Saturday, May 16, 2009
What should I write and post today?
It's summer and I've been avoiding painting because I feel uninspired and overwhelmed by the idea of "PAINTING". I want to make a really grand, beautiful, moving piece and I know that's what is stopping me. I need to just paint for the love of making art, and think that no one ever has to see this piece if I don't want them to...because it's true! There aren't any teachers standing over me, or peers looking at my work. It's just me and the canvas. the wide, blank, empty canvas.
So, I have this folder called "painting ideas" on my desk-top and it's getting pretty full, so let's dump some it onto the blog!
Monday, February 16, 2009
mirrors
Zinaida Serebriakova, young woman in Mirror 1909
PAULUS MOREELSE
PAULUS MOREELSE 1571-1638
Moreelse, Paulus 1632
PAULUS MOREELSE
PAULUS MOREELSE 1571-1638
Moreelse, Paulus 1632
Perhaps one should use a video monitor to capture a self portrait so that things aren’t backwards
self portrait as allegory of painting, Artemesia Gentileschi
Her painting (as in Vermeer) shift from descriptive, to emblematic, to reflexive
Francis Bacon: portrait of George Dyer
In the mirror, object of still life, body, nature share the same psychic resonance; none may boast a priveledged representational status over any other which applies even to the painter himself.
melanie peter, self portrait in the bathroom mirror
planar mirror = flat—perfect reflection….non-planar mirror = some form which is reflective
mimetic premise- everything that crosses its path will share an equivalent visual weight, or capacity for generating meaning.
Jan Steen, the dissolute Household
Is the painting actually a mirror that is hanging on the “fourth wall” that is the picture plane? ~~~ If so, then the painting truly displaces the mirror by implying that the mimetic tableau does not unfold BEFORE the beholder, that is, at a distant remove from him, but, rather, behind him, or, at least, on a plane that is contiguous with the one he himself occupies.
self portrait as allegory of painting, Artemesia Gentileschi
Her painting (as in Vermeer) shift from descriptive, to emblematic, to reflexiveFrancis Bacon: portrait of George Dyer
In the mirror, object of still life, body, nature share the same psychic resonance; none may boast a priveledged representational status over any other which applies even to the painter himself.melanie peter, self portrait in the bathroom mirror
planar mirror = flat—perfect reflection….non-planar mirror = some form which is reflectivemimetic premise- everything that crosses its path will share an equivalent visual weight, or capacity for generating meaning.
Jan Steen, the dissolute Household
Is the painting actually a mirror that is hanging on the “fourth wall” that is the picture plane? ~~~ If so, then the painting truly displaces the mirror by implying that the mimetic tableau does not unfold BEFORE the beholder, that is, at a distant remove from him, but, rather, behind him, or, at least, on a plane that is contiguous with the one he himself occupies.
*planar mirror = flat—perfect reflection….non-planar mirror = some form which is reflective
mimetic premise- everything that crosses its path will share an equivalent visual weight, or capacity for generating meaning.
Mary Cassatt, the fitting
Cassatt: doesn’t pass off painting as equivalent of reality the mirror is there to remind us of its flatness
lefebvre, claude (1632-1675) ,La Fille ainee de l'artiste coiffant son frere vers 1672, musee magnin dijon
1973 - Dali from the Back Painting Gala from the Back
Eternalized by Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected
in Six Real Mirrors
Just how removed is this image… a painting from mirror is not 1 but 2 steps away from reality
C_W_Eckersberg_Woman Standing in Front of a Mirror) 1841
planar mirror presents perfect reflection, other reflective surfaces allude to the ultimate planar mirror.
Auguste Leroux, the mirror
mimetic premise- everything that crosses its path will share an equivalent visual weight, or capacity for generating meaning.
Mary Cassatt, the fitting
Cassatt: doesn’t pass off painting as equivalent of reality the mirror is there to remind us of its flatnesslefebvre, claude (1632-1675) ,La Fille ainee de l'artiste coiffant son frere vers 1672, musee magnin dijon
1973 - Dali from the Back Painting Gala from the BackEternalized by Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected
in Six Real Mirrors
Just how removed is this image… a painting from mirror is not 1 but 2 steps away from realityC_W_Eckersberg_Woman Standing in Front of a Mirror) 1841
planar mirror presents perfect reflection, other reflective surfaces allude to the ultimate planar mirror.Auguste Leroux, the mirror
mirrors--some very different paintings involving mirrors
Antoine Watteau, Gersaint's shop sign:
filled with mirror tropes –
mirror= used to reflect PEOPLE thuse you see portraits
mirrors are whole worlds bound within th arbitrary edge of glass= thus the cnavases
the threshold of the shop is the threshold of perception (our entry point) the cobled street shows the illusion of depth, even though its on a flat surface.
And the stage (complete with proscenium arch) implies the fourth wall.
The body of the beholder/viewer is both instrument and object of vision-the self as spirited perceiver and nature morte (this is called “ecological viewing” we feel as well as see our own body outside of the picture [in peripheral vision]… but a successful mirror-mode painting somehow includes this corporeal extension
Whistler, woman in white
Vermeer, the little street
the implicit subject is the straat (surface) the vessel of reflecte light the primary pavement he trains his attention on is the painting’s own cobbled surface
Matisse, the drawing lesson
Bellini, young woman with mirror
MIRROR= reflecting pool of a fountain, vanity glass…etc, a ready-made arena for aesthetic self-picturing
Random cropping of the image (in a mirror) means that the play of depth versus surface places everything that traverses its path in a spatial “envelope” between mimesis and representation
In the 16th century the Venetians perfected the manufacture of the mirror plate, which stirred fascination for the planar mirror among painters
filled with mirror tropes –
mirror= used to reflect PEOPLE thuse you see portraits
mirrors are whole worlds bound within th arbitrary edge of glass= thus the cnavases
the threshold of the shop is the threshold of perception (our entry point) the cobled street shows the illusion of depth, even though its on a flat surface.
And the stage (complete with proscenium arch) implies the fourth wall.
The body of the beholder/viewer is both instrument and object of vision-the self as spirited perceiver and nature morte (this is called “ecological viewing” we feel as well as see our own body outside of the picture [in peripheral vision]… but a successful mirror-mode painting somehow includes this corporeal extension Whistler, woman in white
Vermeer, the little streetthe implicit subject is the straat (surface) the vessel of reflecte light the primary pavement he trains his attention on is the painting’s own cobbled surface
Matisse, the drawing lesson
Bellini, young woman with mirror 
MIRROR= reflecting pool of a fountain, vanity glass…etc, a ready-made arena for aesthetic self-picturingRandom cropping of the image (in a mirror) means that the play of depth versus surface places everything that traverses its path in a spatial “envelope” between mimesis and representation
In the 16th century the Venetians perfected the manufacture of the mirror plate, which stirred fascination for the planar mirror among painters
mirrors
Las Meninas--Velasquez
* the mirror with the royal couple may be said to embody the ‘mind’s eye’ - The king and queen are not necessarily physically present, but rather conceptually omnipresent.
Vermeer’s woman reading letter by open window: if the foreground initially appears as a kind of boundary that insulates the interior space…it’s a perceptual threshold which conscripts the gaze of the viewer and repositions it as the painter within the picture.
*In his Schilderboeck of 1604, Karel van Mander exhorts painters to pay exceedingly close attention to reflexy-const, or the art of depicting reflections, and not only for their importance to the successful simulation of reality. As Walter S. Melion has argued, this spieghelen, or mirroring, is for Van Mander a kind of primal truth, “the very principle on which natural proesses of representation depend”
Ultimately, this mode of looking betrays vision as a fallible faculty; it is a perceptual process that constructs, or construes, reality as much as it objectively “reads” it.
Vermeer, View of Delft
Van Eyck [suggests] that such powers of simulation are at once a momentous achievement and a thin conceit-perhaps, finally, a slight of hand that depends for its success on a manipulation of the beholder’s attention (as opposed to mere looking) with seamless timing…’the mirror mode’ of reality, which posits that while mimesis simulates reality it also calls attention to its own strategies as a representational system....Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665-66) the model is looking at her reflective bauble (earring) obliquely with the aid of a planar mirror. Her gaze never really returns that of the beholder, instead it subtly elides direct beholding, thereby implying that the image we encounter is synonymous with what the model herself perceives.
*Like the Lacanian mirror, she cannot be engaged as “us”…unless we are looking at the earring
* the mirror with the royal couple may be said to embody the ‘mind’s eye’ - The king and queen are not necessarily physically present, but rather conceptually omnipresent.
Vermeer’s woman reading letter by open window: if the foreground initially appears as a kind of boundary that insulates the interior space…it’s a perceptual threshold which conscripts the gaze of the viewer and repositions it as the painter within the picture.
*In his Schilderboeck of 1604, Karel van Mander exhorts painters to pay exceedingly close attention to reflexy-const, or the art of depicting reflections, and not only for their importance to the successful simulation of reality. As Walter S. Melion has argued, this spieghelen, or mirroring, is for Van Mander a kind of primal truth, “the very principle on which natural proesses of representation depend”Ultimately, this mode of looking betrays vision as a fallible faculty; it is a perceptual process that constructs, or construes, reality as much as it objectively “reads” it.
Vermeer, View of Delft
Van Eyck [suggests] that such powers of simulation are at once a momentous achievement and a thin conceit-perhaps, finally, a slight of hand that depends for its success on a manipulation of the beholder’s attention (as opposed to mere looking) with seamless timing…’the mirror mode’ of reality, which posits that while mimesis simulates reality it also calls attention to its own strategies as a representational system....Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665-66) the model is looking at her reflective bauble (earring) obliquely with the aid of a planar mirror. Her gaze never really returns that of the beholder, instead it subtly elides direct beholding, thereby implying that the image we encounter is synonymous with what the model herself perceives.*Like the Lacanian mirror, she cannot be engaged as “us”…unless we are looking at the earring
mirrors
Manet: Nana, 1877
another play of depth Vs. Surface
she prepares herself for gaze of others (mirror is turned away)
Bonnard: Nude in Light (bottle of Cologne) 1907
The mirror is a FIELD OF REPRESENTATION
Reflecting the figure: mirror tropes in painting (mirrors usually show people—they are whole worlds bound within the edges of the glass)
(The Self Pictured: Manet, the Mirror, and the Occupation of Realist Painting. Art Bullitan 1998 Gregory Galligan)
self portrait with palette (1878) “as the painter gazes outward, he engages us in no simple standoff; rather, our position is uncertain, perhaps that of a portrait sitter, the painter himself, or a mirror before him. In sum, we serve as a complex foil that returns Manet’s gaze to his own body and the canvas itself, in a continuous three-way shuttle.”
Cezanne: self-portrait with palette
By the time Manet [and Cezanne] took up painting in the 19th century, the mirror had acquired the status of a thinking painter’s paradigm…the mirror had long surpassed both its original function as a mechanical tool for realized the painter’s self-portrait and its common figurative use as a metaphor for mimesis itself as a painter’s means of “reflecting” reality. …the premise having arisen directly out f the practical problem of how to transcribe the visual plentitude of reality to a flat and fixed surface (that is the stretched canvas or wood panel)… Manet’s painting constitutes both view and reflection at once, its surface beckoning our faith in the reality represented yet simultaneously drawing our attention to its impermeability as a mirror of self-inscription.
Manet: woman with Parrot 1866
the act of looking into a glass surface is thematized by the eyeglass conspicuously suspended from the model’s neck. The reflexive gaze of the model is further signaled by both of her gestures: one hand fingers the cord of the eyeglass, while the other lift flowers to her nose ( the scent might be appropriated by the body) the reflexive message is then recapitulated by the parrot perched on a double-barreled feeder, which Manet has placed at such an angle that it seems nearly to collapse into one unit, the better to function as a metaphor for the beholder’s implied shift form binocular (spatial) to Monocular (mirror) vision. She is engaged in the act of self-picturing—she does not confront the viewer; instead she views herself in preparation for the gaze of someone she wants to attract.
another play of depth Vs. Surface
she prepares herself for gaze of others (mirror is turned away)
Bonnard: Nude in Light (bottle of Cologne) 1907
The mirror is a FIELD OF REPRESENTATION
Reflecting the figure: mirror tropes in painting (mirrors usually show people—they are whole worlds bound within the edges of the glass)
(The Self Pictured: Manet, the Mirror, and the Occupation of Realist Painting. Art Bullitan 1998 Gregory Galligan)self portrait with palette (1878) “as the painter gazes outward, he engages us in no simple standoff; rather, our position is uncertain, perhaps that of a portrait sitter, the painter himself, or a mirror before him. In sum, we serve as a complex foil that returns Manet’s gaze to his own body and the canvas itself, in a continuous three-way shuttle.”
Cezanne: self-portrait with palette
By the time Manet [and Cezanne] took up painting in the 19th century, the mirror had acquired the status of a thinking painter’s paradigm…the mirror had long surpassed both its original function as a mechanical tool for realized the painter’s self-portrait and its common figurative use as a metaphor for mimesis itself as a painter’s means of “reflecting” reality. …the premise having arisen directly out f the practical problem of how to transcribe the visual plentitude of reality to a flat and fixed surface (that is the stretched canvas or wood panel)… Manet’s painting constitutes both view and reflection at once, its surface beckoning our faith in the reality represented yet simultaneously drawing our attention to its impermeability as a mirror of self-inscription.
Manet: woman with Parrot 1866the act of looking into a glass surface is thematized by the eyeglass conspicuously suspended from the model’s neck. The reflexive gaze of the model is further signaled by both of her gestures: one hand fingers the cord of the eyeglass, while the other lift flowers to her nose ( the scent might be appropriated by the body) the reflexive message is then recapitulated by the parrot perched on a double-barreled feeder, which Manet has placed at such an angle that it seems nearly to collapse into one unit, the better to function as a metaphor for the beholder’s implied shift form binocular (spatial) to Monocular (mirror) vision. She is engaged in the act of self-picturing—she does not confront the viewer; instead she views herself in preparation for the gaze of someone she wants to attract.
Mirrors
Arnolfini Wedding Portrait by Jan Van Eyck
Manet: the Bar at La Folies Bergere
*Painter: first accomplice to the assembled tableau
*Beholder: veiled occupant of the…
*Painting= mirror
The sense of unease this generates in the modern beholder is often equated with… ~voyeurism
~Narcissism
~Lacaniam indexing of the self as a divided, self-alienated object
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Ming and Nigel
Nigel
Ming
So soft and crazy. Yestday Nigel annoyed me all day...just meowing and meowing---begging to have his gross little toy thrown. Ming was just being her cute, fluffy self.
Ming
So soft and crazy. Yestday Nigel annoyed me all day...just meowing and meowing---begging to have his gross little toy thrown. Ming was just being her cute, fluffy self.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Our Baby (for now)
It's been a while since I rapped at ya! Almost a year since the skunk incident! Well...that darling animal has grown so tender and essential to my heart, and the skunk is just the tip of the iceberg. We left the baby cat in the care of Bennet and Kara last summer, and then had Mom and Dad bring the kitties to Florida when we settled in down here. But Oh~~ the pearl was waning into a shadow of her former self when we saw her. She was skin and bones and dying before our eyes. So we brought her up to the vet's office and prayed and cried in the interval. And prayed and cried some more. I called the vet to let him know that he could release the ghost from her tenuous frame. But Lo! He told me she could come HOME in the next day or so...and not in a card-board box or wrapped in a damp and cold towel, but alive and meowing in the cat box! We were over-joyed that this miracle-worker had nursed her back to health. She has been grateful and adorable ever since. We have been grateful and adoring of this vet as well. Whe is literally the most LOVing animal I have ever seen. She loves to rub chins, legs, book-corners etc. And Puurrrrrs like no purr I've ever heard. She is the love of our life and light of our home.
Thanks, Sweetie.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
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