I asked www.mage.space for a picture of orange blossoms.
As you can see, the blossoms are... orange.
Singularity Alert Level lowered from 3 to 2.
Thank you.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
10/08/2014
Not an empty longing. A full longing.
 |
| Forest Interior, 1850, Barend Cornelis Koekkoek |
When I saw this picture it reminded me of Little Dorrit.
And suddenly my heart was overflowing. My spirit welling up.
Oh, how I sometimes long to be in an imaginary place, in a world whose volume is all Love; where shadows do not express darkness, but serve to prove the Light; where the falling leaves, and the sear and sallow garden reveal a Beauty strong and abiding; where I am among the book people, favorite characters, deathless and True.
The longing is so full it grows to an ache that stops my senses and becomes a focus in itself, a concentration to see and understand such a multidimensional fullness.
Spending many moments in that world of Love and Light and Beauty and Truth makes it difficult to re-enter the "real" world. This old here-and-now seems flat and queerly fluorescent-lit and artificial.
Yet I am so grateful for the glimpse of the wide, full world.
Jerusalem, my happy home,
When shall I come to thee?
When shall my sorrows have an end?
Thy joys when shall I see?
O happy harbor of the saints!
O sweet and pleasant soil!
In thee no sorrow may be found,
No grief, no care, no toil.
... Our sweet is mixed with bitter gall,
Our pleasure is but pain:
Our joys scarce last the looking on,
Our sorrows still remain...
"Jerusalem My Happy Home" -- "The original manuscript in the British Museum, dated around 1583, is inscribed, “A song made by F. B. P. to the tune of DIANA.” The author is thought to have been a Catholic priest who based the hymn on the writings of St. Augustine." [ from CyberHymnal ]
6/19/2014
Draw your own conclusions
In September of 1970 I was in the 7th grade. For some reason the controllers of the school decided it would be more High School preparatory to give us four teachers and make us move to four different classrooms during the day.
Mrs. Leggett taught us Spanish, History, and Art.
Yes, "Art" was part of the curriculum.
I remember watching a film strip* about how to paint with watercolors. And then we were issued a baby-food jar with a little water, and told to take our little tin paint box (with its seven or eight hard lozenges of wettable pigments) outside, and paint something realistic. On some kind of issued paper that was slightly thicker and more textured than newsprint**.
Another time, we were told to get out our collection of six watercolor felt-tip pens and told to draw a human face -- oh, we had plenty of instruction in technique, for we had watched a film strip about the proportions of the human face (is it really that far from the tip of my nose to the top of my head?).
Another time Mrs. Leggett put a goldfish in a bowl on her desk, and told us to pencil sketch the goldfish. No film strip that time.
Need I say that my approach to creating two-dimensional art is more impressionistic than representational? My outdoor watercolor of the side of a building with Italian cypress was a warped and soupy sampler of muddy colors. My "face" looked like maybe an Andy Warhol design of a fallen soufflé -- in neon lights. And I gave up on the goldfish and drew an example of pisces as one might find him in a mosaic in the ruins of Pompeii.
It turned out that my lack of realism was Bad Art. It was a Failure, of temperament as well as technique. It was probably part of the Willful Maliciousness of Boys.
We received letter grades in Art. Mrs. Leggett gave me Cs and Ds. (The Art grade went nicely with my Math grade that year.)
And what did I learn from 7th Grade Art Class with Mrs. Leggett? *****
- - -
* It's kinda like a slide show***.
** That's what they printed newspapers**** on.
*** It's kinda like a Power Point presentation.
**** It's kinda like a cross between a book and a web site.
***** See title of post, above.
Mrs. Leggett taught us Spanish, History, and Art.
Yes, "Art" was part of the curriculum.
I remember watching a film strip* about how to paint with watercolors. And then we were issued a baby-food jar with a little water, and told to take our little tin paint box (with its seven or eight hard lozenges of wettable pigments) outside, and paint something realistic. On some kind of issued paper that was slightly thicker and more textured than newsprint**.
Another time, we were told to get out our collection of six watercolor felt-tip pens and told to draw a human face -- oh, we had plenty of instruction in technique, for we had watched a film strip about the proportions of the human face (is it really that far from the tip of my nose to the top of my head?).
Another time Mrs. Leggett put a goldfish in a bowl on her desk, and told us to pencil sketch the goldfish. No film strip that time.
Need I say that my approach to creating two-dimensional art is more impressionistic than representational? My outdoor watercolor of the side of a building with Italian cypress was a warped and soupy sampler of muddy colors. My "face" looked like maybe an Andy Warhol design of a fallen soufflé -- in neon lights. And I gave up on the goldfish and drew an example of pisces as one might find him in a mosaic in the ruins of Pompeii.
It turned out that my lack of realism was Bad Art. It was a Failure, of temperament as well as technique. It was probably part of the Willful Maliciousness of Boys.
We received letter grades in Art. Mrs. Leggett gave me Cs and Ds. (The Art grade went nicely with my Math grade that year.)
And what did I learn from 7th Grade Art Class with Mrs. Leggett? *****
- - -
* It's kinda like a slide show***.
** That's what they printed newspapers**** on.
*** It's kinda like a Power Point presentation.
**** It's kinda like a cross between a book and a web site.
***** See title of post, above.
6/22/2013
Art Criticism
[a repost from June 2011 when crowndot.com was a Posterous (R.I.P.) blog]
So this little communication-challenged man comes up to the parts counter at work, and I am totally not understanding what he is trying to ask me. Subject? Verb? Object? -- He hasn't filled in any of the blanks for me.
"Eesss a, eess, uh . . . khow you say? Uh, you have pepper?," he asked.
"I'm sorry? Pardon me?," I attempted to ask for clarification.
"Uh, you khave uh pen a pepper?"
I handed him a ball point pen and a clipboard loaded with copy paper. This is his illustration:
That is an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper. And that is his drawing. Really. This is what I deal with day after day. For their own safety, people with this tenuous a grasp on reality should not be allowed to roam about unsupervised. Let alone be allowed to work on large equipment. He was trying to draw one of these:
Aha! I see your are cleverly and playfully deconstructing the construction industry! However I find this work menacing as well, in that the aura of tension created by the minisculization of the scribbled signifier seems very disturbing in light of the accessibility of the work. With regard to the issue of content, the disjunctive transmutation of quasi-biomorphic forms threatens to disintegrate the inherent overspecificity. In sum, the work verges on codifying our own participation in the critical dialogue of the last decade. Or something.
So this little communication-challenged man comes up to the parts counter at work, and I am totally not understanding what he is trying to ask me. Subject? Verb? Object? -- He hasn't filled in any of the blanks for me.
"Eesss a, eess, uh . . . khow you say? Uh, you have pepper?," he asked.
"I'm sorry? Pardon me?," I attempted to ask for clarification.
"Uh, you khave uh pen a pepper?"
I handed him a ball point pen and a clipboard loaded with copy paper. This is his illustration:
Aha! I see your are cleverly and playfully deconstructing the construction industry! However I find this work menacing as well, in that the aura of tension created by the minisculization of the scribbled signifier seems very disturbing in light of the accessibility of the work. With regard to the issue of content, the disjunctive transmutation of quasi-biomorphic forms threatens to disintegrate the inherent overspecificity. In sum, the work verges on codifying our own participation in the critical dialogue of the last decade. Or something.
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