Too busy this morning but I can always find a few minutes to take in some work from Georges Rouault (1871-1958). His work has for me a real sense of rightness, a certitude that makes even his roughest brushstrokes seem both perfectly placed and necessary.
Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Quote | Tagged Georges Rouault, Quote | 2 Comments »
Watching the murmurations of starlings is a fascinating and hypnotic thing to see, indeed. Murmuration is the word for the starling flock and for the intricate dance in the sky performed by these huge groups of birds which often number in the tens of thousands.
The murmurations move gracefully and quickly, creating constantly shifting forms that seem derived from some higher levels of geometry and quantum mechanics than my simple mind can comprehend. I get the feeling when I watch them that I am seeing some essential base element of our universe made visible.
We have never really fully understood the hows and whys of these complex movements. Researchers have found that these displays are almost always set off by a predator such as a falcon near the edge of the group. The group responds as a single unit without an actual leader in order to avoid and distance the group as a whole from the predator.
Researchers believe that this done with something called scale-free correlation which allows birds at any point in the group to instantaneously sense and react to what any other bird in the group, no matter how far away, might be experiencing. Any information moves through the group instantly and without any degradation of the message. It’s like an incredibly complex version of the telephone game. With people passing a simple message along in this game, the message is often garbled beyond recognition within a relatively short time. Here the message is passed tens of thousands of times without missing a word, a comma or inflection.
How they do it remains a mystery. Maybe that’s why they remain so fascinating, to remind us that we still know so little of the grand scheme of things.
For this Sunday morning music here’s a piece, On Reflection, from contemporary composer Max Richter. It is accompanied here by a video of the murmurations of starlings. The music and the flowing motions of the birds create a hypnotic and soothing effect. Give a listen and relax. Maybe you can imagine being part of that murmuration.
Posted in Music, Neat Stuff | Tagged Max Richter, Murmuration, Starlings, Sunday Morning Music | 2 Comments »
“You stumble into the forest and wend through the pines that finally open up, and there–before you, above you, around you–a sea of granite soars straight off the talus, stunning for its colors and sheer bulk; and terrible for the emptiness that sets in your gut as your eyes pan up its titanic corners and towers…
We were over 2500 feet up the wall now, into the really prime stuff. Here the exposure is so enormous, and your perspective so distorted, that the horizontal world becomes incomprehensible. You’re a granite astronaut, dangling in a kind of space/time warp. And if there is any place where you will understand why men and women climb mountains, it is here in these breezy dihedrals, high in the sky.”
– John Long, Nose In A Day, First person to climb El Capitan in single day, 1975
+++++++++++
It’s a really busy morning but I did find time to watch a film on the record breaking climb up the face of El Capitan in Yosemite that took place in October of last year. Climbers Brad Gobright and Jim Reynolds scaled the granite icon, once considered an impossible climb, in a mind boggling 2 hours 19 minutes and 44 seconds. To give you an idea of the speed we’re dealing with, most climbers, who must be very experienced just to make such an attempt, spend 3-4 days on the wall before reaching the summit.
Pictures don’t do justice to the sense of awe El Capitan inspires. The idea of someone walking up to its formidable base and basically just climbing up it seems ridiculous. The imagery in the film brings a sense of scale, with the climbers appearing like mites running along the back of a huge hairless beast. It also gives you an idea of how many people are on the face of this monolith at any given time even though it appears completely devoid of life from a distance. I had to laugh to see these two men as they seemingly fly by traffic on the wall.
Take a look. There is something very mesmerizing, even centering, in this short film. Not a bad way to start your own busy Saturday.
Posted in Favorite Things, Video | Tagged El Capitan, Video, Yosemite | 3 Comments »
++++++++++++++++
How well do we know our own shadows?
Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings | Tagged GC Myers, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Moon, New Painting, Quote, Shadow | 2 Comments »
+++++++++++++
Posted in Favorite Things, Quote | Tagged Gustav Klimt, Quote | 2 Comments »
Just a month out from my solo show, Haven, at the Principle Gallery. The work for the show as a whole is shaping up well and I am going through waves of elation and anxiety as I prepare. The elation comes in the way I feel the new work is finishing off and the anxiety in that I fear my judgement might be off base a bit, that what I am seeing and feeling in the work might not come across to others.
That I am working with my head in the clouds.
Fortunately– or unfortunately–that anxiety is not new to this show. I’ve had it in varying degrees for every single show I’ve done over the past two decades. This is my 19th solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery and my 52nd or 53rd solo show overall and I can’t remember ever feeling absolutely confident in how people would react to what I was doing. But so long as I have faith in my own reaction to the work, that I trust that I am experiencing real feeling from it, then I live a little easier with that anxiety, even though it never fully recedes.
The piece shown here is a new painting, 24″ by 12″ on canvas, that elicits the elation I described above. It checks every box for what I wanted from it. It has an equilibrium of fineness and roughness that appeals to me. There is a cleanness in its design that makes it feel solid and whole to my eye. It draws me in and lets me feel that I am the Red Tree here and it is a fulfilling experience.
It makes me feel good, to put it plainly.
Now, I must note that these are my reactions. You might look at it and feel nothing. That is no less valid a reaction than my own. But because I know what I am feeling is true and genuine for myself, the anxiety of showing it to someone who might not feel anything from it is lessened.
So, with that thought in mind, I must get back to work.
With my head in the clouds.
This painting is titled, of course, Head in the Clouds. I used the quote below from Thoreau just a week or two ago but it fits this piece and this blogpost so well I am using it again:
–Henry David Thoreau
In this case, I think I know where I am…
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alexandria VA, GC Myers, Haven, New Paintings, Principle Gallery, Red Tree | 4 Comments »
Ralph Fasanella- May Day -1948
+++++++++++
Today, May 1, is May Day. Some folks see it as a festival of spring that began as an ancient pagan celebration, complete with May Poles, May Queens and May Baskets. Others recognize it as a day celebrating laborers, trade unions and the working class, otherwise known as International Workers’ Day.
I think that labor unions have been integral to the rise of the American middle class and to many things that we now take for granted. Things like eight hour workdays, weekends, child labor laws, workplace safety, minimum wages, health insurance, paid vacations, retirement pensions and on and on. Things that provide a sense of comfort, security and self-worth for working folks.
I believe that the demise of unions goes hand in hand with the growing chasm in income inequality between the owners and the workers of this world. The owners had the shrewdness and the resources to mount a sustained campaign over the years that constantly painted unions in an unflattering light, to the point that many workers began to side with the owners, often against their own self interest.
It’s the same kind of thought control that makes workers believe that big tax breaks and other benefits reserved for owners will have a magical trickle down effect and will somehow enrich their own lives.
Unfortunately, human nature overrules trickle down economics every time. The benefits that the people in labor unions fought and died for — yes, died for— are soon under attack from owners who need more and more and more. The labor battles will no doubt have to be fought again at some point and lord knows what ugliness will come from that.
The painting shown at the top and a favorite of mine, is titled May Day and is in the collection of the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown. I thought it was a fitting image for today. It was painted in 1948 by a favorite artist of mine, American folk artist Ralph Fasanella, who I have written about here a number of times. He was a labor organizer in the 30’s and 40’s when the workers’ movement was making the powerful strides that created the mythic middle class that inhabited the America of the 1950’s. I am not going to spend a lot of time describing his career here but will point out that his work often portrayed labor and workers.
It is powerful stuff, to say the least, and pertinent both for its own time and now.
Here is the description for the painting from the museum’s website:
Ralph Fasanella was born in New York City to Italian immigrant parents. He spent his youth helping his father on his ice delivery route, and absorbed the streets, tenements, and people that would later inspire his art. His mother, a literate and socially conscious woman, introduced Fasanella to antifascist and trade union causes. He eventually became a union organizer until he began to paint in 1945. Fasanella was an acclaimed “primitive” painter in the 1940s, and then painted in obscurity for 25 years until his “discovery” in 1972. May Day represents Fasanella’s attempt to capture the spirit of the workers’ movements of the 1930s, focusing upon the huge May Day parades that annually drew up to 200,000 demonstrators to Union Square in New York City. At the left, marchers pour out of the crowded streets and tenements and descend upon New York’s Union Square. Their large banners proclaim support for organized labor and racial unity under the overarching cause of “Peace, Democracy, Security.” At the head of the parade is a magnificent horse-drawn float, complete with May Pole and women in ethnic costumes. The marchers pass a reviewing stand with a backdrop that serves as a shrine to labor heroes. Across a colorful bed of flowers lies the artist’s utopian vision at the right. It is a place where workers, liberated from the burden of twelve- and sixteen-hour shifts, have the freedom to pursue cultural and recreational activities.
Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, History | Tagged Fenimore Art Museum, Folk Art, May Day, Ralph Fasanella | 1 Comment »
An artist only has so much control over how their work is seen and spoken of by others. The creation itself speaks loudest for the artist, of course. But it is also represented in words by gallery personnel, museum staffs and others. Each individual interpretation adds to or detracts from the work. The artist has little say unless they make an effort to control the narrative with their own words.
I know that I have tried to do this, with varying degrees of success. I felt that in order to do this I would have to try to be honest with my own assessments of the work and what I was seeing in it so that the viewer’s experience might be honestly enhanced. Hopefully, a little more depth into the work would be provided.
Whether this matters in the long term, I do not know. But for the time being, it gives me the feeling that I am somewhat in control of my narrative. Here’s a post from a few years back that speaks a bit more about artists speaking about their work and the difference between doing so with words that actually say something substantive and those that are mere fluffy word clouds.
.
David Hockney- Mulholland Drive 1980
David Hockney- Arranged Felled Trees
ed people to be able to witness that without a crap filter between them and the work.
Posted in Biographical, Motivation, Quote | Tagged David Hockney, Quote | 1 Comment »
The musical Hair opened on Broadway on this date 50 years ago, back in 1968. I grew up listening to this album and most of the songs feel like they are ingrained somehow in my DNA. Hailed as the American tribal love-rock musical, it was a groundbreaking show with songs that permeated the culture and helped define the era. Aquarius certainly feels like that time and that year.
And what a year 1968 was, here and around the world.
There were the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy in April and June.
In a stormy election season, the 1968 Democratic Convention was an eight-day violent skirmish in the streets of Chicago between police and protesters. Ultimately, Richard Nixon was elected president.
Here and around the globe, student anti-war protesters filled the streets and sometimes, as in the cases of Columbia University and Howard University, took over and occupied buildings.
North Korea captured the American surveillance ship the USS Pueblo and held its crew prisoner for 11 months. North Korea released the crew but kept the ship. It is now an exhibit Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang.
There was the Tet Offensive and the My Lai Massacre in Viet Nam.
You had the Prague Spring that results later in the year with the Russians marching into Czechoslovakia to exert their control.
Before the opening of the 1968 Mexico Olympics, students protested in the streets that the money spent by the country for the Olympics would be better put to use in much needed social programs. The protesters were surrounded by the army and fired on, killing over 200 students and injuring over 1000 more.
The Olympics themselves were memorable with Bob Beamon soaring to an unfathomable record in the long jump. And, of course, there was the iconic image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the podium for the medal ceremony for the 200-meter run. Bare-footed with their heads cast downward, both raised gloved fists in the Black Power salute.
That would be enough for most years– maybe most decades. But there was even more that I don’t have time to go in here that make it one of the most chaotic and super-charged years in our history.
And among all that, the subversive sound of Hair played on. Well, it’s been fifty years and the world seems to have rotated back to find us in a similar time of chaos.
Some things never change, I guess.
So, for this week’s Sunday morning music I thought something from Hair would be fitting. So many great choices but here are a couple of better known selections, both of which became hits for artists that covered them in the following years. The first is Easy To Be Hard which was hit for Three Dog Night. The second is the title anthem which was #1 hit for The Cowsills.
Give a listen and have a good Sunday.
Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, History, Music | Tagged 1968, Hair, The Cowsills, Three Dog Night | 5 Comments »
Marsden Hartley- Himmel 1915
++++++++++++++
I have come to the conclusion that it is better to have two colors in right relation to each other than to have a vast confusion of emotional exuberance. . . I had rather be intellectually right than emotionally exuberant.
Marsden Hartley- Portrait of a German Officer 1914
Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Motivation, Painting, Poetry, Quote | Tagged Marsden Hartley, Painting, Quote | 3 Comments »
Redtree Times 