ArteAbstract: January 2007

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

A Poem

This poem has been on my mind lately. I don't know why.

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Saturday, January 27, 2007

4 Grams of Trans Fat, 10 Grams of Sugar, and Caffeine from Two Cups of Coffee

Imagine your Krispy Kreme glazed donut amped up on caffeine. Here's the article. Here's the nutritional information on Krispy Kreme's donuts. I think I'm developing an arrhythmia just thinking about it.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Another Hilarious Installment...

at stuffonmycat.com.

Thinker Recovered

From Artinfo.com....

Rodin Thinker Found After Dutch Heist

THE HAGUE, Jan. 22, 2007—A Rodin Thinker, one of seven bronze statues stolen from the garden of the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam last week, was found badly damaged on Jan. 19, police said.

The statue, the only one of the seven yet to be recovered, will be returned to the museum as soon as it is allowed by the authorities conducting the investigation.

Dutch police arrested two men on Jan. 18 in connection with the theft of the statues a day earlier. The thieves smashed through the museum's garden fence with a vehicle Wednesday and ignored iron statues, indicating they may have been after the bronze for their value as metal.

The museum said the statues cannot be sold on the commercial art market as they are well documented. It did not disclose their value.

The museum is in the former home of late U.S. artist and steel heir William Singer.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

ART CLASSIC #1

La Source
by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
c. 1801
Black and white chalk approx. 21 x 15

Click on picture for larger image.

Who knew one could capture so much with black and white chalk on blue-gray paper? Neoclassical artist, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon is a master of chiaroscuro. The more important thing to note about Prud'hon is that he is also a master of "touch." In other words, his hand has an sensitive empathy with the actual texture of the subject so that he can duplicate said texture with a high degree of realism. There are parts of this drawing on the outer edge that fade off into gesture, but the figure herself is positively alive with illusionistic tactility. The light and dark of the chiaroscuro shape her figure accurately, but it is the artist's touch that communicates her flesh. From the tension of her hand touching her face, to the natural roundness of her breasts, to the bending and folding of her belly, the viewer gets the clear picture of female flesh (as distinct from male). It is this delicacy and sensitivity that makes Prud'hon a master draftsman.

Drawing is often relegated to a secondary or minor art form. If you go to a museum, you will see rooms of paintings, but rarely rooms of drawings (unless it is a "special" exhibition). Even less common is seeing drawings NEXT to paintings in a museum (unless a drawing is a study for the finished painting next to it). Perhaps it is because drawing is often in black and white and people prefer color, that it has been condemned to be the "wallflower" of all the two-dimensional art forms. It is more often that colored pieces win the prizes in art competitions (unless it is a drawing competition, specifically). I remember being warned when applying to grad schools to put paintings and not just drawings in my portfolio because reviewers would like to see what I could do with color. I was also advised not to major in drawing because it "led nowhere professionally."

Sadly, my little wallflower is my favorite two-dimensional art form precisely because it is so primary and necessary for improving observational skills. I like black and white drawing because sometimes color obscures the facts about form and light. In fact, one definition of "color" is to "reveal BY covering," thereby making color a deception and a paradox. There is truth and simplicity in black and white. I guess what I love about this image is it reminds me that drawing is, in fact, an art unto itself that deserves recognition as such. It isn't merely something you use as a study for another art form, but it exists for its own sake as an object of beauty to behold and contemplate.

* La Source can be found in the permanent collection at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA.

© Stephanie Lewis, 2007

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Somebody's Not Thinking

Some art thieves made off with seven Rodin bronze statues from a museum in Amsterdam, one of which was The Thinker. Luckily, there are several of these. To make things even more ignorant, the police think they were after the value of the metal--which implies they will be melting them down. I guess they don't want to try their hand at the Black Market Art world, or they have absolutely no clue about the value of these works--or worse yet, don't care.

The Thinker is a timeless piece, to be sure. What I love about Rodin is what a "painterly" sculptor he is, his knowledge of anatomy, and his flexibility in expression of anatomy. When I say he is a "painterly" sculptor, I'm referring to the surface treatment of his sculptures. He doesn't make everything clean and shiny, and even though his work is in hard material, the forms are expressed softly and expressively. These qualities also make his work seem more "animated" and alive. His work looks effortless in terms of anatomy. It looks as though he could sculpt the figure accurately blindfolded. He's also not afraid to keep things loose (such as hair) or distort forms slightly in terms of proportion (usually the terminating points--head, hands, feet). He understands mass, weight, volume, expression, gravity, poetry, and beauty.

The Thinker is positively iconic; but I have preferred many others over this sculpture. One of my favorites is The Kiss, which most people are familiar with. He understands sensuality and eroticism very acutely, and even created wonderful watercolors incorporating these subjects. Besides The Kiss, one of my favorite sensual pieces of Rodin's is The Eternal Idol. While he grasps sensuality and eroticism, tragedy is not lost on him either. The Burghers of Calais shows off his virtuosity with expression and surface treatment and shows the great sadness and resolution of the subject. Finally, he captures personality in an astute and humorous way. One of my favorite portraits is Naked Balzac, a sculpture of the 18th century writer Honore de Balzac .

Passion exudes from Rodin's art. He took the classical idea about the sculpted human figure and made it modern in a way that I personally believe still has no parallel.