Inspiration or Competition: Artists Living Together

Eat up this great art discussion on The Connection . As you can tell, I listen to the radio while working in my studio. I am quite addicted to public radio. This art discussion kept me awake listening one night. Originally about Painters and Partners, the discussion beautifully rambled into aspects of art and life that artists love to discuss when they are not in their studio or dealing with the intricacies of family life. Guest painters, Selina Trieff and Robert Henry, had the same teachers, Hans Hofmann and Mark Rothko. They have been married since 1955 and have produced excellent bodies of works on canvas and paper, as well as two children. If you are keeping a list of artist that are good role models, add them to your list.

Freedom and commitment. Their commitment, both to art and to their relationship, was a strong theme. One caller commented on the wonderful freedom that artists have to be themselves, to know themselves, and to figure it out. Both described painting as a personal search. Selina's advice to young artists summed this up. "The process will give you strength."

While both do figurative and abstract work, their paintings are very different, reflecting their unique personalities. Follow the link to find images.

Drawing

Peter Steinhart discussed his new book, The Undressed Art: Why We Draw with Lynn Neary on Talk of the Nation. Is drawing a form of meditation? Artists display heightened forebrain activity when they are deep in concentration. Scientists have measured brain activity that is similar to that emitted during Buddhist meditation. Those who draw, however, experience an enhanced sense of space.

The answer to "Why we draw?" remains complex. It does not have much to do with earning money, for the book reports on drawing clubs where groups of people gather to draw from a model. Most of the drawings are considered failures by the artists. Most go into the garbage. Few people display figure sketches in their homes. Steinhart describes artists who draw as having the ability to envision their future efforts as fruitful while finding fault with their current products. Steinhart calls drawing a haunting obsession.

There were many questions from listeners about talent. While Steinhart expressed the view that drawing is a skill that can be learned, the answers to callers nuianced variations of the talent question suggested a need for talent. How would we answer those questions if our society held the ability to draw in the same category as the ability to read? What if we spent as much time and resources teaching children and adolescents to draw as we do teaching them to read? What if we had remedial drawing teachers? Then, maybe, we could truly answer some of the listeners questions.

Anna Quindlen who has had successful careers as both a journalist and a novelist talks about the writing process on To the Best of Our Knowledge. The author of the novel Blessings said that she can write for seven hours at a stretch, but not when working on novels. The reasons? After a number of pages, the characters a writer creates in her head become more real than people she passes on the street. She can also write a real news story using her notes when she becomes stuck and keep going. After several hours work on a novel, however, the creative ghosts dry up. Writing novels is also difficult because the gap between the ideal and the real glares at you once the writing has begun.

Night Owls

On July 19, 2004, Neal Conan’s guest on Talk of the Nation discussed sleep chemistry and how some writer’s use this chemistry to their advantage. Christopher Dewdney, author of Aquainted with the Night: Excursion Through the World After Dark described the phenomenal chemical changes that occur within the body overnight. At approximately 10 or 11 p.m., the body secretes a chemical that induces sleepiness. Another chemical slows kidney activity. As morning nears, the body produces a chemical that begins to wake you up, just like caffeine. A fine arts metal smith called the show and described her night owl work habits. She reported that she works through the night until 5 a.m., sleeps, and then wakes refreshed at 9 a.m. Her mother, also a creative soul, has a similar routine. Her father and sisters, however, do not share this pattern and are not as creative. She asked whether sleep patterns corresponded with creative personality traits. Dudney replied that he found no evidence to connect sleep patterns to right brain or left brain activity. However, If you resist the urge to sleep at 10 or 11 p.m., you enter a stage of very clear mental lucidity that lasts until 1 or 2 a.m. Many writers do good work during this lucid period. (In the book, he does point out that sleep deprivation can ruin one's long-term health.)

The discussion went on to cover moonbows and a fatal nightmare syndrome found in Hmong and Philippine populations. The discussion was sprinkled with poetry and prose about the night.

More on Gauguin

Holland Cotter reviewed the ''Gauguin Tahiti'' exhibit in the New York
Times on Friday, March 5, 2004. His article, "Gauguin's Paradise: Only Part Tahitian And All a Fantasy" continues the schizophrenic look at Gauguin's life and art. "Dreadful man" and potent visual artist. To understand Gauguin the bully and opportunist, he suggests reading Nancy Mowll Mathews's ''Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life,'' published by Yale University in 2001.

Although Gauguin painted an illusion of a Tahiti that did not exist, Cotter praises his use of color, rhythm, originality, and his ability to portray deep mysteries. The show is a must see. Cotter's descriptions are lush.

Cotter also disects Gauguin as a questing hero. To understand questing heroes, he calls upon the historian Alison Goddard Elliott who wrote ''Roads to Paradise: Reading the Lives of the Early Saints''. Purity of heart is the one pure thing they quest, according to Elliot. Cotter concludes, "Gauguin's desire was greedy and promiscuous. He wanted Eden plus everything else, including love, fame and art. Impossible."

Response from Elizabeth Childs

Wednesday, March 10, 2004 12:45 PM
To : chrisyocca@hotmail.com

Hi! Just read your blog!
Wanted to respond to your characterization of my comments on The
Connection. What I objected to in that caller's remarks was the
judgement that he "left his wife and family" and was so immoral and was
"just off to have a good time," in the caller's words. What I was
suggesting was that his leaving Europe shouldn't be seen through 21st
century lenses of what constitutes family, and that the pattern of an
adult leaving the family and children to go off and pursue a
career/calling was common in his class (lower middle class) in France,
and even in his family (look at his own mother and grandmother), and he
shouldn't be so judged for that. I was trying to suggest we see his
biography in more historical than mythic terms. I don't think I ever
said "just look at the work." I also agree we wouldn't have the work,
had he not lived his life that way. I was trying to say, let's also look
at that notorious and legendary life more from a 19th century
perspective.
Anyway, thanks for the blog!
Liz Childs

Heart of Italy: Fiber Workshop and Mountain and Sea Tour

Study shibori dyeing methods in the medieval Apenine village of Santo Stephano. Visit with local artisans, including weavers working on ancient looms. Tour the mountains, L'Aquilla, and Rocca Calascio. Travel to the Adriatic and the Vasto Artist and Writer's Retreat. Tour the gorgeous Tremiti Isles. Our tour guide, Luigi Monteferrante, is a Canadian author of At the Hearth of the Devil's Lair. He visited the home of his ancestral roots and decided to stay.

The dates are July 26 - August 5, 2004.

Contact me via email (chrisyocca@hotmail.com) for more information.

Dick Gordon of The Connection described Paul Gauguin as a painter and philosopher in search of paradise. A new exhibit of Gauguin's Tahitian work opened at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Images of the work are available on both sites.

When a caller asked about Gauguin's abandonment of his wife and family to live and paint in Tahiti, the art historian, Elizabeth Childs, did not want to judge the life of Gaughin, only his work. Mario Vargas Llosa, author of "The Way to Paradise" based on Gauguin's life, however, put Gauguin's romantic ideal in perspective. Gauguin believed that as an artist he was above ordinary mores that applied to other people. This idea was part of the Romantic notion of "genuis" that sprang up during the 19th century. This romantic ideal continues to influence artists and writers today, so it should not be swept under the rug. According to this myth, a genius (males need only apply in the 19th century) can act in ways often taboo for the ordinary citizen. This can become an excuse for self destructive or hurtful behavior.

OK, so Gauguin's life is not one to emulate, but his mysterious art, a product of his life and spiritual quest could not have been made on any other path.

George Shackleford, chair of the Art of Europe and co-curator of Gauguin Tahiti was also a guest on the show.

See Griselda Pollack's work for a feminist critique of Gauguin. I'm still looking for a link to her book.

For news on artist workshops in Italy, check out Vasto Writers & Artists Retreat. Overlooking the Adriatic, Vasto is an ancient Roman City in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Italy’s rustic heart. Many cuisine writers praise the wholesome, traditional cuisine of Abruzzo. According to Luigi Monteferrante a founder of the retreat, "Abruzzo is truly set on becoming the next big thing what with Tuscany and Umbria now having been done by everybody... and if we don't have Chianti we have Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Trebbiano d'Abruzzo and Cerasuolo."

Rachel Citrino, an internationally exhibited artist whose work is rooted in the landscape form, will lead a painting workshop at the retreat.

I am planning a fiber artist workshop in a preserved medieval mountain village one and a half hours from Rome. Quilters, wearable artists, and other fabric lovers will explore shibori dying techniques and meet practicing artisans in the town. We will go from mountains to sea, ending our excursion at the Vasto Writers and Artists Retreat.

For more links to sites that emphasize spirituality and dreams check out the-Insight.com - spirituality/dreams. Their list of links will be up and running soon.

Anya Gallaccio's installation at Tate Britain landscape art is reviewed by Simon Schama in the Guardian.

Here is an excerpt, "Landscape art was born out of the tension between the universal and the local. Its first masters - Joachim Patinir and Pieter Bruegel the Elder - limned the earth as if born aloft on angels' wings, offering to man a glimpse of the godly view."

This rundown on the history of landscape art includes the ideas of landscape art as possession, the gaze from the courtly window, the Romantic gaze from the bohemian country house, and the liberation of natural space from both frame and fence of the latter half of the 20th century.

The review praises Anya Gallaccio's intelligent and unpredictable installations. One is a glade of 200-year-old oak trunks. Oak was the wood that built the powerful imperial navy of the 18th century and helped Britain accumulate wealth, even the wealth that built the gallery housing Gallaccio's art. As nature reclaims it territory in this gallery, Schama concludes, "the seven trees stand as a solemn grove of memory."

The No Sweat Myth: All great artists (or all geniuses) create effortlessly, without sweat.

This myth arose during the Renaissance before our modern idea of genius fully hatched, according to Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist... by Christine Battersby. A new class of painters and sculptors developed. These artists, generally men from well-to-do families, wanted to distance themselves from lower classes and from the craftsmen. They wished to convey that they were above manual labor and, hence, did not sweat. The idea that a good creator works with no sweat is an elitist, outdated, and untrue notion. An artist's sweat may be true physical sweat or the sweat of making many creative decisions. A writer or painter who struggles through many creative decisions can be exhausted after several hours of work. Experienced creators working at a deep level who do not relying on formulaic solutions often feel this exhaustion. There is no guarantee that creating will become effortless for anyone. There is no guarantee that one day of easy, creative flow will lead to another day of working in flow. Working consistently will lead to better work. It may not lead to easier work. You cannot control whether creating will become easier for you. So let go of this myth. You can, however, control your working schedule and make time to create consistently.

Christine Battersby's book is called Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics

Fiberarts Links

Anne Copeland provides a thorough list of fiberarts links. The links include career development, quilt appraisal, creativity coaching and quilting in general. Great resources for fiberartists and other artists!

There Is Always More To Do

Artists are always confronted with the urgency that there is always more to do. This feeling is the artist's double edged sword. The "always more to do" can add to our anxiety or our feeling that we are not good enough; still, it keeps us going in this endeavor; we are never bored with our art.

In an interview with John Freeman, John Updike, now 71 years old says,

"There's the fear that somehow you neglected to say what was really yours to say," "It's not likely. I've written a lot. I must have somewhere touched on almost every aspect of my life and experience. Nevertheless, there's this haunting fear that the thing you left out is going to be finally captured."

In Updike's new novel, Seek My Face, characters are based loosely on Lee Krasner and not at all loosely on Jackson Pollock. The novel's main conflict, however, is the jealousy, fascination, and bond between Hope Chafetz, a 79-year-old arthritic painter, who led a bohemian life during the "go-go" days of Abstract Expressionism and the young art historian, Kathryn D'Angelo, who interviews Hope. Kathryn while lacking an exciting life, has all the assets of youth. As in many of Updikes previous novels, This novel explores New England Puritanism along with the pleasures of the taboo.

Updike has been criticized for writing so blatantly about Pollock and rewriting art history. Updike handles the criticism gravely, by explaining that he did credit the biography and that he "saw the facts as the flowerpot out of which something surprising would grow." In a lighter tone he jests, "Thankfully,...these things come out after the type has been set."

Timeline of Iraq's Cultural Destruction

A list of articles related to the cultural looting is at lootinginfo.blogspot.com

Humor Break

Doonesbury has a fresh take on the looting.

Rosalind Franklin

In ''Secret of Photo 51,'' Nova celebrates the 50th anniversary of James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA by by giving attention to Rosa Franklin's contribution. Franklin's X-ray photo provided the evidence Watson and Crick lacked about the molecule's double helix structure. As Watson writes in his 1968 memoir, ''The Double Helix,'' ''The instant I saw the picture, my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race.''

Franklin "didn't fit in - not by gender, religion, class, or temperament." And she left Watson and Crick's laboratories. According to Maddox [the author of her biography], "the tragedy is not that Franklin didn't win a Nobel, but that she died so young."

Transformational Art

On NPR's April 21st Morning Edition, Ketzel Levine reported on artist Rick Bartow. Bartow's art is informed by his experiences in Vietnam during the war and his Yurok Indian ancestry. Bartow believes in the power of drawing to heal. Returning from Vietnam with psychological wounds, he turned to drawing as a therapeutic activity. Drawing and Alcoholics Anonymous helped him overcome alcoholism, depression, and divorce. Bartow claims, "I draw because I have no choice: it is my blessing, it is my curse." As he stopped drinking, he used drawing and painting to explore the theme of masks falling off. The Native American mythical idea of transformation can be seen in much of his art, including a pastel titled "Traumbuild." (See NPR's gallery section.) In this dream drawing, a man receives guidance from the spirit of a deer and transforms from human to animal. Bartow sometimes starts drawing or painting by randomly grabbing a brush or pastel. He attacks the page with gestures. He makes marks, sometimes with Raven's beak, erases and tries to cover his tracks.

Eyewitness Report of Burning of Koranic Library

Robert Fisk reporting on burning at the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment asks the question: why? Picking up documents blowing in the wind, he said, "I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history." He reported the flames of the Koranic library burning ­to the U.S. Marines giving the precise map location to no avail. Fisk's writing is eloquent and powerful as usual. I won't reword it here.

World's Leading Museums Send Emergency Team to Rebuild Iraq's Shattered Cultural Heritage

The Independent reports that Neil MacGregor, the British Museum's director will coordinate an alliance of curators and restorers from institutions including The Louvre, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, New York's Metropolitan and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. They will assess the extent of the cultural "catastrophe" caused by the organized looting. As many as 170,000 early Mesopotamian antiquities are still missing. Mosul Museum was also ransacked.

"The first thing we must do," said MacGregor, "is send a fact-finding mission out there. We also need to get governments to stop anyone from importing any of these items into their countries."

Mr. MacGregor, an outspoken critic of the American forces who did not protect museums, expressed concern for major archaeological sites, like Nineveh and Ur, some of the earliest and most important cities on Earth.

Mr. MacGregor suspects that looting gangs had links to unscrupulous Western collectors. Still, a group of private American benefactors has agreed to devise a reward scheme encouraging people to return stolen objects.