Heaven

This morning I woke up early
and treated Manolo & the boys with this:

Organic Homemade Butter

and organic No-Knead Bread
The recipes are so easy it's amazing.
My boy's faces
were the best reward!

Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Looking up

Master, placid are
All the hours
We lose,
If, in losing them,
Like in a vase,
We put flowers.

(fragment of a poem by Ricardo Reis, aka Fernando Pessoa)

Tommi Toija, the author of the above sculptures, has an exhibition at the Institut Finlandais in Paris until the end of June.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MEN OF TOMORROW? - new solo show

(Image: Goodbye Metropolis - Caledonia Road area, London)

My new solo show 'Whatever Happened to the Men of Tomorrow?' opens on Thursday 4th June at Andipa Gallery in London. It features brand new images of installations that I have been placing around London over the past year. It runs until the 27th June. More images to follow over the next couple of weeks....

Galison

I was approached by
Galison last summer
to make a birdie themed illustration
for their '09 Holiday card collection
and it is now available :)

I also licensed
four of my birdies
that make a really charming
boxed Note Card set
that includes five of each
of these little guys.

The ABC of Birds

I created this ABC of birds poster
for the 7th issue of LMNOP magazine.

Click here to download a free copy
of Issue No 7 of LMNOP Magazine

And read the fun questions

I answered on page 2.

It is an entire issue dedicated to the alphabet.
There are 12 x 16 prints
available at my Etsy shop.

PETER MAX

"Mistah Kurtz, he dead"

Like Andy Warhol and LeRoy Neiman, Peter Max was a talented, hard working illustrator before he became a pop culture phenomenon. He studied for years with the great teacher Frank Reilly at the Art Students League in New York and learned the skills of a serious artist.

In 1963, Max was selected to paint a jazz record cover. The young and ambitious artist worked hard to finish the project on time, but his art director was less than enthused. Max begged for a one day extension and started over with a totally different approach.

He dug deeper, stayed up most of the night, and produced the following cover which won a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators for the best advertising art of 1963:

One look at this lovely picture tells you that Max was an artist who had what it takes. Note how the highest contrast and the sharpest focused lines are right on that piano keyboard where he wants to direct your attention. Beautiful.

A few years later, Max hit the jackpot with his "Cosmic" art style, which became wildly successful in the 1960s. His trademark psychedelic look soon adorned everything from perfume bottles to airplanes. Max sold millions of posters and limited edition prints and became immensely wealthy.

Max enjoyed the celebrity lifestyle. His personal chauffer drove him around Manhattan in Max's custom designed Rolls Royce. He painted Ringo Starr's piano and performed exhibition painting on the white house lawn. He was featured on the cover of Life Magazine.

Max now had complete artistic freedom. No more deadlines, no more unreasonable client demands, no more unappreciative art directors. He could just look within his heart and paint whatever he found there. His fan base would buy anything with his signature on it. He began making his signature bigger and bigger.



The funny thing is, as his signature got bigger, his talent got smaller:





The artist who started out as a sharp minded and keen eyed competitor became artistically flabby. Here is his painting entitled "I love the World," depicting an angel embracing the planet.

Without the benefit of anyone to challenge or reject his work, Max sank deeper and deeper into a morass of narcissism. Here are some official facts about Max from his web site:

He loves to hear amazing facts about the universe

Peter's early childhood impressions had a profound influence on his psyche, weaving the fabric that was to become the tapestry of his full creative expression.

This new style developed as a spontaneous creative urge, following Max's meeting with Swami Satchidananda, an Indian Yoga master who taught him meditation and the spiritual teachings of the East.

In the 1970s, Max gave up his commercial pursuits and went into retreat to begin painting in earnest....

[I]n October, 1989, Max unveiled his "40 Gorbys," a colorful homage to Mikhail Gorbachev. Prophetically, a few weeks later, communism fell in Eastern Europe....

Max could be forgiven for his nutty philosophy, but when he gained the freedom to say or do anything, his art clearly suffered.

Where oh where is that art director who once told Max to go back and try again?

Artists and critics chafe at any restriction on the artist's freedom. In fact, it seems that illustration is held in lower regard than "fine" art mainly because the illustrator's vision is subject to restrictions from some client or art director. There is some truth to that criticism, but Peter Max demonstrates how the lack of restrictions can be just as hazardous to the quality of art.

In my view, Peter Max, along with Andy Warhol and Leroy Neiman, are good examples of artists whose work was spoiled and made rotten by excessive freedom. Today's fine art scene offers many additional examples of artists whose self-indulgent work has little relevance or value outside their own cloistered circle. When the world provides resistance to an artist (whether in the form of a deadline, or a client's specifications, or poverty, or totalitarian censorship) it can have a beneficial effect on the art. As the old proverb says, "the wind in a man's face makes him wise."

Artistic freedom can help or hurt art. But if great art can be produced in a prison cell or a concentration camp, it's silly for the fine art community to suggest that it can't also be produced within the constraints of a commercial art studio.

Fish Frame

I decided to separate my fishies
and Photoshop them onto some vintage postcards.

Meet Finn,

Franklin,

Frannie,

Frida,

Floyd,

and Freddy.

I'll have them ready for the shop on Monday.
I framed mine and displayed them
in the ledge of our living room.
The prints will be 5 x 7 inches.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Thank you so much for visiting my blog,
it's always a pleasure to have you.

Something Fishy

Click on the image to see it BIGGER
Watercolor on paper & acrylic ink
Will be available as a print
at my Etsy shop later today :)

Falling? Flying?

No fall is ever great.
The distance from the tip of the nose
to the dirt is always measured in the smallest units.
It is always ridiculous, always too human, the
concrete body against the concrete soil,
the sight losing focus, and the hands,
the hands.


Richard Beacham's drawing, at the Boxbird gallery in London.

White

Still playing with white acrylic ink & kraft paper :)
It has been pouring rain outside
every afternoon for the past couple of days...
perfect kind of weather for drawing
and drinking tea.

Kraft

Today I found a kraft paper notebook
I had totally forgotten I had
and made this little birdie
with some Sharpie markers
& white acrylic ink.

Of the daemon

I am not a person particularly given to metaphysical beliefs.
I tend to be cautious in the way I describe the world, and the parts where I allow myself to travel further are, in my perspective, mere mental experiments, or even tricks of the (artistic) trade.
Yet I wish I could simply apply Elizabeth Gilbert's advice and speak out to whatever is out there, negociating with me what comes to my mind.
It's not an easy task. The skepticism rushes in, and I am reminded by myself that, after all, it all remains a metaphor, and although I might be producing things I myself do not expect (that seems to be the rule), I do not know how my heart functions, either, or why I start to sweat or how I fall asleep. The more carefuly I look at myself, the less of what I do can be divided into conscious and unconscious activity. Ergo, I can assume creativity is also somewhere within that quasi-conscious reign that to me should appear no more familiar, or "mine", than yawning.
But, deep down inside, I am also a dreamer. I love to think I'm lucky. I like pretty formulas, and feel very precisely how sometimes things go right. There you have it: here is an opening for metaphysics. If I am so easily tempted to create all these invisible structures, strings and forces, why can't I accept the simple idea that there is someone, something, a daemon, that negociates with me everything I do? Why, for heaven's sake, not accept something that makes your life easier? For the sake of truth? In art?

The Abstraction Game: Myra Mimlitsch-Gray

The problem with abstraction is that a subjective voyage into the unknown is precisely this: subjective. And, since the exceptional quality of my experience as the creator is something distinct from the experience of the spectator, the abstraction game becomes a hide-and-seek of subjectivities, a challenge which at any moment can be called a bluff, a mere ego trip. Thus, whenever the artist moves into abstraction, whenever we receive less (of the visible image of the visible), we find ourselves in a position of risk - the risk of losing track, of losing sight of anything that rings a bell.
It is a risk we have learned to enjoy. It is a risk justified by the way our historically-bound senses receive the world, and well-defended by an astonishing number of passionate theories.
Still, I look with envy at the art lovers who find abstraction as natural as air.
Most of the time, I find it easier to discover new worlds in a stone than in an abstract sculpture.
Yet there are artists who manage to create paths that lead from the world of re-cognition, of everyday objects and images and tastes, of the mimetic pleasures of re-production, to the very limits of abstract forms.
One such artist is Myra Mimlitsch-Gray.

Take a simple object:

The effect of melting does not seem to challenge the object as such. It asks for fruit as loudly as any classic salver does. Nonetheless, it moves us towards a world where the concrete is, well, not so concrete after all:
Here we have a candelabrum, which is hardly a candelabrum any more. It has melted like a candle, apparently contradicting its main function: to withstand melting. Welcome back to the magnificent world of semiotic undoing, and sensual games with the intellect.
Too entropic for you? Why don't you try something more positive, then? Sugar and cream, anyone?

The sugar bowl is the negative of its own shape, as is the creamer... or is it that none of them actually has the shape? What are they, after all, these shapes that are to be useful, that are to serve, as if their being objects were not good enough? What is left of the representation, of the concrete, once we put it to challenge in its very heart?

Let's move back to the first picture now. The title of the work is Trunk Sections, and it is made in cast iron. A tree made of iron. Or is it a mold of a tree? (What a strange idea: a mold of a tree!) Or just a part of their trunk? And why do they seem so... wooden? What, then is the matter with them? They are like ghosts, representing something we presume might have been here, but made of another stuff, another material, another essence, defying the way we see the objectness of the object.
We can, of course, go back to seeing them as just a few pieces of iron cast and assembled to create an abstract sculpture, like so many others.
The question is: with this delicious introduction, why would we refuse the voyage?

Myra Mimlitsch-Gray has an exhibition on until June 27 at the Wexler Gallery in Philadelphia, and you can read an insightful text about her work by by David Revere McFadden here.

Stuff

...in the studio today.

If you click on the images
you can see them BIGGER :)

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 26

The great Joseph Clement Coll (1881-1921) drew like he was conducting a symphony orchestra.


From the Kelly Collection of American Illustration

Note in the following close up the range of effects Coll employed-- the difference between the fine pen lines and the broad brush strokes; the difference between the accuracy of the eyelashes and the almost abstract wiping of a dry brush on the cloak; and notice how Coll achieved the value he wanted for the background by first painting it with ink, then scratching it with a blade:   



Coll's line was vigorous and varied and confidently rendered.  No simple, monotonous shading here.  Look at how his line curls and twists and plays in ways that would not be visible to the reader of the printed page in Coll's era, but which nevertheless contributes to the overall vitality of the drawing.    





James Montgomery Flagg, another talented pen and ink artist, gave a good description of his superior, Coll:

There is no doubt that he was one of the few masters of pen and ink in the world.... He found romance in a story and doubled it, lavishly, prodigally.  He gave himself in his work instead of selling his signature on half-heated stencils. In short, he was a great artist.