You're viewing all posts tagged with art
From People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks: I love the Tate. I really do. Despite the fact that its collection of Australian art is pretty sketchy. Not a single Arthur Boyd painting, for one thing, which has always bugged me quite a bit. There are times when my own ignorance yanks me out of the flow of a book so badly that it’s best to do a quick Google search. In this case, who’s this Arthur Boyd? The painting above is Boyd’s “Portrait of Alannah Coleman I.” I also found this landscape called “Shoalhaven River afternoon.” And then it was back to the novel.

From People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks:

I love the Tate. I really do. Despite the fact that its collection of Australian art is pretty sketchy. Not a single Arthur Boyd painting, for one thing, which has always bugged me quite a bit.

There are times when my own ignorance yanks me out of the flow of a book so badly that it’s best to do a quick Google search. In this case, who’s this Arthur Boyd? The painting above is Boyd’s “Portrait of Alannah Coleman I.” I also found this landscape called “Shoalhaven River afternoon.” And then it was back to the novel.

“
… celui qui, souvent, a choisi son destin d’artiste parce qu’il se sentait différent apprend bien vite qu’il ne nourrira son art, et sa différence, qu’en avouant sa ressemblance avec tous. L’artiste se forge dans cet aller retour perpétuel de lui aux autres, à mi-chemin de la beauté dont il ne peut se passer et de la communauté à laquelle il ne peut s’arracher. C’est pourquoi les vrais artistes ne méprisent rien ; ils s’obligent à comprendre au lieu de juger.

- Albert Camus, accepting his Nobel Prize on 12/10/1957

Hear part of his speech here.

Translation, as provided by nobelprize.org:

… often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

The translation misses at least one nice phrase. Camus talks about the artist forging himself “dans cet aller retour perpetuel de lui aux autres,” which my atrophied French takes to mean that the artist forges himself “in this perpetual roundtrip from himself to others.” The translation of “s’arracher” as “tear himself away” is correct. But “arracher” is a great verb because it sounds like ripping. We lose that in English.

My favorite part, the part that made me post this, comes at the end of the quote: “true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.” And again, the French has a worthwhile twist: Rather than true artists who “are obliged to understand rather than to judge,” I read it as Camus talking about true artists “obliging themselves to understand rather than to judge.” It’s active. It’s a choice.

“
It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things. Our downhearted moments provide architecture and art with their best openings, for it is at such times that our hunger for ideal qualities will be at its height. It is not those creatures with well-organised, uncluttered minds who will be most moved by the sight of a clean and empty room in which sunlight washes over a generous expanse of concrete and wood …

- a striking and (who knows?) possibly specious notion in Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness

This is a notebook I’ve started carrying. The image taped to the cover is from the paperback of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. That’s because I’m using this notebook to write down supposedly fun things. It’s also for to-do lists, dates I want to feed into my laptop’s calendar later, things like that. But the notebook’s real reason for being is to serve as a drab waiting room for supposedly fun things. By supposedly fun things, I mean all the little bursts of curiosity that interrupt my conversations, my jogs, my life and send me to my iPhone to track down some fact, some title, some long-ago actor’s name, some YouTube clip. My plan is to let these curiosity bursts accumulate in the notebook, where I can review them at the end of the day and decide whether I still care enough to seek that fact or see that video. I decided to do this after finishing a book by William Powers. It’s called Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. The book spoke to the part of me that decided to take five weeks off from blogging. It includes passages like this: Rather than bringing the crowd ever closer, our machines should help us find some distance, whenever we need it. And this: Given my maximalist tendencies, I should have been delighted to see digital connectivity spreading far and wide. Wasn’t this what I’d wished for? No more of those irritating moments of isolation. But here’s the weird thing: I started missing them. It wasn’t the annoyance and frustration I wanted back—I’m no masochist. It was the state of mind that I’d found myself in after I couldn’t get a connection and gave up. And this: A decade ago, the digital space was heralded for the endless opportunities it offered for individual expression. The question now is how truly individual—as in bold, original, unique—you can be if you never step back from the crowd. When we think and write from within our busyness, surrounded by countless other voices, too often the result is reactive, derivative, short-shelf-life stuff. The greatest gifts one can give to the outward world lie within. To reach them, you have to go there. I’m not a technologist, so I can’t say exactly how the outward bias of today’s technologies might be changed. But the first step would be to adopt a different philosophical approach, one that acknowledges that in a busy, crowded world, less is more. That for many of life’s most important and rewarding tasks, inwardness isn’t just nice but essential. Perhaps on booting up, a digital device of the future might ask me how connected I want to be right now and offer various options … I was completely primed for the book, so I don’t know how much to trust my own urge to recommend it to just about anybody with a smartphone or a Facebook account or a Twitter habit. Getting back to my notebook and the image I’ve taped to the cover, here’s one of those save-it-for-the-end-of-the-day-and-see-if-you’re-still-curious things I did decide to go ahead and track down: Where did that image come from? It turns out to be by Joseph Mills, a collage artist and longtime street photographer. I hadn’t heard of him, but Washington City Paper profiled him in 2003. The piece includes this quote from Mills: “So finally I quit photography and got into pumpkins. At first I was growing them casually, and then somebody threw this book on how to grow giant pumpkins at me—and soon I was thinking about competitive pumpkin-growing 24 hours a day.” He isn’t joking. Neither is the article. A sensitive, worthwhile read. One more bit from it, and then I swear I’ll stop. I won’t even say goodbye. Here: Giant pumpkins aside, perhaps the oddest thing about Mills’ career is that Mills himself judged much of it, for the longest time, a failure. When he stopped working the streets, with just a few hundred of his thousands of shots printed, he believed “the work was good, but there was something I had not accomplished. I definitely felt that something I desired had not come about.” With the passage of time, however, his attitude toward the work shifted. “Ten years go by, you have kids, and you get healthier,” he says. “And at some point I revisited the negatives and, lo and behold, the photographs I had only dreamed of taking all lay in front of me. The photographs ended up being the pictures I thought I’d failed to take, the work I thought had never existed …” Click for high-res photo

This is a notebook I’ve started carrying. The image taped to the cover is from the paperback of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. That’s because I’m using this notebook to write down supposedly fun things. It’s also for to-do lists, dates I want to feed into my laptop’s calendar later, things like that. But the notebook’s real reason for being is to serve as a drab waiting room for supposedly fun things. By supposedly fun things, I mean all the little bursts of curiosity that interrupt my conversations, my jogs, my life and send me to my iPhone to track down some fact, some title, some long-ago actor’s name, some YouTube clip. My plan is to let these curiosity bursts accumulate in the notebook, where I can review them at the end of the day and decide whether I still care enough to seek that fact or see that video.

I decided to do this after finishing a book by William Powers. It’s called Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. The book spoke to the part of me that decided to take five weeks off from blogging. It includes passages like this:

Rather than bringing the crowd ever closer, our machines should help us find some distance, whenever we need it.

And this:

Given my maximalist tendencies, I should have been delighted to see digital connectivity spreading far and wide. Wasn’t this what I’d wished for? No more of those irritating moments of isolation.

But here’s the weird thing: I started missing them. It wasn’t the annoyance and frustration I wanted back—I’m no masochist. It was the state of mind that I’d found myself in after I couldn’t get a connection and gave up.

And this:

A decade ago, the digital space was heralded for the endless opportunities it offered for individual expression. The question now is how truly individual—as in bold, original, unique—you can be if you never step back from the crowd. When we think and write from within our busyness, surrounded by countless other voices, too often the result is reactive, derivative, short-shelf-life stuff.

The greatest gifts one can give to the outward world lie within. To reach them, you have to go there.

I’m not a technologist, so I can’t say exactly how the outward bias of today’s technologies might be changed. But the first step would be to adopt a different philosophical approach, one that acknowledges that in a busy, crowded world, less is more. That for many of life’s most important and rewarding tasks, inwardness isn’t just nice but essential. Perhaps on booting up, a digital device of the future might ask me how connected I want to be right now and offer various options …

I was completely primed for the book, so I don’t know how much to trust my own urge to recommend it to just about anybody with a smartphone or a Facebook account or a Twitter habit.

Getting back to my notebook and the image I’ve taped to the cover, here’s one of those save-it-for-the-end-of-the-day-and-see-if-you’re-still-curious things I did decide to go ahead and track down: Where did that image come from? It turns out to be by Joseph Mills, a collage artist and longtime street photographer.

I hadn’t heard of him, but Washington City Paper profiled him in 2003. The piece includes this quote from Mills:

“So finally I quit photography and got into pumpkins. At first I was growing them casually, and then somebody threw this book on how to grow giant pumpkins at me—and soon I was thinking about competitive pumpkin-growing 24 hours a day.”

He isn’t joking. Neither is the article. A sensitive, worthwhile read. One more bit from it, and then I swear I’ll stop. I won’t even say goodbye. Here:

Giant pumpkins aside, perhaps the oddest thing about Mills’ career is that Mills himself judged much of it, for the longest time, a failure. When he stopped working the streets, with just a few hundred of his thousands of shots printed, he believed “the work was good, but there was something I had not accomplished. I definitely felt that something I desired had not come about.”

With the passage of time, however, his attitude toward the work shifted. “Ten years go by, you have kids, and you get healthier,” he says. “And at some point I revisited the negatives and, lo and behold, the photographs I had only dreamed of taking all lay in front of me. The photographs ended up being the pictures I thought I’d failed to take, the work I thought had never existed …”

“

I’ve substituted photograph making (like a smoker would use chewing gum) with a notebook and pens. Every time I feel the urge to take a photograph, I pull out my notebook and draw the scene. I’ve learned a lot more about the places I’ve been and, in every country I’ve traveled to, this method usually created a mob of children around us in any public park. These interactions have been some of the best cultural travel experiences I’ve had …

… Taking a photograph of the Eiffel Tower, for example, seems ridiculous. There are millions of photos of the Eiffel Tower. If I were to take my own photo, I doubt I could pick it out from a crowd. By drawing, though, I would spend about 25 minutes looking at the Eiffel Tower, rather than 1/30 of a second, burning it into my brain rather than the digital sensor.

- August Heffner in “The case against vacation photos”

For me, the broader point is that you should do whatever you need to do to savor your surroundings and see the world fresh. Sketch in a notebook. Or stare. Or spin until you’re dizzy. Or shoot photos at an awkward shutter speed. Or write hack poetry. Or remove your specs and embrace your myopia for once. Or walk toward the Eiffel Tower without ever looking up and then turn your back on the landmark and know that it’s right there behind you and try to see if really noticing the facial expressions of your fellow tourists can be enough to give you a contact high.

Click for high-res photo
I went to the Seattle Art Museum today for the first time in a long time. This is from SAM’s permanent collection of Native & Meso-American Art. Click for high-res photo

I went to the Seattle Art Museum today for the first time in a long time. This is from SAM’s permanent collection of Native & Meso-American Art.

via reflectionof.me Sculpture from Rómulo Celdrán’s “Macro” series. Maybe it would be missing the point, but seeing this makes me want to get really close to Celdrán’s sculptures and take more of my macro photos — this time of the textures and materials that add up make three-dimensional art that feels like a macro photograph come to life. Click for high-res photo

via reflectionof.me

Sculpture from Rómulo Celdrán’s “Macro” series.

Maybe it would be missing the point, but seeing this makes me want to get really close to Celdrán’s sculptures and take more of my macro photos — this time of the textures and materials that add up make three-dimensional art that feels like a macro photograph come to life.

This Picasso is in my city. I want to see it.

This Picasso is in my city. I want to see it.

npr:

Vi Hart calls herself “a recreational mathemusician currently living on Long Island.” She talks faster than a machine gun, loves math and draws like a dream. Her newest video, “Doodling in Math Class: Snakes + Graphs,” is eye-popping, says NPR’s Robert Krulwich.

(this post was reblogged from npr)
austinkleon: Dave Eggers takes his sketchbook to Game 1 of the World Series ************************* This is one of seven sketches you can see by clicking the link above or clicking the image itself. Click through. Please. Once you do, you can see my favorite of the seven. It’s of Mary and John Speidel. The Speidels, as you’ll learn, are “Beard Wearers + Makers.” The Speidel sketch is annotated with about 100 words. Not many words, really. But … Sketch + Not Many Words ≈ What’s Cozy, Particular, Insightful  About The Better “Talk Of The Town” Pieces In The New Yorker I’m not sure why I made that an equation, but I did a hell of a lot of indefensible capitalizing and I’m not about to undo that. Also, I went to the trouble of learning how to get the “approximately equal” sign on a Mac: option + x. ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ Go on. Make a few of your own. It’s cheap, safe fun. Treat yourself. - David Quigg ************************* Click for high-res photo

austinkleon:

Dave Eggers takes his sketchbook to Game 1 of the World Series

*************************

This is one of seven sketches you can see by clicking the link above or clicking the image itself. Click through. Please. Once you do, you can see my favorite of the seven. It’s of Mary and John Speidel. The Speidels, as you’ll learn, are “Beard Wearers + Makers.”

The Speidel sketch is annotated with about 100 words. Not many words, really. But …

Sketch + Not Many Words ≈ What’s Cozy, Particular, Insightful  About The Better “Talk Of The Town” Pieces In The New Yorker

I’m not sure why I made that an equation, but I did a hell of a lot of indefensible capitalizing and I’m not about to undo that. Also, I went to the trouble of learning how to get the “approximately equal” sign on a Mac: option + x.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Go on. Make a few of your own. It’s cheap, safe fun. Treat yourself.

- David Quigg

*************************

(this post was reblogged from austinkleon)
painted hood of car parked in Ballard Click for high-res photo

painted hood of car parked in Ballard