TURNER HITS THE BIG SCREEN!

Cannes Film Festival

An unlikely film on the life on an artist.  A few films have made it big, like Lust of Life on the the life of Vincent Van Gogh or Frida   on the life of Frida Kahlo, but in general it is difficult to make convincing work of an artist life and his creations. Mike Leigh's new film on the life of JMW Turner, does an excellent job of showing the last 25 years of Turners life.  It is wonderfully detailed and stays very true to the era. Timothy Spall does an excellent job of portraying Turner,  as a stumpy, pug faced, but very confident in his own talent. 

Timothy Spall in film portraying Turner                        from google for education

   I have loved Turner's work for a long time and I am very excited to get to see this film.  I also love films or books that take me back to another time and place.  I think this is a film we can all look forward to as art lovers and appreciators at an independent film theater near you.   Think of an artist life you would like to see in film and who you would like to play them.  Who fascinating you, not only in their work, but their life.  I think I would like to see a movie on Miro's life spanning pre-world war Spain, during WWII and after.

VAN GOGH IN WASHINGTON D.C.

June Langford Berkley and Elizabeth Gordon

June Berkley and Ann Suggs

PHILLIPS COLLECTION(click)      VAN GOGH REPETITIONS
OCTOBER 12-JANUARY 26

The Postman by Van Gogh       google image for education only

The Postman       by Van Gogh              Google image for education only

Here we are outside the Phillips  Collection for the special exhibition Van Gogh's Repetition. It is a wonderful exhibition with several renditions of the same subject in which Van Gogh is studying light, color or composition. It is a wonderful show with supportive note books, letters and drawings.  The Phillips is always a joy, but this makes it even more special.  You can also enjoy a very inclusive gift shop and great coffee.  The book store is carrying the companion book on the exhibit.  I always think these are great values, as they are a limited printing and rarely accessible later.
  
PLEASE TREAT YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY TO A UNIQUE ART COLLECTION AND EXHIBITION.

VAN GOGH IN D.C.

Repetitions/Van Gogh at the Phillips

VAN GOGH

REPETITIONS

OCTOBER 12, 2013 - JANUARY 26, 2014

                                                                                                                                    from google image for educational purposes only

This is a wonderful show!  If you are in the area or planning to travel to Washington D.C. don't miss the Phillips Collection special showing of Repetitions!  More to come….

CAN YOU, AS ONE LONE PERSON, MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Caine's Arcade

  I am increasingly convinced one person can make a difference in this world.  Perhaps it is passion, perhaps it is intent, and perhaps it is by accident, but how we live our lives, how we give to others, is important not only for others, but for ourselves.  And I more convinced with every day that is our purpose on the Earth.  In giving to others, we give to ourselves.  In enriching others, we enrich the community we live in and make it a better place for all of us.

Rosa Parks Sits in the Front of the Bus Shocking
 the Social Order of the  Time

Ai Wei Wei Dissident Chinese Artist

My Students making Matisse Art

Sometimes I think it is quite by accident like the 9 year old boy who loved being creative so much, the pureness of his act effected others nationwide.  To make a cardboard arcade with tape and scrap cardboard boxes, to have the naive idea to sell tickets and have a business at 9 years old.  Or to be so determined to do something no matter how difficult your handicap may be, as in the case of Helen Keller, that you can overcome seemingly unsurmountable odds, that is determination.
 Or to be one lady on a bus who takes a seat in the front of the bus and sets the world on fire, as Rosa Parks did when she challenged the social order of the day.  Or to be Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for years due to his quest to change South Africa's unjust social order.

Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night                from google for education only

  Or to pick up a brush and to dare to paint differently than every artist before you and shock the art world with your brush strokes like Vincent Van Gogh.  And to stand in front of a tank and defy overwhelming force to bring attention to the need for freedom, and one man did in China.

Elizabeth Gordon, Art Advocate in Washington D.C.
Even thought I am a retired teacher I am never a retired
art advocate and artist.

It is my belief that art can change lives and change the world.  I believe so deeply in the power of the arts to effect and enable people I have spent my entire life in art education, art advocacy and in the making of art.  Starting this blog and being intent on posting every day about the value of art in  people's lives is my attempt to make a different. Some blogs have teams of people behind them to help write, organize and post.  This blog is just me, one person sharing, researching, posting, talking and believing.  What ever your passion is, what ever you talent is, what ever your intent is, just put it out there and the universe has a way of supporting you when you do. Good journey, my friends start today, touch someones life, give a little more than you take, be a little kinder, be a little more understanding, be a little more tolerant, and above all believe in yourself and your abilities. Now go forth do good, and make a difference.

Hello Izmir, Turkiye!!!

Merhaba!  It is so good to see you peaking in on the blog.  I have two years of really good memories from Izmir and Turkey.  I was fortunate to see a good part of your lovely country while I was there.  I know it has changed a lot since the 90's, but I will never forget the friendliness of the people and the beauty of your country.  I especially loved all the beautiful architecture and the Turkish folk arts.  
One of my favorite memories is looking out at the lights on the surrounding mountains.  It always reminded me of Van Gogh's Starry Night.  Thank you Izmir, for so many good memories.

Izmir at Night                                    from google image for educational purposes only

NAME YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS OR ART WORK

Lets start the new year naming our favorite artists or art work. 
 I will go first, then you can add yours.

Charles Demuth       Engine Number 5

Rauschenberg  Monogram
Claus Oldenburg  French Fries
Van Gogh        Starry Night
Calder             Circus
Cornell            Everything he did
Monet             Water lilles 
Duchamp         Re Mutt
Dali                 Psychedelic Toreado 
Picasso           Bull with Bicycle Handlebars
Demuth          Engine Number 5
Johns              Orange and Green American Flag

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.

Still Life with Napkins and Apples

Still Life 

This Photo was one of many I was taking around the mountain studio and I had not thought about it turning out particularly well until I was reviewing the photo's on my computer.  There is no enhancing of color, that is the way it looks.  Sometimes by accident you just get a great shot.  I love the richness of color. 

 It made me think about great still life artists of the past.  One I have always loved is Cezanne.  When I was in high school he was the very first artist I choose to study when we were ask to do a still life by our art teacher.  

And then there was Van Gogh's Sunflowers, again I was captivated. The term still life comes from the Dutch Stilleven meaning bits of fruit or flowers.  I also ran across a surprising piece when researching this for the post.  It is a still life done by Carivaggio in 1595.  I had never seen a still life of his before, only his paintings of people with the drama of pain and struggle. This was such a different look from him.  

So on one day for an artist's date as Julia Cameron calls it take out your sketch book or your camera and look for still life shots! Have fun, you just don't know what will turn up.  If you want to share your results here with us at Rabbit's Moon studio we would be honored.

photo by Elizabeth Gordon                                            Asheville Studio

Cezzane                               from google image

Van Gogh Sunflowers               from google image

Monet           Still lire with Melon   from google image

Carivaggio       1595          from google image

A Site You Will Love As Artists and Art Lovers
Look up any artist anytime, pull up visuals of Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Pollack and thousands more....
Arts On Line(click)

How Artist translate complex human emotion in to Art

When we look at these different artists and how they portray grief and sorrow we can see they have achieved it different ways...Color, shape, texture, symbols, and line.  It can be done simply as Noors painting with flat images and a repetition of shape.  Andrey's painting of sorrow uses a realism, but also relies on color in the use of the variety of brown and dark tones.  The third picture relies on composition and line. Artists take our complex emotions and unsaid feelings and say with paint or clay or metal what we cannot say with words.

Sorrow by Noor Naqvi
 from google image

Disconsolate  Sorrow by Kurrenow Andrey
 from google image

Artist Unknown                                     from google image

Vincent Van Gogh                               Old Man Of Sorrow                               from google image

New Van Gogh Biography

I think you will enjoy this.  I watched the CBS interview with Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, the two authors of the new biography on Van Gogh's life.  It took ten years of research and work to bring this book to completion.  There are over 600 books published about Van Gogh, but no one had done a definitive biography of his life before.  Van Gogh only painted ten years of his life and in the last seventy days of his life he painted a painting a day...70 paintings.  When you scroll over the following name, Van Gogh's Biography, it will take you to the films produced by CBS interviewing the two authors of the book.  It is two parts.  I hope you enjoy this, I found it fascinating offering new details and a new understanding of Van Gogh's personality, life details, and mental illness.  He remains one of the most captivating artists in more recent art history.
addendum:there is an interesting sub story about the two authors and their lives, struggles and challenges in writing this story I will add in  another post.  I think you will enjoy knowing the back story as well.

In the Land of Cotton/South USA

Cotton was king

at one time in the Southern economy and then it fell by the wayside to synthetics and soy which became the crop of choice. So much to my surprise as we were heading from Florida up through the center of Georgia we saw fields and fields of cotton growing. Rarely did we see soy growing anywhere, all the fields are back to cotton. So the demand is up, and synthetics must be less preferable.

My Mother picked cotton in the fields of Mississippi when she was a young girl in high school. She told me how difficult it was to learn and how she had to soaked her sore fingers at night after a day of picking. "If you don't pluck the white bowl out just right the surrounding sharp husk prick your fingers badly", she would tell me. Mom was paid 50 cents for a hundred pounds of cotton. It is amazing to think of the back breaking work that it was, and a young thin high school age young woman, out picking and carrying huge bags along with other field hands.

Then came the industrial revolution and now huge machines come by and pick the cotton. However, as you can see in some of the pictures a lot of cotton is left on the stalks left to rot. They roll the cotton up in large yellow bales for market. It is hard to think of cotton and the South without thinking of plantations and slavery. It is hard not to think of the suffering and inhumane treatment of people. There were artists who painted slaves and workers in the fields in the South. There are artists who paint workers world wide in different styles and with different meaning conveyed. I think of Thomas Hart Benton-The Cotton Pickers, Vincent Van Gogh-The Peat Fields, Diego Rivera-The Detroit Industry, Courbet-The Stone Breakers, Munch-Workers on The Way Home and others. Walt Whitman's poems are filled with references to laboring for others. Dorthea Lange's depression era photographs are unforgettable. There is a richness and honesty of man close to the land. There is an on going story of people involved with harvesting, hard work, and struggle-it is an interesting subject for artists of all kinds..from musicians, to actors, to dancers, and visual artists.

The Beauty of the Laborer

Artists have forever found workmen fascinating for painting, sculptures, and murals. Diego Rivera and the Social Realist exalted labor and the laborer in their murals. Van Gogh studied the farm land and the varying play of light illuminating French men and women harvesting hay. Even when I hear Brando's cry, "Stella"!!! (from Tennessee William's play, A Street Car Named Desire). I can see the working class Brandon, muscular, rough and ready. The play was a study in culture clash, and the raw drama riveted our attention to the differences of classes. Thomas Hart Benton highlighted the American worker and labor movement. There is an innate beauty in labor. The sinewed muscles, the stance of the body, the dirt and sweat of wrestling with the land, and the creation that results from the laborers work. The perfect art model!

Red Harvest by Vincent Van Gogh

I have been enamored by construction workers, roofers, yard men, paint

rs, steel workers, and welders for a long time. On the way to work for many years I traveled across a bridge between two cities, one I worked in and one I lived in. My day started early, 7am or so. And my day would often end at 4 or 5pm, taking me across the bridge at the same time most construction trucks were taking workers to their jobs. Men were draped in different poses, half asleep, in open truck beds. The morning light playing on their hard hats, bandanna's, and leather tool belts was beautiful. The grittiness of faces sculpted by hard work and the environment engaging. Some days it rained, or the wind whipped strongly across the bridge, and some days it was ungodly hot with the sun bearing down on the tired workers that often fell asleep before they could get home.

Murals of the Detroit Industry by Diego Rivera

I was waiting in the car for a friend to pick up dry cleaning recently when I noticed construction in process and the workers next door. As we drove in and parked I became fascinated with one worker. His worn hat with its ocean blue hard hat looking a lot like the old twirling world globes we used to have in school. The yellow sticker, that looks like a red cross from afar and his sun scarf protecting his neck that looked very Middle Eastern all drew my attention. His stance is certain and his look of intent on his job was captivating to me. The workmen's jeans giving the Levi American look with chain and keys dangling, all these images screamed, "do art, do art, do something with this!" Everything is utilitarian, a no none sense look. The blue of the hat is repeated in the fire hydrant and the yellow offsets the yellow sticker on his hat. But also the bandanna that looks like a ponytail and the neatly crafted beard and goatee with dapples of light shinning through, all make for the makings of a future art work and the beauty of labor. How it will evolve I do not know, I only know it draws me like a magnate to want to know more, to want to use these images to create. Will it be a sculpture of mixed media or clay, will it be a collage, a print, a painting?....I do not know, nor do I know when my inner artist will say it is time to start this work.

I carry a camera with me at most times and build a visual journal of images. I capture moments of life or nature or just some odd thing I would forget later, but I loved at the moment. If you are an artist you know the call of doing art, your mind says...you can not, not do this...it comes as an urge, then a command. If you ignore it and let it slip away, you feel guilty you did not heed the call and create. An artist often creates because they must!

There are colors that I just love, especially the ones nature and weathering conditions create. The chalky blue of the fire hydrant, the muted hello with a scraffito of marks that seems to be a Earthy hieroglyphics of sort. Think about the world you live in, pay more attention to the details, value the worn and used...do not think of it is garbage or refuse, think of it as tended and messages left behind. Pay attention to the workers and laborers around you...look at how they stand, how they dress, and how their work molds their character. Then go back and look at other artist and how they interpret the nature of work and workers into their art. I welcome any comment or feedback that you may have about what draws your attention, what inspires you to create, and if you have the same feeling that you can not, not do art!

Netherlands/Amsterdam/Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh Museum of Art/Amsterdam

Here is a site you may enjoy as well. It is photos of Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It is difficult to believe Van Gogh produced most of his work in a ten year span and much of that was under duress. Van Gogh is an artist that children love. His vibrant colors, textural painting strokes and visual movement speaks to the mind of a child. Children love bright colors, bold strokes and bursts of movement. My students loved to hear some of the stories of Van Gogh's life. Children have a unique ability to understand and accept that we often lose as adults.

Go to websites of interest column on the far right for clickable version.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Amsterdam,+van+gogh+museum&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=KDmbTo7hK9O2tgeZ0NWBBA&ved=0CIgBELAE&biw=1123&bih=576

THE BEAUTY OF DETAILS

Details interest me. An object or view can catch you attention, but then take a closer look and it becomes a whole other world of shape, color, pattern, and texture. This is a photo is a close up of a drainage spout that pours into a canal in New Orleans. This canal is near one that gave way and flooded the city of New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.

I find such beauty in nature and man made objects worn and changed by use and weather. There are colors that one could not recreate if one tried. There is a vignette of a moment captured by time and light. Later in the day, the water may not flow, the light will change the color of the leaves and mold, the water would reflect differently. The impressionist knew this, they painted light. Monet, Van Gogh, Degas, Manet and others knew this. They studied one field, on crop of trees, or vineyard at different times of day and different season.
The closer I look I see gorgeous red orange dust, silvery green, white, tan, dark greed, blue green and more...I see leaves that look like koi in a Japanese garden, the edges of the spout take on a feeling of a shell. Now I am feeling as if on the edge of a tidal pool looking down.
As I back away I see a delicate sculpture that speaks to me of Henry Moore and Nancy Graves.

I begin to see the possibilities in my own work, the what ifs. There is such beauty in this world if you take time to look, even in a drainage canal in New Orleans! Look around you, look down, now slow down and look closer. What do you see?