Art and Aesthetics

It feels good to laugh but laughter is contagious and addictive. Humor should be treated like a controlled substance. After all, it is the leading cause of laughter - real laughter. I'm talking about spontaneous, involuntary spasms of genuine mirth. Artificially induced chortling needn't apply. Laughter is caused by the sudden and favorable resolution of an anxiety. Humor is art's ugly sister whom we exhort instead of exalt, but some art - like Yue Minjun's toothy self-portraits or even ancient hieroglyphics of people with cat or bird heads - can make me laugh. Music is more apt to make me cry. Laughter is an effect, not a cause. It is a reaction to, and a symptom of humor. We yawn, we sneeze, we laugh. Laughing is a physical paroxysm that is good for the heart due to stress relief… Continue reading… 3 comments

Back in the 80s, artist Richard Prince took a picture of a picture of the Marlboro Man and sold it as art. The original photo by Jim Krantz was part of an ad campaign to sell cigarettes. Talk about "branding!" What Prince did was liberate a cultural icon, the cowboy, from the sales force. His re-image is sort of a parody - humor so sophisticated that it's not even funny. The dialog between those two seemingly identical images is not about craft, but meaning. Did Prince's copy lessen the value of the original photo? No, I'd say Krantz's stock went up on the notoriety of his cowboy and its doppelganger. Similarly, Shepard Fairey's "Obama" portrait, appropriated from an API photo, now hangs in the National Gallery with compliments from photographer Mannie Garcia… Continue reading… 4 comments

I wrote a new song and painted a picture based on the lyrics. It all started when my fingers stumbled across an A-minor-2nd chord on the guitar. That feverish tone cluster has a half-step interval between B and C at its core, dissonant but in a good way. I usually compose instrumental music which equates to abstract art but a song is narrative, hence the picture. The watercolor-pencil drawing was done afterward but the image evolved in my mind's eye as I worked on the music. The words describe idle pleasantries and the psychological relationship between this man and woman. The picture is a still-life in multiple exposures. Life is not a dream but it's stranger than fiction. The music engages the mind to explore the space of this painting… Continue reading… 2 comments

Looking at Raphael's painting, The Deposition of Christ, one can only imagine the preparation he put into that masterpiece: the finely orchestrated chaos of forms and figures depicting the somber entombment. His style was less dramatic than that of Michelangelo or Leonardo but more earthly and humanistic. This piece of work is strong and moving in its pathos. It transforms a sacred written chronicle into a believable illusion that engages the viewer with the narrative and not just the artist's hand. It was in 1508 when Raphael painted that picture, a recreated vision of an event that occurred in the year thirty something. I wonder how the scene might look if someone had been able to snap a photo way back then and there at Gol'gotha… Continue reading… 7 comments

Art was no longer imitating life but vice versa, so Garathustra chucked it all and moved up north to live in a bat cave. He scrawled pictures of moose and beavers on the walls with wild berries and lead a hungry, horny, but mostly happy life for many years until he finally went nuts and came back to civilization where all that was left of art were video games and air guitar that anyone could play like a superstar. "Art is dead" he proclaimed. "WTF?" everyone twittered. "Virtual reality cannot be without real reality." Thus spake Garathustra. Old-schoolers still slung paint while the new ones pushed pixels. Some had artistic vision and others, not so much. Art became a competitive sport. Flame wars broke out on the Internet so Gar left cyberspace for nature… Continue reading… 3 comments

This visual abstraction seems electromagnetic: a bristling force field all centrifugal and kinetic and laughing at gravity too, but is it some galactic spiral like a cosmic pinwheel in 3K soup or is this nebular nooky the nucleus of some organic germ cell or a runny egg? Is it a nautilus or just water down the drain? A faint octogram scrawled on the surface dissolves in the flux as swervy vectors radiate to a backbeat rhythm. One can almost hear the harmonic overtones that are clearly seen. It has a musical timbre; a shimmering tremolo in sweet syrup that usurps the suck and gurgle of chaos… Continue reading… 3 comments

I had just sat down to read The Matrix and Philosophy when I realized...there are squirrels on my roof. I can't see them, but I can see their shadows on the lawn as I look out of the window on this sunny morning. I'm reminded of Plato's Cave: the one with the campfire inside and the prisoners beyond that, facing the back wall so that they can never see anything but shadows cast from the fire light. My world view from here on my comfortable leather couch does have its parallels with that ancient scenario. The cave allegory highlights the gap between shadow and substance; appearance and reality. But unlike those prisoners who know of nothing about the world outside of shadows on the wall, I recognize that there probably are squirrels loping along the ridge of my roof… Continue reading… 10 comments

In this age of conspiracy theories, it's no surprise that artist David Hockney's book "Secret Knowledge" caused a flap some years ago. In it he purports that many of history's great painters used optical devices like lenses, mirrors, and primitive cameras in the creation of their works. Omigosh! I've not yet read that book, but I'm amused by the fervor with which the debunkists mock Hockney and his theory. Surely he can't really believe that "the Old Masters didn't know how to draw" as one detractor fumes, adding that it's Hockney who can't paint or draw. Oh, the acrimony! The project is a work of art in itself just to spark such dialogue… Continue reading… 5 comments

The funniest part of "The Divine Comedy" is when Barbariccia signals his demons to march by tooting his butt trumpet. Otherwise, the story isn't too amusing. Dante Alighieri's epic poem, written in medieval Italy, chronicles his trip through hell, purgatory, and paradise (guided mostly by the ancient poet Virgil). Dante's trilogy brought the Italian language up to speed in the world of literature. The first of the three books is "Inferno" and it's a hellish read in any language - but at least in Italian it rhymes. The Holy Bible portrays hell as the "gnawing and gnashing of teeth" and such. Dante's description is even more prolific. It's a freakish nightmare of a story. The torments have wretched souls howling like dogs, pale and colorless with sores and mold-encrusted orifices… Continue reading… 1 comment

Well, here's one more thing that I invented, discovered, or developed only to find it has already been done. In this case it's the practice of putting visual art into words: making art from art, prose from paint. Sure, writing about art is like dancing about architecture; I've been doing that for years, but I guess the ancient Greeks were it doing too -- Homer, Aristophanes, and all those guys verbing on their favorite temples and sculptures and stuff. Come to find, there's even a word for it: ekphrasis. John Keats was still doing it ages later with his Ode to a Grecian Urn. Any Google genius can find a whole ekphrastic universe out there - creative writers waxing poetic about other people's artwork… Continue reading… 4 comments

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Pettry amzanig huh? Words, not letters, are the building blocks of language and spell-checking is optional in the human brain. Wondering if this self-correcting phenomenon also occurred in visual art, I randomly took an image of Georges Seurat's familiar masterpiece "A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte," divided it into 49 equal parts and turned each part upside down… Continue reading… 3 comments

I was at a potluck supper at the church when the reverend leaned over my folding chair and asked me, "Did you hear about the skunk that went to church?" "No," I replied. "He sat in his own 'pew!'" I had to laugh, although I prefer humor from certified comedians. Clergyman should offer homilies, not homonyms. Don't get me wrong, Reverend Liscomb is a cool guy -- stops by now and then to borrow my belt-sander or talk theology, the Nicene Creed and whatnot. But that skunk joke stuck in my brain like a pop-song. It was like trying not to think about a blue nun or a holy mackerel. So, at home I checked it out on my Model 1300 Laf-Graf humor analyzer. Sure enough, it was a matter of semantics. That verbal quip hinged on the double meaning of the word "pew… Continue reading… 5 comments

In the realm of aesthetics, music spans the gap between matter and metaphysics. Music is an aesthetic model for all forms of art. Music is all math and vibes. It doesn't inform us like words or pictures do. Its "language" is a balancing act of sound and silence based on syntax not semantics. Tones have no meaning but it's their relations to each other - the differences between them -- of which music is made. Music and art aesthetics are independent of the physical world. Beethoven was stone deaf when he wrote his Ninth. Absolute music doesn't tell stories but it evokes feelings. If I'm moved by a good guitar solo, it's not just due to modes and moods, sympathy or empathy, but by the genius of the artist -- the sense that he or she has captured lightning in a bottle… Continue reading… 6 comments

It doesn't seem like a hundred years ago that Wilhelm Worringer published Abstraction and Empathy (Abstraktion und Einf_hlung). His thesis on the psychology of style is a primer on modernism that has influenced artists from Kandinsky onward. Written just after Cezanne painted his "Bathers" and a year before Picasso's "Les Demoiselles," it marked the shift in the arts from academic towards the primitive and linear styles rediscovered in artifacts like African tribal masks and Japanese woodcut prints. It anticipated Cubism and Art Deco too. It's a freeze-dried view of the organic nature of things. This book challenged my perspective on abstract art… Continue reading… 6 comments

Here are my thoughts about abstract art and this piece that I created with watercolor pencils. When the eye sends light signals to the brain, those impulses goes through the Lateral Geniculate Nucleii to the visual cortex (the projection screen in the back of the head) which then routes the signals back to the LGN via the information processing channels of the "subconscious" including memory, associations, personality and all other so-called intentional states of mind like beliefs and desires which are extensions of the intellect and emotions, and which account for things like empathy and spirituality in art and religion. Without this perceptual feedback, the owner of the brain cannot recognize the image before his eyes… Continue reading… 6 comments

It is almost as if Henri Cartier-Bresson could make himself invisible, judging by the way the people in his photographs seem unaffected by - if even aware of - the great French photographer's presence. His images are completely candid; no posers allowed. His photos are value-added portraits of reality. He could extract drama out of the commonplace, and always found the balance point between narration and abstraction. Cartier-Bresson, whose life touched every decade in the 20th century and beyond, was friends with another Henri - the artist Matisse. Maybe that's who influenced the strangely decorative aspect to Cartier-Bresson's photographs. Henri Cartier-Bresson's images are gray-scale compositions with somewhat musical qualities… Continue reading… 2 comments

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder whether you're looking at an Ingres' odalisque, a Grecian urn, a Gibson arch-top, or Gucci heels. For everything from Delacroix to dirty pictures, you need vision to enjoy art. As I have my head examined by the experts here at The Peterson Institute of Arts and Sciences Research Laboratory and Gift Shop, my eyeball is a theme park. Let me walk you through it while the venerated Doctor D. L. Rayburn stands by on the outside. So don your wet-suits for a trip thru the vitreous humor, the fluid that fills the eyeball - but please, no flash photography. If hypodermic needles and quivering eyeballs make you squeamish then just relax and... We're in. You can take off the rubber suits and put on these - whoa! Hang on, the orb is rotating… Continue reading… 3 comments

Drawings are like currency in the memory bank. Flipping through my sketchbook, I was transported back to Italy, to a Tuscan hillside village called Radda in Chianti. I'd already drawn a picture of the valley that smelled good from our balcony, so I grabbed my pad and pencils one sunny afternoon and walked with my wife down the cobblestone via looking for something to sketch. Drawing helps me see like writing helps me think. Elizabeth veered off to scope out a leather shop, so I found a shady bench in front of a house across from a fountain and church steps, and started doodling. Before long, two kids, a boy of four or five and his little sister, came out of nowhere and hopped up on the bench with me. They leaned one each on my shoulders to watch me draw. I paused..… Continue reading… 2 comments

I went to the Louvre some time ago, that fancy art museum in Paris. The details are sketchy now but I remember my wife Elizabeth and I walked along Les Tuileries past a giant Ferris wheel and a gold statue of Joan of Arc. Not to be all touristy, we went past the big glass pyramid at the Louvre and in the side street entrance. I was on a mission to see just one painting: Jacque Louis David's "Oath of the Horatii." I'd seen it in a picture book and even did a sketch, but aside from that painting I didn't care about anything else except avoiding crowds. I didn't need to see Venus or Victory or Liberty - and certainly not the Mona Lisa. No maps, no guides, no headphones. And no Mona. That would be typical. I'd hate to be typical. I don't run with the pack. I'm a contrarian… Continue reading… 4 comments

Color has a dual-personality: It is light and it is pigment. When we see a certain color, we are actually seeing the wavelength of light which is not absorbed by that pigment. The eye is most sensitive to yellow-green light, but it also makes "warm" colors like red seem to advance towards the viewer while "cool" colors like blue recede. The "warm-cool" labels are arbitrary. They could just as well be classified as "loud-quiet" or "emotional-intelligent." They are as psychological as Kate Kiernan's "Abstraction #4" is compelling. Colors can affect physical reactions: the color red can speed the heart, and yellow may increase metabolism, but these are just common effects of any novel stimuli… Continue reading… 5 comments