Water Lilies (The Clouds), 1903
Water Lilies, 1906
Water Lilies, 1908
Water Lilies, 1908
Water Lilies, c. 1914-1917
Water Lilies, c. 1914-1917
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Jacob Izaaksoon van Ruisdael (c. 1628 - 1682): Cloudscapes
The Ray of Sunlight - c. 1660
Landscape with Church and Village - c. 1665-70
An Extensive Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Village Church - c. 1665-72
Wheat Fields - c. 1670s
Landscape with a View of Haarlem - c. 1670-75
The Shore at Egmond-an-Zee - c. 1675
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Trilogies Of Obscene Beauty And Operatic Carnage
Francis Bacon (1909-1992) - Second Version of Triptych 1944, 1988
'I've always been very moved by pictures about slaughterhouses and meat, and to me that belong very much to the whole thing of the Crucifixion. There've been extraordinary photographs which have been done of animals just being taken up before they were slaughtered; and the smell of death. We don't know, of course, but it appears by these photographs that they're so aware of what is going to happen to them, they do everything to attempt to escape. I think these pictures were very much based on that kind of thing, which to me is very, very near this whole thing of the Crucifixion. I know for religious people, for Christians, the Crucifixion has a totally different significance. But as a non-believer, it was just an act of man's behaviour, a way of behaviour to another.' FB
'Well, of course, you're working then about you're own feelings and sensations, really. You might say it's almost nearer to a self portrait. You're working on all sorts of very primitive feelings about behaviour and about the way life is. . . . If you go to some of those great stores, where you just go through those great halls of death, you can see meat and fist and birds and everything else all lying dead there. And, of course, one has to remember as a painter that there is great beauty in the colour of meat.' FB
'Well, of course, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go into a butcher's shop I always think it's surprising that I wasn't there instead of the animal.' FB
'Pity the meat! Meat is undoubtedly the chief object of Bacon's pity, his only object of pity, is Anglo-Irish pity. . . . Meat is not dead flesh; it retains the sufferings and assumes all the colourings of living flesh. It manifests such convulsive pain and vulnerability, but also such delightful invention, colour, and acrobatics. Bacon does not say, "Pity the beasts", but rather that every man who suffers is a piece of meat. Meat is the common zone of man and the beast, their zone of indiscernibility; it is a "fact", a state where the painter identifies with the objects of his horror and his compassion. The painter is certainly a butcher, but he goes to a butcher shop as if it were a church, with meat as the crucified victim.'
'Their anatomy was half-human, half-animal, and they were confined in a low-ceilinged, windowless and oddly proportioned space. They could bite, probe, and suck, and they had very long eel-like necks, but their functioning in other respects was mysterious. Ears and mouths they had, but two at least were sightless. One was bandaged. The left-hand figure had the hairstyle of a female jail-bird. At shoulder-level it had what might have been mutilated wing-stumps. An inch or two below these there was drawn tight what might have been either a shower curtain or a pair of outsized pajama trousers. Set down on what looked like a metal stool, the figure was trashing round as if to savage whatever came within biting distance. The central figure, anatomically somewhat like a dis-feathered ostrich, had a human mouth, heavily bandaged, set at the end of its long, thick tubular neck.
What that neck might have looked like without the bandage was indicated by the right-handed figure. It had big ears at the corner of its mouth, and was able to open that mouth to an angle of about ninety degrees. It's one visible leg was as much a sofa-leg as an animal leg, and the patch of grass on which it stood was nearer to a bed of nails than to the shaven lawns of Oxford and Cambridge.
Common to all three figures was a mindless voracity, an automatic unregulated gluttony, a ravening undifferentiated capacity for hatred. Each was if as cornered, and only waiting for the chance to drag the observer down to its own level.'
'With hindsight, it is evident that the Crucifixion theme in Bacon's art evolved in several distinct stages. First, there are his early attempts to address the subject in largely abstract terms, with the aim of modernising it or giving it a contemporary twist. Second, there is the revolt against the motif, which is seen as nothing but a hollow convention: the figures rise up against it, repudiating it and categorically denying its authenticity. This is followed by a transitional phase in which the theme appears to have been abandoned; but in fact, it returns through the back door, in a different and disturbing guise. The crucified body is 'costumed' as a carcass, a piece of butcher's meat. Golgotha has moved to the abattoir.
In the fourth phase the Crucifixion theme is grafted onto the triptych form. This development is ushered in by Three studies for a Crucifixion, painted in 1962 at the end of an eighteen-year period when the triptych was effectively eliminated from Bacon's repertoire. From the mid-1960s onwards, the format was Bacon's most important vehicle of artistic expression: that he should abandon it again became quite unthinkable. At the same time, the theme of the Crucifixion began to recede into the background. It was as if the subject had dissolved into something more general, as a ground or premise underlying all the subsequent triptychs but no longer requiring explicit mention.'
'Well, of course, you're working then about you're own feelings and sensations, really. You might say it's almost nearer to a self portrait. You're working on all sorts of very primitive feelings about behaviour and about the way life is. . . . If you go to some of those great stores, where you just go through those great halls of death, you can see meat and fist and birds and everything else all lying dead there. And, of course, one has to remember as a painter that there is great beauty in the colour of meat.' FB
'Well, of course, we are meat, we are potential carcasses. If I go into a butcher's shop I always think it's surprising that I wasn't there instead of the animal.' FB
'Pity the meat! Meat is undoubtedly the chief object of Bacon's pity, his only object of pity, is Anglo-Irish pity. . . . Meat is not dead flesh; it retains the sufferings and assumes all the colourings of living flesh. It manifests such convulsive pain and vulnerability, but also such delightful invention, colour, and acrobatics. Bacon does not say, "Pity the beasts", but rather that every man who suffers is a piece of meat. Meat is the common zone of man and the beast, their zone of indiscernibility; it is a "fact", a state where the painter identifies with the objects of his horror and his compassion. The painter is certainly a butcher, but he goes to a butcher shop as if it were a church, with meat as the crucified victim.'
Gilles Deleuze
'Their anatomy was half-human, half-animal, and they were confined in a low-ceilinged, windowless and oddly proportioned space. They could bite, probe, and suck, and they had very long eel-like necks, but their functioning in other respects was mysterious. Ears and mouths they had, but two at least were sightless. One was bandaged. The left-hand figure had the hairstyle of a female jail-bird. At shoulder-level it had what might have been mutilated wing-stumps. An inch or two below these there was drawn tight what might have been either a shower curtain or a pair of outsized pajama trousers. Set down on what looked like a metal stool, the figure was trashing round as if to savage whatever came within biting distance. The central figure, anatomically somewhat like a dis-feathered ostrich, had a human mouth, heavily bandaged, set at the end of its long, thick tubular neck.
What that neck might have looked like without the bandage was indicated by the right-handed figure. It had big ears at the corner of its mouth, and was able to open that mouth to an angle of about ninety degrees. It's one visible leg was as much a sofa-leg as an animal leg, and the patch of grass on which it stood was nearer to a bed of nails than to the shaven lawns of Oxford and Cambridge.
Common to all three figures was a mindless voracity, an automatic unregulated gluttony, a ravening undifferentiated capacity for hatred. Each was if as cornered, and only waiting for the chance to drag the observer down to its own level.'
John Russell
'With hindsight, it is evident that the Crucifixion theme in Bacon's art evolved in several distinct stages. First, there are his early attempts to address the subject in largely abstract terms, with the aim of modernising it or giving it a contemporary twist. Second, there is the revolt against the motif, which is seen as nothing but a hollow convention: the figures rise up against it, repudiating it and categorically denying its authenticity. This is followed by a transitional phase in which the theme appears to have been abandoned; but in fact, it returns through the back door, in a different and disturbing guise. The crucified body is 'costumed' as a carcass, a piece of butcher's meat. Golgotha has moved to the abattoir.
In the fourth phase the Crucifixion theme is grafted onto the triptych form. This development is ushered in by Three studies for a Crucifixion, painted in 1962 at the end of an eighteen-year period when the triptych was effectively eliminated from Bacon's repertoire. From the mid-1960s onwards, the format was Bacon's most important vehicle of artistic expression: that he should abandon it again became quite unthinkable. At the same time, the theme of the Crucifixion began to recede into the background. It was as if the subject had dissolved into something more general, as a ground or premise underlying all the subsequent triptychs but no longer requiring explicit mention.'
Wieland Schmeid
Monday, April 14, 2008
God's Butcher And His Unholy Worm
Francis Bacon (1909-1992) - Crucifixion, May 1962
DAVID SYLVESTER: Now, in some of your most recent paintings you've both been using strong background colours and gone back to precise and sculptural sort of forms...Do you have a general desire now to make the form more clear and precise?
FRANCIS BACON: Oh yes, the clearer and more precise the better. Of course, how to be clear and precise is a terribly difficult thing now. And I think that's the problem for all painters now, or at any rate painters who are absorbed in a subject in a figurative thing. They just want to make it it more and more precise; but of a very ambiguous precision.
DS: In painting this Crucifixion, did you have the three canvases up simultaneously, or did you work on them quite separately?
FB: I worked on them separately and, gradually, as I finished them, I worked on the three across the room together. It was a thing that I did in about a fortnight, when I was in a bad mood of drinking, and I did it under tremendous hangovers and drink; I sometimes hardly knew what I was doing. And it's one of the only pictures that I've been able to do under drink. I think perhaps the drink made me feel a bit freer.
DS: Have you been able to do the same in any picture that you've done since?
FB: I haven't. But I think with great effort I'm making myself freer. I mean, you either have to do it through drugs or drink.
DS: Or extreme tiredness?
FB: Extreme tiredness? Possibly. Or will.
DS: The will to lose one's will?
FB: Absolutely. The will to make oneself completely free. Will is the wrong word, because in the end you could call it despair. Because it really comes out of an absolute feeling of it's impossible to do these things, so I might as well just do anything. And out of this, one sees what happens.
DS: Did the actual placing of the figures change while you were doing this triptych, or did you see them before you started painting?
DAVID SYLVESTER: Now, in some of your most recent paintings you've both been using strong background colours and gone back to precise and sculptural sort of forms...Do you have a general desire now to make the form more clear and precise?
FRANCIS BACON: Oh yes, the clearer and more precise the better. Of course, how to be clear and precise is a terribly difficult thing now. And I think that's the problem for all painters now, or at any rate painters who are absorbed in a subject in a figurative thing. They just want to make it it more and more precise; but of a very ambiguous precision.
DS: In painting this Crucifixion, did you have the three canvases up simultaneously, or did you work on them quite separately?
FB: I worked on them separately and, gradually, as I finished them, I worked on the three across the room together. It was a thing that I did in about a fortnight, when I was in a bad mood of drinking, and I did it under tremendous hangovers and drink; I sometimes hardly knew what I was doing. And it's one of the only pictures that I've been able to do under drink. I think perhaps the drink made me feel a bit freer.
DS: Have you been able to do the same in any picture that you've done since?
FB: I haven't. But I think with great effort I'm making myself freer. I mean, you either have to do it through drugs or drink.
DS: Or extreme tiredness?
FB: Extreme tiredness? Possibly. Or will.
DS: The will to lose one's will?
FB: Absolutely. The will to make oneself completely free. Will is the wrong word, because in the end you could call it despair. Because it really comes out of an absolute feeling of it's impossible to do these things, so I might as well just do anything. And out of this, one sees what happens.
DS: Did the actual placing of the figures change while you were doing this triptych, or did you see them before you started painting?
FB: I did, but they did change continuously. But I did see them, and the figure on the right is something which I have wanted to do for a long time. You know the great Cimabue Crucifixion? I always think of that as an image - as a worm crawling down a cross. I did try to make something of feeling which I've sometimes had from that picture of this image just moving, undulating down the cross.
Cimabue (c. 1240 - c. 1302) - Crucifixion, 1287-88
DS: And of course this is one of a number of existing images you've used.
FB: Yes, they breed other images for me. And of course one's always hoping to renew them.
DS: And of course this is one of a number of existing images you've used.
FB: Yes, they breed other images for me. And of course one's always hoping to renew them.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
L'après-midi D'une Peinture
Georges Seurat (1959-1891) - Bathers at Asnieres, 1883-84 (retouched 1887)
'There are moments on hot summer days when we are prepared for a miracle. The stillness and the gently vibrating haze give to our perceptions a kind of finality, and we wait listening for some cosmic hum to enchant, like Papageno's bells, the uncouth shapes and colors which surround us, so that they all dance to the same tune and finally come to rest in a harmonious order. In life the miracle doesn't happen, and it is rare enough in art, because great painters have usually created imaginary worlds, outside the range of our ordinary visual experience. But it happens in Seurat's Baignade. As I catch sight of this large canvas at the end of the gallery, framed by a door so that the illusion of reality is increased, I feel that the haze and stillness of summer have at last fulfilled their promise. Time has stopped, everything has become its proper shape, and every shape is in its proper place.'
'Admirers of Seurat often regret his method, the little dots. But the dots are not simply a technique; they are a tangible surface and the ground of important qualities, including his finesse. Too much has been written, and often incorrectly, about the scientific nature of the dots. The question whether they make a picture more or less luminous hardly matters. A painting can be luminous and artistically dull, or low-keyed in color and radiant to the mind. Besides, bow to paint brightly is no secret requiring a special knowledge of science. Like Van Gogh, Seurat could have used strong colors in big areas for a brighter effect. But without his peculiar means we would not have the marvelous delicacy of tone, the uncountable variations within a narrow range, the vibrancy and soft luster, which make his canvases, and especially his landscapes, a joy to contemplate. Nor would we have his surprising image-world where the continuous form is built up from the discrete, and the solid masses emerge from an endless scattering of fine points - a mystery of the coming-into-being for the eye.'
'Bathing has never been labeled "Monday"; yet its tranquil assembly of men and boys resting against the backdrop of a working factory must have been inspired by the all-male work-stopping rituals of Saint Lundi. The link between bathing and the celebration of Saint Lundi in the 1880s reveals the simultaneous contemporaneity and chronological incongruity (which I will call "anachronicity") of Seurat's social awareness and descriptive practice . . .
By the time Seurat completed Bathing in May 1884, the working class tradition of Monday off was changing. Workers had come to associate its celebration not with resistance to employers or to wives, but rather with the resignation and frustration of admitting to being a worker. During the Second Empire, for example, workers preferred to take off Monday because, unlike Sunday, there was no need to dress up. But, by the 1880s, workers dreamed of escaping from their blue smocks and dressing like the middle class did. Indeed, more and more workers managed to do precisely that: analysis of worker's budgets in the later nineteenth century, shows that an increasingly large percentage of income was expended on leisure-time clothing in order to reduce the sartorial distinctions between the classes on Sunday.
[In] its early stages, Bathing was conceived as a proletarian picture but was transformed into an image of shopkeepers and artisans in the course of the development of the project. In the final canvas, knee-length white cloaks, tabbed leather boots, bowlers, and straw boaters (shopkeeper's garb) were substituted for the blue smocks and casquettes worn by the men in earlier sketches. Seurat updated the subject of his first major painting by replacing a working-class population with members of the ascendant class of the day, the lower middle class . . . '
'There are moments on hot summer days when we are prepared for a miracle. The stillness and the gently vibrating haze give to our perceptions a kind of finality, and we wait listening for some cosmic hum to enchant, like Papageno's bells, the uncouth shapes and colors which surround us, so that they all dance to the same tune and finally come to rest in a harmonious order. In life the miracle doesn't happen, and it is rare enough in art, because great painters have usually created imaginary worlds, outside the range of our ordinary visual experience. But it happens in Seurat's Baignade. As I catch sight of this large canvas at the end of the gallery, framed by a door so that the illusion of reality is increased, I feel that the haze and stillness of summer have at last fulfilled their promise. Time has stopped, everything has become its proper shape, and every shape is in its proper place.'
Kenneth Clark
'Admirers of Seurat often regret his method, the little dots. But the dots are not simply a technique; they are a tangible surface and the ground of important qualities, including his finesse. Too much has been written, and often incorrectly, about the scientific nature of the dots. The question whether they make a picture more or less luminous hardly matters. A painting can be luminous and artistically dull, or low-keyed in color and radiant to the mind. Besides, bow to paint brightly is no secret requiring a special knowledge of science. Like Van Gogh, Seurat could have used strong colors in big areas for a brighter effect. But without his peculiar means we would not have the marvelous delicacy of tone, the uncountable variations within a narrow range, the vibrancy and soft luster, which make his canvases, and especially his landscapes, a joy to contemplate. Nor would we have his surprising image-world where the continuous form is built up from the discrete, and the solid masses emerge from an endless scattering of fine points - a mystery of the coming-into-being for the eye.'
Meyer Shapiro
'Bathing has never been labeled "Monday"; yet its tranquil assembly of men and boys resting against the backdrop of a working factory must have been inspired by the all-male work-stopping rituals of Saint Lundi. The link between bathing and the celebration of Saint Lundi in the 1880s reveals the simultaneous contemporaneity and chronological incongruity (which I will call "anachronicity") of Seurat's social awareness and descriptive practice . . .
By the time Seurat completed Bathing in May 1884, the working class tradition of Monday off was changing. Workers had come to associate its celebration not with resistance to employers or to wives, but rather with the resignation and frustration of admitting to being a worker. During the Second Empire, for example, workers preferred to take off Monday because, unlike Sunday, there was no need to dress up. But, by the 1880s, workers dreamed of escaping from their blue smocks and dressing like the middle class did. Indeed, more and more workers managed to do precisely that: analysis of worker's budgets in the later nineteenth century, shows that an increasingly large percentage of income was expended on leisure-time clothing in order to reduce the sartorial distinctions between the classes on Sunday.
[In] its early stages, Bathing was conceived as a proletarian picture but was transformed into an image of shopkeepers and artisans in the course of the development of the project. In the final canvas, knee-length white cloaks, tabbed leather boots, bowlers, and straw boaters (shopkeeper's garb) were substituted for the blue smocks and casquettes worn by the men in earlier sketches. Seurat updated the subject of his first major painting by replacing a working-class population with members of the ascendant class of the day, the lower middle class . . . '
S. Hollis Clayson
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Au Clair De La Lune, On N'y Voit Qu'un Peu
Georges Seurat (1859-1891) - Pierrot et Colombine, c. 1887-88
'Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.'
'Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.'
Henri Matisse
Verso V
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) - Pollard Willows With Setting Sun, 1888
Coutances
Un dimanche aprés-midi, à Coutances
Dans une chambre d'hôtel moyen, sans étoiles
Le soleil passait à travers des rideaux de voiles
Un soleil frais
Je me suis levé bien tard, ce matin
Trop tard pour le petit déjeuner
Je suis sorti, sans rien manger
Je me suis rangé derriére la queue de la boulangerie
La ville était toute habillée de dimanche et de soleil
Un soleil frais
Sur un banc d'un jardin public, je me suis recueilli
Avec un sablé et un pain raisin comme seule compagnie
Mais qu'est ce que je suis venu faire ici?
Entre deux vacances
Un dimanche aprés-midi à Coutances
Dick Annegarn
Coutances
Un dimanche aprés-midi, à Coutances
Dans une chambre d'hôtel moyen, sans étoiles
Le soleil passait à travers des rideaux de voiles
Un soleil frais
Je me suis levé bien tard, ce matin
Trop tard pour le petit déjeuner
Je suis sorti, sans rien manger
Je me suis rangé derriére la queue de la boulangerie
La ville était toute habillée de dimanche et de soleil
Un soleil frais
Sur un banc d'un jardin public, je me suis recueilli
Avec un sablé et un pain raisin comme seule compagnie
Mais qu'est ce que je suis venu faire ici?
Entre deux vacances
Un dimanche aprés-midi à Coutances
Dick Annegarn
Friday, April 11, 2008
Juan Gris (1887-1927): Anything But Grey
Pears and Grapes on a Table. 1913
Teacups, 1914
Fantomas (Pipe and Newspaper), 1915
Guitar and Score, 1915
Still Life, 1915-16
Still Life with Flask of Bordeaux, 1919
Guitar and Clarinet, 1920
The Mountain (Le Canigou), 1921
The Open Window, 1921
Guitar and Music Paper, 1926
'In aesthetics, as in all areas of philosophy, one can begin almost anywhere - with the objects of nature or the objects of art; with aesthetic production or reception; with aesthetic judgement or artistic imagination; with concepts of things or concepts of signs; with the existential, cognitive, or ethical meaning of aesthetic states. However one begins aesthetics, the important thing is to consider the interrelatedness of these and other phenomena. This also applies when when we are concerned predominantly with special phenomena - that is, in aesthetics, with literature or film, ornament or design, monochrome painting or minimal music. One type of aesthetic object enjoys its distinctiveness only in relation to other types, against which it stands out, to which it is related, with which it is in a process of exchange. Ultimately, this holds even for every individual aesthetic object - for this landscape, this building, this installation. Each enjoys its particularity in contrast to other (types of) objects. Theory can support this particularity (and thereby fulfil its most important task) only if it shows in what more general relations this particularity is located. It is only together with a sense of the general that the sense of the particular is there; only together with a concept of this general that it is possible to have an understanding of the multiplicity of aesthetic objects and opportunities. No matter how one begins aesthetics, what always matters in the end is to have a sense of the richness of aesthetic states.'
From Aesthetics of Appearing by Martin Seel
'In aesthetics, as in all areas of philosophy, one can begin almost anywhere - with the objects of nature or the objects of art; with aesthetic production or reception; with aesthetic judgement or artistic imagination; with concepts of things or concepts of signs; with the existential, cognitive, or ethical meaning of aesthetic states. However one begins aesthetics, the important thing is to consider the interrelatedness of these and other phenomena. This also applies when when we are concerned predominantly with special phenomena - that is, in aesthetics, with literature or film, ornament or design, monochrome painting or minimal music. One type of aesthetic object enjoys its distinctiveness only in relation to other types, against which it stands out, to which it is related, with which it is in a process of exchange. Ultimately, this holds even for every individual aesthetic object - for this landscape, this building, this installation. Each enjoys its particularity in contrast to other (types of) objects. Theory can support this particularity (and thereby fulfil its most important task) only if it shows in what more general relations this particularity is located. It is only together with a sense of the general that the sense of the particular is there; only together with a concept of this general that it is possible to have an understanding of the multiplicity of aesthetic objects and opportunities. No matter how one begins aesthetics, what always matters in the end is to have a sense of the richness of aesthetic states.'
From Aesthetics of Appearing by Martin Seel
Eine Kleine Nachtkunst
Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) - Love in the Italian Comedy, 1714
'Life is a lot like jazz . . . it's best when you improvise.'
'Life is a lot like jazz . . . it's best when you improvise.'
George Gershwin
Verso IV
Aztec Sun Stone, late-1400s
'The Aztec Sun Stone (Piedra del Sol) is in Room 7 (Sala Mexica) of the museum. The 12-foot, 25-ton intricately carved basalt slab describing Aztec life is one of Mexico's most famous symbols. The stone was carved in the late 1400s; it was discovered buried beneath the Zócalo in 1790. It was originally thought to be a calendar, and for a brief time, a sacrificial altar.
In the stone's center is the sun god Tonatiuh. The rest of the carvings illustrate Aztec cosmology - the Aztecs believed that prior to their existence, the world had gone through four periods ("suns") of creation and destruction. Four square panels surrounding the center image represent these four worlds and their destruction (by jaguars, wind, firestorms, and water, respectively). The ring around the panels is filled with symbols representing the 20 days of the Aztec month. Finally, two snakes form an outer ring and point to a date, 1011 AD, when the fifth sun (the Aztecs' current world) was created.'
National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City
'The Aztec Sun Stone (Piedra del Sol) is in Room 7 (Sala Mexica) of the museum. The 12-foot, 25-ton intricately carved basalt slab describing Aztec life is one of Mexico's most famous symbols. The stone was carved in the late 1400s; it was discovered buried beneath the Zócalo in 1790. It was originally thought to be a calendar, and for a brief time, a sacrificial altar.
In the stone's center is the sun god Tonatiuh. The rest of the carvings illustrate Aztec cosmology - the Aztecs believed that prior to their existence, the world had gone through four periods ("suns") of creation and destruction. Four square panels surrounding the center image represent these four worlds and their destruction (by jaguars, wind, firestorms, and water, respectively). The ring around the panels is filled with symbols representing the 20 days of the Aztec month. Finally, two snakes form an outer ring and point to a date, 1011 AD, when the fifth sun (the Aztecs' current world) was created.'
National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Think, And Be Merry!
James Ensor (1860-1949) - The Banquet of the Starved, 1915
'The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.'
'The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.'
Susan Sontag
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition IX
Music, 1895
Pallas Athene, 1898
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 1907
Hope, 1907
Water Serpents II, c. 1907
Tree of Life, 1909
'It is not possible that a piece of sculpture, a piece of music which gives us an emotion which we feel to be more exalted, more pure, more true, does not correspond to some definite spiritual reality.'
Marcel Proust
Something Old, Something New I
Exhibit A:
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796 – 1875), The Coliseum seen through Arches of the Basilica of Constantine, 1825
Exhibit B:
Mark Rothko (1903-1970) - Entrance to Subway, 1938
'Since railways came into existence, the necessity of not missing the train has taught us to take account of minutes whereas among the ancient Romans, who not only had a more cursory science of astronomy but led less hurried lives, the notion not of minutes but even of fixed hours barely existed.'
Marcel Proust
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
TIme Is Never Lost, Only Forgotten
William Blake (1757-1827) - Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, c. 1786
'Those who have created for themselves an enveloping inner life, pay little heed to the importance of current events. What alters profoundly the course of their thinking is much more something which seems to be of no importance in itself and yet which reverses the order of time for them, making them live over again an earlier period of their life. The song of a bird in the park of Montboissier, a breeze laden with the scent of mignonette, are obviously incidents of less importance than the outstanding dates of the Revolution and the Empire. Yet they inspired Chateaubriand in his Mémoires d'Outre-tombe to write pages of an infinitely greater value.'
'Those who have created for themselves an enveloping inner life, pay little heed to the importance of current events. What alters profoundly the course of their thinking is much more something which seems to be of no importance in itself and yet which reverses the order of time for them, making them live over again an earlier period of their life. The song of a bird in the park of Montboissier, a breeze laden with the scent of mignonette, are obviously incidents of less importance than the outstanding dates of the Revolution and the Empire. Yet they inspired Chateaubriand in his Mémoires d'Outre-tombe to write pages of an infinitely greater value.'
Marcel Proust
Monday, April 07, 2008
Energies And Enigmas Of The Visible
Francis Bacon (1909-1992) - Figure in Frame, 1950
'FRANCIS BACON: I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as medium for accident and chance.
DAVID SYLVESTER: Why do you say that?
FB: Because...I don't think I'm gifted. I think I'm just receptive.
DS: To some energy in the ether, so to speak?
FB: I think I'm energetic in myself and I think I'm very receptive to energy. By all this I hope you won't get the idea that I think I'm inspired. I just think I receive.'
From The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
'In short, it is not movement that explains the levels of sensation, it is the levels of sensation that explain what remains of movement. And in fact, what interests Bacon is not exactly movement, although his painting makes movement very intense and violent. But in the end, it is a movement "in-place", a spasm, which reveals a completely different problem characteristic of Bacon: the action of invisible forces in the body (hence the bodily deformations, which are due to this more profound cause).'
From Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation by Gilles Deleuze
'FRANCIS BACON: I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as medium for accident and chance.
DAVID SYLVESTER: Why do you say that?
FB: Because...I don't think I'm gifted. I think I'm just receptive.
DS: To some energy in the ether, so to speak?
FB: I think I'm energetic in myself and I think I'm very receptive to energy. By all this I hope you won't get the idea that I think I'm inspired. I just think I receive.'
From The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
'In short, it is not movement that explains the levels of sensation, it is the levels of sensation that explain what remains of movement. And in fact, what interests Bacon is not exactly movement, although his painting makes movement very intense and violent. But in the end, it is a movement "in-place", a spasm, which reveals a completely different problem characteristic of Bacon: the action of invisible forces in the body (hence the bodily deformations, which are due to this more profound cause).'
From Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation by Gilles Deleuze
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition VIII
Titian (1485-1576) - Venus of Urbino, 1538
Rembrandt (1606-1669) - Jupiter and Antiope, 1659
Rembrandt (1606-1669) - Jupiter and Antiope, 1659
François Boucher (1703 – 1770) - Leda and the Swan, c. 1740
Edouard Manet (1832-1883) - Olympia, 1863
Pierre et Gilles (b. 1949 & 1953) - Nina Hagen, 1983
Vanessa Beecroft (b. 1969) - VB45, 2001
'Reciprocity of sensation is not possible because to share is to be robbed.'
Angela Carter
The Week In Review
Films:
Fanny and Alexander, 1982 - d. Ingmar Bergman
1900, 1976 - d. Bernardo Bertolucci
The Leopard, 1963 - d. Luchino Visconti
Television:
Six Feet Under: Season 4
Books:
The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon - David Sylvester
Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation - Gilles Deleuze
The Colour of Time: Claude Monet - Virginia Spate
Constable: The Great Landscapes - ed. Anne Lyles
Monet and Japan - David Broomfield, Gary Hickey, Shigemi Inaga Akiko Mabushi and Virginia Spate
Monet by Himself - Richard Kendall
The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings - James D. Ganz and Richard Kendall
Articles:
Birth of the Seaside - Andrew Lambirth
Impressions of Normandy - Susannah Woolmer
Nature Transforming Itself - Jeffrey Myers
The Sea, The Sea - Laura Gascoigne
The Unknown Monet - Lindsay Rothwell
Music:
Sonic Investigations Into The Trivial - Essendon Airport
Music To See Through - David Chesworth
OHM+: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music - Various
Possible Musics and Music For Airports - Brian Eno
Films:
Fanny and Alexander, 1982 - d. Ingmar Bergman
1900, 1976 - d. Bernardo Bertolucci
The Leopard, 1963 - d. Luchino Visconti
Television:
Six Feet Under: Season 4
Books:
The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon - David Sylvester
Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation - Gilles Deleuze
The Colour of Time: Claude Monet - Virginia Spate
Constable: The Great Landscapes - ed. Anne Lyles
Monet and Japan - David Broomfield, Gary Hickey, Shigemi Inaga Akiko Mabushi and Virginia Spate
Monet by Himself - Richard Kendall
The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings - James D. Ganz and Richard Kendall
Articles:
Birth of the Seaside - Andrew Lambirth
Impressions of Normandy - Susannah Woolmer
Nature Transforming Itself - Jeffrey Myers
The Sea, The Sea - Laura Gascoigne
The Unknown Monet - Lindsay Rothwell
Music:
Sonic Investigations Into The Trivial - Essendon Airport
Music To See Through - David Chesworth
OHM+: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music - Various
Possible Musics and Music For Airports - Brian Eno
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