JAM FINE ARTS

Today’s ArtDrop is a ’Soundsuit’ by contemporary assemblage sculptor Nick Cave. Assemblage is a 3-D collage where the artist is combining diverse found objects to create an original artwork.

Nick Cave has made many 'Soundsuits’. They are intended to enhance movement and often make noise. Clicking plastic buttons, sequins, bottle caps and other noisy salvaged materials make their way onto the suits to add to the spectacle of their presence. They are attention grabbing and anonymous at the same time. In many, Cave has created sensational novel forms of the mask.

You are most likely to encounter a ‘Soundsuit’ stationary and on display in a museum. Every time you see one imagine it in frenetic motion…dancing. Look at the materials and ask yourself what this would sound like during a dance. Would it click, ring like bells, or maybe make a whooshing sound with each gesture? Imagine what it would feel like to wear it. Would you feel free to express yourself? Would you enjoy the anonymity? How would such a costume change how you interact with people?

Image shows a figure wearing a two piece suit with simple white pearlescent trousers (with footwear) and matching long-sleeved, loose fitting tunic with abstract colorful embellishments within the pearlescent background. The neckline and embellishments of the tunic expand into a great hood that reaches over the head toward the front of the face creating a round opening. Within that opening is a multicolored, long-fiber, fun fur mask. The fibers are swirled into a spiral pattern. 

Today’s ArtDrop is a Symbolist pastel on paper officially listed as ‘Profile on Red Meanders’ formerly known as Jeanne d'Arc by Odilon Redon. There must be some curatorial doubts about the title.

The pastel painting features a person’s head and shoulders in profile. The features of the face are subtly and lightly  rendered. The person wears a  tight-fitting head covering that reaches the shoulders below the nape of the neck. There is a very subtle suggestion of a woven pattern. The figure wears a shirt fitting tightly to the neck. Both the headdress and shirt are mottled shades of blue and turquoise. The back of the head is ultramarine. In the negative space surrounding the figure is an expressively pigmented area of red with ultramarine accents. There is a surreal abstract swoop of many colors arcing over the head.
Symbolism is known for its mythical, religious, supernatural, and mystical subjects. Even if the artist didn’t intend to paint Joan of Arc, the person who titled the piece 'Joan of Arc' made a fair assumption. With that title, the painting can be read as a classic piece of Symbolist art. We know that many of Redon’s works are Symbolist, but not all. The medieval look of this piece suggests a Symbolist theme, but we don’t know what it is for sure. What do you think?

This is also a great example of the uncertainty of photography, reproduction, and image editing tools. The top picture was copied from WikiArt. This image is highly saturated making the image glow like a stained glass window. The second image is from the museum that holds the piece in its collections. It is more subdued, like a watercolor, and looks very different. This comparison demonstrates why it is so important to see works of art in person. Which one do you think is closer to the original? 

Today’s ArtDrop is ‘Philosopher in Contemplation’ (or Interior with Tobit and Anna) an oil on small oak panel by Rembrandt.

This is a tiny, intimate domestic interior. The painting as it is reproduced today across the internet depicts a murky interior featuring a composition dominated by a chunky wooden spiral staircase rising through the center. The painting has seen better days. This could be the original varnish adding  centuries of sooty gloom, creating a deep sepia veil and influencing modern interpretation of the piece. The downward spiral of the stair envelopes the brightest zone inhabited by an old man sitting at a desk beneath a large window. He is warmly dressed for winter with a heavy house coat and a red cap on his head. His hands are clasped at his stomach. His head is bowed deep in thought, or perhaps he is dozing off. He is unmistakably the focal point. There is a sense of contemplation and isolation. But wait, he isn’t alone. There is another person here. To the far right bottom corner is a figure stooping over tending a fire. The fire doesn’t throw nearly as much light as the window. Only her face and large hands are illuminated. The outer edges of the painting are almost completely in shadow. The form of the staircase and space it defines to its left create a lit oval in the center of the composition. The ascending steps lead to a darkening void. Unlike so many Renaissance paintings composed with rigid implied geometries, this flat painting is sculpted with curves and shadow.

I recommend visiting the wikipedia entry on this piece to see an engraving from when the work was younger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher_in_Meditation The entry suggests further insight by associating it with paintings of the artist's father.
 It illustrates features of the painting that are invisible to us now. There is a third figure lurking in the darkness on the stairway! In the dark margins at the left is an arched door. Perhaps the obscured features make the biblical story more obvious. I don’t remember the story of Tobit, so I can’t judge that. What does shine forth through the centuries is a feeling of contemplative embrace.

Today’s ArtDrop is a video installation featuring the early digital artwork of Samia Halaby at Tate Modern’s collaboration with the Outernet immersive art space.

The attached still image features a snapshot of a moment in time of one wall of the installation. The imagery is of a colorful abstract digital painting with geometric pixellated shapes reminiscent of early computer imagery. A lady is silhouetted standing in front of one of the enormous screens that wrap the walls and ceiling of the exhibition space.

Tate Modern produced an excellent video of a studio visit with Halaby where she welcomes us into her decades long multimedia career as an artist and Palestinian activist: https://www.youtube.com/watch

Halaby enjoys interacting with her Instagram account so follow her @samiahalaby to join in and give her some feedback on her work.

Today’s ArtDrop is ‘Ebb of a Spring Tide’ by activist artist, Mary Mattingly. It was a temporary, site-specific sculpture for Socrates Sculpture Park. It’s a water clock.

Video and description are from the artist’s web site: marymattingly.com

'Ebb of a Spring Tide' was designed specifically for the waterfront at Socrates Sculpture Park, where the East River’s fluctuating tides provide a literal and symbolic backdrop. Mattingly built the central structure using scaffolding—an architectural material often associated with repair and transition. The materials were intentionally selected to withstand the elements, suggesting that our future dwellings may need to be as adaptive and porous as the environments we inhabit.
Through its scale and placement, the sculpture offers an invitation to walk beneath the canopy, confronting viewers with the tension between collapse and growth, loss and regeneration. It reflects on the precarity of coastal living and the infrastructural and emotional shifts we must make in response to a climate-altered future.

This work and the rest of her work explores solutions to urban problems. She has a manifesto! https://marymattingly.com/pages/manifesto-1

Today’s ArtDrop is 'Reflections on Thud!' by Roy Lichtenstein from 1990. It is an acrylic resin (Magna) on canvas.

Image of a Pop Art style painting of a comic book panel recreating screen printed dots that optically mix in colored commercially printing images.  The subject of the comic book panel is a vicious-looking T-rex, all talons and teeth, falling over onto its back in a cloud of dust. Above the dino’s gaping mouth with protruding red tongue is the word “THUD!” There are comic book action lines indicating the force and direction of the dinosaur’s fall. Superimposed over this layer of subject is another virtual layer meant to represent harsh reflections of a pane of glass cutting through and interfering with the image below. Lichtenstein rendered this illusion in works of his ‘Reflection’ series for a couple of years. 

​Lichtenstein’s study of commercial printing techniques and optical effects made him more than a Pop Artist. He combines Pointillism, Op Art, and mass printing techniques to  render a system of simplified illusion.

(I am that dinosaur. As an art consultant, I developed a bitter prejudice against artwork under regular glass or plexiglass because glare interferes with the artwork below. Intense glare off glass over larger works of art can be blinding. Non-glare glazing is expensive but worth it.)

Today's ArtDrop is a color lithograph, 'Summer', by Alfons Mucha. Mucha was the poster boy for Art Nouveau in late 1800's France. Art Nouveau is characterized by decorative organic lines and patterns inspired by nature. Mucha's work would have been seen advertising products and theatrical productions throughout the boulevards of Paris.

From the Mucha Foundation website: "Mucha portrays Summer as a sensual and sultry brunette with red poppies in her hair. A serene mood of repose and contentment pervades the scene as the woman leans against a grapevine with her feet bathing in the shallow water below. Mucha captures the summer light in the delicate blue sky beyond.'

Keep cool and stay hydrated; maybe go for a swim.

Today's ArtDrop is 'WHOA Sign' by Bill Rountree near Baker, Nevada USA.

You've been driving on the Loneliest Road in the US, Nevada Hwy 50, for hours—maybe days— on your way to Great Basin National Park. You've been driving through miles and miles of arid sage and brushland snaking your way through the Great Basin between the tempest-topped Sierra Nevada and Rocky mountain ranges. Finally, as you approach the little town of Baker, anxious with range anxiety and searching for a gas station, you begin to see folk sculpture along the roadside created by many beckoning hands. One demands that you stop, take it all in, and just chill. That is the 'Whoa Sign'. It is a metal construction made of square profile steel bar into an equilateral octagon like a stop sign with the word WHOA suspended within the octagon. However, this giant parody of the ubiquitous American stop sign doesn't block your view—it frames it—and echoes your reaction to the sublime beauty of the majestic mountain vista and turbulent sky beyond.

​Some sights call for a full stop.