the modern century (art* & plant)

vlaminck, dufy, derain, braque, van gogh, cezanne, lautrec, gauguin, caillebotte, matisse, picasso, leger,

greizes, duchamp, gris, lohse (manet, courbet, david, ingres), turner, delacroix, millet, chirico, savinio (apollinaire, breton and romantics, fauves, post-impressionists, cubism, dada, surrealism, expressionism, futurism, abstract-expressionism, pattern & decoration, conceptual, realists, symbolism, revolution, salon des refusés, african tribal masks, and ukiyo-e)

de stijl, bauhaus, the armory show, moreau, redon, ensor, seurat, rousseau, goya, degas, pissarro, sisley, bonnard, vuillard, vallotton, maillol, rodin, mucha, klimt, beardsley, schiele, kokoschka, munch, nolde, kandinsky, marc, delaunay (robert & sonia), chagall, malevich, goncharova, brancusi, arp, picabia, ernst, schwitters, modigiliani, soutine, beckman, dix, grosz, davis, dove, hartley, o’keefe, moholy-nagy, rodchenko, masson, miro, klee, albers, calder, giacometti, lachaise, moore, and gonzalez.

and on and on and on, etc. and so forth; you get the idea. in the meantime, the century plant marks time one leaf at a time.

*western, caucasian, male (for the most part), and dead.

iris, photo-realism, and lowell nesbitt

lowell nesbitt for your edification.

a man who put his money where his mouth was. we could use more like him.

these recent photo studies of a bearded iris blooming in our garden reminded me, as i was manipulating their outcome, how much i admire the work of lowell nesbitt (not that i’m comparing myself to him, but that these photographs were evocative of his work, triggering memories i have of selling his editions in the ’80s and knowing when to share the sexuality of them with a client and when to concur with the client that they were just pretty pictures of flowers. sometimes i was more successful than others when it came to sharing his rapturous abandonment to nature and form and i could always tell when i’d stepped outside the comfort zone of the collector by the look of disbelief that clouded their brow or the uneasy shuffling of feet and the rise of color in their cheek. perhaps the provocation was worth it to me, that uncomfortable moment when “sex” reared its beautiful head in conversation between strangers, some more ready than others to free fall into its embrace. okay, i may have pushed it, a bit, for the thrill, but what is the point of art if not to disturb?)

untitled (red dot auction, may 11th in costa mesa)

i’m busy,

really busy. much of my attention is focused on the 2nd annual red dot auction, the spring fundraiser for the chuck jones center for creativity.

what’s that you say? oh yes, you’d like to attend? click on ‘red dot‘ for information about the event and to rsvp. it’d be great to see you there.

more later as time allows.

post script

p.p.s. for those of you who may find it difficult to read this, it may be easier if you click on it for its full size.

a-a-a-azalea

someone asked me, “where do you see art?”

which i thought was an interesting, but easily answered question.

“i see art everywhere,” i replied.

“don’t you?”

flesh (lucian freud)

michael kimmelman’s remembrance of his time with the artist is here and is well-worth the read.

lucian freud, naked man with rat, 1977/78, oil on canvas, 91.5 cm x 91.5 cm, collection: art gallery of western australia

our relationship is fairly young when compared to other artists whose work has influenced my emotional, visual, and intellectual acuity, but what it lacks in maturity with those other artists (here and here)  has more than been made up by my deep visceral response to his work and i might add, my utter devotion.

he had floated around the periphery of my contemporary and modern art knowledge for a few years, but when the museum of contemporary art in los angeles hosted a one-man retrospective in 2003, my infatuation quickly turned into a case of full-blown art lust.

before you say, “well, the majority of his work is nudes, that must be what robert’s nattering on about,” i will disabuse you of that notion right now.   to be in a roomful of lucian freud’s paintings is to be psycho-analyzed by them.  he takes you down the dark forest paths of your emotional core, and at times skipping ahead as you stop to make sure you know where you are, even to catch your breath; when you suddenly realize he’s left you to your own devices (a breadcrumb trail behind you notwithstanding).   somehow you manage to go on; to go back would be a far worse thing to do, leaving you emotionally vulnerable when the end, you believe (because he seems to hold out some hope), will allow you some insight, some enlightenment, some knowledge of yourself and your place in the world (as he sees it.)  it’s not all bad.

oftentimes, his view of his subject is omniscient, standing above and looking down on, and not in a condescending manner, but, in a concerned way, he’s showing you (the subject and the viewer) his compassion through this thorough exploration of your body, your skin, your hair.  all that paint!  my god, he slathers it on in deep rushes of impasto, layer upon layer, looking at you (the subject and the viewer) as if you were under a microscope and i think, perhaps, even stripping away your facade to reveal the real you underneath all the artifice of your daily life.

and, and, you’ll see a look of what appears to be utter despair on the subject’s (and on the viewer’s) face, poleaxed with posing, holding onto that last shred of dignity that being naked/nude leaves you with after hours and hours and hours and perhaps days of his god-like examination (it is a bit of being pinned like a butterfly to a board–see nabokov for a companion in literature).  except for many of his portraits of the performance artist, the gargantuan leigh bowery and these portraits are more straight forward, your view of bowery is less compromised and in a way, even more respectful, not to say that freud is disrespectful of his other subjects, but all that looking down and then suddenly your face to face with bowery in all of his obese glory–it’s a shocking shift in tone and intent (to my eyes and spirit).

then, in early 2008 i was fortunate enough to see an exhibition of his etchings, accompanied by related drawings and paintings at MoMA and once again i was stunned by his ability to strip away, isolate and present the essence of his subjects and by that very act of exposing them, the viewer too is revealed.  this emotional use of line seemed to me to be without peer and it may be that his abstract way of looking at a subject reminds me of my love for clyfford still or it may be that his tender portraits of his dogs reminds me of my fondness for the delightfully insouciant work of marcel duchamp–it is that emotional tweaking that sparks a fire in me unlike any other representational artist i know.

i was surprised at how saddened i was to hear of his death this past week.  it was like losing someone close to you that you don’t see very often, rarely talk to on the phone, but somehow always pick up where you left off the last time you shared a time and a place together.

art (and other lovers)

untitled nude, marker pen on paper, 11" x 14", robert gentry (1928-2009)

i am not that kind of person.  you know, one of those “kiss & tell” types that get all worked up over this love affair or that one and have no compunction (no brakes on this runaway car), in fact they have not a care in the world; the only thing they can talk about is how ______ treated them or what ______ did a half hour after they made love (went out for pizza, no less.) you know exactly who i am talking about, now don’t you?  they’re always slightly disheveled, with their mismatched socks, (i’d say unshaven, but since that’s a ‘look’ anymore, it’s hard to tell who’s on the rebound and who is not) or their lipstick slightly askew (done while driving in the early morning hours after you discover that he’s left your bed and slipped out the door), but you usually forgive such behaviors because, well, you know, you’re a bit of chatterbox about your love affairs yourself.  you like to share, maybe even over share and as mother always said, “what’s good for the goose is good for the goose, darling”, followed by that cackle that always reminds you of the pop pop pop of a .22 when you’re standing out in the cold dawn of a plains state november morning calling out, “pull!” and that fucking clay pigeon shoots up out of the blind and you aim and squeeze that freezing cold trigger and POP! it shatters into a thousand shards and, “pull!” you do it all over again.  that laugh.  that’s the one.

do you ever weary, though, of their incessant listing of the traits that make this lover so different from all the others that have come before and those that will come in the future?  “oh, ____ is such a sweetheart.  do you know what he did for me the other day?  why, he came home early and made dinner, poured me a glass of wine, drew a bath (on that fine paper you bought him, wink wink) and slowly undressed me and as he took off that piece of clothing that had me all uptight all day long, he laid a little line of kisses down my _____,”   of course you don’t.

that is how i am about art.  i just can’t keep my mouth shut about it.  how it makes me feel, how i love looking at it when it has its head in a book or when it’s standing there at the kitchen sink, that gawd awful electric yellow “eat my grits” apron that you got as a souvenir on a business trip to atlanta tied around its neck while it does the dishes and you look at the curve of its back and how its legs stretch all the way down to the floor and you think (quietly to yourself for once) that you’ve never felt this way before or if you have this time its different, more real somehow, but then just when you think you’ve gotten so settled, it leaves you (as if you had turned your head for just a second because someone had called your name and like that–the snap of your fingers is the sound that you hear), that one lover is gone and the next one is ready to take its place.

you’d be inconsolable if it weren’t for the fact that you’re just walking through your house and stopping if front of this painting or that etching, quietly taking a visual inventory of the art that makes you wilt with amour fou.  while you’re struck dumb by the subtleties of _______ by _______, you may close your eyes in reverie for a moment and be transported to that one time at the art institute when you first saw ____________by caillebotte/still/van gogh/botticelli/rembrandt/seurat and had to immediately find a seat for fear of fainting, and then you say to yourself, “no, no, that was at MoMA/SFMoMA/Louvre/d’Orsay/ or that fab museum in M__________ that no one ever went to until calatrava had his way with it (such wanton nip/tuck) and now its a goddam destination, it was that one.”

it’s that kind of love affair that i can’t stop talking about.  could you?

giotto’s circle (roseroserose)

there was the circle.  actually it was the perfect red circle painted by giotto in response to a request by the pope to see giotto’s work before hiring him that i read about in david markson’s brilliant “wittgenstein’s mistress” although the story of giotto and the perfect red circle (hand-painted without a compass or other assistance–just his hand, the brush, the paint and a surface; think about it,) may have been a part of my art history library (the one you keep in your mind, the one you draw on unexpectedly–that grain silo on a country highway at the edge of a town that hardly anyone, even you, visits.)

there was the circle.  i knew it would be the beginning.  i knew that the message would start to reveal itself once the circle was down.

there were vague notions of ideas, but none of them fully formed, just an avid interest in the perfect red circle.  my fingertips turned red from the craypas as i rubbed its redness into the canvas (a cherry kool-aid red, a candy-colored & -coated red from over-indulging; the red of lips freshly kissed, slightly bruised — a hush of violet.)

giotto is not a favorite artist of mine.  i am not disposed to the early italian renaissance, i mean i get it, but that doesn’t mean i have to like it.  i could care that the contrapuntal stance suddenly ‘enlivened’ painting toward a more natural representation.  but giotto started this [project.]  there was the circle.  and there were roses.  and there is always marcel duchamp.  i cannot go further than the front door without packing up my rrose selavy & quietly tucking her into my _______ (an yet as unnamed carry-all [port-manteau, peut-être] for ideas & my past.)  please see this blog post, my heart belongs to dada for further proof. )

i am not a painter.  my visual expression is usually relegated to what i can make a digital camera & my computer do.  i attempt to compose photographs (you may have figured that out on your own, should you be any little bit familiar with this blog) that have some beauty or some symmetry or for that matter, asymmetry or that they somehow tell a story (sometimes about me, other times about greater & smaller things, at times they say nothing at all.)

some ideas start out strong (“this is not a …”, above,) but quickly are covered over when a better idea came along (you’ve been to that bar, haven’t you?  the one where you’re just getting into someone — & they you — & suddenly something better comes along — for either one of you & whatever it was that was working for you, isn’t any longer.  i know you know what i mean.)  ideas are like that, aren’t they?  creativity is like that bar–it’s a fairly busy bar–most times anyway, but there are down times too, when your life might get in the way or there’s some other thing that needs YOUR ATTENTION NOW.

there was the circle.  it needed paint.  i know that acrylic paint makes a great adhesive, so i was already contemplating mixing up the media by the time i dipped my first brush into the burnt sienna (the undercoat) & then i needed to spend about a half hour (with assistance, no less) looking for a palette knife or putty knife or something to make a little impasto (or a lot) & finally ended up with a cake spatula (see above, left) which worked on this small surface perfectly (at least for me, the inexperienced painter.)

which.  there was the problem of not being a painter, truly.  i suffered some regret as paint went down, sometimes on its own, other times under my not-quite-as-confident-as-i-thought hand.  i told myself, ‘no matter’, work with what you have, follow your instincts, for god’s sake “use some brighter colors!”  think about the color, the composition, the forms; it’s not like i don’t write about it often enough & here i am struggling with concepts that i know.  because, did i say this before?  i am not a painter.

before i got too carried away by the surface texture of the paint, i sidled over to the computer & started selecting different roses from my ‘botanicals’ file (thinking, as i was, that only one [1] rose would anchor the painting, center, front–giotto’s angel’s wings, his perfect circle its halo); i chose several different favorites, printed them & cut them out in a close approximation of their actual shape, but leaving some ‘edge’ (an angle, a scissor cut) to them, but only because the tiny, tiny, tiny details are best left to someone with more patience than i–of course, that is only partially true, i can maneuver among the shoals of tiny details without incident, but like most people or at least most people like me (which narrows it down quite severely, doesn’t it?) i prefer the grand gesture, the details to follow as best they can, scrambling behind to keep up with the sweeping grandeur that is ‘high concept.’

as sure as i could be, i placed the yellow rose in the center of the circle (poor giotto, clumsily painted over as he is) & pushed it into the wet paint.  in true amateur painter manner, i stepped back, with brush in paint-splattered hand (i may have stuck the tip end of the brush between my lips, a cigarette to think more clearly) & contemplated my work: the balance, the subject (was the visual result now before me an expression of what i felt?), & realized, with all of those other roses laying to the side of the canvas that i was not done with them, yet.

& they all found a home, although there may have been one or two that were rejected (their sad little faces, “why not me?”) & so i set those aside with another use in mind (they ended up on the reverse with my signature.)  but suddenly i now found a triangle (a golden rose triangle) thrusting up into the center of the picture plane (a rose bowl float sliding into the your peripheral vision, just like on new year’s morning as the floats make their away around the corner from orangethorpe onto colorado blvd. in pasadena–an “ooh, look at that one!” escaping your lips.)

& i thought of the flutter of angel’s wings (a scene from kushner’s “angels in america”, maybe not as angry, but still, retributive.)  so.  & i thought that there might be just the faintest whiff, the odor, the scent, the suggestion of an erotic moment (do i need to spell it out for you?  no?  i thought as much.)

those unfurling petals that push the center of the rose up toward your ______, an invitation to smell, taste, indulge, relent, submit, a slave to their power.    do you lose yourself in their beauty?  it is their strength, that beauty, that scent, that sex.   & don’t they make it difficult to love them–the thorns, pin-pricks of anguish, scratches of anticipation; all there to make you want them more, because it is the pain of handling them that makes them that much more desirable.  even after you’ve been hurt by reaching out to their beauty, you are incapable of resisting going back in for another opportunity to bring it close to your ______.

you know the probability of hurt is great, but their beauty completely blinds you to that danger as the reward (their domination of your soul) is so utterly irresistible.   what could feel better than love & yet could cause such despair?

it kidnaps you, love, that is.  you may receive a ransom note, all cut out newspaper letters jumbled together, demanding X for the release of Y (the union that produces zygotes.)  & i know that some of you will debate the relative value of one over the other; others may rush in (otherwise known in romantic literature as ‘fools for love’–a description that, unfortunately, applies to the majority — even the most calculating among us.)  you may prevaricate, waste time, dither, sweat, say yes! then as quickly say no!  all of which are the symptoms of love’s relentless hold on our lives, its foreplay were we in the mood (or in a clearer state of mind) to admit.

(did i know this is where i would end up when i started this project?  & please, consider the parenthetical thoughts, phrases & digressions as asides delivered directly to the audience in a knowing & conspiratorial tone of voice–perhaps accompanied by a wink of complicity, we are, after all, actors upon a stage, blah, blah, blah… [what to do about the poor ellipsis, so overused & under-appreciated, but so perspicacious an ending to our blathering.] )

…

a sunday morning w/saturday photographs (foreword)

if you’re not careful, one day can run into the other quite easily out here.  the weather, on saturday for instance, was not that different from the weather on sunday, he said saturday night at around 9:50 p.m.  he’s even said that there are subtle differences between one sunrise from the  next, & we all know that that is not really true.  for evidence, please note photo above.  that is the sun rising on the right.  need there be more explanation?

but if you are paying attention, there are details that change everything one day to the next.  that statement is not true.  please direct your eye (& what else would you direct?) to the seascape in the photograph directly above this paragraph (a paragraph you’ll note that has no indentation, it’s only considered a paragraph because he has said it is, but that does not make it so, the reader is advised to maintain their distance & to not impose their own righteousness upon the text,) but back to the photograph, what was to be said?  the sea, the sky, some vegetation framing it.  a political act?

you would think not, but you would be wrong.  the very existence of the image is a revolution, a fight for freedom, & even this trite saccharine scene (a tree fern frond unfurls its edwardian moustaches) embodies the power to upend the status quo.

this then is the message that you will find throughout this forthcoming group of posts, a book, serialized if you will, that begins today & ends this coming friday.

what i don’t know about creativity

i know that it is always just below the surface of your skin (dare i say bubbling?) that skein of milk as it warms in a pan on the stove for hot chocolate, the pot set askew on the flame so that one side boils faster than the other.  it’s a balloon on the surface, & with its little ‘plomp’ it bursts & divides & spreads across the surface, multiple events, all of which are difficult to track, one by one, but relative to the objective, combine to create the smell of warm milk, comfort anticipated, frost on the kitchen window as the steam adds a layer of mica to the glass & distorts the outside world (pleasantly so.)

it’s there in the darkness.   you climb the mountain to the ascetic waiting patiently to distill the essence of being, but he tells you that it was within you all the time, dormant, unbidden, unloved (the repression of adults, who in a fit of pique deny your creativity with abject praise or complete indifference.)  the darkness of the cave is a refuge of what you do not know, repression like hibernation.   the sunlight of creating warms the front of your cave, you start to feel it on the bristles of your beard & it leaks under the lashes & lids of your eyes shut tight against the waking.

it struts & preens like a cock before a hen, “choose me, choose me,” it crows but you turn your back to it, its promise of blooming fields of flowers displayed in the fan of its tail, the orgasm of mating, that quick mount & sudden shock of release pushed back, sublimated after years of no, that won’t do, that’s not very good, that won’t make you a living, don’t waste your time, don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t, the rhythm of the blood in your temples (is it any wonder they call that spot on either side of your head ‘the temple’, its where a crown would rest, your god-head.)

but it is still there after all.  it bleeds into what you do everyday, little leaks, a tear drop, a runny nose, just as a reminder that it exists, perhaps it is even an irritant, a pebble under the 3rd toe of your left foot in a shoe that pinches at the arch, a splinter of wood that evades extraction, floating just under the skin “i can see it!” so that you have to tear away a layer of resistance to ease the suffering it causes you (too small to cause real pain, too big to be ignored, after all, a finger is forgotten until its easy use is denied you.)

this blog represents the longest, most consistent spurt of creativity i have had since adulthood.   of course, i have not spent my life denying my creative nature, but i have put it on hold here & there, letting it pop out (as it did in 1980 when i created the works that accompany this post.)  it’s not that i am not creative in my day-to-day existence, i am (at least i like to believe that,) but what i want to say is that this time, here, at the keyboard, has been a boon to me, i like to think of it as a place where ideas get worked out, thought out, said out loud (even if i’m the only one reading them,) a place where my creativity gets to go for a walk in the sunshine (& sometimes in the rain.)

you should try it, even if you think you might get wet (or cry, or laugh, or tire from the climb, or suffer the indignities of day-to-day existence, a pebble here, a splinter there.)