http://artwolfe.photoshelter.com/gallery/Happy-Mothers-Day-2011/G0000zAUj7WwXnLQ
Happy Mother's Day....this is a beautiful photographic gallery by one of my favorite photographers.....Art Wolfe...you can see more of his amazing work at www.artwolfe.com...
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
From So Simple A Beginning...Endless Forms Most Beautiful...Are Being Evolved....
Evolving Creation...Kathleen Fennessy,2011.
There is a grandeur in a view of life, with its several powers, as having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved....Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859
The mystery of all Creation...artistic and universal...has been a primordial source of complex and diverse explorations in all world cultures of these fundamental questions: Where does it all come from? How can we explain...order...and cope with it? And how can we record the creative experience?
The Library of Congress itself has evolved from a library originally established by the American national legislature for its own use... into a broad-based and comprehensive international collection...this is an especially appropriate focus for the national library of a country where most of its citizens trace their roots to many of the cultures represented in its collections.
In 2003,The Library of Congress's international gallery began an ongoing exhibition called "World Treasures"...its first installation was called "Beginnings"...and it focused on how world cultures have artistically and creatively dealt with the creation of the universe, and how they have explained the heavens and the earth
Hamishah Humshei Torah (The Five Books of the Torah).
The Opening Word of the Bible
The Hebrew word Beresheet, which means "in the beginning", opens the Book of Genesis.This decorated initial word is from the first volume of a planned multi-volume edition of the Hebrew Bible.The volume was published by the Society of Jewish Bibliophiles, the Soncino Gesellschaft, in Germany in 1933.Hitler's rise to power prevented the Society from completing what would have been the first bibliophilic edition of the Hebrew Scriptures.
And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely --
I'll make me a world.
A Poet's Version of Creation...."The Creation" is one of seven poems in God's Trombones through which African American poet James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) paid tribute to the black preachers he remembered from his childhood. Each free-verse poem presents in lyrical but colloquial language a version of a classic sermon, such as "The Creation" or "Noah Built an Ark". Johnson rejected the use of broad Negro dialect as comic and derogatory and revealed the old-time black preacher as a folk hero of dignity and eloquence.
William Blake..."Urizen as the Creator of the Material World" from Europe,A Prophecy.Title Page,Lambeth:Printed by W. Blake, 1794.
further enhanced by Blake's brilliant application of color,which heightens the drama of the story of the beginning of the world.
William Blake.The Song of Los, Lambeth:Printed by W.Blake, 1794.
The archetype of the "creator" is a familiar image in the illuminated books of William Blake. On top, Blake depicts an almighty creator stooped in prayer contemplating the world he has forged. The Song of Los is the third in a series of illuminated books hand-painted by Blake and his wife, known as the "Continental Prophecies", considered by most critics to contain some of Blake's most powerful imagery. Only six copies of The Song of Los are known to exist.This copy is the most brilliantly colored version and is continually consulted by scholars studying Blake's work.
In the lower image, Los resting on a cloud, leans on his hammer, the symbol of his creative energy. He stares down at the bright red sun that he has fashioned out of components of his own soul.The sun represents the giver of life,that most fundamental of elements which keeps the world in balance and nurtures the development of all physical matter.
Santal creation myth...the Santals are a tribal people living in several states in eastern India. Among them live itinerant Hindu professional storytellers and painters (jadupatuas), who recount Santal stories, religious beliefs, and festivals using narrative scrolls that they paint. This scroll acquired by the Library of Congress shows the Santal creation story. In the top panel are the 3 principal Santal deities, Maran Buru, Jaher Era, and Sin Cando. In the next are the water and water creatures made by the creator, Thakur ("the Lord").From the mating of two geese come the first human couple and from them their seven sons and daughters, who marry each other and then divide into clans so that siblings may no longer marry each other.
Kalevala
In this opening to the Finnish national epic, important for fostering Finnish nationalism under Russian rule, Kalevala compiled by Elias Lonnrot (1802-1884) from Finnish folk poems in the mid-nineteenth century, the creation goddess is depicted as a young girl celebrating her attributes of air and light. The best-loved illustrations of the epic are by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), and this special edition includes 24 illustrations of his paintings.
Ida Bagoes Made Togog of Batoean."Pall design:traditional for Brahman or Satrya body." Ink on paper.Margaret Mead Papers...
The Balinese cosmos...this work by the important Balinese painter Togog (ca.1915-1989) depicts the Balinese conception of the cosmos while reflecting the emphasis on balance in Balinese culture. In Balinese cosmology, the World Serpent (Antaboga) created the World Turtle (Bedawang) through meditation. On the turtle are coiled two snakes;this is the foundation of the world. This painting, also a design for a funeral pall, depicts the turtle and snakes, with the Supreme Being above.
Michelangelo,The Creation of Adam,Sistine Chapel,The Vatican
(1508-1512)
Sacrilegious...but funny....the deity as the primal bartender...even Adam liked a good vodka martini...
Jackson Pollock...painting in his studio...the ultimate evolving creation....
"There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end.He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was."... Jackson Pollock
Oil on canvas.
Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction...Pablo Picasso
http://dekku.nofatclips.com/2007/09/theater-of-music-mythology-creation.html
The Theater of Music Mythology:Creation was created by Troika Design Group for the rebranding of MHD, a music TV channel...it is an "exotic blend of illustration and character animation which tells the "backstory of how the world of music came to be"...the "idea was to create ancient mythological stories that explain the origin of music and the transformative effect it has on the world".
Primal Leaf,oil on canvas,16x20,June,2011
For further reading: The Greatest Show On Earth:The Evidence for Evolution,Richard Dawkins,Free Press, 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-QWv_0Mjq0)
Sunday, April 24, 2011
American Sculpture Liberated....Cubes and Anarchy ...David Smith...the Archetypical Abstract Expressionist Sculptor
Cubes and Anarchy...the exhibition of David Smith's sculpture and other artwork at LACMA in Los Angeles through July 24,2011 is the first major exhibit of Smith's art on the West Coast in almost half a century.LACMA celebrated its 46th anniversary with the return of David Smith also after 46 years...the exhibit now in the Resnick Pavilion is a poignant remembrance of the major exhibit of his work at the newly opened LACMA in 1965 during the planning of which Smith died when his truck rolled over near Bennington, Vermont.Smith was only 59...but he left a monumental body of work, and he is now considered the greatest American sculptor of the 20th century.
David Smith established sculpture on par with painting in America, and although his burly blacksmith's build has led some people to romanticize him as a kind of blue-collar modernist,he was,like Jackson Pollock, an intensely lyrical artist who possessed extraordinary visual intelligence.
With the elevated physical and metaphysical scale of his sculpture, Smith drew in space with a fierce joy.He became increasingly absorbed with making "series of work" such as the "Cubis" which he made before his death...they are probably the most famous abstract sculpture of the postwar period.As one critic has said, the "Cubis" seem "more alive than most figurative sculpture does"...made of burnished stainless steel,"the shapes have a surface dazzle that can transform mass into light".
Smith remarked on his sculptural lyricism....
"The poetic vision in sculpture is fully as free as in
painting. Like a painting, sculpture now deals in the
illusion of form as well as its own particular property
of form itself."
"There is no conceptual difference between painting and sculpture....The position of creating does not change...just because the medium changes."
"Sometimes when I start a sculpture I begin with only a realized
part; the rest is travel to be unfolded, much in the order of a dream."
"Sculptors are not supposed to paint even painters think so except for Matisse+Picasso - but sculptors are always for painters sculpture...."
LACMA
David Smith established sculpture on par with painting in America, and although his burly blacksmith's build has led some people to romanticize him as a kind of blue-collar modernist,he was,like Jackson Pollock, an intensely lyrical artist who possessed extraordinary visual intelligence.
With the elevated physical and metaphysical scale of his sculpture, Smith drew in space with a fierce joy.He became increasingly absorbed with making "series of work" such as the "Cubis" which he made before his death...they are probably the most famous abstract sculpture of the postwar period.As one critic has said, the "Cubis" seem "more alive than most figurative sculpture does"...made of burnished stainless steel,"the shapes have a surface dazzle that can transform mass into light".
Smith remarked on his sculptural lyricism....
"The poetic vision in sculpture is fully as free as in
painting. Like a painting, sculpture now deals in the
illusion of form as well as its own particular property
of form itself."
"There is no conceptual difference between painting and sculpture....The position of creating does not change...just because the medium changes."
"Sometimes when I start a sculpture I begin with only a realized
part; the rest is travel to be unfolded, much in the order of a dream."
"Sculptors are not supposed to paint even painters think so except for Matisse+Picasso - but sculptors are always for painters sculpture...."
As critic Frank O'Hara observed in 1961, Smith's sculpture is "never sculpture being painting, it is sculpture looking at painting and responding in its own fashion."
"Art is made from dreams, and visions, and things not known, and least of all from things that can be said. It comes from the inside of who you are when you face yourself. It is an inner declaration of purpose, it is a factor which determines artist identity."
~David Smith
"Art is made from dreams, and visions, and things not known, and least of all from things that can be said. It comes from the inside of who you are when you face yourself. It is an inner declaration of purpose, it is a factor which determines artist identity."
~David Smith
"Form doesn't need to be full rounded...permitting the sculpture on a whole to have varying and different aesthetic purposes."
"I will not change an error if it feels right, for the error is more human than perfection."
Along with the David Smith exhibit, abstract expressionist artist, Davyd Whaley and I had lunch at LACMA's new upscale restaurant,Ray's...named after the late Hollywood producer and LACMA Board Member, Ray Stark.....
Along with the David Smith exhibit, abstract expressionist artist, Davyd Whaley and I had lunch at LACMA's new upscale restaurant,Ray's...named after the late Hollywood producer and LACMA Board Member, Ray Stark.....
Davyd's response to the hysterical menu items,including "ramps",was "You've got to be kidding!...you can keep the "ramps"...I'll just have a hamburger!"....very pricey...and barely edible...try Marie Calender's down on Wilshire.....
For further reading: 1.David Smith Invents, Susan Behrends Frank, The Phillips Collection and Yale
University Press.
2.David Smith, Personage, Alex Potts, Gagosian Gallery.
3.David Smith, Related Clues, Drawings, Paintings & Sculpture, 1931-1964,
Gagosian Gallery.
The Artist in All His Dimensions
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204323904577038062880928468.html
For further reading: 1.David Smith Invents, Susan Behrends Frank, The Phillips Collection and Yale
University Press.
2.David Smith, Personage, Alex Potts, Gagosian Gallery.
3.David Smith, Related Clues, Drawings, Paintings & Sculpture, 1931-1964,
Gagosian Gallery.
The Artist in All His Dimensions
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204323904577038062880928468.html
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The Artist's Search for a Fearful Symmetry...Did It All Begin With Zeus.....
The primal artistic search for order and balance in our world, in our life,in our relationships, and in our art and creativity may have started with Zeus... as explored by Plato in his Symposium...he quotes the ancient Greek playwright,Aristophanes:
"In primal times people were globular
spheres who wheeled around like clowns
The Galettes
Claude Monet
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Charis in Doorway
Edward Weston
c.1936
Bronze Sculpture
Edgar Degas
Karl Jung,The Castle,1928
Leonardo da Vinci,The Last Supper, Tempera and mixed media on plaster,mural on an entire back wall,Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie,Milan
For Further Reading......1.Hybrid Imagery The fusion of technology and graphic design,April Greiman,
1990,Watson-Guptill Publications,New York... 2.Fearful Symmetry A Study of William Blake,Northrop Frye,1947,an intense study completed over a period of a decade,Frye made Blake's voice and vision intelligible...a landmark of Blake criticism.
PATTERNS....Leanne Shapton's illustrated series catalogs designs and textiles observed in passing...
The primal artistic search for order and balance in our world, in our life,in our relationships, and in our art and creativity may have started with Zeus... as explored by Plato in his Symposium...he quotes the ancient Greek playwright,Aristophanes:
"In primal times people were globular
spheres who wheeled around like clowns
doing cartwheels.
There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the "androgynous", who was half man, half woman. The creatures tried to scale the heights of heaven and planned to set upon the gods. Zeus thought about just blasting them to death with thunderbolts, but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half...Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature."
Leonardo da Vinci created perhaps the most iconic vision of this same primal artistic and human rage for symmetry circa 1487...with his pen and ink drawing of the "Vitruvian Man" which was accompanied by his notes based on the work of the famed architect,Vitruvius who believed architecture should have the same symmetry as the human body. Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man is his image of the essential symmetry of the human body, and by extension of the universe as a whole.
Da Vinci rendered Vitruvius's proportions of a man's body(not of a woman's body)as one circle and square image overlaid on top of each other...first standing with arms outspread inscribed in a square, and then with feet and arms outspread inscribed in a circle. This symmetrical anthropocentric image represents not only Da Vinci's keen interest in proportion, but also it is a cornerstone of his attempts to relate man and nature...he envisaged "the great picture chart of the human body as a "cosmografia del minor mondo"...a cosmography of the microcosm"...he believed the symmetry and workings of the human body to be an analogy for the symmetry and workings of the universe.
Later the English visionary poet, William Blake explored this same artistic search for "fearful symmetry" in his 1794 poem,The Tyger in his Songs of Innocence and Experience....
There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the "androgynous", who was half man, half woman. The creatures tried to scale the heights of heaven and planned to set upon the gods. Zeus thought about just blasting them to death with thunderbolts, but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half...Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature."
Leonardo da Vinci created perhaps the most iconic vision of this same primal artistic and human rage for symmetry circa 1487...with his pen and ink drawing of the "Vitruvian Man" which was accompanied by his notes based on the work of the famed architect,Vitruvius who believed architecture should have the same symmetry as the human body. Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man is his image of the essential symmetry of the human body, and by extension of the universe as a whole.
Da Vinci rendered Vitruvius's proportions of a man's body(not of a woman's body)as one circle and square image overlaid on top of each other...first standing with arms outspread inscribed in a square, and then with feet and arms outspread inscribed in a circle. This symmetrical anthropocentric image represents not only Da Vinci's keen interest in proportion, but also it is a cornerstone of his attempts to relate man and nature...he envisaged "the great picture chart of the human body as a "cosmografia del minor mondo"...a cosmography of the microcosm"...he believed the symmetry and workings of the human body to be an analogy for the symmetry and workings of the universe.
Later the English visionary poet, William Blake explored this same artistic search for "fearful symmetry" in his 1794 poem,The Tyger in his Songs of Innocence and Experience....
Tyger! Tyger!burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Again in Blake's 1795 "Glad Day",he seeks to free Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man from his constraining square and circle...and Blake infuses his Vitruvian Man set free with a new dynamism and joy...he takes Da Vinci's diagrammatic figure and converts it into a dynamic god of energy, and turns its static pose into a centrifugal fling.
Unlike Da Vinci, Blake felt that ideal forms should be constructed not from observations of nature, but from inner visions. He emphasized imagination over reason,and it is therefore ironic that he should adapt a work by Da Vinci who was so focused on observation and the measurement of proportions.
Contemporary artists with feminist-themed art works have once again riffed on Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and morphed his iconic anthropomorphic image into that of a latter day Vitruvian Woman...
April Greiman in her seminal use of computer tecnology in her landmark fusion of technology and graphic design...used "hybrid symmetrical imagery" in her 2'X6' poster(which served as a "folded cover" for the magazine) of a contemporary Vitruvian Woman(a nude image of herself) for the 1986 Design Quarterly #133:Does It Make Sense?April's poster was a life-size collage created entirely on the Macintosh computer which was made of many different text and graphic elements,and composed entirely on screen without any conventional design "paste-up"...the graphic design world was irrevocably changed forever by Greiman's female Vitruvian "experiment"!
Another contemporary feminist vision of a Vitruvian Woman which resonates Blake's "Glad Day" in setting the Vitruvian figure free of its enclosing and constraining geometry...is Sculptor Jane Dedecker's "Vitruvian Woman"...
Recently the radio show,Radiolab collaborated to create a short film for their Desperately Seeking Symmetry episode,delving deeper into symmetry's role in shaping how we live,find love, and create art:http://www.psfk.com/2011/04/is-our-world-full-of-deep-symmetries-and-ordered-pairs-video.html
As the French philosopher of science,Henri Poincare has said,"It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry,their happy balance;in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details."
The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect...Paul Valery
Symmetry....a beauty of form arising from balanced proportions....is everywhere... in art,architecture, and the universe!
Symmetry....a beauty of form arising from balanced proportions....is everywhere... in art,architecture, and the universe!
Claude Monet
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Charis in Doorway
Edward Weston
c.1936
Bronze Sculpture
Edgar Degas
Karl Jung,The Castle,1928
Leonardo da Vinci,The Last Supper, Tempera and mixed media on plaster,mural on an entire back wall,Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie,Milan
For Further Reading......1.Hybrid Imagery The fusion of technology and graphic design,April Greiman,
1990,Watson-Guptill Publications,New York... 2.Fearful Symmetry A Study of William Blake,Northrop Frye,1947,an intense study completed over a period of a decade,Frye made Blake's voice and vision intelligible...a landmark of Blake criticism.
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| M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948 |
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| M.C.Escher, Circle Limit III,1959 |
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