Ursonate and You

Well, there is this thing that Mark Shea posted that is very funny, and it puts me in mind of a couple of other things, Kirt Schwitters' Ursonate being one of them.

While blogging will be light today, until later, I leave you this 21st century take on Schwitters:

If you object because you are a purist, then I will simply raise and eyebrow and say, "what, pray tell, is a dada purist?"

Although it would make a great band name: Juerg Volta and the Dada Purists.

Of course the best way to come up with a band name comes from the legendary Al Jazzbeaux Collins. I could not find any of his comedy material on YouTube, but I did find this footage of him talking to Lionel Hampton (and how can anyone complain about Lionel Hampton? And his band plays towards the end, with some great close up footage of Hampton):

We listened to the Purple Grotto every Saturday night, and have yet to find a weekly radio event that comes close (although Mal Sharpe's Back on Basin Street every Sunday night on KCSM comes close (and you can hear it online)).

It All Started With Russolo

Laurie Anderson

The song "O Superman" is one of my all time favorites. The video is just icing on the cake...

BAM, again!

I went to that exhibit today (well, yesterday, as it is after 1am), and it was all I expected and then some. There were two other great exhibits, one of which, an exhibit of works by Wallace Berman and his circle of friends, included a great photo of a dear departed friend of mine (and, oh, the company he kept! I suppose that would have to include me, too, although I am not nearly as crazy as Bob Kaufman. I think).

Anyway, if you are in the Bay Area and have a chance this weekend, don't miss this show.

More information on the BAM exhibit.

Please forgive me. I forget sometimes. There are these basic Internet (should it really be capitalized, as Mr. Gates seems to think?) protocols, like posting a link to the official information page of cool exhibits, like the one I mentioned yesterday. It is an easy thing to do, but I forget how much easier it makes life for the reader.

Yes, dear reader, this is just another way that I mistreat you, take you for granted, ignore your plight, step on your face with my polished jackboots as I march onward to a brighter future under the watchful gaze of Dear Glorious Leader, etc.

And to think that you still stop by once in awhile!

And now for something completely different...

I put this in the category of Art, but that is only partly accurate.

For almost a year, the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley has been showing off the cream of its collection at the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM. Really. They call it that. I know, it is disgraceful). Melanie went to see it at lunch yesterday and highly recommends it. I looked over the catalog, and have plans on seeing it tomorrow.

The reason I bring it up now is that it ends this Sunday. I only found out about it this week, or I would have gone, given a report, etc.

Some of the items:

Papyrus fragment of Sophocles' Inachus, one of two known fragments of this lost play.

Homer's Iliad, Book 2, on 2nd century AD papyrus.

Euclid's Elementa Geometriae in both an Italian manuscript from around 1460 as well as it's first print edition, from Venice in 1482.

Piranesi's Opere, including a complete set of I Carceri.

Letter from Junipero Serra.

The Marshall gold nugget.

Loads and loads of early Californiana, particularly anthropological items and natural history stuff. Not to mention great California paintings by Thomas Hill, William Keith, Bierstadt, et al.

Go see it if you are anywhere near the Bay Area. This show will never be repeated, due to the tremendous cost of insuring and securing it.

Arthur and Lucia K. Matthews

This weekend I got a chance to see the Arthur and Lucia K. Matthews show at the Oakland Museum of California. It is excellent, and a must visit exhibit for anyone interested in Bay Area Art. These early twentieth century tonalist paintings were derided by the Society of Six as "tobacco juice art," yet there is something very fitting to their subdued hues and misty atmospheres. More times than not I look out my window and it is a tonalist painting. Sometimes, yes, it is more along the lines of a Seldon Giles, but rarely in the summer.

The funny thing is that when time passes it is easier to see similarities between rival styles of the same era. So, from the tonalists it is not a far chasm, bridged by August Gay, to get to the Society of Six. And, when Louis Siegriest started doing his abstract gypsum and asphalt paintings (amazing little works, many of which can be found in San Francisco's Triangle Gallery), the whole thing went full circle.

Anyway, I need to see the show again, after which I can consider writing a real review, but if you are in the Bay Area, or even passing through the Bay Area, this is a show to see.

Neo-Megilp

Let me just say this to my artist readers: neo-megilp is just about the most fun thing to come into my studio in the last year (besides Amalia, who now has her painting setup next to mine). I am just starting to explore its potential, and will probably never use conventional glazing medium again. This stuff is GREAT!

I used to read about the original megilp, and it always came along with words like "forbidden" or "disaster" and I thought, "what was the appeal of this stuff?" Texture and luminosity. The problem with the original stuff is that it darkened and cracked. Gamblin has formulated a substitute that is based on synthetic resins, so it will stay flexible and clear.

My big question is: do I need to pay as much attention to fat over lean when using this, and, if so, does stand oil work better than regular linseed oil for fattening up subsequent layers?

Also, do any of my readers have any experience with using Gamblin's traditional gesso on panels for oil paints instead of tempera? Do you have to add rabbit skin glue if you are going to do this? I have been getting conflicting answers from the literature.

Art and the Nekkid Body

I just heard Cardinal Arinze's latest podcast on modesty. One point that the rather irritating interviewer kept going back to was on the morality of artists drawing from the nude. The cardinal was taking the position that it is at the very least dangerous to the soul for an artist to draw nude models.

The objections that the interviewer kept throwing up were primarily straw men: arguments of art for the sake of art, that there is so much of this in culture that it can't possibly be wrong, etc. Insofar as the ordinary person's understanding of looking at the nude goes, the Cardinal quite properly pointed out that morality trumps art and that morality trumps culture.

Fine. What both the interviewer and the Cardinal miss, however, is that a serious artist drawing from life tends to distance himself from the prurience that is assumed in spending hours with a nude model. I have spent many hours drawing and painting nude models, and based on my own experience and from talking to many other artists on the matter, one tends to take a fairly clinical and anatomical view of the body.

Now, one could argue that this rather cold and objective view is no way to treat the human body, and that would be entirely correct, IF the drawing was the ends of itself. What both men, knowing little of art, miss is that it is nearly impossible to correctly draw (and therefore paint) the human body without spending considerable time studying it undraped. In fact, to really get it right, you have to take the skin off and study muscle groups and bones as well.

Outside of drawing a person in armor, the knowledge of bone and flesh masses is essential, and a careful study of the masters will show that folds of clothing, belts, etc., are generally used to mark various bones, muscles and fascia.

In medicine it would be considered pure quackery to suggest that doctors not study anatomy on nude models (or carefully rendered drawings of nude models), and it is the same in art. The serious artist's training must involve hours of studying the human form without the shielding of cloth (now, I am entirely comfortable with requiring that genetalia be covered, so long as the structure of the pelvic girdle can still be seen).

Whether or not these nude studies should be exhibited in final paintings is a different question. Certainly there are historical subjects (Adam and Eve, for instance) that require this treatment, as we find in the Sistine Chapel (not generally held as an example of modernist degeneracy). However, in my own work, I will not put a nude figure in a final painting because the whole ballgame is different, and this sort of thing too easily crosses the line between an admiration of beautiful forms into a temptation to lust. I used to do it, but have not for some time, precisely for the objections the Cardinal has outlined.

But, if we are to have any sort of renewal of figure painting, and we must (so I write, even as I am working on an ambitious cycle of highly abstracted paintings), artists must constantly work from the nude. Art is as important as medicine, in fact, probably moreso, and we must demand that our artists go through a training that is suitably rigorous.

Now, certainly there are artists who will find the sort of detached view difficult, and simply cannot get beyond the fact that a purty nekkid girl is in front of them. There are probably med students with similar problems, and it behooves them, as it behooves the aforementioned theoretical artist, to avoid this sort of thing, even if it means abandoning the profession.

Painting in Two Directions

I am finding myself torn, not ideologically or aesthetically, but in terms of time, between two radically different styles of painting.

The thing is, the one that it less appealing to me (although not unappealing), is the easiest one. It is the way that I know when I go into the studio I have a good idea of where to go.

The other is what is far more interesting to me, and it is one of exploration of physical surfaces and structures. The problem with it is that it is so experimental that one painting looks completely different than the one before it.

So I push on, working on one side when the mood moves me, and the other at other times. Of course this results in two threads of painting, which are mutually exclusive in terms of marketing, and right now I need to focus on marketing (for instance, that website that still has not happened).

I have a feeling I will end up spending more time on the less marketable, but we will see.

Meanwhile, I have started a major reorganization of my studio, which should maximize my time in there (last week I spent an hour looking for something that should have been at easy reach).

So, for those who have asked, that is the scoop. Hopefully there will be a website with images in the next few months.

Speaking of Fra Angelico...

On August 15th, I will be giving a slide lecture on Fra Angelico: Mary's Painter at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, following mass and a reception.

If you are in the Bay Area, please come.

You will find more information at the St. Anthony of Padua Institute website.

PS: preparing for this lecture accounts for the paucity of posts on the blog these days.

Monet in Normandy

Yesterday we went to the Palace of the Legion of Honor to see the Monet in Normandy show, which was quite good. It was a bit of a madhouse, but not as bad as other shows recently (my elbows definitely got a better workout at the Art Deco show a couple of years back).

Let me give some advice: skip the audio tours. I did not listen to the one for this show (I never do), but I can guarantee that you will not learn anything that you will retain from one of those stupid audio tours. Also, they totally louse up the experience of viewing art, not to mention the traffic snarls they create as they route people to the same paintings without the benefit of a docent to say, "hey, let's talk about this one, as there are already fifty people hanging around that one."

Really the best way to approach Monet is just with the eyes, hooked up to the brain. There is value in learning about the painter and his context, and you can get quite a bit from the wall text, which was remarkably free of babbleshit, and you can read up before or after.

Anyway, the show is pretty straightforward. If you like Monet, you will like this show (unless you are wanting to see specific works that are not there).

If you don't like Monet, well, upstairs you can see some wonderful baroque paintings upstairs in the permanent collection, as well as a Fra Angelico of St. Francis meeting St. Dominic, some outstanding and overlooked gems from the nineteenth century, and can go downstairs to see some good ceramic works.

Art. Old.

I realize that the art section of the old Rants and Recipes has fallen even further back than the Recipes section. So it goes, and so it will go for a few days.

However, you can hear me yap about Fra Angelico (John da Fiesole, Beato Angelico) on August 15 at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi in North Beach, San Francisco.

What am I going to say? Beats me. I have a couple of ideas, and we will see which one wins.

Meanwhile, in my own art we are seeing a period of drawings, drawings, drawings, and not enough paintings, paintings, paintings. That must change.

Color. Me like color.

I want to do encaustic, but the idea of working with heat in this weather thrills me about as much as standing over a hot stove and making a hearty beef stew.

So, it will probably be watercolor and oil. Not that the two can ever mix or anything.

Gotta go. Tomorrow I might have students eager to brave record-setting heat for a drawing field trip to one of the hottest, least-shaded parts of the Bay Area. I hope they are not as crazy as that, though. If they are, then, well, so am I!

Let me Crazy!

Giotto On Line

First, I have not yet recorded the Giotto lecture for online consumption. Expect me to do that in about a week and a half, when I return from a one week camping trip to Lake Tahoe.

Second, mark your calendars, because I will be speaking about Fra Angelico on August 15 at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi.

Tomorrow!

Remember, tomorrow is the day:

Feast of St. Anthony of Padua. Mass for St. Anthony at 5:30pm at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, followed by blessing with a relic of St. Anthony.

After mass, a reception, to celebrate the St. Anthony of Padua Institute's recently granted canonical status/tax exempt status and busy year of continuing education offerings supporting the Catholic Liberal Arts.

Followed by, at 7:30pm, a lecture by yours truly on Giotto, entitled Shock of the Ancient.

And, yes, if you were intrigued by the focaccia described below, I will be serving it at the reception, along with biscotti that I am making tonight.

Come one, come all, and SUBSCRIBE to the St. Anthony of Padua Institute!

The Shock of the Ancient...Little Over a Week Away!

Come learn about Giotto come early for mass for the feast of St. Anthony (5:30) and a reception. Venerate First Class Relics of Francis, Clare and Anthony!

Come join the The St. Anthony of Padua Institute.

Breakers, Sand, and Oh The Dreadful Wind and Rain...

OK, we didn't have rain, but the dreadful wind, cold, hard, driving stinging sand against the head, arms, and sunburned legs. We had a great time camping at the beach.

Manresa State Beach is right by Watsonville, at just about the center of Monterey Bay. Even though I lived in the area for six years, I only made it to Manresa a handful of times. In my last two years in Santa Cruz, I lived a short walk from Seabright Beach, and if I wanted exotic, I tended to head up North to the more deserted beaches of the San Mateo coast.

But our friends go to Manresa every year, and they invited us to go along, so who could resist a camping trip with friends at the beach? Especially since it gave me an excuse to make paella over an open fire (we went for uber-traditional and used rabbit in it. Yum).

Anyway, we had just been to the exhibit at Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum of the turn of the century artists' colony at Monterey. Looking at the paintings of all those cyprus trees and waves inspired me to try my hand at capturing waves.

Waves are difficult subjects, since they are always in motion, and never repeat themselves exactly, at least not in any coast interesting enough to want to draw. Add in a stiff, cold wind, a thin coating of salt over your glasses, and the challenge goes up tenfold.

There are parts of the drawing that came out right, but I need more practice at the ocean.

Giotto.

Admit it. You have post-modern eyes.

I know you probably hate that phrase, seeing it as a meaningless retread of decadent modernism, but if you see it as identifying art viewers who cannot find a mainstream, then it fits.

You see, the old notion was that there was progress in art. Someone had an idea, and someone else took that idea, and the next thing you know there is a trajectory, and the old art is primarily of interest because it shows the aesthetic vector.

Yawn. What a tedious way to look at art.

So, how DO we look at and understand Giotto in 2006?

Come on now, you don't really think that I am going to give you an easy answer right now, do you?

Instead you will have to come to the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi in San Francisco's North Beach district, at 7:00 (or is it 7:30? I will have to check with my minders) on June 13th to hear me talk about it, live and in person. At least I hope "live." Living in the war zone makes that always seem a bit presumptuous. Don't ask, just pray for us residents of Oakland, where you have a much higher probability of being shot in front of your house, but, hey, at least smoking is prohibited within 25 feet of doorways and windows!

But, as to art, come one, come all. It will be a dreaded slide lecture, but I promise it will not be boring. I hate boring slide lectures.

By the way, for those of you who live in distant lands, we are planning on recording the talk for podcast via the Saint Anthony of Padua Institute website (where you can find my last talk on viewing modern art with Catholic eyes).

Calder and the Surrealists

We went to SFMOMA on Monday to look at the show of Calder that tries to link him with the Parisian Surrealists. It was a fun show, working for me more like a pleasant highlights of the Calder retrospective a few years back, but they completely failed to make the connection between Calder and Breton stick. I mentioned this to a fellow art lover at the North Beach Lectura Dantis, and she agreed, as do The Chronicle's Kenneth Baker and Tyler Green.

Anyway, if you are in the area, it is a good show, with a mesmerizing Picasso and lots of fun Calder works, certainly worth the time (as is the permanent collection, currently displaying a lovely Diebenkorn cityscape).

By the way, speaking of the Bay Area and one of my favorite artists, be sure to read this post about Wayne Thiebaud works and this one of a peculiar Thiebaud, totally out of the ordinary for this artist (although not out of the ordinary in terms of the painting techniques that Thiebaud was using in the fifties. He was still under the sway of Abstract Expressionist paint handling, and had not found his voice in the works that have come to characterize him).

Conservatives in the Arts

Of all the living art critics there are two that I regularly find worth reading: Robert Hughes and Tyler Green. I have not been reading Modern Art Notes as often as I should, so I took a gander over there.

My biggest complaint about both of these critics is when they spill ink or pixels over the cost of works of art and the administrivia of museum governance. I will let them in on a secret: museums are not all that important for the world of living art. At least they shouldn't be. As much as I believe that people should see contemporary art, I don't find the museum the ideal setting. For one thing, the strength in a museum comes from collecting great works, and curators are notoriously inept at picking works that will stand beyond the faddishness of the times. Some do it better than others, but I am going to be more inclined to go to a museum to see what a curator, given the benefit of a few decades or centuries, makes of art that has not flashed in the pan and gone into sweet oblivion.

My second least favorite thing to read about is the politics of artists. Some artists were and are well-read and have thought about politics considerably. Most are not and tend to repeat whatever the chattering classes find fashionable at the moment. A painting just doesn't work in terms of arguing a political viewpoint. It might serve to inspire those who are already in the camp of the artist, but to enslave art to cheerleading is depressing.

However, Mr. Green brings up an interesting topic on politics and the arts here. Why is most art so leftist?

The answer is simple: a conservative artist does not see art as being a good vehicle for political debate, especially one that is reduced to a few loaded images to inspire the troops. The transformative nature of art is going to be in the realm of inspiring contemplation and reflection, something that runs contrary to the notion of art as a call to action.

Socially there is also the problem of the lack of interest in the arts among so-called conservatives who persist in seeing Beauty as superfluous, secondary to the material goals of the free market. Just as the left gives lip service to supporting the arts (so long as the arts are seen as good team players), the American right gives lip service to a few complaints that there are no conservatives involved in the arts.

If the American right wants a conservative voice in the arts, it will have to provide one. It doesn't really care that much, so it won't happen, and this is a good thing. While the arts don't need the silly agitprop of Kara Walker, they will receive equally useless service from a neo-Thomas Hart Benton.

The best approach for conservatives to take is Teddy Rooseveltian: speak softly and carry a big stick. Support artists who do what the arts do best, and let that art stand out in glorious contrast to the insipid crap that Judy Chicago and her ilk plop out on the art world.

Also, the most important thing for our culture is to see that our children get instruction in drawing. Even if the child does not go into any art-related field, the ability to draw is one of the most powerful ways that our great art traditions can be upheld. It is also the best way to, in the words of John Ruskin, "learn to love Nature...." and to "know how to appreciate the art of others."

In Ruskin's notice to his class he says it best:

"The teacher of landscape painting wishes it ot be generally understood by all his pupils, that the instruction given in his classes is not intented to fit them for becoming artists, or in any direct manner, to advance their skill in the occupations that they follow. They are taught drawing, primarily in order to direct their attnetion accurately to the beauty of God's work in the material universe; and secondly, that they may be enabled to record with some degree of truth, the forms and colour of objects, when such recording is is likely to be useful."

Now, obviously I believe that using many of Ruskin's methods can and will produce some artists capable of greatness, but drawing must also be seen as part of one's general education. If conservatives really care about the culture, drawing will have an integral part in the child's curriculum. Then we can talk about reclaiming our culture. Otherwise so-called conservative crankiness about the world of art is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Art Talk On Line...

The preliminary recording of my upcoming lecture at Oakland's St. Margaret Mary's is online. Please note that I call it preliminary. I keep thinking of ways to improve the last sections. The final version might well be quite different. Then again, maybe it won't.

What I shorted was the section on a philosophy of art. The main reason is that the topic is big, important, and should be done in a multi-week seminar. I would rather get people to start looking at art and start reading/thinking about a philosophy of art than to stand up there and give a micro-summary of my own thoughts on the matter.

My own philosophy of art is a work in progress (hopefully it is progress, although there are moments when I wonder). Every day for the past month and a half I have done a little more reading on the matter, and every day I make at least a minor adjustment to my own thinking about the issue. So to say "well, I think this about the philosophy of art" and give a neat five or ten point summary is pretty worthless. Especially compared to you going out and spending time looking at art and thinking about what it is all about and why it is important and so forth.

The second thing that is seriously lacking in the talk, as it stands, is in selections and quotes from major sources in the development of a Catholic view of art. Again, this is mostly due to time, and I would much rather get the art viewing off on solid footing. One of the main points that I am trying to make is that theory is good, but it must not obscure our direct experience with the art itself.

Making a critique of a theory of a particular school of painting, rather than trying to see what is actually in a particular painting is an easy trap to fall into, a trap I sometimes find myself trying to get out of.

So, at this moment I will probably let the lecture stand pretty much as recorded, but a couple of hours ago I was contemplating some major revisions to the last section. We will see.

Art Talk Details

For those of you interested in the Art talk, the audio will be available on the St. Anthony of Padua Institute website on the 20th of this month. The talk itself will be at St. Margaret Mary's in Oakland on the 23rd at 7:30pm. I think that we will record the talk and then allow web access to the Question and Answer session as well.

When I have the specific url to the talk download, I will post it.

Take this as a warning that blogging might be sporadic for a few days (as opposed to the usual?!?) because I have to finish writing the talk for the recording session on Monday.

How To Look At Modern Art

For those of you interested in how to look at art, particularly modern art, with a Catholic perspective might be interested in a lecture/guided museum experience I will be doing on the 23rd and 25th of this month. While the lecture will be at St. Margaret Mary's in Oakland, and the museum experience will be at the Oakland Museum of California, out of towners will be able to get the lecture, with links and bibliographic suggestions, via webcast probably available from the 20th on.

We will be discussing the problems of the definition of style, the problems of relying excessively on theories of art, we will touch on a philosophy of art, and we will take a close look at four paintings from the Oakland Museum's permanent collection. While the discussion will be geared to those with no arts background, even artists and art historians might be interested, because I take a radically different approach to looking at paintings than the standard orthodoxies of art history.

For those wanting to get a head start, I will provide a suggested reading list this weekend.

I have not finalized the paintings we will look at, but I am toying with:

1. A Thomas Hill painting of Yosemite from the late 19th century.
2. A Society of Six painting
3. Nell Sinton's Yukata
4. Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park #107.

First I need to make a preliminary trip to make sure that the selected works are currently on display (they generally are, but you never know when a curator will get the itch to do a cleaning or a rehang), but if you want to sneak a peak, these are what I am thinking of.

The lecture will be in the evening, and the museum experience will be in the morning, with discussion continuing through lunch (bring your own or get one at the good museum cafe), and possibly meandering into the afternoon, if people are interested and have the time. There is no charge for the lecture or to go on the trip, but you will have to take care of your own museum admission.

The material is geared towards adults, but any teenager/advanced pre-teen with an interest in the material and a good attention span should have no problem.

Also, particularly for teenagers, but adults are welcome, I am teaching a beginning drawing class in March. Details later, but the course will pretty much follow a classical model, with 1, 2 and multi-point perspective, use of basic drawing media, modeling by shading, and will culminate with a landscape drawing field trip. Motivated 10-12 year olds will be allowed to take the class as well as teenagers and adults. I will try to keep the equipment list to a minimum to economize.

Why learn to draw? First, it is fun and rewarding. With basic drawing skills you will be surprised at how far you can get. Second, I am convinced that having some basic drawing skills is essential to really understanding art.

But wait, you say, I have no talent for art! I believe that any reasonably intelligent person with reasonably functioning eyes and normal eye-hand coordination can be taught to draw. I cannot guarantee that anyone can be a great artist, and painting is a skill that takes years to master and is generally self-taught, even with the assistance of teachers. However, with some basic training, anyone should be able to convey the illusion of depth and to capture the basic contours of an object.

Both classes/events are under the auspices of the St. Anthony of Padua Institute.

If you want any more information feel free to email me at EKeilholtz [at] aol [dot] com or to call me at 510.261.9596.

On Pop Art

"The whole movement toward a so-called pop art, in the visual arts as well as in music, I see as a disaster, really shameful for mankind, once oriented toward the highest, whose only goal in art was to glorify the divine and the cosmic spirit, and for whom everything in the human world was related to these invisible worlds. That this is now replaced, generally speaking, by garbage art, which celebrates material impermanence and decay, is a disgrace. It needs a tremendous mysticism to adore God through garbage; it is possible, but when you reach a point where images of a lipstick or hotdog have the same significance as the crucifix or Madonna in earlier cultures, it shows where a country is heading spiritually."

Who do you think said that? I will give you a hint: he is German.

No, not the Holy Father.

This is from an interview with Karlheinz Stockhausen by Robin Maconie in August of 1981. You can find it, along with many other gems in Stockhausen on Music, which rates among the top five of works most influential works most influential to me on art and music theory.