An old Chinese proverb says, “Do not grasp the brush before the spirit and the thoughts are concentrated.” This part of the creative process — the beginning part — needs to be handled with the same sort of attention as given to the later stroking. This is where you envision the potential; this is where you sort out the variables for the dish you are about to concoct. Why go for the same automatic cold rice, when almond gai-ding or egg foo-yong could be in the wok?
On Monday evenings in New York City you can go to the Jazz Standard on 27th Street and hear the Mingus Big Band. Behind a plain metal door and at the bottom of a dark staircase is a space not much bigger than a suburban rumpus room, where fourteen specialized cats blast the organized chaos with free improvisation — tight, then loose, then tight again. The melodic storytelling is of the late jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus.
It’s a matter of getting an olive into your martini from across the bar. According to the handbook for “extreme bartending,” this sort of performance excites clients, alleviates boredom, speeds consumption, and sells liquor. Recently, while witnessing an example of extreme teriyaki, I was reaching for the wasabi when a flaming cleaver landed dangerously close to my hand. In any case, the next morning I had to have my suit dry-cleaned
A small painting was brought into a gallery under a woman’s arm. “My ex bought it at an estate auction,” she said. “It’s mine now, but I’d like to sell.” The dealer had represented the artist for many years, so was familiar with his paintings. Formerly, they came to him direct from the easel. More recently, they arrived once in a while, like this one — by way of custodians ready to pass along the provenance. To this dealer, the artist’s larches and firs, sky flicks and French greys had been burned onto the back of his eyelids. And the calligraphic name, laid-in lower right like clockwork, was the signature move
I used to know a photographer by the name of Roloff Beny. Roloff was responsible for a dozen big-format coffee table books. Persia, Bridge of Turquoise was well known, as well as his famous To Every Thing There is a Season. Roloff picked an area and went through it thoroughly. A friend of the Shah of Iran, he once took a red-carpeted year to travel that country in his Land Rover. Roloff generally arose before dawn and was already set up at first light. The midday sun found him asleep in the FWD. I never did figure out where or when his faithful driver slept. As evening and the “magic hour” approached, Roloff was back on the job. “As an artist you should be in business until the time when you almost can’t see,” he used to say. A few years ago he met an untimely end in his bathtub in Rome
My hometown of Vancouver serves as a gateway to some of the remote hearts of Canada’s First Nations communities. The city could be seen as merely a pass-through for purpose-driven travellers, artists and historians en route to the islands and forests of her ancestral peoples. Vancouver’s neighbourhoods-in-transition seem to be invisible. For urban dwellers, the contributions and struggles of many First Nations are noticeable most often in the form of polished, re-contextualized objects of art sold on Gallery Row or can be seen as breathtaking exhibits on the other side of town in the Museum of Anthropology
Anyone who takes a lingering look at the work of Egon Schiele can’t help but be impressed. A brief, bright star in Austrian art (he died in a flu epidemic in 1918, age 28), his drawings, his painted drawings, and his drawn paintings are electrifying. Depraved subject matter aside, his is a line to behold.
Egon’s markers move slowly and intelligently, often nervously toward description. His form-follows-function lines are an education. An understanding of anatomy is combined with the sensibility of Art Nouveau. Bones morph, flesh purples and becomes visceral. Line holds colour in place. Expression is often understated
In times like these, artists may examine their role as grabbers of attention, sources of information or providers of comfort and hope. Some find it impossible to separate a creative voice from one that reveals truth and engages action. Some wouldn’t dream of separating art from activism.
In the 2015 documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” director Liz Garbus unpacks the story of 3-year-old Eunice Waymon, a classical piano prodigy in Tyron, North Carolina. The sixth child of a Methodist preacher, Eunice performed at revivals and walked across town to study Bach at her piano teacher’s house. By nineteen, she’d made it to New York but
A subscriber wrote, “I know by experience that art-making is a conduit to something higher than workaday life — but I’m finding it harder and harder to overcome depression about the low status of my day job and the low status of visual artists. It’s not just that painters are viewed with some contempt; increasingly, our work just isn’t viewed at all. Look at the entertainment section of any newspaper. It will have articles on just about every other art form but painting. It seems that painting is terminally ill or dead. At age 42, I have the typical dream
Painting on location is an event. One begins with the idea of where to go and then takes the trouble to get into that spot. Once there, gear is set up and brushes dipped with the knowledge that light and temperature are fickle and fleeting co-conspirators. A special kind of grit is gained from the entire ceremony — accidents and frustrations mix with the thrill of the unknown. From the corner of one’s own garden to the planet’s most pristine crags, a location waits to be painted. With location work, we’re rewarded with unrepeatable moments and wisdom — the resulting paintings but a record of a larger devotion to the natural world