Week 10: ANCHOR (Search)

Watteau, Pierrot

We talked a bit in class about this painting. Aaron asked why Watteau would have chosen the subject--a very good question. You might look into the Pierrot figure--and the story of Commedia dell'Arte--and the notion of "type" in general. Another word for this is figura--the source being Erich Auerbach in his classic book, Mimesis...

Week 9: MEND (Renew)

Giorgio Morandi

Week 8: BRIDGE

Whistler, Nocturne in Gray and Silver-The Thames

Water Night
Muriel Rukeyser

The sky behind the farthest shore
Is darker than I go to sleep.

Blackness of water, the crater at the core,
The many blacknesses begin to gleam.

Rivers of darkness bind me to this land
While overhead the moon goes far to shine,

And now nothing nobody is my own.
The motion of streams glitters before my eyes:

Sources and entrances, they lie no more,
Now darkly keep, now flow now bright

Until all wandering end, a hand
Shine, and the leadings homeward of delight

Seem to begin my deepest sleep
To make a lake of dream.

Week 7: SHARE

Joan Mitchell

Something to think about in this  Frank O'Hara poem following--first, the way personal life and city  life (world life!) are mixed together--inseparable, really--so that what's on the inside becomes part of what's on the outside--and what's on the outside, in... Joan Mitchell made the painting above about the same time that Frank O'Hara wrote the poem. Interesting to consider the properties they share in this regard...


Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it


Frank O'Hara

_____

And as mentioned in class, read this piece by Alva Noe¨ (on the philosophy faculty at Berkeley). It will relate to our discussion next week of the linear and the painterly...

What Art Unveils: Unlike neuroscience, it can help us frame a better picture of our human nature.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/what-art-unveils/?emc=eta1

Week 6: CARRY

Lost Fan, Hotel California, Fresno, 1923

In Fresno it is 1923, and your shy father
Has picked up a Chinese fan abandoned
Among the corsages crushed into the dance floor.
On it, a man with scrolls is crossing a rope bridge
Over gradually whitening water.
If you look closely you can see brush strokes intended
To be trout.
You can see the whole scene
Is centuries older
Than the hotel, or Fresno in the hard glare of morning.
And the girl
Who used this fan to cover her mouth
Or breasts under the cool brilliance
Of chandeliers
Is gone on a train sliding along tracks that are
Pitted with rust.
All this is taking her south,
And as your father opens the fan now you can see
The rope bridge tremble and the lines of concentration
Come over the face of this thin scholar
Who makes the same journey alone each year
Into the high passes ...


Larry Levis

Week 5: TEND

Morris Graves, Winter Flower, 1954

I think Morris Graves pretty much says it all. So for now, a word and a painting. If something else occurs, will post during the week...

Maybe this--by José Martí...


CULTIVO UNA ROSA BLANCA... (Verso XXXIX)

Cultivo una rosa blanca,
En julio como en enero,
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca.

Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazón con que vivo,
Cardo ni oruga cultivo:
Cultivo la rosa blanca.

_____

I have a white rose to tend
In July as in January;
I give it to the true friend
Who offers his frank hand to me.

And for the cruel one whose blows
Break the heart by which I live,
Thistle nor thorn do I give:
For him, too, I have a white rose.

Students' Online Notebooks F2015 - LINKS

Drawing by Judith Ktjrca

Yan Huang                               http://yanfa2015.blogspot.com/ 

Kasey Elliott                            visualxk.tumblr.com

Aaron Hobson                         http://hobsonvisual2015.blogspot.com/

Erin Daniels                             edaniels91.blogspot.com

Alexa Vaughn                          http://alexavaughn.blogspot.com

Judith Ktjrca                            http://stepfalterstand.blogspot.com/

Robin Chandler                       https://robinlchandler.wordpress.com

Week 4: GATHER

Romare Bearden, Big Sister, collage, 1940s?

I was delighted with the conversation we had about this Bearden collage--starting with Aaron's "I could look at this a long time..." Hope to continue in this way--leads to a very worthwhile time together, these Tuesday evenings...

Here's the Langston Hughes (you probably all know it from years ago, but sometimes poems assume new meanings when you need to read them.) That's certainly been true with me. I'll post two--the first well known (The Negro Speaks of Rivers), and the second (Walls),  which hits a different note--one which runs through much of Langstion Hughes work (because he was responsible and aware?) where a certain sadness or lament in feeling is balanced (redeemed?) by a depth of understanding... There's something of this in Bearden, too--although rather than "sadness" I'd say--an astute awareness of the world around... Which in its own way can lead to celebration...


The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes

I've known rivers
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

_______ 

Walls

Four walls can hold
So much pain,
Four wall that shield
From the wind and rain.

Four walls can shelter
So much sorrow
Garnered rom yesterday
And held for tomorrow.


Langston Hughes, Collected Poems

"Gather up In the arms of your love--Those who expect No love from above." (from his poem, Prayer)

Art and Image

James Ensor, Seascape, 1880

Hello group-- to consider in terms of what we make and discuss in VS280-- a quote from Jed Perl's article in NYRB (Jed Perl, The Perils of Painting Now, NYRB, 24 September 2015)
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/sep/24/perils-painting-now/

"Much of the trouble in the visual arts today comes from our increasing dependence on the Internet, where all the richness and complexity of an artist’s painterly surfaces is reduced to pixels. Paintings are flattened out by the Internet. And the paintings that “take” to digital reproduction almost invariably trump the ones that demand the direct response of a human eye. The Internet, with its clicks and links, threatens to deny us the gradual, evolving, unmediated acquaintance with an artist’s actual work that I’ve had with Baker’s. In order to understand an artist’s work, we need repeated opportunities to see how qualities of surface and texture—what might be called facture—do and do not reflect deeper impulses."

____
I'm using three James Ensor paintings from 1880 as an example.  The one above is probably most accessible. (what do I mean by this?)  Here's another Ensor with a few more direct challenges:

James Ensor, 1880

You can see Ensor's struggle in the work--and at the same time, that seeing the original is the only way to go. So, take this as an encouragement. There's a very good example in the Berkeley Museum (reopening in January 2016)--shown here in a not-so-great photo:

James Ensor, Seascape, oil on canvas, 8 7/8 x 11 in., 1881. (BAM collection

Looking at this painting has always been one of the reasons I return to visit BAM.

I think about this issue every time I post an image of a painting (or other work which depends on touch). Seeing the qualities of an original is indispensable. The German writer and critic, Walter Benjamin, wrestled with this almost a century ago. He used the term "aura" to talk about the qualities of an original work seen "at a certain distance." Benjamin intends the word "distance" to have many meanings...
____

Note that Perl, in the article, uses contemporary examples. 
 

WEEK 2: APPROACH (NEAR)

Pierre Bonnard, Corner of Paris, oil on cardboard, 1905

The Waking
Theodoere Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

____

They say that in English, words with roots from Latin are less direct--whereas roots from Anglo-Saxon are more earthy, vivid, immediate. Consider with the pair of new words. Where do they take you--psychologically as well as visually...

We looked at...

Tuesday 8 September 2015 (TOUCH)

Cezanne (different reproduction qualities)

Robert Frank (The Americans) photographer

Pierre Bonnard / paintings, the pear tree, photo of Marthe
Eduouard Vuillard
Henri Matisse

David Hockney
R.B. Kitaj (after Goya)

Hans Holbein (drawings, paintings--The Ambassadors, Erasmus)

Sonny Bono (moustache) Cher (tiara) / Willie Nelson / Vogue cover drawing

Added at end of semester, as a reminder of some of the themes we touhed on:

Week 1: TOUCH

Drawing by Hans Holbein

Hans Holbein made this drawings in England in the 1530's. Yet his figures look as if they come from today. Let's consider why--and how this shows (is seen) in the drawing itself.

A poem in parallel--

The Journey
James Wright

Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind the town,
We too were swept out, out by the wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.

Wind had been blowing across the hills
For days, and everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything we saw, even
Some small children scampering along a road,
Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.

We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,
And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.

I found the spider web there, whose hinges
Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,
Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging
And scattering shadows among shells and wings.
And then she stepped into the center of air
Slender and fastidious, the golden hair
Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,
While ruins crumbled on every side of her.
Free of the dust, as though a moment before
She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.

I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped
Away in her own good time.

Many men
Have searched all over Tuscany and never found
What I found there, the heart of the light
Itself shelled and leaved, balancing
On filaments themselves falling. The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins, and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who surely
Will bury their own, don't worry.

Course Description

Visual Studies 280: Graduate Seminar
Fall 2015 / 1-3 units (CCN 04283)
Tuesday Evenings / 6-9:30pm / Room 170 Wurster
Anthony Dubovsky
 
This is a class about imagination and ideas. A road trip, perhaps—or a voyage. We begin each week with a theme—often a single word---as point of departure. Each person in the group does a project in response—a drawing, a painting, a collage—the medium is open. In the following class we look at the work, and a conversation ensues. And then, a new word.
 
Note that the hand is important throughout--how the sense of touch becomes a guide.
 
Following this format, the class develops a certain rhythm--a kind of opening. Not just in terms of skill (although skill can play a part), but more in finding the right visual language to give form to one’s feelings about and understanding of the surrounding world. A challenge that carries over into any of the design fields—and beyond….
 
Important: Since discussion is central to each class, students need to be fully confident in spoken English—both comprehension and conversation.
 
Required: One project each week, made with energy and commitment... Attendance at all class meetings, and a wellcrafted book with reproductions of your work, including a short essay about your journey, due at the end of the term. Open to grad students and some seniors from all departments, but limited in enrollment to 12 students. This can be a good place to explore your initial thesis ideas.
 
If you're interested, send Anthony Dubovsky an e-mail with a paragraph or two about yourself and your backgound in the arts, along with 2-3 jpegs of your work. Make sure your name is on each jpeg. Send before August 20 to the following email address: chambersstreet[at]hotmail.com. Earlier applications will receive priority.
 
Painting: Anthony Dubovsky, Anhelo, acrylic on cardboard, 2013