Inspiring impressionism

...saw exhibition "Inspiring impressionism" in Seattle Art Museum. The show unanchored the fixed belief in my mind that the impressionists pulled out their stuff out of their sleeves without thinking or looking at anything but living landscape or cityscape while closing their eyes at the past. Not at all. They looked and looked and looked at all kinds of older paintings - at the Louvre and during their trips - to Italy and all over the place. Like Holland. Some of the examples in the exhibit- the "before and after" pairs - were fascinating, while some others felt like a stretch.
An example of "fascinating":


An example of "a stretch":


At the same time, I happened to be reading "Impression : painting quickly in France" by Richard Brettell. Fascinating book about Impressionists techniques of painting, observing, relating to public and buyers (painting while entertaining guests, for example!)... The more I read and see, the quicker the paintings emerge out of the blur of colors and become pieces of history, placed on the timeline. Not that there's anything wrong with reacting to art as purely reactive way, uninformed but emotional, as I've been doing it for decades....

Here is is the - link - with the info about the exhibit "Impression : painting quickly in France" that was organized in 2001. Sigh... I wish I were there...


One more thing worth to remember - watched a video lecture by Mr. Brettell From Monet to Van Gogh a history of impressionism" Excellent. Worth to see again one day (or two. It's long).

Drawing from the Modern

DRAWING from the MODERN is a three part series published by MOMA as catalog to accompany the chronologically arranged exhibitions of their drawing collection. There are three parts to the collection. I've only gone through two of them, starting 1945, but I'm planning also to get the first part. The book has pretty good foreword that talks about different movements and directions in the field of drawing. It always fascinates me to ponder the question: what ends up in a museum and what ends up in a basement or an attic? Or, in a trash pile? The art of choosing between "good" and "bad" art is indeed a godly task.

Dennis Zaborowski

This very uneventful art walk was almost over. At the very end, eventually, a jewel.
Drawings and paintings by Dennis Zaborowski, originally of Cleveland, Ohio. Rough, dense, filled with memories. Looking at each work was like reading a novel or a short story.

One was called "Mythology of Fatherhood." A tall man with a severed arm flying around the painting with children clinging, grabbing onto his legs. Either a warm welcome home after loosing all the hope that Father would ever show up, or a prelude to abuse.

A bedroom from a fly on the ceiling point of view - large bed in a center, a heavy dresser, a cat sleeping on the mat. A couple making either love or making hate. Title - something about a Catholic couple. I think it actually said, "Catholic couple making love."

Church scene. If I weren't so entranced by the painting that my brain shut down, I would have guessed that Mr Zaborowski was raised as a Polish Catholic.

Have to go to this gallery again and look more at the pictures.

Unfortunately, Mr Zaborowski doesn't have much stuff up on the internet. Some blurry pictures are quoted above, just to REMEMBER ART.

-link- to a short statement by Dennis Zaborowski.

New Chinese art - Yue Minjun

Yue Minjun - paintings in the style of "cynical realism" -link-
Hmmm.... is it an expression of how Chinese guys feel and look like, or rather... how the Western world wants to see them.... through cynical distortions

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-Here's- an interesting gallery of Chinese and Korean art - Arario Gallery

what else - Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham - exhibit a the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami - stage sets (like the one below), dancers' costumes, some videos of Cunningam and his work (Cunninham giving a short dance performance at the age of 80 or so... sweet!)



In general, a little sparse for such a huge and promising space like MOCA. The item that fascinated me most was a video of computerized, moving stage set created using a computer program called Danceforms. Painted stick figures, like skeletons of dancers, moving lines and abstract, computerized free-forms were projected on two screens with the space for dancers inbetween the screens. The actual, flesh and body dancers weren't there to dance inside the set. I haven't found an image on the internet. Too bad, I'd like to be able to remember this set, as much as I would like to see the actual performance.

of course, Mark Ryden

The paintings of the emperor of JuxtaPoz mystical fantasy within a driving distance. Yippee! (a year or two or so ago. I'm trying not to forget things worth loving.)

I've been fascinated by Mark Ryden's art just from looking at small printed pictures in magazines. Seeing the actual paintings was an amazing experience. Some of them were huge, and some of them tiny. Almost all of them, the big ones especially made me stand in front of them for a long time, transfixed. They're deep, as far as the paint goes, and as far as the impressions and the associations they create.

Lately, the world became populated with hordes of little girls with big eyes and heads, toy bunny rabbits and sock monkeys on bicycles. But Ryden still rocks.

The trip to the exhibit was worth every minute of it, including the most unfortunate one - our car being hit by another car in the parking lot.... :( We calmly got out, attended to the business of having an accident, walk to the exhibit, and got lost in the other world...

BTW, it looks like Mark Ryden has some lovely new stuff on his website, and in a show in LA. Unfortunately, this (LA) is a little too far for a road trip.... :(

Robyn O'Neil

Robyn O'Neil - looking at her paintings was like taking a hike through dreamscape of North American Pacific Northwest. Something had happened. Human spirits were broken, fight for food, survival, and closeness begins. Something IS happening?

postindustrial cities

OK, I've just spent an hour looking through my bookmarks, trying to find this one site. I want to remember it as something that totally amazed me. There's power in these paintings that is scary, but also, to me, somewhat sweet.
?
The gray, broken down staircases of Lodz, the war movies, the grayness, the history. Me, playing around, as a child, not even noticing the grayness....

How did these images come to the artist? Was he playing, noticing the grayness, was he being bothered by it?

There is the artist's site - Stefan Hoenerloh from Germany, a click away

Raquib Shaw

remembering what I liked most last year...
Glossy, colorful, mysterious paintings by Raquib Shaw were definitely a mysterious highlight, like a disturbing dream...

The exhibit we saw was called "Garden of Earthly Delights". A contemporary vision of the traditional journey through heaven, hell, and the outskirts of both.







Raqiub Shaw, born 1974 Calcutta, India. Lives and works in London.

Here's a poster of Raqib's on the floor of my messy living room...

R B Kitaj

while surfing art on the internet I (re)discovered RB Kitaj. I've seen one or two of his paintings somewhere, without knowing anything about him...
What an interesting individual....



some links
http://www.geocities.com/pantherprousa/bacon/kitaj_bacon.html

http://www.glyphs.com/art/kitaj/

http://www.southern.net/wm/paint/auth/kitaj/

and a quote from glyphs.com
Kitaj is aware that a Jew who paints figures has crossed a proscribed line, has violated a rule against making graven images. He even dares to contemplate painting God, a transgression of Hebraic law, although not of Christian (thus, for encouragement in this exercise, he turns to William Blake and various Italian painters). Perhaps as a kind of compensation for such defiance, Kitaj also spends a good deal of time concentrating on Cabbalism, the mystical study of the Hebraic scriptures which emerged among Jews in Spain in the 1300s. The Cabbalist employs the Hebrew alphabet as a lens through which to glimpse the Names of God, a means of piercing the veil of the sacred. Kitaj is especially concerned with a variation on Cabbalism developed by the Spanish Mystc Ramon Lull, whose aim was to categorize, and thereby comprehend, the entire cosmos.

Hm... I would have never figured it out myself...

have I ever imagined...

Have I ever imagined being overwhelmed by art books? Art books taking over my space and time. So many art books that is hard to remember?


The two art books that I grew up with. There was no promise for anything else, but there was hope and longing.

David Hockney, collages and cubism

I'm reading Lawrence Weschler's book of essays "Vermeer in Bosnia".

There's an essay called "True to Life: David Hockney's Photocollages". I've been fascinated with David Hockney after I read the book "Secret Knowledge". I would like to re-read it. It's about technical and, I guess, perceptional aspects of art, if there's such word, perceptional.

The essay is about Hockney, photocollages, cubism and perception. The part about cubism is intriguing. I've never been interested in cubism much, not being attracted to its esthetics. But the idea of dissecting perception and putting it in the painting is fascinating. Cubism fighting against the flatness (literal and contextual) of a photograph. Hockney fighting against the same thing, coming up with a different result, a photocollage. The essay is fascinating.

About Picasso's painting of his lover Teresa. He must have spent lots of time with her in bed, close to her face, looking at her from the kind of perspective that is usually not shown in ordinary portrait. Eyes seen from an inch of distance, big mouth.


And here's Hockney's mother.


And now: me and the essay:

I'm not in the photograph, even though I'm reading the book and taking the picture. A part of the essay is how Hockney decided to insert himself in the collage, buy having a small indication of his presence: like the tips of his shoes somewhere towards the bottom edge of the picture. I wonder what Hockney would say about blogging as art. Words, pictures, anonymity.