![\"Castiglione_Hero\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Castiglione_Hero.jpg\")
<\/a>Inertia. Strong. It was true in Minnesota and true here. Hard to get the body up and out of the house, into the city or over to a trail or to an interesting locale, even one reasonably nearby. If inertia comes down on\u00a0the object in place side\u00a0too much, especially as we age, we become, by our own choice, homebound.<\/p>\nDidn’t listen today. Got in the truck and drove into Denver to the Denver Art Museum and the Metropolitan University of Denver’s Visual Arts Center. Got lost a little so I found parts of Denver I hadn’t seen. A good thing.<\/p>\n
The occasion today was a DAM initiated show<\/a> about Castiglione, a 17th century Italian painter who, like Caravaggio, seemed as much psychopath as artist. A DAM curator feels Castiglione has been unfairly ignored and mounted this exhibition to try a 21st century restoration of his reputation. After looking at the show carefully, it is my opinion that history has treated Castiglione fairly. His work doesn’t have, to my eye, that extra pop that a Dur\u00ebr or a Lotto or a Caravaggio brings to painting and drawing.<\/p>\n He’s interesting. His work shows definite skill and imagination, but I didn’t feel moved to look and relook. I do not feel, for example, that I need to go see the show a second time. That might change. This is a first impression. Too, the show was hung in an unusually obtuse way in terms of flow, color and positioning of the works. It was confusing to follow, the rooms often too bare and the colors of the walls not a good choice for seeing the works well.<\/p>\n I bought the catalog and plan to read it. Challenge my own opinion. I was excited to see this show because I like discovering a new artist, their work. I like that the curator too the risk and that he’s done so much scholarly work on Castiglione. Learning about Castiglione will advance my own understanding of art history, of that time period in Italian art and in the way curators\/art historians evaluate and reevaluate artists, so it’s far from a waste.<\/p>\n Jon, step-son and art teacher, recommended another exhibit I would never have seen within his drawing my attention to it. This is a show of contemporary gongbi painting at the Metropolitan University of Denver’s Visual Arts on Santa Fe in the heart of the city’s art district. Gongbi is a difficult to master painting technique with roots in the Han dynasty. It emphasizes the slow build up of form and color, utilizing a very tricky two brush in one hand painting method that looks almost impossible to learn.<\/p>\n In this show a handful of contemporary Chinese artists carry this ancient school of art into the contemporary world of irony and surrealism. The result is wonderful. I liked it so much that I asked to see the price list for the paintings on the off chance that the market for them might not have been made yet. Faint hope. The cheapest was $2,500 with most in the $20,000 range.<\/p>\n Living artistic traditions being united with contemporary sensibilities is fascinating. In this exhibition\u00a0a style used to do jewel like representations of flowers, birds and insects has been used to create cheeky commentary on China’s tradition as it interacts with the west. Worth seeing if you get the chance.<\/p>\n JMW Turner \u00a0 8\/27\/2015<\/p>\n Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Labor Day Moon<\/p>\n Stefan Helgeson sent out a Turner watercolor and asked, what does it say to you? How does it make you feel? I couldn’t find the watercolor Stefan\u00a0copied though it bears close resemblance to a series of small works recorded in Turner’s\u00a0Channel Sketchbook<\/a>.<\/p>\n Turner was the true artist before his time. He looked closely, especially at the sea and the sky, and attempted to evoke them with minimalist figural representation. Instead he waved at the literal scene by splashing colors together, here a horizon line faintly evident, there a cloud suggested, reflecting on them both perhaps a setting or rising sun. The watercolors of the Channel Sketchbooks\u00a0seem abstract, related more to Rothko and the color field artists of the mid-20th century than to his late 18th century, early 19th century peers.<\/p>\n Seen in the context of the Channel Sketchbook the piece Stefan chose looks like a short musical piece: a lyrical quiet first movement, read from the bottom up, then a dark moody second, adagio, followed by a third filled with quick 16ths, 32nds flaring then quieting down into the song-like\u00a0spacing of the first only to rise sharper faster until it fades.<\/p>\n Turner’s work of this sort is brave, putting out there what he sees in his heart, yet, too, still tied to what he sees with his eyes. It’s hard to imagine how much a member of the British Royal Academy, accepted at the age of 15, could be an outlier in this stodgy institution, but Turner was just that.<\/p>\n He was called in his time “the painter of light.” Compare his work to that other artist, Thomas Kinkade, who called himself the painter of life.<\/p>\n Turner saw and dared to paint what he saw and felt. When I look at the work Stefan sent out, I feel challenged to see as Turner saw, to let the little represent the big, to distill the world into its colors and feelings. I feel opened up, spacious, wider somehow and linked by heart to the world around me.<\/p>\n Spring \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Bee Hiving Moon<\/p>\n I spent three hours at the Walker today visiting an exhibition, a large one, on Edward Hopper\u2019s creative process and an exhibition by Jim Hodges: \u00a0Give More Than You Take. On the way home I began thinking about this question: \u00a0did I get anything out of it? \u00a0I certainly enjoyed myself, had a nice lunch at Gather overlooking Hennepin Avenue, the Basilica, the Episcopal Cathedral, Loring Park and Armajani bridge.<\/p>\n But what is the personal value of standing in gallery after gallery, visiting with art in person? \u00a0There are certainly some answers: participating in a dialogue between artist and In the Jim Hodge show I saw many possibilities for textile art that had not occurred to me before and I brought pictures home for Kate, my resident textile artist. \u00a0This is a quilt like work, quite large, maybe 20 feet across and 8 or 9 feet tall.<\/p>\n In the case of Hopper, a personal favorite, there was at least a double benefit. \u00a0The many drawings, often matched with the paintings for which they were preparation, gave a glimpse into Hopper as he worked out his vision. \u00a0How artists choose to include or eliminate items is very interesting to me. \u00a0Second, there are a number of paintings sprinkled throughout the show, one from quite early in Hopper\u2019s career, and they, too, show a progression of his overall vision. This one, for example, from 1882 during one of Hopper\u2019s visits to Paris.<\/p>\n It\u2019s quite a distance from this expressionist work influenced by Lautrec and Degas to this one, Gas, painted in 1940 and much more typical of his later work, post his coming to fame in his 40\u2032s in 1924.<\/p>\n Going deeper gets to the reasons Hopper is a favorite of mine. \u00a0And, interestingly, I can link these two very different works to explain why he attracts me so much. \u00a0Let me add a third before I do that, one in the collection of the Walker, Office at Night.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The latter two, Gas and Office at Night, share a use of light that seems to illuminate a realistic scene, but when examined more closely, lights a vaguely representational setting: a gas station, probably a Mobil station but the sign is just too indistinct to read; while the man and woman in Office at Night at first seem to be real individuals, but on closer examination their features are more elemental, more stereotypical, revealing two types of person rather than two individuals in particular.<\/p>\n The light bathes the gas pumps and the night-time office in a manner creating distance between us and the setting. \u00a0The man at the gas pump is outside the seemingly cheerful light coming from inside the station, not quite reaching where he stands alone. \u00a0In Office at Night the two workers-we wonder what\u2019s so important that they are there at night-are inside, working, while the light comes from outside where others are enjoying time off from labor.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t see that use of light in the 1882 painting, a use I consider distinctive of Hopper\u2019s later style, but we do see a commonality with the other two, one that gets to my affection for Hopper\u2019s works. \u00a0Though there are people in each of these paintings, none of them seem to know anyone else is there. \u00a0Each person\u2019s gaze goes past the person they\u2019re with, or, in the case of Gas, stares at something on the pump, rather than back inside to the station.<\/p>\n To my eye Hopper paints the existential dilemma we all face, one especially acute in the busy city, but also true in the countryside of Gas. \u00a0That is, we are in this world alone. \u00a0We live our lives in the presence of other people, yes, but we can never experience the deep Selfness of the other, nor can they experience ours. \u00a0The light in Hopper\u2019s paintings, again to me, rather than illuminating the settings, highlights this isolation, making it apparent even when the world is well lit. \u00a0His light has a haunting quality, one that takes me into a revery about the nature of human being.<\/p>\n So. \u00a0Yes, I guess you can say that I got something out of my trip to the Walker. \u00a0So much so in fact, that I\u2019ll go back. \u00a0Soon.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Spring \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Bee Hiving Moon<\/p>\n An art day. \u00a0One of my struggles over the last year since leaving the MIA has been how to At the Journal workshop I committed myself to using the teaching company courses I have on art (4) and taking the Warhol class that begins later this month. (a MOOC) \u00a0A while back I decided to devote the second thursday as a museum day. \u00a0My work in Tucson challenged me to consider more, two days a month, or even an art week, devoting one week a month to art: learning, reading, visiting museums and galleries.<\/p>\n [Alexander Young Jackson, Winter, Quebec, (1926)]<\/p>\n Since coming back I have begun using the teaching company courses, interestingly assisted by the habits I learned while taking the MOOC\u2019s I\u2019ve already finished. \u00a0That is, I watch the videos on my computer, open up Notes and take notes as I listen to the lecture. Reading books and monographs naturally accompanies this effort.<\/p>\n Even so, there is no substitute for seeing work in person. \u00a0The texture, the light, the [‘Alchemist’, pencil and acrylic on 1903 Astronomy Map (2013) by Louise McNaught]<\/p>\n I hope in this way to deepen my engagement with art, continue the considerable progress I made over 12 years at the MIA in appreciating and learning from the long tradition of art making.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Spring \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Bee Hiving Moon<\/p>\n Back from the Guthrie and the Penumbra presentation of Mountaintop, a play focused on Martin Luther King’s last night alive in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. \u00a0As it neared the end, it picked up emotional punch using a clever device that I won’t reveal. The pathos of a man about to die because he stood up for love, for justice, can sound wooden on the page, but to see a real man struggling with acceptance, to hear a real woman empathize with him, that’s different. \u00a0That’s the power of theatre.<\/p>\n There’s a good metaphor used in it, one you may have heard before, but which was new to me. \u00a0The civil rights movement, the movement for the poor is not a sprint, but a relay race, with one generation handing on the baton to the next.<\/p>\n When we discussed this play briefly at Christos on Monday, I made the observation that\u00a0 That will be a shame because those years, the 60’s and early 70’s, were so alive and vital. The air crackled with change, with big questions, with thoughts of matters far beyond the vocational worth of a college diploma. \u00a0And we lived it. \u00a0It is our direct heritage and I like very much the notion of the baton.<\/p>\n I’m in that part of the race now where the baton is stretched out ahead of me, ready to lay in the hands of another, but my race is not yet run. \u00a0I’m accelerating, to keep the team ahead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Honey Moon<\/p>\n Back in the MIA yesterday morning before my lunch with Tom. \u00a0Wandering around,\u00a0 (5th century painting, Poet on a Mountain Top by Shen Zhou. \u00a0not in MIA collection)<\/p>\n A long segment of a Chinese scroll, a landscape of black and white mountains, exhibited in a narrow corridor beside the Wu reception hall, sent me into a wistful, calm place and a sudden realization why I like Asian art, especially Chinese and Japanese. \u00a0Much of it is soothing, contemplative.<\/p>\n As these thoughts and feelings slowly tumbled down the stream of my experience, I came to an explanation of this \u201cspilt ink\u201d and discovered the scroll had been done by a literati artist waiting for his son at a mountain monastery. \u00a0His son was overdue and he felt, he said, \u201cLonely and sad.\u201d<\/p>\n The exhibition, \u201cSacred\u201d, has pieces scattered around the atrium on the second floor,\u00a0 Modern science, Darwin being a keen example, constructs its wonders on observation and recognizes that it cannot explain what it cannot apprehend. \u00a0Yes, there is lots of inference, electron fields, quantum action at a distance, the brain\/mind link, but about these things we recognize only what we can measure about them, that is, apprehend. There is no other tool.<\/p>\n So, yes, I understand the \u201cSacred\u201d exhibition\u2019s focus on the surface of things, but it will not, cannot touch what causes a man to wear a chasuble or a yarmulke. \u00a0It will not show the Shiva who dances in the heart of the faithful Hindu or the Buddha mind of the adherent inspired by the Thai walking Buddha. \u00a0It will, in this regard, I think, fall several measures short of its mark. \u00a0Too facile, too straight forward. \u00a0A nice try but not bent enough to capture the mysterium tremendum, the awe that comes with the experience of the holy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n Fall \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Harvest Moon<\/p>\n By taking the two moocs focused on modernism I\u2019m trying to increase my grasp of a (Cezanne \u00a0Chestnut Trees at Jas de Bouffan, MIA)<\/p>\n The history of ideas approach of the Modern and Post-Modern has reminded me of modernism\u2019s roots in enlightenment thinkers like Kant, Rousseau, John Lock, Jeremy Bentham and has helped me see how the realist strain in literature, examples being Madam Bovary and especially Woolf\u2019s To the Lighthouse, reflect a similar struggle among novelists.<\/p>\n The rise of science in its current form also begins in the early modern period and I\u2019ll have (Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912)<\/p>\n Both courses have helped me understand the trajectory of painting from impressionism, post-impression, fauvism,\u00a0expressionism,\u00a0cubism to abstraction and beyond. \u00a0Painters tried to make painting obvious in paintings in the same way that poets tried to make the creation of poetry obvious in the poem itself. \u00a0In this sense modern art has a meta-artistic overlay in which the painting reveals its two-dimensionality and its painterly conceits just as modern poetry highlights itself as written, pointing a finger through the subject matter and form back to the poem itself.<\/p>\n Here is a William Carlos Williams poem in which the writer struggles out loud with the William Carlos Williams<\/strong>, \u201cPortrait of a Lady\u201d (first published in the\u00a0Dial, August 1920) <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Fall \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Harvest Moon<\/p>\n This scroll painting reads from right to left (here top to bottom). \u00a0I could not find images of equivalent sizes. \u00a0Why I wanted to show this, one of this week\u2019s objects on\u00a082nd and Fifth<\/a>, is its rendering of a Daoist perspective on life.<\/p>\n It begins with the temple barely visible at the far right, a vantage point from which the rest of the landscape can be seen. \u00a0As the eye moves along the landscape (a life passing), it comes finally to the end where the mountains disappear into mist, emptiness. \u00a0We come from emptiness and we return to it. \u00a0We have the time in between shown on this scroll.<\/p>\n Some art historical material from the Met\u2019s website\u00a0is below.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe Daoist adept Fang Congyi \u00a0(ca. 1301\u2013after 1378) was active in the Upper Purity Temple \u00a0\u00a0at Mount Longhu (Dragon Tiger Mountain), Jiangxi Province, the center of the Zhengyi (Orthodox Unity) order. His mystical\u00a0Cloudy Mountains<\/em>\u00a0diverges from the more restrained style of most Yuan literati, transforming a mountain range into a writhing dragon vein of energy that uncoils out of the distance only to vanish into a misty void. The Longhu area was described by Fang\u2019s contemporary Song Lian (1310\u20131381) as the\u00a0capital of the immortals<\/em>. The desire to find one\u2019s destiny in this realm was the driving force behind Daoist thought and art.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFang Congyi\u2026imbued with Daoist mysticism, \u2026 painted landscapes that \u201cturned the shapeless into shapes and returned things that have shapes to the shapeless.\u201d”<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to Daoist geomantic beliefs, a powerful life energy pulsates through mountain ranges and watercourses in patterns known as longmo (dragon veins). In Cloudy Mountains, the painter\u2019s kinetic brushwork, wound up as if in a whirlwind, charges the mountains with an expressive liveliness that defies their physical structure. The great mountain range, weightless and dematerialized, resembles a dragon ascending into the clouds.\u201d<\/p>\n Metropolitan Museum Website<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Beltane \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Early Growth Moon<\/p>\n Does Great Literature Make Us Better? \u00a0NYT article you can find\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve read great literature off and on my whole life, starting probably with War and Peace as A formative experience in my reading life occurred in my sophomore year of college when I took a required English literature class. \u00a0Before taking the class I had given serious thought to majoring in English. \u00a0Then I had whatever his name was for a professor. \u00a0He told me what the books I read in his class meant. \u00a0He also claimed, proudly, to read Time Magazine from cover to cover each week as a form of discipline. \u00a0(That would have been discipline for me, too. \u00a0Punishment.)<\/p>\n Whether he represented English literature professors or not I don\u2019t know, and I suspect (Greuter Seven liberal arts \u00a01605)<\/p>\n [That’s how I ended up in Anthropology and Philosophy for a double major. \u00a0Though I did have almost enough credits for a geography minor and a theater minor. \u00a0The theater credits were almost all in the history of theater, which I found fascinating. \u00a0The geography business came about because I was interested in the Soviet Union and, to a lesser exent then, China.]<\/p>\n Has reading Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Singer, Hesse, Austen, Mann, Kafka and all those others That the liberal arts and reading great literature teaches critical thinking is, I think, established. \u00a0They do this by the comparative method, familiar to students of anthropology and philosophy and literature and theology. \u00a0How does it work? \u00a0In the words of blue book essay tests since time immemorial, you compare and contrast. \u00a0By comparing this culture to that one, or this writer to that one, or this book to that one, or this period of philosophy to that one or this theological perspective to that one, a sensitivity to the variations in argumentation, in problem solving, in abstract analysis becomes second nature.<\/p>\n This sensitivity to the variations does not, I think, breed a more moral person, but it does So, in the end, I don\u2019t believe the case for reading great literature is to be made in its efficacy or lack of it in creating moral sensitivity, but rather in great literature\u2019s broadening of our horizon and in the concomitant deflation of our sense of moral righteousness, perhaps, oddly, the very opposite of creating a more moral person.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Beltane \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Early Growth Moon<\/p>\n Back to the MIA for, believe it or not, my first time since January 20th, the day of my last (I visited my favorite object in the museum today, this Sung Dynasty tea bowl with a real leaf imprinted in the glaze.)<\/p>\n Now I\u2019m part of the public though I do have a small laminated card that reads Honorary Docent. \u00a0It fits snugly between my Medicare and AARP cards. \u00a0One more certification that I\u2019m: OLD.<\/p>\n However. \u00a0Once there I felt at home and realized instantly that though the resignation was (this will be a new favorite when it arrives with the Clark collection.)<\/p>\n With that apprenticeship and its wearying (both from a conducting and researching tours perspectives, but also from a driving perspective) and distracting days of touring behind me, I can now concentrate myself on the art that became important to me over that time, (Harriette Bowdoin \u2013 Morning Shadow and Sunlight)<\/p>\n My key focus will remain in the Asian art, but I love the pre-Raphaelites (take that snobby NYT art critic) and the pre-Renaissance and Renaissance works as well as certain other movements like Symbolism, American Realism and the Ashcan School, surrealism. \u00a0I will need to figure out another way to make my trips into the museum part of a learning program. \u00a0But I know I can do that. \u00a0And I\u2019ll still enjoy going in just to wander around, to visit special exhibitions, see friends.<\/p>\n So, here\u2019s a glass to a new relationship with an old partner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n Beltane \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Early Growth Moon<\/p>\n Saw this show before its final day, June 9th. \u00a0Saw it late, I\u2019ll admit and practically speaking didn\u2019t allow myself time to revisit it. \u00a0But I don\u2019t think I would have gone again anyhow. \u00a0Maybe.<\/p>\n This show focuses on epistemology, how we know what we know, and more specifically on the ways in which elements of contemporary life serve to distort truth, dislodge it, falsify it, It was interesting. \u00a0Which, I realized today, is my general attitude toward contemporary art. \u00a0It\u2019s interesting. \u00a0Shane Carruth, director of Primer and of a recent second film, Upstream Color, talked about his belief that all narrative is veiled at the Walker screening of Upstream Color last month. \u00a0He could have spoken, I think, for Liz Armstrong, saying maybe, all truth is veiled.<\/p>\n (Seung Woo Back \u00a0 \u00a0Real World series)<\/p>\n There were the photos of the Oval Office, accurate, except where they weren\u2019t. \u00a0The boxing gloves made from \u00a0a Leadbelly lp, male hand bones and other materials. \u00a0The curious abstract photographs of surveillance satellites, an artist watching the watchers watching us. \u00a0There were the very well done photographs by Seung Woo Back of a theme park in Seoul that has replicas of Angkor, the Chrysler Building, the Twin Towers, the (Leandro Erlich All interesting. \u00a0Thought provoking. \u00a0A critique of much of our current life. \u00a0All that yes. \u00a0And much of it very well made, technically compelling. \u00a0But my heart did not visit this show. \u00a0My head did. \u00a0And my head played the mind game of puzzling out what critical nuance had just been displayed. \u00a0My head nodded at the violation of the compact between fact and conclusion. \u00a0Yes, I see. \u00a0I get it. \u00a0Oh, well done.<\/p>\n But my heart was not there. \u00a0Just as it is often absent from the work displayed at the Walker. \u00a0I find much of the work at Walker interesting, too. \u00a0Challenging my received assumptions. \u00a0Making my rethink perspectives, yes. \u00a0Introducing me to new vantage points. Yes. \u00a0But lacking that complex of aesthetic finesse, concept and overall presentation that goes beyond my critical faculties and touches me emotionally.<\/p>\n Ed Ruscha comes to mind as one who touches me emotionally. \u00a0Some of Cindy Sherman\u2019s work. \u00a0Much of the modernist era: colorfield painters like Morris Louis and abstract (Ed Ruscha)<\/p>\n This stuff (the Truthiness show), definitely provocative, certainly critical in a helpful way of our time and our ways of thinking, often well made doesn\u2019t do it. \u00a0I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s important for everyone when it comes to art, but it is to me. \u00a0And by that standard this show fails.<\/p>\n Oh, and let me make one other point. \u00a0None of this is even close to new. \u00a0The Sophists bent (Maha Maya \u00a0 Maya the Power of Delusion<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n May 10, 2013<\/p>\n These two tables, Interrogation of the Object and Interrogation of the Interpreter, are a barebones beginning. \u00a0My hope is to create easy to use methods and tools that can deepen and broaden our experience of works of art we want to know better. \u00a0This work grows from my use of\u00a0exegetical\u00a0and hermeneutical techniques applied to ancient literature.<\/p>\n Interrogation of the object<\/p>\n Interrogation of the interpreter<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>Out of It?<\/a><\/h2>\n
<\/a>viewer that stretches at least as far back as the Chauvet Caves, over 30,000 to 32,000 years old. \u00a0Learning how the world looks inside another if you accept (and I do) that art turns the inside view outside.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>What do I get out of it? \u00a0Let me probe a little deeper. \u00a0All those answers above are true, as far as they go, but they don\u2019t get quite as far down as I want to go.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nArt Day<\/a><\/h2>\n
<\/a>\u00a0include art in my life with as much frequency and power as the docent program offered, without its limitations and time constraints. \u00a0I\u2019ve not done well on this.<\/p>\n<\/a>display in a museum, gallery, or public place make a large difference in understanding the work. \u00a0So, today at 10:30 am, I\u2019m going into the Walker to see the new Hopper exhibition. This one focuses on his artistic process through examination of prints. \u00a0While there, I\u2019ll see a couple of other shows, too.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>when our generation dies out, the generation who experienced King, Malcom and that whole era will die out, too. \u00a0That means these characters will pass into history, become captive to interpretation and canonization. \u00a0A certain amount of that has happened already.<\/p>\nHonorary Docent Lost<\/h1>\n
<\/a>absorbing the images and the galleries, felt good\u2013but unfocused, I was unclear as to my purpose for being there.<\/p>\n<\/a>some mostly installed, others not. \u00a0It focuses on surfaces, as an art exhibition must: \u00a0clothing, dance, fluids, walking. \u00a0This is something I\u2019ve learned recently, that the modern was a turn toward keen appreciation of the surface of things, logical since philosophy from Kant on down has hammered away at our inability to see the thing in itself, the real behind our perceptions, leaving us with what our senses bring to us, the surface of things.<\/p>\nWhat Sort of Man Was Fragonard?<\/h1>\n
<\/a>conceptual field: \u00a0enlightenment-neoclassicism-romanticism-modernism-(post-modernism: in parenthesis because in my mind the existence of post-modernism is still in doubt). \u00a0The poetry class has done a great job of revealing the tensions and struggles that poets felt as the world lurched from the end of the 19th century through the fertile period around the turn of the century and on through the Great War. \u00a0It\u2019s heightened my awareness of the moderns experience of fragmentation, the built, the machine driven, the phenomenal as all there is, the quandary between art as it has been and art as it must now be.<\/p>\n<\/a>to wait for another course or book to increase my knowledge there.<\/p>\n<\/a>idea of portraiture, one voice trying for the traditional portrait, the other voice disparaging the effort and its apparent lack of success.<\/p>\n
\nYour thighs are appletrees
\nwhose blossoms touch the sky.
\nWhich sky? The sky
\nwhere Watteau hung a lady\u2019s
\nslipper. Your knees
\nare a southern breeze \u2014 or
\na gust of snow. Agh! what
\nsort of man was Fragonard?
\n\u2013 As if that answered
\nanything. \u2014 Ah, yes. Below
\nthe knees, since the tune
\ndrops that way, it is
\none of those white summer days,
\nthe tall grass of your ankles
\nflickers upon the shore \u2013
\nWhich shore? \u2013
\nthe sand clings to my lips \u2013
\nWhich shore?
\nAgh, petals maybe. How
\nshould I know?
\nWhich shore? Which shore?
\n\u2013 the petals from some hidden
\nappletree \u2014 Which shore?
\nI said petals from an appletree.<\/p>\nFrom Emptiness to Emptiness<\/h1>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nDoes Great Literature Make Us Better?<\/a><\/h2>\n
<\/a>a sophomore or so in high school. \u00a0I\u2019ve also read a lot of not great, but not bad either literature and have even written some myself. \u00a0And, yes, I\u2019ve read some distinctly bad literature, but not on purpose.<\/p>\n<\/a>now that he probably didn\u2019t, but at the time I decided I could do the work of an English major without putting up with anymore of that kind of instruction. \u00a0I would read. \u00a0And I did and I have.<\/p>\n<\/a>made me a better person? \u00a0Hell, I don\u2019t know. \u00a0In the article quoted above I think the writer refers to an argument about liberal arts in general; that is, that studying the liberal arts makes one more able to think critically in a complex world and, therefore, to act with a higher level of moral sensitivity.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0produce a more humble one, a person who, if they\u2019ve paid attention, knows that this solution or that one is not necessarily true or right, but, rather is most likely one among many. \u00a0This humility does not cancel out conviction or commitment, rather it positions both in the larger reality of human difference.<\/p>\nNo Longer Part of the Club<\/a><\/h2>\n
<\/a>terra cotta warrior tour. \u00a0Partly inertia, mostly distancing myself during a time of decision about my future with the museum. \u00a0I felt strange. \u00a0No easy parking. \u00a0No badge. No task. \u00a0Having to stand in line for a ticket I acquired with my membership card. \u00a0Plus there was a sense of no longer belonging, as if an invisible protective shield had been stripped away. \u00a0Which, in a way, it had. \u00a0No badge means no magnetic access to the hallways and rooms not accessible to the public.<\/p>\n<\/a>an end, that it is (I know this is a cliche) a beginning, too. \u00a0It is a beginning in this regard. \u00a0I have served a 12 year apprenticeship concerning the objects in this museum, in how to conduct art historical research and in how to share that research with the public. \u00a0There has been, too, education in areas broader than this particular museum and increased self education on matters artistic, historical and cultural relating to the world of art.<\/p>\n<\/a>in particular the Asian collection, certain periods of European and American painting and the world of contemporary art.<\/p>\nArt in the Age of Truthiness<\/a><\/h2>\n
<\/a>cover it up, play with it, even invent it.<\/p>\n<\/a>Brooklyn Bridge. \u00a0That long truck displayed in the dark, filled with ominous tanks and boxes and cargo containers. \u00a0The photographs of the installation of eerily human sculptures forcing us to pick out the people from the sculpture. \u00a0And the frames of famous paintings displayed from the rear. \u00a0Intellectual and physical sleight of hand.<\/p>\n
\nStuck Elevator<\/em>, 2011)<\/p>\n<\/a>colorists like Mark Rothko both punch right through my interesting wall and put a finger or two into vulnerable queasy spots. \u00a0A lot of Warhol does, too. \u00a0Probably could come up with more if I belabored it, but you get the point.<\/p>\n<\/a>truth and perception in classical Athens. \u00a0Hinduism sees the whole world as Maya, illusion. \u00a0Buddhism says it\u2019s our sense perception that entangles us in samsara. \u00a0Trompe l\u2019oiel painting. \u00a0Even, if you stop to consider it, perspective and the tradition of so-called realism.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n Edward Hopper\u2019s, Nighthawks,<\/strong>The Chicago Institute of Art<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/a><\/td>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n What is it?<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/td>\n \u00a0<\/em>A painting\u00a0<\/em>Nighthawks<\/em>,\u00a01942 Oil on canvas
\n84.1 x 152.4 cm (33 1\/8 x 60 in.)
\ns.l.r. Edward Hopper<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Who made it?<\/strong><\/td>\n Edward Hopper<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Has it been altered?<\/strong><\/td>\n No<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n When was it made?<\/strong><\/td>\n 1942<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0 historical moment (+&-)<\/strong><\/td>\n WWII just underway, the Great Depression still effecting the nation.<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0 culturepast\/present\/fut<\/strong><\/td>\n Immediate past:\u00a0 the Great Depression and its strain on American life.\u00a0 The fall of the Weimar Republic.\u00a0 The rise of Hitler.Present:\u00a0 US fighting a two-front war and war measures creating restrictionsFuture:\u00a0 Post WWII building, re-entry of American troops,<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n social context<\/strong><\/td>\n Hopper an East Coast artist, has had a MOMA retrospective in 1933 where his work is questioned as insufficiently modern to be on display there.\u00a0 1942 second half of his career.\u00a0 Themes of loneliness and detachment predominant.<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Class<\/strong><\/td>\n Hopper, continuing in the Ashcan\/American realist tradition, paints scenes of everyday life, focused more on working class America.<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Role of art<\/strong><\/td>\n Hopper said, in 1933, \u201cMy aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription of my most intimate impressions of nature.\u201d\u00a0 Note that Hopper worked in the midst of the rise of abstract expressionism and was, in 1942, considered reactionary.<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n where was it made?<\/strong><\/td>\n Probably in his Washington Square studio, Greenwich Village<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 nation, region, city<\/strong><\/td>\n US, East Coast, New York City<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 geography<\/strong><\/td>\n An island on the coast of the Atlantic in North America<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 by native or emigrant<\/strong><\/td>\n A Native<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Why was it made?<\/strong><\/td>\n Hopper said of it, \u201cNighthawks\u201d has more to do with the possibility of predators in the night than with loneliness.\u00a0\u00a0 Levin, Gail.\u00a0Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Knopf, 1995; Rizzoli Books, 2007)<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n How was it made?<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 From what?<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With What?<\/strong><\/td>\n Oils on canvas<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n What are its colleagues and allies<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 its predecessors<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 its successors<\/strong><\/td>\n Hopper worked in the tradition of American objective painting begun by artists like Winslow Homer, JS Copley and Eakins, continued in the Ashcan school and American Realism.\u00a0 Andrew Wyeth\u2019s work follows him.\u00a0 Also, in a 1964 retrospective at the Whitney Pop and Photo-Realist artists hailed Hopper as the forefather of a new avant-garde.<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n How has it been interpreted?<\/strong><\/td>\n Like much of Hopper\u2019s work the themes of loneliness and detachment, or alienation, seem to predominant but that is, in part,\u00a0 a function of his approach to painting, his detached observational style and his use of light, a result of his trips to Paris in the early 20th<\/sup> century and his exposure there to the Impressionists.\u00a0 He has, according to the Met\u2019s Geldzahler\u2019s essay, too, a clarity of composition like Poussin, David and Cezanne.\u00a0 This leads to a tension between the intimacy of the subject matter and the calculated, concealed geometry.\u00a0 This according to Geldzahler is what creates the stillness and isolation.<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 history of interpretation <\/strong><\/td>\n It has gone through many seasons of interpretation and re-interpretation by various artists from the Simpsons to Red Grooms, Nighthawk\u2019s Revisted: \u00a0 <\/a>Hopper is the man seated second at the diner.It was also reinterpreted in this piece you\u2019ve all seen before:I have a book that I\u2019ve only begun to read, Staying Up Much Too Late, written by Gordon Theisen.\u00a0 It\u2019s subtitle is The Darkside of the American Psyche.\u00a0 This book focuses on interpretation of Nighthawks as a cultural artifact.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a quote from the dust jacket:\u00a0 \u201cWe live in the loneliest country on earth, Theisen tells us, and his darkly vivid language, like Hopper\u2019s brushwork, renders it with deadpan accuracy.\u201d\u00a0 John Vernon, author of a Book of Reasons.<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n \n\n
\n What do I bring to the work?<\/em>\u00a0 Existentialism has been my north star since early college.\u00a0 When I come to Hopper\u2019s paintings, the sense of isolation and social distancing existentialism posits comes alive on canvas for me.\u00a0 Thus, to the extent that this does not match Hopper\u2019s intent, this is a bias about which I have to be aware.Nighthawks in particular plays on a sense of the city and, especially, the city at night, late night as the metaphorical equivalent of existentialist thought.\u00a0 It\u2019s bleakness and the geometric convergence on the cash register suggest to me a critique of the city as marketplace and, in fact, as community.\u00a0 In addition, the viewpoint, from outside the diner looking in, suggests a Nighthawk, a predator seeking prey.\u00a0 Hopper himself points toward this interpretation.<\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0 -received interpretation<\/em>\u00a0 I believe my understanding described above reflects a fairly common interpretation of Nighthawks and of Hopper\u2019s work in general.\u00a0 And, in that sense, of course, Hopper\u2019s intent is of little moment.\u00a0 The question of the relationship between the artist\u2019s intent and a viewer\u2019s interpretation, reaction to a work is a fascinating question that requires more space than available here.<\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u00a0\u00a0 -history with the work\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>Until I began probing Nighthawks for this project, I knew it only in the way I know American Gothic or Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.\u00a0 A familiar work, one that fits that overused word, iconic.\u00a0 It crystallizes on canvas a noir experience present in the film noir works featuring Humphrey Bogart, Orson Welles.\u00a0 Such films as Sunset Boulevard, Touch of Evil, the Maltese Falcon.\u00a0 In that sense it seems to locate itself in the late 1930\u2019s, early 1940\u2019s, which is, in fact, when it was made.<\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n