Central Park abstraction

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, (British, 1924-2005)
Calcium Light Night: Central Park in the Dark some 40 Years Ago, 1974
Image: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/sac/intro.htm
Image copyright estate of Eduardo Paolozzi, all rights reserved, DACS
University of Dundee


I was first introduced to Eduardo Paolozzi at TMA, through one of their current shows: Paolozzi: Pop Art Icon. It has taken me awhile to get interested in the images, but with some searching I found an intriguing one. I admit that the title helps with the intrigue. This is a print, though I am unsure of the process since I couldn't find it referenced anywhere. It is possibly a screenprint as many of his other works are.

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, 1504
Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
Engraving; 9 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. (25.1 x 20 cm)
Fletcher Fund, 1919 (19.73.1)

This print shows Durer's attention to ideal human proportions in his figures. They are most likely based on Roman copies of Greek sculptures he may have seen in Italy. The sculptural attributes of the figures pop out of the image. While Durer's earlier works were woodcuts which he most likely did not cut himself, Adam and Eve and later works are engravings which he mastered through experimenting with cutting the plates.

Durer's representation of Adam and Eve is rich with symbolism, as he filled the landscape with references to medieval theory of the four human temperaments. The melancholy elk, choleric cat, phlegmatic ox and the sensual rabbit were not let loose until Adam and Eve disobeyed God and became vulnerable. In addition, the mouse is a symbol of Satan and the parrot may symbolize false wisdom (Stokstad (2002) 718). Note the very prominent signature on the placard, Durer was very proud of this engraving, and no surprise, as the master engraver rocked the early 16th century with his images and still holds his own today. If you've never seen a Durer in person, try to remedy the situation. I'd also recommend checking out more German work of the late 15th - early 16th century.

Villa

Villa am Strande, 4 (Villa on the Shore, 4), 1920
Lyonel Feininger
Woodcut, 26.6 x 34.2 (32.2 x 38.6)
From Online Image Collection, German Expressionist Prints, 1904-1928 (The Goldman Collection)

I love the strong lines and dramatic angles.

Sorry, I didn't get a chance to write much more, I was preoccupied looking at what art to see when I am in the city this weekend!

Ocean

Vija Celmins (American, born Latvia, 1938). Untitled (Ocean with Cross #1). 1971.
Graphite on acrylic ground on paper
17 3/4 x 22 3/4"

Ocean begins a week with a focus on drawing. I was struck by this work when I first saw it at a show at MoMA. I've come across Celmins a number of times since and this work in particular again recently. The detail of the drawing is mind-blowing. This reproduction lends itself to the look of a photograph and this is not much different than seeing it at any sort of a distance in person. Once you move very close to the work you see that it is not a photograph (though I still needed a look at the label to confirm it was a drawing). Celmins has also created this image as a woodcut, just as incredible (maybe more so now that I am aware of the intensity it takes to get comfortable with let alone become adept at any kind of detailed woodcut).

Celmins is particularly interested in the artistic process which explains the attention she has paid to building up surfaces and tackling labor intensive printing processes such as mezzotint and woodcut. Celmin focuses on grand surface landscapes such as the ocean, desert and the surface of the moon. Her drawings and prints are soothing and beautiful.

Wood Landscape

Upon this Bank and Shoal of Time
Orit Hofshi
Ink drawing, woodcut and watercolor on pine wood panels and paper, 1068 x 264 cm, 427.2" x 105.6"

Click on the image to see it in a fuller length and more detail. I saw this work in a small exhibition catalog of the work of Orit Hofshi and Nogah Engler at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Both female Israeli artists, their work is rich and and intricate. Surely, the work of today needs full attention at it's full size, but we'll deal with the extended version on the web. I can't see all of the details so I am not sure if the prints were made from wood to wood or that the woodcuts were printed to paper which was affixed to individual wood panels which were mounted side by side. This creates a beautiful grid effect. The choice of leaving space between each panel allows you to see each panel as its own work in addition to their collaboration as one whole image .I am also not exactly sure about the inclusion of the ink and watercolor but am guessing that it was a simple print transfer with details added with ink and watercolor. One of the great things about printmaking is it's conduciveness to mixed media additions.

Click on the title and you can scroll through the installation process of the work, and get a better idea of it's scale. The combination of sepia and black and white gives varied dimension to the work, moving you from warmth (sepia) to a cooler effect.

She

She turned her face to the window, 1868
Winslow Homer
Wood engraving, Engraver: Edward Sears
Page from The Galaxy, May, 1868, vol. V, opposite p. 581 Drawn by Winslow Homer, engraved by E. Sears

As commonly occurs in my wanderings (both virtually and physically) I've fallen in love with another artist, but not yet as a whole. Winslow Homer never held any particular interest for me, I tend to shy away from much American painting, while pretty and nice and often wonderfully real, I admit to finding it a bit dull. Many a painter was also a gifted draftsman, and Engravers such as Sears (who I can't find any info on quickly, only that he probably had his own engraving co. - via an ad in Harper's, maybe I'll do a little more research) spent their time bringing these drawings to the printed page. You'll see many of these images from Harper's Weekly, but all kinds of magazines and journals from the late 19th century appear.

I was playing around in the Brooklyn's Museum's collections using their new tag search to find works with women in them (an email from a dear friend prompted this :) and fell into the wonder of Homer's engravings. Maybe it is the lack of pretension in a drawing that has no color, where the focus is on the details of line, the need for a straightforward picture that tells a story, so it stands out amongst the text that surrounds it in the pages of the magazine. Either way (or ways I have yet to pinpoint), these wood engravings are great little stories that I can't stop looking at.

Also check out HarpWeek's cartoon of the day.

Eve

Eve and the Apple II, 1968
David C. Driskell
Woodcut
18.25" x 12.75"
Maryland Printmakers

Another discovery from an exhibition catalog I spent some time with. A new artist for me, David C. Driskell, I fell for Driskell's prints. Unfortunately I haven't found a lot of them online, so if you can get a hold of a book of his work I highly recommend it.

I love woodcuts (form of relief printing) one of the few printmaking techniques I can easily recognize, the distinctiveness of the cuts, their ruggedness, is what I am drawn to. I am looking forward to learning how to do them myself in a few weeks in my printmaking class, if anything it will give me a bit more exposure to the art making process and I can enjoy Driskell's and others' works even more. The style of Eve and the Apple, its cubist formed head, brings thoughts of Picasso,yet the rest of the image veers from that. The sleek and simpleness of Eve's torso is realistic.

Enjoy!

Staged

Untitled (boy with hand in drain)
Gregory Crewdson
digital print
2001-2002
48 x 60” (121.9 x 152.4 cm.)
Albright Knox Art Gallery

I don't know when I discovered Gregory Crewdson, but I do know that his series (of which this is part) was created in western Massachusetts not far from TwilightMASS MoCA (along with the help of a number of people who worked there) around the time I interned there.

In his highly staged photographs, Crewdson's images blur the border between ficiton and reality. The series focuses on a banal suburban environment. Many of the photos take place outside on suburban streets, this entire image was constructed as a set. "The dark, empty space visible below the floor and the dramatic light streaming in the window turn what at first appears to be a mundane domestic scene into an unexplainable moment in an unknown narrative. Crewdson makes rather then takes his photographs, exposing the dreams, anxieties, fears, and desires that underlie everyday life." (http://www.albrightknox.org/acquisitions/acq_2004/Crewdson.html)

I find the awkward, uncanny and unsettling images intriguing, from the sleekness of the creation to the unsettling feeling they can often provoke.

and more... and interivew and more from Aperture

Ladies

Mary Cassatt
Gathering Fruit c.1893
Rosenwald Collection
National Gallery of Art

I googled "art" and the second hit was a wikipedia article (and it is always fascinating to me to read definitions of "art"). I was curious as to what the first image might be associated with the term and it was a Mary Cassatt painting. Not this one, but it made me think of Cassatt's prints which I've always been a fan of. Initially I wasn't a fan of much women's art from the late nineteenth century as it was too feminine. As I've gotten older I learned how groundbreaking and crucial not only this subject matter was but that women were freely doing it. I have never done well at discussing the incredible hardships that women have overcome through time (I was discouraged from going into art history because it was female dominated, which is not actually true) but I was once again reminded while watching Michelle Obama speak at the Democratic convention last night. Regardless of your political views, I hope that if you saw her speak, you'd be just as excited and proud as her mother was sitting in the audience, of not only a headstrong, bright, unique, American woman, but also of all th0se who came before and after her. 2008 marks 80 years since women got the right to vote on equal ground with men. I look forward to hearing Hillary Clinton speak tonight.

Sorry about that, back to art. This print is part of a mural that Cassatt was commissioned to do for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 for the Woman's Building. It was to represent the progress of women into the modern age. While it appears to be a simple scene,
"The act of plucking the fruit suggests women's opportunities in the modern world to harvest from the tree of knowledge. This was an important element in depicting the role of modern women, who, in the late nineteenth century, were able to enjoy for the first time many new opportunities for formal education. In sharing the fruit with the baby, the woman symbolically passes knowledge from one generation to another."
Women have also been left out of the history of art for many years, something that is being remedied slowly, but hopefully surely. So yay! to whomever put together that wikipedia article.