art – Page 14

Always drawing

Thursday, November 1, 2018

The six-year-old is taking art classes at Laguna Gloria. I love dropping him off because while he’s in class, the 3-year-old and I get to explore the grounds. (An older dad told me years ago how important it is to split your kids up once in a while and go on little one-on-one “dates” together.) Yesterday the 3-year-old was having some serious separation anxiety (my wife is out of town), so I put some paper down on the stone ledge around the tiny koi pond and told him to draw the plants. This is what he drew.

Stains on the wall

Thursday, October 18, 2018

A stain on the wall of my in-laws’ garage reminds me how much a thought bubble looks like a brain + stem

In his Treatise on Painting, Leonardo da Vinci suggested you could find new ideas by looking at stains on a wall. “Although it seems of little import and good for a laugh,” he wrote, the practice “is nonetheless, of great utility in bringing out the creativity in some of these inventions.”

By looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marble of various colours, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions, landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange countenances, and dresses, with an infinity of other objects. By these confused lines the inventive genius is excited to new exertions.

I used to set down tea bags on an index card, and turn the stain into a drawing:

Leonardo notes that Botticelli used to throw a sponge with wet paint against a wall and find a landscape inside it. This is, essentially, how Ralph Steadman starts his drawings: first, a splash of ink, then seeing what the splash of ink wants to become…

It’s like you were blind before

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Claes Oldenburg, Ray Gun Wing — Claes Oldenburg, *Ray Gun Wing*

A few years ago, Tamara Shopsin, illustrator and author of the splendid Arbitrary Stupid Goal, recalled seeing a Claes Oldenburg exhibit:

I’ve loved his work for a long time, but had never seen his Ray Gun Museum. It is a display case of 1950s toy ray guns alongside homemade ray guns and found ray guns. It is funny because by the end anything shaped like an “L” really is a ray gun. And you go home and for a while you see ray guns everywhere — boots, toothbrush, your laptop.

The same thing happened to me just from looking at the them on the internet — I was watching John Waters preview his new show, Indecent Exposure, on PBS Newshour, and…

…those sevens looked like ray guns to me!

And later Waters showed off his piece “308 Days,” which is a 3.5 x 9 feet long piece showing about 10 months worth of his crossed-out to-do lists on index cards:

Looking at the scribbles I thought, “Hey, wait a minute that reminds me of…”

Cy Twombly, Letter of Resignation #26 (detail)

Twombly! Waters is a collector, and says he owns over 80 of his books. He keeps the catalog for Letters of Resignation beside his bed. (His housekeeper once told him, “They have the nerve to put this in a book!”) Waters says he loves Twombly because he makes people mad. “This kind of contemporary art hates you too, and you deserve it.”

He explained on Newshour:

I even have a piece that says, “Contemporary Art Hates You.” Because it does, if you hate it first. It’s a thin line. You can’t have contempt about it and go in, but you have to learn, you have to study a little. You have to figure it out. Why these things happen and then suddenly this whole world up– opens up to you. You can see it in a completely different way. It’s like, you were blind before.

The minute you start looking, the world will keep showing you pictures.

PS. Here’s Waters showing off the joke with the sevens:

No time for despair

Sunday, October 7, 2018

Toni Morrison — Toni Morrison! — was once on the phone admitting how upset and depressed and unable to work she was when her friend interrupted her:

“No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”

In his book, Artists in Times of War, the historian Howard Zinn tried to outline the relationship between the artist and society. He emphasized the word “transcendent”: the artist transcends “the immediate,” “the here and now,” and “the madness of the world.”

The artist thinks, acts, performs music, and writes outside the framework the framework that society has created. The artist may do no more than give us beauty, laughter, passion, surprise, and drama. I don’t mean to minimize these activities by saying the artist can do no more than this. The artist needn’t apologize, because by doing this, the artist is telling us what the world should be like, even if it isn’t that way now. The artist is taking us away from the moments of horror that we experience everyday—some days more than others—by showing us what is possible.

The artist provides a much-needed, much-valuable service to us, as trivial as the work might sometimes feel when the artist is doing it. “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh,” says Sullivan in Sullivan’s Travels. “Did you know that that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.”

there's a lot to be said for making people laugh — *Sullivan’s Travels*

But.

But, Zinn says, that is not all the artist does:

[T]he artist can and should do more. In addition to creating works of art, the artist is also a citizen and a human being.

And yet, when the artist attempts to do her duty as a citizen, she often hears: “I follow you for your art, not your politics.”

(Whenever I hear this I immediately think of George Orwell: “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.” And Margaret Atwood: “You’re supposed to do one thing. If you do more than that, people get confused.”)

There’s a specific feeling from some fans that artists and creative people should stick to their business. “I didn’t sign up for this.” “Leave the politics to politicians.” “What do you know, anyways, you’re just a singer.” (Even though, as in the case of health care, politics has everything to do with whether the artist will be able to keep making the work their fan loves.)

Zinn says we can’t be deterred by such sentiments. “It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they’re doing.” This country is our business, and it’s our business as citizens to try to make it as good as we can.

Here’s Jacob Marley’s ghost in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol:

“Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

These are dispiriting times, but it’s our our duty as artists and citizens to keep using our gifts and to keep using our voices to make the world a better place.

So, please: Keep making your art. Keep speaking the truth. We need your efforts, no matter how small and how trivial they may seem to you.

There’s no time for despair, but if you really need a day off, take it. Find the beauty and peace you need to keep going. The work will still be here when you return.