“Serious art is born from serious play.” 

― Julia Cameron,

 The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

James Rosenquist/F 111

Click on the arrow to view/from you tube

There has been such high interest in the James Rosenquist article that I wrote earlier I thought I would add some additional information for those of you who are interested in the artist and the man. This is a you tube clip about the F 111 fighter plane that he painted.  I enjoyed listening to it myself...thought I had seen the painting before I had never listened to a thorough explanation of its meaning. It is quite interesting.  I love researching these articles I learn so much along the way to share with you.  It is an exceedingly large paining made up of many canvases,  84 feet long.  Only certain museums can show the piece because it is so large.  Here is an except from the MOMA article on its showing. 


 "James Rosenquist began to paint the 86-foot-long F-111 in 1964, in the middle of one of this country’s most turbulent decades. Inspired by advertising billboards and by earlier mural-scaled paintings, such as Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, he designed its 23 panels to wrap around the four walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery at 4 East 77th Street in Manhattan, where it would be displayed the following year. Rosenquist took as his subject the F-111 fighter bomber plane, the newest, most technologically advanced weapon in development at the time, and positioned it, as he later explained, “flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising.” Its jumps of scale, collage-like juxtaposition of fragments of imagery, and gloriously vivid palette exemplify the style that defines Rosenquist’s singular contribution to Pop art in the United States"

The Many Faces of Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh  


This is another you tube morphing that I ran across today that I thought you all might enjoy.  All of his self portraits morphed into a continual sequence.  
It is interesting, as long as I taught young children art, Vincent remained an all time favorite.  I am not sure all of the things that appealed to the children...the bright colors, the movement and bold brush work I know were some of the things that drew them, but I think it was much more than that.  I think they sensed a vulnerableness and a needing that he could not fulfill.  Children want to reach out and heal things, they have an innate compassion.  Adults may change them or the world...but we would hope not.  


Click on the arrow on Van Gogh's face and the video will start. Enjoy.

500 Years of Women in the Arts

Lets Celebrate Women in the Arts!!!!

While we are in the midst of a time that women's rights are being threatened I thought it best to take out time to honor women in the arts.  This is an interesting site on you tube several art videos that morph the subject matter.  If click on the arrow on her face it will start the video of 500 years of women in art.
I think it is time to honor some women artists on the site also, for their fight to be noticed in a male dominated art world has been a long and difficult one.  Museums and galleries often differ to male artist believing that might sell better or have more prestige.  Attitudes have been changing, but not nearly enough.  Many women have led the way....and groups like the gorilla girls that have called attention to the inequities, but there is much more to do.  So on this site we will highlight women artist in history and present day on a regular basis.  

Quotes on Art by James Rosenquist

+ I was probably born with the ability to draw, but that does not make you an artist.

+ People say I use my billboard technique to make art. Baloney! I used my art technique to paint billboards.

+ It's all autobiographical, everything is, all of it.

+ If you are close to it, a big painting is just a feeling around you, that's all.

+ Whenever I got a new studio I made the largest possible painting, and since the ceiling was low, the painting became horizontal. As I changed studios and got larger spaces, I made bigger paintings.

+ It all has meaning to me. As I explain my paintings, I hope that they get away from me, that the idea takes off and has a life of its own.

+ I tell young people that the greatest paintings in museums are made with minerals mixed in oil schmeared on cloth with the hair from the back of a pig's ear. It's that simple.

More Art Sites for Artists, Art Advocates, Teachers, and art lovers

GOOGLE IMAGE PHOTO

CONNECTIONS TO A WOLRD OF ART

All of the sites are clickable, but will also be added to the art resources column to the right on our blog for you easy access.

National Gallery of Art
Museum of Computer Art
Western States Art league 
Art History Resources
California Arts Initiative
Australian Art Resources
One Art World

Great New Art Sites You Will Love, Check them out!

photo form google image

I am updating our resources columns with new sites I have come across recently.  Listed below are the sites and if you click on them they will take you to the link.  I have also added them to the resources column for easy access for you at any time.  Just book mark our site, rabbitsmoonstudio.blogspot.com  or list under favorites and these resources will be already organized for you.


Artcylopedia     An encyclopedia of artists, art work, art movements and styles   
                          
Arts Map           A map that locates museums, art       schools and other art related places 
                         
Masterpieces/Virtual Museum   A Virtual Museum of Masterpieces   
  
Art Babble        Often called the You tube of the art world   
                                
Wooster Collective   A collective of outdoor art sculptures and installations  around the world.                 

Virtual Website of the Sistine Chapel

Here is a website I think you might all like that was forwarded to me by a friend and fellow artist.  It is a virtual site of the Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.  You can visit it as if you were there and scroll around the room and ceilings.  Enjoy.  Click on the word Sistine Chapel and it will take you to the site.

detail of ceiling 

CINDY SHERMAN RETROSPECTIVE COMING TO MOMA!

Mother as Coffee Table

 I can hardly wait for Moma's new retrospective of Cindy Sherman's  work, it should be awesome. I first saw Cindy Sherman's photography at the Women's Museum of Art in Washington D.C.  I couldn't help but laugh.  She has a wonderful wacky sense of humor, besides a mind of artistic genius.   I was enamored with her portraits of herself capturing historical figures and movie stars.  However, one of the funniest pieces I have seen her do is when she decided she would do a coffee table book and she literally used her Mother as the coffee table base with a sheet of glass on her back!  It was so ridiculous it was brilliant.  I wondered how she had talked her Mother in to doing that photo where she would not look glamorous to say the least and then I thought if I had ask my Mom to do the same she would have....with great glee in her eyes.  I think Cindy's Mother must have been like that, a bit daring and up for the game.

Historical Figures in Art

For people who don't think they will do well in art because of things they couldn't do well at first, and for art teacher's to remember to have faith in your students efforts and work-for we do not know where it will lead them ...read this section from the Bread and Butter Magazine with quotes from Cindy Sherman about her early beginnings....

"Though primarily a photographer/film-maker now, her attraction to painting began early in her life; as a school-aged child she often created drawings and paintings. In fact, contrary to what one might assume, photography did not even come naturally to her; in the early Seventies Sherman actually failed her first undergraduate course in photography. She also has claimed that she never did well in Art History where she had problems memorizing names and dates. (note 5) Downplaying her art-historical savvy, she’s said,

I’m illiterate in the historical, classic knowledge of photography, the stuff teachers attempted to bore into my head, which I resisted. The way I’ve always tried to cull information from older art and put it into my work is that I view it all anonymously, on a visceral level. (note 6)

She really blossomed artistically after graduating and moving to Manhattan. In 1983, she recalled a pivotal, painting-related inspiration for her unique approach to photography: “I had all this make-up. I just wanted to see how transformed I could look. It was like painting in a way.” 

One of the things as artists and teachers of the arts that we have to get past is the idea of failure...like a big red X on your paper that glares at you.  Learning is not one attempt or two, it is a series of ways we try something, experiment and decide where to go from there.  I have begun to realize there really is no such thing as failure...we only stop trying.  Basically it is no more that something we decided should happen or might didn't....then we create something else or find a new way to think about things.  My how the world changed we man accepted it was not flat, or that there was such a thing as gravity...or though Einstein failed math he could still become a brilliant mathematician and scientist.  

Clicking on highlighted areas will link you to other sites and information.

Hello Iraq!

Modern Art from Iraq

This is a first time visit to our site from Iraq!  We are so happy to have you and look forward to learning more about your artists and culture.

German Expressionism/Series on German Art Movements

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM
(where ever a word is highlighted in dark orange it is a clickable link to take to more in depth information)

When I looked up quotes from German Artists recently I read a bit further and was amazed by the breadth of the German Art Movements.  I decided I would do more research and do a series of articles about the different movements.
I chose to begin with Expressionism only because it has always fascinated me through the years. There will be a series of links available to you throughout the series, when you see a highlighted word click on it and it will lead you to more in depth information about that subject or person. My major was not art history in college, but as all art students I did take course work.  The professor taught by memorization not interest...with a poor memory and a fascinating subject presented in a boring manor I did not excel.  I took art history again on a graduate level with art history graduate students...though I was not one....and made A's because of a wonderful professor and art history presented in an interesting way with stories of artist lives, why art movements happened and how they were connected to the times and events they happened in.  And from there on I decided that is how I would teach art history to young children, they would learn about the artists and their life, they would learn about the time period, the culture, the foods, the clothes and why the artist did art the way he or she did....Most often art does not stand alone from a time period it is connected to. It is what is happening in the world, and in a society that influence the creators and thinkers of a given time or era..... that is when art movements are formed...so we begin with German born movement of Expressionism.

War and hard economic times scar people and effect the society in which they happen.  Such it was with German Expressionism.  The movement is born out of these times when people felt badly about the world they lived in and the harshness of what they experienced and saw around them.  Artists are the conduits, the absorbers, the sponges of this universe of feelings and emotions.  The frustration often becomes an explosion of paint, sculpture, dance, music and film.  Angst and a need to express it reflects the artists chaotic creations and philosophies during that time. 
Kandinsky, Marc and Klee among others were formidable  in the German Expressionist Movement.  The expressionist no longer want to show just their impression of things they want to go further and show their feelings expressed in what they are seeing. They were highly influenced by the expressive work of Van Gogh and others.  There were three different separate sub groups within the movement. Expressionism became isolated to Germany because of WWI.   Freud's philosophies and ideas were also very influential for artists and others at the time. Psychoanalysis of the inner world and dreams offers another way for artists of the time to explore their ideas and feelings.  It was cutting edge science at the time, as quantum physics is for us now.  It changed the way people could view themselves in relationship to what they were experiencing and even how they related to each other.  It is in this way we can get a view of why the artists painted what they did, and why they used the images they did.   
Another interesting part of this is that the German Expressionist were ousted by Hitler as degenerative artist.  Many fled to New York and Chicago. And because they did much of the work of the German expressionist is in museums and collections in the United States.
If you go to the MOMA(Museum of Modern Art) you will see they have a website devoted to German Expressionism.  

Paul Klee/Full Moon

Franz Marc/Yellow Cow

Wassily Kandinsky

Moma(Museum of Modern Art) in New York City has a website dedicated to their comprehensive collection of German Expressionism(click for link)

Rabbit's Moon studio: Our World visits this week!

Rabbit's Moon studio: Our World visits this week!: Past week visits, and today so far United States 312 ...

Watch as the we grow durning the day, it is fun

Look and see if you see your country, visit and you will.  It is really fun to watch over a course of a day and what the numbers grow and see what countries check in.  If you post your country today  I will make sure I post it for all to see as well.

United States 42 United Kingdom 17 India 4 Germany 3 Russia 3 Austria 2 Australia 2 United Arab Emirates 1 Latvia 1 Netherlands 1

Our World visits this week!

Past week visits, and today so far United States       312                                                                             312                                                                                     312                                                                                                          Germany 68 United Kingdom 53 Russia 34 France 18 Canada 13 Australia 12 New Zealand 11 Ukraine 10 Hong Kong 9 United States 48 United Kingdom 18 India 4 Germany 3 Austria 2 Australia 2 United Arab Emirates 1 Latvia 1 Netherlands 1 New Zealand 1