Jacob Lawrence and Peter Schjeldahl

Today I was reading an art review by Peter Schjeldahl about the painter Jacob Lawrence. I like Lawrence's work very much and would like to see the show in NY if I could. At one point Schjeldahl described Lawrence's work as "world changing art" which pricked me with a kind of strange surprise. People often say things like that about art work and I am often rather astounded. Hyperbole is endemic in the Art world after all. One thinks of Picasso's Guernica and immediately thrown into a world of war. That it was about Spain is beside the point, which I guess is why the painting possesses such a universal appeal. And yet, what exactly has it changed? Has it awakened anyone to the brutality (often futility) of aggression on a national scale? (or even on a personal one for that matter) I doubt it. Can it shape a person's sudden decision to become an artist? Of course, but so can Monet's Hay Stack's or Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can although for different reason probably. But what does "world changing art" mean? Somehow I cannot understand how art can change anything except in a very deeply personal nature. I don't believe Schjeldahl means that. After all the title of the show in question is Migration and the paintings are illustrations on this theme of the great Black migration northward to the cities. It is a monumental theme but I love his work mostly because of the paintings themselves which I find graphically arresting. The theme, although important, isn't the reason I like the paintings anymore than I like angels painted by Giotto. The theme is secondary unless one is in the propaganda business. The real reason is because of the dramatic integrity of the art work which has a unified motion of its own after the work is finished.

Chris Burden, made in America

This was a pivotal moment in America's art movement. At the height of the Vietnam War this piece moved the complacency of the Art world into another dimension; into the world of theatre and performance from which it rooted and has blossomed ever since.

I don't know how to think of it other than as a political piece, but then, I know little of Chris Burden. 

As Rod Serling would often say:

"for your perusal in the twilight zone"

apropos Yoko

Stig

 New York 4 hours ago

Art makes people think. Yoko makes people think. Whatever you think of Yoko is art now. Thank you for your participation.

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In the NYT yesterday was an article about Yoko Ono's show at MOMA. I do not write about her show but instead on the comment made by this contributor to the Comments dept which now accompany many NYT articles online. I find myself perusing this section for a few minutes to get an idea about how variously random people react to events in today's political, social, and cultural world. These Comments sections' being the new Hyde Park of op-ed pages. 

In any event, what struck me so sorrowfully was just how differently I imagine Art than to this fellow Stig  who had responded to another person's comments about the show (not favourably). I will not get into her work  but address this idea that "Art makes people think". (Art should make people think)

I find this disturbing because for me, Art has always made me feel something mysterious inside of me, almost as if a work has cross-circuited my prejudicial thinking patterns and gone straight to my soul. Saying this does  not discount the role of imaginative thinking which runs parallel to this 'feeling' in front of a work. It saddens me that Contemporary Art, since post-Dada, has somehow hijacked this experience and created a kind of Frankenstein of intellectual machinations which have taken over the education systems worldwide. This is a new phenomenon in the scheme of things. 

I am not a luddite, nor am I someone who caves into charming sentimental pastiches of reppitive and un-original works of Art, but I cannot understand how so many people have been hoodwinked into a Contemporary Art world reduced to coy symbols. After all, it is Philosophy which should make us think, but it is Art and Poetry which allows us to feel. How can it be otherwise? 

Who is Bach? Puccini? The Beatles? Mahler? Goya? Titian? Matisse? Arthur Miller? Tennessee Williams? BB King?,,, Maria Callas for god's sake?

And, just because I am at it; how did Contemporary Art divorce itself from sensuality anyway? How did Contemporary Art become reduced to a 'twitter-like' thought only to be jettisoned into the nearest litter bin?

Ah, a friend might say, you miss the point: "Follow the money trail!,,, It is just entertainment...."

Another might say:
"Stop with all your serious misgivings over the state of Art,,, its just game,,,, a shell game for the rich."

Mais, "NON!" I say, because I am a painter who still yearns to be moved by Art, not titillated (or twitterated) and entertained like its a Disney film. 

Suddenly, in all this, I am reminded of The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse which I had so loved many years ago. 

More to be revealed,,,,

Peter Bruegal, still alive

In our time of terrible, indiscriminate madness wreaking havoc in the Middle East, Africa and even on our own 'civilized shores', I cannot think of an image which best renders the actual horror of what some men do to others. It is a reminder that violent insanity isn't just a signature of our epoch, something which I confess I sometimes I believe because through the internet it feels like an onslaught 24/7, as they say these days.

In this painting is that terrible beauty; one which only artists of rare ability seem capable of making in any epoch. Bruegel shows us that there is such a grace even in darkness. I sometimes do not know where to put this awful sense of guilt for having such an easy life while so many others on this earth seem to be destined for inexhaustible sorrow. I live in a land wherein clean water is taken for granted and food plentiful. And then, there is this shame for feeling incapable of doing anything for them. Only a handful of painters are able to do this, Goya comes to mind. All the exquisite handling of paint (behind the 'motif') reminds me that to get to the 'whole' of an unified image one must past through the details as gruesome as they may be.

By ear

Hakuin Ekaku (1686 - 1768)

Hakuin Ekahu (1686 -1768) #2

Here are two more exquisite works by Hakuin Ekahu. The first is on the theme of 'one hand clapping' which is the most famous of Japanese koans. The second one is perhaps another koan but I don't know the motif. It is simply called 'mortar and bush warbler'.

These are interesting for me, notably when one thinks of the struggle of the Contemporary painter in his/her search for meaning in the surface especially after someone like Matisse for instance.

Hakuin Ekaku (1685 - 1768)

 Monkey and Cukoo (55 x 43cm)

This is a wonderful ink wash by one of the really great, great poet/artists of Japan. Superlatives aside, he is for me inspirational in the sense that his pictures teach me about pictorial form in this Contemporary world. He uses the space of the paper in a very particular way and his pictures seem to defy logic which is an enviable aspect of his originality. A great unified picture plane is evident while at the same time it is built using all of its few elements necessary to complete the poem at hand. 'cows, 'ants, 'spoons', 'cups', 'crows', 'bamboo' 'waves', 'Mount Fuji"...

This mix of elements and ideas in a unified picture plane is for me the "Holy Graal" of painting.

ciné-échange! (les livres à pattes)

There is a Cinema just a stone's throw from the Gare Saint-Lazare aptly named Cinema Caumartin because it sits on the rue Caumartin (Duh!). In the lobby, to my surprise, when I went to see a film there a few months back, I discovered several large shelves overflowing with books of all shapes and sizes. The idea is simple: One is encouraged to take a book home but on condition that one replaces it with another one. The idea for this comes from Russia where apparently (so reads the small sign below) when Russians lose personal papers (of any sort I presume) they are called "des papers à pattes" (papers with legs!) and they are not considered lost at all, but are deemed to have a life of their own as they simply go their own way leaving their owners forever perplexed. So in this spirit the Cinema Caumartin offers "Les livres à Pattes!"

pretty cool (très chouette, en fait!)

Geoffrey Lehmann, Australian poet

  

             
                Getting started 

When we first came our house
was two weatherboard rooms
in a bare paddock.

I was just back from a war.
There were no trees
and I chose the name "Spring Forest".

It was dark when we drove up
and lit our pressure lamps and unpacked.
Our children found potatoes sprouting
on the wire mattress of a large iron bed.
What were they doing there?
my daughter kept asking.

We burned ironbark
in the old brick fireplace,
rubbing etherized hands into warmth.

At dawn Sally and Peter were out
calling in the frost, exploring.
A long icicle hung from the tank.
That day five cars passed on the road
and the children ran out every time.

Matisse

Jasper lips

A dear friend has sent me a wonderful book entitled "Rendez-vous with Art". It is essentially a dialogue between Philippe de Montebello and Martin Gayford as they travel through museums, churchs and art galleries around the world.

(Just the early introduction is already  captivating)

Philippe de Montebello pauses in front of a shattered  yellow stone. 'This', he exclaims, 'is one of the greatest works if art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, indeed in the world, of any civilisation!' The object we are looking at is part of a face, the lower section. Of the upper portions - the brow, the nose, the eyes - nothing remains.

'If you told me you'd found the top of the head', he continues, 'I am not sure I would be thrilled because I am so focussed, so absorbed and captivated by the perfection of what is there; that my pleasure - and it is intense pleasure - is marvelling at what my eye sees, not some abstraction that, in a more art historical mode, I might conjure up. It's like a book that you love, and you simply don't want to see the movie. You've already imagined the hero or the heroine in a certain way. In truth, with the yellowed jasper lips, I have never really tried to imagine the missing parts.'

I remember this small fragment in the Met because I prowled the Met every friday afternoon for years when I lived in New York. And, how I miss those excursions!

(More to be revealed)