August 31, 2006
Congrats to Don Relyea
Don Relyea, artist, composer, and maker of The Reductionizer (which I've been using during August to make HTML images) and other things, and his family welcome kid #3, a son, Aiden Aldon
Relyea, born August 29. Congrats to everyone.
Joanne Mattera: Heat of the Moment
Joanne Mattera: Uttar 294, 2006, encaustic on panel, 36 x 36"
JOANNE MATTERA
"Heat of the Moment: New Paintings in Encaustic"
Arden Gallery, Boston, September 5~30, 2006
Reception: Friday, September 8, 5-7 pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday, September 9, 1pm
August 30, 2006
Eva Lake
I have been wanting to feature Eva Lake here for sometime. Now is the time.
EVA LAKE: CRIMSON, 2006 oil on canvas 12 x 12 inches
Eva Lake is a Portland artist whose show at Augen Gallery is just about to close. She's hardworking, and her paintings are intense, beautiful, and very visual.
Although the forms in her current work might be called geometric or grid-based, and some might even toss out the "Op" word, her work is firmly rooted in the natural world, in color and atmosphere and times of day, and has to do with the way we see our world as both the thing it is and then abstract from that to sensation, periphery, memory and the iterative circle of translation or conversion from the visual to emotion to intellectual, and back and forth again. (There is a kinship between Eva's work and Mel Prest's, who I wrote about in June.)
Eva's work is about how we see and experience nature, and provides and frames the experience of how we are able to take in only so much at a time, how we scan and take things in it bits and pieces, and how the actual act of seeing nature isn't necessarily about seeing a whole.
Seeing nature as a whole isn't possible, because nature, what is before our two eyes and in our periphery, is too overwhelming. Our two eyes aligned horizontally provide a relatively narrow field of vision. But if while we look at nature we also feel ourselves in nature, as part of nature, there is the possiblity of a feeling of wholeness. A painting is a finite area of certain dimensions with edges, and so the painting has to have a kind of composition and resolution and containment. It has to be a whole, integrated and complete. I think Eva achieves this.
Eva's work helps us see and feel part of nature, but in a way that does not tie us to place, allows a kind of focus, and makes this kind of seeing and feeling rooted in the material and the handmade. This kind of consciousness of nature, made with materials and with a human touch, is a unique aspect of nature, is evidence of our place in nature, is a way of talking to and sharing with each other.
Additionally, Eva makes excellent photomontages, keeps an excellent running diary that's well worth following, interviews folks for Artstar Radio (many archived and downloadable, and excellent), and runs Chambers, a Portland Gallery, to which I've never been, but I'm assuming since Eva is running it, it's also excellent. And I don't throw the word "excellent" around all that much. But whoo! If I even thought to aspire to all of those activities, well, I'd just need a nap right now.
Joseph Hughes
SF painter Joseph Hughes has a new website and a show opening Sept. 7 in SF at Takada Gallery.
Ernie Kwiat
Ernie Kwiat has an August run of digital drawings- they're great. See 08 Green Fuzz or 05 Hay Fever. Check out the sketch made in Painter. Ernie tells me that it is his intention to draw a monster a day until Halloween, which I happen to know is his favorite holiday. That's gonna be like close to a hundred drawings.
11 Summer of Love, digital, Ernie Kwiat
August 29, 2006
Candlestick (19660829)
Candlestick (19660829), HTML, 348 x 494 pixels
August 28, 2006
August 27, 2006
Meds (Gravenstein)
Meds (Gravenstein), 20060827, HTML, 300 x 470 pixels
August 26, 2006
August 25, 2006
August 24, 2006
Delacroix: The Sea and Cliffs near Dieppe
Eugene Delacroix: The Sea and Cliffs near Dieppe, 1851, (La mer et les falaises près de Dieppe, avec reprise de la mer se brisant contre la paroi à droite), Watercolor and pencil on paper, 10¼” × 15½”, Dated lower right; stamped lower left: Lugt 838a; $75,000.
James Harris Gallery and Jill Newhouse, New York Present Junctions: Selected Drawings from Contemporary Artists and Modern Masters
See a very nice Vuillard drawing. And a Manet watercolor.
August 23, 2006
The thing about Matthew Barney at SFMoMA is that...
The mysterious thing about Matthew Barney is the fact that he has the backing to basically do whatever he wants.
The depressing thing about Matthew Barney is how bland his work is.
The smartest career thing about Matthew Barney is that his work appears ambitious because it's big and colorless and uses unusual materials.
The surprising, and not so surprising, thing about Matthew Barney is how derivative his work is.
"DRAWING RESTRAINT is an ongoing performance-based project exploring the notion that form emerges through struggle against resistance[1]." That sounds good. But it doesn't look so good. I'd like to propose a moratorium on artists who explore notions.
The real show at Barney's SFMoMA exhibition (through September 17, 2006- be sure and miss it) is the viewer walking through these massive spaces. 
Video monitors are mounted hanging from the ceiling, everything is white, everyone is walking around looking up. One room is all hanging monitors and vitrines, white and quiet- it feels like fashion, like shopping, like walking through some hip clothing store with music videos playing on monitors. Everybody is trying so hard to figure out what the hell is going on here. They're all being good obedient art lookers.
Everything is so big. It obviously took a lot of work to do all this. The museum put some resources into this event. The museum has tried to celebrate this exhibition. It must be very important. That's the message.
I tried. It didn't work.
Barney's grandiose metaphors and mythology are trite. It's J. R. R. Tolkien and Carlos Castaneda rolled into... no, it's not even that good.
There are many many many Beuys references:
- Sketchy, shaky, faint pencil drawings of body fragments? Check!
- Vitrines? Check!
- Vaseline, the equivalent of Beuys' use of fat? Check!
- A 35mm film can on the floor? Check!
- The artist in costume, adorned, or transformed? Check!
- Industrial material in its natural, "formless" form? Check!
- The artist as a seer or healer? Check!
- Highly metaphorized and oh so grand mythology? Check!
Even the drawing on the wall above the stairs that he did on-site during a performance dressed as General Douglas MacArthur borrows the central cross form from Beuys.
The photo stills aren't anything special. They're just dull and thoughtless fragments. They're all frame and nothing interesting.
The drawings aren't anything special. They're just dull and thoughtless fragments. They're all frame and nothing interesting.
The sculptures are really big. It's kind of cool to see big blocks of cast petroleum jelly falling apart. I don't know why the exhibition doesn't stink up the museum.
The sculptures aren't much, however, without the videos to give them a little context. And the videos are tedious. The lighting and framing and the cuts are ugly. It looks like crappy digital video. Speaking of artists who think they're in the same league as Beuys, I'm sure Barney could get some sound film making advice from Julian Schnabel- it might be a huge improvement.
Aspects of the installation which place the viewer in the place of passive spectator are simply offensive- that one small room with all the video monitors and vitrines is awful because of the position in which it places the viewer. I was struck by what I perceive as Barney's indifference or disregard for the place of the viewer in the work.
One of the most fascinating things to me was seeing the fourth floor south gallery with all the walls removed- I'd never seen that space opened up like that. Three or four years ago the Eva Hesse show was in those very same galleries - that was a great show; I'd put Hesse up against Barney any day.
William Wiley is a really interesting, genuinely imaginative artist who creates characters and situations, invents little worlds, uses language in fun ways, is visually interesting, and deals in important topics. He could be seen as a predecessor to Barney, even more so than someone like Bruce Nauman, Jack Smith, Scott Burton, Ree Morton, Joan Jonas, John Waters, Yoko Ono, Vito Acconci... But Wiley's just a little ol' local boy Northern California senior citizen painter.
The saddest thing about Matthew Barney is that, despite my being open to the work and this exhibit, it's just plain boring. I'm not easily bored. I have a lot of goodwill towards artists, towards people trying to make stuff that has meaning. But this stuff isn't that interesting to look at, much less think too hard about. This is the kind of show that makes me think, now why do I have that museum membership?
Photos by mac-tasitc at Flickr used without permission.
More exhibition photos at Flickr or Fecal Face.
August 22, 2006
August 21, 2006
Travelling Northward (After Tu Fu)
Travelling Northward (After Tu Fu), 2006, oil on canvas, two panels, 20 x 16 inches each (20 x 33.75 inches installed)
Tres Sendas
Tres Sendas, 2006, oil on canvas, four panels, 12 x 9 inches each (12 x 40.5 inches installed)
Strummer
Strummer, 2006, oil on canvas, four panels, 12 x 9 inches each (12 x 40.5 inches installed)
August 20, 2006
Andy and the Lion
Andy and the Lion, by James Daugherty, The Viking Press, New York, first published 1938, fifteenth printing March 1967
Yet another book read to me by Captain Kangaroo: "In this retelling of Androcles and the Lion, Andy meets a lion on the way to school and wins his friendship for life by removing a thorn from his paw. Andy is always barefoot ... when he visits the library to get a book on lions, on the way to school, meeting the lion and later at the circus. This book was first published in 1938. It has about two dozen illustrations."
This is the last book I've scanned and will show here. They can all be viewed on a single page.
August 19, 2006
Run Weatherman Run
Run Weatherman Run, 20060819, HTML, 484 x 414 pixels
The Little Fire Engine
The Little Fire Engine, by Lois Lenski, Henry Z. Walck, Inc., New York, 1946
Lois Lenski also wrote Cowboy Small, featured 20060806.
"In this adventure, Fireman Small rushes to battle a fire in town. When the alarm bell rings, Fireman Small suits up and roars down the road in his shiny red fire engine. When he helps extinguish the fire and rescues a young girl, Fireman Small becomes a hero in Tinytown."
August 18, 2006
The Travels of Babar
The Travels of Babar, by Jean De Brunhoff, translated from the French by Merle S. Haas, Random House - New York, 1934
Everybody knows Babar. I like the blue heads and the daintily held yellow handkerchiefs in the trunks. Blue, yellow, and black. I like the texture of the basket. Of course, the anchor, and the wound rope, should be hanging down, not at an angle. Who is Babar, King of the Elephants, travelling with? Why, it's Queen Celeste!
The Babar stories are full of expressive language, sophisticated beyond the early reader level.
In the twinkling of an eye, Babar has unbound Celeste. They both hurl themselves on the cannibals. Some are wounded, others take flight; all are terrified.
Unbound, hurled, cannibals. The syllabic rhythm of the last sentence. It's fun to read aloud with flourish.
Although, humans attacking animals- is that cannibalism? If the animals are anthropomorphized, I suppose so.
And sophisticated emotions:
They have landed. The aeroplane has gone back. Babar and Celeste are speechless with surprise. Where are Cornelius, Arthur, and the other elephants? A few broken trees! Is that all that is left of the great forest? There are no more flowers, no more birds. Babar and Celeste are very sad and weep as they see their ruined country. The Old Lady understands their grief.
August 17, 2006
The True Book of Tools for Building
The True Book of Tools for Building, by Jerome Leavitt, Ed. D., pictures by Bill Armstrong, Childrens Press, Chicago, 1955
August 16, 2006
Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994)
Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994), 20060816, HTML, 150 x 450 pixels
Jack and the Three Sillies
Jack and the Three Sillies, by Richard Chase, pictures
by Joshua Tolford, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1950
From Resources for Readers and Teachers of Appalachian Literature
for Children and Young Adults- "Jack and the Three Sillies" - or - "Jack's Wife":
There are many variations on this old tale about noodleheads or sillies or foolish people. There is usually a series of three individuals or couples or groups doing something incredibly stupid such as trying to get the moon out of a pond where they see its reflection, or showing ignorance of everyday practicalities such as how to put on pants. Often the main character sets out to find others who are as foolish as his or her spouse or fiancé(e). It is interesting that in some of the Appalachian tales, the main character is Jack's wife and the sillies are all men.
August 15, 2006
Umbrella
Umbrella, by Taro Yashima, New York: The Viking Press,
First published 1958, third printing February 1961
Wikipedia: "Taro Yashima (1908–1994) was the pseudonym of Jun Atsushi Iwamatsu. After studying for three years at the Imperial Art Academy in Tokyo, he became a successful illustrator and cartoonist before going to jail because of his opposition to the militaristic government. In 1939 he and his wife went to America to study art, leaving their son Mako behind in Japan. After Pearl Harbor Mr. Iwamatsu joined the U. S. Army, and went to work as an artist for the OSS. It was then he first used the pseudonym Taro Yashima, out of fear that if the Japanese Government found out there would be repercussions for Mako and other family members. After the war, he and his wife were granted permanent residence status by act of Congress, he was able to return to Japan and collect Mako, and his daughter Momo was born.
"In the early 1950's he began writing and illustrating children's books under the pseudonym he'd used in the OSS. Crow Boy (1956), Umbrella (1958) and Seashore Story (1967) are Caldecott Honor books."
August 14, 2006
George Lawson in Folly
George Lawson is interviewed in Folly; download the August 2006 issue as PDF.
"I'm concerned with what constitutes painting, how best to use the medium to discover an image. I think about what makes a picture open or closed, and how best to bring together the different constituent elements of all things visual, just as one might strive to integrate (as I mentioned Jung before) pre-dispositions to think, emote, intuit and touch things. But I'm not too concerned with categorizations. Most categories, abstract and figurative for example, don't offer me much in the way of a differentiating principle. They don't help me to orient myself and my world to painting; they don't open up or deepen my experience of painting."
George Lawson: Japanese Firemen 2, oil on linen, 2005, 64 x 54 in
A Hole is to Dig
A Hole is to Dig: A First Book of First Definitions, by Ruth Krauss, pictures by Maurice Sendak, Harper & Brothers, 1952
Classic!
August 13, 2006
Fish in the Air
Fish in the Air, story and pictures by Kurt Wiese, The Viking Press, New York, 1948
1949 Caldecott Honor Book Award
A boy named Fish gets a fish kite. A big wind comes and pulls Fish and the fish kite into the air. They are finally caught in a fisherman's net. Other than that, this is a pretty uneventful story, much less award-winning, and I can't believe the award was for the illustrations. I don't know; beats me.
August 12, 2006
Mono Hot Springs (2004)
Mono Hot Springs (2004), 2006, HTML & JPEG, 460 x 600 pixels
A Pony for Linda
A Pony for Linda, by C.W. Andersen, The MacMillan Company, New York, 1958
Inside are highly rendered pencil drawings pretty obviously made from photos- there's just a quality of light to them that looks like a black and white photo.
Girl riders, horses, and Linda's gracious gift of the trophy and blue ribbon to the other girl who had to travel farther for the competition after the judges couldn't decide on a winner- I guess this is what you'd call Chick Lit.
But the cover- heavy. Terrific pale green cloth background that feels very spacious and distant, and then the title and images sit right on the surface like they're rubber stamped.
The more I look the more I think, Chick Lit- look at the dainty pointed hooves.
August 11, 2006
What's Inside of Me
What's Inside of Me, Herbert S. Zim, illustrated by Herschel Wartik, William Morrow & Company, New York, 1952
This book is kind of creepy, but I can't decide if it's a good kind of creepy or a disturbing kind of creepy.
August 10, 2006
James K. Polk
James K. Polk, 20060810, HTML & JPEG, 200 x 200 pixels
This is more fooling around with Don Relyea's Reductionizer, which is my August project here. I've incorporated JPEGs into the HTML work (Sept 2005 & June 2006), but those drawings involve more of a drawing process for me.
I use Dreamweaver, and I make images beginning with a table, filling in cells, control-selecting groups of cells to draw a line or separate areas to insert a hexidecimal code or modifying the existing code to slightly shift colors. I can add and delete rows and cells, copy and paste one area to another, or invert or reverse an image by copying and pasting rows and cells in reverse or into another table. I can change cell and row height and width, and I can put tables inside tables. It's very much of feeling of drawing, though it may not sound like one by my description. To say that it is somewhat like collage may be closer.
But using the Reducitionizer is very different. An image is converted to a table and then I work with this existing image, rather than building up an image. It's modification. The Sept. 2005 and June 2006 series the JPEG is specified in the table attribute "background", so I am drawing on top of the image. Using the Reductionzier the image is in the table, so I am working into the table image. And once a table is rendered as an image with any detail it's a pretty hefty file, so making changes is a little slow and unwieldy. I'm just trying to figure out an approach here, and how to bring in what I was already doing, which I don't want to leave behind, into this new way of working.
This is just to explain that the images so far are pretty different from what I was doing, not close to what I have in mind, and I'm uncertain how to get there so far.
Cowboy Small
Cowboy Small, by Lois Lenski, Henry Z. Walk, Inc., New York, 1949
"Cowboy Small takes good care of his horse, Cactus. In return, Cactus helps Cowboy Small get work done on the range. Together they round up cattle for branding and live the good life. At night, Cowboy Small eats at the chuck wagon, sings with his friends, and sleeps under the stars."
Lois Lenski (1893-1974) is a well known author and illustrator. In 1946 she was awarded the Newbery Medal for Strawberry Girl. A school is named after her in Littleton, Colorado- why? I wonder about the connection between Littleton and her Mr. Small Series.
A sweet little book. Many reviews at Amazon.
Nice touches: like the font a lot, with its subtle narrowing and broadening; the yellow "socks" on the horses legs; the plaid lines of his shirt are the cover fabric; the two dashed lines on either side of the tail; cool chaps; the deep space of the right side (his left) of his hat rearing back around his head; the horse is prancing, like a carousel horse; that little touch of yellow along the edge of the saddle's horn popping right up out of Cowboy Small's crotch.
For a simple drawing it's very complete and articulate- the rope, the saddle, the one spur, the kerchief.
The two clouds over the single sheep crammed into the left side right in front of the horse is a little peculiar; I feel this need to put the sun or a big cloud on the left side between "Cow..." and the tail.
The horse's head looks a little like a burro.
August 09, 2006
Connemara Tartan
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Connemara Tartan, 20060809, HTML & JPEG, 400 x 400 pixels
Don Relyea's Reductionizer
The HTML images I've been posting during the month of August are made with Don Relyea's Reductionizer. Learn more, download, play: The Reductionizer. Don writes:
The reductionizer is a software art project. It was spawned from an email conversation with artist Chris Ashley. Basically I wrote him and said, "Hey I have this script, would this be of use to you?" He was definitely interested and dialog ensued discussing ideas, possible features and suggestions. In it's current state it is more like a photoshop filter than an art tool. The current thinking is to move it into the realm of a simple art tool for creating art on the web. Adding features that give the artist manipulative capability is desirable.What is it?
It converts bitmap images to html table layouts and provides for easy scaling of cells using sliders and text entry fields. It has a very reductionist lean to it, in that it is easy to reduce a photograph down to a more abstract lower resolution image. It exports to both graphic and html formats. It will have editing functions like a pencil, eraser, paint bucket, hand and gradient tools to allow for more creative freedom. It will have z sort able layers, palettes and an eyedropper.It also has a component that randomly grabs photos from flickr from random wordlists sorted by interesting. The image absorbed, below was scraped automatically by the reductionizer. I doodled on it with the pencil tool after reducing it.
Eileen Fell & Tim Schwartz
 |  |
| Eileen Fell: yellow leaves, 2005 | Tim Schwartz: Tops 2, 2006, oil on linen, 19"x13" |
Eileen Fell and Tim Schwartz just launched a new website.
I met Eileen and Tim last October in Philadelphia at the Urban Canvas opening. I wrote about one of Tim's paintings in January, 2006: Tim Schwartz: Untitled (Four Ways). Look at some more past work.
I chose the two images shown here. I decided on two verticals simply because I thought it would make a nicer post. I resized them to the same height so they'd make a more nicely formatted post. I don't know the actual dimensions of the photograph. I wasn't aware until these two images were side by side that, very loosely, they share a kind of compositional wedge shape in the upper right area. The work of these two artists is separated at the website, more like two separate sites. My intention here was not to homogenize the images, so don't let your looking end here, go to their website.
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, story and pictures by Virginia Lee Burton, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1939.
Classic. Captain Kangaroo read this story to me. I was shocked when I saw this book in the library's discard pile.
Since it was first published in 1939, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel has delighted generations of children. Mike and his trusty steam shovel, Mary Anne, dig deep canals for boats to travel through, cut mountain passes for trains and hollow out cellars for city skyscrapers. But with progress come new machines and soon the inseparable duo are out of work so Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne travel to the small town of Popperville and accept one final challenge — to dig the town cellar in just one day. What happens is a testament to their friendship and to old-fashioned hard work and ingenuity.
August 08, 2006
Slieve Gullion, Armagh
Slieve Gullion, Armagh, 20060808, HTML, 312 x 304 pixels
How to Play Baseball
How to Play Baseball by Martin Iger and Robert Fitzsimmons, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1962.
When the last time you saw a boy with a crewcut wearing a cardigan, cuffed pants, and leather shoes with heels swinging a bat?
Yellow sweater, yellow socks- such a stylish dresser!
This kind of printing makes home plate levitate at just below knee level.
I really like the simplicity of the hands.
I like the how black outline is used and not used- it's all around the pants, but none around the bat or arm, none on the forehead or top of nose.
That bat is quite a club.
Nice exposed achilles and lifted heel on the right trailing foot.
The more I look at the right leg sticking out from behind the left knee the weirder it looks. Try it: forget that the right leg joins a hidden thigh- just see it as joined to the left leg. It's like his right leg grows out of his left knee.
I find the ear pretty convincing.
There are a couple of things at work here that aren't too far from my Berkeley paintings: flat areas, use of background as a color, dark outline used extensively but not completely.
The red area defined below the bat, around home plate, up against his stomach, and down to his knee is an interesting shape once your eyes call it out.
That white arm pokes out of the puffy folded sleeve like a bone sticking out of meat.
All photos inside, including part of a photo deeper inside the book on which the cover is based:
August 07, 2006
Sopa de la Zanahoria
Sopa de la Zanahoria, 20060807, HTML, 225 x 600 pixels
Saving Arnold J. Kemp from the Land of Baloney
Arnold J. Kemp: Daydream Nation
Exhibition dates: July19 - August 19, 2006
Stephen Wirtz Gallery
I get several gallery and museum press releases and curator's statements everyday, many of which are full of such ridiculously grandiose claims that I both laugh and boil. I've been tempted to occasionally post the most offensive ones here, but usually just hit delete, instead. But not today. I saw this show last week and generally liked the work, but there's a problem here.
Here's the first paragraph of the press release:
Conceptual in origin and formal in presentation, these abstract works on paper and canvas are dominated by bold, geometric expanses of solid black. Kemp's refined palette also incorporates ink washes, graphite line, and the juxtaposition of areas of white pigment to create thematic variations. These rigorously balanced and aesthetic constructions exist on their own as strong studies in spare minimalist composition, yet are informed by calculations rife with literal and metaphorical reference to language, aspects of personal history, and politics.
OK, I can live with most of that. But there is nothing in this work seen in person that lives up to the following paragraph. The ideas contained here might be important for the artist, but for the viewer, me, who is looking at painting with eyes and a working knowledge of art history and doesn't see painting as a conceptual prop, it's just baloney:
As a black artist creating black paintings, Kemp activates a conceptual strategy that comments on the notion of established expectations of what black artists should make. Kemp questions the appropriateness of the categorization "black art" while simultaneously exploring the position of his work in a lineage of influence. While acknowledging a rich ancestry of artists who have created black paintings including Barnet Newman, Ad Reinhart, Goya, and Joan Mitchell among others, Kemp also cites a conceptual strategy and slippage of meaning that also resonates in the work of artists such as Adrian Piper, David Hammons, Sun Ra, Igor Stravinsky, Duke Ellington, Alice Coltrane, Mike Kelley, and Lorna Simpson.
I defy anyone to see these paintings cold and have any idea expressed in that previous paragraph pop into their head unprompted, and once it's introduced, for that idea to matter at all in relation to the work, as it's made, with the imagery it contains, hanging in that gallery, standing right in front of it.
Risking playing in the potential minefield of race, what if the press release for Robert Ryman's next show said, "As a white artist creating white paintings, Ryman activates a conceptual strategy that comments on the notion of established expectations of what white artists should make."
Painting, or any art, as a "conceptual strategy that comments on the notion of established expectations" is not only an uninteresting idea, it's an idea that is at least twenty years into solid status as a cliche.
Crap like this is embarassing and makes it harder to convince your relatives that art is actually a good thing.
Joseph Hughes
Richard Schur and me in the mirror with paintings by Joseph Hughes from the mid or late-90's- a dark green one behind us and a yellow one in the entry room of Joe's house, San Francisco, 20060805. Each painting has much more detail and surface and color variation than shown here. And they are impeccably crafted; the details of the work are a big part of the looking and seeing here.
About Joseph Hughes: [1] Takada Gallery; [2] Seeing the Hovering Image: Joseph Hughes' Recent Paintings, 2004Oct; [3] 2004 review.
Icebergs
Icebergs, by Roma Gains, Illustrated by Bobri, Thomas Y. Crowell Company New York, 1964
Great cover- simple, graphic, abstract: subject-specific and referential but still oblique and open with possibility. A rarity- the illustrations inside are just as good as the cover, except of course they have to inform the subject more, so the presence of boats and other human-incidental details spoils the abstraction.
See the absurd simplicity and elgance of #1, the Suess-ian Baroque exaggeration of #2, and the Matissean jazz form and eye-sucking black hole in the middle of the iceberg of #3.
August 06, 2006
Wait For William
Then flop, off came William's shoe, and there he stood with one shoe off and one shoe on. "Wait for me!" called William. Wait for me, my shoe's come off!"
Wait For William, by Marjorie Flack, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1935
Once there were three children who lived in a white house in Pollywinkle Lane in the village of Pleasantville.The oldest of these three children was a big boy whose name as Charles and he was eight years old.
The middle one was a girl whose name was Nancy and she was six years old.
The youngest was a little boy and his name was Wiliam and he was just four years old.
One summer morning when William was riding his scooter up and dow the walk Charles said,
"Hurry up, William, put away your scooter and we will take you down to Main Street to see the Circus Parade."
Nowhere in my copy is Richard A. Holberg credited, as he is on the cover below:
August 05, 2006
The Earth is Your Spaceship
The Earth is Your Spaceship, by Julius Schwartz, pictures by Marc Simont, McGraw-Hill/Whittlesey House, 1963
Great cover, so-so inside illustrations, lousy text with lousy science. This book is really about the Earth, not space, but just barely- it touches on gravity, rotation and orbit, compostion of the earth, atmoshphere, but it's mostly pap.
Spaceship Earth is a merry-go-round- A merry-go-round in space That turns and turns And never stops. You can say, "Stop the earth I want to get off! But it won't And where would you go if it did? Round and round And never a stop. Round and round But your head doesn't spin. Merry-go-round Earth Takes a whole day- Twenty-four hours- For just one turn!
This book feels really 1963:
Here's some context for this cover that's meant to appeal the future space traveller in every little boy (and, not too likely, little girl):
"The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961; Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made one orbit around the earth...""Kennedy was eager for the United States to lead the way in the space race. Sergei Khrushchev says JFK approached his father twice about a "joint venture" in space exploration—in June 1961 and Autumn 1963. On the first occasion, Russia was far ahead of America in terms of space technology. JFK later made a speech at Rice University in September 1962, in which he said, "No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space" and, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."[12]. On the second approach to Khrushchev, the Russian was persuaded that cost-sharing was beneficial and American space technology was forging ahead. The U.S. had launched a geo-stationary satellite and Kennedy had asked Congress to approve more than $22 billion for the Apollo Project, which had the goal of landing an American man on the moon before the end of the decade. Khrushchev agreed to a joint venture in Autumn 1963, but JFK died in November before the agreement could be formalized. In 1969, six years after Kennedy's death, the Project Apollo goal was finally realized when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to land on the moon."
A footnote to a very interesting article titled The Ecological Colonization of Space specifies, "The first published instance of "spaceship earth" is in a children's book by Julius Schwartz, The Earth Is Your Spaceship (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), a book that probably was inspired by (Buckminster) Fuller."
I love how crudely the figure and the transition from light to dark on the earth is drawn. And speaking of crude, see how the shadow cuts diagonally across North America on the lower left up across the North Atlantic way above Scandinavia- is that even possible?
August 04, 2006
Lentil
Lentil by Robert McCloskey, published by, as it says on the title page, "The Viking Press, Inc. in May 1940." To the right, "A photo in The Columbus Citizen of McCloskey donating Lentil to the Ohioana Library in 1940. (Left to right: Mrs. J. E. Clark, Mrs. Clarence Wrum, Mr. McCloskey, Mrs. Depew Head, and Mrs. E. N. Manchester." 
" A boy named Lentil saves the day when a grumpy old man tries to ruin a small town's big celebration."
This book, by the great Robert McCloskey, author and illustrator of classics like Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries For Sal, is fantastically illustrated. In a bit of a reversal of the trend developing in my first three book covers posts, which is that the book cover art is superior to the actual book illustrations, the drawings inside Lentil are rich, complex, and dynamic, very lively and appealing- McCloskey has a great sense of energetic line and form, and he appropriately uses just enough of the formal, academic side of drawing- persepctive, naturalistic light sources, rendering that shows lots of life drawing. Perhaps I should scan a page and show it here since I can't find images other than the cover on the web.
I'd guess that the earliest reader for this book is a very proficient second grader, but the illustrations probably cannot be fully experienced by anything less than a more cognitively-developed fourth grader. That's my guess, but there's lots of variation there depending on many factors regarding the reader.
(Incidentally, there are lots of great resources for assessing reading levels and lists of books rated by levels. Not surprisingly, much of this is targeted at home schoolers. Reading Levels of Children's Books: How Can You Tell? has a very comprehensive list of rating methods, and "Leveled Book Lists" has tons of leveled titles by grade and title; they agree with me about Lentil, rating it at 2.75, which means a grade level second grade reader three quarters of the way through that school year. Grade level reading proficiency, when demonstrated, can actually seem quite high these days if one spends a lot of time in urban school districts where many students who are second language learners are struggling with fluency. My experience as a teacher was an eye opener regarding how much of a struggle it is for students from low-literacy background to learn to read with genuine understanding and pleasure.)
But let's talk about this cover. Orange and green is a favorite color combination of mine. This scan is a little dark, but in-person the green strokes on Lentil's shirt really pop. This is a pretty simple cover that I find really relaxed and pleasing. The illustrations inside are drawn with some kind of crayon, which makes for a kind of grainy quality, while the cover seems almost painted. The line quality is solid and flowing, rather than the stop-and-start quality of drawn line. The green inside Lentil's shirt feels like four quick strokes, and the black surrounding him are a bunch of relaxed flat strokes pulling up from the sharp diagonal line over which his arms reach.
The curled shape in front of Lentil is pretty obviously the corner of a page furling back towards the reader; in terms of knowledge about the world, you can take the image literally- see it, got it, done. But visually, if you just let go of that knowledge, and let seeing take it's own path (do you know what I'm saying here- that seeing can have it's own knowledge and logic which can be completely detached from knowledge attached to language, letting seeing something become an experience of openness and possiblity and flexibilty and iterative process rather than an experience with a single finite answer), but there are two things that can plausibly deny this reading.
First, the top left corner and the fold at the right of this "page" don't extend out to the edges of the cover- the page is inset from the edges, meaning that it isn't even a complete illusionary depiction of a page. The logic isn't complete, so I can see this foldover as some other kind of shape. This is the image aspect of the cover that as the reader I can choose to go with or not.
Second, this is a cover, with a fabric background, and it's hardcover, so my seeing of these details denies that I am seeing a page. This is the object aspect of the book. My prior knowledge of what a book is informs what I know about how a book works, but it is actually my seeing that confirms this is a cover.
These may seem like small points, but it is these small points that are part of the looking experience. This is part of how I look at a painting.
Now, I know this is the curled edge of a page, but I don't have to see it that way. Two other ways I keep seeing this shape under Lentil's arms are as one side of a folded paper airplane, and also as the cover of a bed or sleeping bag folded over, which means Lentil would be laying it bed playing the harmonica. That's not McCloskey's intention, but I enjoy the possibility that I can read this image in at least three ways.
Another version of the cover (right), however, confirms more certainly what McCloskey had in mind, I think, and this version completely discards the ambiguity which I enjoy so much. This version is red, black, and white rather than orange and green, and shows off McCloskey's drawing style. I prefer my orange and green version.
Three other final things I think are worth pointing out.
The diagonal line under Lentil's arms separates two qualities: on top, there is a great variety of line- the choppiness of the black strokes' edges, the tight green in the shirt, the angualarity of the hands, the folds in the shirt. And below it's all smooth edged lines and shapes, right into the lettering. It doesn't hit you over the head, but it's a nice contrast.
The shadow under the fold is really nice- see where it's nice and fat on the right and follow it over to the left as it approaches the corner of the page and really becomes narrow- it's that little bit of thinness of the shadow that stands out and makes the page hover- that little moment is really nice, and when you broaden your vision and take in the cover as a whole that narrow little slice, postioned very near the middle of compostion, does its job without you really knowing how much power it exerts.
Finally, there's a strong triangle form present here: [1] beginning at the top left corner, trace your eyes down the straight line of the fold under Lentil's arms diagonally to the right where the shadow ends; [2] turn direction left and follow the tops of the title lettering in a straight line all the way over the spine of the book; [3] run your eyes right up the spine back to the fine point where the left and top of the depicted page join. That triangle is a central area of energy in the compositon; once you trace it it's really strong. The slight curving line of the folded over page bisects this triangle in half from apex to base. The line has a lot of presence, dividing the triangle into empty space on the left side, and the form of the curled page on the right. Inside both halves of this triangle are the projected musical notes out of Lentil's harmonica, floating over half the page and the empty space. This is the most abstract space of the image- those notes denote sound, something happening in air that we can't see, and yet visually here they are, making the most spatial, atmospheric space in the entire image. Perhap's this is why this is the area in which some kid couldn't resist drawing some stars- that's the place where something less pictorial but more energetic is happening.
One last thing: this book, like many of the others I'm showing here, is an artifact of mid-twentieth century America showing an absolute ideal white middle-America equal to your best Frank Capra effort. There is a tendency for books like this to be discarded from many school and public libraries in order to make room for a selection of books with greater ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity. Making libraries more diverse is a good thing, but it's unfortunate that a wonderfully illustrated book like McCloskey's may be set aside simply because of the era it depicted.
August 03, 2006
Hotel Steinberger, Frankfurt
Hotel Steinberger, Frankfurt, 20060803, HTML, 504 x 462 pixels
The background image is a JPEG converted to an HTML tabel with Don Relyea's Reductionizer.
A Tiger in the Cherry Tree
A Tiger in the Cherry Tree by Glen Dines, The MacMillan Company, 1958.
This book is inscribed on the title page, "to Melrose School, Glen Dines." I have no idea if the author really signed this book, but I'm going to trust that it was. Melrose School is the school where I taught in Oakland, CA. I wish Mr. Dines had included the date.
Just look at this image. It's incredible. There's that big dominant orb shape, the flowing twisting banner on the left, and different patterns in the clothing of the four figures. The palette is unusal- there's a common blue-gray cloth cover, and a typical use of black, but most of the color real estate goes to the pale creamy peachy orange. This scan makes the cover a little bluer and the pale orange a little redder and more intense than it really is, but only slightly. The orange just pops off the cover, but there are many aspects to the composition here that contain that orange and make this image really hold to the confines of the cover.
First off, note that in a graphic medium- two or three colors only- where line is really important, that the central orange oval, a giant lantern, has no outline. It is the only orange shape in the whole composition that is not outlined (except for the tiniest bit of a headcover on the partial figure in the upper right quadrant overlooking the lanter), whereas everywhere else the orange is sharply contained by black. I think this lack of outline, combined with the merest curving edges of the black lantern cap and the black lantern base, is what allows the lantern to read as round, because very little else suggests this- the lettering of the title on the lantern doesn't suggest sphericity. Imagine a black outline around the edges of the lantern, try visualizing it- were it there I think visually it would it would be much harder to see the lantern as spherical. It's a small thing, and many artists would've continued their process and just outlined everything, but here is an instance of a little restraint that is enormously significant.
I wrote yesterday about seeing the cloth cover's color as both a color used in the image and as a hole that my eye falls into. This is the image/object duality, and something painters are often after. In the case of this cover my eye keeps following the flow of front banner on the left and falling into the hole of the banner. I actually get a really good feeling from looking at this part repeatedly, of letting my eye flow with the banner and then drop into the color of the book's cover. A painter will look at a painting as an image but they also look at the paint- what does the paint, it's qualities, the way's it's applied, tell you? It's about forest and trees, not forest or trees. Go to a museum and watch people look at paintings and you'll see that most people never go up to the painting to look at the paint; they're content with standing back and just seeing the picture. It's the same with looking at this some of these covers- these small little details count for everything.
As I write this and look at the cover an obvious thing hits me that I'd never quite realized when I looked at this cover before. The two forgegroud figures on either side and the one in the background right are holding bamboo poles that join above the lantern and from which it hangs. It's obvious, I know, but when looking at this before I never said it to myself. I think that's one thing I like about this image- I wasn't able to read it right away. I'd always assumed that the far left figure held the banners aloft, and I was way wrong.
Why do the two figures foreground left each have one eye covered?
The robes of the three foreground figures mix complexity of pattern and color with great variety. The far left figure has a lot of orange, which balances out the dominant black on the right. The middle figure is more complex in terms of color and pattern- it's just loud enough to do something really interesting: most of this drawing has fairly straightforward, smooth-edged, flowing line quality except for the two roosters at top; they are drawn with much more character, with shorter, choppier, more angular strokes. This is the most graphically expressive or "ragged" drawing here, and I think it's nicely balanced by the more complex robe of the central girl figure below. So, around the lantern there is a left and right, top and bottom kind of balancing through color, density, pattern, weight, and visual action.
Both the banner pole and bamboo pole on the right go up diagonally to the left, making a nice wide channel that the eye rows down from top to bottom while reading the title. My eye tends to run in a couple of different ways- round and round the lantern counter-clockwise, or begin at the dark figure at the bottom right, go up the bamboo pole, jump over to the top of the banner and follow it down like a funhouse slide, slide over to the left up through the black figure again, and start over: "When I get to the bottom/I go back to the top of the slide/Where I stop and turn and I go for a ride/Till I get to the bottom and I see you again/Yeah, yeah, yeah[1]."
A little more about the story illustrations rather than the cover:
From biblio.com, "Lovely book about how a timid tiger and an old magician came to live in a cherry tree in a Japanese village. Beautifully illustrated, in the style of Japanese woodcuts."
No, the illustrations are not in the style of Japanese woodcuts, and to me aren't nearly as interesting as this cover. Compostionally they have a lot going on, but the drawings are more completely rendered and telling, rather than, in this cover, dynamic and suggestive. The drawing and compostional style inside the book are actually quite conventionally Western, but that's no great surprise.
This is the third book in a row I'm showing here for which the cover artist is different than the actual story artist, and in which the cover art is way more interesting that the internal art.
Another cover can be found for this book that looks like it was done by the author and is vastly inferior to the two color print job I have.
One thing I can't quite get a handle on is this book's relation to history as a book for English readers. In 1958 American occupation of Japan was just six years in the past, and the country was still in the middle of rebuilding and retooling. If I had read this book in, say, the post-war and early Cold War 1965 at age 8, what would my unformed world view think of this?
First, my impression would be that most Japanese adult males wear heavy black-framed glasses. Check that off the list: Japanese, male, adult, black glasses, expressive eyebrows? Check.
My second impression would be that everyone in Japan wears wooden platform shoes (they're called Geta- I had to look that up), whereas anyone who watches a Kurazawa movie knows that isn't true (I say that with tongue in cheek).
And my third impression would be that when the Japanese build a little bridge over a tiny brook the bridge has to be one of those semi-circular ones that arches high up in the middle that you have to practically climbs up and down.
As I look inside these books I realize even more fully that I collected them for the covers, not what's between the covers. How about that?
August 02, 2006
Sutro
Sutro, 20060802, HTML, 400 x 400 pixels
The background image is a JPEG converted to an HTML tabel with Don Relyea's Reductionizer.
Ask Mr. Bear
Ask Mr. Bear, story and pictures by Marjorie Flack, The MacMillan Company, New York, 1958
See 20060801 for explantion of this series.
On the surface Ask Mr. Bear seems like a pretty typical pattern book for early readers. A very young boy, Danny, asks the Hen if she can give him something for for his mother's birthday, and the Hen offers an egg, but his mother already has an egg, so they go along until they encounter the Goose who offers feathers for a pillow, but she has a pillow, and so on through the menagerie.
Books like this reinforce reader recognition of a set vocabularly through repetition to develop reading fluency, and also practice and develop the reader's ability to recognize and predict narratives and narrative typs and patterns, character types, and so on. This is the kind of book where you read to a young child, "So Danny and the Hen and the Goose all hopped along until they met..." and then the younger developing reader guesses what is next- another animal, of course. If the reader is really young and may not be able to predict quite yet you can turn the page, they'll see the animal and shout, "A Goat!" Everyone has experienced this.
But there are some strange things about this book. After Danny has asked five barnyard animals for a gift the Cow finally suggests Mr. Bear, who lives in the woods, but none of the animals will accompany Danny. Danny goes to the woods alone and asks Mr. Bear, who whispers something in Danny's while in a pose that's just a little too intimate. At the end Danny ends up giving his mother a "Bear Hug" for her birthday.
It's bizarre that Danny goes to the woods alone, and that Mr. Bear is the only non-barnyard animal and has, in this context, a foreboding formal title "Mister". The Bear-to-Boy relationship probably sails over most readers heads.
The cover is obviously done by a a different artist, and this makes me think that these two and three color covers were not typicall done by the book's illustrator. In yesterday's post I remark on how different the cover is from the inside illustration, and Ask Mr. Bear is no exception. The drawings inside this book are also quite different from the cover: on the cover the lines outside the define the boundaries of the figure; inside, the drawing style is more of what I typically call Dufy, though lots of other artists and illustrators do this- color is layed down and then defining lines are drawn on top, with the under color peeking out beyond the drawn outlines. The style of drawing on the cover contains each figure and separates them from each other, while the drawings inside use this Dufy style, which diffuses each figure a bit situates them better in their environment on the page.
The Danny on the cover looks nothing like Danny inside the book. Outside Danny has a big head with dark haired jutting out over his forhead. Inside Danny is Arayan blonde, taller and better proportioned. The animals are all drawn differently, too; for example, Inside Goat has a beard, Outside Goat doesn't.
It's peculiar to me how the Sheep and Goat are cut off on the left hand side about half an inch inside the binding- why bring it in like that? I wonder how many young kids were confused by the Sheep's head attached to the rear of the Goat?
The pale green and dark purple printed on the cover are not colors used inside the book. And there is something weird that happens when I look at the cover: there are five figures- four animals and a boy. The entire bodies of the animals are printed. All of Danny is printed except for the inside of his shirt and the tops of his socks- the fabric is used as a color. But because Danny is the only figure that uses the background as a color my eyes fall through his torso to the cover's fabric. His torso kind of drops out as a hole in the composition, and I see his over-sized head as precariously balanced on a torso-skeleton of a few thin lines. It makes him strangely disembodied.
Danny, Hen, Goose, Goat, and Sheep all look to our right, off the edge of the book, as if they've just glimpsed the next animal they will encounter, which in the book is the Cow. But this cover gives no indication that there is a Cow- the title suggests that they are looking at Mr. Bear, and to me they seem, especially Danny, just a tad reticent. Getting ready for those secrets to be whispered in his ear, I guess.
August 01, 2006
Daisy
Daisy, 20060801, HTML, 370 x 430 pixels
The background image is a JPEG converted to an HTML tabel with Don Relyea's Reductionizer. I'll be making images with this toll during August, and talking about it more later.
Across the Borderline
Douglas Witmer and I will be showing a collaborative drawing installation titled Across the Borderline at the Rike Center Gallery at the University of Dayton, Ohio in January 2007. We will use a weblog, Across the Borderline, to document our preparation for this show. A proposal for the show and the gallery floorplan can be found there, too.
Two Artist's Talking
A few weeks back Joanne Mattera and I began a weblog conversation called Two Artists Talking, to which we'll post once or twice a week and plan to continue indefinitely.
Flip and the Cows
Flip and the Cows, story and pictures by Wesley Dennis, Cadmus Books, published by E. M. Hale and Co., Eau Claire, Wisconsin, 1942
A couple of weeks ago Steven LaRose posted a scan of a book, Anyone Can Paint!, which reminded me of a project I've wanted to do for a couple of years but have avoided because it's labor intensive- scans of childrens' books I have. So in the next few days I'll scan and post a few.
I have three or more boxes of books like this collected during my elementary school teaching years in the 90's as our school library threw them out, usually in large batches. Kids just weren't checking out books like this anymore. These are books of my own childhood. I primarily collected books that tended towards graphically strong one and two-color printing on colored covers, something that seems to have been dropped over the past two or three decades. I'm a little repelled by, but also drawn to, how these books clearly represent a kind of post-war white American idealism of the late 40's and 50's. I also have books from the early 60's that get a whole lot more graphically loose, sort of jazzy, with splashes of color and line reminescent of Raoul Dufy, or in other cases clearly using geometric and collage elements.
Many of these covers do standard stuff: make good use of flat areas of few colors, layout and carve positive and negative space, have lines with interesting qualities or shapes with suggestive edges, and activate the background as an active color and area. This is all Art 101 kind of stuff, but it's a lot easier to point out and talk about than it is to do it successfully.
The drawings inside Flip are fairly academic, drawn in charcoal and crayon, and aren't nearly as interesting as the cover, which is one of my favorites. A simple google of Wesley Dennis returns lots of links to his work; apparently, he was quite well known for his horse drawings (1, 2, 3). A number of used copies are availabe via Alibris, the descriptions of which often refer to the book bearing the name of a school or library; one synopsis says, " A colt realizes his desire to jump across the brook following a dream in which he sprouts silvery wings."
I love the three fonts: the block letters used for "Flip" and "Cows", the tidy linked letters use for "and the", and the swinging cursive of the author's name. I like the rectangular field of red and the few lines carved into the black to make Flip; it's not really that well drawn, but you easily getting the feeling of "young horse". I am mezermized by the regular sawtooth halo around Flip- you'd think it wouldn't work, even be a little buzzy or unsettling, but so much of the cover is crisp and even that this jagged halo neatly envelopes Flip and makes the strong red recede. And finally, I really like the double-sawtoothed stretch of black grass below that spans from edge-to-edge, beneath which Flip's hooves disappear into the background of the fabric of the cover; by simply contrasting slightly larger blades of grass above with small ones below an easy feeling of foreground and background is suggested.
Later editions of this book have a much less compelling cover.