art & artists (3 Viewers)

I just read that article. I don't know why Bryan Lewis Saunders' name is super familiar to me, but maybe I'll wake up in the middle of the night and have an "ah ha!" moment. I rather LOVE his experiment, but if you notice, his portraits don't start getting really good (If they are in order anyway) until he started taking bath salts. And that's also what probably did him in. I hear that shit is dangerous. Maybe it was once he took the bath salt, and then added the booze. Wow. Those get rad.

Makes me want to make art again. Maybe one day.

I like the idea of committing yourself to a "thing" every day for a month though. It's good discipline, like zen-ish or something. I've done things like this. It's always had very good results.

How is everyone?
 
until he started taking bath salts
I very rarely take bath-salts. Usually I take ethereal-oils or mostly nothing at all.
Sometimes I do experience creative waves in the tub, but never thought it could be because of the ingredients.
 
Maybe you confused a creative wave with a water wave? Were you farting during your bath? A lot of people confuse the fart gasses that come up to the surface, "bath salts." It can get them dangerously high. In some cases, they are hospitalized.
 
Bryan Lewis Saunders
I think that guy is full of beans, as the kids say. There's something else at work there. He's not just "a curious and adventurous artist," he's got some other kind of screw loose. Like the "I really love drugs, I need to come up with some kind of excuse to get really fucked up" screw.

If he is just "a curious and adventurous artist," then the "experiment" is just a hype thing to draw attention to him and his his pedestrian art, which is worse than just being someone who loves to take drugs.

Because really, who doesn't love to take drugs?
 
i actually didn't get all the way through the article but just finished it now.

in what way genuine? that he has integrity about his work?

he may, but the work itself - the quality - is very bad.

he says he resents that the drug pictures are the only ones people are interested in but that's the only interesting
thing about his work.

.
 
i actually didn't get all the way through the article but just finished it now.

in what way genuine? that he has integrity about his work?

he may, but the work itself - the quality - is very bad.

he says he resents that the drug pictures are the only ones people are interested in but that's the only interesting
thing about his work.

Did he actually say that he resented it? I must have missed that. I got the impression he wished that wasn't the only art of his that people were interested in.

Anyway, we all have opinions about what's "good" and what's "bad," quality, and all that.

I only meant genuine in that he wasn't the kind of pretentious I am used to seeing in most artists. I didn't think he was trying to make a bunch of money, or motivated by notoriety in doing the experiment, like a lot of people probably think. Some artists just like to do weird shit.
 
Here is a review of a new book of Kerouac art. There are definitely parallels with Bukowski's art. (Hint, hint, publishers. If you are looking for an author to write about Buk's art, I'm available...) Look forward to any of your comments here. :)
Sadly there are no illus. in the review. The Kerouac estate are kind of tricky to deal with...
Enjoy!
https://alexanderadamsart.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/jack-kerouac-as-artist/
PS Sorry I have been away. Super busy. Explanation will become obvious later in the year.
 
i like the zoom in of the city cause you can really see how abstracted his painting technique was. there's no rendered detail and
it just dissolves into shapes and colours. he was so ahead of his time in so many ways.

the impressionists - and van gogh - recognised him as approaching colour and the application of paint the same way they were - 200 years
before them.
 
I do see what you mean. Yes, in context of his time, he was a visionary in that respect. I forget, as many people do, the context of the time. It's amazing.
 
Vermeer's interiors [...] The way he handled light
Vermeer is definitely handling his craft much more precise. He's a technician and what a gorgeous one.
What I love about Van Gogh so much ain't craftsmanship, but his vivid directness of expression.
 
vermeer's a "technician?" you don't think he expressed anything beyond craft in his stuff?..

van gogh had to be a master craftsman - i.e technician - in order to express himself so directly.

he worked his ass off for years to develop the skill to directly express himself in his great later stuff.
 
That was funny, but I thought they missed an opportunity there. Imagine if they'd run the whole five minute film. No one would have talked about anything else for a week. "What the fuck was that?!"

Forget the next week, they'd probably talk about it every year for the next 20 years. They only recently shut up about that fucking Apple "1984" commercial, and that wasn't even interesting.

Anyway, then I looked up the cost of 30 seconds during the halftime show and saw that showing the whole thing would have cost Burger King 52 million dollars, so I suppose I can understand why they wouldn't do that. ? ? ?
 
you (and mjp) must have seen the movie "tim's vermeer?"

Nope. Never seen it. I will look for it now.

vermeer's a "technician?" you don't think he expressed anything beyond craft in his stuff?..
van gogh had to be a master craftsman - i.e technician - in order to express himself so directly.
he worked his ass off for years to develop the skill to directly express himself in his great later stuff.

Not to butt in, but I think this is like comparing apples to broccoli. Or unicorns to donkeys? (If you very much prefer one over the other.) I wouldn't call either "technicians" though. They are both from different centuries, first of all. Art meant entirely different things in those contexts--again, all about context. Was Vermeer taking the same risks in the 1600s, that Van Gogh did in the 1800s? Maybe it can be looked at in that way, instead of comparing the work itself, which is so vastly different it's not even in the same stadium...
 
yeah you gotta see it. really interesting guy and his idea and practical application of it is pretty astounding. whether he's right
or not.

all artists are technicians. technique has to be mastered - become a non-concious element - if you want be able to express something
without (technical) restrictions.

i reacted to roni's comment cause it read like he was dismissing vermeer as a technician and craftsman while glorifying van gogh.

van gogh is one of my faves so it's not cause i don't appreciate his shit. his comment - in letter below - about "local colour" is what i meant when i said van gogh and the impressionists recognised in vermeer a kindred spirit in terms of not being interested in local colour in their work. and that was rare (or nonexistent) in painters of his era.

i just found this excerpt from a letter from van gogh to his brother -

"I would like to tell you a lot more about what Chardin, in particular, makes me think about colour — and — not making things the local colour. I think it’s splendid: ‘How to surprise — how to define the substance of this toothless mouth with its infinite subtleties. It’s made with nothing more than a few streaks of yellow and a few sweeping strokes of blue!!!’ When I read this, I thought of – Vermeer of Delft. When one sees it from close to, the townscape in The Hague is incredible, and done with completely different colours from what one would suppose a few steps away. "

edit - just found this in another van gogh letter -

"What I’m saying in this letter amounts to this — let’s try to get the hang of the secrets of technique so well that people are taken in and swear by all that’s holy that we have no technique."
 
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yeah you gotta see it. really interesting guy and his idea and practical application of it is pretty astounding. whether he's right
or not.

all artists are technicians. technique has to be mastered - become a non-concious element - if you want be able to express something
without (technical) restrictions.[..]

edit - just found this in another van gogh letter - "What I’m saying in this letter amounts to this — let’s try to get the hang of the secrets of technique so well that people are taken in and swear by all that’s holy that we have no technique."

This is something I hear/run into a lot: Master technique, or the rules in order to break them. I mean, in a nutshell, that's what I hear and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I am not sure one has to master everything about the entire practice of painting across the board. What if an artist had to master art in all forms? Or all genres, or all styles... I mean how vast and how limited does it need to be, and who is the authority? Not to say one should purposely stay stupid. I believe one should always stay a student until you're dead. But what makes a "Master" anyway?

I think you find your voice, your niche, and try to evolve within that through technique and expression. Why waste time with a bunch of shit you have no interest in unless you need for specific purposes. Realism may not be the most important element of a work. Total abstract expressionism may not be either, as I've seen in lots and lots of really bad art (subjective opinion, of course). Depends on what is trying to communicate or throw up onto the canvas I guess.
 
without going into another of my windy replies i'll just say i agree with all your points. what i was referring to specifically was mastering whatever approach you take to make your stuff.

whether it's vermeer or cy twombly, just the way they physically apply their materials.

realism is the least important element of a work. that's very clear even to me, and you've seen my shit!

anyways, it's fun to talk about.

just watch it roni, with your vermeer comments...
 
Sometimes I am inclined to compare a painting with a chess position. Or a chess problem. Even though the latter has to be solved to unfold its beauty and deepness.
Last month I participated in a team competition in Denmark. The walls of the building we played in were hung with works by Danish artists. Especially a painting in the hallway drew my attention and I ended up switching between the chessboard and the painting. I won easily that day.
 
Yeah, EGON SCHIELE is one great kickass.
Last fall, there's been an exhibition only like 80km away from me and I got a friend to drive us there.
Focus of that exhibition was on his self-portraits.

I also managed to have the publishers of the accompanying cataloque giving it to me as a review-copy for free:

Schiele-Katalog-2018_1b.jpg


Schiele-Katalog-2018_2a.jpg
 

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