Speed of Life

As John Cage said, “Our lives are changing to the point where people may have their own lives rather than lives that society has given them second-hand.” Art is in the forefront of changes in society, and artists are the best people we can ask about ways to take hold of our own lives by thinking creatively. -Kathan Brown Kathan Brown, the founder of San Francisco's Crown Point Press, has a new book out - "Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively: The Art of Etching and the Truth of Life" . The book is put together as a series of thirteen creative secrets gathered from working with contemporary artists as they created etchings at Crown Point. Wayne Thiebaud "Hill River" 2002 Color drypoint with direct gravure and spit bite aquatint 21-1/4 x 30-1/2" Wayne Thiebaud's corresponding creative secret is to cultivate sensuality. Richard Diebenkorn's is getting into the flow. Shazia Sikander's is to use every tool. Robert Bechtle's key is to know ...

Cover Image: Gregg Chadwick "Ossi di Sepia" monotype Bruce Boone's "My Walk With Bob" has been described by Dennis Cooper as a seminal and perfect work. Originally published in 1979, Ithuriel's Spear - a small press based in San Francisco - has brought out a new edition of this important book. "My Walk With Bob" contains a collection of short narratives by Bruce Boone and is regarded as a core text of the New Narrative movement emanating from Robert Glück's writing workshops in San Francisco. Robert Glück writes in the afterward of this edition that "the beginning of modernism is a man (Baudelaire) walking through a city. Bruce experiences his own version of the fragment in a walk with me through a part of San Francisco that reminds him of earlier eras both in his life and the life of our culture." The image "Ossi di Sepia" which graces the cover was steeped in my reading of modern poetry, especially Baudelaire and the Ital...

I have been thinking about Goya and Spanish painting while in the studio recently. Gregg Chadwick "Songs Of Almodóvar" 48"x36" oil on linen 2006 In Southern California, Spain is never far away. The lilting sound of Spanish is almost an aural fragrance in the air. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746 - 1828) "Woman with Clothes Blowing in the Wind" Carbon and Watercolor on Ivory 1824-25 "I've no more sight. No hand, no pen, nor inkwell, I lack everything - all I've got left is will." - Goya in a letter to a Spanish friend. 1825 There is a wonderful piece by Robert Hughes on Goya in the Guardian. I have quoted a few lines concerning Goya's late paintings on ivory: "He was short of money, and friends proposed that he should make himself some by doing a new issue of the Caprichos, but Goya refused to compromise himself by repetition. Instead he spoke of something entirely new in his work: miniatures on ivory. Not the licked, froze...

Gustav Klimt "Apple Tree I" 42 7/8" x 43 1/4" oil on canvas 1911 or 1912 Estate of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer Quite a week in Los Angeles. Michael Govan has taken up his post as the new director at LACMA and the recently repatriated Gustav Klimt paintings are now on display at LACMA as well. Gustave Courbet "Stream in the Forest" about 1862, oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston At the Getty tonight noted art historian Linda Nochlin will present a lecture: "How Landscape Means: Courbet and His Territory" in conjuction with the traveling exhibition - "Courbet and the Modern Landscape" -which is currently on view at the Getty through May 14, 2006. * Details on the Nochlin lecture And UCLA finished a remarkable run through the NCAA Basketball tourney on Monday night. The Bruins fell short in the title game but played with remarkable courage and showed incredible class throughout the tournament.

"A Walk with Ganesh" Gregg Chadwick, 72" x 84" oil on linen 2005 My brother, Kent Chadwick , is a Seattle writer and recently finished a poem inspired by the painting above: "A Walk with Ganesh" Obediently, I begin, but it is a curious way to experiment with no design and venture out in thought alone. It is my father who has traveled to where elephants wander, to where they’re worked and tended. It is my brother who has breathed the red dust of Bangalore, who was told by a Bombay cab driver, “Ganesh was just in my car!” At home I know just what I read— that he broke off a bit of his tusk to take dictation, to copy down at divine speed the inspired, sculpted rush of Ved Vyasa’s verse creating the Mahabharata. Oh, to compose as swiftly as a god can write! Oh, to out sing one’s breath! Obediently, I begin a journey measured in mouse steps— a journey in...

" If the Princes of the world had to fight hand to hand, goodbye to war. But while there is someone in the world who can sacrifice thousands of victims how and when he pleases, Without risk to his person, enslaved humanity do not complain of his barbarity, for the blame is yours." -Giambattista Casti, "Gli animali parti" 1802 "Contemptuous of the Insults" Goya 1816-1820 From: "A Revolutionary Age: Drawing in Europe, 1770–1820" organized by the Getty as a companion exhibition to the traveling exhibition " Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile" "Sometimes the most determined of invaders, equipped with strong armies and copious intelligence about its enemy can make myopic blunders that later seem close to madness" Robert Hughes, from "Goya"- on Napoleon's invasion of Spain Three years into our debacle in Iraq it is helpful to turn to art and history for some perspective. Napoleon invaded and occupied Spain from 1808...

Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I 138 x 138 cm oil and gold on canvas 1907 Altmann Collection, Los Angeles A legal arbitration panel in Austria recently decided that five Gustav Klimt paintings, stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family during World War II, should be returned to Maria Altmann who lives in Los Angeles- the legal heir to the looted collection. The two sides began mediation following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that Altmann could sue the Austrian government. It was announced today (thanks for the heads up Tyler ), that the five paintings will go on display from April 4 through June 30 at LACMA . Suzanne Muchnic in the Los Angeles Times reports that "the exhibition was initiated by Stephanie Barron, LACMA's senior curator of modern art, in January after the Austrian arbitration court ordered its government to turn over the paintings to Altmann, ... Barron proposed the show in a letter to Altmann's attorney, Randol Schoenberg, who presented the ...

Bamiyan Buddhas March 12, 2001 Destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas On March 12, 2001 the Buddhas in Bamiyan were destroyed in Afghanistan. Despite a resounding chorus of international condemnation, the Taliban ignorantly declared that the tenets of Islamic fundamentalism were more important than the world's artistic heritage. And so, the statues were blown apart, exactly six-months before the destruction of another pair of cultural icons, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The Bamiyan Buddhas were towering figures carved into the sandstone cliffs of what is now central Afghanistan sometime around the third century A.D. The statues were the tallest standing Buddhas in the world. Like classical Greek and Roman sculptures, which provided major influences on the Buddhist sculpture in this region, the Bamiyan Buddhas were originally brightly painted and most likely gilded. This region was known historically as Gandhara and occupied areas of present day North W...

"And history will soon forget about you, but the heavens they will reward you." -Nick Cave, "Faraway, So Close" Cassiel and Gorbachev in Wim Wenders' film - "Faraway, So Close" "Faraway, So Close" marked Mikhail Gorbachev's feature film debut. The guardian angel, Cassiel, looks over his shoulder while Gorbachev meditates that "a secure world can't be built on blood; only on harmony." On March 10, 1985 after the death of Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed leader of the Soviet Union. In 1988, Gorbachev began withdrawing Soviet forces from Afghanistan. More than 15,000 Soviet troops died during the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989). Also during 1988, Gorbachev announced the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which had kept Eastern bloc nations under Soviet domination. The Soviet Union's Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov jokingly described the decision as the Sinatra Doctrine, bec...

"We're making a mystery here, so make it mysterious." -Hayao Miyazaki    Update: Arrietty the Borrower: Next Studio Ghibli Project to be Released in Japan on July 17 th 2010   Hayao Miyazaki "Howl's Moving Castle" Hayao Miyazaki's most recent film ,"Howl's Moving Castle", is being released today on DVD in the US. The images in this film are spectacular. It is a visual feast: a panoply of color, movement, motion, spirit and imagination. Miyazaki makes films with children in mind. But his films are never childish. At a press conference in Paris upon the release of "Spirited Away"*, Miyazaki said,"In fact, I am a pessimist. But when I'm making a film, I don't want to transfer my pessimism onto children. I keep it at bay. I don't believe that adults should impose their vision of the world on children, children are very much capable of forming their own visions. There's no need to force our own visions ont...

Still From Ang Lee's "The Hulk" Photo by Gregg Chadwick At the Academy Awards tonight, Ang Lee was named Best Director for his film "Brokeback Mountain". Mr Lee is a true talent - willing to take risks and at times fail. "The Hulk" (picture above) was arguably not a very good film. But his fims are always worth watching and the range of subject matter in his films is remarkable. Ang Lee on the set of Brokeback Mountain

On December 24th, 1914 the entrenched forces arrayed against each other near Ypres put down their arms on Christmas Eve. With an exchange of songs and camaraderie, French, German, and Scottish soldiers searched for a way to overcome - for one brief night - the conflict that raged between them. As morning dawned the physical and cultural No Man's Land that divided them reappeared ... The Academy Award nominated film Joyeux Noel, which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, explores these events and the human cost of war. The film is up for Best Foreign Language Film at Sunday's Oscars. Oscar Page on Joyeux Noel Joyeux Noel Trailer During World War I, many artists painted significant works: Pierre Bonnard French "Un Village en Ruines Près du Ham" 63 x 85 cm oil on canvas 1917 Musée d'Histoire Contemporaine, Paris Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was in a group of painters assigned in 1916 to go and paint the war. All that remains from his attempt to visually describ...

Carol Es "1-SELF" Carol Es, who shows with the George Billis Gallery and who writes Esart, now has work included in the Getty Collection. The Getty recently purchased a volume of Carol's "1-SELF", a thirty-six page handmade catalog in an edition of fifty. Carol has explained that "the title suggests both intimate self-expression and the artist’s pattern making background in the Los Angeles garment industry, as patterns were often marked "1-self" for manufacturing." Caro Es has been busy with interviews and with preparations for her upcoming show at Gallery 825 in April. Go to Esart and read all about it. Congrats Carol.

April 25th marks the release of Bruce Springsteen's , "We Shall Overcome, The Seeger Sessions," which features Springsteen's personal interpretations of thirteen songs associated with folk musician Pete Seeger. Pete Seeger According to Jon Landau, the album "has a lightness and ease to it, a sheer joyfulness, that makes it very special from top to bottom. Bruce has taken a core group of classic American songs and transformed them into a high energy, modern and very personal statement." Of the new album Springsteen said, "So much of my writing, particularly when I write acoustically, comes straight out of the folk tradition. Making this album was creatively liberating because I have a love of all those different roots sounds... they can conjure up a world with just a few notes and a few words." Springsteen recorded the album with a large ensemble. The musicians on the record are Springsteen (guitar, harmonica, B3 organ and percussion), Sam Bardfeld...

Jacopo Bassano "Christ Driving the Money Changers From the Temple" 17 3/16" x 21 3/8" black and colored chalks on blue paper circa 1570 Getty Collection Jacopo Bassano's "Christ Driving the Money Changers From the Temple" is a remarkable drawing. Rich, swirling masses of colored chalks are rubbed and shaded onto a colored sheet of paper defining a light filled atmosphere as much as a biblical scene. The freedom of execution in this preliminary study seems to speak directly to the Venetian love for complex coloristic effects. Jacopo Bassano learned much from Titian . Titian's oil paintings are richly layered with unique pigments from around the world that were readily available because of the Venetian Republic's long maritime reach. With access to these powders, which would be ground with linseed oil to form paint, Venetian artists such as Titian and Giorgione were able to lay out singular colored atmospheres. In essence Titian at his finest...

A brazen armed robbery of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet and Dali marked the opening of the Carnival in Brazil on Friday. Gunmen burst into the Chácara do Céu museum in Rio de Janeiro and made off with their most valuable paintings and a book by Picasso. Sources in Brazil say that the stolen paintings were Pablo Picasso's "The Dance", Claude Monet's "Marine", Henri Matisse's "Garden of Luxembourg" and Salvador Dali's "Two Balconies". Museum director Vera de Alencar told reporters that at least four men brandishing firearms had been involved in the heist - including one holding a hand grenade. Art lovers inside the museum were also relieved of their wallets, cameras and cellphones during the robbery. The assailants rushed out of the museum into the cobblestone streets of the Santa Teresa district and disappeared into a crowd following a Samba parade. With its steep, almost precariously tilted streets, cable car line, and bo...

Gregg Chadwick City of Desires (Cidade dos Desejos) 72" x 96" oil on linen 2005 Opening tonight at the Santa Monica Art Studios from 6 to 8pm is the exhibition: LEAVING AZTLAN (redux) February 25 – April 9, 2006 Opening Reception Saturday, February 25, 6-8pm ARENA 1 A project of Santa Monica Art Studios 3026 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA. 90405 Directors: Sherry Frumkin and Yossi Govrin My studio will also be open.

Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi This Tuesday, February 21st at Cal State University, Monterey Bay, Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi will be leading a lecture and discussion on "Images of Latinas/os in Film and Media". The husband-and-wife team will lead the free event at 7 p.m. in the University Center ballroom. Together they wrote the screenplay for the film "A Day Without A Mexican." Arau also directed the movie; Arizmendi is the star. In today's Monterey Herald , Marc Cabrera reports that "were it not for the couple's shared vision, the surprising indie hit "A Day Without A Mexican" would have just been a funny idea that Arizmendi had shared with her husband, who was also the film's director." "There is some competition when it regards whose idea was that," said Arizmendi over the phone from a Los Angeles studio, where she and her husband are working on individual projects. "I was the one who said the line, ...

Cover by Helen Frankenthaler "Her placement of words was like the placement of paint on a canvas," said her daughter, Hadley Guest. Modernist poet and art writer, Barbara Guest died on February 15, 2006 in Berkeley, California. During the 1950s, she created collages that later became covers for her books, and along with her poet colleagues in the New York School wrote for Art News magazine. In her recent collection of art writings, "Dürer in the Window" , gathered from a lifetime of looking, thinking and creating, Barbara Guest describes her experiences as a poet among painters and sculptors in a time when there was no "recognized separation between the arts." Her poems are crisp and visual with a taste for color and painterly image. "The Blue Stairs" inspired by a stairway in the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam is a good introduction to her work: "The Blue Stairs" by Barbara Guest (audiofile) There is no fear in taking the...

William Blake "Death of the Strong Wicked Man" watercolor on paper 1805 William Blake "The Grave Personified" watercolor on paper 1805 The recently rediscovered William Blake watercolors to be sold at Sotheby's in the spring should be bought by the Getty and the Tate jointly so both institutions can make the works available for scholars and the public. In Carol Vogel's piece on the rediscovered Blakes in the New York Times, Martin Butlin, a Blake scholar, expresses that breaking up the collection and selling them one by one at Sotheby's is "absolutely philistine. The seller has no regard for the integrity of works of art, only for money. As a group they tell a story." The nineteen artworks are from a series of 20 watercolors that Blake originally created as illustrations for the poem, "The Grave," by the Scotsman Robert Blair. With luck the William Blake watercolors could be showcased in an exhibition that moves between Los Angeles...

Gregg Chadwick The Stillness Between 48"x48" oil on canvas 2006 INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED: Supreme Art by gallery artists: Johnny Apodaca, Aleah Koury, Anita Hilton, Bud Gordon, Kevin Flynn, Dianna Cohen, Gregg Chadwick, Brian Behnke and Richard Newman 18 February - March 2006 Reception: SATURDAY, 18 February 4-6pm - (note different time!) Hope to see you there. LISA COSCINO GALLERY / 216 Grand Avenue / Pacific Grove / CA / 93950 / 831.646.1939