Friday, May 15, 2009

Careers in the Arts: U.S. Mint Releases New Lincoln Penny Designed by Sculptor Charles L. Vickers



One of a series of four new pennies honoring the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth was released today. The design was sculpted by artist Charles L. Vickers for the United States Mint. On the reverse side of Vicker's new penny is a low relief of a young Abraham Lincoln sitting on a log reading a large book. It seems that Lincoln has found his true calling in the realm of words as he takes a break from his rail splitting duties in Indiana.

Vickers has created an inspiring image that speaks as much of our time as Lincoln's. With high school drop out rates at 20% in California it is nice to be reminded daily that the mind needs to be exercised as much as the body. Lincoln's story is inspiring and as a nation we are fortunate that President Obama understands Lincoln's legacy.

Sculptor Charles L. Vickers' story is inspiring as well. Vickers served with the 101st Airborne Division before heading off to New York in pursuit of his dream to become a professional artist. Vickers studied at the Art Students League, the Frank Reilly School of Art, the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts. Not all art careers begin with an MFA. Much like young actors, many young visual artists find their way through a series of lessons and classes rather than a degree program.

Most artists do not find immediate gallery representation or steady employment in the arts. Looking for a break, Vickers left New York in 1976 and moved to the city of Eakins, Philadelphia, eventually finding a position at the Franklin Mint. In the interesting nether-world between the blue chip art world and commercial design, Vickers has found his place. The United States Mint site describes how Vickers has progressed:

"Since leaving as a Senior Sculptor in 1985 and establishing his own studio, Charles’ design work has earned him recognition throughout the world and he has been commissioned to work on many private collections"


We are fortunate that Charles L. Vickers joined the United States Mint’s sculptor-engraving staff in December 2003. In the future when I hear the change rattling in my pocket, I will be sure to pull out the coins and see if Vicker's Lincoln is journeying with me.


(The pennies are being produced at U.S. Mint sites in Philadelphia and Denver. They are minted in 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc -- the same metallic content as the first Lincoln penny issued in 1909.)


Charles L. Vickers
courtesy the U.S. Mint

More at:
Charles L. Vickers - US Mint

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Sneak Peek at My Painting in this Weekend's 30th Anniversary Venice Artwalk's Silent Art Auction



This weekend! Sunday, May 17, 2009

Now in its 30th year, the Venice Art Walk & Auctions has raised millions of dollars for Venice Family Clinic – largely through the Silent Art Auction, which offers great deals on original and limited-edition works by the biggest names in the Southern California art scene.

American Memory (Bobby and Teddy Kennedy)
Gregg Chadwick
American Memory (Bobby and Teddy Kennedy)
10"x16" oil on linen 2009
(Larger View at: American Memory)

My painting is up for bidding on Sunday, May 17, at Westminster School, 1010 Abbot Kinney Blvd., in Venice.

More at:
30th Anniversary Venice Artwalk
2009 Venice Art Walk & Auctions

What Lies In the Shadow of the Statue? ~ Ille qui nos omnes servabit.

Update; January 26, 2010
The statue is of Tawaret the goddess of protection during pregnancy and childbirth.





The Egyptian god Sobek seems to be the inspiration for the giant statue on LOST. I was leaning towards Anubis but the crocodilian snout gives it away. (Anubis was probably a bit too close to Stargate anyway.) Gary Jones' masterful photo of the Temple of Haroeris and Sobek in Egypt shows Sobek in detail. The light in Jones' photo is stunning - mysterious and beckoning.

Caroline Seawright writes of Sobek:

"Having the form of a crocodile, the Egyptians believed that he also had the nature of a crocodile. He could be the strong, powerful symbol of the pharaoh, showing the ruler's might. He could use this force to protect the justified dead in their after life, and be the protector and rescuer of the other gods... yet he could also use that power to savage his enemies and the sinful deceased. He could bestow sight and senses to the dead, he could bring water and fertility to the land."



"What lies in the shadow of the statue?" Richard's answer in Latin is:

"Ille qui nos omnes servabit," ("He who will protect/save us all.")


Just in time for the release tomorrow of the film Angels and Demons, we have Richard on LOST answering questions in Latin and calling himself Ricardo. Latin of course brings to mind the Catholic church and the history of Rome. Could Richard be a priest? Is he also known as Father Ricardo?

More at:
Sobek, God of Crocodiles, Power, Protection and Fertility

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Is this the Earliest Known Painting by Michelangelo?



Is this painting of Saint Anthony tormented by demons the earliest extant painting by Michelangelo? Keith Christiansen, a curator of European painting at the Metropolitan Museum in New York is convinced the work is indeed a Michelangelo. The painting in question would have been painted when Michelangelo was a young (12 0r 13 year old) apprentice in the established Florentine painter Ghirlandaio's workshop. Michelangelo's earliest biographers including Giorgio Vasari and his former student Ascanio Condivi describe how a young Michelangelo was inspired by an engraving of Saint Anthony tormented by demons by the 15th century German artist Martin Schongauer. Michelangelo freely created his own version of the composition providing richly invented colors and a Tuscan landscape in which the action takes place. Carol Vogel in the New York times describes how Met curator Christansen's detailed examination of the painting convinced him that the work was Michelangelo's earliest known painting:

"I looked at it and said this is self-evidently Michelangelo. There’s a section of the rocks with cross-hatching. Nobody else did this kind of emphatic cross-hatching.”



Attributed to Michelangelo
The Torment of Saint Anthony c. 1487–88. Oil and tempera on panel, 18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
courtesy the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth


Martin Schongauer
St. Anthony
engraving printed on paper 15th-century - German

Ascanio Condivi describes in his biography of Michelangelo how the young artist visited the fish market to study the detailed overlapping of fish scales to provide verisimilitude to his version of Schongauer's demons.




Attributed to Michelangelo
Details of The Torment of Saint Anthonyc. 1487–88. Oil and tempera on panel, 18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
courtesy the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Michelangelo's Torment of Saint Anthony will be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York from June through August. The painting will then travel to its new home at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The painting will be hung alongside an edition of Martin Schongauer's engraving, reuniting inspiration and creation.

“It is now one of our greatest treasures,” Kimbell Director Mr. Eric McCauley Lee said. “And will receive pride of place in our collection.”


More at:
Earliest Known Painting by Michelangelo Acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum

By the Hand of a Very Young Master?

Friday, May 08, 2009

Reading Craig Arnold's Poem "The Singer"

And what they sing so lovely and so meaningless
may urge itself upon you with the ache
of something just beyond the point of being remembered
the trace of a brave thought in the face of sadness.

- Craig Arnold, from The Singer

A Balance of Shadows
Gregg Chadwick
A Balance of Shadows
72"x96" oil on linen

On the small volcanic island of Kuchino-erabu off the coast of Japan, American poet Craig Arnold became lost and searchers have now concluded that Craig vanished over the side of a cliff into the unknown. It is sad whenever a life is lost but even more so when an artist in his youth leaves so much undone for us to only guess at. We are left to carry on in Craig's artistic spirit.

More at:
Craig Arnold - Facebook Tribute

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

for Alex Eliot on his 90th Birthday - "Oriste!"

In Alex Eliot's marvelous essay in Frederick Franck's book, What Does it Mean to be Human?, Alex recounts his journey to the Greek region of Karoulia and his encounter with the "very holy fellow" Simon. Like many of his fellow Orthodox monks from Mount Athos, Simon retired to a cliff side residence in Karoulia. Perched high above the water, these monks spend their later years in solitude with the meeting of the sea and sky as their constant companion.

Alex was invited by a fisherman from Mount Athos, who spoke of Simon as a holy fellow, to make the journey with him by sea to visit the monk. With the fisherman's boat bobbing in the waves below, Alex climbed a series of steps carved into the rock face with only a series of chains spiked into the cliff to hold onto. The fisherman had said, "If those chains will hold you, it is as God wills" for Alex to meet with Simon. At the end of his climb, Alex explains that he lay drenched in sweat gasping like a beached fish until he felt a cool shadow break the heat and there was Simon, "sparkling eyed" with his arms spread wide, exclaiming "Oriste!" meaning "Welcome, what can I do for you!"



Forgive me if I break Alex's engaging narrative at this point. As I write these words, I am sitting in my studio surrounded by a series of new paintings inspired by a recent trip with my family to Japan. The siren of these images is calling me. And I can't help but wonder what Alex and Jane Eliot, who also traveled with their family to Japan, will think of this new work. I don't have to risk my life scaling a cliff to reach the Eliots. I just need to make my pilgrimage out my studio door and down Ocean Park Boulevard, Diebenkorn's old haunts, to Venice, California to visit this couple who always greet my friends and family with wide open arms and profound insights. Like Simon's greeting, Alex Eliot's welcoming words nourish and inspire me.


Gregg Chadwick's Studio with 13 Geisha (13芸者) - in progress

Alex Eliot will turn 90 on April 28, 2009. In his fruitful life, Alex has met with and written about the great artists of his age - Picasso and Matisse. One might think it would only be natural for a man of such wisdom and experience to be a bit haughty. Instead Alex shares the old monk Simon's gentle and generous spirit as well as his great wisdom and love for life.

While on that cliff in Karoulia, Simon offered Alex a piece of caramel candy. Alex, graciously accepted the gift and then when the monk was preoccupied, Alex, feeling that the seemingly undernourished monk needed all the calories he could get, slipped it under Simon's plate. Alex then bowed and scooted out to climb down the cliff to the boat waiting below. The sun was setting when Alex reached the fisherman who lay asleep in the boat. The sirens called. Alex disrobed and dove into the sea only to be startled by a basket hurtling down the old monk's supply cable which linked his aerie to the world. In the basket was the caramel. "My candy had come back! I put the caramel straight into my mouth and like a child once more I tasted its burnt sugar elixir right down to my toes."

And then Alex opens up to the mythosphere - "Never before in this life, possibly, had my poor spirit taken nourishment. I stood dripping upon the shore of time and Simon waved to me from eternity."

Like Simon's candy, Alex Eliot's friendship gives my poor spirit nourishment.

Let me break again from my essay to speak directly to Alex:

Alex, I thank you for your wisdom, your profound words and feelings, the inspired love that you show to your wife - Jane - and your talented children. Alex - you are a lifeline, an example, and a challenge. I am proud to be your friend.



Study for a Portrait of Alex Eliot
8"x13" oil on wood 2009

Throughout my years as I stand with my wife, MarySue, and my son, Cassiel, on the shore of time I will see Alex and Jane Eliot waving to me from eternity and exclaiming, "Oriste!"


More at:
Alex Eliot's Website
Jane Winslow Eliot's Website

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Los Angeles Times Festival Of Books at UCLA Today and Tomorrow - April 25 - 26, 2009






Author Wil Wheaton talks about writing, the sweet smell of bookstores and his Star Trek days as well as his excitement about the upcoming Star Trek film. See Wil Wheaton at UCLA today.

General Info

Dates
Saturday, April 25
10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Sunday, April 26
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Location
UCLA
405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024

Tickets
Tickets are free!
Tickets will be available on April 19 through ticketmaster.com.
They are needed for indoor panels and speaker sessions.
More...

Parking
Parking on the UCLA campus is $9.
Free shuttle bus services will connect the outlying UCLA parking lots with the main festival entrances.

More at:
L.A.Times Festival of Books Website

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Bo



(Click on photo to enlarge)

Springsteen and the E-Street Band cover the Ramones' "I Want to be Sedated" - Boston, April 22, 2009


Springsteen and the E-Street Band cover the Ramones' "I Want to be Sedated" - Boston, April 22, 2009


Springsteen and the E-Street Band cover the Ramones' "I Want to be Sedated" - Boston, April 22, 2009 (full song - another view)

On their current tour Springsteen and the E-Street Band are showing off their punk side. Last night in Boston, with a giddy Steve Van Zandt orchestrating the song, Springsteen and the E-Street Band covered the Ramones' "I Want to be Sedated". The video is a bit rough but in true punk form a manic energy is present. Enjoy!


Mike Ness, Springsteen and the E-Street band perform Social Distortion's "Bad Luck" - Los Angeles, April 16, 2009

Monday, April 20, 2009

Holland Cotter awarded 2009's Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.



Art writer Holland Cotter has been awarded 2009's Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

From the Pulitzer site:
The 2009 Pulitzer Prize for criticism has been "awarded to Holland Cotter of The New York Times for his wide ranging reviews of art, from Manhattan to China, marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling."



Sun Zhijun/Dunhuang Academy
"Inside Mogaoku’s caves: A fifth-century painted Buddha, sprinkled with desert dust."

Holland Cotter's article from July 2008, entitled Buddha's Caves , is a nice introduction to his writing:

"Mogaoku is charmed ground. In late spring and early summer the air is fragrant, the sky a lambent blue, the desert oceanically serene. And there is the art and the soaked-in atmosphere of devotion. The place leaves strong and alluring memories in the memories of visitors; in its caretakers it inspires lifelong loyalty."



Gregg Chadwick
Sketchbook Image of "Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture" at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
pencil and wash in bound volume 10/21/08

For those of us in California, Holland Cotter's review of the Getty Museum's exhibition of Bernini's portrait sculptures was required reading:

Bernini "adhered to the Renaissance model of the artist as polymath. In addition to being a sculptor, painter and draftsman, he had a major career as an architect; was a poet, playwright and stage designer; and still found time for a scandalous love life.

"Like other successful artists of his day Bernini was both a master and a servant, a celebrity and a functionary. He could be innovative to the point of sacrilege — one thinks of his orgasmic St. Teresa, or the crazed immensity of the baldacchino over the tomb of St. Peter in the Vatican — yet his invention was almost always at the service of a conservative political and religious elite. He pushed the spiritual potential of art in radical directions but was a propagandist for hire to the Church Triumphant."



Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times
An installation view of "Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture" at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
(Both Monica Almeida and I were attracted to the same view of Bernini's portrait of his mistress Costanza Bonarelli with Cardinal Scipione Borghese looming beyond.)

The New York Times page for Holland Cotter:
Holland Cotter in the New York Times

Monday, March 23, 2009

Under Pressure from China, South Africa Declares That Soccer is More Important Than World Peace!


The South African Government, stooping under pressure from the Chinese government and business leaders, has denied the Dalai Lama a visa to attend the upcoming international peace conference in Johannesburg which is scheduled to begin this week.

Thabo Masebe, a spokesperson for the South African government has stated that if the Dalai Lama attended the conference, the focus would shift away from the 2010 World Cup which South Africa will host next year:

"We cannot allow focus to shift to China and Tibet," Masebe said, adding that South Africa has gained much from its trading relationship with China.

The Dalai Lama's fellow Nobel laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said that he will not attend the peace conference in protest:

"We are shamelessly succumbing to Chinese pressure," Archbishop Tutu was quoted as telling the Sunday Independent. "I feel deeply distressed and ashamed."
A spokesperson for the Dalai Lama told AFP news agency he was "very disappointed" by the decision, also accusing South Africa of caving into "intense pressure" from Chinese authorities.

Former South African president, F.W. De Klerk, also a Nobel laureate, is in solidarity with Desmond Tutu, saying that he would also not participate in the conference if the Dalai Lama remained excluded.

De Klerk said that the decision to refuse the visa made a "mockery" of the peace conference."The decision to exclude the Dalai Lama is irreconcilable with key principles on which our society is based including the principles of accountability, openness and responsiveness and the rights to freedom of expression and free political activity."

"South Africa is a sovereign constitutional democracy and should not allow other countries to dictate to it regarding who it should, and should not admit to its territory - regardless of the power and influence of the country."


More at:
South Africa bans Dalai Lama trip

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Off to Japan!


This beautiful photo is by my Japanese friend in Kyoto.
More at: lolalways

I will be in Japan for the next two weeks. My bags are almost packed. Loose ends almost tied up. OK, I am not quite ready yet.
But I still must say "Gambate!" (Very roughly in Japanese - "Go Get em")

I will be in Tokyo for the first eight days and then on to Kyoto. It will be quiet here on Speed of Life. Much more when I get back.

Yossi Govrin's Monument to Donald Douglas and His Dog, Wunderbar, Unveiled at the Santa Monica Airport


Yossi Govrin and his Bronze Sculpture of Donald Douglas and Wunderbar

Yossi Govrin spoke yesterday at the unveiling of his bronze sculpture of Donald Douglas and dog Wunderbar ."I have always been afraid of flying, " he said. "As an Israeli, all citizens serve for a time in support of the country. And as I just said I was always afraid of flight. So what did they do? They put me in the airforce. And they made me jump out of airplanes!" Yossi was safely on the ground speaking in the shadow of the Douglas DC-3 Monument which seemed to soar above him.

This aircraft was built at the Santa Monica airport in 1942 and after a long journey from the US Army Air Corps, to the Navy, to a stint in commercial aviation with Nationwide Airlines, to service with the Richfield oil company, the plane now dubbed "The Spirit of Santa Monica" is home. Echoing Yossi's days jumping out of aircraft, this DC-3 was initially used as a 28-seat paratrooper and glider tug.


Palmer, Alfred T.- photographer.
Women at work on C-47 Douglas cargo transport, Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, Calif.
1942 Oct.


In the 1920's, Donald Douglas started building planes in a small workshop in the backroom of a barbershop on Pico Boulevard. By the end of World War II, Douglas Aircraft had produced more than 30,000 planes for the United States Armed Services. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, former commanding general of the United States forces in Europe fighting the Nazis, remarked "that the DC-3 was one of the four reasons the allies won the war."



Artist Yossi Govrin

My father-in-law, Ralph Heilemann, after serving with the Navy, worked at a secret weapons system in a hangar at the Santa Monica airport in the 1950's. Ralph later went on to work on the Lunar Rover for the Apollo, moon shot, program. Yesterday, watching the crowds beneath The Spirit of Santa Monica and milling around Yossi Govrin's sculpture, I thought of how the past continually mingles with the present. And that the creative spirit and heroism of those who have come before us continue to season our lives.

I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (Ralph - Madison)
Gregg Chadwick
I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (Ralph Heilemann)
16" x 8" oil on linen 2008



Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Thoughts of Travel on Saint Patrick's Day


Phil Cousineau at Yeats Tower in County Clare, Ireland.

"I am convinced that pilgrimage is still a bona finde spirit-renewing ritual. But I also believe in pilgrimage as a powerful metaphor for any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to the traveler. With a deepening of focus, keen preparation, attention to the path below our feet, and respect for the destination at hand, it is possible to transform, even the most ordinary journey into a sacred journey, a pilgrimage."
--Phil Cousineau, from
THE ART OF PILGRIMAGE

Before he departs on a journey, Phil Cousineau calls a dear friend or a trusted mentor. In his wonderful book, The Art of Pilgrimage, Phil describes just such a call to his friend and mentor Joseph Campbell before Phil left on a journey to Paris in 1987. Phil describes how Joseph Campbell's bon voyage felt like a blessing and that Campbell's voice "took on a shimmer of delight" as they spoke of Campbell's years in Paris in the late 1920's.

Before I leave for Tokyo, I intend to ring up Phil and congratulate him on his new television program, Global Spirit which is set to premiere Sunday, April 12, 2009 on Link TVGlobal Spirit will delve into humanity's existential questions, "tracing our collective human journey in the timeless quest for truth, wisdom and understanding."

Phil's passion for humanity is evident in all aspects of his work: writing, filmmaking, and teaching.
Phil - you inspire me daily and I am honored to be your friend.



"Beannacht Lá Fhéile Pádraig"

More on Phil Cousineau:
Phil Cousineau's Website

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

3rd Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk on Saturday, March 28 from 1 to 5 pm and Doni Silver Simons Opens at Sherry Frumkin, March 26 from 6-9 pm

2010 Update: The 4th Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk is on March 20, 2010 from 1-5pm
Details at:
Airport Artwalk


The Presence of Light
Gregg Chadwick
The Presence of Light
48"x36" oil on linen 2009

When a painting seems to be finished I ask,
"Is the work open enough to allow the viewer
to enter into the painting and find their own
path or story?" If not, I dive back in again.


Coming up soon is the 3rd Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk on Saturday, March 28 from 1 to 5 pm. My studio will be open and I will have a group of new paintings on view. This will be a nice opportunity for you to take some time off from the stresses of our twittering world and to enter into my paintings in search of your own paths or stories.

I will be in Tokyo but my talented friend, the singer/songwriter/dancer Kelly Colbert, will be on hand to answer questions and to engage you in conversation about art and perhaps, life?

Zeitgeist
Gregg Chadwick
Zeitgeist
48"x36" oil on linen 2009

Also, that same week, the numinous artist, Doni Silver Simons', exhibition "....lines...." will open at the Sherry Frumkin Gallery on Thursday, March 26, 2009. The reception runs from 6-9pm. The Sherry Frumkin Gallery is in the same hangar as my studio, as is Doni's studio. As an act of community, Doni has asked us to open our studios during her opening on Thursday, March 26. Kelly Colbert will be on hand in my studio on the 26th as well. I am fortunate to have such a group of intelligent, talented and caring artists and gallerists around me. When the news of the world threatens to throttle our creative souls, a shared artistic community can help keep us on the path. Doni Silver Simon's work marks the passage of time yet its open spaces are less elegiac than timeless. Like the photos of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Doni Silver Simons limns the ineffable space of time.


Doni Silver Simons
Neilah
16'3"w x 7'h
Acrylic on Linen



The Santa Monica Art Studios are located at 3026 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90405.
My studio is #15



More at:
3rd Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk
Santa Monica Art Studios
Doni Silver Simons







--

Monday, March 09, 2009

Royal T

Royal T
Gregg Chadwick
Royal T
20"x20" oil on wood 2009

This very recent painting was inspired by a visit to the opening of the KAWS curated exhibition, I Can't Feel My Face, at Royal / T in Culver City.

Whitney Museum Council member Susan Hancock, a collector who owns several works by KAWS and operates the café and art space Royal/T, compares KAWS to Takashi Murakami, who is described by the Los Angeles Times as " a Tokyo-born pop savant whose work is inspired by Japanese manga comics":

"I consider KAWS the U.S. Murakami equivalent," Hancock said. "He is mimicking what is popular in today's world: SpongeBob, Smurfs, Simpsons, much like Murakami took off from the world of Japanese contemporary culture."

My work nods subtly to both KAWS and Murakami.

Next time you are cruising the galleries in Culver City, stop by Royal/T for a bite to eat in an art studded site. Check out KAWS' exhibit at Honor Fraser as well (Up until April 4, 2009).

More at:
Royal T
KAWS Website
Honor Fraser Gallery

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Thoughts on "No Line On the Horizon's" Cover Art: Hiroshi Sugimoto's "Boden Sea"


Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948)
Boden Sea, Uttwil,
42.3 x 54.2 cm (16 5/8 x 21 5/16 in.) gelatin silver print 1993
Metropolitan Museum of Art


Seascapes

Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence. The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there be water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. Let's just say that there happened to be a planet with water and air in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example. Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.
- Hiroshi Sugimoto


Hiroshi Sugimoto's haunting photograph Boden Sea, Uttwil graces the cover of the band U2's new album which was released this week. At its best the music on No Line on the Horizon, produced by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, and Steve Lillywhite, is open and atmospheric and in many instances raises similar questions to those found in Sugimoto's photographs in which water meets air. Since 1980 Sugimoto has traveled the world to find his locales. Ephemeral seaside moments are stripped away in Sugimoto's images. Rather it is the "particularity of light and atmosphere" at play in front of a distant horizon which compels Sugimoto. In each of his photos where sea meets sky, the horizon precisely splits the image into equal parts of air and water. From this combination. in primordial times, life began. The Metropolitan Museum in New York, in their catalog notes on Boden Sea, Uttwil, describes Sugimoto's photos as limning "the shifting envelopes of air and water covering the earth" and ultimately describing the ineffable: " the featureless purity of the world's first day."


Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948)
Aegean Sea, Pilion,
152 x 183 cm gelatin silver print 1990

What does the horizon mean? At some time we have each gazed across a body of water attempting to unlock the mysteries of life and creation. The Metropolitan Museum describes Sugimoto's horizons as both literal depictions of "the contact between Earth's surface and the ether" and also as "metaphors for the bounds of our mental and visual perception."
"The depth of field within each picture is as far as the eye can see. This visual approximation of the infinite is an apt expression of the sublime for an age that has forgotten that such majesty exists on a shrinking and polluted planet."
Like the light from distant stars, we are viewing the light of the past as it arrives in our sphere of vision.


Mark Rothko (American, born Latvia 1903–1970)
White and Greens in Blue, 1957
oil on canvas 1957
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
photo by Gregg Chadwick

Like Sugimoto, the painter Mark Rothko courted the numinous in his work. Standing in a front of a large Rothko painting is in many ways similar to gazing from a cliff across the sea to a distant horizon. Rothko resisted attempts to see his paintings as abstracted landscapes but we can't help but feel the mists and waves created by the seemingly effortless movement of Rothko's paint across the massive expanse of his canvases. Rothko's paint creates an interior luminosity that pours out of the canvas. Mark Rothko is not illustrating a pleasant day of sun and surf but instead is creating light with the barest of means. This moment of creation which reaches back to the origins of life is a direct connection between Rothko and Sugimoto. In this spirit Sugimoto writes,"The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there be water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light."


Caspar David Friedrich (b. 1774, Greifswald, d. 1840, Dresden)
Monk by the Sea
110 x 172 cm oil on canvas 1809
Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Another much earlier antecedent for Sugimoto's work is the 19th Century German painter Caspar David Friedrich, whose painting Monk by the Sea depicts the meeting of air and water witnessed by a lone figure. The art critic Robert Rosenblum connected Caspar David Friedrich's seascape and the paintings of Mark Rothko when he wrote in The Abstract Sublime that,"We ourselves are the monk before the sea standing silently and contemplatively before these huge and soundless pictures as if we were looking at a sunset or moonlit night."


Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948)
Time's Arrow,
(Seascape 1980/ reliquary fragment, Kamakura Period, 13th Century)
H 8.4 cm gelatin silver print, gided bronze 1987

Hiroshi Sugimoto collects fragments of the past. Time's Arrow combines a hoju (flaming jewel) shaped Buddhist reliquary from 13th Century Japan with one of his contemporary seascapes. In the catalog to his exhibition L'Histiore de L' Histoire, Sugimoto writes of this piece:

"In place of the missing ashes, I have inserted a seascape of a calm sea surrounded by fire, somehow reminiscent of the newborn earth. Time's arrow shoots from the primordial sea through a Kamakura period frame straight at your eye."

There is an interesting connection between Sugimoto's interest in time and Brian Eno's involvement in the Long Now Foundation. In 2003, Brian Eno took part in a fascinating discussion at Fort Mason in San Francisco. During the evening, Brian Eno described his musical and artistic goals:

"I was interested in losing the obvious boundaries of music, I wanted to make something that didn't sound like it had edges, sonic edges, or that it had a beginning and an end. I wanted to make something that belonged to a big space and you as the listener could hear some of that but not necessarily all of it, and I wanted to make something that felt like it had always been going on and would always be going on and you just happened to catch a part of it .... and I wanted to give the implication that this was not a piece of music in the ordinary sense of something that had been composed with a beginning, a middle and an end, but instead was a continuous endless place in time. So I was developing this idea of place of music being not so much a sonic narrative but more a sonic landscape - again with the feeling that this was a landscape that was always in the present tense, a landscape that was an extended present tense."


The Sea is Watching  (for Hiroshi Sugimoto)
Gregg Chadwick
The Sea is Watching (for Hiroshi Sugimoto)
36"x48" oil on linen 2009

Listening to U2's new album No Line on the Horizon, I am struck how much different the music would be if the band had fully opened up to the sonic landscape that Brian Eno helped them create in the studio in Fez, Morocco. Instead of striving for a hit with Get On Your Boots, the first single released from the work and which reportedly Brian Eno disliked intensely, what if the band had allowed the organic process of creation to lead to an album that felt like a musical equivalent of a Mark Rothko painting or a Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph? There are moments to be sure, but overall the album doesn't reach the grand poetry of Sugimoto's cover image or Brian Eno's production. Ultimately, the final four songs - Fez, White as Snow, Breathe, and Cedars of Lebanon - stand alone as testaments to what could have been a rich voyage of sight and sound. Hiroshi Sugimoto writes in L'Histoire de L'Histoire, "Images of the sea have an evocative power to stir distant memories of where we humans come from. Such images possess a profound embracing gentleness, a healing quality of parental love."



Said Taghmaoui rows from Europe to Africa in the final scene from Linear, a film/music video mash-up of U2's songs from No Line on the Horizon directed by Anton Corbijn



Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948)
Sea of Buddhas
gelatin silver print 1995

Sea of Buddhas
The art scene I knew in New York in the 1970s was dominated by minimal and conceptual art, experiments in visualizing how abstract concepts. It occurred to me that similar motives inspired the making of art in twelfth-century Japan, when they reproduced the afterlife conceptualized as the Buddhist Pure Land Western Paradise in model form in this world. Thus we have an installation of a thousand and-one Senju Kanon "Thousand-Armed Merciful Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara" figures passed down eight-hundred years to this day in Kyoto. After seven years of red tape, I was finally granted permission to photograph in the temple of Sanjusangendo, "Hall of Thirty-Three Bays." In special preparation for the shoot, I had all late-medieval and early-modern embellishments removed, as well as having the contemporary fluorescent lighting turned off, recreating the splendor of the thousand bodhisattvas glistening in the light of the morning sun rising over the Higashiyama hills as the Kyoto aristocracy might have seen in the Heian period (794-1185). Will today's conceptual art survive another eight-hundred years?
- Hiroshi Sugimoto




More at:
Hiroshi Sugimoto's Website
Brian Eno's Website
Rothko at the Tate
Anton Corbijn's Website
U2 Performs "Breathe", "Magnificent", "I'll Go Crazy", and "Beautiful Day" on David Letterman



Sunday, March 01, 2009

U2 Performs "Breathe", "Magnificent", "I'll Go Crazy", and "Beautiful Day" on David Letterman

Update: Thoughts on U2 and Sugimoto at: No Line On the Horizon


U2 Plays Breathe on Letterman - March 2, 2009

Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.
- Hiroshi Sugimoto


U2 Plays Magnicent on Letterman - March 3, 2009


U2 Plays I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight on Letterman - March 4, 2009


U2 Plays Beautiful Day on Letterman - March 5, 2009