Love Wastes Not




Keep Swimming by Kirsten Borror

2012 Acrylic on Ragboard 5x5

May God be in the midst of these trials.


Purifying and cleansing each and every one: the prodigal and the faithful, to be refined and renewed.


Give each the faith to believe You are equipping each one for Glory tasks ahead.


Show me how to rejoice in these difficulties.


How is this to be, Lord??


Love Turns Us




Sinking Down by Kirsten Borror

Acrylic on Ragboard 5x5


Our faith sinks and our heart fails waiting for help that never comes from 


the ones who are not willing


nor able to defend us against enemy attack.


Ultimately, there is One glorious Love 


who can save us completely.





I asked God this morning, "How is today going to work?" The word He gave me was from


Jeremiah 30.


Our bondage will end. We will serve the One who frees us.


No fear, no terror, He will correct us fairly.


He will restore to us what was taken.


What is destroyed will be rebuilt.


The sound of thanksgiving songs and merriment will be heard from what had


lain in ruins. 


Our community will be firm and secure in the Lord.


He will accomplish His purposes for the oppressed and the oppressors.  


You will understand this in days to come.









Mabel Alvarez, Borderline Modernist



The fine portrait shown above is a 1923 self-depiction by Mabel Alvarez (1891-1985), aunt of Luis Walter Alvarez (1911-88), winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968.

Her Wikipedia entry is here and another biographical sketch here.

She was born Hawaii when it was a kingdom, but moved to the mainland while young, spending most of her life in California. The biographical notes indicate that she was interested in spiritual matters and the color theories of Stanton Macdonald-Wright, the Synchromist painter I discussed here. Apparently she had an affinity with green for a number of years. Alvarez has also been associated with the California Impressionism school, though she did few or no landscape paintings. She is better classed with the Group of Eight, southern California artists who maintained an association from 1921 till 1928.

Alvarez was a modernist of sorts whose paintings made use of the modernist vocabulary to a sometimes greater -- but usually far lesser -- extent. As can be seen below, people portrayed in the paintings seem to be exclusively women.

Gallery

The Italian Model - 1924

Dream of Youth - c.1925
Here Alvarez channels Symbolism.

Anabella
The hair style suggests this was painted in the early 1940s.

Girl Seated in the Garden
I'm guessing this dates from around 1930.

Ladies with Parasols - 1958
A comparatively late painting showing Synchromist influence.

In the Garden - 1925
Aside from the self-portrait at the top, I find this to be the most appealing work.

Portrait of a Woman
Another hard to date painting, but probably from the 1940s.

Self-Portrait - 1945
She would have been about 53 and aging gracefully.

Alvarez is hard to pin down, for me anyway. Most of what I've found on the Internet is pleasing, though I prefer it when images have solidity rather than a flattened Impressionistic character.

Frantisek Kupka: Stylistic Gadfly


Just about any artist aspiring to become a professional faces the task of deciding what style or school to follow. This was particularly difficult for painters of the early 1900s who decided to commit to modernism in general, but faced a bewildering flurry of new schools and movements to choose from. So it was for Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957, Wikipedia entry here).

Kupka was born in Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and trained in art in Prague and Vienna before moving to Paris 1894 where his training concluded. He spent the rest of his long life in France. As it happened, his career-defining thirties decade largely coincided with the rise and, in many cases, decline of movements such as Fauvism, Blaue Reiter and Cubism. And in his early forties there was Futurism and the first abstract movements.

What to do?, he might well have asked himself. And his answer was to try as many movements as he could. Below are some examples of his work.

Gallery

Admiration - c.1899
This might have been an illustration because Kupka worked as an illustrator while establishing himself as a painter.

Self-Portrait - 1905
Not a traditional portrait, yet not modernist either. More of an advanced sketch or study. His left arm seems oddly positioned.

Portrait of the Artist with His Wife - completed 1908
A better version can be found on the Internet, but its size in kilobytes is too great to justify. I tried to adjust the colors from a smaller version, but they aren't right. In any case, this paintings seems stylistically a little older than 1908. Compare to the other 1908 painting below.

Lipstick - 1908
Now Kupka is into a mild form of expressionism. A watercolor from the same year, Profil de gigolette, looks even more like something Kees van Dongen might have painted.

Ruban Bleu - 1910
The colors are Fauvist, but the underlying drawing is still representational.

Mme. Kupka Among Verticals - 1911
Pure abstraction began appearing at this time. So Kupka has now almost caught up with the leaders of the avant-garde pack. Except he puts a representation of his wife in the upper-center.

Disks of Newton - 1912
This is in the Orphist/Synchromist mode of abstraction that burst forth around 1912.

Vertical and Diagonal Panes - c.1913
Another early abstraction, but using a different geometrical basis.

The Machine Drill - 1929
Charles Sheeler was starting to create industry-inspired images at about the same time. This Kupka painting indicates movement, so it also can be interpreted as a dying ember of Futurism.

Blowing Blues II - 1936
Kupka painted a number of paintings showing this sort of swirling, curving abstract design from around 1914 until much later in his career. Detours such as "The Machine Drill" seem to have been rare, so far as a Google searches indicate.

DAVID HOCKNEY. Un joven de + de 70.




Tenía pensado hacer una entrada con la obra de Hockney más adelante, pero el hecho de que su obra se encuentre ahora a nuestro alcance en el Guggenheim de Bilbao y sobre todo el momento triste y pesimista en el que nos encontramos todos inmersos, me ha decidido a adelantar este artículo para plagar el blog de luces, colorido y sobre todo de optimismo. 



TALA DE INVIERNO 2009



Hace unos días llegaba a mi buzón una revista digital de Arte a la que estoy suscrita. Entre los artistas que aparecían se encontraba David Hockney y titulaban el artículo así: “David Hockney, ventanas de optimismo”. 

Era como si hubieran leído mi pensamiento porque la obra de este artista siempre me ha transmitido eso precisamente: optimismo. Su obra nos trae auténticas ráfagas de optimismo que nos iluminan la vida.



 DETALLE de LA CARRETERA QUE ATRAVIESA LOS WOLDS



Se suele decir que el buen artista expresa su carácter y su momento vital en la obra. Delante de la obra de Hockney no dudamos de la vitalidad de este hombre. Diría con seguridad que una de sus cualidades es su permanente “juventud” mental, cualidad que expresa su obra que se presenta joven y vital.

En una reciente entrevista con ocasión de la exposición que nos trae al Guggenheim bilbaíno, decía sentirse rendido ante el uso del I-pad y daba muestras de estar abierto a todas las nuevas tecnologías. Aún viviendo en un lugar aislado como es Bridlington, está totalmente conectado, o electrónicamente conectado. Mentes así son abiertas y creativas de por vida.



 NICHOLS CAYON.1980



Se dice de David Hockney (Bradford 1937) que es el más grande pintor británico con vida, que es un gran maestro, se le cataloga como un artista del pop-art y un sin fin de calificativos más. Tendemos a calificar, a encorsetar y a colocar a los artistas dentro de movimientos y tendencias, pero lo cierto es que artistas como Hockney transcienden todo eso. Están ahí y lo más importante, están en constante actividad creativa.
No puedo escribir este artículo sin dejar un apunte sobre mis preferencias a la hora de hablar de este pintor. Admiro, su atractiva influencia de ilustrador en sus obras, su color, su luz y su creatividad incansable. 



 INTERIOR. LOS ÁNGELES



Y admiro sus paisajes. También, ¡como no! admiro el Hockney de las piscinas californianas porque en realidad esas piscinas y edificios sin paisajismo que los respalde son precisamente el paisaje de California. Pinturas que representan espacios con edificios bañados de luz y color, con un estilo un tanto ingenuo y que son muy representativas del “paisaje” californiano que embrujó a este pintor durante mucho tiempo. No hay duda de que el contraste de aquella atmósfera californiana y el ambiente en el que ahora transcurre su vida le lleva a crear de forma diferente.



 GREEN VALLEY



Comentaban en el artículo que he mencionado al principio de esta entrada que Hockney en estos momentos se encuentra en una obsesiva exploración del clima del este de Yorkshire, lugar en dónde ahora habita, y es seguro que su lluvia, su viento, sus luces y sus cambios climáticos, le proporcionan gran creatividad como, en su día, le influyó su estancia en Los Ángeles.


La obra “La mayor zambullida”, podría ser una de las más representativas de ese periplo californiano. 



 LA MAYOR ZAMBULLIDA. 1967



Se trata de un acrílico sobre lienzo pintado en 1967. En él está captado ese “paisaje” del que hablaba. Representa un día cualquiera en el exterior de una casa de California. Hay una sensación total de inmovilidad, reforzada por la técnica que empleó el artista al pintar las líneas horizontales y verticales con rodillo. No hay presencia humana visible pero hay un elemento que interrumpe esta inmovilidad y que hace que la intuyamos: la salpicadura del agua junto al trampolín. También nos atraen las dos palmeras al fondo,excesivamente altas y finas. Este cuadro está considerado como un icono del pop art.


 
Otra obra de aquella época es “Dos chicos en la piscina, Hollywood”



 DOS CHICOS EN LA PISCINA, HOLLYWOOD. 1965



También se trata un acrílico sobre lienzo y se pintó en 1965. Y también tiene como tema las piscinas y el sol californiano. Esta vez la presencia humana no se adivina sino que está presente con los dos jóvenes. Muy gráfica como la anterior, con colores puros y con una composición sencilla, es un claro ejemplo del Hockney ilustrador. No obstante los dos jóvenes presentan diferente tonalidad en la piel, algo que contrasta con el tono decorativo del resto de la obra. Este contraste que “humaniza” a los personajes hace también que sean objetos de nuestra mirada que se dirige instintivamente hacia ellos. 


Hockney fue artista precoz, aunque en un principio se orientó hacia la publicidad e incluso ganó algún concurso publicitario siendo adolescente. Toda su obra tiene gran influencia gráfica. Entró en la escuela de arte de Bradford y posteriormente, en 1959, viajó a Londres en dónde estudió en el Royal College of Art. Su éxito le llegó muy pronto puesto que siendo aún estudiante expuso obra que vendió con facilidad.




ART POP



En 1961 viajó a Nueva York en dónde, como no podía ser de otra manera, se sintió atrapado por la ciudad. De ahí viajaría a Los Ángeles que al parecer superó con mucho lo que le ofrecía Nueva York. Sus pinturas de los años 60, las de las piscinas, esas que arriba he comentado, tan plenas de luz y color, estarán por siempre asociadas a Hockney.



 AUTORRETRATO 1966



Hockney es un creador versátil y como tal ha trabajado en otros cometidos. Además de ser excelente dibujante, fotógrafo y artista gráfico, fue coreógrafo de ballet y de ópera, una carrera que al parecer se vio truncada al sufrir pérdida de audición. 

Aunque, mayormente relacionemos a Hockney con esas pinturas de piscinas y casas de California, el Hockney de los paisajes monumentales para mi tiene gran atracción, como ya he apuntado. Porque hay que decir que la obra de Hockney es monumental en cuanto a tamaño. Esos inmensos paisajes por los que puedes “pasear” y en los que te sientes inmersa y atrapada.




 DAVID HOCKNEY DELANTE DE UNA DE SUS OBRAS EN LA TATE GALLERY



Como buen ilustrador, sus pinturas suelen presentar un dibujo perfectamente encajado y una composición en total equilibrio. Esos caminos que en muchos de sus cuadros sirven de eje central, invitan a pasear por ellos. Delante de sus obras yo me he sentido “caminando” por sus paisajes y cargada de optimismo. Es una suerte y un privilegio para los que nos gusta el Arte poder contar con artistas de esta categoría que en tiempos como los que corren nos transmiten estas sensaciones. 



 BOSQUE WOLDGATE



La obra de Hockney se encuentra en numerosos museos y colecciones particulares. Podemos encontrarla en Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst de Noruega, en el J.Paul Getty de Los Ángeles, en el Museum of Fine Arts de Boston, en la National Gallery de Washington, en el Fine Art Museum de San Francisco, en la Tate Gallery de Londres y en muchos otros museos. Está presente en todo el mundo.



 SR.y SRA CLARK. 1970 en la Tate Gallery



Estos días tenemos la oportunidad de admirarla en el Guggenheim de Bilbao en dónde permanecerá hasta el 15 de septiembre y en dónde se nos muestra el Hockney más vanguardista que despliega un buen número de dibujos con I-pad.



NOTAS: Para mejor visualizar la fotografía “picar” con el ratón encima de las que interesen.
Para la lectura de entradas anteriores, ir a la ventana de la derecha y “picar” en los años y meses. Se desplegarán los títulos correspondientes a cada fecha.

Para la elección de otro IDIOMA ir con el cursor al final de la página.


Fuentes consultadas: Arte del siglo XX. (edit.Taschen)
Historia del Arte. E.H. Gombrich (Edit. Debate)
Los maestros de la pintura occidental. (Edit.Taschen)
En la red: hoyesarte.com
Para la fotografía las mismas.

Macdonald-Wright's Takedown of 1930s WPA Art



The New Deal era WPA art project and similar government-sponsored employment schemes for artists long ago became something of a sacred matter for many art historians and art followers in general. A number of artists who had reputations at the time or later gained fame participated in the projects. Examples include Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Marsden Hartley and Jackson Pollock (a link to names is here). Many of these projects involved murals on walls of public buildings; an example is shown in the image above (by Jacob Elshin, University Station post office, Seattle - 1939).

Like most other government spending programs of the Great Depression, the arts programs were criticized at the time as wasteful uses of taxpayer money. But that criticism melted away once World War 2 started and the arts programs began to be terminated.

Since I call this blog "Art Contrarian" I thought I might as well present a strongly contrarian view of the art programs that I recently stumbled across. It's a view by an insider who had responsibility for projects in southern California.

That insider was Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973) who was one of the first painters to paint in a purely abstract manner. I recently posted about him here. Information about and views of one of Macdonald-Wright's own murals can be found here.

Macdonald-Wright has his say in an oral history interview: the link is
here. You might not agree with his point of view, but he has a strong one and it's pretty entertaining, given the usual solemnity when the subject of art is introduced. I need to add that quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Stanton Macdonald-Wright, 1964 Apr. 13-Sept. 16, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The SM in the transcript is Macdonald-Wright and BH is Betty Lochrie Hogue, the interviewer. Extracts follow, but note the final exchange:

* * * * *

BH: Do you think that this Project did any good for painting in California at the time?

SM: I think it set back art all over the United States a hundred and fifty years.

BH: You do, really?

SM: I do! I think it was absolutely the worst thing that could possibly have happened.

BH: Why?

SM: Because they got five thousand and one hundred useless, untalented people in the place who went in saying they were artists, and nobody cared because what they wanted to do was to give money away. They had over 5,000 people, and when the Project ended in -- what was it, 1940? I guess it was about 1940 more or less, those people kept right on painting. And vast numbers of those people that you see exhibiting in galleries now are the same people. That's what's the matter with art....

There were competent artists, as I say, in this thing. I had some extremely competent artists here. This Feitelson was one of them, for instance. He's one of the finest draftsmen we have in the country. And the man who was the head of the mosaic department, Albert King, is more than competent. We had very competent men as far as that's concerned. And I immediately made them heads of departments so as to give them a little time to do some of their own work, something of that kind. But the general run of those people would have been better off if they'd starved to death as far as art is concerned. Eddie Cahill, who was the National Director at that time, said to me years afterward . . . . I happened to be back in New York, I think it was in 1955 when I was on my to Paris. I was having dinner with him, and he said, "Well, Stanton, now that this is all over, and it's all over for a long time, fifteen years, what is your real opinion of the Project?" Of course, he was a man who was dedicated to it, he was a sociologically-inclined baby, he was an institutional slave by temperament, a very sweet fellow. I said, "Eddie (his name was Holger but we all called him Eddie), I think it set art back a hundred years." He never spoke to me after that. I never came in contact with him again.

BH: Well a lot of people were actually eating who might not have been at the time . . . .

SM: Well I don't know of anybody who was eating that wouldn't have been that should have been eating at all. I think they would have been much better off and so would the world had they not eaten. I haven't much of the sociologist in me and my heart doesn't bleed very easily for those people. If you had been around there you would have realized what I mean by it. They spent most of their time complaining bitterly because we hadn't gone directly in with Russia . . . .

BH: Oh really!

SM: Most of them were what we would call (due to the law which they passed that nobody can call a person by their name) at that time Communists. They spent most of their time trying to get everybody that wasn't a Communist out of the place and to fill it up with Communists. And from what I hear, and this is not an opinion of mine but, from what I've heard from the National Director, most of the New York Project was made up of those babies. And that doesn't only go for New York but practically every other city, except this one out here. And I had my hands full to keep those people from taking over the whole work. Two or three of them even got to the point where they painted murals and sneaked in a picture of a hammer and sickle here and there on them.

BH: For heavens sake!

SM: And I had people watching those things all the time and I had a brigade of whitewashers there that would go right out and wipe that mural off the wall or cover it up with something. I had to do that how many times. Because at that time the public wasn't as thoroughly inured and used to and indifferent to those Communistic pastimes as it is now. They would welcome it now probably.

.... [W]hen I closed the door on that Project, as far as I was concerned I washed my hands not only of the dirt of Government indoctrination but also of the dirt of most of the pictures that were painted in it.

BH: Well, the fact that the Federal Arts Project gave such an impetus to him [Donald Hord] makes me think of something that you said in this little booklet which you loaned us and which I had microfilmed the other day. It is such an expressive statement. I'd like to read this one sentence you wrote. It is from an address that Mr. Wright made over the radio in Santa Barbara in October of 1941, on the occasion of opening a new gallery under Donald Hord's directorship. You said, "Let us also remove our criticism from out the ages of a spurious and grandeloquent jingoism. Let us recognize that our own consciousness of youthful vigor encouraged by the Federal Arts Project, has without the shadow of a doubt, raised the average standard of American painting. But let us not confuse topics with technique, and let us take a slightly longer time-view of our qualities than have been recently found in the writings of our critical tycoons." I thought it was very good that you made that remark. I presume you were referring to our consciousness of regionalism and having to stand on our own feet in painting coming out of the Project?

SM: Mrs. Hoag, I was working for the government at the time. I'm always loyal to the person I work for.

Love Allows




Diving away by Kirsten Borror

2012 Acrylic on Board 5x5

Where else will we go but to you, Lord?


For the one who leaves the flock, Lord, protect them. 


Keep them safe from violence, from the plans of evil people.


One day may this one desire Your path, Your wisdom,


Your royal touch. 


May this one seek You as fortress, strength, shield, and foundation.  


From the plans of the enemy that seeks to destroy, save this one who walks away. 


May this one find comfort and shelter under the shadow of Your Wing.


You, Our Father of healing, of revealing, of giving abundant peace, truth and grace beyond what we can imagine.






Love Heals




Restored by Kirsten Borror

2012 Acrylic 5x5 

Wounded but healed in time. I pray for you to be sustained, to be filled with the Lord's joy, because that will be your strength. May you cry out to the Lord who is the Healer. May you cry out to the Lord in your trouble, in your distress, in whatever destruction you have fallen into. There is a word that comes to you from heaven, look in the scriptures, ask for it, seek it, and you will find it. This is where your healing lies.





Heaven's light breaks through my gloom.  The healing I waited and waited for came in an instant. There is abundant peace and truth in heaven, ask for it to come your way.


George Hendrik Breitner: Have Camera, Will Paint


George Hendrik Breitner (1857-1923) was a Dutch naturalistic painter. He was a friend of Vincent van Gogh in the days when they were painting quotidian scenes, but did not like van Gogh's later work.

A lengthy Wikipedia entry on Breitner is here and he also is dealt with in this book published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

Breitner is not a household name outside the Netherlands even though he was skilled at both painting and photography. Examples of his work in both fields are shown below.

Gallery

Gezicht op de Dam te Amsterdam - c.1894

Gezicht op Keizesgracht hoek Reguliersgracht - c.1895

Hussars

The Earring - 1896

Red Kimono

Photo reference for Red Kimono

Oudezijds Achterburgwal, Amsterdam

The Bigger the Gift the Bigger the Love




Color Danced by Kirsten Borror

2012 Acrylic 5x5

Who will celebrate more, the one who saw the bad thing pass by?

Or the one who is rebuilt from ruin?




Proyecto "La pura verdad"


Colin Campbell Cooper: Skyscraper Impressionist


I suppose when the word "Impressionism" comes up, most people think of country scenes painted in bright colors using many small, distinct brushstrokes. In fact, not all the original group of French Impressionists painted that way. And those that used those bright colors and distinct brushstrokes didn't always reserve that approach for rural or village views. One of Claude Monet's famous series of paintings dealt with the Rouen Cathedral. Paris boulevards and even railroad stations also served as subject matter for French Impressionists.

When some American artists caught on to Impressionism, they too were willing to use city scenes as inspiration. Perhaps best known are views of New York City parades commemorating victory in the Great War painted by Childe Hassam.

As less-known Impressionist who built a reputation via urban scenes was Colin Campbell Cooper (1856-1937). Wikipedia has a large, useful entry on him here and here is a link to a book dealing with him and his work.

Cooper's career didn't move into high gear until he was nearing age 50 and began using Philadelphia (his home town), New York City (where he lived for many years before finally relocating to Santa Barbara, California) and even Rochester, New York (his wife's home town) as subjects. Apparently that delay was no serious problem because both Cooper and his wife seem to have had sources of income that allowed them to travel extensively and not be utterly dependent on sales of their paintings.

Below are images of some of Cooper's works. Like many American Impressionists, Cooper's paintings relied on stronger drawing and more structural use of light and shade than did some of the French Impressionists. He was also quite capable of paining in a more traditional style, as the image of his wife indicates.

Gallery

Emma Lambert Cooper - c.1897
The artist's wife, who also was an artist.

Broad Street Canyon, New York - 1904
One of his earlier cityscapes.

The Financial District - c.1908
Essentially the same view as that of the painting above, but probably painted later.

Taj Mahal, Afternoon - c.1913
Not many European or American artists traveled to India a hundred years ago, so Cooper's painting of the Taj Mahal evoked considerable interest when it was first displayed.

Palace Gate, Udaipur, India - 1914
Another scene from the Coopers' India visit.

Palace of the Fine Arts, San Francisco - c.1915
Cooper traveled to California a number of times before moving there following the death of his wife in 1920. Bernard Maybeck's Palace of the Fine Arts was built for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 and is still standing.

Hudson River Waterfront - c.1921
The height of the Woolworth and Singer buildings strike me as being exaggerated.

A Santa Barbara Courtyard - c.1925
Santa Barbara has no skycrapers, but Cooper was happy to paint what he saw there. His California works of this period permitted him to be grouped with other artists active in the state at the time who are known as California Impressionists.

Two Women - c.1917-18
From time to time Cooper would take a break from buildings and portray pretty women.