Sunday, January 24, 2016

Important Writings/Journals Created By Three Well Known Visual Artists

The Journal of Eugene Delacroix

One of the great documents of art history and literature where this seminal artist who was so important to the French Impressionist talks about a broad range of topics: his paintings, his life, the paintings and sculpture of other artists; new literature and the music of his day. Baudelaire called Delacroix "the last of the renaissance painters and the first modern."


Image result for delacroix journal         






The Diaries of Paul Klee

The Bauhaus master, so important to early European modernism, and contemporary art education, he records the events of his inner and outer life from age nineteen to forty. He talks about a broad range of personal experiences as well as many of his essential ideas about his own artistic technique and creative process.
Image result for Paul klee diary       






The Painter's Mind
A Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting 
by Romare Bearden and Carl Holte with introduction by Ralph Ellison

The Great American collages Romare Bearden and Author Carl Holte write about the relations of structure and space in painting by examining old master compositions and the application of the principles they deduced. 

Bearden is described as a late modernist artist; Hilton Kramer wrote about Bearden that he used forms that "derive originally African Art, then past into modern art by way of Cubism and are now being employed to evoke a mode of African experience." This is technically not a journal or diary, but Bearden talks about observations and ideas derived from his life long investigation of great works of art that have direct bearing on his own work.










Saturday, January 23, 2016

What is Drawing?


A mapping out
 A fleshing out
  A flushing out
    An indulgence
     An addiction/obsession
      An escape from boredom
       A confession
        An encounter
          An evocation
           An encapsulation
            A prying or teasing open
              A prayer
               A form of worship (the divine, the beautiful etc.)
                A meditation

A conversation
A dialogue with the past, present and future
A dialogue between the internal and the external
A dialogue between the seen and unseen
A dialogue between the know and unknown

                A concept/mental image/ creative idea visualized
             A physical act documented/ a record
           A pattern of marks arranged with purpose and intention
         An ordering/ reordering of form and space
       A configuring/reconfiguring
      A revising/redefining
      A constitution/ a reconstitution
        A conjuring/ excavating/ exposing

              A visual poem
             An event
           A story
        A journey through time and space
      A discovery made
    A truth found
  A portal

A door
  An unlocked door
    A door kicked open
      A doorway to access and process thought/feeling
       A possibility

Visual communication/ a visual language
A graphic representation
An illustration
A diagram
A transcription
An abstraction

                  A political statement / an act of rebellion
                    A visual statement/ a proposition
                      A form of inquiry/investigation/ study
                        A laboratory for experimentation

The way/ a way
A way of seeing
A way of thinking
A way of being
A way of being present
A way of being projected through marks on a flat surface
A way to generate, develop and sort out ideas visually
A way to play with line
A way to define and solve problems
A way to run away
A way to leave ones mark
Evidence of ones existence:
(I draw therefore I am)


Cooper 1/23/16











Saturday, January 16, 2016

Wonderfully Surreal Hand Drawn Animation




This animation short, About Face, created by Chris James in 1978 involves animal and human transformation and wonderful caricatures of many famous people. The music is by Claude Jouvin and camera work by Julian Holdaway.

In this day of CGI animation, About Face has an appeal in its rawness of line, which pulsates with life and energy, and in its direct application of media, which appears to be a combination of color pencils, ink and watercolor.  The accidental and unpredictable way the hand creates and manipulates media, following the artist's creative dictates are on full display, making the viewer aware of the drawn and painted quality of the image and by extension aware of the presence and action of the artist's hand as creator. 

This is indie animation in the pre-digital age; it is the imperfect hand drawing imperfectly conveying an idiosyncrasy that expresses a dreamlike quality, conjuring ethereal and hallucinatory images in thin air.  The wild and violent metamorphosis of human and animal figures and transitions from scene to scene gives me the impression of what might happen if Salvador Dali and Afred Hitchcock were to collaborate, creating something intensely psychological, disquieting and phantasmagoric. In fact, Dali and Hitchcock have collaborated once in the movie Spellbound (1945). Beyond the obvious similarity of the musical treatment in Spellbound, About Face seems to tap into the visual language and mood from Spellbound’s dream sequence and another Hitchcock movie, Vertigo.  The dream sequence in Vertigo also uses hallucinatory transformations and flashing colors to give the alarming impression of a nightmare.


 About Face is animation at its best revealing the movement of the imagination with no limits, where anything is possible, the witty comedic shift to the surprising, to the absurd, to the threatening and to the terrifying".




Spellbound (1945)




Vertigo (1958)




Because I am discussing surrealism and the cinema and made reference to Dali, it would be fitting to present his 1929 surrealist classic. A short movie he collaborated on with Luis Bunuel called Un Chien Andalou. They created the film under the principle that " no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.

Thursday, January 14, 2016

The Modernist Grid

The grid is a ubiquitous sign of modernity. It is a schematic that is a universe tool in organizing visual information although it is more associated with modern art and architecture, science and technology, and modern cities.

The grid can mirror the vertical and horizontal edges of a page, canvas or screen.  It emphasizes flatness, straightness, and the materiality of its support. It can function as an organizing structure as in the case of Chuck Closes painting Emma, or as form itself as in the case of Mondrian's and Martin's paintings.

 Emma, Woodcut print 2002  Chuck Close


Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow, Piet Mondrian


On A Clear Day, 1973, Agnes Martin



As an organizing tool it guides the disposition of elements within the two-dimensional plane. It can function as an invisible or visible structure. It activates the entire space into a structured field. It is a rationale for why and how parts are placed within the space.

Tokyo Dolores Japanese Dance, Performance Art


Tokyo Dolores is a Japanese performance art project that brings together acrobatics, anime, fantasy and folklore, Japanese pop and subcultures, street fashion and elaborate costumes, and pole dancing. Tokyo Dolores collaborates with artist, costume designers, videographers, and other creative people during the production of their live performances. They explore the deep and complex spirituality of Japanese girls.












Experimental Japanese Animator Yoji Kuri


Yoji Kuri, born in Japan in 1928, is a cartoonist and independent filmmaker who gave birth to a modern-styled, independently made, adult-aimed animation in early 1960 Japan.  He is considered part of the first wave of experimental animators. His work involves dark comedy using farce and morbid humor. He works in a multitude of styles, but generally his animations are surreal, erotic, witty and strangely disturbing.














Love-Ai (1963)



Aos (1964)



The Room

http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php/the_first_wave_of_independent_animators_
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yōji_Kuri

Basic Compositional Principles


Understanding compositional principles are important as a starting point to becoming a more informed viewer. Artists use, bend and break these principles  as necessary in conveying their message and creating visual excitement. For the viewer when you know the underlying principles behind how a composition is organized, your appreciation and understanding of the work is increased. Compositional structure is not purely an aesthetic issue; the visual order or structural logic of a work of art or design conveys  meaning, and an artist or designer tries to correlate that meaning with his or her content and intention whether consciously or intuitively.