My neighbor caught me
Meditating.
I was so embarrassed.
31 July 2013
30 July 2013
29 July 2013
28 July 2013
27 July 2013
26 July 2013
22 July 2013
gotta love this guy #18 (keith Haring)
Who can not remember those funny looking cartoons of walking dogs and crawling men on the streets of SOHO and the village in 1979? These small cryptic characters were done with such subtlety, even a kind of grace. New York walls and subway cars during the late seventies were laced with the anarchy of twisted color, and I often felt like I was living in a prison; everywhere tags assaulted us. I was never fond of graffiti nor I have I changed much from that opinion over time.
So, Keith Haring's small endeavors around curbs, street gutters and lampposts were a welcome surprise for me. Of course, afterward he then became such a big star that I kind of lost interest in him over the years. And yet, I would see him around from time to time; coffee shops and bookstores in the village although I didn't know him personally.
At the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris I had gone to see Derain, Dufy, and Bonnard, not to see Keith Haring. But as I go see everything, anywhere, anytime, I made my way into the cavernous rooms where giant colorful canvass' were simply hung up without any frames. I only wished that I had had the instinct to film so much more than I did because with each room as I penetrated this show I increasing became more and more overwhelmed by the outburst of this guy's creativity. And, in truth, its not even the kind of painting I particularly enjoy, and yet, I found myself very moved by the show as a whole. He not only exhibits a wonderful graphic style, but also a tremendous sense of humor. He reveals a quiet intelligence, one which seems so prescient now looking back in time, one which offered a gritty and cryptic vision of our hurried lives today. I think that if he had lived a normal life span he would have grown into a more sophisticated painter. I see something in his late things which move away from that easy and familiar graphic style, one at which he became so adept, and into something more cohesive in an abstract way. It looked like he was moving into the less familiar and more painterly which is always more artistic than doing over and over again that which we know how to do. This is a great show and one which offers lots of surprises.
21 July 2013
20 July 2013
16 July 2013
15 July 2013
11 July 2013
09 July 2013
08 July 2013
06 July 2013
04 July 2013
02 July 2013
30 June 2013
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26 June 2013
Prince Street
I keep coming across various paintings as I unearth different files from several old computers. This one was done around 1994 in New York on Prince street where I lived. Funny enough I wish to get back to these kinds of 'stories'. I am never sure just what they mean which is why I find them so intriguing now (not that I had a clue what they meant 20 years ago either) but I am curious to explore something a little more figurative than what I have been up to past 12 years while living in the Drome.
More will be revealed.....
24 June 2013
22 June 2013
21 June 2013
20 June 2013
18 June 2013
14 June 2013
11 June 2013
10 June 2013
08 June 2013
06 June 2013
04 June 2013
surprise!
I just arrived back in France from England, and while driving south I was listening to France Inter; a discussion between Francois Busnel and the writer Antoine Compagnon concerning Proust and Montaigne. Compagnon said that literature must principally evoke a sense of the 'surprise'. He added that a reader must never read the preface before jumping into the book.
"One should not lose out on the pleasure of reading by too much pedagogy".
("..il ne faut surtout pas, surtout pas supprimer ce plaisir par trop de pédagogie"...)
I bring all this up because recently in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanawaza, Japan (but it could be almost any Contemporary venue today) I moved through an exhibition while reading the fact-sheet which I was given to explain the works and the artists exhibiting. There are, these days, certain code phrases which let one know that one is in a Contemporary Museum space:
"...the artist engages our sensibilities.."
"...he has created a world that calls our attention to ..."
"A continuing investigation of life and death is the theme informing all facts of..."
"...we remain confused by...."
"These works which compel us to question our
visual understanding of the world and everyday
awareness, engender a mysterious world of a
different dimension...."
I am often surprised to discover that I am 'supposed to feel this', and I am 'supposed think that', that I was supposed to 'question this' and 'be confronted' by that. I have barely the freedom to have my own experience in front of a work of art as I am assaulted by what the curators and artists have already programmed me to experience. No doubt they do not trust that we, (the public), can be trusted to 'get it' without being armed to the teeth with all sorts of information and philosophical questions. But isn't it all a bit maddening? I mean: where is the poetry, after all?
Thus, how refreshing it was to hear a writer proclaim that surprise, an element so duly overlooked, it would seem, is a crucial necessity for entry into the world of literature, for this writer, (and reader). In other words: what is the point of our imagination if we cannot be present for our own experience in front of a work of art, even at the great, and delicious risk of getting lost in it?
So the questions begs: If one agrees with this premise, then; why the disconnect between the 'Visual Arts' and 'literature', and, how come the Visual Arts have been hijacked by intellectuals and anthropologists?
03 June 2013
31 May 2013
27 May 2013
25 May 2013
Henri Cartier Bresson in Kyoto
I was skeptical about paying ten euros to see a small show of H.C.B. believing that I had seen most of his things either in shows or books over the years. But it was such a sexy poster, and being here in Kyoto, I was feeling a little homesick for France, so coughed it up, as we say in America.
And I am glad I did as there were many images I didn't know, and not a few of them were entirely mesmerising. One, in particular; a wide shot of a young boy in a shabby looking street of Paris in 1932. The look on his face, not sad, but somewhat worse, his expression seemed shorn of any hope that he would ever escape that miserable looking street.
Many others from far flung places, which were indeed more flung far than they are today: India, Spain, Soviet Union, Greece, and Mexico, they are now just a low cost ticket next-door.
But H.C.B. certainly lived a wonderful and productive life. In the show there is great self-portrait of himself: Laying down on what appears to be a wall, he shot everything below: (horizontal though) his sweater, a bit of trousers, and his naked left foot folded over his right ankle. It said: tired feet!
I was happy to see the show after all. I realize just what a giant he was for a whole generation of photographers. His work in black and white, or Monochrome, as its fashionable to say today, seems always anchored by a simple kind of unity, either pictorially, or through something going on in the subject. I don't know much about his life but I do know that he always drew, and made paintings. Towards the end of his rich life it's apparently, all he wanted to do. His beloved Leica would have felt lonely sitting on a desk or tabletop.
For myself, and my recent adventure in photography, I feel that taking pictures has only strengthened my understanding of what it means to 'seize' Form. I have watched my paintings become more graphically impaled upon the visual world around me. It's as if most of my waking hours are in pursuit of the 'next' image whether it be a photograph or a painting.
I now find myself searching out images in the world at large those mental pictures that have been slowly developing, gestating, inside this growing pictorial obsession.
That it can captured so fast with a camera is marvellous thing, but a painting, alas, takes time. My drawing, for the moment has been sulking but whenever I do make something, I am surprised at how much it has evolved nonetheless. It is more graphic than ever before, and I believe this is a good thing, surely it's from all the photos I take nowadays.
The show ends tomorrow at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Kyoto.
24 May 2013
23 May 2013
sharks and tornadoes! (O.M.G.!)
So, what is it about sharks and tornadoes that frighten and fascinate us all? The terrible destruction of the recent tornado in Oklahoma remind us all how fragile we are no matter where we live. People will always live in 'Tornado alley' just as surfers in South Australia will always surf waters known to be the home to White Pointers.
Is it the perfect beauty of both these 'monsters'; their aerodynamic lines; their unpredictability; their capacity to instill in us the most intense and irrational desire to watch them from as close as we possibly can, yet still be at a safe distance away? Is it their ruthless appetite for ripping things up in a matter of seconds; for serrating objects in half, for their indiscriminate violence? For all their amoral destructive behavior they appear almost benign. Just look at the happy face on that shark!
There are shows on television which chase tornadoes, and there are all sorts of operations in South Africa which lace shark infested waters with chum, then lower spectators in steel cages while White Pointers circle in a frenzy. We cannot seem to get enough of them, until they get us.
further reading for the really curious and not faint of heart! One gleaned from a site entitled White Shark Facts, the other entitled Tornado Facts Website.
shark facts!
Great White Sharks try to avoid fighting for food. When there is only enough food for one, they have a tail-slapping contest. The sharks swim past each other, each slapping the surface of the water with their tails, and often directing the spray toward the other shark. The one who gets the meal is the shark that delivers the most tail slaps.
The Great White Shark have an enormous liver that can weigh up to 24 percent of its entire weight.
Scientists estimate that after a big meal, a Great White Shark can last up to three months before needing another one.
Great White Sharks rarely attack people and when they do, it is because they mistaken the person for their usual seal prey.
Young Great White Sharks eat Leopard Sharks.
A Great White Shark was once kept in an aquarium for a few days, but it became disoriented, continually hitting its nose against the glass, so it had to be released into the sea.
The biggest Great White Shark ever caught was off Prince Edward Island in 1993. It was 20 feet long.hitting its nose against the glass, so it had to be released into the sea.
In one year, a single Great White consumes about 11 tons of food.
Some scientists believe there are less than 10,000 Great White Sharks in the entire world.
More than 70 percent of known victims of Great White Shark Attacks survive because the shark realizes it has made a mistake and doesn’t finish off the prey.
Tornado Facts!
Each year, about a thousand tornadoes touch down in the United States, far more than any other country.
Waterspouts are tornadoes that form over a body of water.
A strong tornado can pick up a house and move it down the block.
Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas make up Tornado alley, where tornadoes strike regularly in the spring and early summer.
Many houses in tornado alley have strong basement shelters.
Some people have seen inside a tornado with their own eyes lived to tell about it.
Knives and forks have been found embedded in tree trunks flung from a tornado.
Usually a tornado starts off as a white or gray cloud but if it stays around for a while, the dirt and debris it sucks up eventually turns it into black one.
3 out of every 4 tornadoes in the world happen in the United States.
Thunderstorms most likely to give birth to Tornadoes are called supercells.
Tornado winds are the fastest winds on Earth.
A Tornado in Oklahoma once destroyed a whole motel. People later found the motel’s sign in Arkansas.
A Tornado can sometimes hop along its path. It can destroy one house and leave the house next door untouched.
In 1928, a tornado in Kansas plucked the feathers right off some chickens.
In 1931 a tornado in Mississippi lifted an 83 ton train and tossed it 80 feet from the track.
The United States have an average of 800 tornadoes every year.
Each year, dozens of Americans die from tornadoes.
Usually, a tornado’s color matches the color of the ground.
Some tornadoes make a considerable amount of noise while others make very little. It depends on the objects a tornado might hit or carry. A tornado moving along an open plain may make very little noise.
Some people think the crop circles in the UK are the result of weak whirlwinds. About 60 of these small tornadoes are formed every year in Britain.
22 May 2013
Bacon in Tokyo
There is a show at the Tokyo museum of Modern Art of Francis Bacon's paintings. I went to see it there as I had never really seen a large show of his work.
Recently, however, I saw a documentary containing perhaps the only real interview he ever gave to an art critic whose name I forget, plus footage of him and his friends at the notorious bar, the Colony Room Club in SOHO back in the late 60's. Amazing stuff, and I found myself surprised by his remarkable personality, one of tremendous wit but too often ladled up with sarcastic cruelty. He was a drinker after all (an anecdote: he once told an admirer of his work, someone who had wanted to visit his studio: "You wear bad ties, why would I show you my work?"). Ouch! But, he had a tremendous artistic personality, one of obsessive and unabashed curiosity around the baser aspects of the human body and soul, no doubt. This is the obvious side, of course. But in this interview he comes off to me as very bright and completely unpretentious, without any presumption regarding the direction of his work or even its value. He simply painted, and that was that. If others liked or didn't like it, so be it. One has to admire this steely response to the outside world especially in the ego-driven world of Art.
I had also seen the remarkable film starring Derick Jacobi, a long while back that I found horrifying and beautiful all at once. There are scenes recreated of the Colony Room which capture with uncanny verisimilitude the alcoholic antics of Bacon and his friends.
He created his biggest works in a small messy room (his studio) in South Kensington, and this also speaks a great deal about him. He loved Velasquez, that is certain, but I was less certain about whether or not he had done anything of significance from using these great paintings as models.
I wanted to simply articulate a few feelings that his work provoked in me. So armed with just these previous encounters with Bacon, I went to see the show in Tokyo.
(From my notes made in the exposition):
The first problem I have, and perhaps it's the only one really: How does one enter into Bacon's world? At the risk of giving offense to his admirers, and I know there are many, I personally feel excluded from his inner world. Why is that?
Ok, it would be easy to suggest that I simply don't get it. That is possible, but the problem for me is that I 'almost' get it, so thus my frustration.
I feel that I am too much of a sensualist who loves Tintoretto, to find movement in Bacon's paintings. This is what I find frustrating. For me, it comes so close, but then it appears fro freeze in a kind of two-dimensional graphic space which fights with the often intricately rendered detail of heads and bodies. I have often felt that his work has the light of 'illustration', so unlike the light I love in many different painters from so many different periods in art history. I think of Massacio and Piero della Francesca; of the torment of Goya and Otto Dix, and the mystery of Matisse.
So, my feeling is that I find myself strangely left out as if watching a photo of a scene going on inside a house across the street; a scene which excludes me.
There is a study for a portrait of a man, his head sits in the middle of the picture, a tiny head in a sea of blue and I am reminded of Giacometti. How would Alberto have created a sea of light in all that darkness? I know it's unfair to compare but most of us do anyway, even secretly when we are alone in our studios or bedrooms with no one else around. Comparison is inevitable when push comes to shove in creation.
I realize after looking at already a few of these portraits that he worked from photographs which for me, sadly feel too present in the paintings. The color harmonies feel contrived, or worse, they don't relate at all to one another, cool orange clash next to a field of cold greens....I find no resolution for this collision of disharmony. I am left standing at the edge of a cliff, I cannot jump but cannot turn back either. I am stuck and I imagine that many of his admirers would happily say:
"Yes! That's the anxiety! That's his genius. It is just this place from where he comes from, and can articulate so well."
And yet, I still cannot find my way into, or out of this 'anxiety' because it feels two dimensional and contrived.
"Yes! That's the anxiety! That's his genius. It is just this place from where he comes from, and can articulate so well."
And yet, I still cannot find my way into, or out of this 'anxiety' because it feels two dimensional and contrived.
There is a study of the Pope Innocent X dressed in a pink frock while seated in a bright green chair which made me think of Matisse and just how he might have rendered it. Matisse always invites me into his world and through each and every picture I never feel excluded from his emotional input. I have the feeling that his painting never stop moving unlike that of Bacon's which seem to cement me into a darkness as if I've been buried alive.…. So why does Bacon keep me out? No doubt Bacon himself would like that. But if he hadn't been a drinker would he have cared? I want so much to like his work more than I do, and that is my frustration.
20 May 2013
16 May 2013
14 May 2013
War and Art
In the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art is an exhibition of war time paintings. Here are but a few samples. Obviously, I was so struck by the intensity in all of them but also the painterliness, especially in the last one of the kamikaze attack on the American B-29's. They chose a 'Western' way of working these subjects into oil paintings. It as if the painter (Ken'ichi Nakamura) had Monet in mind when he made this incredible picture. I was very moved by them and leave them for your perusal.
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