Let those sans sin, one might reply / Yet what’s so special about our times, . . . we shun or, better, expose / Those humans painting too unclothed! / And saying, doing, quite savage things. / While we, the pure, accusations sling!
What did you say the subject was – Expressionism?
I think the subject is going to end up being the dog one of the faculty members has brought along. Will he bark? Will he pee?
Talk about Expressionism! Talk about – hey now! hey! – patting the bourgeoisie, . . .
My secret dream of learning how to draw
Some people, much as many artists long ago, first seek to learn some set idea of the basics before they try to make art. But, for one, we don’t know what the “basics” are any more. Perhaps the most basic and hardest thing is learning how to let one’s heart lose on the paper? And how do you learn that?
Portrait of Tasha, by William Eaton, with colored pencils.
If you can’t make my peaches erotic, honey, please . . .
There’s a love or commitment in working and reworking and reworking. And if the finished or abandoned artwork can only reflect some of this love and commitment? Good!
From Franz Marc to steel blue, burgundy, woman
A progression, from the Picasso sketches that led to “Les demoiselles d’Avignon,” to Franz Marc’s yellow horses, to an abstracted drawing of a nude female model, done with pastels, water-soluble color sticks and an eraser, in New York, a century later.
Homme aux yeux mauves
How much of life passes in a dimmer light; / Mid a little bit of hopping, mostly we snore? Image inspired by Picasso’s “Homme au maillot.” As for the poem laid on top—inspired by an aging prostate?
When the new is exhausted or bankrupt what do we have left?
Like Winston Smith in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” we search among the scraps of the past to try to reconnect with what we hope were better times. And thus, for example, in the beaux arts we have Wendy Artin painting watercolors of Roman ruins or of naked twenty-first century models as if they were sculptural remains. We have painters like Balthus using Renaissance techniques, and, in the case, say, of John Currin, doing pastiches of Renaissance works. In the works of artists as diverse as Mark Tansey, Kara Walker, and the Indian artist Indian artist K.P. Reji we have a renewed interest in history painting. At the latest Whitney Biennial we even had young American artists quoting not so ancient predecessors such as Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha.
Marguerite au chapeau de cuir
A version of Matisse’s 1914 painting of his daughter Marguerite in a leather hat, based on an image appearing in the “Matisse: In search of true painting,” edited by Dorthe Aagesen and Rebecca Rabinow (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012).
