Gregg Chadwick Berlin Diary 30”x22” ink on paper 2018
Painted as an homage to Christopher Isherwood, "Berlin Diary" depicts a fleeting moment in a city of dreams. As I created this artwork, I listened to the haunting soundtrack from the film "A Single Man" based on an Isherwood novel set in Los Angeles. Painted in ink and gouache over a monotype substrate, "Berlin Diary" combines vibrant color and movement to create a scene of mystery and possibility. Isherwood's life in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 inspired his "The Berlin Stories" which was adapted into a play, a film, and the musical Cabaret. In 1939 he moved to the United States as war loomed in Europe and settled in Los Angeles. Isherwood's life and work helped spur on the gay rights movement. Isherwood's books include the novel "A Single Man" and his autobiography, "Christopher and His Kind." Isherwood died of cancer on January 4, 1986. Isherwood and his lifelong partner artist Don Bachardy were fixtures for years in the Los Angeles artistic community. Author Peter Clothier recently wrote this on his admiration for Isherwood:
"Isherwood’s early stories and poems were the first I read that spoke directly and personally to a teenage boy who was struggling to find his own voice, his own individuality as a writer as well as his own place in the world. I gobbled up his “Goodbye to Berlin” and “Mr. Norris Changes Trains” as though I had written them myself. Later combined as “The Berlin Stories”, they were clearly fiction only in name, novels that so intimately described personal experience that their main character was called, frankly, Christopher. As a writer, Isherwood saw himself as the hub of everything that happened around him and his work invited this young admirer, gave him permission to do the same."
Isherwood and Bachardy in front of Hockney's portrait
Photo by Calvin Brodie
via The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Like Peter Clothier, I began reading Isherwood when I was in my late teens. I was at UCLA and became intrigued by Isherwood and Bachardy while looking at reproductions of David Hockney's 1968 portrait of the two of them.
On the occasion of a brilliant reading of Isherwood and Bachardy's letters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's MetLiveArts, actor Simon Callow said this about the portrait:
"When David first painted it, he and Christopher were beacons as gay men who were comfortably and unapologetically out at a time when that was very uncommon. It was the apparent effortlessness of it that made it so striking: their relationship was no big deal, they seemed to be saying. So this wonderful double portrait of a gay couple was, in its cool and unaggressive way, an affirmation of the normality of homosexuality, which was somehow even more radical than the already gathering voices of the militants. In a sense, Hockney and Isherwood and Bachardy were saying: 'Some people are gay. Get over it.' Like its 18th-century models, the portrait celebrates the quotidian: being gay doesn't have to be a drama."
The groundbreaking Chinese American actress Anna May Wong was born on this day in 1905. My painting ”Anna May Wong” is part of a series of historically inspired artworks on the history of the movie business and Los Angeles,. "Anna May Wong" evokes cinema dreams and societal memories. Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American film star, and the first Asian American actress to gain international recognition. Her acting career went from silent films to talkies, to stage, to radio, and to television. Born in Los Angeles, a few blocks from Chinatown, Anna May Wong's career has been an inspiration for many. My painting was created as an homage to Anna, sourced from numerous photo stills and film clips. I am honored that my painting of Anna May Wong is in the collection of NPR reporter Ailsa Chang. Ailsa's recent report on Anna is a must listen.
Gregg Chadwick Beyond Light 30”x22” monotype on paper 2004 Private Collection, San Francisco, California
The Soviet satellite Luna 1 was launched on January 2, 1959. This was the first artificial object to reach the escape velocity of the Earth and the first to be placed in heliocentric orbit. 64 years later, Luna 1 remains in orbit around the sun. The Luna 1 mission was intended to crash into the moon, but due to a ground control error, the satellite veered off course like a robotic Major Tom. Two months later, the United States launched NASA's Pioneer 4. The space race was on and our night skies would never look the same.
I remember watching the NASA Apollo missions on TVs wheeled into the classroom when I was in elementary school. I was always taken with the wide shots of the crowds outside Cape Kennedy gathered to watch the launch. Now known by its original name of Cape Canaveral, the NASA area was renamed by President Johnson in honor of President Kennedy who was the inspiration behind America's moon program. The name returned to Cape Canaveral in October 1973.
My monotype on paper Beyond Light was the first in a series of artworks that depict a figure gazing at the sky as a rocket powered craft streaks upward towards the heavens. The Latin phrase Ad Astra - To the Stars - provides a thematic title to this group of artworks.
Model of Interplanetary station Luna 1 exhibited in the "Kosmos" pavilion of the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy of the USSR
In Japan the first dreams of the New Year, hatsu-yume 初夢, traditionally provide markers for the dreamer's upcoming year. In that spirit, perhaps the first artwork sold in a new year provides inspiration for the months to come. My painting Ponte del Castelvecchio (Verona) is the first sale of 2023. On this first day of the new year, I am busy packing up my Verona painting for shipment to its new home.
I think back to the genesis of the painting. I was perched above a Renaissance era bridge in Verona watching a light rainfall and the swollen river rushing by. The smell of rain filled the air. Swifts darted across the milky sky. Like gauze stretched across a stage set, the mix of rain, bus exhaust, and a distant sun breaking through the mist cloaked the moment in a spell of timelessness. I thought of the late Russian emigre writer Joseph Brodsky and his idea that water is the image of time. Often on trips to Europe, I will carry a battered copy of Brodsky’s verse to help inspire my ramblings. Here in the Veneto, I am reminded of Brodsky’s love of Italy and Venice in particular. I turn the pages of Brodsky’s Watermark and find the passage I am looking for:
“I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is. Perhaps this idea was even of my own manufacture, but now I don’t remember. In any case, I always thought that if the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water, the water was bound to reflect it. Hence my sentiment for water, for its folds, wrinkles, and ripples, and — as I am a Northerner — for its grayness. I simply think that water is the image of time, and every New Year’s Eve, in somewhat pagan fashion, I try to find myself near water, preferably near a sea or an ocean, to watch the emergence of a new helping, a new cupful of time from it. I am not looking for a naked maiden riding on a shell; I am looking for either a cloud or the crest of a wave hitting the shore at midnight. That, to me, is time coming out of water, and I stare at the lace-like pattern it puts on the shore, not with a gypsy-like knowing, but with tenderness and with gratitude.”
I look up from by book and peer down at the river’s edge. In the reeds and shallows small fish chasing food dart where the current eddies. In this reverie, my mind creates stories — If Brodsky is right these pools hold time in stasis. If I had a long net, maybe I could dip into the water and pull out living memories.
I rush back to my studio on Via Filippini and lay in with liquid oil paints the initial layers of my first study for Ponte di Castelvecchio.
Gregg Chadwick
Study forIl Sole nella Pioggia : Ponte Castelvecchio Verona
oil on canvas
private collection — Verona, Italy
On the canvas, I brush in greens, milky blues, and brick reds. The structure of the bridge begins to emerge as I cut into the wet paint with a loaded brush of lighter color. It is a large canvas in my small 16th-century space and it quickly becomes a presence in the room. After the initial surface is complete, I lean the wet painting against the plaster wall.
Gregg Chadwick’s Via Filippini Studio, Verona, Italy
I stand across the room and gaze at the painting. Even at this stage, the artwork has taken on a life of its own and I need to respect that. I see hints of Corot, maybe Degas? Perhaps I was thinking of Giorgione’sThe Tempestnow housed at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, Italy?
Giorgione Banner with Detail of The Tempest
I spend time with the painting, then out into the vibrant Veronese streets for dinner. Tomorrow, I will look at the painting again and maybe, if the paint is dry enough in the humid summer air, add more layers of color. In the morning light with an espresso in hand, I will see more clearly.
A few weeks later upon its completion, I left the study with a new collector in Verona and started on a much larger final version in my Santa Monica studio upon my return from Italy.
As a painting progresses, I will often find hints of its future shape in historical artworks as mentioned above, or in films, or books. When I was in graduate school at NYU, I studied not far from Verona in Venice. I often think of my instructor Giovanni Soccol who provided the art direction for Nicolas Roeg’s eerie Venice-based film Don’t Look Now. The film is based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier and stars Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Soccol’s artistic vision is evident throughout the film and I remember traveling to sites in Venice with Giovanni where the film was shot. As a Venetian, water is an important subject for Soccol and is often poetically referenced in his film work and his paintings.
Another striking element from Don’t Look Now has found an echo in my painting Ponte di Castelvecchio (Verona). The color red is a character inDon’t Look Nowas much as Christie and Sutherland. That pop of color against the green-blue water, blue and grey skies, and tawny stone of Venice finds an echo in my painting. In my painting, the splashes of red and orange that mark the umbrellas swiftly carried across the bridge find their antecedent in Soccol and Roeg’s film. Water and time.
In my painting "New York Stories" it’s five minutes to midnight. Waiting for 2022 to move into 2023 like the hands of a clock spinning into the next hour, figures move around the iconic Grand Central clock like foxes huddling beneath a tree in Andō Hiroshige's "New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji"
It’s raining this New Year’s Eve in Santa Monica. I’m listening to a recording of a 10,000-member choir in Japan singing “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Enthusiasm for Beethoven is particularly strong in Japan. Every year in December, singers gather in a concert hall in Osaka to sing the final chorus from Beethoven's Ninth.
Gregg Chadwick
Passing View of Shohei Bridge
30"x24" oil on linen 1990
Again, my thoughts trace a circuit from this moment back to an earlier New Year in Japan as 1989 rolled into 1990. I was in Tokyo following the spirit and artworks of Ando Hiroshige. That winter in Japan, I clutched a large volume by Henry D. Smith II and Amy G. Poster on Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and trekked on rail, foot and car across the historic core of what was Edo era Tokyo. Sponsored by the Nippon Seiyu-Kai's 30th Anniversary Award, I endeavored to create a series of new paintings inspired by Hiroshige’s woodcuts. Time, place, memory, mystery and lore all mixed in my artworks.
Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando) (Japanese, 1797-1858)
New Year’s Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Oji
( No. 118 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo)
9th month of 1857 Woodblock print
Brooklyn Museum
Today @nortonsimon posted a photo of one of the most mysterious images from Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Alison Baldassano from the Brooklyn Museum wrote about this artwork, "People aren’t the only beings who gather together for special celebrations on the night before a new year dawns. In this woodblock print by Hiroshige, foxes come together on New Year’s Eve to receive directions for the upcoming year and emit ghostly flames, the size of which helps predict the next year’s crop…. And, as the foxes could say in the morning, 明けましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu) or #HappyNewYear!"
Today we celebrate the birthday of opera composer Giacomo Puccini, born #onthisday in 1858. Known for "La Boheme", "Tosca", "Madama Butterfly", and "Turandot", Puccini's operas continue to inspire. I painted this small oil on panel painting of Puccini for a solo exhibition of opera inspired artworks at the Central City Opera in the summer of 2019. That year and also in 2007, I created a series of paintings that were commissioned by the @ccityopera to be used as keynote images for each of their productions during the summer season. It was a marvelous project to work on and I loved spending time in Colorado with the entire Central City team. Great music and great camaraderie! Thank you Central City Opera!
President Zelensky received a standing ovation before he began his speech to Congress. “Slava Ukraini!” Glory to Ukraine! members of Congress shouted out. “Heroyam Slava!”
Glory to heroes! he responded.
President Zelensky concluded his address by unfurling a battle flag given to him by soldiers on the front line in Bakhmut, Ukraine and then gifted the flag to the United States.
“This flag is a symbol of our victory...We stand, we fight, and we will win because we are united. Ukraine, America, and the entire free world."
"To cast a vote in the United States is an act of faith and hope... That faith in our system is the foundation of American democracy. If the faith is broken, so is our democracy. Donald Trump broke that faith. He lost the 2020 election and knew it." -Chair @BennieGThompson
Numerous state and federal courts evaluated and rejected the Trump campaign’s claims of voter fraud, including judges appointed by Trump himself.
Many of these courts issued scathing opinions criticizing the lack of evidence that President Trump and his allies advanced. pic.twitter.com/WhCl16Vh83
still one of the most chilling moments. Hutchinson: the crowd is calling for Pence to be effing hung. Meadows: "You heard [Trump]. He doesn't want to do anything. He thinks Pence deserves it."
.@RepLizCheney: “No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. [Trump] is unfit for any office." pic.twitter.com/Qw2j7mcz5s
Patti Smith visits the Morning Joe program to discuss "A Book of Days," which collects a calendar year of images and words. Patti discusses how the pandemic brought her to Instagram and how being on Instagram helped lead to her book.
It was great to be at the White House to celebrate the Respect for Marriage Act being signed into law by @POTUS! I’m happy that the hard work and long hours of bipartisan negotiation have finally paid off for the millions of loving same-sex & interracial couples across America. pic.twitter.com/BrnxtnYAxw
Who woulda thought the gayest party I’ve ever been to was at the White House? Thank you @POTUS for signing the Respect for Marriage Act! #LoveIsLove 🏳️🌈 pic.twitter.com/EA1rdoAxXt
The Respect for Marriage Act is now the law of the land. I was honored to watch as @POTUS honored the fundamental right of Americans to marry the person they love. It means people like my child will have the same rights as everyone else.💖 pic.twitter.com/4HNclCg2DZ
Created by CineClark who writes: "Part 2B of a 12-part 8mm film series on Los Angeles, I found this 8mm gem in a thrift store. I have digitized it and, using the narration sheet that came folded up in the case, narrated this film. I did not change, omit or edit any words from the original narration in order to preserve the integrity of the original film. To skip my intro, jump to the :55 second mark.
* I was struggling on using the possessive or not in the title. Though it is known today in its current location as Angels Flight, I decided to use the apostrophe as it is shown on the wheelhouse sign at the 1:44 mark of this film.
OTD in 1964, John Coltrane and his band recorded "A Love Supreme" in a single session at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs NJ. Here with producer Bob Thiele, saxophonist Archie Shepp (who played on an alternate take that day), and pianist McCoy Tyner. #jazzpic.twitter.com/3DofCDGaxY
Bass – Jimmy Garrison
Composed By, Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane
Drums – Elvin Jones
Piano – McCoy Tyner
Engineer – Rudy Van Gelder
Producer – Bob Thiele
Recorded: December 9th, 1964
A1 Part I - Acknowledgement 0:00
A2 Part II - Resolution 7:48
B Part III - Pursuance / Part IV - Psalm 15:14
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%20%2048%E2%80%9Dx36%E2%80%9D%20oil%20on%20linen%202016.jpg "Ponte del Castelvecchio")
