Tuesday, August 15, 2006

An Intimate Grammar

An Intimate Grammar
Gregg Chadwick
"An Intimate Grammar"
(In Memory of Uri Grossman)
30"x24" oil on linen 2006

I paint Buddhas when the world seems to call for them. As a father I can barely begin to understand the loss of a son. The death of David Grossman's son Uri during the recent fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli Army in Lebanon clearly shows the costs of war. I paint Buddhas in the hope that courageous men like the writer David Grossman will continue to seek peace through dialogue and understanding. It is much more difficult to sit down at a negotiating table and hammer out differences than it is to lob missiles over the border or to drop bombs in retaliation. A world without prejudice, brutality or war is a world which I wish to leave for my son. The goal seems naive or laughable to some but the non-violence of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. bore great fruit.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

War Hits Home for Israeli Novelist David Grossman

Uri Grossman
Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit

The New York Times reports that Uri Grossman - "the son of Israeli novelist and peace activist David Grossman has been killed in southern Lebanon ... just days after the author urged the government to end the war with Hezbollah guerrillas."

David Grossman
Photo: Shai Rosenzweig

Uri Grossman's family released a statement:

"Uri Grossman was born on August 27, 1985. He was supposed to celebrate his 21st birthday in two weeks. Uri studied at the experimental school in Jerusalem. He reached the armored corps and fulfilled his aspiration to be a tank commander. He was about to be released (from the army) in November, travel the world, and then study theater. Friday evening he spoke, from Lebanon, with his parents and sister. He was glad that a decision on a ceasefire was taken. Uri promised that he will be eating the next Shabbat dinner at home. Uri, son to David and Michal and brother to Yonatan and Ruthie, had a fabulous sense of humor and a big soul filled with life and emotion."

The Jerusalem Post's account:

"On Sunday, the war brought disaster home to Grossman when his son Uri, a 20-year-old staff-sergeant, was killed by an anti-tank missile that hit his tank. The younger Grossman was taking part in a major military offensive in the southern Lebanon village of Hirbat Kasif, aimed at sweeping the area clear of Hizbullah fighters ahead of Monday's expected cease-fire. Two other soldiers and an officer were killed in the same incident."

David Grossman, the author of such internationally recognized novels as "Someone to Run With", "The Yellow Wind" and "The Zig-Zag Kid", has long been an outspoken left-wing activist. In his 2003 book "Death as a Way of Life", Grossman presented a sobered but still resiliently liberal view of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In early 2005, he said at a literary fair: "Everyone knows that the conflict will end. The writing has been on the wall for a number of years. This is our chance to write history, and not be victims of it."

Of Israel's struggle to live in peace, he said, "We hope to become a story like any other story. But for God's sake, not a larger-than-life story, just a story of life."

The New York Times continues, David Grossman, whose novels and political essays have been translated into 20 languages, is an outspoken advocate of conciliation with the Arabs and of ending Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

But, like most Israelis, David Grossman supported Israel's retaliation when Hezbollah fighters attacked an army patrol inside Israel on July 12 and unleashed a barrage of rockets on civilians in the north.

By Thursday, David Grossman, said the war had gone on long enough.

The turning point came the previous day when the government approved a plan to launch an 11th-hour campaign to inflict a devastating blow to the guerrillas.

In a joint news conference with fellow novelists Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, Grossman denounced the plan as dangerous and counterproductive.

''Out of concern for the future of Israel and our place here, the fighting should be stopped now, to give a chance to negotiations,''
David Grossman said.

Grossman, an Israeli-born son of a refugee from Nazi Europe, urged Israel to accept a proposal by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora -- which later formed the core of the U.N. resolution for ending the conflict -- calling for the deployment of Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon with the help of an international force that would end Hezbollah's virtual control over the area.

''This solution is the victory that Israel wanted,'' Grossman said. He warned that stepping up the offensive could trigger the collapse of Saniora's government and the strengthening of Hezbollah -- the very force Israel set out to destroy.

''It's still possible to prevent it,'' Grossman said. ''This is the last moment.''



David Grossman from his 2003 collection of essays, "Death as a Way of Life", on the ten years since the Oslo Accords:

"But who can hope for love between nations? Who really loves anyone in this world? (Of course, I'm referring not to people but to nations.) Do the English love the French? Do the Germans love the Russians? Perhaps we should even ask: Do the West Germans and East Germans love each other?

"Interests" is the key word, and it is the guarantee that the agreement will work. The two peoples have signed on to the agreement because they understand that they have no other choice. After decades of mutual bloodletting, they have come to terms with the idea that if they do not live side by side they will perish together, in a maelstrom that will engulf the entire region. It is existential interest that pushed these two reluctant peoples into each other's arms. The United States and Japan, and the Europeans led by Germany, now have to turn peace into a practical and enticing option for both sides. A flourishing economy, new jobs, a sense of freedom, reinforcement of everything in life that was damaged or paralyzed during the years of occupation and Intifada-all these can significantly strengthen those Palestinians who want peace. Similarly, the right-wing extremists in Israel will have difficulty arguing with a concrete improvement in the economy, in the quality of life, in the sense of security. The fundamentalists of Hamas will fight a war of despair and no quarter. They will try to create a nightmare atmosphere. Only a robust creative reality, full of life and hope, will succeed in withstanding them. We need to begin creating that reality now, immediately.

Neither romantic love, then, nor a high wall. I dream of two countries separated by a distinct border. A border that will make clear to each state the space in which it exists as a political entity, as a national identity. If there's a border, there is an identity. There is a new living reality in which this identity can bleed out the poison of illusions and begin to heal.


One more important thing: This is a condition in which-years from now-the two sides will be able to give themselves a new kind of definition-not one contrasted with an enemy, but one that turns inward. One dependent not on the fear that they might be destroyed but instead on the natural development of a nation, on its system of values and the various facets of its character. This is a decisive change. For years, both sides have suspended the internal dialogue that each must have. The state of continual conflict was a reason and an excuse for not addressing their fundamental, authentic problems, a reason for just trying to survive one more violent conflagration. I can definitely see that such a new process of defining ourselves, the Israelis, will bring about tremors and changes. It will require a painful assessment of our definition of ourselves today in relation to our Jewish heritage. It will force us to confront our complicated history anew, and to consider the possibility of choosing a new way of relating to the world outside us.

If peace is established between us and all the Arab countries, we will also be able, finally, to internalize the fact that we are part of the Middle East. We will comprehend that our presence here is not the result of some bureaucratic-geographical error, but rather that this is the place in which our lives will henceforth be conducted, and it would be well for us to open ourselves to the world and to the culture of our neighbors. Clearly, such a step can be taken only if we have partners, if the Arab countries no longer view Israel as "a cancerous growth of imperialism" (as Israel has been termed on many an occasion in the Arab press) but rather as an integral, stimulating, and vital part of the Middle East.

If we can reach and live with this vision of the end of days, we Israelis may well permit ourselves-after years of instinctive self-denial-to believe that we have a future. That we may dare to believe that we will finally have continuity and prospects. That death will not cast its shadow on everything in our lives. Perhaps we will be able to free ourselves from that sense of doom that lies deep down in our collective consciousnesses-that, for us, life is only latent death.

This is the true meaning of self-determination. I have always believed that when Israel agrees to grant this right to the Palestinians, it will also win it for itself. Now the moment has come for the Israelis, for the Palestinians, and for the other sane nations in the region. Here it is now: the Future."

Günter Grass Comes Clean

"Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum)"
Günter Grass
lithograph
(Grass' first novel -''The Tin Drum''- is a magnificent attempt to portray the horror and stupidity of the Nazi years.)

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, German Nobel Laureate Günter Grass admits that, between 1944-45, he was a member of Hitler's Weapons SS. Günter Grass says the shame of his youthful naivety has long haunted him and that it will now be his "Scarlet Letter."

Der Spiegel reports that Ralph Giordano, a leading German-Jewish writer, said he would not condemn Grass and praised his belated confession:

"It's good what Günter Grass has now done,'' Giordano said. ''What's worse than making a mistake is not coming to terms with it. His example also shows how seducible young people can be.''

One of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany, the SS played a key role in the Holocaust, operating the death camps in which millions died. But by the war's end when Grass was inducted, most were drafted and many under 18.

Der Spiegel reports :

" At first, says Grass, he saw the Weapons SS as an elite unit, and not as something "repulsive." It wasn't until later that he became plagued by feelings of guilt. "For me, the whole thing was always tied to this question: Could you have realized what was going one at the time?"

"Grass says he has always known that the day would come when he would have to talk about this part of his past. Did he miss the right opportunity to discuss his SS membership? "I don't know," says the author, artist and poet. "It's certainly the case that I believed what I did as a writer was enough. After all, I went through my learning process and reached my own conclusions. But there was still this lingering blemish."

"Ich bin dabei gewesen"
Günter Grass
lithograph

"More amusing than sensational is Grass's recollection of a boy named Joseph, with whom he spent time in a prisoner-of-war camp. When asked whether this 17-year-old was in fact, Joseph Ratzinger, the man who became Pope Benedict XVI, Grass says: "He became my friend and we played dice together. I had managed to smuggle my dice shaker into the camp. I wanted to be an artist and he was interested in a career in the church. He seemed a little shy, but he was a nice guy."

"Like Grass, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was in fact imprisoned at Germany's Bad Aibling camp. Whether the Vatican will comment on Grass's recollections remains to be seen."

After serving in World War II, Grass ended up in Berlin, where he studied art.

Having trained as an artist, Mr. Grass began his career with a book of poems illustrated by his own drawings. Grass became well known as an author and a biting social critic but has continued to produce visual art over the years.

Vivien Raynor in an article from the New York Times published on March 28, 1982 reviews Grass' lithographs: " The visions of the artist, which are inextricable from those of the writer, have roots that go much deeper than the 20th century. The prints, with their implications of dazzling white light, their sinuous but firm lines and their textures that range from rich black hatching to a delicate gray stipple worthy of Aubrey Beardsley, are strange in the way that the works of Arnold Bocklin, Otto Runge and Max Klinger are strange."

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"Yet political turmoil in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and beyond only underlines the challenge of using the past to illuminate the present. Put differently, can 400 carefully chosen objects, some dating to the 11th century, provide us with any fresh insight into what is happening in the Middle East today?"
-Alan Riding in the New York Times

The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London is a long overdue re-installation of the Islamic collection at the V&A. Students and instructors at the nearby Royal College of Art often stop by the V&A for lunch. Maybe this collection of beautiful and politically charged artwork will inspire the artists of London and beyond to delve deeply into the connections and ideas found in these objects rather than repeat the tired diatribe coming from the talking heads in the Middle East, Europe and America.

The Ardabil Carpet (detail), Iran
Width 553.5 cm x length 1051.5 cm
Hand knotted woollen pile, on silk warp and weft; asymmetrical knot, open to the left; 304 knots per sq. in
1539-40
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Alan Riding in the New York Times

Victoria & Albert Museum

Museum With No Frontiers: Discover Islamic Art

The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Monday, August 07, 2006

Picture Kill



A Picture Kill notice has been sent out by the by the Reuters News Service and Beirut based freelance photographer Adnan Hajj has been dropped by the agency for Photoshopping news photographs of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict.

The Reuters Website reports that they received "more than 2,000 reader e-mails on this issue over the weekend." The agency issued a kill on the photo in question:


Doctored Photo of Beirut by Adnan Hajj

and sent out an unaltered version:


Unaltered Photo of Beirut by Adnan Hajj

Reuters also reports that they have "withdrawn all photographs taken by the Beirut-based freelancer after establishing that he had altered two images since the start of the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah group."

"There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image", said Tom Szlukovenyi, Reuters Global Picture Editor. "Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict and unalterable policy".

"Reuters terminated its relationship with Hajj on Sunday after a review of a photograph he had taken of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on suburban Beirut the previous day found it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more and darker smoke rising from buildings.

An immediate enquiry began into Hajj’s other work. It found on Monday that a second photograph, of an Israeli F-16 fighter over Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon and dated Aug 2, had been doctored to increase the number of flares dropped by the plane from one to three. The caption also misidentified the objects as missiles rather than flares, which warplanes release as a defensive measure." Here is that photo:


Doctored Photo Of Israeli F-16 over Lebanon by Adnan Hajj

"Manipulating photographs in this way is entirely unacceptable and contrary to all the principles consistently held by Reuters throughout its long and distinguished history. It undermines not only our reputation but also the good name of all our photographers," said David Schlesinger, the Reuters Global Managing Editor.

Szlukovenyi said the mere fact that Hajj had altered two of his photographs meant none of his work for Reuters could be trusted either by the news service or its users.

"This doesn’t mean that every one of his 920 photographs in our database was altered. We know that not to be the case from the majority of images we have looked at so far but we need to act swiftly and in a precautionary manner," Szlukovenyi said.

The two altered photographs were among 43 that Hajj had filed directly to the Global Pictures Desk since the start of the conflict on July 12 rather than through an editor in Beirut, as was the case with the great majority of his images.
Hajj worked for Reuters as a non-staff contributing photographer from 1993 until 2003 and again since April 2005."

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Does Gorky Make You Smarter?


Arshile Gorky
"The Artist and His Mother"
1926-36 oil on canvas 60 x 50 in.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Gift of Julien Levy for Maro and Natasha Gorky in memory of their father
© 2000 Estate of Arshile Gorky/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Today's New York Times reports that a new study by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum suggests that "learning about paintings and sculpture helps children become better students in other areas." The study cites "improvements in a range of literacy skills among students who took part in a program in which the Guggenheim sends artists into schools. The study, now in its second year, interviewed hundreds of New York City third graders, some of whom had participated in the Guggenheim program, called Learning Through Art, and others who did not."

"The study found that students in the program performed better in six categories of literacy and critical thinking skills — including thorough description, hypothesizing and reasoning — than did students who were not in the program. The children were assessed as they discussed a passage in a children’s book, Cynthia Kadohata’s “Kira-Kira,” and a painting by Arshile Gorky, “The Artist and His Mother.”

The Whitney Museum describes "The Artist and His Mother" as "arguably Gorky's masterpiece." Michael FitzGerald in the Whitney's Archive Research Project on Gorky goes on to explain that the "painting is based on a photograph of the young Gorky and his mother, taken in 1912, before the Turkish massacre of Armenians during World War I, when Gorky, his mother, and his sister were sent on a death march. His mother never recovered her health; she died in 1919 and the fifteen-year-old Gorky emigrated to America."



The publisher summarizes Cynthia Kadohata’s “Kira-Kira" :
"Kira-kira" is Japanese for glittering or shining. Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering — kira-kira — in the future."

Both Gorky's painting and Kadohata's novel portray the world from a child's eye and give voice to stories of growing up in a difficult and at times brutal world. It makes sense that diving into discussions of these artworks would help children open up intellectually and provide them with a sense of mastery. All too often, the voices, needs, and stories of children are hidden or forcibly repressed.

"While it is unknown exactly how learning about art helps literacy skill, the hypothesis is that the use of both talking about art and using inquiry to help students tease apart the meaning of paintings helps them learn how to tease apart the meanings of texts, too. They apply those skills to reading.”
- Johanna Jones, a senior associate with Randi Korn and Associates, a museum research company conducting the study over three years with a $640,000 grant from the federal Department of Education.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Twitchell Files Claim Against Labor Department Over Loss of Ruscha Mural


From the Los Angeles Times:

"On Thursday, attorneys representing artist Kent Twitchell filed a claim against the U.S. Department of Labor in connection with Twitchell's large-scale mural "Ed Ruscha Monument" — a six-story portrait of fellow artist Ruscha on a building owned by the federal agency — being painted over in early June. Twitchell said he received no notice, as required by law, that the paint-over would take place."

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Giant Clams Invade the Departure Lounge at SFO


Underwater Display: Terminal 1
San Francisco International Airport

Summer - Lots of traveling in the heat and lots of time in airport departure lounges. The San Francisco International Airport has an interesting program of curated exhibitions. Terminal 1's current display concerns the sea -
"Aquarium: Underwater Planet"

The exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Steinhart Aquarium from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. (All the current exhibits at SFO are listed at sfoarts.org.)

Specimens gathered long ago float in amber colored jars bringing to mind Doc Ricketts' Lab in Monterey or even the mutated human/sea creatures who serve Davy Jones and torment Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest."

I found A O Scott's review of the reviewers-"Avast, Me Critics!"- in the New York Times to be an entertaining take on the role of critics in contemporary American society:

"Are we out of touch with the audience? Why do we go sniffing after art where everyone else is looking for fun, and spoiling everybody’s fun when it doesn’t live up to our notion or art? What gives us the right to yell “bomb” outside a crowded theater? ... Online, everyone is a critic, which is as it should be: professional prerogatives aside, a critic is really just anyone who thinks out loud about something he or she cares about, and gets into arguments with fellow enthusiasts."


Organist at “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest"
El Capitan Theater, Hollywood


Giant Clam: Terminal 1
San Francisco International Airport

Friday, June 23, 2006

Liquid Jelly: Installing Matthew Barney at SFMOMA

Matthew Barney sweeps up at SFMOMA

There is an amusing article in today's San Francisco Chronicle about the installation of Matthew Barney's "Drawing Restraint" exhibition at SFMOMA- Petroleum Jelly, Barney dressed as Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Tennessee trucker Jim McKinney, future Bjork sightings. This exhibit, which opens today, is going to be fun.

Matthew Barney's "Drawing Restraint" Exhibition has its own comment space on the web: "Drawing Restraint:What's Your Opinion?"

Trucker Jim McKinney with coffeee and pastry watches his tankload of petroleum jelly ooze forth at SFMOMA

Matthew Barney Podcast:

"Drawing Restraint:Podcast"

Podcaster at SFMOMA'S Chuck Close Exhibition

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Los Angeles Film Festival Opens Today

Max Beckmann
"Film Studio"
25 5/8 x 37 5/8 in. (65.1 x 95.6 cm) oil on canvas 1933
Saint Louis Art Museum

The Los Angeles Film Festival opens today and runs until July 2nd. The screenings will be held in venues throughout Westwood.

Star Wars empresario George Lucas acts as Guest Director this year. Lucas has this to say about independent film, "Throughout my life, I have been amazed and inspired by films that transport me to new lands .... The experience of discovering these new cultures, new stories and new filmmakers is exhilarating and rejuvenating."

As Guest Director, George Lucas has elected to screen three films:

Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai"
Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove"
Jean-Luc Godard's "Masculine Feminine"

Poolside chats will be held during the festival at the W Hotel. Anjelica Huston and Sally Kellerman will talk about photography with photographers Michael Childers and John Stoddart on Wednesday, June 28th at 7 p.m. ($15 at the door)

Conversations about film, art and music will be held at the Hammer Museum. (At least I hope they talk about art while at the Hammer.)

Danger Mouse opened up the festival last week at the Hammer. My thoughts on that conversation will appear soon.

L.A. Film Festival

Friday, June 09, 2006

Rosetsu's Elephant


Nagasawa Rosetsu
"Elephant and Children"
ink on paper c. 1794
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

I recently wrote on the extraordinary ink on paper technique of the 18th century Japanese artist Nagasawa Rosetsu. Newly on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco is Rosetsu's "Elephant and Children". This painting combines a daring composition with rich and varied brush techniques. The Asian Art Museum has determined that Rosetsu "depicted the elephant's huge body, large ears, trunk, and legs with minimal strokes using a flat brush, afterward using a round brush quickly but carefully to fill in details such as the children."

Rosetsu's paintings are witty, at times charming, but usually contain a hint of mystery or even dread. Rosetsu "is said to have had a volatile temperament, and his life ended under mysterious circumstances, possibly murder or suicide."

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Kent Twitchell's "Ed Ruscha Monument" Painted Over


"Ed Ruscha Monument"
Kent Twitchell
1978-1987 Acrylic

"(The Ed Ruscha mural) has always been such a popular piece in the art world and in Los Angeles. I had no idea it was in danger in any way," he said. "It was sort of my 'Mona Lisa'; I worked on it for nine years."
-Kent Twitchell


"Ed Ruscha Monument"
Kent Twitchell
(painted over - June 2, 2006)


Ed Ruscha in a brooding Firestarter pose. Do they really want to mess with this man's portrait?

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Ursprache & Weltschmerz


Katharine Close, an eighth-grader at the H.W. Mountz School in Spring Lake, New Jersey, becomes the first girl since 1999 to win the national spelling bee.

After spelling "ursprache" correctly, Katharine Close stepped back from the microphone and put her hands to her mouth upon being declared the winner. "I'm just in shock," Katharine said. Asked what she'll remember most, she said: "Probably just hearing 'ursprache,' which is a parent language."

The word "weltzschmerz", which we all should reflect upon as it means sadness over evil in the world, tripped up the second place finisher - Finola Mei Hwa Hackett, a 14-year-old Canadian.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Judging by Appearance: Master Drawings from the Collection of Joseph and Deborah Goldyne at the Legion of Honor


Henri Matisse
"La violiniste a la fenêtre" (The Violinist at the Window)
charcoal on paper 1924
photo courtesy of the Palace of the Legion of Honor

"Judging by Appearances" at the Legion of Honor is a rich exhibit of works on paper from the private collection of Joseph and Deborah Goldyne. The artworks have been arranged under broad themes by curator Robert Flynn Johnson, which leads to chance correspondences between disparate artists. Matisse's luminous charcoal drawing, "La violiniste a la fenêtre", with its silvery light seems apt for the fog shrouded skies above Baker Beach on a typical summer morning in San Francisco. (I imagine a similar view from Robin William's open window as I drive back from the museum through Seacliff towards North Beach.) Hanging nearby is a tiny Rembrandt study, which carries a similar force with the simplest of means. In one of my earliest drawing classes, the Los Angeles artist Tom Wudl looked at my work and said, "It is what you leave out of the drawing that is most important." He didn't mean it as a compliment. In contrast to my early efforts, Matisse and Rembrandt create entire worlds with ink smudges and charcoal smears.


Giorgio Morandi
"Landscape"
watercolor 1957
photo courtesy of the Palace of the Legion of Honor

Giorgio Morandi's "Landscape" somehow brings the fragrance of Italy back to me. I really can't explain the watercolor's effect on me. Like the Matisse and the Rembrandt, Morandi's work combines the utmost simplicity with incredible grandeur and presence. A Turner study of the Moselle hangs nearby and it too pulses with color and space, as the work seems to melt into an abstraction of pure light.

Unlike many exhibits, the label commentaries in "Judging by Appearances" are well written, witty and opinionated. Both the curator, Robert Flynn Johnson, and the collector, Joseph Goldyne, provide their honest thoughts on the works. And as viewers we seem to be encouraged to join the dialogue and contribute our own thoughts.

This is a beautiful exhibition, which should be viewed before it closes on Sunday. Museum staff members promised me that a catalog is in the works and should be in the bookstore any day now. The museum's website provides very little info on the show so the catalog will prove to be indispensable.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai


Icon with Saint Theodosia.
(detail)
Byzantine (Constantinople), first half of the 13th century.
The Holy Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt

In today's Los Angeles Times, Suzanne Muchnic reports on the upcoming exhibition at the Getty Museum:
"Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai"

In 2004, the Metropolitan Museum in New York presented an exhibition on Byzantium which included works from St. Catherine's in the Sinai.

Opening at the Getty Museum on November 14th will be the first exhibition in the United States to focus exclusively on treasures from the Greek Orthodox monastery beneath Mount Sinai in Egypt. Founded by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the in the 6th century, The Holy Monastery of St. Catherine, lays claim as the the world's oldest continuously operating Christian monastery.


The Holy Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt
photo - Bruce M. White

Father Justin Sinaites, librarian at St. Catherine's, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times says that "the works will be installed in a setting designed to illuminate their devotional roles and evoke the ambience of the monastery."


"Virgin Hodegetria"
12th century
The Holy Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt
photo - Bruce M. White

Thursday, May 25, 2006

RB Morris at the Getty



RB Morris at the Edinburgh Castle, San Francisco
photo by Gregg Chadwick

Lucinda Williams has called him the "greatest unknown songwriter in the country." Recently at the Edinburgh Castle in San Francisco, I heard RB Morris play the greatest unreleased song in the country - his post September 11th lament - "Empire Falls". "Empire Falls" is a heartbreaking look at America today. It would fit right in on Neil Young's "Living With War", Pearl Jam's new album, The Dixie Chicks' new collection, Springsteen's current tour and Michael McDermott's glorious upcoming album. Come to the Getty Museum on June 9th and hear it for yourself. Money back guarantee if the song doesn't move you. Well the event is free so no worries there.

The Getty describes RB Morris as a "hillbilly beatnik hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee, and a celebrated poet, playwright, and singer-songwriter. His songs reflect a range of musical styles from blues and country to improvisation and spoken word, but what holds them together and gives them their signature is a provocative wit and a sense of melancholy. Morris's rhythmic wordplay turns these contrary tendencies into the best of friends."

RB Morris (Friday Nights at the Getty)
Date: Friday June 9, 2006 at 7:30 pm
Location: Harold M. Williams Auditorium, Getty Center
Admission: Free. Reservation required

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Thoughts on the Process of Painting


Gregg Chadwick
"The Crossing"
72"x48" oil on linen 2004

Thinking About Art has my "Artists Interview Artists" piece up. I respond to a series of questions on the process of my work:
Artists Interview Artists: Gregg Chadwick

Thanks JT. And thanks to Sky Pape at Artists Unite for linking to my interview and my site:
Artists Unite

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Richter's Squeegee, Courbet's Knife, Rosetsu's Fingers


Gerhard Richter
"Breath"
(detail)
oil on canvas 1989
Milwaukee Art Museum

Tyler Green's recent piece on the correspondence between Courbet's paint quality and Gerhard Richter's paint technique, echoes my own recent thoughts. The landscape motifs in many of the works at the recent Courbet exhibition at the Getty in Los Angeles were almost a framework to enable Courbet's paint pyrotechnics.


Gustave Courbet
"The Gust of Wind"
(detail)
oil on canvas c. 1865
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Courbet's paint is dragged, scumbled, rubbed, scraped, ladled on with a palette knife, smeared with rags, and fingers. Richter's work is also manipulated on the surface of the canvas while the paint is still wet. Richter's blurred, squeegeed marks create a new reality and for me evoke thoughts of grottoes, mists and Wagnerian myths.


Gerhard Richter
"Breath"
oil on canvas 1989
Milwaukee Art Museum


Nagasawa Rosetsu
"Herdboy Playing a Flute"
141.8 cm x 139 cm hanging scroll; ink on paper c. 1792
Kyushoin Temple, Kyoto

Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754-1799), a Japanese artist featured at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in - "Traditions Unbound: Groundbreaking Painters of Eighteenth-Century Kyoto" also actively manipulated the wet paint surface to create images of great depth and mystery. Nagasawa Rosetsu's "Herdboy Playing a Flute" was painted with his fingers, palms and fingernails. The artists of Eighteenth-Century Kyoto referred to this simple yet extraordinary technique as shitoga. Paintings in this expressive manner were often created during a night of poetry and drink. Another painting executed by Rosetsu with his fingers is signed, "suichu mansha Rosetsu shi ga" - (finger painting, haphazardly painted by Rosetsu when drunk).



Artists often use their fingers and hands while painting- smearing, blending and stippling the surface of the work. There is a sensual quality to the application of paint that is often ignored in writing about art. As a painter I find James Elkin's "What Painting Is" to be an important work because of its discussion of the physicality of paint.: the loopy, thick, gooey quality of lead white. The clear mineral glazes of lapis lazuli. The mystery of cinnabar, flying white and dragon's blood. For James Elkins, painting is akin to alchemy.


Leonardo da Vinci
"Ginevra de' Benci"
(detail of fingerprint)
c. 1474/1478, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art

Leonardo da Vinci's "Ginevra de' Benci" may not lead us to the heirs of Jesus and Mary Magdalene but it does provide evidence of Leonardo's own hands blending the wet paint into a rich field of sfumato. Painters are often like alchemists, as James Elkins describes, or like masons building a thick surface like Courbet's rocky fields, and at times seem to be like Pygmalion creating living pictorial realities out of their own hands.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Robert Heinecken Dies


Robert Heinecken
Photo work from a guerilla special edition

Christopher Knight reports in todays Los Angeles Times that the artist Robert Heinecken has died. Robert Heinecken's photo works took his photography directly into the world. In one of his most memorable artistic actions Robert Heinecken bought numerous copies of a current edition of Time magazine in 1969 and then, after adding his own ani-war images adapted from horrific news photos from the conflict, put them back on the newstand shelves for unsuspecting customers. Christopher Knight explains: "The pages of Heinecken's guerrilla "special edition" included superimposed lithographic prints of a recently published photograph showing a smiling soldier holding the decapitated heads of two anonymous Vietnamese youths. The shocking image was repeated indiscriminately over fashion advertisements and editorial news copy throughout the magazines. Between 1969 and 1994, he made 37 editions of variously collaged and overprinted magazines."

Robert Heinecken created meaningful work that expressed his own outrage at the injustices being waged during an unpopular war. We need him now and will miss him.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

October Off Ocean Park: Greeting Diebenkorn

Gregg Chadwick
October Off Ocean Park
72"x72" oil on linen 2006

My painting, "October Off Ocean Park" was painted in a series of starts, stops and absences. Major compositional elements were scraped down or painted over. I worked on the painting over a series of months then years. My artistic engagement with the work of Richard Diebenkorn helped me finish the piece. I knew I wanted to get the light of a Santa Monica evening into the work. But I wasn't quite sure how to pull it off. Not long ago I moved into a studio at the Santa Monica Airport, literally off Ocean Park Boulevard. I could walk out the door and see that evening light filtered through my memories of Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series.

Richard Diebenkorn
Ocean Park No.27 100" x 81" oil on canvas 1970
Brooklyn Museum

Arthur C. Danto, in "Encounters and Reflections", writes at length on Diebenkorn's Ocean Park paintings:

"Ocean Park itself is a community in Santa Monica, where Diebenkorn traced a daily path between home and studio, but whether or not these works make the topical references to local landscape with which they are credited, they clearly are something more than abstractions with recurrent compositional motifs, cadences, pastel tonalities, scumbled fields and tapelike forms, and stunning juxtapositions of color swept on with masterful brushwork. Each of them, for example, displays the submerged record of its own realization, and so distinctive are the pentimenti in Diebenkorn's art that each painting carries within itself the visible history of the artist's search. The nearest parallel, perhaps, would be the great drawings of Rembrandt, in which certain crowded lines converge on the sought-after contour so that the drawing and its draw-ing are one, process and fulfillment inseparable. In my view, Diebenkorn's paintings are less about the bright skies and long horizons of Ocean Park than about the act of painting."

In Richard Diebenkorn's last years he moved back to Northern California from Los Angeles. Polar places of existence for many in the west. In Diebenkorn's work there is a difference in the light quality between the Ocean Park paintings created in Southern California and the more gestural and thicker pigmented works done in Northern California. It is too simplistic to ascribe these differences as solely about place. But I also find that my quality of vision differs as I view my paintings in these polar lights. Color seems to be more present, and perhaps more important, in my Southern California work. And space becomes expansive in my Southern California paintings as well. In San Francisco, the fog and the vertiginous landscape pull me close to the source.

As his health failed, Diebenkorn painted less but continued to create etchings at Crown Point Press in San Francisco. One morning on a walk from my Market Street loft, with a book by Robert Hughes in hand, I spotted Richard Diebenkorn leaning up against a BART entrance watching the cable car turnaround across Market Street. He was captivated by the movement of the conductors as they spun the car around on a giant wooden turntable. I stopped, leaned up against a wall, and flipped through Robert Hughes' "Nothing If Not Critical" until I reached his essay on Diebenkorn. I read slowly, pausing often to gaze up at Diebenkorn as he gazed at the forms moving across Powell Street. Eventually, I closed the book, walked over and thanked Richard Diebenkorn for his art and inspiration. He smiled and tears seemed to well up in his eyes, as he said "Thank you. I am glad that my work inspires you. Is your studio nearby?" I nodded and tried to say something "about the interplay between figuration and abstraction in his work." Diebenkorn was frail at this point and seemed to know that he didn't have much longer to live. I didn't want to take him away from his moment alone in the morning light on Market Street. I thanked him again and moved on. Richard Diebenkorn died soon after in 1993. The thought of Diebenkorn and his work is often with me.

Richard Diebenkorn
Portrait of Jane
John and Jane Fitz Gibbon Collection

*On May 12 at 6:00 p.m. at the new de Young Museum in San Francisco, Kathan Brown, Founding Director of Crown Point Press, will detail thirteen "magical secrets" about thinking creatively that she learned from working with artists in the etching studio over the past forty-four years. As part of the program Kathan Brown will play a videotape of Richard Diebenkorn working in the Crown Point Press Studios.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Art Fabrication: From Idea to Project

Photo by: KB Projects
Konstantin Bojanov, an art fabricator, at work on Richard Jackson's "The Pink Empire" .

"As art with high production values has become increasingly common, the role of the artist has evolved into something closer to that of a film director who supervises a large crew of specialists to realize his or her vision."
- Mia Fineman in The New York Times

Mia Fineman's New York Times article on contemporary art fabrication is well worth the read: "Looks Brilliant on Paper. But Who, Exactly, Is Going to Make It?"

Lee Sevilla: A 71 Year Old Artist In Need


Lee Sevilla in her car with Sandy
Photo by Richard Hartog

In today's Los Angeles Times, Steve Lopez describes the predicament of Lee Sevilla. An emerging artist at 71, Lee Sevilla spends the nights overlooking the Pacific Ocean, sleeping in her car with her dog Sandy. The hours after work are spent at a local public library, where Ms. Sevilla works on her drawings hoping to scrape together a few more dollars to aid her living situation.

Steve Lopez writes, "About 10 years ago, Lee Sevilla answered a lifelong dream, got a student loan and took a few art classes at UCLA. I discovered I've got a gift," she said, proudly showing me her pencil sketches of wildlife and domestic animals. "If only I could figure out how to make something happen with it now. I seem to be in a rut there too."


Lee Sevilla
Photo by Richard Hartog

"She's an amazing woman, and so talented," said Roz Templin, a library assistant who, along with her colleague Kimberlee Carter, is trying to arrange an exhibit of Sevilla's work at the El Segundo Public Library.

Requests for artwork by Lee Sevilla should be sent to the following mail address:
Lee Sevilla
P.O. Box 5484, Playa del Rey, CA 90296.
Her current prices range from $60 to $20.

Friday, May 05, 2006

On Gold Mountain


Gregg Chadwick
关于金山 (On Gold Mountain)
68"x68" oil on linen 2006

For the immigrant Chinese community, San Francisco was known as Gum Saan - "Gold Mountain" - a place of freedom and prosperity. This new painting, is in part a visual poem on new Chinese immigrants coming to America. Many of these new immigrants are young girls adopted from China into American families. What will their stories be?