Pollock and Kandinsky

In a previous post, I wrote about Kandinsky’s emphasis on the “inner necessity” to construct excellent compositions.  He articulated that this force is the most important component that propels the creation of artistic forms.  The American Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock discussed a similar sentiment nearly forty years later.  “The method of painting is the natural growth out of a need.  I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.”  The legendary American artist unquestionably shares Kandinsky’s opinion on the nature of good art, although Picasso and Miró were the artists that Pollock admired the most! 

For the trailer of the 2000 Sony production Pollock-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0xiovbDML0

Famous Fauns

A faun is a mythological creature with an extensive history in visual culture.  Half-human and half-deer, fauns embody the spirit of the forest and the animals that inhabit it.   In art, representation of this hybrid mammal is manifold.  For example, the most extravagant ancient home discovered in Pompeii exhibited a bronze statue of a dancing faun in the atrium.  Appropriately, archeologist now referred to the site as Casa del Fauno.  The home also included many more impressive works of art like the Alexander Mosaic, a remarkable rendition of the Greek battle of Issus in 333 BCE. 

Another famous faun is named after its first documented owner, Cardinal Francesco Barberini.  The antique original is on display at the Glyptothek Museum in Germany (above) and often attracts much attention for its erotic aesthetic.  The Louvre in Paris has an 18^th century replication of the Barberini Faun.

Thousands of years after the Greeks first depicted their fascination with fauns, we continue to imagine and re-imagine these mythological beings.  C.S. Lewis created The Chronicles of Narnia including the beloved faun character, Mr. Tumnus.  Guillermno del Toro also employed the faun in his film El Laberinto del Fauno.  This magical movie intertwines history and fantasy, where the faun entices the young Ophelia into an alternate reality.

A scene from El Laberinto del Fauno-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVLZz0Sj-ko&feature=related

Glyptothek Museum-

http://www.antike-am-koenigsplatz.mwn.de/glyptothek/

Death and Taxes

It would be a felony to sell Robert Rauschenberg’s 1959 work titled Canyon because it contains a dead bald eagle, a species that is now under federal protection.  However, the I.R.S. expects the owners to pay $29.2 million in estate taxes for inheriting the work!  “At the moment, tax experts note that the I.R.S.’s stance puts the heirs in a bind: If they don’t pay, they would be guilty of violating federal tax laws, but if they try to sell Canyon to zero-out their bill, they could go to jail for violating eagle protection laws.” (Patricia Cohen, New York Times) 

New York Times full story-

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/arts/design/a-catch-22-of-art-and-taxes-starring-a-stuffed-eagle.html?ref=design

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation-

http://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/

Futurism

The founders of Futurism were violent, reckless, and misogynistic.  The 1909 artistic movement they created in Italy condemned public institutions for learning:

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side forever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. (F.T. Martinetti, “The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism”)

The Futurists’ called for a new form of art, an art that would not seek to reproduce reality.  Their work “…is only creation!”  Creations such as F.T. Martinetti’s drawing Vive la France and Umberto Boccioni’s sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (above) are consistent with the Futurist agenda.  For example, Boccioni’s figure is infused with atmospheric elements, a key component the artist outlines in his “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture.”  Unique Forms of Continuity in Space exemplifies the Futurist theory that “the environment must be part of the plastic block which is a world in itself with its own laws.”  Futurist creations are quite interesting, despite their aggressive and pugnacious approach to art theory.  I find it ironic, and slightly satisfying, that much of their work wound up in the museums that they abhorred!  

An English translation of the Futurist Manifesto-

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html

Trees

I have only ever seen photographs of Piet Mondrian’s The Red Tree.  While this Dutch artist is most famous for his red, yellow, and blue grid compositions, I wanted to share this very lovely work that I hope to see in the Netherlands sometime soon.  Another Dutch artist less known for his tree paintings is Vincent van Gogh.  His painting The Starry Night is undoubtedly a masterpiece, but I think van Gogh’s trees are equally interesting and absolutely beautiful.  The link below allows you to see individual brush strokes on some of van Gogh’s tree paintings.  This is a great feature that a lot of museums are starting to share, still there is nothing like seeing a work of art in person!

van Gogh Museum’s excellent zoom features (click show enlargement)-

http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?page=4564&collection=1282&lang=en

Mondrian restoration project at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag-

http://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/index.php?id=036871

Fenway Photo Project

The Museum of Fine Arts and Fenway Photo Project announced the winners of their creative contest today.  Participants were asked to submit original photographs to commemorate Fenway Park’s centennial celebration.  Congratulations to the six winners, whose work is now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts through October 3, 2012.  My personal favorites are Barbara J. Ross’s 1976 action shot of Carleton Fisk making the tag and Bart Blumberg’s 2009 image Ted’s Red Seat.  I especially love the cone-shaped head gear that the base runner at second is sporting in Ross’s photo, and the way that Blumberg expresses his enthusiasm to help tell the Red Sox tale at Fenway for future generations!

As a silly side note, I have included a painting I made for my brother in 2007.  This Christmas gift was quite the commodity in the Jenkins household for about six months.  My younger brother was caught attempting to steal the Sox painting on several occasions, yet his efforts suddenly ceased when Manny left to play for the Dogers the following summer.  Due to Ramirez’s recent retirement, I am willing to wager that my older brother has since invested in a state-of-the-art security system to prevent art thieving siblings from entering his home.

Museum of Fine Arts and Fenway Photo Project-

http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/grandstand-gallery

Granada

This city in the south of Spain is remarkably beautiful, as the poet Francisco de Icaza expresses, “…there is nothing in life like the pain of being blind in Granada.”  The remarkable history of Granada amplifies the city’s spectacular sights.  During the middle of the fourteenth century, Arab leaders built the Alhambra, an extraordinary fortress overlooking the city.  For centuries, visitors have marveled at the architectural intricacies of this landmark.  The original Islamic décor is unprecedented in the history of Western art, and is a visual testament to the sophistication of the Al-Andalus society.  The art and architecture of this Iberian civilization contributes to the poet’s praise of Granada.

Museum of the Alhambra-

http://www.alhambra-patronato.es/index.php/Museo-de-la-Alhambra/68+M5d637b1e38d/0/

I highly recommend Mariam Rosser-Owen’s recently published book Islamic Arts from Spain

Wassily Kandinsky

One hundred years ago, Wassily Kandinsky wrote “On the Problem of Form,” a foundational essay on abstraction in art.  Defending his non-objective compositions, Kandinsky theorized that the most virtuous aesthetics stem from an artist’s ability to visually express themselves:

… it is not the most important that the form is personal, national, or has style; whether or not it is in accordance with the major contemporary movements; whether or not it is related to many or few other forms; whether or not it stands completely by itself: but rather the most important thing in the question of form is whether or not the form has grown out of the inner necessity.

Throughout the early 20^th century, it is evident that Kandinsky relied heavily on color to create his own visual language.  Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract art and an advocate for a new aesthetic, founded on the principle of freedom in artistic expression.

Above are two of my personal favorites: Panel for Edwin R. Campbell No. 3 and Black Lines (see links for Kandinsky in the MoMA and Guggenheim collections.) 

MoMA-

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A2981%7CA%3AAR%3AE%3A1&page_number=&template_id=6&sort_order=1

Guggenheim-

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-list/artist/k/?search=Vasily%20Kandinsky

The Open Window

One extraordinary thing about The Open Window is its discretely disguised similarity with Cubist works of art.  Hernri Matisse is famous for his Fauvist compositions, a style generally recognized as the antithesis to Cubism.  At first, there is no clear connection between this bright, cheerful painting and an archetypal Cubist work with a neutral-toned conglomeration of geometric shapes.  However, the assimilation of interior and exterior space in The Open Window is conceptually the same as Cubist passages that work to fuse mass and void.  Both Matisse and the Cubists deny the beholder a tangible sense of foreground and background.  Note the lack of aerial perspective in Matisse’s canvas, which pushes what would be the vanishing point into the foreground.  Now the boats and French doors begin to compete for attention in this canvas.   The playful technique of exhibiting an unnatural space essentially establishes the work of art as an entity unto itself, no longer a mere representation of reality.  Matisse and the Cubists took different routes to arrive at semi-abstraction.  In retrospect, they open the same door (or window) for their followers to create and advocate for a wholly abstract art.

Miró and a Catalan avant-garde

Arc-Voltaic was published in 1918.  The magazine consists of: this cover page featuring Joan Miró’s illustration, three poems in Catalan, an essay printed in French and Italian, a Vibrationist drawing, and concludes with a poem in Castilian.  The avant-garde poets and artists collaborating on the only edition of Arc-Voltaic were working against the restrictive aesthetic agenda of Noucentisme movement, which championed a Classical Mediterranean style.  However, the Arc-Voltaic artists’ relationship to the cultural movement is complex. 

The Catalan avant-garde was not seeking a complete, radical rupture from Noucentisme, because part of its philosophy was attractive to artists included in the magazine like Miró and Joaquín Torres-Garcia.  The female nude in Miró’s cover illustration exemplifies this tension.  Stylistically, it breaks with Noucentisme’s emphasis on classicism, ideal proportions, harmony, order, and balance; but the subject matter resonates with the nationalist agenda of the movement, in its attempt to give shape to an essential Catalan community that is akin to ancient Greco-Roman civilizations.

For more on Noucentisme-

http://www.mnac.es/colleccio/col_modern.jsp?ambit=83&lan=003

Fundació Joan Miró-

http://www.fundaciomiro-bcn.org/index.php?idioma=2

Email me for more on Arc-Voltaic.  For excellent academic studies on Miró, I recommend works by Robin Greeley and Robert Lubar.