Week 5: TREASURE

Ionian

C.P. Cavafy 

Though we have broken their statues,
though we have driven them out of their temples,
the gods did not die because of this at all.
O Ionian land, it is you they still love,
it is you their souls still remember.
When the August morning dawns upon you
a vigor from their life moves through your air;
and at times a figure of ethereal youth,
indistinct, in rapid stride,
crosses over your hills.

                                              

                                                                      Rae Dalven translation

Week 4: MEND

Sea Concert, Tadeusz Kantor, 1967 (photo by Eustachy Kossakowski)

I don't know if there's a single image that can work in parallel with the word MEND--or if all the conflicting qualities in the image above get at some of it--but since we started looking at images from Poland in the late 1960s, this seemed a good locator. The performer here (is that the word?) is Edward Krasinski (we'll look at more). The idea for the piece came from Tadeusz Kantor. And the photographer was Eustachy Kossakowsi. (His picturing of the scene is crucial for how we understand--and thereby remember it. Or remember and thereby understand it?)

A mysteriously simple time--yet with personal trials of an immense sort, personal and public both--the politics of those years were an over-the-top challenge--to be discussed. But at the same time, there was a certain clarity as to artistic purpose--and a necessity to the questions asked...

We'll continue with this...

Week 3: GATHER

I was going to include a Morandi here--because of the way we focused on his painting in class on Tuesday evening. But I wanted you to have something new--or rather, something new/old--the Ryder above. It's thought to be from 1870-75--Ryder would have been in his mid-twenties. At the outset of his career--not one of the later paintings, with their mysterious shapes--shapes he discovered (found) in the course of working and reworking an image until something--well, something miraculous appeared. The late paintings are the ones he's remembered for. But it's always good to see where an artists begins. Look at the shifts in the whites here--the shapes that carry the narrative (is a cow in an ambiguous pasture a narrative? Are four bottles in the middle of a gray field a narrative?). Better, how does the paint itself tell its story...

If you look at the Barbizon painters from France, you'll see the source of Ryder's tonalism here. (And tone was always an crucial quality.) But the subtle way he uses warm and cool color is also distinctive. Maybe more the possibility of color... In this regard, we could compare him with George Inness--another wonderful American painter...

Gather--a set of meanings...

Notes

struggle with:

primitive
painterly
dumb like a painter  (duchamp and ideas rather than materiality)
guston: art takes care of herself
economy of images
color
adrian stokes-   carving and modelling
richard wollheim - seeing in
psychoanalysis

ryder
corot
bonnard/vuillard
guston
sylvia fell
auerback camden road school, even sickert (look at sickert)
resnick
early twombly - twombly sculpture
george inness
morandi
new york (after cezanne)

images that had to be...

Adrian Stokes- colour
Sylvia Fell - Northumberland (Cambria)

Week 2: MEANDER

Adrian Stokes, Still Life (Last Eleven: No. 7), 1972

Adrian Stokes was an English painter and critic. It's interesting here to see something so clearly specific in subject and at the same time, so fluid in how he arrives at the painting itself. Caught my eye in somebody's snapshot from the Tate when I was looking into Stokes' work. The image above is truer in color--it's from the Tate Gallery website. One of Stokes' ideas had to do with the distinction between carving and modelling. His phrase, "carved to flower..." Letting what's already present in the stone emerge in the making...


The Waking
Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

Week 1: TOUCH

Tortoise-shell oracle bone, ancient China

Here are some words for the theme in French and German--the images that come up using them search terms are quite different. Let's discuss. Also, a search in Chinese would be fascinating.

Landschaft des Berührens
paysage de contact
landscape of touch
to touch:  toucher
to touch: berührens
rühren= stir 

Touch--physical, psychological, emotional. How this plays out in painting, for example--the painterly tradition--where the brush stroke itself is evidence of touch. A trace. Or sculpture--the mark of the hand... Or in drawing--the touch of the medium on paper...

The image above, an oracle bone from the 3rd millenium BC (Shang Dynasty) comes by this quality naturally. In part because of the materials (which are organic), and in part because of the effects of time. (What Walter Benjamin referred to as aura.) And because of the very way it's represented. These are the themes I touched on (!) in the class last night--and which we'll develop together over the semester--and beyond.

The physicality of image always central (not simply representation).

 

Students' Online Notebooks F2016

Jeremy Breningstal           https://visual170.wordpress.com


Elizabeth Ryan                  excavatingexcess.blogspot.com


Rebecca Coleman              rebeccagracecoleman.blogspot.com


Rafael Tiffnay                    cargocollective.com/whatisntnature


Alexander Craghead         berkeleycitylimits.blogspot.com


Esther McKenzie                esthervis280.blogspot.com 
      

Jingpeng Li                        artworkofli.blogspot.com


Jake Ongaro                      jakeongarovs280.blogspot.com


Lucy Stephenson               http://ldstephenson.weebly.com


Robin Chandler                  https://robinlchandler.wordpress.com