"Liberty Leading the People" 1830 by Delacroix
"There is something in me that is stronger than my body which is often given new heart by it. In some people this inner power seems almost non-existent, but with me it is greater than my physical strength. Without it I should die, but in the end it will burn me up - I suppose I mean my imagination, that dominates me and drives me on."
I'm a fan of big-wave surfing. One winter I was on a painting trip in Oahu, when I went for a drive to the pipeline to watch some of the big wave surfers catch some big ones. That day the waves were enormous and only about six surfers were out. Scores of surfers and tourists sat on the shore and watched in awe at these tiny specks, dwarfed by massive crashing waves as high as buildings, and marveled at the courage of man.
Last week was the Mavericks Surf contest in Half Moon Bay and today the elite of the world surfers wait on call, for the go ahead for Eddie Aikau invitational big wave surf event at the Pipeline in Hawaii, for the waves to meet the 40 foot requirement. The New York Times ran an article on the preparation these surfers put into their craft. As well as being superb athletes they spend hours studying weather patterns, ocean currents and whatever it takes to understand the movement of the ocean. Such painstaking preparation can mean the difference between life and death. With waves over 50 foot high there is no room for error.
I paint on location. The first thing I do when I arrive in a beautiful place such as Hawaii is spend a few days just looking at the ocean. Studying it's waves, it's light, it's energy until I feel I have reached an understanding of the special gifts that the location has to offer. This is absolutely vital if you want to capture the spirit of a place on the canvas.
Art is like surfing. You have to love it and be willing to do whatever it takes to master your craft. You have to have a big vision and you have to have a big passion for the vision that you want to share with the world. You have to be willing to whatever it takes to get it out in the world. I can think of no more noble calling than to help up a torch for what is great and beautiful and light. The following picture is one of the great surfing locations on Maui. I painted it because when I watch Big Wave surfers I am transported into a place that reflects the courage and grace of the human spirit, dancing with the enormous power of Nature. A great piece of art like Van Gogh's "Starry Night" or one of Turners paintings does the same thing for me. So how about you, what inspires the arti spirit for you?
Big Wave by Josse Ford.
Technorati Tags: art, art marketing, artists, Hawaiian, ocean
Last weekend I went to the LA weekly art show "Some Paintings" at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Featuring the work of over 70 living Los Angeles painters, curated by LA Weekly arts writer, Doug Harvey the exhibition was a huge success. Parking was a crazy experience for me. I'm used to zipping around Manhattan on the subway, not sitting in a long snaking traffic queue.
I didn't see a huge amount of art that resonated for me but there were some quite interesting landscapes by David Lloyd in the William Turner Gallery. The smooth lusciousness of the finish and the bright colors were gorgeous.
The event was packed with artists, their families and collectors. It was quite a feat in patience to see all the different exhibits.
Other pieces of art that i liked:
You can see the rest of the photos from the show here, in my photo albums.
As I left a performance piece was going on outside. The artists were jumping up and down on a car covered with a pile of rubbish, yelling and beating it with sticks. Perhaps a fitting tribute to the state of modern art today, just kidding :-)
Technorati Tags: art, art collectors
Yesterday i saw an excellent documentary called "The Eloquent Nude" directed by Ian McCluskey. The film tells the story of the relationship between Weston and his muse, Charis Wilson. Charis inspired a series of nudes that inspired some of the most famous and beautiful images of the twentieth century. Weston was also known for his black and white abstractions of nature. Their relationship unfolds through interviews with Charis, aged 90, telling her stories, Weston's black and white photographs, and engaging reenactments of the couple's travels.
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Nude, 1936 (227N)
Edward Weston negative, Cole Weston print
Edward Weston lived on the California coast, near Big Sur, and was a contemporary of Steiglitz, Georgia O'Keefe, and Ansel Adams. The 1940s was my favorite time in American art history. So many great artists and photographers came together in New York and California, immortalizing the beauty and wildness of nature. A spiritual thread runs through their work, a desire to know truth and perfection through the practice of their art. Interestingly enough, it was through the stress of commercial pressure that their relationship started to disintegrate. The happiest years of their work together was when they were traveling around the country on the first Guggenheim grant awarded to a photographer.
I feel a close affinity with the artist from those days because traveling around in my RV painting the national parks in the States is such a source of joy for me. I have traveled all over the world, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Africa but it still the grand mountains and the wild deserts that inspires and informs my art. I am preparing for another art journey to the mountain and deserts of New Mexico. The stormy skies are quite something in late August! I'll be adding some photographs from my last trip there to the photo galleries soon.
Edward Weston photographed shells, forlorn desert dunes, the San Louis Obisco coastline, the Sierra mountains, clouds in the desert. And his eye turned everything that he saw into a window, that leads us into a more refined, shimmering world.
Shell by Edward Weston, available from the Contessa Gallery
The film can be seen today at 5pm at the Riverview Theater, 3800 42nd Ave S., Minneapolis. I would highly recommend make the effort and see the film as it is hauntingly memorable. If you don't live in Minneapolis, support the project by buying a DVD here.
Technorati Tags: art, film, journeys, photography, women
A new charity, United States Artists, will give $50,000 grants to 50 artists. - New York Times:
New Charity to Start Plan for $50,000 Artists’ Grants
A new charity, United States Artists, will announce today an ambitious plan to provide support to working artists, starting with a grant program that will be one of the most generous in existence.
Fifty artists working in a wide variety of disciplines and at various career stages will receive $50,000 each, no strings attached. The first recipients will be announced on Dec. 4.
However, to be eligible for a grant you will need to be nominated.
"Each year, nominations are made by an anonymous group of arts leaders, critics, scholars, and artists chosen by USA. Nominators do not know one another. There identities shall remain secret.
Nominators are asked to submit names of artists they believe show an extraordinary commitment to their craft. Artists at any stage of career development may be nominated. To be considered for fellowships, artists must be 21 years of age or older and U.S. citizens or legal residents in any U.S. state. Artists must have the following:
For further information visit United States Artists.
Technorati Tags: art opportunities, artist grants, artists, emerging artists
The NYT has an interesting article on the acquistion of a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer which was bought last month by the billionaire collector Ronald S. Lauder and is on display his Neue Galerie for German and Austrian art, on the Upper East Side, NYC.
"The art market operates according to its own logic, which may have nothing to do with the quality of the art. Value is not price — whether the issue is a Klimt, or a ballplayer, or a chief executive paid millions of dollars, who runs his company into the ground.
But Oscar Wilde had it right about cynics, price and value. It’s only natural to play the skeptic when the art world is a circus of profligacy, drunk with cash, and when dimwitted speculators make headlines, wasting fortunes on bad art. Who knows what the most money paid in private for a painting really is: maybe $135 million. For that amount, assuming it is what Mr. Lauder paid, his portrait of Adele, a hedonistic masterpiece, will be talked about in terms of how many lives might have been saved or how many lifted from poverty for this sum.
It’s inevitable. But ludicrous. The Met spent more than $45 million two years ago for a tiny Duccio “Madonna and Child” whose modesty seems its most endearing virtue. The tipping point between endearing and hedonistic is evidently somewhere around $100 million.
As for the border separating public interest from private enterprise, it has never been fixed. The Neue Galerie is Christie’s annex now, exhibiting paintings for sale ($15 general admission, no children under 12 allowed), whose display is also a public service.
Someday Adele will be seen for just what she is: beautiful, a gift to the city. And $135 million may even come to look like a bargain."
Technorati Tags: art, art collectors, art sales, nyc art
Recently I attended a panel at the Whitney curated by Andrea Zittel. Andrea and her friends who live at Joshua Tree talked about their influences and experiences on building community in the context of art. Here's what the Whitney had to say about the event:
"Well known for her research and design of domestic and external environments, Andrea Zittel creates experimental models for contemporary life, or what she calls "systems for living." Her current project, the desert studio and home A-Z West in Joshua Tree, California, explores all aspects of the everyday, from home furniture and house guests to food and clothing, as part of her investigation into the contours of human nature and human needs. One such A-Z project, Wagon Stations, comprises mobile living stations customized by individuals invited to join Zittel's desert community; several will be on view beginning February 9 at the Whitney Museum at Altria."
I've always liked Andrea Zittel. I first saw her work at the Whitney where she had a film on her daily routine as an artist at Joshua Tree. I appreciated it because the film had a great sense of humor. And then, of course, there's the desert. As Andrea herself has to say of the desert: "After living in the desert for six years, I have come to believe that most of us are drawn here because each of us is looking for some version of personal freedom." The A-Z wagons represent small, portable structures, customized by each artist, an ode to personal freedom. Traveling through the desert in my RV, painting, I can totally relate to the need for a space of one's own, even better if we can take it with us on our art journeys.
A Wagon in It's Native Environment
A Wagon Station from the installation at the Whitney, Altria
The panel itself meandered across a lot of different territories, from activist 60s art to camping out in a large tent in the middle of the Freize Art Fair, in London. What struck me, however, was just how much fun these artists were having being artists. They seemed to live in a world so far removed from our ordinary world of "getting ahead" and commercial considerations. How refreshing! This is what it must be like to live fully in the artist archetype, not an small pokey garret, starving but noble, but in a world of childlike wonder, innocence, creating magnificent worlds of your own choosing, without regard to whether of not anyone else gets it. I can't remember the last time I felt like that - probably the last time I was out in the desert.
Further thoughts from "The Artist's Mentor":
"In one of his letters from Tahiti, Gaugin had written that he felt he had to go back beyond the horses of the Parthenon, back to the rocking-horse of his childhood. It is easy to smile at this preoccupation of modern artists with the simple and the childlike, and yet it should not be hard to understand it. For artists feel that this directness and simplicity is the one thing that cannot be learnt. Every other trick of the trade can be acquired. Every effect becomes easy to imitate after it has been shown that it can be done. Many artists feel that the museums and exhibitions are full of works of such amazing facility and skill that nothing is gained by continuing along those lines; that they are in danger of losing their souls and becoming slick manufacturers of paintings or sculptures unless they become as little children.
-- E.H. Gombrich
"The Artist's Mentor : Inspiration from the World's Most Creative Minds" (Ian Jackman)
Technorati Tags: art, artists, culture, desert, journeys, women
A recent issue of the New York Times featured an inspiring essay by Arthur. L. Miller about two giants of modern history......
Last year, the 100th anniversary of E=mc2 inspired an outburst of symposiums, concerts, essays and merchandise featuring Albert Einstein. This year, the same treatment is being given to another genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born on Jan. 27, 250 years ago.
There is more to the dovetailing of these anniversaries than one might think.
Einstein once said that while Beethoven created his music, Mozart's "was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master." Einstein believed much the same of physics, that beyond observations and theory lay the music of the spheres — which, he wrote, revealed a "pre-established harmony" exhibiting stunning symmetries. The laws of nature, such as those of relativity theory, were waiting to be plucked out of the cosmos by someone with a sympathetic ear.
Thus it was less laborious calculation, but "pure thought" to which Einstein attributed his theories.
Einstein was fascinated by Mozart and sensed an affinity between their creative processes, as well as their histories.........
.....he (Einstein) wrote four papers that were destined to change the course of science and nations. His ideas on space and time grew in part from aesthetic discontent. It seemed to him that asymmetries in physics concealed essential beauties of nature; existing theories lacked the "architecture" and "inner unity" he found in the music of Bach and Mozart.
In his struggles with extremely complicated mathematics that led to the general theory of relativity of 1915, Einstein often turned for inspiration to the simple beauty of Mozart's music.
"Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music," recalled his older son, Hans Albert. "That would usually resolve all his difficulties."
In the end, Einstein felt that in his own field he had, like Mozart, succeeded in unraveling the complexity of the universe.
This story is a beautiful example of the power of art and music to uplift and inspire. It also reminds us of the compelling and potent connection between science, art, and music - that a holistic approach to living is what we humans need to prosper and achieve great things!
Read the Full NYTimes Essay...
Technorati Tags: art, art collectors, art resources, art techniques, spiritual art, writing
Da Vinci's most well known and mysterious paintings is the "Mona Lisa." There has been much speculation down through history as to who's portrait it might be. We know that it was very important to Leonardo. He carried it with him everywhere. Why was he so attached?
Hauntingly beautiful, the mystery of her smile has provoked much discussion. What is she smiling about? Leonardo used a special techique called sfumato - the blurred outline and soft edges, with indistinct corners of the eyes and corners of the mouth.
Who was she? An unrequited love affair? One suggestion that I agree with, is that she was a self-portrait. I believe that Leonardo Da Vinci was painting his Soul. Michael J. Gelb in his book How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci has found evidence for this from Dr Lillian Schwartz of Bell Laboratories and author of The Computer Artist's Handbook.
"Applying sophistocated computer modeling with precision measurements of scale and alignment, Schwartz compared the Mona Lisa with the only extant self-portrait of the artist, drawn in red chalk in 1518. As she describes it, 'Juxtaposing the images was all that was needed to fuse them: the relative locations of the nose, mouth, chin and eyes and forehead i none precisely matched the other. Merely flipping up the corner of the mouth would produce the mysterious smile ..."
And then, of course, there is "The Da Vinci Code" which has been unleashing a torrent of interest and controversy, especially within the Vatican. But this is the story of another post..
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"How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day" (Michael J. Gelb)
Technorati Tags: art, spiritual art
I am greatly enjoying a book called "The Mission of Art" by Alex Grey, a New York based visionary artist. I especially enjoyed what he had to say about Art and the Soul.
"Art is communion of one soul to another, offered through the symbolic language of form and content. An artist creates a sensible form, through harmonious use of the medium (paint, clay, music, and so on), which expresses content, by subject and feeling. We absorb metaphysical sustenance from the balance of formal means and expressive ends. Art expands the appreciator's consciousness by providing a glimpse into the hearts and minds of strange beautiful humanity. Art is nutrition for the Soul. The soul cannot thrive on junk food.
Many artists develop technical skills - they can draw, paint, or play an instrument - but seem to have little that is fresh, original, or worthwhile to say. Other artists really have something important to express but lack the skills or courage to express it. Rare is the artist with skill who offers a significant statement.
The only way to formal inventiveness and technical ability is to work and work, studying and perfecting the craft. Artists discover unique features of their medium that contribute to actualizing their personal vision. A well-crafted work of art requires discipline. Devotional labor lavished on a work of art radiates love and care to the viewer."
Technorati Tags: art, artists, nyc art, spiritual art
