"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."
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 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
I haven't been in internet land for quite a while (as you have probably noticed :-) but I came across this satirical story today which i quite enjoyed: Healing As Art: The Tale Of The Painting Doctors - Robin Good's Latest News:
There was once a small group of medical doctors (MDs) who wanted to create art.
To accomplish this, they first decided to study art to find what it was made of.
Using elaborate microscopes and measurement devices, they discovered that art was made up of ink on a canvas. With the help of the best high-tech equipment available, they applied thousands of tiny blots of ink to a canvas in the hopes of creating art.
But it wasn't art. It was just ink on a canvas.
Hoping to improve their results, one doctor noticed that art was usually made of different colors of ink. To succeed in creating art, he suggested, they would have to study these colors and find ways of applying them to the canvas.
Using even more elaborate instruments, they determined that ink colors were created by specific, measurable wavelengths of light reflected off the surface of the ink. By isolating different chemicals that absorbed certain wavelengths of light, they were able to synthesize chemical pigments with the appearance of different colors.
With this success in hand, they once again turned to the canvas, applying large quantities of chemical inks, in all varieties, in their attempt to create art.
But it still wasn't art. It was just a lot of different colored inks on a canvas.
Frustrated by the failure, another doctor in the group came up with the idea that since art obviously wasn't produced by the colored ink, then it must somehow be found within the canvas. They proceeded to dissect the canvas.
Using medical imaging equipment and an elaborate system of fiber classification, they were able to catalog and name over two hundred types of microscopic fibers found in the canvas. With this knowledge, the doctors were certain they now understood art. They knew the fiber structure of the canvas and the chemical composition of the inks. What more could art be made of?
Armed with this new scientific knowledge of art, they gathered enormous samples of all the fibers, chemicals and inks now known and combined them in a giant mass of ink colors and canvas fibers.
Only it still wasn't art. It was a flattened blob of canvas covered with multicolored inks.
In frustration, the doctors declared there is no such thing as art.
"If it cannot be scientifically replicated in laboratory experiments," stated one doctor, "it does not exist."
And thus art was thereafter banned from all scientific discussion, and artists were ridiculed for dallying in their colorful parlor tricks.
The art laboratory was abandoned, left to fade into dust, forgotten by the scientists and doctors who once thought they could understand art by naming its chemical constituents.
Not long after, a young girl happened across the abandoned laboratory. There, she was surprised to find the most brilliant collection of multicolored inks she had ever seen. They reminded her of a dream she once had with rainbows and fields overflowing with wildflowers.
Spotting an empty canvas, she dipped her finger into a pool of brilliant blue paint and began to smear it across the canvas. She followed that with a warm yellow sun, luscious green fields, and brilliant blotches of color that looked like flowers.
She didn't notice the wall charts, diagrams and reams of data around her in the room. She knew nothing about the chemical composition of inks, nor the structure of canvas fibers. She only knew that brilliant colors and a fresh canvas tugged at her creativity, opening a window of possibility through which she traced the dreams that once danced across the canvas in her mind.
It was art:
Healing is like art.
Neither healing nor art come from the physical matter, the chemicals, the molecules.
Neither healing nor art can be measured or understood as an inventory of parts.
Neither healing nor art exist anywhere but in the minds and hearts of those who materialize observable artifacts by acting on utterly non-scientific dreams and intentions.
Healing and art are much the same. Hence the term, "Healing Arts."
This story was originally written by Mike Adam from NewsTarget.com.
Technorati Tags: art, artists, spiritual art
I'm on a painting trip in Cape Cod, experiencing glorious fall weather and painting oceans and marshes. Cape Cod has a rich tradition as an artist's colony with painters such as Henry Hensch and Charles Hawthorn, the impressionists, through to Hans Hoffman and Mark Rothko, the abstract expressionists. Thoreau made Cape Cod famous in his book of the same name.
I have been finding the light especially gorgeous and have been doing two paintings a day since I got here - an early morning and a late afternoon set up. The sunsets are especially colorful. The National Park "Province Lands" is just a mile from where I am camped and I have a choice of several elevated locations from which to paint the surrounding dunes and ocean.
The photo above is one of the marshes in the national park and a great source of lights and darks for a late afternoon painting session. Capturing the water and the waterlilies floating on the surface is especially interesting. I like the curve of the foliage along the edges.
Recently I visited the Robert Smithson exhibition at the Whitney. Smithson believed that art existed beyond the confines of the museum. His work covered a wide range: earthworks, sculpture, photography and film. His themes were the landscape, language, the monument and site specific artworks. He was fascinated by industrial landscapes. He was self-taught as an artist, although he did attend the Arts Students League. He loved to read - he had more than a thousand books in his library.
Like me, he had a love of travel and journeys in search of his artistic inspiration and settings. His writings tied together mythology, science. It wasn't so much his art that excited me about this exhibition but the torrent of ideas, and connections pursued, the traces of which he left behind in his journals and essays. Normally conceptual art leaves me unmoved, bored, cold, even insulted that the pure, rigorous discipline of seeking ever economies of visual description should have been replaced by such a pretentious impostor. But Robert's ideas electrified, made me think, opened inviting worlds. Poet/Philosopher/Artist he was a living testament that being an artist is a state of consciousness, a calling, a journey into the unknown, a "what if".
Here's his words on his most famous work, "The Spiral Jetty":
"Chemically speaking, our blood is analogous in composition to the primordial seas. Following the spiral steps we return to our origins, back to some pulpy protoplasm, a floating eye adrift in an antediluvian ocean. On the slopes of Rozel point I closed my eyes, and the sun burned crimson through the lids. I opened them and the Great Salt Lake was bleeding scarlet streaks. My sight was saturated by the color of red algae circulating in the heart of the lake, pumping into ruby currents. No they were veins and arteries sucking up obscure sediments. My eyes became combustion chambers, churning orbs of blood blazing by the light of the sun. All was enveloped in a flaming chromosphere."
At that place he had a vision of an immobile cyclone and "Spiral Jetty" was born. A counter clockwise spiral that took 600 tonnes of earth and rock and suggested new ways of looking at art. The "Spiral Jetty" has undergone many changes. In 1970 it went underwater and reemerged 20 years later. It's surface changed from black to white. It has become akin to a national monument. People who otherwise have never heard of Smithson, make the journey over forlorn, rough roads to stare in wonder at it's monumental strangeness. After all, what was he thinking. A giant spiral, in the middle of nowhere, connecting our ancient path with it's neighbor, the post-industrial jetty - his favorite preoccupation.
Photo © Estate of Robert Smithson.
Resources
Technorati Tags: art, artists, culture, journeys, nature, spiritual art
A couple of weekends ago I spent a day listening to different ideas on what motivated the intense friendship between the artist Cezanne and his master and friend, Pissarro. The keynote lecture was given by Richard Brettell, Professor of Art and Aesthetics, University of Texas at Dallas.
Here's what I learned from Richard:
CEZANNE AND PISSARRO
Cezanne and Pissarro were friends for 15 years. Pissarro was a generous man and was always a central figure in all the various artistic groups of his day. He was also different from the other artists, older, fiercely intelligent, he came from a larger world. He was also friends with Gauguin. Courbet was important an important influence to all of the impressionists.
Pissarro and Cezanne spent many a day painting side by side plein air. Their relationship was convivial but also competitive. The impressionists painted not only in response to a motif but also in response to their companion artist. Through the conflict of opposition in ideas and style, they struggled to find their voice as an artist through opposition to the other.
They also painted recurring motifs such as houses and farms. But it was more than just a reworking of a recurring idea, it was a way of communicating visually with the other artist. The paintings were painted with the idea that the other artist would see it and would respond. As a result, studying the paintings tell us a huge amount about the relationship between Cezanne and Pissaro which is why the exhibition at the MoMA with the paired paintings was such an excellent opportunity to see into the worlds of these two great artists.
PISSARRO AND GAUGUIN
Pissarro and Gauguin spent six years together. In 1879 Cezanne invited Gauguin to join his first impressionist exhibition. Gauguin exhibited a sculpture. Gauguin had made a lot of money as a businessman and he collected a lot of art. Even in his early paintings there's a pecularity about them, a bit like Daumier on acid.
One of Pissarro's great gifts to his fellow artists is that he pushed other artists to be strong and to be themselves while he would push himself to be different from them. Both Cezanne and Gauguin painted pictures in "response" to Pissarro. Both Gauguin and Pissarro were obsessed with painting upward, "making patterns of the world vertically".
Another interesting detail about their relationship is that they needed to paint apart from each other, when they painted side by side the paintings generally failed. Pissarro was obsessed with his own failures as an artist. He was often correcting and redoing his own paintings.
PISSARRO AND SEURAT
in 1885 Pissarro met Seurat. It was a revelation for him. He discovered a new approach to uniform pictorial surface and color theory. They had a short working relationship.
Of all the artists, only Van Gogh didn't have a strong interaction with Pissarro.
RESOURCES
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From John Ruskin: British artist, scientist, poet, environmentalist, philosopher, and art critic.
The greatest thing a soul ever does….. is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way
............John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)
John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Technorati Tags: art, spiritual art, writing
