Too much virtual art research can be hazardous to your, well, being.
(See here and here)
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Monday, July 16, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
BEFORE THE BEGINNING, AFTER THE END
The starting point for art is our five senses. Yet sight, touch, and other senses are no help when it comes to one of the most powerful themes for art.
In his final play, Shakespeare laments, "Our little life is rounded with a sleep." That sleep-- vast, profound and impenetrable-- defeats artistic understanding. There are no colors or shapes or designs to portray it. In fact, the clues we receive from our meager senses usually end up making the artist look silly.
In Robert Frost's poem Home Burial, a mother wails at her inability to accompany and understand her dying child:
Artists who do try to explore what lies beyond consciousness usually get about as far as the veil:
The powerful painter Arnold Bocklin employed a similar device-- a distant island-- but the point is the same: no sneak previews allowed.
If art cannot help us see past the veil, what insight and consolation can it give us?
For me, one of the most successful efforts was George Herriman's lovely dialogue between Krazy Kat and the afterlife. Here, Krazy Kat uses an ouija board to seek the wisdom of the spirits on the other side of the veil.
Herriman's light and elegant touch combines profundity and humor. Most of all, his tenderness and humanity seem to me a far better response to our ignorance than the grim and ponderous approaches of Bocklin or Brueghel.
In his final play, Shakespeare laments, "Our little life is rounded with a sleep." That sleep-- vast, profound and impenetrable-- defeats artistic understanding. There are no colors or shapes or designs to portray it. In fact, the clues we receive from our meager senses usually end up making the artist look silly.
In Robert Frost's poem Home Burial, a mother wails at her inability to accompany and understand her dying child:
The nearest friends can goPerhaps for this reason, most artists satisfy themselves with depicting the observable detritus left behind, rather than trying to get any closer.
With anyone to death, comes so far short,
They might as well not try to go at all
Artists who do try to explore what lies beyond consciousness usually get about as far as the veil:
The powerful painter Arnold Bocklin employed a similar device-- a distant island-- but the point is the same: no sneak previews allowed.
If art cannot help us see past the veil, what insight and consolation can it give us?
For me, one of the most successful efforts was George Herriman's lovely dialogue between Krazy Kat and the afterlife. Here, Krazy Kat uses an ouija board to seek the wisdom of the spirits on the other side of the veil.
Herriman's light and elegant touch combines profundity and humor. Most of all, his tenderness and humanity seem to me a far better response to our ignorance than the grim and ponderous approaches of Bocklin or Brueghel.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
THE WATERCOLORS OF JOHN GANNAM
Some illustrators, such as Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, went on to become famous in "fine art" circles for their amazing watercolors. John Gannam (1907 - 1965) remained an illustrator but his watercolors were still amazing.
Gannam's paintings adorned stories in popular magazines for many years. He also painted a popular series of advertisements for sheets and blankets.
Neither Winslow Homer nor Edward Hopper could hold a candle to Gannam when it came to portraying the deep emotional relationship between a housewife and her new blanket.
But don't be fooled. Look closely and you will see the work of a serious and accomplished watercolorist.
Many of Gannam's paintings were published in cropped form, accompanied by intrusive headlines and graphics like these:
But when you look at the originals, you see Gannam's mastery at work:
Little details like this row of flowers demonstrate how Gannam kept looking hard all the time. Gannam didn't use a rote formula or lapse into photorealistic tracing.
These watercolors could fit quite comfortably on the same wall with the work of Homer and Hopper.
Gannam's paintings adorned stories in popular magazines for many years. He also painted a popular series of advertisements for sheets and blankets.
Neither Winslow Homer nor Edward Hopper could hold a candle to Gannam when it came to portraying the deep emotional relationship between a housewife and her new blanket.
But don't be fooled. Look closely and you will see the work of a serious and accomplished watercolorist.
Many of Gannam's paintings were published in cropped form, accompanied by intrusive headlines and graphics like these:
But when you look at the originals, you see Gannam's mastery at work:
Little details like this row of flowers demonstrate how Gannam kept looking hard all the time. Gannam didn't use a rote formula or lapse into photorealistic tracing.
These watercolors could fit quite comfortably on the same wall with the work of Homer and Hopper.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Plug yourself
Vilcus, the Plug Dactyloadapter, by Art Lebedev (see also here), who have brought some other truly wonderful ideas so far - and have been working on more (like this great keyboard where you can actually program the keys according to your current needs - QWERTY, AZERTY, or Photoshop, or anything else, for that mater).(via)
Sunday, July 1, 2007
ARTISTS IN LOVE, part ten
In both art and life, the sculptor Gaston Lachaise was famously devoted to his muse, Isabel.
Lachaise was working in Paris in 1901 when he first saw Isabel Nagle strolling through the gardens by the Seine. Isabel was a married woman on vacation from the United States. Lachaise later recalled, she “immediately became the primary inspiration which awakened my vision...."
The young artist appeared at her door every day until she agreed to let him draw her portrait. By the time she left Paris to return home to Boston, the couple was in love .
Lachaise could not live apart from Isabel. He gave up his friends and family in Paris, learned to speak English and followed her to Boston with just $30 in his pocket. There, he persuaded her to leave her husband, a conservative local businessman.
Gaston and Isabel fled strict Boston society to romp nude in the remote woods of Maine. They swam and frolicked in the phosphorescent sea at night. They wrote bad love poetry to each other (as is every couple's right). A sample from Gaston:
Years later he wrote, “through her the splendor of life was uncovered for me and the road of wonder began widening….” It must have been somewhere along that wider road that he started sculpting Isabel opened up like some giant fecund orchid.
I used to think Lachaise's art was pretty uncomplicated. Then I read that Isabel was in reality just five feet, two inches tall and weighed a mere 110 pounds. Whoa.
Oliver Sacks observed that "the world isn't given to us-- we make it with our nervous systems." In art as in love, what we bring to and invest in the object of our affection plays a significant role in what we perceive.
Lachaise did not simply copy Isabel as nature created her. Through her he distilled abstract shapes and contours of eros. Willa Cather once said we can find happiness by being "dissolved into something complete and great." As far as I can tell, Lachaise followed that formula to become a very happy guy.
Lachaise was working in Paris in 1901 when he first saw Isabel Nagle strolling through the gardens by the Seine. Isabel was a married woman on vacation from the United States. Lachaise later recalled, she “immediately became the primary inspiration which awakened my vision...."
The young artist appeared at her door every day until she agreed to let him draw her portrait. By the time she left Paris to return home to Boston, the couple was in love .
Lachaise could not live apart from Isabel. He gave up his friends and family in Paris, learned to speak English and followed her to Boston with just $30 in his pocket. There, he persuaded her to leave her husband, a conservative local businessman.
Gaston and Isabel fled strict Boston society to romp nude in the remote woods of Maine. They swam and frolicked in the phosphorescent sea at night. They wrote bad love poetry to each other (as is every couple's right). A sample from Gaston:
Isabel and Gaston were married, and Gaston devoted his entire career to sculpting monuments to her ample belly, powerful haunches and pendulous breasts.I sing my hymn to you,
You the goddess for whom I searched,
Whom I express in my every work,
Have made me a God.
Years later he wrote, “through her the splendor of life was uncovered for me and the road of wonder began widening….” It must have been somewhere along that wider road that he started sculpting Isabel opened up like some giant fecund orchid.
I used to think Lachaise's art was pretty uncomplicated. Then I read that Isabel was in reality just five feet, two inches tall and weighed a mere 110 pounds. Whoa.
Oliver Sacks observed that "the world isn't given to us-- we make it with our nervous systems." In art as in love, what we bring to and invest in the object of our affection plays a significant role in what we perceive.
Lachaise did not simply copy Isabel as nature created her. Through her he distilled abstract shapes and contours of eros. Willa Cather once said we can find happiness by being "dissolved into something complete and great." As far as I can tell, Lachaise followed that formula to become a very happy guy.
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