Rembrandt at the Getty

by Gregg Chadwick

The exhibition "Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits" opens today at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Rembrandt

"Hendrickje Stoffels, Possibly as the Sorrowing Virgin"

30 7/8" x 27 1/8" oil on canvas 1660

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tyler Green's thoughts on the exhibit during its first stop in D.C. bring up an important question, "No one knows why, near the end of his life, Rembrandt painted so many religious figures who devoted their lives to spiritual goals and who were killed for it. Arthur Wheelock, the NGA curator who put together this show, brought these paintings together in an effort to spark some thought on the question."

Tyler Green's superb piece concludes with an echo of Lawrence Weschler's "Vermeer in Bosnia" by providing a wartime context to Rembrandt's portraits of martyrs:

"Just as now is a time of battle in the Middle East, so too was the Netherlands in Rembrandt's time. In the seventeenth century the Dutch fought wars with the Spanish and the British. The First Anglo-Dutch War ended in 1654 (and naval skirmishes continued for years), just a few years before Rembrandt began the paintings shown here.

As with Vermeer's paintings, you'd never know that Rembrandt lived surrounded by war. (The presence of several hushed Vermeers in a gallery adjacent to the Rembrandt show underscores this point.) Rembrandt's quiet portraits reject blood and violence in favor of humility and introspection. I can't help but think that's part of why they still look so great today."

Tyler's recognition of the humility and introspection in Rembrandt's late portraits is a point that bears repeating. I had a chance to speak with the painter Chester Arnold this weekend whose "To Never Forget: Faces of the Fallen" exhibition of memorial portraits of American troops killed in action in Iraq continues to travel across the country. Sadly, Arnold's exhibition continually needs updating as more troops fall in Iraq. But Chester Arnold and the group of artists that he has gathered continue to create poignant images with a humility and introspection that Rembrandt would understand.


"Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits" runs until August 28th and is accompanied by a wide range of lectures and events.

To start things off at the Getty: Thursday June 9th at 7:00pm, Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. - curator of northern baroque painting at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. and organizer of the exhibition, discusses Rembrandt's late work and will explore the spiritual nature of the assembled paintings.

Bashō's Haiku and the Evening Cool

by Gregg Chadwick

As the evenings grow longer in late Spring and voices from the clubs down the hill from my studio drift in on the breeze, I feel a human quickening that the 17th Century Japanese poet Bashō would have understood. Art's ability to speak across the centuries never fails to inspire me and provide hope for the future.

I am currently reading "Bashō's Haiku", translated by David Landis Barnhill. Barnhill's translations from the original Japanese are crisp. Each word is chosen carefully and the original verse order is maintained. These translations have an almost clipped brevity - like a Zen master's clap to focus his students. Barnhill's deft word choice allow Bashō's images to suggest layers of meaning without overlaying a modern American voice onto the poems.

Gregg Chadwick

"The Porcelain Sea"

48"x38" oil on linen 2005

Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) was born into the samurai class, but rejected that world after the death of his master and became a wandering poet and teacher. During his travels across Japan, he became a lay Zen monk and studied history and classical poetry. His own poems contain a mystical quality expressed through images from the natural world.

Barnhill explains that " in the early 1690's, Bashō began to emphasize lightheartedness and day-to-day subject matter, promoting a new aesthetic of "lightness" (karumi)."

One of Bashō's poems describes this lightness of being through a description of vibrant nights in Kyoto:

The evening cool at riverside, Fourth Avenue," they call it. From early Sixth Month with its evening moon to the moon at dawn just past mid-month, people lining up along the river in platforms drinking sake and feasting as they party all night long. Woman wrapped in showy sashes, men sporting fashionably long coats, with monks and old folks intermingling, even apprentices to coopers and blacksmiths, everyone carefree and leisurely, singing up a storm. Yes indeed, life in the capital! 

river breeze-
wearing pale persimmon robes,
the evening cool
kawakaze ya / usugaki kitaru / yusuzumi
- Bashō 1690

Global Art

Wanted to thank:

Hans Heiner Buhr in Georgia (not the state- the country) for his comments on Silk Road.
hans heiner buhr

Marja-Leena Rathje from Finland (now resident in Canada) for her comments on Lalla Essaydi.
marja-leena rathje

Linden Langdon for her work in Tasmania.
linden langdon

Vvoi in Portugal for his thoughts on contemporary art.
vvoi

And Laila Carlsen from Norway (now in SF) for her friendship, inspiration and amazing work.

Laila Carlsen

"Dance"

60" x 45" oil on canvas 2005

Laila - when can we expect your blog?

Lucian Freud in Venice

Update: May 2008 -Painter and Model: Lucian Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping Sells for $33.64 Million

Both Franklin and Todd pay homage to the Lucian Freud article in the London Times .

Lucian Freud

"The Painter Surprised by a Naked Admirer"

54"x42" oil on canvas 2005

This painting will be the most recent work in a a retrospective exhibition, curated by William Feaver, on show this summer at Venice's Museo Correr (12 June-30 October 2005). The exhibition is organised by the Venetian Civic Museums on the occasion of the 2005 Venice Biennale.

Cherry Blossoms and Kamikaze

by Gregg Chadwick

While glancing at the schedule for this week’s National Critics Conference (May 25-28, 2005) at the Omni Hotel in Los Angeles, I came across the description for Elizabeth Zimmer's "Kamikaze Writing Workshop." Obviously the word "kamikaze" has shifted in tone and meaning since it first entered the American vocabulary during the last years of WWII. I doubt that Zimmer’s criticism class will make a fiery plunge into the conference hall as a final project. But I was reminded of the important work being done in the fields of aesthetics and history by Emiko Ohnuki – Tierney at the University of Wisconsin.

Cherry blossom send off.

Kamikaze means "divine wind" in Japanese, and originally referred to a miraculous typhoon that saved Japan from a Mongolian invasion force in the 13th century. The Japanese Navy used this term to describe their suicide attack planes. In America, the word "kamikaze" describes actions that are reckless or dangerous to the point of being suicidal. The term "kamikaze" is now applied to a wide range of situations, including terrorist suicide bombings, reckless drivers, and out of control classrooms.

This free use of the word kamikaze tends to inhibit our understanding of a key question. Why did almost one thousand highly educated "student soldiers" volunteer to serve in Japan's tokkotai (kamikaze) forces near the end of World War II, even though Japan was losing the war? In “Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History” Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney shows how the Japanese state manipulated the symbol of the cherry blossom to convince young soldiers and sailors that it was their honor to "die like beautiful falling cherry petals" for the emperor.


Cherry blossoms served as the primary symbol of kamikaze pilots. And their fiery descents into American fleets were likened to falling blossoms in the spring wind. The image is poignant and powerful. Young girls would line the runway and wave branches of cherry blossoms as the pilots took off on their attacks.

Emiko Ohnuki - Tierney reports that many former students from Japan's elite universities died as kamikaze pilots: “In October 1943, military draft deferment ended for students in liberal arts and law, although the deferment continued for students in such fields as engineering and natural sciences.” Many of these former students joined special units to carry out suicide attacks on Allied fleets. Emiko Ohnuki - Tierney estimates that one thousand student soldiers died as kamikaze pilots.


Drawing on diaries never before published in English, Ohnuki-Tierney describes these young men's agonies and even defiance against the imperial ideology, “Passionately devoted to cosmopolitan intellectual traditions, the pilots saw the cherry blossom not in militaristic terms, but as a symbol of the painful beauty and unresolved ambiguities of their tragically brief lives.”


Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History
by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
University of Chicago Press, 2002

Silk Road

Painting in the studio today...

Gregg Chadwick

Silk Road

48"x38" 2005

Private Collection

Lalla Essaydi

by Gregg Chadwick

Modern Kicks reports today on the 2005 DeCordova Museum's Annual Exhibition. The report from Modern Kicks: " those of you who haven't already been hearing a lot about Lalla Essaydi, expect to do so."

Encouraged by Modern Kicks prompting I add my thoughts about Lalla Essaydi:

The Boston based photographer Lalla Essaydi grew up in Morocco. Her childhood experiences in a remote family residence inspired a return visit two decades later in which Lalla began a series of images that she recently described to T. Trent Gegax in Newsweek's International Edition as her reinterpretation of "the Arab female. We're always seen as the woman who's oppressed, when we're actually negotiating every day."

Essaydi creates and then photographs henna scripted tableaux of women in draped interiors. Essaydi's henna calligraphy runs across figures, skin, floors and walls. The arabic words comprise, as reported by Gegax, "Essaydi's stream-of-consciousness diary ("I am a book that has no ending. Each page I write could be the first...")

Lalla Essaydi 

"Territories #29"

40 3/4" x 33 1/4" chromogenic print 2004

Gegax continues:
"The calligraphy, an art form that until the past decade was not taught to Moroccan women, took three weeks for each image. Through her works, Essaydi, now in her 40s, gives voice to a complex generation of Arab women—Western and Eastern, traditionalist and liberal, secular and Muslim."

Land of Plenty

by Gregg Chadwick

A new mayor has been elected in Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa - the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since the city's pioneer days. L.A.'s last Latino mayor, Cristobal Aguilar, left office in 1872, when Los Angeles was a frontier town of barely 6,000 people.

Villaraigosa's win exemplifies the growing clout of Latinos in California, after decades of population growth that failed to lead to a rise in political power.

This is a positive step that bodes well for the future of the city and the state of California. But there is still much to be done. As Bruce Springsteen said at his latest concert in L.A. - "The American government's border policy is a disgrace."

Across the Border in Ensenada, Mexico
photo by Gregg Chadwick

On her blog today, Megan McMillan thinks of Wim Wenders' film, "The End of Violence", after overhearing the gardener's working at her apartment complex. Megan McMillan's description of the conversation illustrates the inequities in this land of plenty:

"Black, white, there are still a lot of problems. Slavery was over a long time ago, but if you think about it, we're slaves too. I just try not to think about it... man, I just try not to think about it."

Listen to a cut off the soundtrack to Wim Wender's "Land of Plenty" ...

The Weight of the World

and create a new reality today.


Art

American Favorites

by Gregg Chadwick

In response to Tyler Green's response to the Guardian:

Diego Velazquez' "Juan de Pareja" is my favorite painting in America.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez
Juan de Pareja
oil on canvas 1650
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
photo by Gregg Chadwick

This is one the paintings that made me want to become a painter.


Richard Diebenkorn's "Ocean Park #54" is my favorite painting by an American.



Richard Diebenkorn
"Ocean Park 54"
100" x 81" oil on canvas 1972
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
See:Diebenkorn and Kitaj Off Ocean Park

R.B. Kitaj's "If Not, Not" is my favorite painting by a living American artist.



R.B. Kitaj
"If Not, Not"
60" x 60" oil on canvas 1975-76
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Call for Artists: Video Art for Tom Bradley International Terminal LAX

Video Art in Tom Bradley International Airport - CA
Deadline: May 23, 2005. The City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department seeks to establish a pre-qualified pool of up to twenty (20) Video artists/artist teams to be considered for the upcoming Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT) projects at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Artists who have experience working with multiple screen projections and are capable of occupying an entire space on a grand scale are being sought. The artists should address the context of the airport and the City of Los Angeles and help create an impressive moving visual art environment. This is an exciting opportunity for Video Artists to collaborate with a team and generate work that will enhance a dynamic space and engage millions of visitors each year. The artwork will be exhibited on a video wall and/or a linear “film strip”. The video wall is comprised of 20 40”LCD screens and covers an area approximately 25 feet wide and 10 feet high. The film strip consists of 58 back-to-back 40” LCD screens with an overall length of approximately 90 feet. Both locations provide opportunities for artists to create works with temporary or permanent Video art installations. Questions: Noah Davis: 213.473.8570. Download application at: culturela.org

Phil Cousineau: The Painted Word

From Gerald Nicosia in the San Francisco Chronicle "Phil Cousineau has long been a powerful presence in the San Francisco literary scene, but he is best known as a filmmaker and writer who has carried on and reinterpreted the work of Joseph Campbell, especially regarding the omnipresent influence of myth in modern life.

Phil Cousineau
photo by Gregg Chadwick

Last year he also had a best- seller with "The Way Things Are," a collaboration with the religious philosopher Huston Smith. All this while Cousineau has been publishing -- in very limited editions -- collections of his own poetry, whose influence has been noted by a great many other major poets of his generation, including Antler and Jane Hirshfield. But his latest collection, The Blue Museum (Sisyphus Press; 152 pages; $12 paperback; P.O. Box 330098, San Francisco, CA 94133), comprising poems selected from his entire life's work, is a book readers will be unlikely to forget.

 l to r: Gregg Chadwick, Huston Smith, Cassiel Chadwick and Phil Cousineau 

photo by M.V. Heilemann

"The Blue Museum" contains the whole story of one man's life, the way poets seldom do it any more -- the way Wordsworth or Whitman did it, say, or William Carlos Williams, or even, more recently, Charles Olson. Cousineau writes in long, conversational, deceptively casual lines that quickly add up to an explosive critical mass. At times these epiphanies are dazzling, as when Cousineau recalls in "Go-Kart" the first time in childhood he took note of his own being in the world:

My nostrils fill with the smell of freshly mowed grass,

my eyes smart with streaming sunlight, my fingertips warm

to the touch of just-sawed two-by-fours

my thin arms sag under the weight of tools

hauled in from my dad's hand-made,

silver-painted workbench.

All at once --

in one swift moment --

I know I know

I know I'm knowing I'm alive

and not not alive, not dead,

not like my recently deceased grandfather,

not unborn like our neighbor's nine stillborn babies.

Yet Cousineau is equally adept at the sort of short-lined, concise, clear- eyed appreciations of nature perfected by Gary Snyder, whose influence shows in poems like "The Meaning of Happiness," an exquisite lyric about the harmony between man, woman and unborn child:

The swift flow of salmon

in brisk rivers

loud with moonlight

The murmur of lovers

Calling the restless one

In her teeming belly

It takes courage to write poems about one's living wife (Kenneth Rexroth was one of the few before Cousineau to do it superbly), but perhaps even more courage to write about those other giants in our lives, our parents. Cousineau writes of his dead father in "Slow Dissolve":

he was trying to tell me he was dying,

"I don't know how much longer I have left."

Just thirty-two, I didn't believe a guy

could lose his father that young.

I huddled deep into my black leather jacket

that still stank of motorcycle fumes,

felt my heart shrink-wrapped by his cracking voice,

the icy finality with which we shook hands

in the doorway of his apartment.

"The Blue Museum" contains several equally moving poems about Cousineau's role as father himself to his young son, Jack.

Jack Cousineau

In one poignant poem, driving his son home from Sonoma at night, he is torn by the boy's terrible fear of the darkness, and finds himself lying, as his own father had, to comfort him: "Only then did the words spring free,/ the lie I told to tell the longer truth, / "Don't worry, buddy, we'll be home soon./ I won't let the darkness hurt you. " In this poem, as in so many others, Cousineau is able to draw profound questions out of ordinary daily life, and here he asks with astonishing simplicity: "How do you lead a child/ into the darkness and out again?"

"The Blue Museum" contains poetic tributes to a whole array of artists and heroes who have inspired Cousineau in the literal odyssey of his life, as he has wandered across the globe for decades. There are poems about John Lennon, Anne Frank, Ray Charles, Anna Akhmatova, the bargirls of Naples and the most beautiful ode to Van Gogh I have ever read, "Vincent's Search," in which the poet, perhaps thinking of his own poetry as well, speculates that the painter "never/ searched for more than frankly green, frankly blue landscapes,/ only longed to paint an olive orchard so vivid others/ would want to harvest it, a starry night sky so alive anyone/ who gazed at it would long to lay themselves down/ and sleep the sleep of the ages below it."

Phil Cousineau's latest: Native American Spirituality: Huston Smith and Phil Cousineau in Conversation

L.A. Light

by Gregg Chadwick


There is a cinematic light to the skies in Los Angeles at dusk and a Disney-like quality to the shopping arcades and restaurants.

Encounter at LAX
photo by Gregg Chadwick

The level of energy is similar to New York but it is spread out horizontally and tends to dissipate along the edges as the city leaks into Orange County. Prompted by Megan and Murray's recent newcomer's thoughts on L.A. and my current exhibit at the LACMA Art Rental and Sales Gallery, I have begun to think about Los Angeles as a muse as well as a subject. What siren calls does this city sing?

Ed Ruscha "LACMA On Fire"

At my opening at LACMA last Friday, more than one person came up to me and asked if I was in the business -referring to film and television. As an artist in L.A. you must not forget your place on the periphery. But in that benign neglect, there is freedom for a visual artist. There is a sense of possibility even. And chance.

Gregg Chadwick's Studio
May 2005
Santa Monica Airport

Ry Cooder has a small studio at the Santa Monica Airport. Though we have not yet met, it is comforting somehow to think of him working nearby as I paint late into the night. I picture Wim Wenders driving up in an old Mercedes to listen to Ry Cooder's latest musical project on Chavez Ravine. And I keep painting away.

For Tom Fowler

by Gregg Chadwick

Artists create communities. And artists that share representation by the same gallery form a family. Dysfunctional maybe. But still a family. As a family of artists and with deep sadness those of us who exhibit at the Dolby Chadwick Gallery in San Francisco mourn the passing of Tom Fowler. Again, we are reminded how fragile life is.

" More influential than current art trends is the religious or spiritual tradition of writing repetitive phrases as a form of meditation. Zen Buddhist scroll writings and Hebrew holographic writings are examples of this. Another motivation is the tradition of penitence. Saying a hundred Hail Mary's, or having to write mistakes over and over on a blackboard, is something we are all familiar with."
- Tom Fowler

Tom Fowler 

"Why"

There will be a memorial service for Tom Fowler at The Melting Point Gallery on Sunday, May 15, at 2:00 PM. The Melting Point is located at 1340 Bryant Street in San Francisco.


Art Business News on Tom (scroll to the bottom of the article)

Warhol's "Liz" Sells for $12.6 Million at Sotheby's

Carol Vogel at the New York Times reports:

"Lawrence Graff, the London jeweler, successfully outbid five other contenders for "Liz," one of Andy Warhol's series of 13 paintings of Ms. Taylor, this one against a deep-red background. The 1963 painting was being sold by Irving Blum, the Los Angeles art dealer who had owned it for 40 years."

The Crossing

"Gregg Chadwick paints scenes from the life of Asia that reminds us of the monastic life of pilgrimage which has been all but lost in the West."
-Ratnagarbha and Thomas Jones
from "Urthona: Journal of Buddhism and the Arts" Issue 20

Gregg Chadwick
The Crossing
48"x72" oil on linen 2004 

Thanks to Anna Conti for her recent comments on my work and site. Enjoyed her tour of the downtown San Francisco galleries.


And Tyler Green is pondering the state of art in LA while reading about the Tate in London. Provacative ideas.


Also a must read is Megan McMillan's account of skipping out of high school to sit in the cool chill of Church's iceburgs.

Once Again, We Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself: "The Power of Nightmares"- A New Film Series by Adam Curtis

by Gregg Chadwick

This weekend in San Francisco (May 2005) an important and powerful film series by the British Director Adam Curtis was screened. Jeanne Carstensen from the San Francisco Chronicle explains,"The Power of Nightmares," Curtis' three-part series, broadcast on BBC last fall... asks hard questions about the scope of the global war on terror, such as whether al Qaeda is really as vast and powerful a network of international terrorism as we've been led to believe. But "Nightmares" also digs much deeper, into the roots of neoconservatism and radical Islamism, two conservative movements that have significantly helped shape geopolitical events since the end of World War II. As we near the four-year mark of a war that has no definable end, "Nightmares" asks viewers to consider the idea, and its implications, that politicians and citizens alike are now living in a society driven by fear above all else."

Jeanne Carstensen continues, "In "The Power of Nightmares," the international men of mystery are Leo Strauss, conservative political philosopher from the University of Chicago, and Sayyid Qutb, U.S.-educated Egyptian turned Islamic revolutionary. Both rejected post-World War II American values and believed that Western individualism led to nihilism.

Strauss' students, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, went on to build the neoconservative movement based on their mentor's ideas of governing through great unifying myths. Finally in power in Washington, D.C., when Ronald Reagan came into office, they used their influence to convince the White House and the American people that the Soviet Union was extremely dangerous -- an Evil Empire -- a version of reality that contradicted reports from the U.S. intelligence community. In power once again under George W. Bush, after Sept. 11, the neocons have led the charge into a new war against global terror, and, once again, sold the country on the idea that this threat is so vast and unimaginably evil that the most extreme measures are justified.

Qutb, meanwhile, returned home and seeded the already growing Islamist movement that was challenging the secular Egyptian state with a more radical strain. After he was executed, his ideas lived on through Ayman al-Zawahiri, who joined forces with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Curtis' goal isn't so much to compare the neocons and the radical Islamists -- although there are some fearful symmetries -- but to point out how, through the ideas of Strauss and Qutb, they've changed the world, often in ways they themselves didn't intend, and how fear functions in the politics of our era."

Adam Curtis decribes his film in the Chronicle:
"The West does face a deadly threat from groups and individuals inspired by dangerous ideas .... But the film also argues that the true nature of this threat has been completely misunderstood by governments, security services and the international media. It has been distorted and exaggerated to create a vision of a unique threat unlike anything we have faced that justifies extreme countermeasures. This fantasy, which has trapped our leaders and our media, prevents us from comprehending and dealing with the dangers we face."

"The Power of Nightmares" will also be screened this year at the Cannes Film Festival.

For more info:
SF Film Festival
BBC News on Adam Curtis

HEAD Magazine: Remembered Like a Dream

by Gregg Chadwick

HEAD Magazine, an online publication from the United Kingdom, is featuring a group of my paintings in their latest issue in a visual article entitled: "Remembered Like a Dream" .

cover photo by Dominik Weyerke

The staff at HEAD magazine describes the intent of their efforts:

"HEAD Magazine is an online publication designed to showcase the creative talents of established and emerging visual artists from all over the world. HEAD Magazine was founded in 2003 by Steve Kraitt and Nicolene Hannan, and provides an editorial and advertising-free platform for exhibiting the work of photographers, artists, illustrators and designers. From the outset, the central ethos and conceptual objective of HEAD Magazine has been to provide artists with a global platform of the "purest" form. It was the primary intention of Steven and Nicolene to create a publication that concerned itself entirely and exclusively with the presentation of visual art, without any of the influence or distraction that editorial association can often apply. HEAD strives to present only the work itself and nothing more; no biographical information regarding the creator/s of the work, no review or assessment of the work, and no other form of written content that could influence or inform the reader further than the immediate emotional response that the work itself prompts. This lack of editorial is one of the primary attractions of Head Magazine, and the reason so many of our readers find our concept so fresh and appealing."

Picasso's Guernica Remembered

by Gregg Chadwick


April 26


The Basque city of Guernica was firebombed by the Condor Legion of the Nazi Luftwaffe sixty-eight years ago today prompting Pablo Picasso's painting "Guernica". The fascist states of Germany and Italy had provided men and military aid to the forces under Franco who were trying to wrest control of Spain from the democratically elected government.

Picasso

"Study for Guernica"

graphite on paper 1937

"A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it."
- Pablo Picasso


News of the firebombing of Guernica reached Paris on April 27th in a broadcast by Radio Bilbao. Within that week, Picasso abandoned his initial ideas for a painting destined for the Spanish Pavilion at the soon to open World's Fair. On May 1st he began a series of graphite on paper studies for a new painting, which would become "Guernica".


In a burst of creativity, Picasso molded his personal artistic themes into a universal declaration against war. Picasso's companion, the photographer Dora Maar, had access to the work in progress and recorded the development of the painting in a series of black and white photographs.


The painting's final state depicts a world where interior domestic life has literally been blown into the streets. By deftly combining cubistic space with classical art references and newspaper reportage, Picasso created a political painting that harked back to Goya's "Third of May" while depicting a new type of total war. The enemy who has laid waste to Guernica is nowhere to be seen. This unseen enemy's violence is created offstage as in a Greek tragedy and his weapons are thrown down wantonly upon an innocent populace.


This painting has also played a part in our new war. On February 5, 2003, United Nations officials covered up a tapestry reproduction of Picasso’s “Guernica” during US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation of the American case for war against Iraq.


One cannot help but think of a small man, behind the cloth hiding the painting, pleading, "Do not look behind the curtain." Picasso pulled the curtain back on the destruction of Guernica and unveiled the small men hiding behind their armies. Let's hope there is another painter out there willing to pull the curtain back on today's injustices.




Art

Devils and Dust: Bruce Springsteen, Edward Hopper and American Light

by Gregg Chadwick


Bruce Springsteen's latest album will be released on April 26th, 2005. But the title track, "Devils and Dust" is already available. Like the compelling story in the newspaper that you find well after the hype of the front page, the characters in this new song are riveting yet invisible to the general public. The music is stripped down, at times hardscrabble and barren like the physical and emotional landscapes that these characters roam. As a painter, when I listen to Springsteen's hard fought melodies and stark vocals, I see images. And many times I see images painted by Edward Hopper.

Edward Hopper

Gas

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Hopper's figures share with Springsteen's characters a very American way of being. Not always pretty- but always present. Both Hopper's paintings and Springsteen's songs are lit by a sort of American light that exists not to create atmosphere, but to light objects. This same light is used in school portraits and family snapshots to fix smiles for posterity. But, as in the boxes of color photos found in attics and basements, the color in Hopper's paintings seems to turn amber as the works age. I was struck recently by the evident aging in Hopper’s "New York Movie" at the Museum of Modern Art. The paint was visibly pulling away from the edges of the painting. The clean, smooth look found in much contemporary painting and photography was not there. You could see the struggle in the painting's creation and feel its impending loss in the growing network of cracks and fissures. Springsteen's ballads on 1982's "Nebraska" foretold another process of decay even while new. The album was mastered from a damaged cassette tape of homemade demos that Bruce carried with him to band rehearsals. The crack and hiss in the album were there from the start and seemed to create the soundtrack for the eventual decay of Reagan's grand American Empire. Springsteen's next stripped down acoustic album, 1995's " The Ghost of Tom Joad", was steeped in Steinbeck’s novels "Grapes of Wrath" and "East of Eden". But Steinbeck's optimism had been left in Salinas. And Bruce left the romanticism out on New Jersey's Highway 9. The music in "The Ghost of Tom Joad" was as dry as Hopper's paint in his later works. And that was the point. These were American artworks based on tangible images and moments. And there was a sort of American heroism evident in getting these images and stories down.

USMC, Korean War

photo by Robert Chadwick

Springsteen wrote the haunting title track for "Devils and Dust" on the eve of the war in Iraq. There is no bombast in this piece. This is no call to arms. Instead, Bruce captures the inner conflict of all soldiers on all battlefields. When Bruce mumbles, "We're a long, long way from home, Bobbie", I think of the photos taken by my father, another Bob, as a young Marine in the Korean War. But even more I think of my mom, waiting for her man to come home. And I think of the young American moms and dads waiting for their loved ones to come home from Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the numerous and un-named lily pad bases scattered across the globe.

Springsteen and Bono, 1981

U2 tackled the mythos of the American West in 1987's "Joshua Tree". This music is now so emblematic of an American sense of place that I longed to hear those anthemic songs while recently driving through the National Park at Joshua Tree. But when I exited the park and watched the afternoon light slant across boarded up storefronts along the Highway and heard the scream of the Marine Corps jets above me, I realized that Springsteen had to leave his anthems behind when he tackled his vision of the American West in "Devil's and Dust". Springsteen doesn't just see the wide-open vistas at the scenic viewpoints. Springsteen turns around and sees the young Mexican girl selling trinkets along the road. Springsteen knows of the rat-filled tunnels she crawled through to get to America. Springsteen hears the diatribe coming from Washington and Sacramento. Springsteen's response is to strip his songs down just a little bit more, to edit deeply, and to keep looking at the American light.




Springsteen plays in Los Angeles on May 2 and May 3. My thoughts on the concert will follow:
See Devils and Dust Tour

*Update: Devils and Dust Tour

Whispers of Siam

by Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick

"Poem of the River"

36"x29" oil on linen 2005

Julie Weiss, who designed the costumes for the films Frida, American Beauty and Twelve Monkeys, recently stepped into my studio to view my new paintings. She was struck by the garments of remembrance that ran across the wall: saffron robed monks, a trio of women in kimonos, a boy in blue running across an open beach. Julie Weiss said, “ The paintings all together are like a ribbon across time and experience. We are following these monks on their journey. We see with their eyes as they pass by storefronts and streets. We are with them in fate, chance and accident.”

This ribbon began a few years ago in Thailand during a journey with my father. He was acting as a visiting lawyer involved in issues of justice and human rights. I would scurry out at dawn to wander the alleys of Chiang Mai and would catch the monks on their small morning pilgrimages. The morning of my last day was especially luminous. The light was almost incandescent and the blur of movement seemed to create paintings for me. I just needed to pay attention. To really see. I spent the time on the short flight to Bangkok watching a film in my mind of saffron robes glowing in the morning mist. As I waited for my connecting flight to San Francisco I caught a new clip on the television monitor. As the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center I longed for home and my son and knew that my artistic pilgrimage was just beginning. My new paintings are inspired by the whispers of Siam that I carry with me from that day. The saffron robed monks in my work are direct echoes of that experience. For me these monks are spiritual pilgrims that lead us away from the destruction and waste of violence, racism and hatred.

A selection of new paintings will be on exhibit from May 6 – June 9, 2005 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Art Rental & Sales Gallery
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036

Reception for the artist
Friday, May 6th, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Leo S. Bing Center, Lower Level at LACMA

Gallery hours:
11am - 4 pm: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday
Closed Sunday, Monday and Wednesday
323-857-6500

Miranda July: New Film & New Blog

Miranda July, recently involved with the Learning to Love You More project which made stops along the West Coast as part of the Baja to Vancouver exhibition and was in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, has a new film and a new blog .

Miranda July, The Swan Tool

"I loved Miranda July's piquantly original first feature film, "Me and You and Everyone We Know", about a fragile, quirky,and imperfect human connection. It was probably my favorite among the American Dramas I saw at Sundance, and I loved it like a poem or perhaps like a piece of performance art for which Miranda July is known; it is also poem-size, the kind of exotic delicacy likely to bloom only in festival soil."
- Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

Private Screening of "A Day Without A Mexican" for Arnold?

by Gregg Chadwick

California's actor governor knows all about film screenings. After his latest off the cuff and out of control quip:

"Close the borders. Close the borders in California, and all across Mexico and the United States. Because I think it is just unfair to have all of those people coming across, and to have the borders open the way it is. We in California have to still finish the border. That is the key thing -- to have borders and to keep the law, enforce the law.", Schwarzenegger told hundreds of newspaper publishers at the Newspaper Association of America convention at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.

Arnold needs to arrange a private screening of Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi's film - "A Day Without A Mexican". In an interview with Bija Gutoff on the Apple Final Cut Pro site Sergio explains the genesis of the film:

“I was waiting for my car to be washed, and this guy handed me a tip,” says Sergio Arau. “In a restaurant someone heard me speaking Spanish and asked me to bring water. I’d say to myself, ‘Do I look like I work here?’”

Yareli Arizmendi and Sergio Arau

A well-known journalist, cartoonist, animator, musician and film and video director in Mexico City, Arau was used to being viewed as a serious professional. So it was a shock to discover how little his resume counted in the U.S.

“What happened?” asks Arau. “I had a long career before I came here, and because I didn’t speak English, for the first time in my life I was a minority. No one knew or cared about the work I had done. What’s worse, they didn’t even see me.”

As an immigrant, Arnold Schwarzenegger should realize the unwarranted and destructive nature of his comments. Close off immigration from Mexico, Central and South America and California will grind to a halt. Take a break Arnold. Grab a bowl of popcorn. Screen "A Day Without A Mexican". Get ready to laugh and learn a few things. Remember Arnold; it's that other newly elected German-speaking guy who thinks he is infallible.

Gregg Chadwick
Portrait of Yareli Arizmendi
40"x30" oil on linen 2012

"How do you make the invisible visible? You take it away," says Yareli Arizmendi, the film's lead actress, co-writer and co-producer, also known for her portrayal of Rosaura in Like Water for Chocolate.

Arizmendi's mantra comes from the old adage 'you don't know what you have until it's gone,’ and it is precisely this idea and sentiment that the filmmakers want us to walk away with-- knowing and feeling that immigrants, legal or illegal, are indispensable not only to our economy but to our very way of life.

"The most important thing is that we are human beings," says Sergio Arau, the film's director, co-writer and co-producer.

"I believe this film will make a better place for my kids," says Sergio Guerrero, the film's co-writer, second-unit director and one of the top directors of Spanish-language television commercials."

Note:
*Interview With Sergio and Yareli from the article "A Day Without Racism?" by Ricardo Acuña in Socal.com



Art

New Pope - New Culture War?

by Gregg Chadwick

Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany Is Elected
265th Pope, Taking Benedict XVI as Name

The newly elected pope is a divisive figure and an acknowledged opponent of a contemporary, pluralistic and modern culture.
In a world beset with war, over-population, environmental degradation, religious strife, AIDS, prejudice and racism, we need a religious leader who embraces humanity in all its colors, genders, orientations and talents. Instead we are presented with a man who is according to Rose Marie Berger of Sojourner's Magazine, "dogmatic, and rule-bound. Inclusive language makes him queasy. Liberation theology and women's ordination give him hives." The new pope sees pluralist modernity as heresy and homosexuality as a moral and psychological disorder. As Cardinal, Ratzinger predicted that Buddhism would replace Marxism as the Catholic Church’s main enemy this century.

"Art itself, which in impressionism and expressionism explored the extreme possibilities of the sense of sight, becomes literally object-less. Art turns into experimenting with self-created worlds, empty "creativity", which no longer perceives the Creator Spiritus, the Creator Spirit. It attempts to take his place, and yet, in so doing, it manages to produce only what is arbitrary and vacuous, bringing home to man the absurdity of his role as creator."
- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Art, Image and Artists"

"There is simply no other figure more extreme than the new Pope on the issues that divide the Church. No one. He raised the stakes even further by his extraordinarily bold homily at the beginning of the conclave, where he all but declared a war on modernity, liberalism (meaning modern liberal democracy of all stripes) and freedom of thought and conscience. And the speed of the decision must be interpreted as an enthusiastic endorsement of his views. What this says to American Catholics is quite striking: it's not just a disagreement, it's a full-scale assault. This new Pope has no pastoral experience as such. He is a creature of theological discourse, a man of books and treatises and arguments. He proclaims his version of the truth as God-given and therefore unalterable and undebateable. His theology is indeed distinguished, if somewhat esoteric and at times a little odd. But his response to dialogue within the church is to silence those who disagree with him. He has no experience dealing with people en masse, no hands-on experience of the challenges of the church in the developing world, and complete contempt for dissent in the West. His views on the subordinate role of women in the Church and society, the marginalization of homosexuals (he once argued that violence against them was predictable if they kept pushing for rights), the impermissibility of any sexual act that does not involve the depositing of semen in a fertile uterus, and the inadmissibility of any open discourse with other faiths reveal him as even more hard-line than the previous pope. I expected continuity. I didn't expect intensification of the fundamentalism and insularity of the current hierarchy. I expect an imminent ban on all gay seminarians, celibate or otherwise. And I expect the Church's immersion in the culture wars in the West - on every imaginable issue. For American Catholics, I foresee an accelerating exodus. But that, remember, is the plan. The Ratzingerians want to empty the pews in America and start over. They will, in that sense, be successful."
-Andrew Sullivan

Also see: don't forgive them;they know what they are doing.

Marla Ruzicka Dies in Her Line of Duty

by Gregg Chadwick

"I was really changed by my experiences in Afghanistan. It is a luxury for people to say war is bad when they are in San Francisco. You need to make friends with people in the U.S. government in order to get a change in policy. You can't say something is bad unless you come in with ways to fix it."
-Marla Ruzicka

Marla Ruzicka and Matt Gonzalez at Laila Carlsen's show, San Francisco City Hall

photo by Gregg Chadwick

The war in Iraq is a senseless accumulation of deaths. Marla Ruzicka, the founder and tireless leader of CIVIC (The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict) and Faiz Ali Salim, (CIVIC's Iraq Country Director) were just two of the most recent casualties. But for the San Francisco art community these deaths struck home. Marla was good friends with Matt Gonzalez and frequented the art openings in Matt's office at City Hall when she was in town drumming up support for her campaign to account for the civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Marla died on Saturday at the age of 28 in a suicide bomb attack while on the way "to visit an Iraqi child injured by a bomb, part of her daily work of identifying and supporting innocent victims of this war," said CIVIC representative April Pedersen in a statement on the group's Web site.

April Pederson continues, "It is tragically ironic that two beautiful people who devoted their lives to helping innocent victims of war have now become them.There are precious few who have the courage to stand up and demand justice for all the victims of conflict wherever they may be. This troubled world cannot afford to lose people like them.

Marla overflowed with passion and had an incredible sense of obligation to help those less fortunate. She worked tirelessly to push the US military on its responsibility to keep a proper accounting of the consequences of military action on civilians in Iraq."

Marla's funeral will be held on Saturday at 11am in Lakeport's St. Mary's Church, and a memorial service will follow in Washington, D.C. Her father, Clifford Ruzicka, asks that donations in her memory be made to CIVIC at P. O. Box 1189, Lakeport, CA 95453.

Robert Worth in the New York Times reports."On the day she was killed, Ms. Ruzicka was visiting Iraqi families that had lost relatives to the violence here. She sent a text message to a friend saying the stories had been painful to hear.

An American Army officer who arrived on the scene shortly after the bomber struck said that Ms. Ruzicka's car was engulfed in flames, and that she was still alive and conscious.

A medic on the scene treated her, said the officer, Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, and heard her last words.

"I'm alive," she said."

Marla's spirit was captivating. Her vision was clear. And her bravery and willingness to get into the dirt of both war and politics should inspire all of us to continue with our efforts to create peace in our time. Marla's last words ring clear. Marla's spirit, Marla's vision, Marla's bravery and Marla's cause live on.

Marla's Work- The Christian Science Monitor
Marla's Work- The San Francisco Chronicle
Marla Dies in Her Line of Duty- New York Times
Marla : Time

Sculptor Robert Graham's Nude Gift to Venice

by Gregg Chadwick

The Los Angeles Times reports on the controversy over the gift of a sculpture by the figurative artist Robert Graham to the city of Venice, California. Diane Haithman in the LA Times reports,"The Los Angeles City Council approved the yet-to-be completed artwork, a gift to the city from the artist and Venice donor Roy Doumani, last June. But earlier this month a handful of Venice residents filed appeals with the city to block the sculpture's placement in Windward Circle, a traffic circle ringed with funky eateries, wacky gift shops and chic boutiques."

Robert Graham's work, like that of the Bay Area sculptor Stephen de Staebler and Rodin before him, plays on the history of classical sculpture and its fragmentation over time. The proposed sculpture for Venice is an elevated stainless steel female torso. The work would focus on the core of the body minus extremities. This emphasis helps to exclude a reading of the sculpture as a portrait of an individual or a type and broadens the scope of the work to include myth as well as art history. There is nobility and strength in a portrayal of the active human core that is exemplified in the classical Belvedere Torso now in the Vatican Collection.

Sculpture by Robert Graham, UCLA Sculpture Garden

photo by Gregg Chadwick

Peter Selz writes on the subject of fragmentation while considering the work of Stephen de Staebler:

"Ever since Auguste Rodin, evoking the damaged sculpture of antiquity, presented his partial, yet muscular and erotic figures, the fractured human form has been endemic to modern sculpture. The human torso was a dominant theme in the work of artists as diverse as Maillol and Brancusi, Henry Moore and Antoine Pevsner. Giacometti pared the standing woman and the striding man to the bare essentials of existence. But only in the “Abakans,” the poignant headless figures by Magdalena Abakanowicz, and in De Staebler’s sculpted images does the fragmented figure assume a symbolic function of human incompleteness and yearning for wholeness. De Staebler’s large-scale legs signify this predicament for an artist who faces the human condition—both its vulnerability and its tenacity. His work recalls the ancient effigies of the Sumerians and the Egyptians. At the same time, it is painfully contemporary. While there is a timeless quality in De Staebler’s work, these severed limbs remind us of our recently awakened sense of vulnerability."

Belvedere Torso,1st Century, Vatican Collection

"Despite delays and controversy, Doumani and Graham have no intention of withdrawing their donation. 'Venice is Venice. It's one of the most outspoken communities anywhere,' Doumani said wryly. 'I've never had so much trouble giving anything in my life."




Art

Artists Interview Artists

J.T. Kirkland on his site:thinking about art has a call out for artists to interview other artists. Formulate five interview questions that you would like another artist to answer. Send them on to J.T. He will then provide you with five questions from another artist that you will answer and return. JT will post the interviews periodically.

More on Peter Schjeldahl at SFMOMA

Peter Schjeldahl was also at SFMOMA last Thursday evening - Anna Conti who graciously provided a link to my entries on Neil Welliver and Peter Schjeldahl provides a detailed account of Thursday's lecture:

Peter Schjeldahl at SFMOMA

Neil Welliver- Down the Canvas to the Bottom and Out

by Gregg Chadwick

Neil Welliver, who died this week, painted the Maine landscape with rigorous vision and an all-over technique inspired by abstract expressionism that gave his work a Thoreau-like spirit of both the pragmatic and the numinous.
He settled on a daringly simple method of painting. Starting from the top of his large, usually square paintings, Welliver would finish a corner, then a horizontal strip and work his way down the surface of the work until he painted his way out in the last corner. There is a freshness of seeing and paint in these works that bring to life both the crisp light of Maine and the inner workings of Neil's richly intelligent and humorous mind.

Neil Welliver, Vickie 48"x48" oil on canvas 1970

"Courbet looked very hard and had a method. Bierstadt did not
look very hard and had a method, and de Kooning makes it up as he
goes along. I think I relate much more to de Kooning because I look
very hard and then I make it up as I go along.
The way I paint is totally focused and intense and complete -
every mark is a form that's not going to be covered up later. I don't
go over it. I go down the canvas to the bottom and out, and that's it."  
-Neil Welliver, from a conversation with Edwin Denby, 1981

"Years ago, Neil said to me that his goal as a painter was to make a natural painting as fluid as de Kooning. And he repeatedly acknowledges that the vitality of his own art comes from Abstract Expressionism, and that he has a natural affinity for pure abstraction. What is truly remarkable about his paintings is their success in, at once, organizing the picturesque elements of nature without loss of phenomenological integrity, and at the same time, achieving abstract structure without the feeling of the imposition of a natural order."  
-Frank Goodyear, 1993 

Also see:

modernkicks: neil welliver

terry teachout on welliver

ken johnson on welliver

alexandre gallery

Art

Peter Schjeldahl at SFMOMA

by Gregg Chadwick

Peter Schjeldahl at SFMOMA
photo by Gregg Chadwick

Peter Schjeldahl, currently the art critic for the New Yorker, held a roundtable discussion with Neal Benezra, director SFMOMA, and Janet Bishop, curator of painting and sculpture SFMOMA, yesterday at the Wattis Theater in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His enthusiasm for art and artists was palpable. And his wit was in rare form. During the question and answer session following the discussion it was announced by an artist in the back rows of the Wattis Theater that painting was dead. Peter chuckled and then asked,” What kind of art do you do?" The artist responded that she was involved in art that utilized new technologies. Peter laughed again and blurted out, "Well, there you go, trying to kill off the competition." He neither dismissed the woman nor her art but instead pointed out the careerism hiding behind many art labels and preferences.

When I asked about the place of beauty in contemporary art, Peter leaned forward and spoke from the heart." This is an important, if not controversial, question that I write about often. In the 60s and 70s in academia it was the forbidden word. A group of art historians could look up at the blue sky and and declare it a beautiful day on their way to a conference on contemporary art. But once in the doors of the conference room, beauty ceased to exist." Peter concluded by stating, "Art does not have to address beauty- to reach for beauty. But it sure is great if it does."

SFMOMA · Public Programs Archive: Peter Schjeldahl: The Story of the Image (April 7, 2005)

Art

Murakami's Little Boy Exhibition Opens April 8th at New York's Japan Society

From:
Japan Society Gallery, Spring 2005
Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture

Curated by Takashi Murakami
April 8 - July 24, 2005

Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture explores the culture of postwar Japan through its arts and popular visual media, from the perspective of one of Japan's most celebrated artists. Focusing on the phenomenally influential subcultures of otaku (roughly translated as "pop cult fanaticism") and its relationships to Japan's artistic vanguard, Takashi Murakami explores the historical influences that shape Japanese contemporary art and its distinct graphic idioms. The exhibition's title, Little Boy, refers to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, clearly locating the birth of these new cultural forms in the trauma and generational aftershock. In Murakami's perspective, a resonant figure for Japan's contemporary condition is that of the "little boy"--both the nickname for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and an image of Japan's infantalized culture.

Little Boy concludes Murakami's "Superflat" trilogy, a project conceived in 2000 to introduce a new wave of Japanese artists and to place their work in the historical context of traditional Japanese styles and concepts. The exhibition will showcase the work of key otaku artists and designers, many of whom are cult celebrities in Japan, and introduces their film and video animations, video games and internet sites, music, toys, and fashion to American audiences.

Work by Anno Hideaki, Aoshima Chiho, Ban Chinatsu, Fujiko F. Fujio, Kawashima Hideaki, Kato Izumi, Komatsuzaki Shigeru, Mahomi Kunikata, Matsumoto Reiji, Miura Jun, "Mr.," Narita Toru, Okamoto Taro, Oshima Yuki, Otomo Katsuhiro, Otomo Shoji, Takano Aya, Tsubaki Noboru, Yanobe Kenji, Yoshitomo Nara, and Murakami will be exhibited. Public art works by Ban, Aoshima and Murakami will be installed at sites throughout New York City.

A fully illustrated, bilingual catalogue, co-published with Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition, with essays by Murakami, Midori Matsui, Morikawa Kaichiro, Okada Toshio, Sawagari Noi, Katy Siegel and project directors Tom Eccles, Director of the Public Art Fund and Alexandra Munroe, Director of the Gallery and Vice President of Arts & Culture at Japan Society.
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Friday, 11 am - 9 pm
Saturday & Sunday, 11 am - 5 pm