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July 31, 2004 (Weekend roundup)
Carolyn at DangerousChunky is one of those artists who "works best with the art making space under her nose." Check out her story on the bad studios that came before the good one.
Figure painter Elise Tomlinson is catching flack from her web host (WestHost) because she used the word "nude" in a link pointing to her site. She's been hosting with them for five years without incident, now they want her to post a disclaimer saying, "Some of the material may not be suitable for people unde the age of 18." Otherwise, they're canceling her account! Click HERE if you want to send these idiots a message.
Here's a positive look at the future of the art market, by Todd Gibson, from NY
(thanks for the tip from Zeke's Gallery)
About the blog -
Sometime before the end of the year (and after my October show), I would like to change this blog over to a real php site, with "permanent link" features and XML & RSS syndication, etc. I'm still trying to decide which software to get, so if anyone has advice on that topic (php authoring software, wysiwyg if possible, for Mac OS X) please email me. Right now I'm wavering between iBlog and MoveableType.
Someone handed me a copy of this Zen Center interview with painter Gordon Onslow-Ford, which contained the following statements by GOF:
"I do not wish to speak for traditional religions. When asked what my religion is, I say I'm a painter."
"If you pay full attention to what you are doing, to what is happening, you will find something new. It is only when you are tired or thinking about something else that you do what you already know. Creation happens in the instant. In the instant everything is present, everything is fresh. All that there is, is in the instant. It doesn't have anything to do with speed - you can paint slowly in the instant as well as you can paint fast. But you pay attention. When it comes off, it's in the instant."
Wind Bell, Volume XXV, Number Two, Creation in the Instant: An Interview with Gordon Onslow-Ford by Michael Wenger and Kazuaki Tanahashi
Viola Frey died Monday (five days ago) at her home in Oakland (which is right across the Bay from us.) You'd think I'd have heard about this in one of our local papers, but no... I found out today from the NYT. There's a recent interview with her HERE by the di Rosa Preserve. They have several of her pieces scattered around the grounds.
July 30, 2004 (Friday)
"Imaginative work ... is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; (it) is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. ... but when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of human beings and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in."
Virginia Woolf, "A Room of One's Own."
(Incidentally, besides a room of one's own, the other thing Virginia said a creative woman needed was a steady endowment of 500 pounds per year. According to my calculations, that would be about $9,300 current American bucks. Hmmph - I wish.)
My Studio
There are four main features to my work space. The most important is a door that I can close, and lock, if I feel like it. I hardly ever do, but the option has to be there. Solitude is vital.
The space is a 13 ft. by 13 ft room in the back of the house. I divided the space into three areas: the art-making area, the business area, and the rejuvenation area. Each of these areas takes one wall, and the windows take the fourth wall.
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The art-making area. A few years ago I got one of those big red metal rolling tool chests for my paint. It's been a huge space and time saver. Before that, I used to have paint jars and tubes spread out all over every available surface, and stuffed into various boxes. I just built the wall easel last year. It's a good, sturdy (and adjustable) place to hold canvases up to 60" x 80", which is twice as big as I usually work. It was cheap, too - the materials were less than $50. There's a little radio/cassette player on the shelf under the easel, so I can listen to something while I'm working on underpainting or other easy things.
The business area. The usual - computer, fax machine, reference books, business files, etc. It's on the wall opposite the easel and the room is small enough that it's easy to go back and forth between the two areas. So, for instance, if I just finished glazing a canvas and need to wait 20 minutes for it to dry (acrylics) I can just turn around and check my email. And then turn back around and start painting again.
The rejuvenation area. A comfy chair and my favorite books. There are actually way more books than you can see in these pictures. Books and artwork are in serious competition for the wall space around here. Many first time visitors slowly scan the room and then say something like, "There... are... too many... things to... look at... in here." But hey - it works for me. |
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July 29, 2004 (Thursday)
Check out this terrific review by Charles T. Downey of American Paintings at the National Gallery, over at ionarts (28-7-04.)
Cinque Hicks makes a cogent case for center-less art world, with the internet functioning as a map. Tyler Green made the same point (on June 18th.)
I recently heard an NPR interview with artist James Prosek, who paints in a converted one-room-schoolhouse.
"His studio in the schoolhouse is a separate world -- somewhere between a bachelor pad and a boyhood fort. 'It's my little room,' he says. 'All of my stuff is here and no one can get at me.' The cozy, slightly rustic space is about the size of a two-car garage. It has a potbellied stove and sleeping loft beneath a pitched roof made from wide planks of chestnut wood. Six low-hung windows usher in an abundance of natural light."
from the NPR interview - more on their web site
It got me to thinking about the importance of workspace to the creative process. I've had the privilege of visiting the workspaces of many artists, and it's interesting how they become a kind of installation piece. Except they keep evolving. I'm fascinated by the way the artist's studio either confirms or expands my impression of them as an artist.
For instance, the first artist I knew was my mother. Her workspace was one end of the kitchen table. After all the cooking and cleaning was done for the day, she'd sit down there, open her box of supplies, and start in on her current project. I think of that little box of art stuff as the perfect symbol for her artistic expression, which was tucked into the little spaces in our family life. I have that wooden box on a shelf in my studio.
At the other end of the spectrum is a painter I know who lives (and works) in a large space in an industrial building. He's been there for about 30 years, and if he had been so inclined, he could have built a nice 2 bedroom apartment in all that square footage. But the bare essentials for a "living" area are tucked into one end of the space, and the rest is devoted to his painting. One glance and you know the theme of his life story.
Then there's another painter I know who lives in a nice big house (with extra bedrooms, a formal dining room, a huge garage, etc.) Guess where he works? In a derelict greenhouse out back. There are so many missing panes in this "greenhouse" that it's really just a 3D stick drawing of a house. He's essentially working outside, exposed to the elements, but he's surrounded by the illusion of sanctuary. I saw him out there one cold foggy day, in his Bob Cratchit clothes, when it dawned on me - this must have something to do with the "suffering of the artist as responsible provider."
These are examples of artists who work in, or next to, the place where they live. (I belong to this category myself.) What about artists who maintain a separate studio and commute to and from, like going to a job? Sounds awful to me, but it really works for some people.
I know one artist who used to have a space much like mine, but she was always complaining that she couldn't get any work done there, she needed a "real" studio. This seemed preposterous to me, and since no amount of rational discussion dimmed her conviction, I just assumed it was another one of those cases of wannabe artists who always have an excuse for NOT doing work. But she finally managed to score a great studio space in one of those vibrant artist enclaves. To my great surprise, she has started pouring out a tremendous amount of very good work. So I guess she was right - she needed a "real" studio.
What about your space? Tell me about yours and I'll tell you about mine - tomorrow.
July 28, 2004 (Wednesday)
On my morning walk yesterday, I noticed a new (mosaic) mural on the wall of the Sunset Elementary School at 41st and Ortega. This mosaic mural, titled "Protectors of the Amazing Redwood Forests", was created by 3rd graders from Susan Heller's and Lynn McGauly's classes during February - June 2004. dimensions: 10' high x 20' wide. The image of Julia Butterfly in a tree is appealingly icon-like. The whole mural is an interesting combination of painted areas, traditional ceramic (small bits of glass) and bigger hand-painted tiles.
As I considered whether to post anything about the mural, I remembered the discussion generated by Franklin Einspruch's post, "Our Prize", which referenced a NYT story about an Iraqi artist. I misunderstood the discussion to be about whether the Iraqi art was good enough to rate a news story. I was going say something here about it, but I posted it on Franklin's site instead.
Speaking of other blogs, I tweaked the sidebar a bit. Discovered some new blogs and added them. Eliminated a couple who seemed to have died. Shuffled some in & out of the "favorites" cell. What happened to Tyler? (Hope he's OK.)
July 27, 2004 (Tuesday)
I started a couple of new paintings today, one for a client and one for me. They both started off easily and I'd love to stay up all night working on them. But I'm forcing myself to work on updating the web site instead, and then maybe finish up that publicity stuff for the next show. It's better to quit for the day when the painting is going well. It's easier to jump right into it the next morning. If I had quit when I'd hit a rough patch, there would be a million other things that needed doing in the morning.
I had three visitors (briefly) in the studio today and one of them mentioned that my work was getting darker. It's not the first time I've heard that recently. It's an odd feeling, hearing that kind of thing. The work doesn't seem particularly dark to me and I don't feel more depressed or cynical than usual, though god knows there's reason enough in the world to feel that way. So how is it that stuff just starts happening in my work, without my intention? I usually don't figure out what it's really all about until after I'm done with a series.
Now, if I was trying to make art in Baghdad or maybe Ramallah, I could understand a little darkness. I've read that artists in these places are being criticized for not painting cheery canvases. It's strangely comforting to be reminded that no matter what we paint, some people will like it and some won't. So your best bet is to just keep doing whatever you feel driven to do.
July 25, 2004 (Sunday)
I guess the city budget is worse than I'd realized... I was on the way home from the theater last night when I encountered the newest MUNI station agent:
July 24, 2004 (Saturday)
Art in the News
Peter Schjeldahl in the current (July 26, 2004) issue of New Yorker Magazine:
"The dominant problem of pictorial art since the nineteen-fifties is photography, and, by extension, film and video. The basilisk eye of the camera has withered the pride of handworked mediums. Painting survives on a case-by-case basis, it's successes amounting to special exemptions from a verdict of history."
This is what happens when you don't get out enough. Out of New York, I mean.
Pigeon shot for pecking art (Reuters story)
A bird with a penchant for 17th century Dutch art has paid the ultimate price for flying into a museum gallery and pecking a hole in a masterpiece. "We tried everything to catch the pigeon and called in experts to grab it, but in the end they had to shoot it out of the air," a museum official said. The other victim, Thomas de Keyser's 1633 painting of a civic guard was restored and put back on display on Thursday.
Gallery visitor identifies stolen art ( By Malaika Fraley of the TriValley Herald):
At an upscale art gallery one recent Saturday, Pacific Gas and Electric executive Jeff Joy flirted with the notion of buying an unsigned painting by Maxfield Parrish, a renowned 20th-century American artist whose work he started collecting two years ago.
But with his daughter's wedding a month away, Joy decided he couldn't spend $50,000 on the piece, and accepted a book on Parrish from his wife as a consolation prize. He didn't expect to read that the same painting he had just admired, a 1942, 10-inch-by-10-inch oil entitled "Study for a River at Ascutney," had been stolen from the book's author in the 1980s.
"They (the police) said we just trumped the FBI -- they've been looking for this painting for 19 years," Joy said, who led police to the painting last week. "I was so pumped up about it all weekend. I still am."
The painting was taken in 1985 from Parrish expert and former Hillsborough resident Alma Gilbert's Union Square gallery, just two weeks after it had been stolen by -- and recovered from -- a man in drag who was captured in a foot chase. (Herb Caen wondered if the heels slowed him down.)
Homeless Man Becomes Patron of the Arts (by Kevin Fagan of SF Chronicle):
"Don's long-estranged mother died recently, leaving him $187,000 -- and the first thing Don did when he got the money was cut a $10,000 check to the art gallery he has sat in front of for two years, panhandling and begging for free food. He got drunk to celebrate, then stumbled into the door of the Blue Room Gallery, walked straight up to owner Paul Mahder and handed him the check."
July 23, 2004 (Friday)
The last installment of this week's theme, "Seeing", based on notes for the lecture I gave Wednesday night at the SF (Parkside) Public Library. Today's topic:
How to see like an artist.
It's easy:
1. Look at art
2. Make art
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2
OK, you want more details?
1. Look at art - we covered this on Wednesday. See real art as much as possible. Over and over, again and again.
2. Make art. Get a sketch book, pencil or pen, and a simple set of colors (any kind.) Start drawing. Pick anything as your subject - your foot, a saltshaker, the car across the street. It doesn't matter, just draw. Don't worry about how your drawing looks. You're not trying to get into the Louvre, you're trying to train your eyes, hands and brain to see the peculiarities and uniqueness of the world in front of you. Think of the sketchbook as a diary, and don't go showing it around, at least in the beginning. Try drawing something by looking at the object, but not looking at the paper. Try drawing something from memory (not looking at the object.) Try drawing the air around the object, but not the object itself. Try finding the abstract elements in whatever you're looking at - draw those.
3. Go look at some real art again. See if you notice is anything different this time. As you go about your business in the world, stop every now and then, and look at things as if you were drawing them.
For inspiration, check out sketch-book bloggers, Keri Smith, Danny Gregory, and Élena Nazzaro. But don't get intimidated - they've been at it for years.
July 22, 2004 (Thursday)
A continuation of this week's theme, "Seeing", based on notes for the lecture I gave last night at the SF (Parkside) Public Library (which went pretty well, thanks. Standing room only and lots of people stayed after for questions.)
On Sunday I talked about the difference between looking and seeing. Monday we skimmed over point of view. Tuesday I covered a few of the ways that an artist guides your experience in the picture plane. Wednesday I told you how to increase your understanding and appreciation for paintings (how to truly see them.) Today:
Seeing art can change the way you see the world.
What kind of changes? Depends on what kind of art, and where you're starting from.
The most common method of visual observation, practiced by almost everyone in the modern world (except visual artists, and those on chemical enhancements) is the visual shorthand of symbols. Artist Danny Gregory did a good job of explaining this phenomenon about four months ago (his entire original statement here. Scroll down to March 15th.) Basically he said that we reduce our observations to symbolic shorthand when we see/think, "that's a car, that's a building, that's a person."Seeing the symbols causes us to miss the very specific reality that lies before us.
When you see a painting of a recognizable car, building or person, and then you move a little closer and see that it's made up of oddly colored dabs of paint, your mind starts grappling wildly, in an effort to reconcile this contradiction. Do it once, and your mind says, "That was weird," and moves on, unchanged. Do it repeatedly, and your mind says, "Better take another look at that car, building or person." Which is when you start to notice the wild bunch of colors and shapes that make up that car, building or person.
Daniel Chandler has an extensive web site devoted to visual perception. He refers to the use of symbolic shorthand as categorization, which has a number of advantages:
- it makes complexity manageable;
- it speeds up recognition;
- it reduces effort and learning;
- it makes the most of past experience;
- it makes events predictable;
- it supports systematization;
- it bonds social behaviour (providing shared frameworks);
- it tailors the world to our purposes;
"The cost of these advantages is a loss of particularity and uniqueness in perception and recall. For Romantics, it is also regarded as inducing a sense of distance from the world. The way we categorize phenomena seems to be a 'natural' 'reflection of reality', leading us to forget the role of categorization in constructing the world."
Artists tend to see outside and across these categories, and looking at art can help the non-artist do the same.
To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check out Carolyn Zick's zillion views of a vest. Tomorrow - How to see like an artist.
July 21, 2004 (Wednesday)
A continuation of this week's theme, "Seeing", based on notes for the lecture I will be giving tonight (7-8 pm) at SF (Parkside) Public Library, located at 22nd and Taraval.
On Sunday I talked about the difference between looking and seeing. Monday we skimmed over point of view. Tuesday I covered a few of the ways that an artist guides your experience in the picture plane. Today I tell you how to increase your understanding and appreciation for paintings (how to truly see them.)
"Long looking at paintings is equivalent to being dropped into a foreign city, where gradually, out of desire and despair, a few key words, then a little syntax make a clearing in the silence. No one is surprised to find that a foreign city follows its own customs and speaks its own language. Only a boor would ignore both and blame his defaulting on the place. Everyday this happens to the artist and the art."
From "Art [Objects]" by Jeanette Winterson, Alfred A. Knopf 1995, 0-679-44644-3
Winterson begins the book describing an encounter with a painting, "that had more power to stop me than I had power to walk on." Later she says,
"I confess that until that day I had not much interest in the visual arts, although I realize now, that my lack of interest was the result of the kind of ignorance I despair of in others. I knew nothing about painting and so I got very little from it. I had never given a picture my full attention even for one hour."
She then goes on to describe the process of looking at a painting, for an hour, in an attempt to really see it. The stages she goes through are similar to the experiences of a novice at the zen center during meditation: discomfort, distraction, daydreaming, irritation. Eventually she discovers that she needs to see many paintings:
"Years ago, when I was living very briefly with a stockbroker who had a good cellar, I asked him how I could learn about wine. 'Drink it' he said. It is true. The only way to develop a palate is to develop a palate. That is why, when I wanted to know about paintings, I set out to look at as many as I could..."
And I concur. To learn how to look at paintings, the most important thing you can do is to look at a lot of paintings. In real life. Looking at paintings in books and on the internet is all well and good when you're trying to plan which gallery to visit, or if you need to refer to a painting's basic attributes. But paintings are about paint, and they need to be seen with as little as possible between the eyeballs and the paint.
The second thing you need to do is spend significant time with the paintings you like. Many hours. Either hang them in your home, or visit them often. See them at different times of day, in differing kinds of light. See them when you're in different moods. See if you can discover something new, or just look and see what comes up.
Tomorrow - Seeing art can change the way you see the world.
July 20, 2004 (Tuesday)
A continuation of this week's theme, "Seeing", based on notes for the lecture I will be giving tomorrow (7-8 pm) at SF (Parkside) Public Library, located at 22nd and Taraval.
On Sunday I talked about the difference between looking and seeing. Monday we skimmed over point of view. Today I'm covering a few of the ways that an artist guides your experience in the picture plane. By "picture plane" I mean the two dimensional space that holds the image. We're going to take a tour of the web, looking at contemporary representational paintings.
First up - a beautiful new painting by Franklin Einspruch at Artblog.net, "S.A. on the Yellow Chairs", (oil on panel, 24 x 32 inches, 2003 - 2004.) A woman rests across two small chairs in a precarious position (with a gap between the chairs.) But the horizontal lines and rectangular composition signal calm and stability. The model is looking at the viewer, an act which penetrates the picture plane and evokes the sense that the viewer is in the same room with her. The model's body is twisted along a horizontal line, which is a good way to create the dynamic impression of a living being. Is there a narrative here? The only one I can see is, "Model serves as object of painter's gaze, but model is engaged in the process." You can always make a case for your own narrative. Go ahead - it's your prerogative as the viewer.
The narrative is obvious is in "Family Pet" by Alanna Spence at Angry Pirate (13"x 10" Encaustic on wood, June 2004.) The tilted horizon, the right-facing sight-lines of the child and cat, and the exit-stage-right composition, all contribute to the sense of movement toward an uncertain outcome.
The self portrait sketch by art student Tim Lusk has a mostly square composition, which usually means a quiet, stable image. But in this case everything (brim of the hat, eye glasses, fingers of both hands, subject's sightline) points to the tip of the pencil, which is making a mark in the foreground. A lot of energy is focused on that mark, and is then radiated back out into the rest of the image. The narrative: the artist is hard at work, focusing his energy, studying the basics.
Contrast Tim's self portrait with another portrait of an art student, this one painted by the teacher. Dale Erickson's "The Art Student" (48" x 69", oil on canvas) shows another student intently focused on drawing. But this time we have a complex composition with a much wider view of the student in her surroundings, including a glimpse of the outside world. The sight-line of the student/model stays within the picture plane and we are invisible observers.
This last painting, "Cobalt Embrace" by Elise Tomlinson (Oil on canvas, 20" x 24") pushes the limits of "representational", but I wanted to include it because it shows a figure completely disengaged from and inaccessible to the viewer. The artist says this about composition and color: "In this painting I wanted to create two more color pyramids, this time inverted. The sky is wide, and creates an inverted base to the pyramid. The blue of the figure in the fetal position creates the inverted apex. To even it out, I created the second (complimentary) color pyramid using a wide orange base and the orange hair as the apex."
Besides composition, sight-lines and narrative, an artist can use color, focus, contrast, symbolism and iconic elements to influence the viewer. I'll talk about these Wednesday night at the lecture. Tomorrow, in this blog, we'll touch on ways to increase your understanding and appreciation of paintings.
July 19, 2004 (Monday)
Seeing (tid-bits from the outline of my upcoming lecture - continued from yesterday)
For the next few days, when I refer to paintings, I'm referring to representational paintings, mainly because I'm a realist painter, and that's one example of a point of view. A painting always has a point of view, and it's usually easy to see. Paintings with overt social and political messages have obvious positions, but physical viewpoint has more impact than you may have realized. |
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I intentionally aimed for this perspective, by standing on a ladder, because it creates a distancing effect that takes the viewer outside the scene. It's a god-like view that diminishes the subjects in relation to their environment.
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The standpoint is much lower and the objects in the foreground seem to increase in power and importance. They dominate their environment and take on an iconic significance.
This painting is an image of the visitation window at Alcatraz. The tightly framed scene contributes to the claustrophobic sense of the place.
The artist, intentionally or not, manipulates the experience of the observer and point of view is just the beginning.
Tomorrow: composition, sight-lines, and narrative.
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July 18, 2004 (Sunday)
from "Beer, Art, and Philosophy" by Tom Marioni
Crown Point Press 2003, 1-891300-17-2:
"You can probably see the ideas behind an artwork that seems to be invisible if you look for more than just a few seconds. You can try to figure out the artist's intention, and usually you have a clue from the title. If you stay with it, eventually you get most of the story. You never get it all. The artist doesn't get it all either, and may get something unexpected after he steps back from the work when it is finished. Different people get different information, depending on what they bring to an artwork. If you go to an Italian Opera and you don't understand Italian, you don't get the whole story, but you still get a lot out of the opera. It's like that in every field. When a scientist looks in a microscope, he might see a cure for cancer. If I looked in the same microscope, I would see an Abstract Expressionist painting. Sometimes people don't know what they are looking at because their brains block out everything except what they expect art to be."
This weeks' theme is "Seeing." I'm giving a lecture on this topic Wednesday evening, so I'll be thinking about it for the next few days, and my desk is piled with books and notes related to visual thinking, depiction, and so forth. I'm trying to chart a clear path through this topic without wandering off into two of my favorite diversions: color and symbolism. (Maybe if this little experiment works out, I'll make those topics the theme for another week... or month.)
First, let's distinguish between looking and seeing. For the purposes of this essay, to look is to turn one's glance toward; to perceive with the eye. To see is to have a mental image of; to understand or comprehend. I think of looking as a physical act and seeing as a mental activity.
"You do not see with the lens of the eye. You look through that, and by means of that, but you see with the soul of the eye."
John Ruskin
(more on seeing tomorrow)
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Roberta Fallon was in SF and she saw the Coit Tower murals - see her story (Sunday July 18th) at artblog. She also saw the hearts, which she was not impressed with. I'm not a big fan of the hearts either, but I saw one on Sunday at Yerba Buena that I kinda liked. I'm not going to get into whether or not it was art, but it was attractive, well-crafted, and improved the ambiance in that particular location. It was sponsored by Nancy Pelosi, and decorated by Laurel True.
July 16, 2004 (Friday)
Tyler Green's two-part interview with art critic Jerry Saltz wrapped up yesterday. Luckily, I ordered the book (Seeing Out Loud) from Amazon before they ran out. I have no interest in becoming a critic, but I would like to do better job of describing the shows I've seen. And a better job of thinking about the shows I've seen. That's what made me want to read this interview, and I wasn't disappointed.
Expressively, I've been feeling stuck lately. This ebay fraud thing has brought clouds hanging over my head. Not to mention the fact that it sucks a lot of time and energy. But Rachael's honest art talk today perked me up and actually got me to tap this out and get on with things. She said, "The point is that if you want to draw you better start by making marks and lots of 'em and if you want to write, moving words around works as a start." Good advice, and I intend to follow it.
July 14, 2004 (Wednesday)
Forget anything I could say today - everyone who cares about art should go to right to Tyler Green's interview with Jerry Saltz (art critic of the Village Voice.)
July 13, 2004 (Tuesday)
But is it art?
Marja-Leena has been wondering if "Public Art Fauna" is art.
Cows, pandas, pigs, sheep, sharks, whales, flamingos, moose, and (San Francisco's) hearts. I've avoided talking about the hearts around town these days because I find them somewhat embarrassing.
The hearts are being auctioned to raise money for SF General Hospital, so it seems curmudgeonly to complain about it. I know a few of the artists who are participating, and I was amazed to hear that they actually got paid for this gig! (Non-profit fundraisers almost always ask artists to donate art in exchange for "free exposure.") Corporate Sponsors put up the money for materials and artists' time. The hearts sit around the city all summer, then get auctioned off in the fall.
Is it art or is it decoration? The line between art and decoration is wide and fuzzy, and considering the purpose of this event, why get into it?
There are really only two things that bother me about this whole affair:
1. Hearts? Come on, whose idea was that? You know when you're still in the love-and-respect phase of a relationship, and your significant other suddenly commits a bush-league blunder that, while not worth breaking up over, is so very disappointing? That's how I feel about San Francisco - disappointed.
2. Why couldn't the corporate sponsors have spent the same money paying San Francisco artists to make whatever they make best, exhibit the art in some public (tourist-rich) venue, and then auction the work in the fall? Bet they'd make just as much money for the hospital. And it would be a true reflection of San Francisco art. It would be ART.
July 12, 2004 (Monday)
After it got too dark to paint, I pulled some books off the shelf, and have been going through the little notes I penciled in the margins, looking for stuff to use during the lecture I'm giving next week. The topic is "The Art and Practice of Seeing." I have plenty of thoughts on the matter, but need to organize them. The problem is, I've been painting all day, and still feel more visual than verbal. Will try to write tomorrow.
July 11, 2004 (Sunday)
"The Violence of War and the Solace of Art"-
a book review by Charles Matthews in the San Jose Mercury News
VERMEER IN BOSNIA, by Lawrence Weschler, Pantheon, 412 pp., $25.95
quote from Charles Matthews:
Vermeer lately has become almost everybody's favorite painter: a creator of images washed with a clean daylight, in which women are seen at mundane tasks or caught in moments of inaccessible reverie, surrounded by gleaming copper and brass vessels, lustrous ceramics, jewel-toned fabrics and tapestries. Just to think of them is to enter a world of calm.
In 1995, Weschler was in The Hague, reporting on the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, and asked one of the judges how he dealt with the emotional impact of reading and hearing, day after day, about hideous atrocities.
`` `Ah,' he said with a smile. `You see, as often as possible I make my way over to the Mauritshuis museum, in the center of town, so as to spend a little time with the Vermeers.' ''
Weschler understood exactly why -- he had been doing the same thing himself. But then he reflected further: Vermeer was born in 1632, in the very middle of the Thirty Years' War, so ``when Vermeer was painting those images, which for us have become the very emblem of peacefulness and serenity, all Europe was Bosnia (or had only just recently ceased to be), awash in incredibly vicious wars of religious persecution and proto-nationalist formation, wars of an at-that-time unprecedented violence and cruelty, replete with sieges and famines and massacres and mass rapes, unspeakable tortures and wholesale devastation.''
And this realization takes Weschler into a re-examination of the paintings themselves, in which he discovers new meanings and previously unfelt tensions. ``It's almost as if Vermeer can be seen, amid the horrors of his age, to have been asserting or inventing the very idea of peace.'' Who says that studying the humanities has no relevance in the contemporary world?
It's always encouraging to hear a defense of beauty. In a place like San Francisco, I am surrounded by those in the pursuit of truth, justice, and self expression. Admirable goals but not successful art projects, for me at least. Still, I'll admit to the occasional nagging sense of guilt that what I'm doing is self-indulgent piffle.
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Thank you to Chris at Zeke's Gallery, for helping me find the permanent links to NYT stories.
July 9, 2004 (Friday)
The NY Times has an article today in the Arts section, by Kirk Semple, titled "Lawbreakers Armed With Paint and Paste": "Two decades after the heyday of graffiti, the spray can has given way to posters, stickers, stencils and construction tools, and the streets of New York and other cities around the world vibrate more than ever with the work - some say the destruction - of guerrilla artists." The story briefly covers some the techniques used to make and install the art, and mentions a few of the artists.
In San Francisco, street artists like Barry McGee and Dave Warnke have moved into the galleries, but there are many more still decorating tunnels, walls and old buildings. Who are the San Francisco sidewalk stencil artists?
I've been seeing this work all over town for a couple of years or so. I heard a rumor that Pico Sanchez, of Project Artaud, had painted some of the stencils I saw in the Mission last year. This week I saw the "Missing" piece (above left) at 9th and Judah and the "Martini" piece (above right) at Post and Leavenworth.
I started snapping photos of them because... I snap photos of just about everything. It's the way I look at the world. I was at the Federal Building a few days ago and I considered taking a photo of an interesting architectural detail, but didn't because I was late for an appointment. Good thing I didn't, as I found out later that the Feds don't like you taking photos of their building. (They confiscated my camera when I went thorough the security line, but I got it back later.)
I've carried a camera with me, every time I leave the house, for at least 15 years. Since I got my digital camera, the number of photos I shoot as been increasing exponentially. Part of the reason for the increased shots is the fact that I no longer have to worry about how much the processing is going to cost. But another thing happened after I was freed from the "24 shots to a roll and should I spring for one hour or overnight processing" framework. I got more experimental. I would shoot things just for the hell of it, to see what would happen. This led to improvements in my intentional photos, which led to the desire to take more photos, which led to changes in the way I see the world.
I believe we all learn to see. That is, seeing is a learned activity, an intellectual pursuit. In March 2000, at age 46, Mike May, blind since age 3, had his sight surgically restored. But he's still learning to see. In the first few months after the surgery, he couldn't distinguish between a sphere and a cube. Two years after the surgery he was still having trouble recognizing perspective lines and individual faces. Physically, his eye is working. The image projected on the interior of his eye, through his new lens, is clear and accurate. But his brain is still learning what to do with that information.
Most contemporary people think a photographic image is "realistic", but symbolism, impressionism, and cubism are equally valid ways of seeing. Photographers and realistic painters learn to see in two dimensions. Painters see color in terms of pigment. Many photographers see color in terms of grey scale. Fooling around with the camera helped me to see new aspects of the world. Here are two views of the same scene (the raising of the old Emporium Dome, seen from Mission Street.)
One of the things I noticed, looking at the overexposed image (on the left) was how much light was being reflected from the black asphalt street. Since learning that, I now see it without the camera whenever I look at a sunny city street.
July 7, 2004 (Wednesday)
with nods to Tyler Green and Caryn Coleman, here's my
SF Top 5 for July:
1. SFMOMA "fresh look" at the Permanent Collection
Read my review of it here and Kenneth Baker's review here. (The reason I often link to KB's reviews: When you write about a show you've seen, you can't say something about every single piece. It would be a book, and no one would want to read it. Besides, there are always pieces in any show that inspire no reaction from me, except "eh - so what." What's convenient for me about KB is that he has completely different enthusiasms than I do. As a matter of fact, we almost never agree on anything. This means when he sees the same show I did, he will mention different work, or a different take on the same work.)
2. "Finesse" at Catherine Clark Gallery
A group exhibition of drawings, curated by artist Phil Knoll. Reviewed by me (here) yesterday.
3. Frey Norris group show, gallery artists
This is a newish gallery (opened Feb 2003) that I came across on one of my hikes up the hill from Union Square to John Pence. Frey Norris has mostly representational work from a mix of emerging and master artists. It's a stimulating mix of work and attractively displayed in the small space. With just a few pieces by each artist, I was left with the "I want more" feeling that will make me return soon. They're friendly and approachable - no need to use Paige West's "10 Questions" and they fulfill Caryn Coleman's "functions of a gallery".
4. “I Thought You Were Waving at Me,” sculpture by Christian Maychak, gouache paintings by Jim Gaylord, at Gregory Lind
This gallery always has work that is exquisitely crafted, and this show is no exception. The Gaylord paintings are beautifully and carefully painted to look like objects or creatures of some kind, yet still remain abstract. Think of Max Ernst's sensibility with a California look. Reviewed here by Alison Bing.
5. Hackett Freedman - Louise Nevelson and Manuel Neri
Louise Nevelson- seven large-scale wooden wall reliefs, dating from the 1970s, and twelve mixed-media collages created between 1957 and 1981. This is work by her that you've never seen before. Plus 3 recent marble figure sculptures by Manuel Neri. Reviewed by me on June 25th (here) and by Kenneth Baker (here.)
July 6, 2004 (Tuesday)
"Finesse" at Catherine Clark Gallery: A group exhibition of drawings, curated by artist Phil Knoll. Nice variety of works on paper here - watercolor, ink, pencil, charcoal and representational as well as abstract work. The most original was Mark Dean Veca's life-sized canvas "hide". At first glance this looks like a mottled brown steer-hide but on closer inspection, I noticed that the spots are (acrylic painted) western themes. Clint Eastwood, the Marlboro man, Yosemite Sam, the cowboy from "Toy Story" and many other cowboys are intricately combined with cactus, scorpions, canyons and mesas. There are beautiful master drawings by mature artists like Masami Teraoka, some well-crafted comix work by Chris Ware and Phil Knoll, and some gorgeous work by artists I'd heard about but hadn't seen before (Josephine Taylor and Thomas Plagemann.) This gallery will be closed for the month of August, so get down to 49 Geary to see it soon. You can also find printed work by some of these artists at the Cartoon Art Museum (right around the corner from SFMOMA.)
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July 5, 2004 (Monday)
Beethoven is back in the light (or in this case, the fog.) |
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The bust of Beethoven used to overlook the Bandshell, across from the de Young Museum. But over the years, trees, bushes, and weeds grew up around the monument, hiding it from all but the most curious. Beethoven is now in the middle of a hard hat site, overlooking the one of the trenches being dug for the new underground parking garage.
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Photo at right was taken today. (That's Verdi in the background, overlooking the tour bus parking lot.)
Photo at left was taken in 2002 © by David W. Sumner, who would like you to know that this is not his crop, but he let me use it anyway because he's so fond of me.
Below is a current view of the de Young and garage construction, from in front of the spot where the pedestrian tunnel used to be. |
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July 3, 2004 (Saturday)
What's going on with the gallery at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts? Lately, every time I go there it looks more and more lifeless. The place has the feel of a death watch. There are fewer and fewer staff and the exhibits are sad, tiny little things spread out in that cavernous space. Not that they haven't had some good work there. The Fela show just closed (see this link from the New Museum, since the Yerba Buena site is impossible to view on dial up. Do any of these hip web designers care about the fact that those fancy flash video sound sites cannot be viewed by average mortals with older computers and 56k modems? Or do they just like to have their own exclusive little party?) The individual pieces in the Fela show were intense, warm, and full of life, but it felt like they were scattered around an airplane hanger. The energy of the work was dissipated. The next show at YB doesn't open until the 17th, but it's going to be a graffitti and skateboard show, including an indoor skate bowl. Now THAT sounds like a good use of a big space. (Click here for a February '04 story about layoffs at YB.)
No photos allowed at SFMOMA, but they do give away these nifty brochures for several of the exhibits. The top one is for the Frank Stella show. The middle one, for Evan Holloway and Dave Muller, was on very heavy paper, and is a big 9" x 8", folded. The bottom is the centerfold of the Pipilotti Rist installation brochure.
July 1, 2004 (Thursday)
SFMOMA - "a fresh look" at the permanent collection. It's been a long time since I was this jazzed after leaving SFMOMA. They rearranged things and pulled a lot of work out of mothballs. The 5th floor (1960 to present) looks especially good. Stepping off the elevator puts you face to face with Louise Bourgeois' "The Nest" - a giant brown metal spider with four little ones under her. Looking through her legs at the opposite wall, you see a huge Robert Rauschenberg, "Point of Entry" (1998.) This painting seems fresh and topical. It's a dreamlike montage of American multicultural themes in hot, saturated colors. Next to the Robert Rauschenberg is a Jay DeFeo painting, "Incision," a tall vertical black and grey piece that looks like the offspring of a brief affair between "The Rose" and one of Gerhard Richter's abstracts (AB, St.Bridget, 1988.)
Robert Gober gets a whole room for his installations, "Rat Bait," "Prison Window," "Newspaper," and "Untitled." But this is really one piece, and even though I haven't seen it for years, it's set up exactly the way I remember it. A room with four walls and a very high ceiling is painted to look like a nice, safe, unthreatening forest. Except part of the painting is uncompleted, with just the pencil sketch on white wall. A sink, partially full of water with taps running constantly, creates the sound of a natural stream. A box of rat poison is under the sink. A window is cut high into the wall and covered with bars, but you can see blue sky beyond the bars. Stacks of bundled newspapers are placed around the room. I've always liked this piece. It stimulates weird dissonant emotions in me. The trees and the sound of running water are so soothing, so peaceful. Then the undercurrent of dread and anxiety start to build. And then I have to leave.
Barry McGee has a large wall installation composed of hundreds of small framed drawings, hung overlapping each other like fish scales. The drawings are mostly his typical graffitti heads. The sections of exposed wall are painted red with a bit of graffiti style decoration.
Kara Walker's room is painted dark grey and the walls present a seamless, dizzying parade of black and white (literally) figures of paper silhouette. Black figures hoist sticks with white swan heads. White swans paddle by with black heads, white semen and breast milk leaks from other black figures engaged in various forms of mayhem.
Leaving the darkness of Kara Walker's world, and entering the Evan Holloway and Dave Muller exhibit, you feel the urge to put on sunglasses. You know you're back in California. Bright lights, blue skies, lots of open space, plenty of humor. Dave Muller has painted a hundred or so skyscapes with acrylic (watercolor style) on sheets of paper, each 32" x 40". Besides sky, and more sky, we see the tops of buildings, the top of a street lamp, Sutro Tower, a giraffe head and neck... it's all about looking up. Meanwhile, looking down, we see Evan Holloway's "Map." It's a 3-D map of chroma and value, composed of painted sticks, forced into a grid formation. Still, they look like sticks.
On the 4th floor is Contemporary German art, a small Frank Stella retrospective and Pipilotti Rist's video installation. The best thing in the German exhibit was Katharina Fritsch's "Child With Poodles" - 224 black poodles in four concentric circles around a white infant.
I described Pipilotti Rist's videos here on April 2nd and I still love them - I dropped in again for another showing.
The Frank Stella show is titled "What You See is What You See." There are only eight paintings (covering the period from 1959 to 2001) but it's enough. These paintings each try to take over the room (actually they're in two rooms.) Imagine eight of your pushiest, most extroverted friends in your living room, all at the same time. Nervous? You should be. Jill Dawsey, Curatorial Associate, says this in the show brochure: "This frenzy of colorful graphics threatens the overall legibility ... overwhelming the viewer with sensory information."
The 3rd floor is photos. There's the usual permanent photo collection, and Larry Sultan has a show of giant glossy color photographs taken on porn movie sets. It's actually more interesting than it sounds. Some of the best images had no people in them. I like Larry Sultan, so I tend to cut him a little more slack than most other photographers, but still, I don't really feel qualified to say much about photography, so let's move along...
The 2nd floor houses the permanent collection of work from 1900 to 1960. At first, I didn't see much different here. A little minor shuffling, which I guess serves the purpose ("a fresh look") but not much more exciting than when your mom decided to put the arm chair over by the window and move the rocker next to the sofa. On the other hand, I suppose I can't really expect them to put away the Matisse, Picasso, Braque, etc. and bring out some new ones because... they don't have any more. And it's not that I don't like some of these paintings. They have a very fine Frida Kahlo self portrait (1930): simple, unadorned, in a turquoise dress. But wait - after you pass the first couple of rooms, things start to get interesting. I love the wall with Jackson Pollock's "Guardians of the Secret" (1943.) It was in this space before, but now it has new company. Philip Guston is on either side ("The Tormentors," 1947 and "White Painting," 1951.) They're perfect together - all on the cusp between abstraction and symbolism.
The next few rooms are more or less the same. What else can you do with those massive color-field canvases and giant pop art stuff? Four walls, four paintings. The room with David Park, Joan Brown, and Diebenkorn had a nice friendly bay-area vibe.
Then I encountered William Kentridge's "Tide Table,"(2003.) I was stuck there for close to an hour. Why have I never seen this before? Several large, loosely rendered, figurative charcoal drawings. There seemed to be some kind of narrative happening, but I wasn't clear on the details. Beautiful , mesmerizing work. Then I noticed a parade of people coming and going from behind one of the drawings. I took a look, and discovered an animated video, made from the charcoal drawings I had just seen outside. Fascinating technique - he rubs out sections of the drawing and redraws that area, shoots, rubs out again, redraws. etc. Charcoal lifts off smooth paper easily, but you can see the sections with the most action getting darker as time passes. Then the camera cuts to another scene (and a clean piece of paper.) The story is told without vocal narrative, but with a sound track of African music, sound effects (ocean waves) and visual cues. It all takes place on a beach. A middle-aged man in a suit sits in a beach chair reading a newspaper. He is the center of the film - things happen in, around and through him. I came out of the video room and spent some more time with the drawings. No surprise - they carried more weight now.
The last room held a large Louise Nevelson wall sculpture (1964,) a huge red and blue Ellsworth Kelly diptych, a Gene Davis striped canvas, and other similar work by Ad Reinhardt, Larry Bell and John McLaughlin.
Back in the lobby, blinking and returning to this world, I couldn't believe how long I'd been there. I was starved, so I headed for the "Caffe Museo" and found a corner table where I could slurp some carrot soup and jot down some thoughts before they all floated way:
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