Montreal 360

This 4-minute "homage" to Montreal is worth sharing. Over a period of 4 months, Andrew Andreoli made this video celebration of my favourite city using only a camera, a tripod and a computer. No drone, no dolly.

Andrew has just completed his degree in film studies at Concordia University.

(If clicking on the image above doesn't work, please go to youtube and do a search for Montreal 360 Andrew Andreoli.)

Stars and Hearts

At the beginning of the summer I posted my intention to begin a fun project: making stitched fabric postcards. I do this annually for my Christmas cards, and every year it's something different.

I was inspired by the small heart-themed collages that Jane Davies posted on her blog. You can see some of the images here.

Because I wanted to make Christmas cards, I chose a star motif, rather than a heart, to work with. I enjoyed working with a bright palette.

Isn't it funny how we see little human figures in the 5-pointed stars?
One head, two arms, two legs, dancing....

But I wasn't really happy with the format. Standard size for postcards is 4 x 6, and squares seem better-suited to stars. I reverted to the heart shape, but used Christmasy-colours of green and red, choosing from some of the older printed cottons in my collection.

As I developed these, I gradually introduced a few brighter colours, like lime green and magenta, to give them a bit more life. (I was getting some useful feedback, working on this project at our text'art retreat.)

The colours were getting bolder and bolder, but with less of that Christmas flavour.

Finally, I limited myself to red/pink/magenta hearts on greenish/turquoise backgrounds.

And now I have a nice selection of fabric postcards, some of which will serve for the Christmas season. Others will get a simple frame and be used for gifts, and possibly for sale at the upcoming fall show of the Hudson Artists.

"How Art Works", by Ellen Winner

Have just read How Art Works, published this year by Oxford University Press. The author is a professor of psychology at Boston College, and director of the Arts and Mind Lab. Ellen Winner explores the psychology and philosophy of art in its many forms (music, literature, film...) but I am most interested in what she writes on the topic of visual art.

In Chapter 2, the author describes how Denis Dutton, a philosopher of aesthetics in New Zealand, attempts to answer the question "What is art?"

Dutton proposes that typical works of art, whether musical, literary or visual, have characteristic features:

skill and virtuosity
novelty and creativity
representation
expressive individuality
emotional saturation
direct pleasure
intellectual challenge
imaginative experience
culture of criticism
style
special focus
existing within art traditions and institutions

Let's look at these one by one, and try to think of examples of art that challenge this definition, by not exhibiting the characteristic. (In these instances, the characteristic is not necessary). Also, let's try to think of examples that demonstrate the characteristic but are decidedly not art. (The characteristic is not sufficient).

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

1. Skill and Virtuosity

Duchamp's readymades (the urinal, for example) were found objects, so they do not display skill or virtuosity. And something like surgery, which does display skill and virtuosity, is not usually thought of as art. So this feature is not necessary or sufficient, but nevertheless is characteristic of most works of art.

Aphrodite of Milos

2. Novelty and Creativity

Many examples of classical art do not display novelty or creativity, so this is not necessary. Neither is it sufficient. Technological innovation might show novelty and creativity, but it isn't art.

Jean-Paul Riopelle, Perspectives, 1956

3. Representation

Much modern art is non-representative, thus representation is not necessary. And maps and graphs are representative, but not art, and so this quality is not sufficient.

You will be relieved to know that I am not going to continue in this vein, but perhaps you would like to consider for yourself whether each of these twelve characteristics is either necessary or sufficient for your definition of art. Despite the exceptions, I think there is merit in Dutton's idea, in that these qualities do form a cluster of traits that help us distinguish "art" from "not art".

And let's remember too that we're not talking about good art vs. bad art, which is an entirely different issue!

Once Winner sets us up by giving us a loose definition of art, she proceeds to draw on various psychological studies designed to shed light on questions such as:

– Are artists born or made? (Both. Innate talent and thousands of hours of practice are both essential.)

– How can that be art if my two-year-old can make something just like that? (Adults, children and artificial intelligence can distinguish paintings made by artists from paintings made by children or animals about two-thirds of the time.)

– Do art lessons or music lessons impart skills that raise scores on standardized tests? (Regrettably, there is very little evidence to support the theory that these skills transfer to academics. High test scorers tend to participate more in art lessons, sports and community activities, so it's more likely a matter of "drive".)

– Will reading fiction make us more empathetic? (No evidence of this, but there have been some positive indications that role-playing in the classroom can help make us more sympathetic to others.)

The author also explores why we value authenticity in art, and devalue copies and forgeries. Also, how much do we value effort in art (i.e., how long did it take you to make that?)

Interesting questions, but evidence-based studies provide few answers.

"Life with Picasso", by Françoise Gilot

Last month I posted an item about Françoise Gilot, muse and wife to Picasso. I learned about her through a profile in The New Yorker, in their July 22, 2019 issue. Since then I have read her book, Life with Picasso (McGraw Hill, 1964), and enjoyed it even more than I expected.

Françoise Gilot and Pablo Picasso

Her co-author, Carlton Lake, wrote the foreword to the book, and was clearly impressed by the consistency and detail of Gilot's memories. The book was published barely ten years after she left Picasso.

When they met, Gilot was a young art student. She relates some of the advice Picasso gave her as a beginning artist. For example,

"You know, we need one tool to do one thing, and we should limit ourselves to that one tool. In that way the hand trains itself. It becomes supple and skillful, and that single tool brings with it a sense of measure that is reflected harmoniously in everything we do. The Chinese taught that for a water-colour or a wash drawing you use a single brush. In that way everything you do takes on the same proportion. Harmony is created in the work as a result of that proportion, and in a much more obvious fashion than if you had used brushes of different sizes. Then, too, forcing yourself to use restricted means is the sort of restraint that liberates invention. It obliges you to make a kind of progress than you can't even imagine in advance."

We also learn about some of the aesthetic considerations of Picasso. For example, we see how Picasso celebrated the unexpected in his compositions.

Pablo Picasso, Girl Before a Mirror, 1932

"I start with a head and wind up with an egg. Or even if I start with an egg and wind up with a head, I'm always on the way between the two and I'm never happy with either one or the other. What interests me is to set up what you might call the rapports de grand écart – the most unexpected relationship possible between the things I want to speak about, because there is a certain difficulty in establishing the relationships in just that way, and in that difficulty there is an interest, and in that interest there's a certain tension and for me that tension is a lot more important than the stable equilibrium of harmony, which doesn't interest me at all. Reality must be torn apart in every sense of the word. What people forget is that everything is unique. Nature never produces the same thing twice... a small head on a large body, a large head on a small body.... I want to draw the mind in a direction it's not used to and wake it up.... That's why I stress the dissimilarity, for example, between the left eye and the right eye.... So my purpose is to set things in movement, to provoke this movement by contradictory tensions, opposing forces, and in that tension or opposition, to find the moment which seems most interesting to me."

Pablo Picasso, Woman with Guitar, 1913

We read about Picasso's thoughts on Cubism:

"The papier collé was really the important thing...."

and his reflections on how modern painters must navigate their own paths without the benefit of the Academy:

"Beginning with van Gogh, however great we may be, we are all, in a measure, autodidacts –you might almost say primitive painters. Painters no longer live within a tradition and so each one of us must recreate an entire language.... In a certain sense, there's a liberation but at the same time it's an enormous limitation...."

We learn about the relationships between Picasso and his contemporaries, and about what they thought of each other's work. Gilot recalls the reflections of Matisse on Jackson Pollock:

"I have the impression that I'm incapable of judging painting like that... for the simple reason that one is always unable to judge fairly what follows one's own work. One can judge what has happened before and what comes along at the same time.... But when he gets to the point where he no longer makes any reference to what for me is painting, I can no longer understand him. I can't judge him either. It's completely over my head."

Henri Matisse, The Green Line, 1905

and Matisse's account of how Renoir responded to Matisse's paintings:

"He looked them over with a somewhat disapproving air. Finally he said, 'Well, I must speak the truth. I must say that you're not really a good painter, or even that you're a very bad painter. But there's one thing that prevents me from telling you that. When you put on some black, it stays right there on the canvas. All my life I've been saying that one can't any longer use black without making a hole on the canvas. It's not a color. Now, you speak the language of color. yet you put on black and you make it stick. So, even though I don't like at all what you do, and my inclination would be to tell you you're a bad painter, I suppose you are a painter, after all."

Marc Chagall, La Mariée

An excerpt that I found very amusing was about the mutual regard of Chagall and Picasso. To understand the context, you have to know that it was said during a time when Picasso had let his painting lapse in order to explore lithography, sculpture and ceramics. Picasso is quoted as saying,

"When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is. I'm not crazy about those cocks and asses and flying violinists and all the folklore, but his canvases are really painted, not just thrown together. Some of the last things he's done in Vence convince me that there's never been anybody since Renoir who has the feeling for light that Chagall has."

Gilot recounts how, long after that, Chagall gave her his opinion of Pablo.

"What a genius, that Picasso," he said. "It's a pity he doesn't paint."

Of course we learn all about the squabbles between the artists and a good deal about the irascible, difficult and demanding personality of Picasso. And we are skillfully transported to the artistic community of the mid-century Midi.

I would strongly recommend Françoise Gilot's Life with Picasso for anyone who is interested in the French art scene of the 20th century. A good read.

World Press Photo returns to Montreal

The 2019 edition of the Expo World Press Photo Montréal will be presented at Marché Bonsecours from August 28 to September 29. World Press Photo is considered to be the most prestigious professional photography competition in the world. In 2019, the winning photos are divided into eight categories: News, General Information, Contemporary topic, Portrait, Environment, Nature, Sport and Long-Term Project.

The photos are enlarged to be seen by a crowd, and mounted on panels that form a labyrinth through both levels of the venue. Many of them are disturbing, as they often document human tragedy and environmental disaster.

The Grand Prize this year was awarded to American John Moore, for his photograph showing a two-year-old girl in tears during the arrest of her mother, a Honduran immigrant, in the United States. In June 2018, the family attempted to cross the border between Mexico and the United States.

For more information, visit the event's website.

Major retrospective for Lee Krasner

This week the New York Times brought news of a solo show of Lee Krasner, featuring almost 100 works by the American abstract expressionist.

The show currently runs at the Barbican Gallery in London, and will travel in October to the Schirn Kunstalle Frankfurt, and continue next year to the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Long overshadowed by the paintings of her husband Jackson Pollock, Krasner's work shows great range.  She is one of the few women painters to receive a full retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, a show that opened a few months after her death in 1984. In recent years her work has received more attention. In May, a panoramic Krasner from 1960 was sold at auction for $11.7 million, a record for the artist.

To learn more about Krasner and about the current show, access Jason Farago's article in the New York Times here.

States of Mind, States of Being: Meditations on the Human Condition

Here's a peek at a current show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. Though there are a number of paintings in the exhibition, it was the sculptures that caught my interest.

Theaster Gates, Ground Rules (Red Line, Green Line) 2015
"One of the most important artists of his generation, Chicago-based artist
Theaster Gates has developed a socially engaged practice that turns attention
 to overlooked peoples and histories. His Ground Rules series salvages remains of
gymnasium floors that have been decommissioned by the city of Chicago.
For Gates, the markings on the gym floor, the signs of the rules of the game,
are emblems of a broader social order learned at a young age:
lack of access leads to life-long disadvantage."

The introduction to the show reads,

"Philosopher Umberto Eco tells us that 'Art tries to give a possible image of this world, an image that our sensibility has not yet been able to formulate.... Art suggests a way for us to see the world in which we live, and, by seeing it, to accept it.' In an era that often places a premium on speed and sensationalism over slowness and substance, a moment when the world's barometer for truth is at times insupportably low, it falls to art to show us not just how the world might be, but how it really is."

Michel de Broin, The Abyss of Liberty, 2013
"Drawing on the famous Auguste Bertholdi statue unveiled in New York
in the 19th century, Michel de Brouin questions the notion of liberty
by placing the iconic figure in a precarious position.... With its
hollow interior made visible, this bronze cast conjures up a kind of abyss
in which the idealization of liberty falters."

Jana Sterbak, Planetarium (Montserrat Version), 2000-2002

Sylvia Safdie, Keren No. 4, 1999

Sylvia Safdie, Keren No. 4, 1999 (interior, detail)
A book with its pages partially exposed is positioned inside a large copper cylinder.
As the gaze of the viewer shifts, the pages appear to flip open, an optical illusion.

Tony Cragg, Sharing, 2005

Tony Cragg, Sharing, 2005, alternate view
An observant look reveals three faces melded into a spherical form.
"Sharing is a figuration of Cragg's enduring interrogation of the porousness
of human thought. 'Positive or negative we are constructed as much
from what we are as from what we take in,' Cragg has averred."

Yoan Capote, Abstenencia (Libertad), 2014
"This work consists of bronze casts of the hands of anonymous migrant workers
sequenced to spell in sign language the word 'Libertad' [Liberty]....
As a whole, the work creates an allusion to the difficulty common people
face in making their voices heard on important social issues."

I found these six works and others raised compelling questions about what it means to be human in this world.

"Created by artists of different races, genders, ethnicities and nationalities, the works in this gallery encourage us to think differently about the world and our place within it.... Silent hands the spell out 'liberty', an upside-down emblem, and reconstructed boards of a broken-down gymnasium floor invite us to question just what 'liberty' means and to better understand the inequalities that persist to this day."

The show is part of the museum's permanent collection. 

Omar Ba at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Omar Ba, Les autres [The Others], 2016
oil gouache and India ink on corrugated cardboard

Senegalese artist Omar Ba has a solo show at the MMFA, continuing until November 10, 2019.

I visited the show recently, and was intrigued and challenged by the large works. Often using a substrate of wood or corrugated cardboard, Ba typically lays down a matte black background that allows his colours to "pop".  His rich patterning recalls African textiles and ceramics. While it is clear that his paintings address political issues, his symbolism is somewhat enigmatic, which encourages a more thoughtful engagement with the imagery.

Omar Ba, Afrique Now, 2015
Oil, gouache and acrylic on corrugated cardboard

The posted text reads, in part:

"Bringing together many of Oma Ba's most important works to date, Same Dream lays bare the artist's profound critique of authoritarianism as well as his firm embrace of the resilience and perseverance of the human spirit. Representations of dictators and despots depicted as hybrid half-beasts are set in dialogue with paintings of youth and strong women that convey hope for the future. This duality in Ba's choice of subject matter underscores today's divided reality, precariously straddling development and destruction."

Omar Ba, Team, 2017
Oil, pencil, acrylic, India ink and gouache on
corrugated cardboard

"Omar Ba's work engages with some of the most urgent issues of our time: global inequality of wealth and power, immigration crises and our changing relationship to the natural world. His penchant for depicting personal narratives, alongside collective ones, speaks to the multivalent character of the work. Born in Senegal in 1977, Ba splits his time between Dakar, Senegal and Geneva, Switzerland, and synthesizes the visual textures of these places through his practice, which combines the historical and the contemporary, elements African and European....

"...Figures emerge from biomorphic forms and lush flora and fauna inspired by the dazzling coast of Senegal, where Ba grew up. Micro-worlds exist within larger constellations that evoke a shared cosmogony among humans, plants and animals." 

You can learn more about the artist and the exhibition here.

4-minute videos of MMFA highlights

Nathalie Bondil, Director General and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, has created a series of twelve videos, each one devoted to one of her favourites in the museum's collection.You can access them by visiting this link.

All are in French, with English subtitles. Here's a sample from the series:

The compelling story of Françoise Gilot

Here's a fascinating read: the profile of Françoise Gilot written by Alexandra Schwartz  and published in the July 22, 2019 issue of The New Yorker.

In "How Picasso's Muse Became a Master", Schwartz writes:

"Gilot is ninety-seven now; she has been painting nearly as long as Picasso did, and is enjoying something of a revival. In October, I went to Sotheby’s to watch a curator interview her about a new edition, from Taschen, of fanciful travel sketchbooks that she made in Venice, India, and Senegal. Gilot, still beautiful in a navy-blue suit and knotted silk scarf, was lucid, witty, and pitilessly dry in the French way."

Schwartz refers extensively to Gilot's own "remarkable" 1964 memoir, "Life with Picasso", written with the art critic Carlton Lake, and recently reissued by New York Review Books Classics.

In this "Me Too" era, Gilot's story has much to tell the contemporary reader about the challenges inherent in the roles of muse, lover, artist, and independent spirit.

You may be able to access the article through this link.


  

Photos under consideration

Looking back over files of my photos, I am close to selecting a few more that will serve as inspiration for new cityscapes.

Yes, I know, I said I would never make any more cityscapes. And yet I find myself needing new material to add to some exhibition commitments for the coming season.

Exteriors? Interiors? Perhaps one or two of these images will serve nicely. All were taken last year in Copenhagen.

This photo and the two below were taken in a stairwell of an art museum.
I wish I could remember which museum it was.

As I responded to Jo, who commented on a similar post two weeks ago,

"We have to take our inspiration where we find it, yes? When something speaks to us, that makes it worth following up, I think. And it's also valuable to ask ourselves what it is about the image that has drawn us in. Contrasting scale, contrast of straight vs. curved, contrast of light and dark, the juxtaposition of the human figure against the architectural, rhythmic grids.... It's all there!"

Why Dora Maar is Much More than Picasso's Weeping Woman

The first ever retrospective of Dora Maar's art has just ended at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and will be travelling to London’s Tate Modern and then to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Dora Maar, Nature Morte, 1941

Thank you to Lauma, who shared this link to the BBC Culture site with me.

Dora Maar, Eau, photograph

To quote from the article:

"Dora Maar was one of the most important Surrealist photographers and the only artist to exhibit in all six of the group’s international exhibitions....

"Yet today she is primarily known as Picasso's Weeping Woman. Her tears, obsessively depicted in numerous canvases, seem to show a woman broken by the abusive relationship that contributed to a breakdown and her withdrawal from public life.

"Although a consciously enigmatic woman who left little written evidence about her life and work, Maar deeply resented the image. 'All [Picasso's] portraits of me are lies. They're Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar,' she told the US writer James Lord. In fact, Maar continued to create throughout her life, leaving a vast and highly varied body of work, much of which was only discovered upon her death."

Pablo Picasso, The Weeping Woman

The retrospective exhibition will be staged at Tate Modern from 20 November 2019 to 15 March 2020, and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from 21 April to 26 July 2020.