Thursday, March 21, 2019
Happy World Poetry Day
Thursday's #WorldPoetryDay is a chance to celebrate the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind: https://t.co/qiPMlAy0g9 pic.twitter.com/LtxL3Ksanp— United Nations (@UN) March 21, 2019
Saturday, March 16, 2019
Friday, March 15, 2019
RIP W.S. Merwin
Gregg Chadwick
The River Dreams
16"x11" oil on linen 2009
I learned tonight about the death of W.S. Merwin. I had a chance to chat briefly with W.S. Merwin after his wonderful reading at the Hammer Museum on October 29, 2009. We spoke of elephants and mystery and nature. Inspiring memories.
The poems of W. S. Merwin’s mature career were often Delphic, haunted, and bleak. They seemed to have been delivered unto him, and he transcribed them by lightning flash. https://t.co/Z4biUog5VT— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 17, 2019
More on W.S. Merwin:
W.S. Merwin Profile
Paul Holdengraber In Conversation with W.S. Merwin
Poem for Merwin
Sunday, March 10, 2019
John Legend performs Bridge Over Troubled Water at #GRAMMYsAretha celebration!
VIDEO: @JohnLegend performed Bridge Over Troubled Water at the #GRAMMYsAretha celebration! pic.twitter.com/98rpGUhHGR— Opinionated Me (@opinion8dmecom) March 11, 2019
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
At the Van Gogh Museum: Hockney – Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature
via lalouver
"you have to really look..." 👀#DavidHockney ahead of his exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum that pairs 120 works by the British artist in dialogue with those by Vincent van Gogh. On view March 1 - May 26, 2019⠀
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#Repost from @vangoghmuseum⠀
David Hockney on his exhibition that opens this Friday at the Van Gogh Museum: Hockney – Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature. #HockneyVanGogh#davidhockney
"you have to really look..." 👀#DavidHockney ahead of his exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum that pairs 120 works by the British artist in dialogue with those by Vincent van Gogh. On view March 1 - May 26, 2019⠀
-⠀
#Repost from @vangoghmuseum⠀
David Hockney on his exhibition that opens this Friday at the Van Gogh Museum: Hockney – Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature. #HockneyVanGogh#davidhockney
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Please learn about the real Green Book
Please learn about the real Green Book. https://t.co/9WjGP0HcYW— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) February 25, 2019
"Every time someone's driving somebody I lose," Spike Lee backstage at #Oscars— Jessica Gelt (@jessicagelt) February 25, 2019
For anyone who may be interested in what the Green Book actually was, here is a link to more information about this act of resistance and source of love and survival for many African-Americans. It started with Victor Hugo Green. #OSCARS https://t.co/gdFp1mekub pic.twitter.com/9WkeInv2fd— Ava DuVernay (@ava) February 25, 2019
The Green Book saved lives. It made travel (slightly) easier for black people. It showed what hotels were safe, what roads we could travel, and where we were likely to die. For that to be turned into a story that "starts" with Viggo is a slap in the face. #Oscars https://t.co/9nqPpOfZHn— Krystina Arielle 🦖 (@KrystinaArielle) February 25, 2019
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Night Painting
By
Gregg Chadwick
 |
Gregg Chadwick
oil on linen 2019
|
I
lift three brushes wet with paint. Each brush holds its own hue- ultramarine
blue, glowing amber, and a cool black. Airborne Toxic Event’s “Sometime AroundMidnight” plays on headphones tethered to my iPhone. The room spins like the
song. I almost dance as each brush moves across the linen. Wet paint slurred
into wet paint. I search for the light in the dark in a painterly chase through
the night.
I
paint in a refurbished airplane hangar, the night glowing darkly through the
skylights above me. Alone in a vast space, my thoughts travel back to years of
painting at night: from a loft in SoHo during New York’s “Bright Lights Big
City” years, to a small makeshift space in Tokyo, to a studio in a reconfigured
office building on a block of San Francisco’s Market Street that Edward Hopper
would have appreciated, to now in a building at an airfield where a fake town
was suspended over sensitive areas of the field during WWII to mislead a
possible aerial attack.
Like camouflage draped across an
airfield, night changes the way we see. Distance is obscured. Color shifts. We
see blue tinged black and white under the stars. At
night, humans and most vertebrate animals are colorblind because the most
sensitive light receptors in our eyes, called rods, detect only black and
white. But geckos are different. Painting in what was a military airbase,
especially as my mind drifts in the quiet of the night, I often think of the
pet gecko my father had in his quarters while stationed in Okinawa. As I
struggle to truly see, I wonder what colors my dad’s gecko saw. Geckos evolved
from creatures that were active only during daylight, so they did not have rods
for night vision. Over time through evolutionary adaptation as geckos shifted
to nighttime activity the color receptors in their eyes became more sensitive
and enabled full hued night vision.
Gregg Chadwick
In the Ginza Rain
oil on linen 1987
Over
the years, perhaps with geckos in mind, I have honed my ability to see subtle
nuances of color both during the day and at night. I collect moments in my
memory by standing still and taking in the sensations of an evocative evening
or a cool dawn. I often begin a painting with the intention of capturing one of
these remembered moments and its particular atmosphere of color and light.
Before I paint, I lay my colors out on the palette in a range from light to
dark and warm to cool. As I mix my paints, I think about light. I want an
interior light that emerges from the painting. Painting night reveals the
contrast between light and shadow in my artwork and emphasizes the luminosity
within the painting.
 |
Gregg Chadwick
oil on linen 2014
My oil on linen work The Azure Hour
combines a certain sense of beach light and air with the dreams and memories of
the urban night. On evenings in Southern California when the cool ocean breezes
bring a blue fog into the night, it sometimes seems that anything is possible.
The painting took over a year of work to finish. It progressed in a series of
layers, scumbles, and deletions that created an evocation of the complex
nightscape in my mind. I find it necessary at times to paint at night under
subtle illumination to see if the effect that I am reaching for has begun to
take hold. When the light is too bright it is difficult to see the range of
tones from dark to light in a painting. The darkness itself helps create the
light. One cannot exist without the other.
Gregg Chadwick
Occupy
oil on linen 2013
Recently,
I stood outside in a clearing of a Monterey, California forest near the coast in
the middle of the night with my brother and René Boitelle, senior paintings conservator at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Unlike the skies in Los
Angeles, we were able to see the stars in the night sky and of course thought
of Vincent Van Gogh’s painterly evocations of the glittering night. Van Gogh
was able to capture the night in his paintings with his skillful use of
midnight blue and starry yellow. Gazing at a Van Gogh painting of a star filled
sky, it seems as if he knew that the lights he saw in the dark night had
traveled from the deepest reaches of time. According to physicists, as we gaze
at the stars, in essence we are looking back towards the beginning of time.
 |
| René Boitelle, senior paintings conservator at the Van Gogh Museum photo courtesy René Boitelle |
Later
that week, I stood with René and another conservator, Devi Ormond, before a Van
Gogh painting of a weaver; the painting was laid out like a patient on a table
in the Getty Museum’s conservation lab. The work seemed so fragile, yet at the
same time sturdy and timeless hearkening back to an era of firelight,
candlelight, and moonlight. Soon after Van Gogh painted his weavers, the advent
of electricity would completely alter the character of the night. . Perhaps in
every painting of the night there is a hint of this loss, echoing the shadowed
forms in the artwork. I am reminded of the nights many years ago when, before
painting, I would put Miles Davis on the record player. I would drop the needle
on the first track and listen to the hiss and crackle as ‘Round Midnight began to play– the music always muted, blurred as
if it emerged from a smoke filled room.
Gregg Chadwick
After Puccini
oil on canvas 2013
Early
in my career, as an exhibition of my paintings closed at a gallery in Osaka,
Japan, a fellow artist turned to me and somewhat derisively asked, “So what’s
next? Will you travel from city to city painting their nights?” I didn’t come
up with a quick rejoinder then. But I know what I would say now, “You can’t
paint the day without the night.”
This Essay, Night Painting, by Gregg Chadwick is included in Burning the MidnightOil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey Into Day, edited by
Phil Cousineau.
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Gary Clark Jr - This Land [Official Music Video]
Must Watch!
Wonderful performance by Gary Clark Jr last night on Saturday Night Live.
Saturday, February 16, 2019
The Angel Falls to Earth: Bruno Ganz Dies
by Gregg Chadwick
Bruno Ganz has died at 77 leaving us with a rich legacy. The Swiss film actor played numerous iconic roles over the years from an angel longing for human love in Wings of Desire to Hitler facing imminent defeat in Downfall. The New York Times reports that Bruno died at his home in Zurich.
Bruno Ganz left his mark on Berlin in Wender's Wings of Desire. Painters, writers, and filmmakers from Max Beckmann to Christopher Isherwood to Wim Wenders have created visions of Berlin that still guide us across the city's potent memoryscape.
In honor of Bruno, I am posting my oil and ink on screen painting The Angel of History inspired by the writings of Walter Benjamin.
Benjamin wrote: "This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward."
- Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," IX
Solveig Dommartin and Bruno Ganz in Wim Wender's Classic Film Wings of Desire
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Bruno Ganz as the angel Damiel in Wim Wender's Classic Film Wings of Desire |
Bruno Ganz has died at 77 leaving us with a rich legacy. The Swiss film actor played numerous iconic roles over the years from an angel longing for human love in Wings of Desire to Hitler facing imminent defeat in Downfall. The New York Times reports that Bruno died at his home in Zurich.
Bruno Ganz left his mark on Berlin in Wender's Wings of Desire. Painters, writers, and filmmakers from Max Beckmann to Christopher Isherwood to Wim Wenders have created visions of Berlin that still guide us across the city's potent memoryscape.
 |
Gregg Chadwick The Angel of History 29"x73" oil and sumi on Japanese screen |
In honor of Bruno, I am posting my oil and ink on screen painting The Angel of History inspired by the writings of Walter Benjamin.
Benjamin wrote: "This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward."
- Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," IX
Solveig Dommartin and Bruno Ganz in Wim Wender's Classic Film Wings of Desire
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| Peter Falk in Wim Wender's Classic Film Wings of Desire |
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| Look Closely: Are There Angels Hiding in the Ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church? photo by Gregg Chadwick (Berlin 2010) |
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Looking Forward to Yesterday
Looking Forward to "Yesterday"
Danny Boyle’s next project stars Himesh Patel, Lily James, Ed Sheeran
Danny Boyle’s next project stars Himesh Patel, Lily James, Ed Sheeran
St. Vincent & Dua Lipa | Masseduction / One Kiss | 2019 GRAMMYs
St. Vincent & Dua Lipa share the stage for mashup performance of their respective songs, 'Masseduction' and 'One Kiss.'
Friday, February 08, 2019
Wednesday, February 06, 2019
Martyn Joseph - Here Come the Young
Hey Folks - fans of @michaelmcdermot , @peterhimmelman , Peter Gabriel or @springsteen ? Martyn Joseph's music is the real deal. Enjoy! https://t.co/QceqxHmXjz— Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) February 7, 2019
Our voices are powerful.— Zero Hour (@ThisIsZeroHour) February 7, 2019
Our voices are crucial to the climate conversation.
Do not underestimate us.#ThisIsZeroHour https://t.co/MfJamnFXxT
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