Friday Snapshot from Special Collections
Back in Special Collection after a little break and I came across a book about Roger Fry. My mind not perhaps on the work didn’t notice it particularly; a 21st Century paperback until I looked at some images and I stopped in my tracks. Before long I was researching a bit more and found some better images. This man I think deserves more than a snapshot see what you think?
Alphabe Thursday … U is for Marina Abramović and Ulay
There have been performance artists that have used walking as their preferred medium; some have been dramatic, ambitious and extreme. Marina Abramovic and Ulay for instance, were radical performance artists, she from Yugoslavia and he from East Germany. In 1976 they began to collaborate in a series in what they called ‘relationship’ works. They were interested in testing both their own and the audiences’ physical and psychic boundaries with performance that threatened all emotional senses. Among their influences were shamanism, alchemy, Tibetan Buddhism and other esoteric traditions. After years of pushing the boundaries in 1988 Abramović and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey which would end their relationship. They began their final walk from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China; Marina from the east by the sea and Ulay from the west in the Gobi desert. Three months later they met up in a mountain pass near Shenmu in Shaanxi Province among Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist temples. It was noted that this last performance ended as their first performance; where they strode towards each until they collided.
Wednesday’s woman wood engraver from Brazil …
Soon I will be going to Brazil. I am on a mission to have a list of women engravers, so we can visit the art galleries and museums with a knowing look. This is our fourth trip and visiting galleries are a joy. These images from Poetica da Resistencia aspectos da gravura Brasileira by Edith Bohring are not clear but nonetheless evocative; I am determined to find the originals.
I know little about Edith Behring (1916-1996) except that she is a Brazilian author, painter, printmaker and designer. She studied with Candido Portinari, Axi von Leskochek and Carlos Oswald. In 1953 she was awarded a government scholarship to study in Paris where she studied metal engraving with Johnny Friedlaender. Here, she held her first solo exhibition in 1955 at the Galerie Saint Placide. Back in Brazil in 1957, Edith taught at the Institute of Fine Arts, now the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage. She also set up the Workshop of Engraving at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro in 1959 where she remained for the next ten years. It would seem that she continued to have solo exhibitions in South America and Europe until the late 1980s.
I really hope I will be able to find some more of her work while in Rio.
Weekly Photo Challenge … Blur
I don’t pretend to be photographer; I had great hopes when I bought a manual SLR a few years back. While the intentions were good the results were mixed. However, I have now an intelligent camera and while the images are not masterpieces they do for my requirements. Yesterday, in my garden I tried to make a picture that was blurred in an arty way … something my SLR would do so well! Sadly I failed … rest assured these wall flowers have a wonderful perfume.
On Monday I will …
It is Monday, yesterday I wrote my curriculum vitae; a story of my life in relation to my career as an artist which has been only a dream since 1966 and not yet seriously materialised. So you can imagine it took several hours and if the Art Group accounts for determination and getting blood out of a stone, I am in with chance.
So, today I am thinking about the artist’s letter of intent, again this will need some serious consideration and copious cups of tea. I forgot to mention tea is also vital in the cv writing exercise.
So, by way of light relief and while the kettle boils I look back at lino cuts made early in my career as a print maker which happened before the thought of ‘being’ an artist had occurred and coincided with my first trip to Brazil.
In Rio I was overcome by the colour, shapes and visual delights that lend themselves to the cameraman, artist and mere onlooker in liberal abandon. So for the first time since the 1960 I began to draw the things around me, as my dear dad had encouraged all those years before. It was not long before I was making very pleasant marks and the habit has remained; pencil and pad with my camera are never too far away!
This little image is the result of an hour under the palms on Copacabana … pencil in one hand and an ice cold coca and a straw in the other.
Silent Sunday
Saturday and the blank page dilemma …
This week I plan to write my CV, so with that, my artist statement and portfolio I can apply to be an associate member of a local art group.
Sounds easy and to some it would be very.
But for me it is going to be a struggle, I don’t have an artist’s curriculum vitae. No matter how I try I cannot get blood out of a stone. At school I did get 6 O levels including art and I did enjoy my art classes. My home environment was not conducive to making works of art. So I did a daily paper round after school to earn the grand sum of 9 shillings (45 pence) to attend Saturday Morning art classes at Southampton Art School. For 3 years my friend and I took the 10 mile bus journey; little girls still in ankle socks and with big dreams. If I close my eyes I can see the space and smell the smells! Afterwards, before our journey home again we would walk back through the bomb sights still derelict after the war, to find a coffee bar where we’d sit dark corner and watch the students laugh and act cool.
Then, I wanted so much to be an artist and I still do, but during the journey in between it wasn’t an option.
All this does not stand up in the CV in three sentences let alone the recommended 2 sides of A4, so the page is still blank!
For those who read my blog yesterday, there is a part 2 of my story of my dad and for whom I wish to become a print maker. I think also he would approve and better without a CV … but for now it is vital!
Some news …
Today, I am not in the Library its a holiday and so a snapshot would not do! It is quiet in BlogLand its seems that the world is on holiday. So I thought I would take this opportunity to share some news; it is pretty insignificant to most people but what the heck they are away from their internet connection and won’t read it anyway.
I think today I became a print maker!
I began practicing 2 or 3 years ago with erasers and even became quite creative and adventurous. Truthfully, while there was a degree of artistry I did need to address the deficiencies! It had been 50 years since I had drawn a picture. So I found an art teacher who took me back to basics; to schoolgirl stuff and now beyond. I began to draw and paint and who knows the future. Meanwhile, I continued to develop the printing and now working with wood and lino and again there are more options to explore.
Now, I am in a position to find an Open Studio and a group (s) where I can continue learning, also showing and sharing my work and new found knowledge. Not from academic place but a place of greed and urgency. While I honour and respect those with the academic background, mine resurrected from the wood shavings of my father’s boat building workshop needs a space too.
Last night I showed my a sample of my work to a small local group in Reading; not only did they accept me as a member but they gave me advice and guidance as my next steps to join larger and more influential groups. This will mean I have to show a more distinct portfolio, a CV and an letter of intent … so today I begin a another leg of my journey.
Alphabe Thursday T is for the Taoist monk … etc.
This week I go back to the other side of the world to China;to where walkers in the mountains, often portrayed in ancient poetry and paintings, didn’t celebrate the mountains but the wanderings. To ‘wander’ is the Taoist code for becoming ecstatic; the arriving was sometimes regarded as a non-event . A common theme in 8th century poetry by Li Po, is the search for a Taoist master in the mountains and then not finding him. Mountains had both physical and symbolic geography so that literal walking has metaphorical overtones:
a poem by the humourous Buddhist Hermit Han Shan a contemporary of Li Po.
“People ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain? There is no road that goes through …
How can you hope to get there by aping me?
Your heart and mine are not alike.”
It would seem that walking is a good thing to do but not without hardships and diversions on the way. For life is a journey through a wilderness. This concept, universal to the point of banality, could not survived unless it were biologically true.
None of our revolutionary heroes is worth a thing until he has been on a long walk. Che Guevera spoke of the ‘nomadic phase ‘ of the Cuban Revolution, Mao Tse-Tung did the Long March, Moses the Exodus then there was Odysseus’ epic journey home after the Trojan War.
Robert Burton writes in his Anatomy of Melancholy ‘Movement is the best cure for melancholy.
Wednesday’s print-maker from Brazil …
As I start to count the weeks before I go to Brazil; I found another artist whose work I would like to see while I am there; not that I will be short of things to do. I do like visiting art galleries while I am not familiar with the artists of Brazil I find myself wandering aimless; it is useful to be armed with a list and a vision.
Again the Poetica da resistencia ; aspectos da gravura Brasileira has given me another couple of images and a little background information in Portuguese to add to the list.
Anna Bella Geiger, (b. 1933) who is a Brazilian artist of Jewish-Polish background and professor at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage and lives in Rio de Janeiro she is of international acclaim and an artist renown for her interest in and use of multimedia.
Before moving from Rio to New York to study art in 1954 Geiger had previously graduated in literature and language. She returned to Rio and began teaching engraving at the Museo de Arte Modern in the 1960s. It was in the 1970s when she began to include other representational elements into her work.
I understand she is still working and hope to see more of her contemporary works while in Rio
Coat Hanger Doll's House 