Collage According to the Laws of Chance 2

In my last post, I wrote about the artist Jean (Hans) Arp. He made collage according to the laws of chance.  He dropped squares of paper onto paper and gave the works titles like Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance. The image below is made with cut and pasted papers, ink and bronze paint (1917), image courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.

Jean Arp, Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance

Arp was a founding member of the Dada movement that started in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916.  A lot of Dada was about the laws of chance. The movement started as a political protest and dissipated after the close of World War 1. Many of the artists (Jean Arp, Kurt Schwitters, and Max Ernst) left protest for studio practice and went on to build stellar art careers.

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

I am fascinated by Dada. I think it’s resurgent, and think a lot of contemporary art is inspired by Dada.

Dada and Marcel Duchamp

Dada is still with us because of the artist Marcel Duchamp.

Duchamp was not a member of the Dadaist movement (he resisted joining groups). But, he was a natural Dadaist all his life.

The Bride and the Bachelors

Read Calvin Tomkins book The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde (Duchamp, Tinguely, Cage, Rauschenberg, Cunningham). I bought the paperback, first published in 1965.  The first chapter is about Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887-1968).

Duchamp said: “Why worry about art when life is what matters…Do unto others as they would wish – but with more imagination.”

Duchamp invented the term readymade – see the image below of “Bicycle Wheel” (1913/1964)

Marcel Duchamp, Roue de Bicyclette/Bicycle Wheel

Calvin Tomkins: Unlike the Surrealist objet trouve – a common object chosen for its accidental aesthetic value, the readymade has no aesthetic value whatsoever (according to Duchamp). Tomkins adds: therefore, it functions in a sense as a derisive comment on all art traditions and dogmas.

Read more  about Duchamp at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) website.

Every art movement that uses everyday objects today can thank Duchamp for leading the way.

One of Duchamp’s most famous readymades was titled “Fountain” – a porcelain urinal turned upside down with the signature R. Mutt.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountane/Fountain

Duchamp (and Joseph Stella) sent the sculpture to the 1917 exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists at the NYC Armory show. Duchamp was a founding member of the Society. The work created a furor.  The hanging committee refused to exhibit the readymade sculpture.

Calvin Tomkins wrote: Duchamp commented slyly: The only works of art in America are her plumbing and her bridges.

Fountain Art Fair, New York 2012

Flash Forward to 2012 and the Fountain Art Fair (March 9-11) at the 69^th Regiment Armory at Lexington Ave. and 25^th Street during New York Art Week.

This is the same 69^th Regiment Armory where Marcel Duchamp famously hung his “Nude Descending a Staircase in 1913 (showing alongside contemporary artists like Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch and Pablo Picasso) – Duchamp would later secure a place in art history with his readymade (urinal) titled FOUNTAIN (1917).

In March, I participated with a group of 72 artists in a salon-style installation at the Fountain Art Fair with a group called Hullaballoo Collective – at booth E212. The collective was organized by Bernard Klevikas and several other artists who live and work in Brooklyn, NY. I exhibited 2 collages.

Here’s a link to the BlouinArtInfo blog with the title: Fountain Artists Honor Armory History with Playful Nods to Duchamp…

One Hullaballoo member made the connection from the Fountain Art Fair to  Marcel Duchamp, exhibited a work titled Idol Inaction, and arrived at the opening reception wearing a Duchamp jersey. See image of Brian Goings below at the Hullaballoo booth.

Brian Goings at Hullaballoo

Bernard Klevickas wrote the Hullaballoo statement:

Hullaballoo Collective is a diverse group of artists who have come together through social media to present a salon style exhibition at the Fountain Art Fair… We are artists. We are part of the egalitarian zeitgeist, the energy that underlies the new century and that uses new tools to reach broad audiences. There’s a Hullaballoo website. There was a lot of buzz.  The website shows works by the artists in the Collective.

The image below is my work, titled Recycle 1, collage, assorted papers recycled from old monoprints, 22×18 inches, cut and assembled in random order.

Nikkal, Recycle 1, collage

I don’t know if this year’s downtown Armory show was different from recent years. I’ve read reviews that say the show has changed and is getting upscale. I was expecting the space to be raw and unfinished and the art to be young and edgy.

According to Fountain organizers, this year’s show attracted over 10,000 visitors in 3 days. On opening night, there was a line around the block to get in – and we did get art critics Jerry Salz and Roberta Smith at our booth. Read about the record attendance…

WHAT WOULD DUCHAMP SAY?

What would Duchamp say? I know he disdained the confluence of art and commerce (but managed very well – thank you!). some art critics say he gave up art for chess, but his readymades were re-made in the mid-20^th century, shown to great fanfare, and his work is now known around the world.

I bet he would love the idea of social media and the possibilities of the Internet.

What do you think Duchamp would do about Social Media?

Make Contemporary Collage

I am a great fan of Calvin Tomkins who writes brilliantly about contemporary art and artists.

His book LIVES of the ARTISTS includes in-depth profiles of Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Matthew Barney, Cindy Sherman, Richard Serra and others.

The book is exciting to read, filled with personal information and critical insight, and would be appealing to everyone who is interested in art and artists.

Tomkins writes: contemporary art is all about choices.

I’m a collage artist. Collage is the most contemporary art medium, accessible to everyone. Collage is all about choices.

I got a phone call from Stephen McKenzie, the manager of Adult Education in the Visual Arts at the Newark Museum (Newark, NJ). He asked me to lead a mini collage workshop this past Saturday for museum members.

I chose to say yes.

I wanted the opportunity to promote two upcoming workshops, and, as always, to promote creativity through collage.

In May I did a very successful workshop titled Possibilities with Paper at the Museum. I am scheduled to teach Possibilities with Paper 2 and 3 in August and in October.  There are so many possibilities. Collage is the perfect contemporary media.

The Newark Museum Mini Collage Workshop

I gave a lot of thought to what the Newark Museum mini workshop would include, and wanted to offer a project that would encourage looking and promote understanding visually.

Here are some of the possible mini workshop themes I considered:

Possibilities with Paper

Project: Create variations in papers for collage

Embellish surfaces

Create texture with paint and tools

Combine elements and explore design

Repurpose papers for collage

I will teach Possibilities with Paper 2 at the Newark Museum on August 7, 2011,  and will teach possibilities with Paper 3 at the Newark Museum on October 30, 2011. See more information about the 2 workshops.

Colorful Collage

Project: discover a personal color palette

Explore rich saturated colors in watercolor and pastel

Play with variations in hue, value and chroma

Select magazine images in related colors

Explore complementary colors

I will teach a Colorful Collage workshop on July 17 at the Pelham Art Center.

The Art of Romare Bearden

Project: explore collage as layered imagery

Explore variation in scale

Design with geometric and curved shapes

Play with pattern, surface and line

Last year I taught 2 workshops at the Newark Museum inspired by Romare Bearden. One was titled Caribbean Landscape. Another was titled Conjur Woman: Portrait in Collage.  Each full-day workshop is 6 hours – long enough to complete a collage.

A Question of Time

The two mini workshops would each last 90 minutes so the project had to be simple and not take too long to complete. I wanted everyone to be able to start quickly and have enough time to finish.

My top choice was Romare Bearden because this is a special year (the centennial of his birth) and many museums and galleries are honoring him with retrospective exhibitions (including the recent show at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery on West 57 Street in New York City). The exhibition closed May 21, 2011.

See works by Romare Bearden online at the Michael Rosenfeld gallery website.

I wanted people to see and understand how Bearden constructed his collage images. But I was also concerned that it would require more time than was available.

Serendipity and the art of Jean Dubuffet

The day before the scheduled workshop, I discovered an image by Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901-1985) with a fabulous, provocative quote – it was guaranteed to stimulate and inspire. Here’s the quote:

Dubuffet:

“What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones. 



Art doesn’t go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is.

Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery. I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.”

Jean Dubuffet

The image above is titled Sylvain. It’s 10×6 inches. It’s a collage made with insect wings.

This is how I organized the Museum mini workshop project:

Provide 12×12 inch construction paper in a deep hue

Provide a free-form profile drawing on 9×12 yellow paper

Provide magazine images of faces, eyes and mouths

Supply scissors, markers, glue, seam rollers and squeegee

Supply magazines for additional collage papers

Everyone got a color copy of the Dubuffet image and the quote.

I read the quote aloud.

I discussed how the image was constructed with insect wings – and also pointed out that there was an eye and teeth that could be on top or below the other papers.

Everyone was instructed to cut out the profile drawing and either trace or glue the drawing onto the larger sheet (and they got to choose where to place it). I did a demonstration on how to apply the glue. I suggested that they notice how Dubuffet limited the range of colors and try to select papers in a similar tonal range.

The rest was up to them. They chose how to proceed and what images, patterns and colors to include.

See samples of their work below. Notice how each one is unique.

workshop collage

workshop collage

workshop collage

workshop collage

I was attracted to Dubuffet’s quote and art and connected both back to a comment by Calvin Tomkins in LIVES OF THE ARTISTS. He described Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst – contemporary art stars – as the reigning heirs of deliberately outrageous art that feeds off the corrupting influences of capitalist glut and entertainment.

Dubuffet called his work Art Brut. He created with common media. His art was not high brow and he created deliberately outrageous art.

See Damien Hirst’s butterfly winged art (done in 2003), and read the review.

Thanks for reading. Please add your comments below.

ART OF THE DIARY

I was fascinated when I read that the French artist, Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947) kept a diary that commented on the weather and recorded the shoes he wore each day. How interesting is that?

I never kept a diary because I didn’t want to keep a record that somebody could read. However, I am intrigued with the idea of writing about shoes. The shoes we wear tell so much about the lives we live. Even Carrie Bradshaw would agree.

Is a blog like a diary?

the diary of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (1809-1871)

The Morgan Library  (225 Madison Avenue at 36^th Street, NY, NY)

has mounted a fabulous exhibition titled The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives.

The image above is the Diary of Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (1809-1871). Image: the Internet.

I’ve seen the Diary exhibition at the Morgan Library 3 times. I am amazed by the fame of the authors included.  I am amazed by the penmanship and beauty of the entries. The script is so tiny and perfect.

There are over seventy diaries on view. The show closes May 22, 2011.

The diaries include the most personal information. People wrote private journals to keep a record of their daily lives and creative projects, and to explore and sort out personal problems.

The exhibition includes the illustrated journal of the American painter Stuart Davis (1894-1964), the journal/sketchbook of painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (British, 1723-1792), the writings of Charlotte Bronte (British, 1816-1855), Tennessee Williams (American 1911-1983) and John Steinbeck (American 1902-1968), and the travel diary of Albert Einstein (born Germany, 1879 – 1955).

The exhibition poses the question: What is a diary?  Must it be a private document? In the age of web journals, blogs and social media, how and why do we document our daily lives today?

Are we returning to writing diaries but in a different form?

Read more about all of the diaries at the Morgan Library exhibition.

See the online exhibition and follow the curator’s blog.

Can an object express an idea like a diary?

Claudia DeMonte, Female Fetish Shoe

The image above is by Claudia DeMonte and is titled Female Fetish: Shoe (2006). It is pewter and brass on wood (4x9x3 inches). The artist is investigating icons of female culture. The decorative elements are small pewter representations of a woman’s world: gloves, purses, cups, saucers, and umbrellas (image: the Internet).

STIMULATE CREATIVITY

The Morgan Library exhibition folder says keeping a diary is a stimulus to creativity.

Why not keep an artist’s journal? They are illustrated diaries and can be on any theme you choose. You can keep a record of your daily thoughts, and your plans and progress with a project. You can keep a travel journal or a dream journal. Your journal can even be a collection of to-do lists.

If you add art to your writing, you’ve created an art journal. I recommend you embellish your journal with collage, painting and drawing.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

What did you see or read that challenges you?

Keep a journal and it will help you understand your creative process and help you remember all the steps you took that helped navigate the hard parts.

Describe the project, make notes of how you brainstorm and capture ideas as they flow.

Your note taking will help you focus. If you like to add charts and checklists, it will help you quantify and measure where you are going.

DO YOU KEEP LISTS?

The next exhibition at the Morgan Library is titled “Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (June 3 – October 2, 2011).

It sounds like a good follow-up to the Diaries exhibition.

Willie Cole, Pretty in Pink

MAKE A METAPHOR

I want to return to shoes as a metaphor for history and culture. It seems there are many artists who do shoes. Here’s another bit of information:The British artist David Hockney wrote that he started his photocollage works with his feet. His is shoes were always the beginning point of the visual journey. Hockney is an excellent writer. He is able to describe his ideas and process in great detail. I recommend his book THAT’S THE WAY I SEE IT (by Thames & Hudson).

Willie Cole (American, born 1955) showed a collection of shoes in an exhibition titled Sole to Soul at the Alexander and Bonin Gallery, 132 Tenth Avenue, NY, NY  (Jan-Feb 2006).

The image above is titled Pretty in Pink.

The shoes are formed into circles to express the concept of lotus blossoms, which die and flower again. The blossoms range in diameter from 4 to 7 feet.

The gallery wrote: Willie Cole’s art is about acts of transformation and transcendence. In the late 80′s the artist made a conscious choice to work with used objects to take advantage of the energy transference achieved through a process of telekinesis and chi transfers. He has used consumer and industrial detritus such hairdryers, irons, bicycle parts and shoes to make objects which reveal their nature as talismans and sometimes as a critique of capitalist and consumer culture.

Willie Cole currently has works included in the exhibition “Reconfiguring an African Icon: Odes to the Mask by Modern and Contemporary Artists from Three Continents” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (5^th Avenue at 82 Street, NY, NY). The exhibition continues through August 21, 2011.

Willie Cole, Shine

The work above by Willie Cole is in the Met show and is titled Shine (2007). It is constructed with shoes, steel wire, monofilament line, washers and screws, 15.75 x 14 x 15 inches, collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (image: the Internet).

Do you see the eyes and mouth in Cole’s work titled Shine (above)?

Thank you for reading this blog. I hope you enjoyed all the news about the artists and the exhibitions. Please add your comments below. Do you – or did you – keep a diary? Do you think the blog replaced the diary?

Drawing is Collage-Collage is Drawing

I was in Manhattan in NYC, a week ago Friday, had an hour to spare before meeting friends uptown at the Studio Museum in Harlem to see Mark Bradford’s collages.  There was just enough time to visit the Museum of Modern Art. I had to do it.

The MoMA exhibition “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century” was going to close the following Monday, February 7^th. All my artist friends said You Must See this Exhibition. It’s not just about lines and drawing. It’s also about collage.

There was a weather forecast for more snow, so an extra hour might be all the opportunity I would have to see the show before it closed.

Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Collage

As I entered the 6^th floor exhibition gallery, there was a small crowd gathered, listening to a docent in front of the first three works in the exhibition – all by Pablo Picasso – all titled Guitar – one a collage, one an assemblage, one a charcoal line drawing – all done in 1913 and 1914.

The collage, seen nearby,  titled Guitar, is cut and pasted paper, printed paper, charcoal, ink and chalk on colored paper on board (1913), 26×19 inches.

I heard the docent say: Picasso used line to emphasize the flatness of the surface. She continued: notice the charcoal he used to outline the papers in the collage.

In 1912, Picasso was inspired by movement in space, by dance and motion pictures.  Along with Georges Braque, Picasso invented Cubism and modern collage to explore those ideas.

Paul Klee said: A drawing is simply a line going for a walk

Paul Klee, Der Angler, Reverse Drawing

On Monday, the same day the exhibition was due to close, I came back with Bette, a dear friend whose field is interior design. We celebrated her birthday at MoMA. It was great fun to share comments about the individual art works as we walked through the exhibition.

The image nearby is titled Der Angler (the Angler) 1921. It’s an oil transfer drawing, watercolor and ink on paper with watercolor and ink borders on board 19 7/8 x 12 1/2 inches.

I explained to Bette how a reverse drawing is made: Basically the artist draws from the back onto a sheet of paper that is face down on a surface coated with a thin layer of oil paint or print ink. The line that is transferred to the front of the paper is the impression made with a fine pencil or pen.

After the oil paint dried, Klee added ink and other media.

As Bette and I walked through the exhibition galleries, I asked myself: What makes each work in this show a drawing? Why is it included? What media makes the line?

I looked at the works in terms of how each artist explored the line in two or three dimensions. We saw the  line extended beyond the canvas. I was intrigued by work by Robert Ryman (American, born 1930) titled Impex, an unstretched linen canvas stapled to the wall with a a blue chalk line drawn from the top right edge up to the ceiling.

We saw dimensional works and sculpture projecting forward from the wall (a stabile by Alexander Calder). We saw sculpture that looked like lines in space hanging from the ceiling.

There was free standing sculpture on the floor, including Cube (9x9x9 feet), black finished steel (2008) by Mona Hatoum (born Beirut, Lebanon, 1952).

We saw loose undulating lines in colored pencil on cardboard, 1940 by Sophie Taeuber Arp.  I prefer taut lines.  Bette commented: Loose Ends.

I purchased the exhibition catalog for my collage library collection. It has excellent essays on the concept behind OnLine.  You can see On Line online. You’ll almost feel you are seeing the show because there are so many images and links to video and excellent text about the show.

My Favorite artist’s and their drawings in the show are by Pablo Picasso (Spanish 1881-1973), Hans (Jean) Arp (French, born Germany 1886-1966, Paul Klee (German, born Switzerland 1879-1940), Atsugo Tanaka (Japanese, 1932-2005), Eva Hesse (American, born Germany 1936-1970),  and Lucio Fontana (Argentine 1899-1968).

Lucio Fontana, Spatial Concept: Expectations

The image nearby is by Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), titled “Spatial Concept: Expectations (1959) and is synthetic polymer paint on slashed burlap, 39×32 inches.

Inspired by Futurism, Fontana wanted to escape the “prison” of the flat picture surface and explore movement, time, and space. Starting in 1949, he punctured and pierced the surfaces of sheets of paper to reach behind to what he called “a free space.” In the late 1950s Fontana began to slash linear cuts into stretched canvases.

Catherine de Zegher wrote an essay for the exhibition catalog:  Drawing is characterized by a line that is always unfolding, always becoming. Drawing is understood as an open-ended activity. The exhibition explores surface tension, the line broken free from the surface.

She adds: The history that informs the exhibition is interpreted here as an interweaving of materials, records, and the requirements of a changing present. The reading inevitably reflects notions of interconnection (as on the Web) and interdependency in a new globalized society. She wrote:

Thought has been linear and progressive.

It has evolved into a kind of network

More fluid, open, simultaneous and undefined.

Atsugo Tanaka, Round on Sand, Performance

The image nearby is by the Japanese artist Atsugo Tanaka (1932-2005). It’s a view of her performance Round on Sand (1956). She was also represented in the show with 2 works on paper  done with India ink, ink pencil and crayon on paper – one a preparatory drawing and the other a drawing after her performance Electric Dress (1956).

Atsugo Tanaka, Electric Dress

The image nearby is a drawing by Atsugo Tanaka, titled Drawing After Electric Dress (India ink, ink, pencil and crayon on paper 30 5/16 x 21 5/8 inches, 1956)

It looks like a drawing. It is actually the plan for a performance.

Calvin Tomkins, in his excellent book LIVES of the ARTISTS, wrote: “The radical changes in art and society that were set in motion during the early years of the twentieth century gave rise to a new kind of artist…where

Art could be whatever artists decided it was, and there were no restrictions on the methods and materials – from video and verbal constructs to raw nature and urban detritus – that they could use…If art can be anything, where do you begin?

Begin with Picasso.

On February 10^th, my friend Dale invited me to join her at the Museum of Modern Art Member’s preview to see Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914. The 3 Guitars from the OnLine show are now ensconced in the Guitar show. Because of the way the show is lighted, the works look even more dimensional. The show is exquisite.

Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Paper Construction

The image nearby is Picasso’s Guitar (about 1913). It’s  made with paperboard, paper, string, and painted wire installed with cut cardboard box, overall: 30 x 20 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches. Picasso gifted the work to the Museum of Modern Art.

See Holland Cotter’s exhibition review “When Picasso Changed His Tune” in the NY Times, (Friday, February 11, 2011).

The review opens: “It’s 1912 and Pablo Picasso is in Paris, thinking: All right, what’s next?”

Cotter writes: “piece by piece it’s entrancing. Taken as a whole it’s a record of a brief but intense revolution that generated some of the most challenging ideas in modern art.

I would love to hear what you think about drawing and, if you visited the MoMA exhibition, what you thought of the works and the artists in the show. Thank you for your comments.

Who I Am Writing For

I received a short and sweet comment to my post Late Night Musings on the Value of Art and Why I Paint Squares from kzurc who wrote: Great Post! I love art talk. I responded: Thanks. I love art talk also.

Late Night Musings is basically a review of Don Thompson’s book $12 Million Stuffed Shark the Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2008). It’s a great book and a must read if you are interested in who becomes a famous artist and why. I included an image of my geometric collage titled Metro at the start of the post to show I really do paint squares. I see myself as a contemporary artist who has a sense of art history. See the image below.

The $12 million refers to the price for Damien Hirst’s dead shark in formaldehyde titled “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” (1991). It caused a sensation and the haute art world has never been the same since Damien Hirst. But maybe it’s changing. Reality bites.

The economy has hurt the art market for artists at all levels, crushed opportunities and sales. A lot of artists complain that galleries won’t look at their work. I say we have to reinvent the game.

I have a dilemma: I want to write about the art world (it’s a big world and there are so many important issues that intrigue me). I also want to write about the art of collage. I love paper. I teach collage workshops. I say my life is about glue. But I love to talk art talk.

I signed up for Blog Triage with Alyson B. Stanfield and Cynthia Morris to get a handle on blogging. I’ve been following Alyson’s posts, have her book I’d rather be in the studio,  and I’m ready to get to work.

Lesson #1 asked us to write a blog: Who are you writing for? (Who do you want to visit your blog?), and asked us to think of a real person we know.

The person I would like to visit my blog is someone like Sylvia (her real name). That’s because she’s smart and interested in contemporary art. Sylvia loves to make jewelry and takes classes. Sylvia has an incredible sense of style and design. Sylvia would be a great patron. She’s not afraid of art. She is a fun person to be with.

Sylvia’s been to my studio and comes to my art openings. I’m not sure she ever will buy my art (maybe she will). She’s very supportive. She is the kind of person I would love to have as a patron of my work.

She told me she likes to read my blog but has never left comments. I wonder if she thinks the posts are too wordy. I will ask her.

Nikkal: Metro Green Grey Brown Black Indian Yellow, 24x24 collage on panel

Here’s an  image of my collage on panel titled Metro. The series is all about geometric abstraction and color. If you are in the Metro NY area, visit my studio at Media Loft to see images in person, or visit me online at nikkal.com.

I just  relaunched my collage website Stuff That Sticks. It has a new mission statement with a focus on collage workshops.

I posted a new blog titled Caribbean Fantasy Island Collage the day after the collage website was relaunched (with help from webhost Christina Saj at Muse Design Group). I have 2 workshops scheduled this month. One is titled Caribbean Fantasy Collage. The other is titled Conjur Woman Portrait in Collage. Both are inspired by the work of Romare Bearden (African-American, 1911-1988), one of the greatest masters of modern collage. His work is the inspiration for the two workshops.

Romare Bearden, Purple Eden (1987) watercolor and collage

At left is his work titled Purple Eden , photo by Carlos Lippai. It’s the first of several Bearden watercolor collage paintings included on the blog.

This painting captures the lush colors of the Caribbean and showcases Bearden’s brilliant watercolor technique.

Toni Ruppert already commented on my blog: Nikkal, Thank you for sharing more about this wonderful artist. I knew of Romare Bearden before, but viewing his work through your eyes was very enlightening. Well done!

I have to reply to Toni asap and say thanks for the nice comments.

I hope more people who love the art of Romare Bearden and the Caribbean will find my post and be inspired by Bearden’s art. I hope many of them will be inspired to make their own collage paintings.

My Blog Triage goal: repurpose the blog to focus mainly on the art of collage with appeal to a broad audience, and, when I want to, tie in themes in the broader art world (like a mixed media collage that can include  this, that and some of everything in between!).

Thank you for reading this post. Please add your comments.

Late Night Musings on the Value of Art and Why I Paint Squares

Metro Green Grey Brown Black Indian Yellow

I’m reading the $12 MILLION STUFFED SHARK – The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2008). It’s a great book.

Don Thompson teaches economics to MBAs at York University in Toronto and, in the past, at Harvard Business School and at the London School of Economics. The book is about money, branding and how power players navigate through the art world. It’s witty, well written and fast-paced. There’s a lot of information about artists, galleries and dealers (he lists the 25 major contemporary artists). He talks about auction houses, auction psychology, VIPs (as opposed to VOPs), art fairs, art and money…

Damien Hirst, a famously famous young British artist, created – or had fabricated – the $12 Million Stuffed Shark and gives the first half of the title to the book. Hirst says: “Becoming a brand name is an important part of life. It’s the world we live in.” He was discovered and branded by Charles Saatchi, a famous, branded art dealer.

According to Don Thompson, branding adds personality, distinctiveness, and value to a product or service, and branding offers risk avoidance and trust to the art collector.  He adds: The motivation that drives the consumer to bid at a branded auction house, or to purchase from a branded dealer, or to prefer art that has been certified by having a show at a branded museum is the same motivation that drives the purchase of other luxury consumer goods.

The VIPs are buying art because they are VIPs and the art they purchase validates them as VIPs. For me, making art (and the art I love) is about making sense of the world. So, that leads me to the question – What is the value of Art?

BUT IS IT ART? An Introduction to Art Theory (Cynthia Freeland, Oxford University Press, 2001) is all about the value of art. It’s another great book – a kind of reader’s digest of theories on contemporary art and criticism. Freeland is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, TX and a member of the American Society of Aesthetics.

Have you ever thought about the aesthetics of blood in contemporary art and culture? The chapter “Blood and Beauty” does, and is illustrated with the image of a huge embalmed shark in a glass vitrine by Damian Hirst. The work is titled “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” (1991). Freeland says the title is intended to stop you in your track. Hirst permeates discourse in contemporary art on every level.

Another chapter discusses taste and beauty, and philosophy: Aristotle and Plato, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, John Dewey and Arthur Danto (who extols the genius of Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes). Freeland says Warhol helped spark the transition from macho NY Abstract Expressionism to gender-bending postmodernism. She adds: An object like Brillo Boxes was baptized as “art”  (because it was) accepted by museum and gallery directors and purchased by art collectors.

The chapter about music, geometry and harmony and Medieval Chartres Cathedral brought me back to Chartres. I read the rose window was about the orderly cosmos, and the square illustrated moral perfection and was the basis for proportions in the façade, towers, windows and interior walls. The order by which the world was organized is now deconstructed.

I’m reminded of another take on contemporary culture. I found David Hickey’s article, titled “PAGANS” folded and tucked into the book BUT IS IT ART? The article appeared in the Oct. 2008 issue of Art in America magazine. It’s a perfect coda to all of the above.

Hickey says we live in a pagan world now, and we shop for dreams in galleries and boutiques, and every cent we pay for an object that exceeds its utility may be taken as a pagan sacrifice.  And we sacrifice happily.

The article includes two reproductions of C prints by Andreas Gursky titled Prada I and Prada II (one print is 50 by 86.5 by 2 inches –shoes lined up in display cases in an upscale shoe salon.). Gursky was born in Germany in 1955, is listed as one of the 25 Major Contemporary Artists in Don Thompson’s book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, and is represented by Matthew Marks Gallery in NYC.

See http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/26838/conversation-with-dave-hickey/ to read a great conversation with Hickey at the Frieze Art Fair in 2008. He was asked how things have changed for artists in the last 10 years.  He has a lot to say.

In conclusion, I always knew I liked squares, so I’ve included images of my own recent works that are very geometric and contemporary,  and allow me to return to the light and glory of Chartres.

©Nancy Egol Nikkal, May 2010

I hope I have inspired you to read these books and think about the meaning of art. Please add your comments.