acoolsha
Painting
Stanley Twardowicz 14 June 2008
Section: painting
Categories: Mention
The painter and photographer Stanley Twardowicz passed away on June 12th.
My heart and thoughts go out to his family and friends, in particular his wife, the painter Lillian Dodson, and to his good friend Nicholas Maravell. And to his friends Charlotte Koons, Pete Bridgstock and Matt Bessell.
In the early 80s Nick created valuable video documentation of experiences with Stan, anticipating his later brilliant video work on and with Ray Johnson.
Through Nick, I had the pleasure of meeting with Stan a few times.
One evening in in the 80s in his Northport studio remains vivid in my memory: Stan was friends with Jack Kerouac and had recorded some evenings with him in his studio, mostly talking and drinking beer. This was in the mid-sixties when Kerouac was living in Northport, New York (Kerouac died in 1969). Stan recorded these evenings on a high-quality reel-to-reel tape recorder. On the evening we were visiting, I recall it was Nick, Nadine and me, Stan played extensive passages from the recordings. That was wonderful in itself, but what was also amazing was that the recordings were being played in the same room, with the same furniture, where they had been recorded. This was as if we were experiencing the imprint of the long past evening in the room, going back in time. It was like an aural hologram, with the sound waves’ interference with the same walls and furnishings generating the life in the room again.
Links:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Twardowicz &rarr
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_keroac&rarr
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Meister des Paradiesgärtleins 6 June 2005
Section: painting
Categories: Mention / Exhibition
My dear friend Nick found an online reproduction of the painting I refer to in my previous entry. Thank you! The link to it is at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/.
Nick was also kind enough to include a comparison with a similar painting by Matisse. Below a screenshot from the email:
Permalink :: painting/344/Meister des Paradiesgärtleins
Das Städel Museum 5 June 2005
Section: painting
Categories: Exhibition / museum
Hexagonal Tables
In the Städel museum here in Frankfurt there is a small painting from around 1400 on the subject of the Garden of Eden, attributed only to the Meister des Paradiesgärtleins (Master of the Little Garden of Eden) of Strassburg: a dominant element of this painting is a hexagonal table, of stone I believe, which resonates strongly in me and, along with other examples of paintings of such a table, embodies for me the striving to see and represent the world around us. A hexagon is so easily constructed, but becomes more difficult to depict when tilted in space, particularly when you haven’t quite finished inventing perspective.
This painting (I haven’t been able to find a reproduction of it in the internet) touches on some of the feelings that Cézanne’s still–life paintings evoke in me. In the Strassburg meister’s painting, the back line of the hexagon lines up almost exactly with a bottom horizontal line of a garden wall in the rear of the painting, pulling both elements back and forth, but also perhaps being a conscious attempt to stabilize the table in space by fixing it to an object which is clearly behind it in order to compensate for the difficulties in placing the hexagonal shape in perspective. Or maybe the artist was playing with these ruptures as part of the excitement of the painting, like in so many of Cézanne’s paintings.
Whenever I think and feel about perspective it begs the question of which came first, perspective or our development of it as a tool to help us come to terms with reality.
Speaking of religion, this painting of the Garden of Eden is more a painting of a garden than of the biblical Eden. I mean this in the sense that it is a sequestered garden and conveys a feeling of security, enclosure, protection from the outside world, from an encroaching and potentially threatening material reality. But in that sense it is still very much a religious painting.
A Cézanne
The Städel has only one Cézanne in the permanent collection, or at least only one which I have ever seen on display there. It is an early painting, before Pissarro’s decisive influence, of a mountain road with trees and a rock precipice rising from the edge of the road. Though it is daytime, the sky is black. The painting is strong and solid, full of Cézanne’s struggle to make that way, and it has grown on me with time, perhaps even more so because it is in fact the only Cézanne to be seen here in Frankfurt.
Courbet’s influence is clear, and the rock face becomes one with the gray tones of paint smeared and scraped with a palette knife.
A Picasso
There is one Picasso Cubist painting, a portrait of Fernande Olivier in front of a landscape. As an example of measuring one’s own growth of perception — my own growth — against a relationship with great art, this painting becomes stronger and more compelling for me every time I see it.
A Daubigny
Always on display is a tremendously large Daubigny of an orchard which I am really just beginning to appreciate after knowing it for so many years. I assume the painting was made at or near his home in Auvers sur Oise.
One of my strongest associations with Daubigny has always been Vincent van Gogh. Daubigny’s residence is located not far from the hotel where van Gogh died in Auvers. The wikipedia entry on van Gogh contends that his painting, Daubigny’s Garden, was his last work before dying.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, Frankfurt and the Städel Museum represented a leap in the growing European recognition of van Gogh’s art, particularly associated with the Städel’s purchase of The Portrait of Dr. Gachet (more →). There is an excellent book on the life of the painting written by Cynthia Saltzman: The Story of a van Gogh Masterpiece, Money, Politics, Collectors, Greed and Loss (amazon →).
Many Beckmanns
Max Beckmann lived in Frankfurt for many years and not surprisingly there are many of his paintings here. He is an artist who I have grown to appreciate with time, particularly his simple still–life paintings which are so solid and intelligent, and his self-portraits which have the same qualities.
Exhibition: The Permanent Collection
Museum: Das Städel Museum, Frankfurt Germany
Permalink :: painting/343/Das Städel Museum
Wunschwelten 2 June 2005
Section: painting
Categories: Exhibition / museum
The high-culture camp of the culture industry meets Anacondas.
Title: Wunschwelten ("Wish-Worlds")
Museum: Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt
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