Spurning The Earth
August 5th, 2010
Related posts
Categories: art | Tags: art, imagination, photographs | No Comments
Self Portraits 2
June 6th, 2010
Lucien Freud, 1981
Francis Bacon, 1969
David Siqueiros, 1969
George Tooker, 1947
Felix Nussbaum, 1942
Christian Schad, 1927
Curt Querner, 1938
Victor Brauner, 1931
Otto Muller, 1922
Petrov Vodkin, 1918
Related posts
Categories: art | Tags: art, imagination, madness, painting | No Comments
The Aesthetic Rapture
May 10th, 2010
One of my very first educational experiences as an art student took place at the feet of a lecturer - we sat on the carpet and he sat on a chair - assigned to aid the First Year’s transition into this strange new world. He’d been a sculptor and conceptual artist but had moved into art theory and history. On our first day he told us that art, sex and religion, were the only areas our society sanctions as being legitimate spheres in which to experience ecstasy.
Wow. I really was at art school.
I’ve never forgotten his words - they intrigued me when I first heard them as much as they still intrigue me now, many years later. Discussions along these lines took place every day. I was expecting a little more emphasis on the technical side of art, but this was the early eighties and conceptual art had slouched into the nation’s art schools, an unfiltered Camel between it’s fingers and a copy of Baudrillard under it’s arm. Learning to paint was simply a matter of being tossed into a white cube studio space with the necessary materials and being left to figure it out in between tutorials on Julian Schnabel and Jeff Koons. So where was the ecstasy?
I’m not talking about the satisfaction of acquiring skills, or being overtired and spinning out on coffee and cigarettes or even completing a painting or other artwork to general acclaim. I never knew what that lecturer really meant until a couple of years later, when on an ordinary day, I stapled some paper to the wall, picked up a stick of charcoal and began to draw. About half an hour later, while totally absorbed by what I was doing, I suddenly understood what he’d been on about. I find it hard to explain but extinction of the self comes close, extinction of self and unity with the act or idea.
Three years later I had a similar intense experience, again while drawing. I don’t know the physiological basis for it; there were no paint or turps fumes around, nor chanting or drumming. I don’t want a reductionist explanation of it nor do I see it as having any mystical significance. But last week, after a long, hard day of writing I experienced a similar feeling. No, it wasn’t hysteria or relief or a lifting of pressure – although maybe that lent an edge to it - but more a rightness or unity, a submergence of the self in a creative act. It verged on the sublime. Three times in twenty-five years of creative work. Maybe I haven’t been working hard enough.
Those three occasions, particularly the last, reconfirm my own belief that whatever the outcome of the finished work, whether it hangs on a wall or whether it gets published, all the royalties and sell-through and rights sales and reprints and reviews can only stand in the shadow of such transformative creative moments. It’s why we do it, and keep doing it – nothing comes close, except, as my long ago lecturer said, maybe sex and the religious experience.
Related posts
Categories: art | Tags: art, creativity, imagination, madness | No Comments
Self Portraits 1 - ‘I am the person I know best’
March 10th, 2010
Arnold Bocklin, 1872
Aleksi Gallen Kallela, 1894
Vallotton, 1897
Gustave Caillebote, 1892
James Ensor, 1889
Edvard Munch, 1903
Luigi Russolo, 1909
Ferdinand Hodler, 1912
Otto Dix, 1914
Marc Chagall, 1914
Ernst Kirchner, 1915
Title quote - Frida Kahlo
Images via Gunther Stephan
Related posts
Categories: The Fragment of Dreams, art | Tags: art, creativity, Fragment of Dreams, imagination, madness, paintings | No Comments
Blackbird Fly
February 15th, 2010
Most haute couture fashion is beyond the finances of ordinary mortals but it doesn’t hurt to look and marvel and admire. My mother and I used to play a game where we’d look through various fashion magazines and choose the dress we liked the best. This quest was punctuated with ‘oo, I don’t like that,’ and ‘Oh, now that’s elegant,’ or ‘what a get up.’ We made different choices, as one would expect, but it was through this particularly female pursuit – teapot and biscuits handy at all times – that I became familiar with the names of designers in the fashion world.
I followed the careers and collections of a few, as you would a particularly interesting artist or author, but only through photographs I must mournfully add. And the death this week of one whose designs often intrigued – Alexander McQueen – really saddens me. In my imaginary salon I would have bought many of his clothes, particularly his bird dresses. Suicide leaves a feeling of despair in its wake and perhaps more so when such a bruised and beautiful creative soul gives up and leaves this world.
The muse has left along narrow
And winding street,
And with large drops of dew
Were sprinkled her feet.
For long did I ask of her
To wait for winter with me,
But she said, “The grave is here,
How can you breathe, you see?”
I wanted to give her a dove
That is whiter than all the rest
But the bird herself flew above
After my graceful guest.
Looking at her I was silent,
I loved her alone
And like gates into her country
In the sky stood the dawn.
Anna Akhmatova
images via style.com
Related posts
Categories: art, culture | Tags: art, culture, fashion | No Comments
A Human Thing
January 26th, 2010
In my past life in the visual arts world I noted – along with thousands of others – that any overtly female artwork, not feminist, but dealing with the business of being of the female gender, was neatly sidelined as ‘women’s art’. Some female students scrambled valiantly to get away from this label because it was the kiss of marginalisation and obscurity. But some embraced it with an enthusiasm and passion usually reserved for the beheading of aristocrats in revolutions.
Sculpture departments in art schools are full of traditional masculine technologies such as woodworking, metalwork, steel, clay and so on. During my time as a student in a sculpture department all the permanent staff were in their men in their forties, (the part timers were female). At the end of each term students would display whatever it was they were working on and the staff, and other students, would gather around for what was termed a critique.
When a female student exhibited a ‘female’ piece of work the tension became unbearable, because criticising these artworks was impossible. The male teaching staff - poor bastards - were being asked to walk through a minefield. Bristling female students held their breath as they anticipated a bloody explosion, but the male students wandered off – it didn’t concern them, it was a chick thing. And anyway, it was ‘women’s art’ – made them a bit squeamish, a bit guilty and a lot bored.
So what’s the point of this little story, I hear you ask. The point is, despite being fifty one per cent of the world’s population, representation of women and their lives is still considered a minority interest, and of lower status than the dominant masculinised culture. New York Times film critic, Manhola Dargis, talks about this problem in regards to Hollywood filmmaking. (Jezebel.com, December 14)
“There’s a reason that women go to movies like Mamma Mia. It’s a terrible movie… but women are starved for representation of themselves. … It’s a vicious cycle. We’re (women) not going to movies because there aren’t movies for us. Therefore we’re not seen as a loyal movie going audience. My point is that if there are stories about women, women will come out for that…
That’s why [women] go to a movie like The Devil Wears Prada and make huge hits. They want to see women in movies. People in the trade press constantly frame that as a surprise. This, gee whiz, Sex and the City’s a hit, Twilight, hmm, wonder what’s going on here. Maybe they should not be so surprised. In the trade press, women audiences are considered a niche. How is that even possible? We’re 51 percent of the audience.”
To generalise, women are interested in stories about relationships between people. In popular culture romance and women’s fiction are invariably focussed on relationships both within the family and beyond, how woman negotiate these relationships and how individual women find a place in our society. These books represent us to ourselves – larger than life, sure, but with a core of truth that we recognise. However these books are marginalised, and in the case of romance, trivialised and stigmatised.
A relative of mine can’t get his head around the fact that I’ve chosen to write romantic comedy. The word ‘romantic’ sticks in his throat. He just can’t understand why an overeducated, intelligent western woman would be writing such things.
And I’ll tell you why – Australian author and academic Bronwyn Parry describes romantic fiction as having four main characteristics – a concern with relationships, with the emotional arc or journey of the characters, affirming the power of love and with an optimistic ending. I’m interested in relationships, I’m interested in exploring emotions, I know happy endings don’t mirror reality but people like to be uplifted occasionally. And I do believe in the transformational power of love – not in some queasy pink Hallmark way, but as a human who has had lovers, children, partners, friends and parents, and seen love at work. Everybody is, or has been, on a journey toward intimacy with another human being – it’s not a minority experience.
Related posts
Categories: culture, on reading | Tags: art, books, culture, love, writing | 1 Comment
Beneath Clouds of Pale Blue Tears
November 6th, 2009
Related posts
Categories: art | Tags: art, paintings | No Comments
Luscious Pink
November 3rd, 2009
Related posts
Categories: Pictures, culture | Tags: art, desire, paintings, photographs | No Comments
Marylou’s Yellow Dress
September 30th, 2009
Related posts
Categories: Pictures | Tags: art, desire, paintings | No Comments
Agnes And Her Divine Service
August 26th, 2009
Sheep via Urban Flea Design Blog
Tilda Swinton via The Feeling of Absurdity Blog
Wool Face and Twins - Chrystl Rijkeboer
Mask and Skull - Max Dupain
Wool Organs - Sarah Hillenberger
Related posts
Categories: Pictures, art | Tags: art, desire, photographs | 4 Comments
for a good feed ...
