THE THINKING MAN'S ART

CONCEPTUAL ART

Conceptual art is just that, it is based on a concept or idea. For many years I was not sure how to define myself or my art until I read about conceptual art. I have always been a teacher and a researcher.  I have loved both and often one generates the other.  I love thinking about how to relay an idea or concept to others.  Though much of my art is done intuitively that only happens when I get to the actual act of putting the material together.

Rene Magritte, Surrealist  

 Actually much research and thought goes into my art, as if I were writing a paper to present, or a class to teach.  I love learning and sharing what I have learned.  Being an art teacher for 37 years I do a good bit of both.  I learned early on the more I researched a lesson or a unit to teach students the more excited I was and the more the enthusiasm carried over to the students.  My research and my act of learning excited them and made them want to investigate and create.  

Ai Weiwei   Chinese Conceptual Artist
 from google image for  educational purposes

For all the years I taught I was an artist before and after, it was essential to me to always do art and share what I made. Working with conceptual art let me go back and forth between my world of teaching and my world of being an artist.  So I learned what I was doing was called Conceptual art and the realm I was working in was Surrealism.  These two areas gave me the path to doing intellect based art.  I could never be nor want to be a representational artist.  
Below are pictures form the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.  The architectural firm that designed the new Dali museum incorporated his interest in the double helix that is often found in his paintings. But the building design only allowed for one helix though.  

Of the last three conceptual art pieces I have done, one was 2 dimensional and two were  3 dimensional assemblage.  Both were created working from a theme for art membership shows at the Morean art center and one for the Dali Museum for a benefit. The piece for the Dali was done with Dali's complete history of Surrealism and his different periods in mind.  The theme was "Liquid Desires" working off many levels of meaning.  I responded with a piece named "Wet Dreams".  Freud's psychological theories were very prominent in the work of the surrealists. And in the piece I entered I included many symbols that would trigger unconscious meaning in the viewers mind. 

details of  assemblage "Wet Dreams"

The present piece I am working on will be conceptual and have multiple levels of meaning as well.  I am beginning with an African head and headdress base and then moving into universal themes and present day issues.  At least that is where my mind is now.  I am working with a sub theme of aphasia in on a personal level and on a universal level of the challenges of communication. The head itself lends one to think of speaking, communication, and reasoning.  African headdress often convey additional meaning in the details of what is woven or sewn or sculpted into the headdress.    Bits and parts of pieces of everyday life, a bit of a metal tag, a piece of cloth, a watch band, bullet casings, and what ever seems of value or to be honored.  It is a part of the celebration of life in the African culture where art is not a separate entity unto itself.  
I have been very interested in the concept of the brain, its function and how the separate parts of the brain can work independently when damaged.  My Mother had a stroke at 90 and had been having small TIA's for a few years before, my Grandmother also had a stroke and had brain damage.  In both cases I was and am intimately involved.  In addition half my career dealt with teaching special education with multiple handicaps and levels of thinking.  How the human brain functions is of great interest to me and I am in awe of how complex an organ it is.  
The piece I am working on now will at some level respond to all of  these issues.  It is still forming in my mind until it begins to form a shape and gel.  How will I work in all the ideas I have in mind and on all the varying levels at this point is still a mystery to me.  I would would like to incorporate a video loop somehow and/or layers of transparencies of images. The pieces below are the beginning of the collection of items I have collected or bought that I will be working with.

Head for designing hats

Antique Gas Mask

Ship building molds

*all highlighted areas are to click for more information

WHAT IS ART?

Cave Paintings of Lascaux     from google

This is worthy of a discussion and has been for as long as man first picked up a stick of charcoal to draw.  From the days of the cave man when drawings of bison and deer were depicted on the walls of caves man has been involved in the act of making things and expression.  The caves of Lascaux, France did not show stiff nor ultra realistic drawing, but drawings that show movement and a knowledge of oneness with nature.
 I am sure there are people today, if these drawings were taken out of context, would call them too fluid, not realistic enough, a limited color pallet and so on. Every period of art, every movement of art has been met with controversy of some kind. From ancient Egypt to Italy, to France, to Asia and the Middle East, culture upon culture, age upon age, the needs and styles of art have changed.

Egyptian side view with frontal eye                     google image

I think another part of this discussion is why does man need to draw or create? Why did the cave man feel the need to pick up a piece of charcoal, mix earth and chalk to recreate their hunts?  One could have just told stories or sung songs.  In some cultures drawings become real things that have a life of their own.  Each culture has a need to create, to reflect upon itself and as our technology has changed so has our art.

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci 
from google image

Artist once were chained to their studios because paints in a tube were yet to come and easels were not portable.  Colors had to be made and ground out, brushes were licked to a point by assistants, and there were periods where anything could become a base for a color, such a mold for green, or mollusks for an intense purple.  Whole villages died due to lead poisoning from the lead in the artists paints and assistants lips were distorted from pointing brushes loaded with lead.
The Greeks came up with perfect proportion, the ideal.  Leonardo dissected bodies to learn the true structure of a human to the risk of his own life.  Math came into play as Renaissance artists wanted a truer since of perspective.
Once the camera was invented there was not the need to record images for the sole sake of representation.  Now artists could take more leeway in interpretation, emotions, and experimentation. The art movement in Paris led us away from stiff dark colors, to emotion, light and movement. Impressionism moves forward with Monet, Renior, Van Gogh, and Degas.  How does the light seem, what is the emotional play through the artist to the subject at hand.  How can I show just the quick look of movement and light?

Monet's Gardens at Giverny, France
from google image

Then came harder times with violence, poverty and war.

Salvador Dali                                                     Surrealistfrom google image

Dadaism was a reflection of a senseless time at the end of WWI that people questioned to the core of their beings the desperation of their times. Science and art often go hand in hand.  As Freud is questioning the meaning of our dreams and symbolism then surfaces art that presents symbols and the nature of the mind. Surrealism was not long to follow, then we begin to question again what perspective truly is as Picasso shows us a multi -dimensional person with the nose to the side and the eye looking forward. 

Picasso                  Cubism   google image

Cubism is born and we look at many things, not just people from a different view. We know objects are three dimensional, so what is realistic and not?  
And now we are at a time when Modern art often has a disconnect with people who view it.  So we must ask ourselves why is that?  What is it about our age and our culture that has produced art that seems is harder for people to understand?  As we are more complicated as a society, as we are more advanced as a civilization, and as our technology rapidly changes...our art reflects us as a people.  Art reflects the confusion of the time, the alienation people feel from a modern world that often leaves them in their wake of rapid change, and changing value systems.  I have oft heard it said that artists are the shaman of their times....we reflect our world back to our culture.  Modern art makes us think, asks us questions that are not simple, and rarely is a representation of the sake of representation.  

Andy Warhol                            Pop Artist

 The need is not there because we have cameras, computers, and the ever expansive flow of data.  As technology expands even further and more things become possible that seem beyond our imagination now...what will artists do with it?  They will create, that is what they do.  They will interpret our world for us when it gets to complicated to comprehend.  They will make us think deeply and help us to see things in a way we never would have.
 Should it always be pretty, should it always be easy, should it always be representational-I would put to you it should not be.  It would be to our detriment if it was.

Robert Rauschenburg      from google image

  Should it be ugly and hard to understand...yes, sometimes for that is how we are as a world and as people.  We would dishonor art to take away artists freedom to think and create, we would diminish art if we demanded artist only copy nature or people realistically and more so we would limit our growth as people and a civilization if we do not encourage our artists to experiment and grow and to envision what can be.
 If Gaudi had never envisioned architecture as if it were fluid and melting instead of angular, if Da Vinci had never dissected the first body, if Buckminister Fuller had never built the geodesic dome, if the cantilevered arch had never been invented, if Van Gogh had never painted starry night, and Michelangelo had never lay on a pallet painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, if Picasso had never painted Guernica protesting the massacre of the Basque in Spain, and Pop art had never pointed out the mass commercialism of our times, the Eiffle tower was never built, and Frank Lloyd Wright had never picked up building blocks....our world would be poorer for it. Look about where ever you are, right now.  Now imagine if there were no art..the walls bare, the architecture non existent, the furniture no imagined, the halls of all the buildings blank..so signs, no nothing, just bare..that is a world with out art.
 I am not an art historian, but I have had many art history courses.  I am open to discussion and correction.  I think we should be open to a fascinating discourse on the arts.  Please feel free to add to the discussion.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ONE OF MY FAVORITE ARTISTS!
AN ARTIST OF SURREAL ART

RENE MAGRITTE  

One of the most interesting things to me in my practice of art is that for a good part of my career I didn't realize I was a surrealist at heart. I love the symbolism, the thought of intellectualism behind the creation  and a meaning that is not obvious or easily come to.  For me art needs to be more than a reflection of an image, it must delve deeper into the soul and the mind to find relevance in my being.  

Wet Dreams

Wet Dreams, Rêves Humides, sueños mojados,влажные сновидения, sogni bagnati,sonhos molhados....That is the title of my piece.

I originally had planned to do a two dimensional piece. The day I walked into the studio I walked past an antique dress form I bought years ago. It was a little more expensive than I had wanted and paid bit by bit until I had paid in full. Then it sat in my studio until I began to work on the piece for the Dali, "Liquid Desires Event". As I walked past, it seemed to call to me. I picked it up, sat it on my studio table and the soft morning light brought out the soft rounded forms of antique cotton and woman's shape. From there I began a ritual I often do for almost all of my creations...I surround myself with possibilities...I try this piece and that, like a puzzle with hundreds of combinations. Then as I work a composition starts, almost like music, it flows, to an upbeat and down, to bass and treble, then each part seems to come together and finally it all seems right and I say aha! There! I see you! And it is then all seems right with my artistic soul.
The photo above is an old image I saved from years ago. I keep a file and when something catches my eye, I keep it, never knowing at the time where it will find its home. The close up is also the pupil of an eye, a double vision that Dali used so often. You also see circles and dots floating thought the piece as a method of unifying the images. I have always loved Dali's painting of his dead brother that is made with a series of dots, and also again in the The Hallucinogenic Toreador

there are dots that begin to transform into other images.On the rear of the Assemblage is an early picture of a Javanese woman from an old 1930's photo almbum I bought at an antique store. The album was filled with photographs of a wealthy man from Miami who evidently traveled the world. Her image is mysterious, looking out at you from the past. She wears a sarong and no top. As you may notice her breast are rounded and circular that repeat again in shape like the circles that transform into her face and then in to black circles.

The black netting has many meanings, like a Spanish woman's mantilla, a fisherman's net, a sexy woman leg hose...but for me it has even more personal meaning-it was my Aunt Josephine's hair net from the 1950's.

This is a close up of a porcelain hand that was originally a glove mold. A close friend bought it for me hoping some day I would use it in art work. On this side of the porcelain hand I had done photo transfers of a crowd scene in Asia. I wanted the repetition of circles, the Asian influence, and the high contrast of black and white. I also wanted the mystic of the past.
On the back side of the dressmakers form the netting does an interesting thing I had not first noticed, it takes the form of a woman's thighs and legs. Sitting above the dress form is an old drawer to a peddle sewing machine. My Mother was an an accomplished seamstress among many of her talents. In another view you will see a close up of the metal and stone artifacts on the sewing drawer which have phallic and sexual references as much of Dali's art does.
The miniature glass bottles refer back to a assemblage art that Dali did with a black coat and shot glasses filled with green alcohol. These were originally a watchmakers collection filled with parts for repairing watches.
Dadaism evolves into Surrealism in a time when the world seemed askew, not unlike the present. Dali, Breton, Duchamp and Giacommeti were influenced by the times that seemed so chaotic and the thinkers of the day. Freud's psychological theories of dreams symbology and sexuality all play into the art that they are creating. If you are interested read more about the revolution of objects and Nadja. This work of art is influenced and gives a nod to these men and their times. I find myself very comfortable in the world of surrealism. As I look back at my art over the years I think I have been a surrealist more often than not.