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Posted on 4/30/2014
By Donald Fox
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It is not unusual for any of us to constantly juggle a variety of activities. We have obligations at home, with family, with friends, with work, and if we happen to be an artist that also works a regular job, well, that speaks for itself. A lot is said about women having done it all for generations without receiving their due and often with little thanks. This is not about sexism, but it’s easy to recognize, unless one is a staunch chauvinist, that women continuously make stellar contributions to families, to communities, and to the world. To their credit women have kept their achievements in the spotlight as well they should. I’m mostly concerned here with the idea of making priorities in order to best address whatever needs to be done.
As a longtime educator I have heard just about every possible excuse from students for why a particular assignment didn’t get done on time. It doesn’t take long, though, for one to get pretty good at telling who has sincerely faced a challenge and who is simply in the habit of making excuses. Teachers attempt to teach responsibility, which may be one of those traits that can’t really be taught, but it can be modeled. Hopefully, that will get the lesson across.
Professional educators typically participate in periodic seminars that focus on classroom and learning issues. Generally these are called in-service trainings. Much emphasis is placed on cooperative learning, organization, and preparedness, and also on generational learning issues. Since I work with adults, there is the difference between young adult learners just out of high school (currently called millennials) and older adults who may be seeking re-training as a result of job market challenges (typically the boomers or gen-Xers). Maturity and life experience certainly make a difference in most cases, the older and more experienced having learned the importance of responsibility, organization, and being true to one’s word.
The pressures of life, at home or at work, can best be addressed by organizing tasks and scheduling time to complete them. How one organizes may vary from person to person as each ideally is aware of personal strengths that will suggest where to best put one’s energy and focus. A general guideline, however, that will apply to most everyone is to prioritize tasks and then do the most important first. As one task is accomplished, all others ascend upward one position in importance and are handled in turn. Unless there is an unexpected emergency, anything other than top priority is a distraction and ultimate time stealer.
This simple idea, however, eludes many students who tend to perpetuate long-standing habits of procrastination. The big task, be it presentation or research project, is put off to the last, and then there is not sufficient time to do it well nor to reap the benefits the task would normally provide, learning being the principle benefit.
Posted on 4/29/2014
By Donald Fox
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“Old friends sat on their park bench like bookends.” – Paul Simon, Bookends
Art is an interpretation of experience crystallized into particular form: painting, sculpture, poetry, music, or dance. The initial experience is that of the artist based on feeling, thought, and imaginative insight. One or more of these may dominate and certainly will vary from work to work. It is the artist’s interpretation and feeling that directs the creative process. Once the work is completed, however, the artist’s input is like a ghostly imprint that may have significance for the audience, but the most important experience now becomes that of the audience as the work comes to life in another’s eye and mind. Many will say that the artist no longer has any influence at this stage. Whatever he or she has given to the work is all that will remain in evidence. If this is noteworthy, then hopefully the audience will decipher it; if not, the audience’s experience will dominate.
Those who are particularly interested in the arts and spend significant amounts of time appreciating them will likely also have developed very personal relationships with a number of works and artists. It won’t matter if the work was created a thousand years ago or just last week. The connection, once made, will likely last the viewer’s lifetime. Some of these relationships can become quite intimate given time, and the viewer will feel as if the artist and the work are old friends. Like old friends – the really best ones – they rarely change but reveal secrets and insights over that lifetime.
We may feel like we want to have the most positive relationship with work and artist, but part of the value of art is that it is made by individuals, and talented though they may be, artists are as human as anyone. They make mistakes, succumb to human foibles, have personal blind spots, and sometimes are outright ornery. These shortcomings can sometimes manifest in the work, which may make it more endearing or possibly make it off-putting. In some cases we may find that we like the work but dislike the artist – or, vice-versa. This may suggest more about our own foibles, for art (and friends) often can be a mirror as well as a window.
Posted on 4/28/2014
By Donald Fox
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The first of the seven types of ambiguity that William Empson discussed in his now classic text The Seven Types of Ambiguity is metaphor. Most students have learned about metaphor in their high school English classes if not before in junior high or middle school. Romeo’s famous line from Romeo and Juliet, “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun,” is a classic metaphor as it compares Juliet’s radiance (as seen by Romeo) to that of the sun. In language, a metaphor is an imaginative comparison. Something is seen as something else, usually two things that would not normally be thought of as similar. This kind of figurative language is most associated with poetry, and Empson’s book was about the use of ambiguity in poetry.
I would argue that painting is metaphor, and it makes no difference really if the painting is representational (realistic) or abstract. A comparison is made by the artist between the painting of a scene or an idea and the scene or idea itself. The painting may represent a landscape, but it is not a landscape. It is a painting. It has certain qualities in common with the landscape by picturing its elements, but it also has characteristics that are decidedly non-landscape: pigment, ground, canvas, and frame. None of these materials are found in the actual landscape. The painting also utilizes basic elements of design in its realization of the painted image, and these elements are held in place within the painting by their specific relationship to each other. The combination of elements gives a visual approximation within a specific scale of the observed subject. They are, in effect, abstractions derived from observation, but the materials are so cleverly and skillfully manipulated by the painter that the image is what is seen by the viewer (at least initially) rather that the materials.
With metaphor, both parts of the comparison can be seen wholly as themselves – Juliet or the sun – in order to understand the meaning of the metaphor. When paired together as metaphor, each is seen in a new light, so to speak. The qualities that Juliet might share with the sun or the sun with Juliet connect to create a third entity, the Juliet-sun, which we understand metaphorically rather than literally. Similarly, the painted space of the landscape we intuitively understand as not being real space even though we give in to the illusion. We generally compare our experience of landscape with the painted image before us and marvel at how similar the artist has made it to the memory we have. We also at some point become conscious of the artist’s style and how the artist has utilized that to give us an impression or illusion of reality.
A painting that is not representational, often called abstract, is not intentionally representing something observed though it may be representing some idea or experience conceived by the artist. This meaning or content or whatever we choose to call it is also a metaphor for that experience or meaning. The art is the metaphor just as in the landscape painting. If the painting is said to have energy from its color, its composition, its expressive power in brushstroke or whatever evidence is provided by the artist, the viewer sees the result of that and not the action that created it. Thus, the painting represents the emotion, feeling, action, energy – it is creating a comparison to those things in the mind of the viewer.
Metaphor is a powerful communication tool, and it is fundamental to artistic expression. Ambiguity comes into play because the art may have multiple meanings. Metaphor allows us to make associations. Some associations may even be contradictory, but these can co-exist within the space of the art. Through associations different viewers may also derive different meanings from their artistic experience. Metaphor and ambiguity enable us to find new meanings each time we revisit a work especially ones where the artist also is open to alternatives.
Posted on 4/27/2014 5:39:17 PM
By Donald Fox
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Braque - Lasrge Interior with Palette
A classical cubist painting like those done by Picasso and Braque around 1905-06 may appear rather dull and somewhat agitated to modern eyes. The colors are deliberately muted grays, browns, and ochers. The shapes typically are angular and may even seem tilted or askew. Emphasis is on planes and linear elements. If any recognizable subject can be discerned, which in many paintings can, these are partially represented by outline or basic shape, and that shape may be broken into several overlapping planes. This is often explained by the painter’s interest being to show objects from several viewpoints all at once rather than a single point of view in the traditional manner of representation. No attempt is made at perspective in depth; rather flat surfaces that would normally recede into depth are tilted up: table tops, floor, walls, and objects are all shown as if part of a singular plane or multiple planes that are parallel.
These notes were made in the current Braque retrospective at MFAH: spatial planes in shallow space, cast shadows of one plane on another, overlapping, abutment, transparency and semi-transparency. Muted colors to keep focus on shapes. Object presented in silhouette and outline rather than in volumetric depth. Patterns like that of wallpaper or floor designs also emphasize flatness. Linear elements echo or accent shapes and planes. Short parallel brushstrokes related to kinds of strokes used by Cezanne in both still life and landscapes. His increasing interest in and emphasis on planes in space – would he have arrived at cubism had he lived and worked beyond 1906?
A major retrospective of Cezanne’s work was held shortly after he died, and this exhibit made him even more well known to painters that already knew something of what he had been doing. Braque was coming out of his Fauve period and had met Picasso. Braque also returned to L’Estaque where he had done several Fauve style landscapes and shifted to a style that emphasized frontality and overlapping planes. He also abandoned the bright Fauve palette for a more subdued palette similar to Cezanne’s of greens, ochers, and blues. Back in Paris, the collaboration between Braque and Picasso ensued and is well known for its culmination in both analytic and synthetic cubism. Picasso moved on to many stylistic explorations, but Braque refined his cubist style over decades ultimately producing a wide range of colorful works that always used observation of surrounding space as the origin of his compositions. He painted the familiar and we see into his own surroundings as filtered through his artistic temperament. The fracturing of images seen in early cubism gave way to a very personal rearrangement of observed space into designs that are intricate, complex, and integrate shapes and space as palpable substance on the surface of the canvas.
Posted on 4/26/2014 6:08:39 PM
By Donald Fox
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Diversity is the way of nature. Living systems depend upon variety to maintain health and sustain the parts and the whole. In the early days of the environmental movement back in the sixties, biologists and other earth scientists began speaking publicly about what they had known in their respective disciplines for some time. They used terms like ecosystems, recycling, and regeneration. They pointed to negative effects from disruption of the natural order whether from cataclysmic events like the massive meteor that took out the dinosaurs or from unnatural introduction of chemicals, pesticides, and toxic wastes into natural ecosystems, especially wetlands and watersheds. All the while, of course, other scientists were discovering better living through chemistry, new ways to utilize fossil fuels, and more opportunities for necessary fuel consumption.
No, this is not a liberal political rant. This is intended as musing on the concept of diversity, a term that has come to mean anything from opening to possibility to denial of that possibility to certain groups. All of that has taken place in the social, political, and economic arenas of human affairs. These days it seems impossible not to politicize a conversation for someone readily takes offense and then becomes either obnoxiously defensive or radically offensive, both often creating nearly the same result: bad feeling and stymied positive action.
Nature, however, does its work without judgment, rancor, or regret. Life sustains life in a great series of links we call the food chain. Out of death and decay come life, but this is not sacrifice for the greater good. That is a human concept based on value judgment. Considering ourselves at the top of the food chain is also a value judgment that despite some religious interpretations is a misconstrued reality. There are many predators that could easily take any of us humans out given the opportunity. However, all creatures are at risk when faced with the devastating power of natural cycles that can include extremes of temperature or mega-expressions like tornados, cyclones, or global warming.
Sometimes in the arts we find expression that engages an audience from a universal perspective. The singular life is given as representative of the whole. We can read about the life of someone in a remote place from an alien culture who nevertheless is faced with the same challenges as the rest of us: survival first followed by development of potential. We all share those human conditions. We seek understanding and fulfillment. We make choices based on circumstance, experience, knowledge, and skill. Variables of location, race, culture, and opportunity are part of the diversity equation for humans. We also have complex brains that enable us to address challenges with creativity and flexibility not available to other sentient creatures. We have the capacity for self-awareness, accessibility to language, and the opportunity to communicate with each other in multi-layered forms. We also have imagination, the ability to create and understand symbols, as well as the ability to ignore our potential and to self-destruct. In short, we can annihilate as easily as we can create. Irony seems unique to the human species.
Posted on 4/25/2014 7:19:17 PM
By Donald Fox
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The cream-colored painted brick wall of the auto shop behind my house glows orange in late afternoon light. Twisted fence pickets alternate erratically between shadowed gray and yellow grazed wood grain, a few protruding nail heads bright in the light with straight angled shadows about twenty degrees slanted down to the left. Pale blue sky softened by brownish-gray clouds crisscrossed by black and yellow wires that power the neighborhood. Cool blue-white window sill disappears behind tinted gauze curtains left and right. A note pad, a camera lens protected, its strap serpentine like a textured ribbon, two pens, a stack of papers and books, a note with two passwords upside down and other coded words, symbols that make no matter beside a gray knobby-fabricked office chair, a tie-dyed pillow upright on its seat. Files opening back to front like an accordion fan blocked by a brown Kleenex box printed with stylized flowers, the clear Russian teacup contains one last sip of tea.
The eye moves restlessly as it takes in color, shape, texture, light, form – rods and cones vibrating, neurons firing. The brain seeks understanding from constant saccadic motion. Within the city the hum of traffic is a distant white noise at once obliterated as the AC condenser kicks into life sending cool air throughout the building. It’s not even summer yet and already it approaches ninety degrees outside. This is the reality of a temperate climate in lower latitudes. The eye seeks and the brain continues its running commentary.
A bit of blue added into white buffered by a tinge of yellow or brown, just enough to lower intensity. More blue and a bit of purple for shadows, but try as we might, we cannot paint the sound. Only the light matters. That light can show the heat or the cool by the proper color choice. Contrast creates texture, form, or weight, but always there is silence. The most magnificently detailed environment of tempest, storm-tossed seas, autumn breeze, or searing desert, all equally silent. The clash of swords and contortions of battle equate to silence. David Siqueiros’ Echo of a Scream reverberates in silence. The rhythm of Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-woogie vibrates in silence. There is no music from Pan’s pipes for dancing satyrs or writhing nyads. Rather, it is for the viewer to provide the soundscape as he or she contemplates silently the painted silence before the eyes.
Posted on 4/24/2014
By Donald Fox
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Life in a large city is filled with possibility especially within the arts and cultural activities. The concentration of people, wealth, and variety of interest generally makes for cross-cultural fertilization in food, music, and the performing and the visual arts. In Houston we also have one of the top museums in the country, and despite what some critics may say about art museums serving their own interests, I’d question what museums they are talking about. Certainly the one here serves its community with one stunning exhibition after another, from classicists to Impressionists to modernists, including spotlighting the work of some of Houston’s longtime artists such as John Alexander, Dick Wray, and James Surls. We are also home to superior colleges and universities that contribute their share to artistic education. There are outstanding galleries and private institutions like the Menil Collection that has a remarkable private collection of art that includes the world famous Rothko Chapel on the campus of the University of St. Thomas. Both the chapel and the university are funded by the Menil family.
The only downside to life in the big city is the traffic. This I navigate often as I have to drive across town several days each week to my place of employment. When freeways are clear, traffic can flow at a reasonable rate even during morning or evening rush hour. One minor slip-up, however, can almost instantly create horrendous congestion. As a result, stress levels go up as patience goes down. It is at times like these that knowledge of art history comes in handy, for it can be a great distraction from the lack of physical progress to reflect on the amazing array of art objects that have come down to us through the passage of time. The slow arc of history is an interesting reminder of the flow of life’s river and how many streams and tributaries contribute to its continuous if somewhat meandering path throughout the planet. Many of the designs that we take for granted can be traced backwards in time to previous ideas and images of artists and cultures long predating our own.
The Renaissance, for example, that gave us so many insights into perspective, atmosphere, proportion, and light was itself influenced by even more ancient civilizations that carried thought and perception to unparalleled heights of sophistication and understanding. In that long ago time, art and science were not very far apart and frequently influenced each other oftentimes through the common thread of mathematics. This is especially evident during that great burgeoning of creativity and exploration that we call by its name of renewal and awakening. Quite a number of paintings have carefully constructed mathematical designs as the basis of their compositions. We might also think of the many drawings by Leonardo that specifically illustrate proportions and measurements observed in nature. There was, in fact, a concept that underlay much art for several centuries (and mathematical underpinnings of science) that God’s creation being perfect could be expressed through the truth of mathematical calculation.
We may be more enthralled today with the precision of minute machinery, the nanotechnology world, or the high speeds of computing and internet communications, yet sometimes we’re reduced to a crawl and our super machines cannot go as they were designed. We might think then about that flow of history and what direction it may be going.
Posted on 4/23/2014
By Donald Fox
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Today is the four hundred fiftieth anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare, generally considered the greatest writer in the English language. So much has he towered over other authors from his own time, fellow playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe, and pretty much everyone since, that he has been the target of some who would diminish his accomplishments. One such faction includes those who suggest that Shakespeare did not actually write all his work, much of it being written by the 17th Earl of Oxford or Christopher Marlowe or other authors. There is no direct evidence supporting these claims, and scarcity of information regarding Shakespeare’s life seems to keep the authorship question alive for some. What remains for the world, of course, are the works that were published in print after Shakespeare’s death in what is known as the First Folio.
It is quite remarkable that these works are still read, performed, interpreted, and remain required parts of high school curricula across the United States, England, and other countries. The popularity of certain plays like the tragic romance of Romeo and Juliet, the dark tragedy of Hamlet, or the lighthearted comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream is perpetual, and all of these plays have inspired later creations in film, ballet, opera, and the theater with modernized characters or unusual stagings. Franco Zeffirrelli’s film version of Romeo and Juliet was an instant classic in the late sixties. Woody Allen’s spoof A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is one of my favorites.
For many readers, students in particular, Shakespearean language is a challenge, and they find the plays difficult to understand or relate to. These are plays, however, and a good staging can bring characters to life and give the words the true power of their poetic and often very witty dialog. When read with care, the plays reveal a range of characters of varying social level with their particular speech patterns and language that show Shakespeare as an astute psychological and sociological observer. If one considers that public performances in Shakespeare’s day had to appeal to a broad spectrum of audience members, it is clear why certain language, jokes, and comical characters were included. The same can be seen in other Elizabethan dramatists like Marlowe and Jonson.
There are few artist names that will fit into a single sentence with meaning and relevance, but we could easily say Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt in the same breath with no reservation. I am grateful that as an undergraduate English major I had the opportunity to study Shakespeare’s work with recognized scholars. They taught me that there was more than dreamt of in my youthful philosophy.
Posted on 4/22/2014
By Donald Fox
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French poet, writer, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau once said, “An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.” This strikes me as a defensive statement, one that might be said to a journalist or interviewer seeking privileged information about the artist’s creative process. The analogy in the statement is, of course, a false one. A plant is not a sentient being nor capable of communication of thought or even having thoughts. The artist thinks of little else other than art and speaks of it often to whomever will listen. Artists, however, are typically reticent about discussing their own work yet often speak freely about art in general.
There is a popular belief that the visual artist in particular is inept with words since he thinks in images and responds to images. Images are, in fact, the visual artist’s vocabulary. As a manipulator of images, the artist does not use words and may even find them inadequate to express what images can express. There may be some truth here, but artists who think deeply about their work do talk about it and write about it largely as a means for clarifying what they think and feel. Many examples from notebooks, letters, or transcripts show that visual artists can be quite eloquent.
What I think Cocteau really meant is that the artist cannot fully explain (chooses not to explain) his art nor should he need to do so to an inquiring public. Let the art speak for itself unless the work is so dense and obscure (perhaps like Joyce’s Ulysses when first published) that some added context may enable the audience to begin to develop a framework from which to interpret a complex work. Most artists would be fully capable of doing this though they might be reluctant to do so.
One reason that many artists hesitate to talk about their work is that they don’t want to prejudice or limit the viewer. Without explanation, the work is open to whatever interpretation a viewer may suggest. Art, being ambiguous by nature, can easily contain multiple meanings and sustain multiple readings. The best art tends to reveal its secrets over time, and this makes it all the more valuable as experience for the viewer. Once the work is out of the artist’s hands, it essentially no longer belongs to him, and the work takes on a life of its own. By this point the artist is already on to other works that later as a whole may give new meaning to everything that has come before, and this is another reason that the artist may be reluctant to speak too soon as he is not done speaking yet.
Posted on 4/21/2014
By Donald Fox
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“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth,” said Pablo Picasso in 1958. Some might argue that art itself is the truth when it is legitimately felt by the artist and executed with maturity and passion regardless of what may be represented. If we parse Picasso’s statement a bit, we can see that there is veracity there as well. He is suggesting that art is a fabrication. It is made up from experience but is not reality itself although it provides real experience for the audience. The artist manipulates his tools, his thoughts, his feelings to portray something that communicates a carefully planned set of ideas although the planning may not always be on a conscious plane. The artist takes liberties with reality and with truth in order to get at something much deeper than ordinary experience. We might say that art suggests heightened experience, or at least enables the viewer to create that for himself.
I am reminded here of an article I read last year by a writer who was not particularly artistic himself, happened to be in Spain as a young student, and took the opportunity to see for himself Picasso’s Guernica but only as an afterthought (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Day-Picasso-Made-Me-Fall/140915/ ). He describes the process leading up to the room where the painting is exhibited. He sees various preparatory sketches chronicling the development of the painting, but when he finds himself in front of the work, he is unexpectedly knocked to his knees by its power. What is it about this abstract, semi-cubist monochromatic painting that expresses the destructive power of a German bombing raid on an insignificant village in rural Spain in the very early days of the Second World War? There is visual and emotional truth in the distorted and contorted forms in the painting, but no observed reality. Picasso was not present at the event in 1937, but like many artists of the time, he was affected by the Spanish Civil War. He was himself a Spaniard, and that was part of the truth for him. He painted the picture in Paris, and though it traveled around the world for artistic and political purposes, it did not go to Spain until 1981 where it has remained.
Quite a few critics and historians including Simon Schama identify this painting as Picasso’s finest achievement. Everything afterwards according to many was so much repetition of earlier ideas. Perhaps, but I doubt Picasso would have agreed for as an artist he was pursuing his own truth throughout his lifetime and it made little difference what others thought about him or his work. He continued to work consistently into his mid-nineties and that’s a lot more than most people do. Art may be a lie, but it is a most magnificent and engaging one.
Posted on 4/20/2014 7:33:28 PM
By Donald Fox
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I just ran across a note in an old journal from 2003 that was written in the MFAH while viewing an exhibit. Some graphic works by Elsworth Kelly were on view and included a small collage titled Two Blacks and White, 1968. Three simple shapes create the image, two black shapes bookending a white center. The left black shape is convex to the right. The black shape on the right side is rectangular. The white paper is actually part of an art calendar that mentions watercolors by Charles Martin and drawings by Walter Barker. That show was January 7 through February 11, but the year is not visible. The significance for me is that both Martin and Barker were art professors when I was a graduate student at UNC-Greensboro. Both professors served as advisors for my thesis. Wally Barker was there the entire two and a half years I spent in Greensboro. Charles Martin came at the end of my first semester. I did not know at the time when they had previously met but Barker had been a student at Washington University in St. Louis where he studied under the German expressionist Max Beckmann who had been forced to flee Germany in 1937. It was not until after the war that he managed to immigrate to the United States where he held several teaching posts.
There is some irony in this small reference to my former professors and their connection to Beckmann and expressionism ending up in a collage by one of the abstract minimalists in the late sixties. I intend to research this further to pinpoint the exact date and location of their exhibit, whether that was during or after their days at Washington University. It is a matter of curiosity that may or may not have any consequence. It is a footnote in their lives but also in mine. Since they gave so much to me when I was a student, I feel I owe them the courtesy of doing the research.
Posted on 4/19/2014 6:24:20 PM
By Donald Fox
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A very popular book from the late seventies, Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, was a contributor to the popularization of the left brain-right brain theory that in recent times has been minimized in scientific circles. Many of Edwards’ suggestions for improving drawing skills are useful, but the science referenced in her work was limited at best. Psychologists and neuroscientists depend more today on brain imaging as a means to determine specific brain activity and the location within the brain where certain cognitive functions may be found. The simplification of left brain-right brain split might once have made an interesting concept, but now it has been shown that numerous parts of the brain are activated in both hemispheres when either artistic or reasoning tasks are attempted. Pop psychology and pseudoscience, however, are areas that develop loyal fans perhaps because the ideas from them are easily accessible and don’t require in depth analysis or significant proof.
Lateralization, or the idea that one hemisphere or the other dominates certain types of activities, is an oversimplification. In truth, many complex thinking activities are controlled by areas in both hemispheres rather than one. Some of these activity locations are considered tendencies rather than strict adherence to one brain location or another. Brain plasticity, the ability of the brain to change or to heal itself by another area taking over the function of a damaged area, is one of the more exciting discoveries from brain imaging in the past twenty years or so.
As far as artists generally being right brain dominant, a recent study by neuroscientists in England and Belgium has suggested that the amount of and interaction between gray matter and white matter in several areas of the brain within both hemispheres may be far more significant for the complex tasks required of artistic expression. A link to the BBC article reporting this study is provided here: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26925271 .
Artistic expression being essentially a subjective experience, it seems most important for individual artists to develop sensitivity to their own internal processes. We cannot observe our own brain function, but we can pay attention to what excites us, stimulates us, and serves to activate our own individual creative response. Art it is, after all, the result of whatever expressive activity the artist does.
Posted on 4/18/2014 7:47:15 PM
By Donald Fox
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Thistles and Bluebonnets
On the road in bluebonnet country. It’s a bit late by mid-April – the best viewing would have been mid to late March – but there still are significant patches of bluebonnets intermixed with paintbrush, primroses, and occasional verbena. My wife and I are out with our friend Dorothy and her daughter Carol. Dorothy is a former painting student of mine, but she still calls me her teacher. She will turn 99 this November. Since she lives in the country, it is a double treat for us to come out in the spring for a visit and a drive around back roads near her home to some of the best flowered patches and scenic views.
On this trip we saw others out enjoying nature’s springtime spruce-up. Children and adults sat, laid down, or strolled through the few accessible fields of wildflowers. Many residents have their property fenced off to keep livestock in and people out, but anyone can still view the flowers beyond the strands of barbed wire. The pleasure of seeing multigenerational groups of people enjoying themselves among the beauties of nature is uplifting. A young brother and sister running hand in hand, his blue shirt and her red dress echoing the bluebonnets and paintbrush is a postcard moment of youth in its springtime in the midst of spring’s bounty. Another family group takes turns photographing each other blowing bubbles among the blue, red, purple, and yellow flowers.
Plein air painters like to enjoy their connection with nature as they venture into landscapes for study and painting. There is seriousness along with the lighthearted pleasure of observing and painting the beauty of nature. Many will talk about the spiritual connection that they feel to art and to nature. Yet those who do not paint may also feel linked to a sense of source as they immerse themselves even for an afternoon or a few hours in fresh air, natural color harmonies, the connection of family, and record their time together with digital cameras and I-phones.
How we connect to the world around us can vary tremendously. Artists choose to focus on this connection as part of their work, and they give back to others glimpses of what is possible even when sometimes they are recording what others have already discovered in their own lives but may not have discovered that they (the non-artists) are living art as much, or more, as they might at other times view it in a gallery or museum.
Posted on 4/17/2014
By Donald Fox
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“Art constantly aspires towards the condition of music,” so wrote English art critic Walter Pater in Studies in the History of the Renaissance: The School of Giorgione. The obvious question here is what is the “condition of music”? Many answers may follow just as there would be many interpretations of a poem, a painting, or any other work of art. Some say that music is just what it is – tonal sounds placed in rhythmical context and that have no reference to anything else. This suggests something a bit like abstract painting if we substitute color and shape for sound. So is the implication here that all art moves towards the abstract? Viewed from a modern perspective, that might seem to be the case.
Pater was a proponent of the idea that all experience comes from sensation and that there is constant flux in the world of our experience. Sound, as in music, is pure sensation. Since art generally appeals to the senses first, whatever else it may do by expressing through image or symbol or language, it “aspires” (to maintain the personification) to the purely sensual. Sensation may be thought of as concrete experience, but the initial sensory response is, in a way, abstract since it has no context or meaning until it is interpreted by the brain and thus becomes perception. Humans, being curious by nature, also feel compelled to find meaning or to give meaning when there appears to be none.
With most western painting from the Renaissance well into the nineteenth century, pictures represented the external world as experienced by the artist. Through suggestion, color, shape, symbol, and narrative, artists expressed ideas, stories, or concepts in these paintings. There often was specific emotional and intellectual content. Music, by contrast, may have been created for specific occasions and appreciated on intellectual or emotional levels, but typically it did not have a specific message or meaning. As one might say today, “It is what it is.” Music is abstract in that sense. It is experienced as pure sound. Any meaning derived from it is by association only and these originate in the listener.
Renaissance painters became quite adept at designing their paintings with classical or spiritual content by using symbols and visual metaphors to express their ideas. Yet there simultaneously existed the abstract qualities of the pictures that viewers could respond to without understanding any symbolic visual language: bright colors and harmonies, sensual shapes, and rhythmical patterns from the interplay of line, texture, light-dark contrast, and proportions. Similar abstract qualities can be seen in primitive and aboriginal art as well. Whether the conscious move by artists to focus primarily on these basic elements was inevitable or not is hard to say. In hindsight this certainly seems to be the case or at least might be argued by some art historians. It is important to remember, however, that since Pater died in 1894, he could not have been thinking about abstract painting as it later came to be. He might have known the Post Impressionists, but would have known none of the early modernists.
Another idea that Pater expressed is that art is best understood in the context of its time. Certainly we tend to re-evaluate works from our own perspective, but this is for our own purposes and not for the creators as we may impose concepts that would have been incomprehensible to them. The appreciation of art history requires diligence and knowledge for understanding. Pater’s observation about art and music might seem prescient to our ears, but it too should be considered within the context of his particular focus on Renaissance painting.
Posted on 4/16/2014
By Donald Fox
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“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” This particular quote is attributed by some websites to Leonardo da Vinci, but I was unable to find a specific reference and so remain skeptical. Whether by Leonardo or not, the ideas are interesting and worth considering. Personally, I would change the wording because although I agree with the second part, I don’t fully agree with the first.
A painting may certainly be poetic, a condensed image, if you will, just as poetry is condensed language. Like word images poetry, visual images in paintings can also be symbolic, metaphorical, or suggest multiple meanings. Part of the power of poetry comes from its ambiguous nature. It varies from discursive prose that tells something as it is, deals with factual information or proves assertions with reason and logic. Poetry may contain factual information, but the poet’s intention is not to be factual but to provide insight into some aspect of the world, human experience, emotion, or a higher level of truth that in fact may contain several truths at once – thus, the ambiguity. Likewise, painting that is artfully done makes use of facts sometimes as in truthfulness to observed reality, but also as with poetry the artist takes liberties to impart emotional power to images or to select images for their emotional impact. It is for this reason that I would not say “painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt.” This first half of the quote suggests that painting may lack emotional impact, but that is far from the truth. Painting shows us the poetry of shapes and colors and sometimes of ordinary things that we think we know, and painting is full of emotive potential by these revelations which may be heightened by the artist’s emotional feeling invested in the work.
The second half of the quote – “poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen” – at face value seems true enough. If we think more deeply, however, there is more to consider. Poetic language is often emotional language. Poetry, after all, is lyrical at its core since originally poems were sung by traveling bards, even the great epic works like the Iliad or the Odyssey. It is from this tradition that meter, rhythm, and rime originated. Music always has a powerful emotional component perhaps because the rhythm of sound in particular resonates with the natural rhythms built into our bodies and lives. We are so emotionally tied to rhythm that we naturally express it visually as well in painting, sculpture, architecture, and other forms of design. The felt or emotional connection with poetry is apparent.
What about “felt rather than seen”? I think I’d take exception here also. Poetic language is visual language. It is figurative language part of whose purpose is to create images in the mind of the reader or listener. Imagery in poetry makes poetic language quite different from that discursive prose mentioned earlier. Though the images may not be seen externally, poetic images are definitely seen internally. This is part of the symbolic power of language of any kind – verbal, written, pictorial, kinesthetic, or auditory – the images are felt and seen, or better yet, sensed by our entire being. Here, then, is one way of expressing a different idea connecting painting and poetry. Painting is visual poetry, and poetry is verbal painting; both stimulate feeling and engage thought.
Posted on 4/15/2014
By Donald Fox
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“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together,” so wrote John Ruskin in The Stones of Venice, his three-volume treatise on the art and architecture of Venice from the Byzantine period to the Renaissance. Ruskin is the English critic and aesthetician who championed the Pre-Raphaelite painters and was sued by James Whistler for insulting him publicly. Ruskin’s writing is generally dense Victorian English and can be overly wordy as well as on the conservative side artistically. He took exception with Whistler over the latter’s painting entitled Nocturne in Black and Gold: the Falling Rocket accusing him of essentially doing what Jackson Pollock did later on purpose – flinging paint.
What Ruskin says on the surface sounds right and reasonable (in the quote, not about Whistler). Artists in particular might find it easy to relate to the concept of hand, head, and heart working in synchrony. The hand of course suggests the skill of the artisan that typically has grown from talent that has been honed by experience. There is no reason for argument there. One would hope that the artist also will use his or her head in the process of making, will be thoughtful, analytical when necessary, and will guide the creative process to an effective conclusion. We would also expect that the heart, the center of feeling as it has become known through centuries of expression and remains so even in our scientific age where we also see the heart as the primary engine that keeps the body functioning, is understood as the personification of goodness and passion for life and work.
Still, some questions arise if we are to consider that art is inclusive rather than exclusive in nature, the latter meaning that art can be elitist and seem to exist above the everyday world. We do often speak about the power of art to transform and to elevate us, to raise us above pettiness and the mundane. There also is art’s longstanding use to express spirituality and to manifest the numinous. Suggestions of good, the spiritual, or the ethereal conjure far more possibility for interpretation than either reason or emotion may conjure. These days it seems inevitable that disagreements arise as well.
In fairness, I don’t think that this issue is simply one of our era alone where arguments over word usage abound for fear of giving offense. Political correctness has at times created something of a mad dance in the public arena. A misplaced word or thought can wreak havoc in the life of individuals or entire groups. It should be evident that we think differently based on experience, education, modeling, or association. Cultures interpret or express things in unique ways, so if we’re using language that makes sense to us from our perspective, we should not be surprised if someone from a different background does take offense or disagrees. If we add to this the reality that artists sometimes do as they please, consequences be damned, then maybe hand, heart, and head are not so synchronous after all. Just a thought.
Posted on 4/14/2014
By Donald Fox
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“Art, like life, should be free, since both are experimental,” wrote George Santayana in The Life of Reason: Reason in Art, ca. 1905-06. Reason in Art is one of five volumes that make up The Life of Reason. The volumes consider reason in 1) common sense, 2) society, 3) religion, 4) art, and 5) science. I suppose one could argue at length about the meaning of Santayana’s statement, but one interpretation is that art should be unencumbered. It should not be bound or fettered or conceived as being a particular way. It is “experimental” in that it is not fixed nor assumed to always be according to specific definition. It is always evolving and changing. Were it to become too strictly defined, it might not any longer be considered art but some sort of dogma instead.
We can see this in designs whether those based on natural forms or derived from geometry and mathematical forms. The principles of design are general and inclusive, but anyone’s design sense could interpret basic elements according to individual feeling. It is the individual that often imposes strictures even while promoting freedom of expression. There is no restriction, however, that one who is artistic is also without prejudice or judgment.
It is not surprising, then, that there are two large camps: one promoting representational or naturalistic painting and the other promoting abstract or non-objective painting. Both, interestingly, use the same fundamental design principles. The artists simply adapt the principles to their needs. Does the artist have to be bound to one camp or the other? Is a depiction of the natural world automatically at odds with an abstract one? Does one perspective find the other too restrictive, or from the other side, too unrestricted? Since both are utilizing fundamentals that are the same, i.e. shape, color, texture, space, and so on, don’t they share common ground?
Prince Hamlet observed “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2:2). Without arguing the merits or context of this excerpt, we can still extract a bit of truth that how we think about something makes it appear a certain way in our own minds. Feeling won’t necessarily give voice to reason any more than reason will control feeling. In other words, we can experience art directly and respond to it with spontaneous feeling. We may then attempt to reasonably explain that feeling as a way to understand it and something about the work. We might respond to a work with reason and not be concerned with feeling (as one might a piece of geometric abstraction).
Human beings are quite flexible in how they can interact in given situations, but many seem to find comfort in following a well-delineated path. Things need to be clear and unambiguous. Art, however, even when it is based on natural observation is often ambiguous and suggestive of more than one interpretation. It serves us because it is a kind of sounding board to which we may respond in varieties of ways. When abstract, art seems to be more challenging perhaps because there is no initial recognition with which to connect. Is it then too free, too experimental? That is up to the viewer to decide.
Posted on 4/13/2014 8:15:46 PM
By Donald Fox
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I have a cat that thinks he’s a dog, at least that’s my projection of what he thinks. He certainly acts like a dog. He’ll follow me or my wife around from room to room. He’ll sit at our feet or lie down across one or both feet. He stretches out like a dog when he sleeps, and he’s a bit messy when he eats, again much like a dog. His meow isn’t very cat like either; it’s more of a gravely growl. All in all, though, he’s a wonderful companion, very loving and totally loyal. Whether he thinks he’s a dog or not, it’s undeniable that his traits are quite dog like. Where he learned this behavior is a mystery. Since he came to us late in life, he was already about seven, I can specualte that he once lived with a dog, but I don't really know.
In the world of nature, animals do sometimes imprint on animals of a different species. This was studied by Konrad Lorenz, an animal behaviorist. He noted the strong first impression that is made on babies upon initial sighting of their mother. This is instinctual. And the strong bond is one of many survival instincts that help protect animals in the wild. The mother duck with little ducklings in tow is a common sight even for city dwellers with access to a park or zoo.
As humans we like to think that we have free choice, self-determination, and conscious awareness that place us above other animals. It may be true that we have the most complex brains and our social order is probably more complex also. But, it is also true that we can easily be swayed by others. Sometimes this is done through reason and logic, but often it is done through emotional response and being swayed by someone charismatic. History is full of such stories.
In the arts, a very strong teacher can actually inhibit the growth of students. A student falls under that teacher’s spell and simply emulates rather than creates. This type teacher is very often authoritarian, so in order for the student to grow and mature, he or she will at some point likely come into conflict with the teacher. If this does not happen, it is usually because the student is strongly imprinted by the teacher’s ideas and methods.
An astute teacher, on the other hand, will guide students while also allowing them autonomy and even encouraging them to explore other possibilities. I’ve seen mother cats teach their young safety and hunting skills with great patience and persistence. Birds often take a similar approach when encouraging fledglings to fly. These are moments when the young go beyond imprinting to actually develop and incorporate skills that will enable them to thrive. Perhaps the best teachers know these things intuitively as well. They know how to nurture, encourage, guide, and support their charges to learn by doing, attempting, discovering, and adjusting where necessary. Finding such a teacher can be an interesting journey.
Posted on 4/12/2014 8:11:18 PM
By Donald Fox
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Technology is a tool, yet we often speak about technological influence as though it were some autonomous entity, sometimes benevolent and sometimes malevolent, that controls our lives for good or ill. The industrial revolution that originated in the late nineteenth century sparked unparalleled economic growth in Europe and America, but harsh conditions continued and in some cases worsened for many unskilled laborers who according to later socialistic readings were being crushed under the wheel of capitalist industry. We could make a case for a variety of positive outcomes from that revolution as well as other more recent ones. The novels of Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, and Upton Sinclair show the darker side of industrialization.
At any point in time, people accept what is known to them. They remain ignorant of what things may have been like before when certain tools or conveniences were not available. Specific technologies can have powerful effects on individuals’ lives and on the social order. Major inventions like the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, or computers profoundly changed communications and tended to speed up change in other arenas. In our modern age we sometimes overlook the amazing achievements of predecessors who worked without the tools we use with a sense of entitlement.
One significant change for painters came with the invention of the paint tube around 1840. Prior to that, animal skins in the form of small bladders were used. Later a glass syringe was designed to hold paints, and this was replaced by metal tubes that quickly became widespread. It was the introduction of this collapsible tube with a reliable sealing lid that made outdoor painting easier as paint was now far more portable. We can easily take paint tubes for granted since they are so abundant and have been around for over a hundred and fifty years. However, the history of painting might well be different if that simple tube had not been available to the likes of Corot, Renoir, Monet, and their associates.
Posted on 4/11/2014 8:55:00 PM
By Donald Fox
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Anyone who has ever taken a history course will know the importance of dates. Famous and important people, events, or time periods are identified by dates to fit into the long chronology that is the human story. In grammar school we’re practically force-fed dates, or at least we used to be; I don’t really know what educators at that level are doing these days. What I do know is that a lot of my college students know very little historical perspective prior to their own birth dates. Hopefully, they will eventually learn that time is one of the few treasures that we have.
Today is my birthday, and I’m spending part of it at the art museum attending a lecture on Georges Braque and reviewing the current retrospective of his work on display here. The years between 1905 and 1910 were important ones for Braque and for the development of modern painting. He is known for this period, first as part of the Fauve painters and then for the development of cubism and his association with Picasso. Braque, however, did not stop there. He continued working through two world wars and into the sixties forging a singular style while focusing on his immediate surroundings: interiors, his studio, still lifes, and other subjects at hand.
The life of any artist is composed of far more than a few paintings or drawings or scribbled words. The day to day and moment to moment existence is much richer than may be found in a particular work. That work, once complete, has a very different chronology than the life. It may affect others for generations, but what the painter felt or thought at completion of the work is often lost to art history. He may already have moved on to the next piece or the one after that. The artist’s expression continues and the singular work is evidence of one small thread in that larger history.
Individuals log time by significant events in their lives or the lives of their children. This is normal and natural. Artists chronicle their work and its changes over periods of weeks, months, or years. Forward motion is the general goal although there may sometimes be cycling back to something previous to move forward into the next phase of creative expression. This can prove to be an interesting study for future historians and critics, or even for the artist himself.
With art, as we begin to look, we find that we want to know more and understand more. Placing the art into the context of a life, into an era, and into the larger arena of a movement or significant period can help us understand more about the time and the history from which it grew. In a way this is like discovering secrets from family history that brings to life the experience of ancestors that we never knew personally. We soon discover that we are part of a larger fabric that has been woven by many hands over numerous generations. We feel connected to the past as much as the present, for it is our personal history that has been enlarged by our understanding.
Posted on 4/10/2014
By Donald Fox
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“Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”) is the inscription written beneath a painting of a pipe, one of Rene Magritte’s most famous images, La Trahison des Images or The Treachery of Images. Executed in 1928, Magritte was making a simple observation that the representation of something is not the thing itself. This should be obvious, but many people do not make that distinction with words, images, or other symbols. At one level Magritte was also being satirical, for there are many who judge a painting solely by its verisimilitude to the thing observed that is translated into paint.
In English classes, if I ask for the definition of a noun, generally I will hear several people say, “a person, place, or thing.” They are always surprised when I say that is incorrect, and they protest that that is exactly what they were taught. Perhaps, but maybe they didn’t listen well enough. A noun is a word that names a person, place, or thing. The noun is the name of something and not the thing itself. One might argue here that this is just a matter of semantics, and he would be absolutely correct. It is about semantics and how we can easily fool ourselves into thinking that we know something directly when all we really know is a perception of it.
Several issues are at play. One is that we use language to interpret our experience of the world. We explain things to ourselves by describing them with words, but words themselves are symbols of things. Already we are removed from direct experience by the filter of words. Secondly, our perceptions also are interpretations of sensations that are closest to direct experience. Sensations, however, have no meaning without the understanding provided us by our brains that interpret the sensations, give them context, and create meaning for us. A perception, then, is a representation of some aspect of the world experienced as a sensation. That sensation, whether visual, tactile, or auditory, is also a kind of filter because it is transmitted information via nerve impulses. Time and distance are involved between the stimulus, the bodily response, transmittal to the brain, processing by the brain, transmittal back to the site of stimulation, and appropriate reaction.
But that pipe is physical! It can be touched and felt; it is solid and is used for a specific purpose. Well, as Magritte pointed out, you can’t smoke his pipe. It’s only a picture. So what does this mean for artists? That problem each artist has to figure out for him or herself, and the answer is at the core of what every artist believes to be true about his or her artistic experience.
Posted on 4/9/2014
By Donald Fox
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Cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf on NPR’s Here & Now today suggested that modern computer users’ brains are adapting to an eye-byte online culture just as we have been adapting to sound-bite news from television reporting for decades. The Tufts University researcher says that many young people have lost the ability to deep read text as might be required for reading novels or textbooks. They have become trained to look for important words, a kind of word-surfing tendency, as one scans through multiple hits from web searches. This kind of superficial reading may interfere with the ability to comprehend more complex text. It is similar to the short attention span that many young people have developed, often attributed to exposure to hours of television, attention grabbing commercials, and video games.
According to Wolf, the human brain has adapted over millennia to reading written and printed text. This is not a natural ability like language or vision. The brain has learned to read by adaptation. Linear text, however, is quite different from text as it appears on the computer screen, especially from the internet where ads, moving images, and text are all jumbled together. The brain has to actively search differently for content and meaning while scanning, scrolling up or down, and seeking key words. Since time spent online for many people is currently about five hours per day (almost doubled since 2010), people’s brains are being trained to process information quite differently. Add to that time online additional time spent watching television instead of reading and the effect is multiplied.
Researchers call what we do online non-linear reading. What they are finding is that increased non-linear reading creates challenges for those who actually love to read. When they go back to linear reading after significant time using various devices that require non-linear reading, their ability to concentrate has been impaired. Anyone with a reasonable degree of self-awareness has probably noticed this for themselves.
The commitment to reading a novel, a short story, or a poem is complete. The reader becomes immersed in the text and the imaginary world it portrays. One can get absorbed into (or absorbed by) the internet, especially social media like Facebook, and discover that huge amounts of time have elapsed. From this experience, however, there is not the same kind of intellectual stimulation that comes from a novel that entices us with language, imagery, the poetry and music of words, and the ideas that flow from the work or are incited by it. We interface with computer technology very quickly and are constantly changing with whatever it presents to us. We don’t take the time to mull over ideas or follow complex reasoning developed over many pages as in a book.
Young people especially who have grown up with computers and the internet likely have not learned the reading skills that their parents developed. Those skills may be affected by adaptation to newer technological demands, but they can be recovered. Ms. Wolf discovered this about herself. After spending extensive time online, she had difficulty reading literature that she previously had enjoyed immensely. After concerted effort and several weeks, she re-trained herself to effectively read linear text. She suggests that we can learn to be bi-literate, but we do have to train ourselves to read in both ways.
More study is being done in these areas for there are potential negative consequences for current and future generations. There certainly could be many fantasy stories spun about futuristic societies where the loss of deep reading skills might be linked to loss of freedom and the loss of the ability to think for one’s self. Some writers (Ray Bradbury and Margaret Atwood) have already speculated in that direction.
Posted on 4/8/2014
By Donald Fox
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“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible,” wrote Swiss artist Paul Klee in The Inward Vision. Anyone familiar with his work may think of simplified forms and abstract images that never quite move completely into non-objectivity (pure abstraction) but make reference to nature in a playful, and some would say, childlike way. The works are typically small scale and intimate, about the size of a magazine or something that could easily be held in one’s hands. There is a distinctive use of line and closely harmonized colors that might suggest a controlled emotion were not the sense of play so evident. That playfulness, however, is more like the energy of discovery, the excitement of doodling with a sense of purpose.
Klee was concerned with the elements of design in their most fundamental form. Line that traces distance, gives direction, or creates rhythm. Plane that carves space, defines surface, or suggests form. Color that emanates light, expresses mood, or echoes music. None of these were used in traditional ways to create a likeness or to reproduce the visible. As a modernist, Klee was interested in the qualities of materials, both medium and ground, as expressive tools that could make ideas visible. Like many other early twentieth century artists he used art as a means of exploration not of the real world per se but of his own experience of the real world. He was original, prolific, and gained the respect of many of the groundbreaking artists of his time. He also wrote extensively about art including some of the most influential writing on modernism.
Today there is something of a resurgence in traditional painting although neither it nor abstraction dominate in the larger art world. The latter often is overly formal while the former frequently lacks the substance of the great achievements of the High Renaissance, the Dutch Golden Age or the age of Impressionism. There isn’t the great thinking that once created a strong base for creative expression. Artists today would do well to reconsider theoretical concerns that led artists of the past to make visual statements that resonate through generations.
Posted on 4/7/2014
By Donald Fox
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I enjoy collecting interesting comments about art from a variety of sources: writers, philosophers, artists of all kinds, and the occasional politician. Did I just say politician? Yes, I did. For example, John F. Kennedy in a 1963 address at Amherst College said, “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” I partially agree, for certainly art has sometimes been used for propaganda purposes. Many ancient monuments were primarily made for propaganda. They were intended to extoll the ruler and intimidate enemies. Aren’t official portraits a form of propaganda as well? Of course there is the category of art that we specifically call propaganda art and tend to think of posters with slogans or banners or flags.
One of the things that makes art, Art, is that it has multiple meanings; i.e. it is ambiguous. A painted landscape may be a beautiful design that expresses mood through the artist’s choice of colors and rendering of form. It may also express specific ideas of the artist about nature and how nature modified becomes art. The artist is giving his aesthetic through the painting. By choosing to use art as a means of stating ideas about nature and the making of art, the artist is promoting (propagandizing) his artistic vision. The painting may also be a symbolic statement about life, creation, impermanence, mutability, or a host of other concepts depending on the artist’s mindset and intention.
Those who approach art as Fine Art may tend to think of art as truth, or as Kennedy says, a form of truth. It represents the world more clearly in its symbolic mode of expression, and the more universal the appeal of the art, the more powerful it is as affect or as truth. Can truth have more than one meaning, or if the truth is diffuse (exists in more than one form), can it be truth? Hasn’t science shown us that what we see is more than what is visible to the eye? Objects that appear hard and impenetrable are actually composed of nearly limitless space. They are made up of minute particles that are in constant motion, and it is this motion that gives form to everything that we experience with our senses. What is more sensuous by way of experience than art? It plays fully upon our senses and through them on our emotions and reason.
Perhaps our view of truth as an absolute is itself an illusion, an abstract concept to appease the mind that is frightened by too many choices and that feels challenged by ambiguity. Who would have thought that a politician would make such an intriguing observation?
Posted on 4/6/2014 6:36:10 PM
By Donald Fox
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As we move about in the external world, we encounter many givens for which we have been trained since a very young age. Gender roles, though their influence has been moderated in western culture in recent times, still exert influence on behavior and expectations. Despite feminism, the women’s movement, and ERA, gender expectations continue to be problematic – just ask a single mother or an unmarried woman attempting to establish credit.
We tend to learn attitudes from family and culture, and these beliefs become actions with regard to social interactions, choice of friends, and many decisions we like to think are conscious, unbiased choices made with deliberation and purpose. Many things, though, are already mapped out for us. For example, we don’t as individuals build roads to get us from place to place. We use whatever is already in place since everything has been developed and organized for our use.
Essentially the same is true for learning and obtaining knowledge. Schools are very well organized, and though many educators do emphasize creativity and problem solving, many do not. Tests have to be passed so it becomes important for students to learn specific material that has been designed by committee. Jobs are on the line should students not perform well.
Rules and guidelines exist nearly everywhere, and the successful person learns to navigate these demanding challenges. In the process, certain assumptions are made about value and importance. Take for example current technology. How many times have you noticed someone walking along a street, a hallway, or in a park with his or her head down and fixated on a small screen in the palm of his hand? That person’s mind is only partially aware of surroundings. He or she is off in a virtual world. This is not the same as someone daydreaming or allowing the mind to wander in thought while doing some other task. There is a conscious, dedicated focus being given to the mechanical extension of self that neglects the reality of the present moment.
Many of the great inventions of the past have enabled us to see and experience our world in greater clarity, have helped us to understand basic functions that may be invisible to the immediate senses, and have trained us to relate more effectively and completely with the physical universe we inhabit. Along the way we’ve created greater comfort and some degree of increased safety, but we’ve also tasked ourselves with more demands upon our mental and physical health. We’ve increased the number of stressors rather than reduced them while convincing ourselves that our dependence on technology, energy consumption, and negative impact on our planet are minor tradeoffs that our use of technology will supposedly provide answers for in the future. Ironically, we insulate ourselves from our natural connection to mother earth while reaching for an illusion of greater connectivity in virtual space. Communication of ideas and concepts comes in smaller and smaller increments.
Many will suggest that the past is over and done. We must look to the future, more growth, and more change. The change admittedly comes at increasingly fast pace. But, the reminders of our relative place in the cosmos are all around us. They are in the night sky full of stars many of which no longer exist. We see only their ghost light that we mistakenly assume as evidence of permanence. Doesn’t the sun rise every morning? Isn’t the pattern of stars the same each night? What about, though, those fondly remembered places of childhood? When you visit them, are they the same as remembered, or do they even still exist? Many of mine do not, yet their memory lingers and continues to influence my present when I pay attention.
Art is a source of continuity and connection to all that has come before. We can marvel at the accomplishments of our ancestors just as we may marvel at how contemporary artists continue to show us aspects of our collective consciousness to remind us of our humanness. Our gadgetry may also be marvelous, but it cannot improve on the human model of physical touch, presence of mind, and the light that gleams in the eye of one perceived.
Posted on 4/5/2014 7:55:56 PM
By Donald Fox
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Gondoliers' Siesta by John Singer Sargent
Yesterday I attended a lecture at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts given by Dr. Kaylin Weber, Assistant Curator of American Painting and Sculpture. Entitled “Shimmering Colours and Sliding Forms,” the lecture addressed aspects of John Singer Sargent’s Venice watercolors, works done over roughly a twenty year period. The central idea was that Sargent presented Venice, a city that his friend Henry James said could no longer be painted in a fresh way (its representation had become clichéd), in a way that no other artist had. In essence, Sargent focused on portions of scenes rather than grand vistas, he used skillful cropping and unusual perspectives (often from a gondola), and he also made light (and shadow) his primary subject.
His images of the famous Catholic church located at the entrance of the Grand Canal, Santa Maria della Salute, illustrate clearly how Sargent worked with watercolor. Unlike Monet and other painters who represented this subject, Sargent never showed the entire building. He might show a low-angled view of the front steps and the main entrance while cropping off the top of the building. Some of these views might also include the prows of gondolas, which would actually block part of the building. The paintings were done on location as he observed the structure and in much the same way that most tourists were likely to see the building. Since he did dozens of paintings of this and other buildings, it is only when someone sees all the paintings together that he or she gets an understanding of the entire structure.
In a way, what Sargent was doing was not too different from what other Impressionists did with scenes that they painted in series to study the light at different times of day. Sargent, however, didn’t focus so much on light changes according to time but light changes according to shifting position of the observer. Many of his paintings are powerful abstract designs with captivating perspectives while also being very keenly observed objects in space as revealed by light-dark contrast. They were very modern paintings at the time he did them and still feel fresh and quite contemporary although now over a hundred years old.
Interestingly, it is said that Sargent did not think much of his watercolors. They were paintings that gave him respite from the rigors of portrait commissions, and he created hundreds of watercolors while traveling through Europe and Africa. He did exhibit some of them a few times in England and in two significant shows at Knoedler Gallery in New York (1909 and 1912). He showed them in America with the stipulation that they were not for sale – except, that is, unless an institution might buy the whole lot. The first exhibit was purchased in its entirety by the Brooklyn Museum of Art when it outbid the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. A few years later a second show was entirely purchased by the Boston museum. Works from both collections make up the bulk of the current exhibit at MFA Houston. Dr. Weber emphasized that this is a once-in-a-lifetime exhibit, for she told me after the lecture that these paintings have been traveling for about a year and soon will go into storage for at least ten years in order to protect them. Anyone remotely close to Houston would do well to see them before they are gone (on view through May 26).
Posted on 4/4/2014 9:57:46 PM
By Donald Fox
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When I was four or five years old, I was supposed to have my tonsils removed. I remember being at the hospital the evening before. I was given an enema. A nurse later told me I would go to sleep, and when I woke up my throat would be a bit sore but that would soon subside. All that I remember, though, is resting at home later and being told by my parents that I still had my tonsils. The whole episode was dreamlike and except for corroboration from others in the waking world, it might have been a dream.
I learned that I had had a shock reaction to the ether, the anesthesia used at the time. I nearly died and had to be resuscitated. There were no bright lights, no images of deceased relatives or friends, no voice telling me to go back – in short, none of the eerie out of body experiences so frequently dramatized in film and fiction. I went to sleep and I woke up, but for years thereafter I wore dog tags around my neck cautioning others that I was allergic to ether. That particular anesthesia eventually went the way of history, and subsequently, doctors told me that ether had always been difficult to monitor. Probably I had been given too much and thus the reaction of respiratory arrest.
I could say that early experience gave me an epiphany of purpose and determination, but there’s purpose in all life, isn’t there? Many later events became far more significant and impactful and were powerful teaching moments. Still, as everyone thinks him or herself special, unique, and imbued with purpose, I could say that the second birth was a reminder of the importance of the first.
Life is an amazing journey, but not everyone sees it so. There also is evidence all around of deprivation, suffering, and unfulfilled opportunity. Art is one of the expressions that enables us to create context and a sense of purpose for our own life experiences. There are many manifestations of beauty and harmonious design in the world that can be acknowledged and appreciated for what they are. These are like jewels or ornaments to everyday life. Art, on the other hand, may be beautiful and elegant, but it is also much more. It becomes a window or doorway into another realm of experience. It may lead outward to an understanding that reaches far beyond the individual self. It may broaden perspective and expand awareness. It can illustrate the microcosm as a fully functional part of the macrocosm.
Art can also lead inward and reveal aspects of self that may have been hidden, latent, or ignored because of focus on something considered of great consequence until shown to be otherwise. It is no accident that the moment of illumination in art is called catharsis or epiphany, nor that these terms are also used to name spiritual awakening. Art can delve into the realm of human darkness and bring the suppressed, the misunderstood, or the misdirected into the light. That is a part of its gift from generation to generation.
Posted on 4/3/2014
By Donald Fox
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“All good things which exist are the fruits of originality,” said John Stuart Mill. Like many eighteenth and nineteenth century thinkers and leaders, Mill had received a classical education largely by reading texts in original Latin or Greek (which he did, taught by his father from a very early age). He was a strong proponent of free speech and politically leaned to the left although he did have a somewhat elitist view of government leaders – the highly educated were better suited to make decisions over the masses. Interestingly, if somewhat oddly, Mills held a version of utilitarianism that suggested a lower form of art is more desirable if it results in affecting a greater number of people than a higher form of art. Most artists would argue for quality in art being the superlative criterion rather than numbers of people affected by it.
If the appreciation of art is subjective, can there be legitimate objective criteria for judging it? Some would mention beauty as one of the criteria. Others might mention moral purpose, that the art should not be offensive or injurious. Perhaps almost any limitation placed on art to define it more precisely could be found objectionable by either being too narrow, and thus too limiting, or too broad, and thus too vague or inclusive. What makes something of qualitative value? Is it largely based on appearance? Should it be harmonious or dynamic or balanced? Should it elicit pleasure, elevate the spirit, stimulate the mind, or produce emotional response, preferably of a positive nature? Should it have meaning but the meaning not be too explicit, rather deal more with ambiguity and suggested possibility?
Considering the history of art, we will find that criteria change according to period, cultural norms, and sometimes according to political and/or spiritual beliefs. Often there can be a prevailing mindset that produces a certain kind of artistic expression that coexists with a secondary mindset that runs counter to and even challenges the prevailing one. The latter is ultimately seen as a precursor to subsequent expressions that define a future norm, and that in turn is displaced by another set of ideas and so on. Value, then, appears to be tied to cultural context although some might argue that value is the result of education, which can affect understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and the adoption of universal principles.
In one sense art is fluid. It is like a chameleon or shape-shifter. It comes from one frame of mind, but it has much greater appeal than the framework from which it grew. In essence, it transcends its time and place while also signifying the who, what, when, where, and why of its birth. It outlasts its maker, its supporters, and its detractors. It speaks anew to every generation for years, decades, centuries, millennia. It even outlasts the questions we so assiduously ask about it.
Posted on 4/2/2014
By Donald Fox
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The left rear signal light burned out on my Focus station wagon. I could tell because the turn signal begins to flash very rapidly instead of the normal tick-tock steady rate. Generally replacing a bulb, either front or rear, is an easy operation – remove two screws and the whole lamp assembly comes loose from the car. Twist the base of the bulb assembly and it pops out. Then pull out the burned bulb, put in a new one, and put everything back together. That’s the way it should work. I remember, however, about a year ago having to replace the bulb on the rear right side. I discovered then that the blinker bulb, which is the top bulb in the tail lamp assembly, did not come out as easily as the lower bulb. The opening from which the bulb assembly twists out was malformed, and the bulb assembly had to be pried out with some effort. Unfortunately for me, the left side was even worse. The slots around the edge of the opening through which tabs that hold the light assembly in place are supposed to slide through were not large enough for the tabs to fit through. This meant that the lamp assembly had to have been originally assembled with that light already in place because there would have been no way for it to be inserted through the slotted opening as constructed. I literally had to pry the hard plastic with a screwdriver and break pieces off to make enough room for the flanges on the bulb assembly to then be pried out. Had I been at home with access to my array of tools, I could have easily cut or drilled the hard plastic to allow for easy removal and replacement. However, on the road I only had a couple of screwdrivers and thus had to work much harder and longer.
What does this have to do with art? Well, use of appropriate tools makes the art making process work as it should. The focus can be on creating the work and not trying to solve issues unrelated to the creative process. Also, time is not wasted. Even with the proper tools, though, there are times when unexpected issues arise, and the artist must do some creative problem solving in the act of making. This is where training, flexibility, analytical thinking, and creative thinking work together to resolve the challenge.
Another alternative, of course, is to consult someone that knows more than you. For a car that would usually mean taking it to a shop or mechanic. Where would you take art to find a fix? Someone with more expertise might be an option, possibly an instructor or teacher or someone whose opinion you trust. These days it’s pretty easy to look up problems online and find solutions for many types of issues including artistic ones. The diligent artist, meaning one who is prepared from continual study, continual practice, and continual questioning of the process, will almost always be able to resolve most any problem that may arise in a painting. There is no substitute for experience, and that experience only comes from the dedicated application of the process.
Posted on 4/1/2014
By Donald Fox
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You can only be yourself. On the face of it, this seems such a simple truth, but today in any bookstore and increasingly online, you can find hundreds of titles and as many or more people willing to help you be someone else: smarter, bolder, braver, more confident, empowered, and ultimately, successful. In short, you will be a new you, perhaps the you you’ve always desired to be. Then again, maybe you’ll just learn to accept who you are. Would that be so bad?
Perhaps you see yourself as creative, but you want to be more original. Maybe you have lots of good ideas, but you don’t have the skill to implement them. Maybe you create lots of work, but you’re not so sure of its value or quality. Maybe you have work to show, but you feel intimidated about putting it out there. Maybe you don’t feel confident in talking about the work that you do. Are we beginning to see a pattern here?
The truth is, many of the greatest artists had doubts about their work or lacked confidence in presenting that work to others. We’re used to thinking about modern angst with painters like Van Gogh, James Ensor, Jackson Pollock, or Mark Rothko. We may know something about the social ineptness of Paul Cezanne or Paul Gauguin, or we might think back to the debauched lifestyle of Caravaggio. What most of these artists did have, though, were the desire to create and the discipline to continue doing so in the face of sometimes daunting odds. And, in spite of whatever personal challenges each may have faced, they created work that transformed the history of painting because they were true to their creative selves.
A lot of study has been done on creativity. Many attempts have been made to define it, to describe it, and to make guidelines that will either promote it or enhance it. However creativity may be described and whatever suggestions might be made to increase it or make it available when called upon, there is no good answer to where that desire to create comes from. Is it part of some sophisticated survival response that is so specialized it far exceeds its basic function? Is it some higher form of evolution that further separated humans from other animals? Did the complexity of the human brain need something more challenging to fill its capacity for doing? Is it the special touch of the divine as a reminder that we can create to a great degree but never to the level of perfection or to the level of creating life itself?
We may never know some of these answers, but on a personal level we do know that the creative spark is a wonderful catalyst that propels us into the most intriguing worlds of imaginative revelry and activity. What any one of us feels is unique to us alone – how could we possibly know what another experiences anyway? It is subjective, internal, and though it might be described or shared, it cannot be definitively delineated or fully corroborated. We agree that there is something called creativity, and we can see its results, but I cannot truly know that my experience of creativity is the same as yours. All I can ever know is my own experience and from that, perhaps, deduce that others may experience something similar. My concern is in utilizing and caring for that which is uniquely mine.
The pundits may continue their punditry, the sophists their sophistry, and the theorists their theories. I will continue to grow according to the design that is me just as you will grow according to the design that is you. Should our paths cross and we exchange information or insight, that may be a good thing, but you cannot grow me any more than I can grow you.
