Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Pat Calhoun]

fun stuff and Becquer sounds interesting

 

What is poetry? you ask, while fixing

your blue pupil on mine.

What is poetry! And you are asking me?

Poetry... is you.

 

He also wrote some narrative pieces in prose, "Narraciones", which are loaded with imagination and implausibility, such as "Memorias de un Pavo" (Memoirs of a Turkey) in which, as the title implies, he describes the trip of a turkey from its home farm to the city, and its purchase to be eaten, when its writings are discovered inside the already cooked body.

 

(from wiki)

Edited January 15, 2013 by pcalhoun

[Boba]

Thanks for the plug, however undeserved.

The paintings by Donato you posted, I've never seen his work. He is an incredible artist. Wow!

I'm not sure if you mentioned them earlier in the thread, there's a lot to take in, but NC Wyeth and Winslow Homer seem to deserve mention in this journal. The latter is on display in Portland Maine (also home to C-Link) and worth the trip to behold in person. Jeff Jones also comes to mind when I think of these guys. I should find some images of their work to post, if it hasn't been already.

 

[Boba]

I admit I never actually read Becquer's writings, I was told the story of La Organista by a close friend who related it to me when he saw my sketches for the piece. It seemed to fit the subject and helped me to put a story to the concept.

[Flex Mentallo]

Thanks for the plug, however undeserved.

The paintings by Donato you posted, I've never seen his work. He is an incredible artist. Wow!

I'm not sure if you mentioned them earlier in the thread, there's a lot to take in, but NC Wyeth and Winslow Homer seem to deserve mention in this journal. The latter is on display in Portland Maine (also home to C-Link) and worth the trip to behold in person. Jeff Jones also comes to mind when I think of these guys. I should find some images of their work to post, if it hasn't been already.

 

Please post whatever interests you!

[Boba]

Thanks, I will (thumbs u

 

There's so much to choose from, here's some I found on the web:

 

Winslow Homer

 

 

 

 

 

 

NC Wyeth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Boba]

And some more Arthur Rackham

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Larryw7]

I'm very partial to the work of Caravaggio, and his use of light and shadow(which has influenced many cinematographers such as Caleb Deschanel, and Golden Age Hollywood great John Mescall). He has a way of bringing ancient events and Biblical stories to life.

 

Caravaggio's Nativity

 

From the FBI's webpage:

 

In October 1969, two thieves entered the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Italy and removed the Caravaggio Nativity from its frame. Experts estimate its value at $20 million.

 

 

 

Caravaggio's St. Francis

 

Francis contemplates his mortality by looking at a human skul and a cross, remembering his eternal destiny. The skull motif is common throughout the history of art, and has made it's way to the covers of several classic comic books.

 

 

 

[Cat-Man_America]

[font:Times New Roman]Marvelous choices of art for discussion, both in respect to influential historical works and the diversity of art from board regulars.

 

We haven't even scratched the surface in regard to the latter, but wherever this ends up, it's one heckuva thread![/font]

[Pat Calhoun]

Since one of the things this thread is about is artists who have inspired us, might be time to recap the tale of the magic shopping cart. When I was a tween in San Diego in the early 1960s I used to take the ferry from Coronado Island (where I lived) over to downtown SD to cruise the used bookstores. Lanning’s Book Shop between Ninth & Tenth on Broadway (next to a skeezy bar that fascinated and repelled me) was run by an old lady who kept a shopping cart full of coverless 1950s comics out front for a penny apiece.

Part of the magic was no matter how many comics were bought (quite a few!) the cart would be full next trip… But most of the magic was the things themselves. Crom, Ken Shannon, Frankenstein, Sniffer and the Deadly Dozen (vs Iron Jaw!), ACG horror, Atlas: a comics cornucopia of almost infinite proportions. (Don’t recall much EC or DC.)

But two books in particular towered above the rest (though it would be many years before I’d know all the details of title and issue number etc): Weird Mysteries #5 & Mister Mystery #7. In both cases the lead story did most of the ‘heavy lifting’, and both stories were drawn and presumably written by Basil Wolverton.

“Swamp Monster” & “Brain Bats”, “Brain Bats” & “Swamp Monster” – o but those 2 etched deep into my young psyche. I still feel his mighty pen carving those thick definitive lines across my mind.

 

 

As a bonus found this on Lanning’s- drawn by Henry Chamberlain of ComicsGrinder to illustrate Jackie Estrada’s memoir of the magic shopping cart- where she was getting Lulu & WDC&S while I prowled the pits of PCH…

 

http://comicsgrinder.com/2012/09/28/jackie-estrada-and-comic-fest-going-to-lannings-bookstore/

 

 

+ coupla more BW splashes had on file…

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

This is what I look like when no-one visits my sales threads!

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Winslow Homer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are fabulous!

[Flex Mentallo]

I thought I would discuss some of the paintings that most fascinate me and have had a direct influence on my own work. I’ll also show the work I did in response, so you can mock, and laugh at the absurdity of the comparison. But sometimes the greatness of paramount works of art is easier to relate to when we see how mere mortals attempt in vain to emulate them.

 

 

Las Meninas 1656

 

Diego Velasquez’ painting of Las Meninas has been frequently described as the greatest painting ever painted.

 

 

 

At first sight the subject is quite conventional for the period, one of many such he painted for the Spanish Royal Court. The Infanta and her maids seemingly pose for the artist, and we are struck by the informality of her pose, as though we were seeing the moment preceding the formal arrangement. Perhaps the little girl is tired of being stuck in a room with nothing to do but stand quite still, and her dwarfs, pets and maids are trying to distract her so that she will be good.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

In 2004, the video artist Eve Sussman filmed 89 Seconds at Alcázar, a high-definition video tableau inspired by Las Meninas. The work is a recreation of the moments leading up to and directly following the approximately 89 seconds when the royal family and their courtiers would have come together in the exact configuration of Velázquez's painting. Sussman had assembled a team of 35, including an architect, a set designer, a choreographer, a costume designer, actors, actresses, and a film crew.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

As we look a second time, we note that the King and Queen of Spain appear to be reflected in a mirror at the back of the room. Then one thinks, “Aha” It is not the Infanta who is being painted, but her parents, whose painted image is being reflected, and she has dropped in on them for an impromptu visit!

 

 

 

But if they are reflected in the mirror, where are they standing? If we were to suppose that they are the subjects of the painting, then surely they would be standing where we are? For on the left isn’t that the artist himself, peering round the side of his canvas?

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

Have we become the subject of the artist’s regard, standing in place of the King and Queen? Are we meant to see ourselves somehow no longer as passive observers but in the painting?

 

Paradoxically they appear more in focus when seen at a distance. Up close they seem to dissolve into fugitive shadows.

 

Perhaps then Velasquez is asking us to muse upon the transience of earthly power (at a point in time when Spain was a superpower)?

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

To underscore his point, he makes the Infanta’s menagerie – a sort of distorted reflection of the Royal Court of which he has long since been a courtier - the true subject. Even the Infanta will pass away he seems to say, but the painting will live on through the ages carrying her image.

 

Yet even this does nor appear to be the complete answer, for given the scale of their reflections, the implication appears to be that the King and Queen should actually be standing in the space between the artist and the mirror, thus blocking his view of their reflection. That only their reflections are present once again underscores the theme of mortality.

 

 

There is a man standing in the outer hall, looking in on the scene, but from outside the action. He is a passive observer, much like us. He, like us, is part of time. Like us he stares in upon a scene that is outside time, preserved in the amber of the artist’s gaze.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

But most extraordinary of all is the inference that the painting on Velasquez canvas is indeed the one we see! In other words he is showing us precisely what he sees, including himself. And if that is the case, it means that the artist is not looking out at us at all, nor is the Infanta looking at her Royal parents. They are both staring at their own reflections in a mirror.

 

This would mean that the painting we see is also contained within itself, on the canvas we cannot see. It would mean that we are not as we first thought looking at the people at all, but their reflections. Which would mean that we are looking at a painting of a mirror, in which because we are staring into it we should be reflected. And the man in the background is behind us. But we are not there, meaning that it is we who are evanescent, as we pass by. Nor are we present to them, yet they look right at us across a bridge of slow time.

 

What really does my head in then is to try to establish where on earth the King and Queen are actually standing, since they are not then the subject of the canvas Velasquez appears to be painting - for they are reflected in a mirror, which is reflected in a mirror, in neither of which they are actually present!

 

Reality is an illusion and art is an illusion of an illusion.

 

Edited January 20, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

Equally astonishing is the artist’s handling. Most truly impressive is the handling of air and space. Forms appear to cohere in dazzling arrays of light and shadow.

 

The Infanta appears to be breathing.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The empty space behind her and her menagerie is astonishingly rendered. The artist paints not the room but the space it contains. To show how impossibly difficult this is, here is an etching by Goya, an equally great Spanish artist, and probably the greatest etcher who ever lived – perhaps only Rembrandt exceeds him. But in his transcription he focuses on foreground and background, and consequently the middle space collapses, and with it the carefully wrought layers of illusion.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

So it is Velasquez consistent handling of tone throughout that holds the picture together.

 

Most dazzling of all is his handling of paint.

 

Like Rembrandt and Vermeer he owed a debt in his formative years to Caravaggio, whose work had become known in Spain and the Netherlands either before or soon after his death.

 

To contrast his early and later styles, for example, here is Velasquez “Immaculate Conception”, painted when he was just 17.

 

 

 

We are struck not only by the maturity of his technique, but also by the plain reality of the Virgin’s features. Like Caravaggio before him, he used ordinary people – in this case a local village girl – as the models for his paintings. And it is this that makes the painting so immediately moving, for we know we are seeing an ordinary person – a real person – in the throes of a miracle.