Editor’s Letter

Editor’s Letter: November, 2014

“To create one’s own world takes courage.” ~Georgia O’Keeffe

Left: Jankel Andler, The Artist (1927). Private Collection

Time’s Odds and Ends

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly: what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince (1943).

Our legacy, both individually and as a culture, can be found in the mundane objects of everyday life: a photograph, trinket or souvenir, or maybe a letter. Recall, for example, the utter joy of a tornado survivor who recovers a wedding album in the rubble of a home where all else is lost. No grand gesture is needed to memorialize our brief presence here on this earth, or in the sweep of history. Memories are not cached in blocks of years or even weeks—but in moments. And objects, most small enough to hold in our hands and freighted with personal meaning serve as vivid reminders, refueling thoughts and emotions tied to those fleeting instants in the continuum of time. In other words: objects often lose their objectivity once embedded in our personal lives. xxxxxxMore

Editor’s Letter: October, 2014

“Beauty excites the sensitive soul to tears.” ~Edgar Allan Poe

Left: ‘Anatomy of the Bones of the Human Body,’ artist unknown, German, late 15th c. Staatliche Sammlung München

Wheels of Fortune

‘Past is Prologue’ is an aphorism that may thoughtlessly roll off the tongue. But, except in the broadest historical sense of the term, we don’t give much thought to its implications in daily life. I ran across an amusing story in an unlikely place (an antique automobile club newsletter) that fascinated me, in light of this old adage. With another time-worn phrase in mind—‘necessity being the mother of invention’—I thought it would be fun to share this functional design story with readers: xxxxxxMore

Editor’s Letter: August, 2014

“Jump off cliffs. Develop your wings on the way down.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Left: Andy Warhol, Ingrid the Nun (1983). Private collection

Them Bones, Them Dry Bones

Once again, another round of stories has captured media attention and the public eye regarding the true identity of da Vinci’s, Mona Lisa. It appears to be the non-mystery that stubbornly resists solution, in light of decades of forensic study and scholarly examination. And if you’ve ever had the opportunity to see the diminutive work hanging in the Louvre, encased as it is, in a hermetically-sealed steel and bomb-proof glass vault, you might wonder what the fuss is all about. Does this painting, alone in the world of masterpieces, deserve a specially-designed, express elevator to the basement of the museum in the event of a terrorist catastrophe? xxxxxxMore

Editor’s Letter: July, 2014

“Modern art…is an attempt to deal with the chaotic formlessness and swift flux of the modern city.” ~Robert A. Bone, literary scholar

Left: Salvador Dali, ‘Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln – Homage to Rothko’ (Second Version), 1976. Dali Museum, St Petersburg, FL.

Bullets in the Name of Art

www.artesmagazine.com — Big 5: Jones says her first kill was a rare African white rhino, part of her quest to bag the Big 5 African game animals (rhino, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard and lion.

What do the names Kendall Jones and Satao have in common? For those interested in the plight of endangered species, the answer is that they are, respectively, perpetrator and victim in a vicious cycle of harvesting endangered species for personal ambition. Jones is the 19-year old,Texas Tech cheerleader who set a personal quest to bag the Big Five African game animals (lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard, and White/Black rhinoceros) on a recent expedition. She gleefully announce on her Facebook page, “The first animal I ever shot was a White Rhino with a .416 Remington!!” The White rhino, which number around 20,000, are among the rarest in the world. Jones’s ultimate goal—to garner her own 15-minutes of fame with a reality TV show in 2015, where she hopes to espouse her interest in hunting and animal conservation. The death toll continued until she reached her objective, giving each photo-op her best cheerleader smile, posing with the trophy animals as though in a prom date portrait—except her companion is not the star quarterback, but a creature of the wild, very hairy…and very dead. xxxxxxMore

Editor’s Letter: May, 2014

”Art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” ~John F. Kennedy

Left: Artist(s) Unknown, ‘Street Art, New York City’ Mixed media.

Creative Activism

When I go to New York City on business, I walk. I get more walking in on the streets of the city than any day devoted to a good workout in the country. And as I walk, I observe that art is everywhere. It’s as though there’s an unwritten rule: no blank space shall go unused. Famed communication theorist, Marshall McLuhan once said ”the medium is the message;” and for the urban artist’s medium, fair game consists of every alley wall, abandoned building, construction fence, truck body and doorway.xxxxxxMore

April, 2014

“I place my mark and do not hide.” ~Isamu Naguchi, Sculptor

Left: Roy Lichtenstein, Oh, Jeff…I Love You, Too…But… (1964), oil on canvas. Private collection

Wanted: Guidance Counselors!

It was T.S. Eliot who said, “April is the cruelest month,” meaning, I suppose that the weather—and our emotional ties to it—can turn on a dime during this transition from winter to spring. As a New Englander, I am certainly familiar with this particular meteorological roller-coaster ride. But my perspective differs slightly, usually seeing the proverbial glass as half full. During these past few months, winter dealt us all its severest blow…drifts to the window frames, hurricane force winds, rain, sleet, rarely-seen tornados and snow thunder, rattling both our nerves and resolve. xxxxxxxMore

Editor’s Letter: March, 2014

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” ~Twyla Tharp

Left: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril, Dancing (1893). Private Collection

Ready, Fire…Aim!

Ijust love the way advertisers look for tie-ins between their products and any random current event. “George Washington loved independence; on his birthday you’ll love the freedom the new Jeep Wrangler gives you.” “Spring training means that baseball season is nearly upon us; hit it out of the park with the new Subway Tuna Melt sandwich!” “You rely on that carpool to get you to work on time; make sure your colon is just as regular with new Yoplait Greek Yogurt!” artes fine arts magazine

“We have art in order not to die of the truth.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Left: *Raphael, Portrait of a Young Man (Self-portrait?), 1513-14. Plundered by Nazis in Poland. Never recovered. Estimated value, $100M.

Private Eye?

It used to be that art collecting was the province of the very rich—kings and sultans, popes and emperors. Then, in the Age of Exploration, an emerging merchant class arrived on the scene, in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and England. They wanted ‘in’ because owning art was prestigious, a sign that you were traveling in the right circles. It meant that you could raise two crossed fingers at your next banquet and proudly boast, “The king and I, yup, we’re like that!” Collecting—or rather accumulating—wasn’t a case of art for art’s sake; there were matters of power and prestige on the line. Art was hung high in 17th and 18th century estates, salon style: floor to ceiling and end-to end, in a helter-skelter mix of portraits, landscapes and still lifes. The portraits were, of course, renderings of you and your wealthy forbears; the landscapes often reflected on pastoral settings or storms at sea, metaphors for good times and bad; and still lifes were crammed to bursting with all manner of fruits, vegetables, flowers, sea life and other dead animals. If life at your estate was truly bountiful—then this painting confirmed there were enough leftovers to make a painting. artes fine arts magazineMore

Editor’s Letter

“Spoil a picture a bit, in order to finish it.” ~Eugène Delacroix

Left: Robert Henri, Cafferty (1921). Private Collection.

Hooray for the Circle!

Give me the Maya calendar from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, over our present Gregorian system, any day. Maya culture believed in the circularity of nature—and of life. For these sophisticated and innovative peoples, the days and years moved in one grand arching loop, only to return to the same point, decades later. Cycles of agriculture, victories and defeats in war, life and death, and the power of the stars and planets to influence events here on earth (borne through the cosmos on the back of a giant turtle, by the way) were all embedded in the various cycles of days that followed, one after the other. Both micro decisions-like when best to plant maze-to macro strategies, such as when to launch an attack on those annoying neighbors, were all discernible with a quick consult with that giant carved circular stone down in the town square. The repetition of the various calendric cycles, the natural cycles of observable phenomena, and the recurrence and renewal of death-rebirth imagery in their mythological traditions were important influences upon Maya societies. This conceptual view, in which the “cyclical nature” of time is highlighted, was a pre-eminent one, and many rituals were concerned with the completion and re-occurrences of various cycles. artes fine arts magazine

“The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed.” ~Pablo Casals

Left: Giotto di Bondone, Bust of an Angel (after 1304). Polychrome mosaic. The Reverenda Fabbrica of Saint Peter, Vatican City State. © Cittá del Vaticano.

‘Tis the Season of Hyperkulturemia

We can thank the French author, Henri-Marie Beyle (nom-de-plume, ‘Stendhal’) for that strange rush we feel when we first enter a holiday-stocked department store, or stand, be-dazed and bedazzled in front of the twinkling Christmas tree, piled high ‘round with colorful gifts and gadgets. That unfamiliar buzzing of the brain, best described as a trance-like state of immobility (as in, where do I start!?), accompanied by a glazing over of the eyes and a slight numbing sensation around the mouth is not unfamiliar to some. Neurologists have described it well, and art lovers have experienced it—long before it became symptomatic of our Age of Consumer Overload. It is called Stendhal Syndrome, and like so many other sensory excesses traceable to the Italian Renaissance. They should have known better than to wow us with the Sistine Chapel, or The David’s dramatic proportions, those awe-inspiring Duomo’s or Botticelli’s delicate and all-so-very-human gestures in The Annunciation or The Three Graces. These, and so many other of the city’s treasures, await discovery in the city-sized museum called, Florence. artes fine arts magazineMore