I'M BACK!

I wanted to take a quick moment to apologize for my long absence, and to thank you all for your continued support and visits to my blog. 

My little boy and I are now completely settled in to our new home in Arizona, meaning that I will be rededicating myself to my work here - with and for you. 

Please let me know if there are any events / favorite artists / art related things in AZ that you would like to have featured on the blog and on my page on the Examiner.com website. Being new to the AZ art scene, I would greatly appreciate any direction you might have for me!

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Featured Artist of the Day: Magdalena Pankiewicz

Magdalena Pankiewicz

Warsaw, Poland

Drawing, Painting, Illustration

ilustracja-mody.blogspot.com

All images on this page are the creation and property of the artist, Magdalena Pankiewicz.

For more information about the artist and her works, please click HERE.

Featured Artist of the Day: Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka

(1898 - 1980) 

Born Maria Gorska

Warsaw, Poland

Art Deco Painter

"Young Lady with Gloves" 1930

"Group of Four Nudes" 1925

"The Polish Girl (La Polonaise)"

"The Blue Hour" 1931

Fashion Illustration

"The Brilliance" 1932

"The Rose Hat" 1944

"Self Portrait in the Green Bugatti"

For more information about Tamara de Lempicka, please visit the official website, HERE.

Featured artist of the day: Mimi Yoon.

Mimi Yoon

The following artworks are the creation and property of the Los Angeles based artist, Mimi Yoon.

"Bang Bang" acrylic on linen. 24x36

work in progress. acrylic on linen. 16x20

"Between Here and There -9"

"Between Here and There -6"

"Eye 8" acrylic on canvas. 12x12

"One Size Fits All - Venus" acrylic on canvas. 24x24

"That's My Dreamworld" acrylic on canvas. 24x36

"Rain" acrylic on canvas 18x24

"Stand Back...I've Got This One..." (Chin-Goo 2) acrylic on linen 24x24

Artist Mimi Yoon working on a piece

For more information about Mimi Yoon, please visit her pages on these sites...

RedBubble

Mimi's Corner

BlueCanvas

Facebook

Twitter

Max Ernst: Self-Constructed Little Machine

Max Ernst "Self-Constructed Little Machine" 1919/20

Max Ernst’s Self-Constructed Little Machine is a pencil sketch that unites the Dadaist concern with the possibility of personal and cultural destruction by the machine (a response to World War I), and the surrealist fascination with Freud.  This image depicts two machines placed on either side of the paper with an explanation of the scene in Ernst’s own handwriting that seems to be “a confused account…that conflates sex and scatology.”[1]  

 From simply viewing the image, the depicted machines might be hard to categorize. The machine on the right somewhat resembles a wind turbine with capital letter A’s placed in a round near the top, with what a viewer of today might recognize as a solar panel above it- though this object would not have been known to Ernst at the time of the image’s creation.  The machine on the left resembles a giant saw, waiting at ready for someone to pull it down and cut something.  Art historians have discovered that the image is actually based on a “found printer’s proof” depicting a “drum figure with numbered slots” on the left and a “tripod personage” on the right[2].  Ernst also plays with the spatial relation of the two objects by adding a mismatching tilt to the flat surface lines on which they appear to stand.

The numerous effects and visual oddities within this work can be explained to have origins and relations to both the Dada and Surrealist movements.  Its inspiration from a found object is representative of the Dadaists play with such objects in novel combinations as a way to create a feeling of shock and to cause reason for societal evaluation and revolution; while the fact that the original object was a printer’s proof is indicative of Dada’s embrace of the “new synthesis of avant-garde art with technology.”  This represents both Dada’s critique of and reliance on the materials and machines of modern society.  While a large part of the Dadaist artistic and political motivations were a reaction to the destructive and negative world changes brought about by the machine as a response to WWI, they also embraced the new mechanical advances in printing technology as a way to spread their ideas to a greater population[3]^,[4] .

The Self-Constructed Little Machine can also be linked to ideas within the production of “the art of the insane”- with which Ernst dedicated himself to while still in his Dadaist phase.  The modernist interpretation of the art of the insane as “directly revelatory of the unconscious” came from the publications of the psychologist Lombroso, whose ideas surfaced in the early 1920s.[5]  Ernst used the “disturbances of schizophrenic representation” to “disrupt the principle of identity” in terms of both art and the self.  It is this freedom from reality that lead Ernst to develop the idea of the body as a “dysfunctional machine” which can be seen within this image, and within some of his early Dadaist collages.[6]  Upon closer examination of the work itself, one discovers the hidden bodies within the machines; the object on the right a knock-kneed quasi-man with the protruding A's as arms, and the solar panel type object as a head.  There is also a long cylindrical object placed between the “legs” which can be thought of as a phallic symbol.  Its detachment from the body is crucial in light of the burgeoning interest in Freud at this time, as a possible representation of the male castration anxiety.  The object on the left can be seen not only as the source of this castration anxiety in the female form (suggested by the numbered slots in the drum, or the slot in the middle of the base of the machine), but also as the saw itself which physically removed the phallic shape from the body of the machine-man on the right.  On the base of the “female” machine there appears to be a pair of glasses, which could represent the new vision of reality, of the self, and of the female counterpart that was revealed through the experience of a young boy’s realization that his mother does not have the same parts that he does.  This integration of symbols that represent castration anxiety into the image can be seen as a connection and possibly an influence to the Surrealists, whose main preoccupation was the depiction of the ideas of psychoanalysis and dream images.

To read more about Max Ernst’s pivotal role in the transition from Dadaism to Surrealism and for an in-depth look at his work, Massacre of the Innocents…check back here tomorrow!

Unless otherwise noted, the thoughts an opinions in this article are solely those of the author: SadieFaye

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[1] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 183.

[2] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 183.

[3] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 135.

[4] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 168.

[5] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 180.

[6] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 183.

About Art: Pierre Bonnard

"Self-Portrait" Pierre Bonnard 1889

 "A painting that is well composed is half finished."
- Pierre Bonnard 

(1867 - 1947)

(French Painter & Printmaker)

About Art: Hedy Lamarr

"Resting" Antonio Mancini. 1887. oil on canvas

"A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires."
- Hedy Lamarr

A Moment of Abstraction: Henri Matisse & The Geranium

             

"The Geranium" Henri Matisse 1906

 

     The dawn of the twentieth century sparked a period of social and political instability and rapid change.  With increasing industrialization, and doubt in the newly coined “antique” social hierarchy, artists struggled to define themselves as individuals, artists, and influential members of the quickly modernizing society.  This search for identity prompted a generational urge to move away from classical artistic styles and subject matter.  Their new forms erupted with the ideals of freedom and a personal expression imbued with so-called modern ideology; revolutionizing their ideas in color theory, technique, and subject matter.  Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was one such artist who believed in the responsibility of his generation to not only share in the opinions, feelings, and delusions of their modernizing world, but to find a new means of representation to convey their reality to the public.[1]  Like other Postimpressionists, Matisse experimented with ideas of abstraction and painting as a medium of importance in itself, rather than a means to an end, in his formation of a personal voice and style that would speak for and to the growing masses of modernized society.

            The idea of Modernism and modern art that took form between 1905 and 1907 was not the term ‘modern life’ coined in the 1850s, but instead the whole combination of the thinking, philosophy, and culture of “Modernity” that was based on a concern for the medium’s technical ability, and placing the subject matter in the second spot of importance.[2]  Matisse’s painting, The Geranium, of 1906 can be thought to represent the monumental changes occurring within the avant-garde art world at this time.  It is an example of the journey from the former generation’s Postimpressionism practiced by Signac, Gauguin, and Cezanne, among others, to the Fauves’ idea of representing the modern world through emotive rich hues, to the future of total abstraction in cubism and symbolism.[3]  This work can also represent the intermediate stage of Matisse’s own stylistic transformation from the frenzied and unmediated style of the Fauves to the “art of balance, of purity, and serenity” which would later define his fully developed style.[4]^{, [5]}

 

            Though Matisse’s image of a flowering plant and two small sculptures placed atop an outside table is clearly distinguishable, the artist utilizes various stylistic methods from both past impressionists and his contemporary modernists in order to slightly dilute the crispness of form and object identity; creating a work that can be placed in an intermediary position along the “continuum of abstraction”.[6]  Beginning in his work as the leader of the Fauves in 1905, the importance of color and its transformative effects within an image were instrumental in Matisse’s development of style based not on scientific theories, but instead on “observation, on sensitivity, on felt experiences”.[7]  In this painting, it is possible to witness his play with these ideas as he samples the colors of the surrounding natural objects to render the table on which the central items sit.  In his use of color and paint handling, one notices the influence of the past in the quotation of Gauguin’s characteristic use of “flat, unmodulated planes of nonmimetic color” for the execution of the table.  One can also contribute the presence of the blank unpainted canvas used to create the “possibility of contour” around the leaves and the two sculptural figures which pull the image back from the edge of complete abstraction to Matisse’s predecessor, Signac, and his concept of the important role of the entire picture surface in the creation of the image.[8] Contemporary influences are seen in the thick paint, use of bright and varied colors, and rapid brushwork displayed throughout the rendering of the sky and the leaves of the plant; all techniques were commonly used by the Fauves.[9]^,[10]  

The play between abstraction and representation seen in many contemporary works of this time is further explored in the technical handling of the composition and paint. The loose handling of the paint which creates the branching foliage of the plant and the sky within which the vines seem to disappear contributing the expressive arrangement of the image, moves the image towards abstraction and the overall uncertainty of absolute form within this painting as the leaves seem to hang, individually suspended in the air; inciting wonder in the viewer as to whether they can still be connected to the plant at all.[11]^,[12]  This moment of abstraction is balanced by the clearly oversized and articulated vase and leftmost section of the plant, allowing the viewer to maintain a concrete idea of the represented worldly objects.  The depth of the vase also negates pure abstraction by countering the denial of spatial depth created by the quickly rendered leaves and flatness of the table which seems to float almost parallel to the picture plane; proposing a direct challenge to the traditional importance of illusionism and depth within academic painting.

             

Perhaps the most purely abstract moments within the canvas are the two amorphous nude colored objects which appear next to the plant on the table.  Upon closer examination, the outlines of a human form faintly appear, and scholarly sources have attributed their identity to two of Matisse’s own still-life sculptures (a motif revisited in his 1911 painting, Interior with Eggplants).[13]  Aside from the dialectic of antique and modern aspects of the color and paint handling within Matisse’s work, these sculptures create a subject matter that can also be contributed to these dueling forces present in the artist’s modernizing world.  The inclusion of these sculptures within the scene of natural foliage transforms the image of an abstract still life into a miniature model of a then recognizable “populated Arcadian landscape”.[14]

            Henri Matisse’s painting, The Geranium, offers an insightful look into the development of an artist’s and a generation’s expression of the rapidly changing idea of modernity which were ushered in with the turn of the twentieth century.  Through his choices of subject matter and object details, paint handling, and color, Matisse offered insight into the various ideas arising at this time in the expression of the modern: ranging from the first generations of postimpressionists such as Gauguin, to the Fauves, and looking forward to the rapidly approaching ideas of total abstraction.

The ideas in this article (unless otherwise noted below) are the original ideas of SadieFaye

           

Referenced Works

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[1] Matisse, ‘Notes of a Painter’. Translation taken from J.D. Flam, Matisse on Art (London and New York: 1973), 74.

[2] Northwestern University. Lecture by Professor Kiaer, 21 September 2010. 

[3] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Volume 1: 1900-

               1944 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 74.

[4] Matisse, ‘Notes of a Painter’. Translation taken from J.D. Flam, Matisse on Art (London and New York: 1973), 73.

[5] Northwestern University. Lecture by Professor Kiaer, 5 October 2010.

[6] Paper guideline handout.

[7] Matisse, ‘Notes of a Painter’. Translation taken from J.D. Flam, Matisse on Art (London and New York: 1973), 73.

[8] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 74.

[9] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Volume 1: 1900-

               1944 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 74.

[10] Art Institute of Chicago.  Accompanying image description by display.

[11] Matisse, ‘Notes of a Painter’. Translation taken from J.D. Flam, Matisse on Art (London and New York: 1973), 70.

[12] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 100.

[13] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 104.

[14] Art Institute of Chicago.  Accompanying image description by display.