Grand Central

Grand Central by GreggChadwick 

36"x48" oil on linen 2012

Late Summer Mentors and Memories

Watching these poignant videos of Eddie Vedder singing with Bruce Springsteen and knowing that Tom Morello was offstage waiting for his next turn, I am called to thank the numerous mentors in my life. As an artist, sometimes it is only the artwork itself that carries its influence into your life. Other times it is the day to day connection with a teacher, colleague, or partner. And for me it has also been the powerful influence of my family and friends. From my blazingly intelligent wife MarySue Heilemann, to my brilliant brother Kent Chadwick, to my supportive parents Bob and Peg Chadwick, to my teachers Sam Amato and Jan Stussy at UCLA and Dale McConathy and Richard Martin at NYU, to my colleagues at the Santa Monica Art Studios, to the always inspiring writer Peter Clothier, to my gallerist in San Francisco Sandra Lee, to my collectors over all these years, to my new friend and colleague in the arts Barbara Drucker, to my agent Gwenda Joyce, to the insightful film and theater artists Alan and Alana Caudillo, Yareli Arizmendi and Sergio Arau, Dan Bonnell and Lea Floden, Craig Zisk and Julie Weiss, to the passionate musicians RB Morris, Kelly Colbert, Michael McDermott and Peter Himmelman, and to my collaborator in the creative fire Phil Cousineau - I say "Thank You for the inspiration, friendship and mentorship!"


Video: Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder Sing My Hometown at Wrigley Field Sept 8, 2012


Another View: Bruce Springsteen w/ Eddie Vedder My Hometown - Wrigley Field 9/8/12

Video: Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder - Atlantic City- Wrigley Field, Sept 7, 2012

Gregg Chadwick
Jimmy Buff's
72"x96" oil on linen 1983-1988

Stopped Time: The Motion Studies of Eadweard Muybridge

by Gregg Chadwick

Eadweard Muybridge
Muybridge Animal Locomotion, plate 288

circa 1887

© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu

"....'See how curiously,' said Mr. Muybridge, referring to a photographic series (Plate 288 shown above) of one of our most prominent University baseball nine, 'and yet how perfectly, this plate illustrates the occurrence of an error in catching.' True enough. In the successive pictures the ball is muffed, strikes the player's thigh, runs up under his arm and across his back, while he is looking eagerly on the wrong side for it."
- The  Pennsylvanian, 1886 


In the 19th century the railroad, the telegraph and the camera transformed our experience of space and time.  JMW Turner's painting Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway documents in oil paint the beginnings of this perceptual shift.  In Turner's work, the powerful steam engine races from the painting's perspectival vanishing point into the viewer's space, breaking free of pictorial constraints. 

JMW Turner
Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway
36"x48" oil on canvas 1844
National Gallery, London

Eadweard Muybridge, born 182 years ago today, took Turner's artistic explorations and  expanded upon them. Muybridge's photographic stop action photos revolutionized our understanding of human and animal movement.

Eadweard Muybridge
Muybridge Animal Locomotion, plate639

circa 1887

© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu

 Not content with the long exposure times needed to create photographic plates, Muybridge's artistic explorations with instantaneous photography led to his groundbreaking motion studies. In the 1870s, at the Palo Alto Stock Farm owned by railroad baron and former California Governor Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge invented his photographic method for the capture of high-speed action. Muybridge devised a system for documenting animal locomotion by using a series of cameras which produced sequential images of stilled movement on glass photographic plates. These photographs were arguably the first successful photographs of rapid motion and they revolutionized photography and the natural sciences.

Photograph of one of the three batteries of cameras, with plateholder,
used by Muybridge to produce the Animal Locomotion images
circa 1887
© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu

 These sequential images seemed to cut time into slices. The images recorded fractions of a second, which the unaided human eye had not been able to perceive before. Soon Muybridge would set his photographs into motion with his early motion picture device the Zoopraxiscope
 and hand drawn silhouettes of his horse in motion photos seemed to gallop fluidly when viewed through the machine.

Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope on display at the Kingston Museum
Kingston upon Thames, UK

Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope inspired Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Dickson's Kinetoscope, which in time led to the modern film projector.

After his photographic success in California, Eadweard Muybridge moved east and continued his studies with the assistance of the University of Pennsylvania in the 1880's. 

Eadweard Muybridge's outdoor camera house, 36th and Pine Streets, Philadelphia

circa 1886

© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu

Members of the commission overseeing Muybridge's work at Penn included Thomas Eakins as well as professors from Penn's Medical, Veterinary and Engineering Schools. Student-athlete's and faculty members at Penn posed for Muybridge's motion studies.

Thomas Eakins
A May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand)
23 3/4" x 36" oil on canvas 1879-1880
Collection Philadelphia Museum of Art

The artist Thomas Eakins, inspired by his interactions with Muybridge in Philadelphia, painted A May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand). Eakin's depiction of a horse and carriage in stop-action motion was unprecedented in painting and seemed off putting to many contemporary viewers. One critic of the time wrote, "The effect of the picture as a whole it is impossible to accept as true, unless it be that Mr. Eakins' perceptions are right and those of everybody else are wrong."  Eakin's dismissed the criticism and continued his explorations of motion in his photographic and painted works. 

Muybridge's groundbreaking work continues to influence artists across the globe. The Japanese filmmaker Koji Yammamura's animated work Muybridge's Strings is a poetic homage to Muybridge and a poignant contemplation of time and memory: "Though separated by a century and an ocean, the lives of photographer Eadweard Muybridge and that of a Japanese mother clash poetically, sharing the irrepressible human desire to make time stand still."




Trailer for the animated film Muybridge's Strings by the Japanese filmmaker Koji Yamamura.



2011 /12 min. 39sec./ 35 mm /No dialogue /Canada, Japan
Techniques: Drawing and painting on paper


A CO-PRODUCTION OF THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA, NHK AND POLYGON PICTURES
Direction, Script, Editing Koji Yamamura
Original Music, Sound Design Normand Roger, Pierre Yves Drapeau, Denis Chartrand
Executive Producers David Verrall (NFB), Kenji Saito (NHK), Shuzo John Shiota (Polygon)
Producers Michael Fukushima (NFB), Keisuke Tsuchihashi (NHK), Shuzo John Shiota (Polygon)

Koji Yamamura at work on Muybridge's Strings

Gregg Chadwick
I Canti (The Cantos)
78"x60" oil on linen 2011

My own work I Canti (The Cantos) can be seen as a rumination on time and memory inspired by Muybridge's discoveries.

Also in the Los Angeles area, Mark Arnon Rosen and Wendy Marvel's  mechanical flip books evoke a world caught between Muybridge and the 21st century:

And today Google got into the act with a witty Google Doodle honoring Muybridge:

More at:
Yamamura Animation
Eadweard Muybridge Doodle
X-Ray Dreams

The author Rebecca Solnit considers Eadweard Muybridge and the perceptual revolution of the 19th century in her marvelous book River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West.

Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement

Kelly Colbert Sings 600 Acres

Kelly Colbert Sings her new song 600 Acres inspired by Gregg Chadwick's painting Arlington. The song is a poignant tribute to those lost in the war in Iraq and in particular to the memory of the United States Marine Ahn Chanawongse.

A bit of Ahn's Story:
"Cpl. Kemaphoom A. Chanawongse enlisted shortly after graduating from Waterford (Conn.) High School in 1999 over the objections of his mother, Tan Patchem. “He understood it was dangerous, and he was proud of doing it,” she said. Chanawongse died after his unit came under attack while attempting to secure a bridge. He had been listed as missing until April 16. Chanawongse, who came to the United States from Thailand at age 9, played youth soccer and planned from a young age to join the military. His grandfather is a veteran of the Thai air force. He was known to members of his unit as “Chuckles” for his sense of humor, and one friend said the avid snowboarder was talkative and outgoing: “Every time you turn around, he’s gone talking to somebody,” said Steve Cava, 22. But he also had a strong sense of duty, his parents said, and had a Marines tattoo on his arm: “U.S. Marine, made in Parris Island.” “He did it without fear and without delay, even one minute,” said his stepfather, Paul Patchem."

More on Ahn at:
Run for the Fallen

September 11, 2009

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