rabia

...and they tried to cure solitude.


i'm still thinking about this.


"Brothers, my peace is in my aloneness.My Beloved is alone with me there, always.I have found nothing in all the worldsThat could match His love,This love that harrows the sands of my desert."

confessionals always end up mythologizing. i think that idea is solidifying as a truth for me.

too much of anything can't be healthy; including solitude.?

prozac nation

the book is much much better than the little independent film. they didn't capture any of the glamorization or mythologizing components so well threaded throughout a life so taken over by the persistence of pain and abject misery as the book does.
and what better way to revision life and conquer future obstacles.

interview with mr. dylan about the visual arts and his painting

"...other than the world we know."

animation show highlights

1. Jan Svankmajer - dimensions of dialogue

2. lotte reiniger - the adventures of prince achmed

3. wan brothers - princess iron fan

4. max fleisher - betty boop

5. lumiere brothers - serpentine dance

New romanticism -- metamodernism

Love this idea -- though it's a little like being bi-polar.
Ha. I understand it quite easily at a superficial level and
look forward to studying it more... I happily feel my own
ideas fall Into this...would like to explore it more.
There is an accompanying sense of renewal and hope.

barnett newman's voice of fire

This is the first painting i saw [up close, 'live'] that made a huge impact on me. a school trip when i was 15 to the national gallery. A very controversial painting because of it's cost - 1.8 million spent - and it's misunderstood simplicity.

i don't think this is frivolous spending. the museum educator taught us how to look at it, and i was really overwhelmed by the experience. i lingered on after everyone else moved to the next section of the museum, and i just stared it, actually able to see the "fire" erupting in the middle stripe of the painting, because of the complimentary colour and size used in the adjacent stripes. it is possible that it might have scientific explanations -- something that i happened to come across a few years later.

in my head, like my second painting of the beginning of the more serious painting

it's good when your art makes people uneasy. when critics have a hard time with it.
especially when they hate it.
is that right?
so does that mean you're avant-garde or just mediocre/bad ?
if you were mediocre, they wouldn't care enough to hate it. is that right?
should i just keep playing into the fantasy in my head?
because that is what i like to do most.
maybe that's my real motivation for doing anything worthwhile.


and so you just keep going, and keep doing it, because you have to. and in posterity might one find out, and not necessarily you, if it meant anything or if it was just an occupation of your time to disappear and fall to waste.

my next project is to work on this gigantic canvas that i've had for awhile. will probably be working on it through the winter to the spring until my trip abroad, finally.and it feels so cozy and beautiful thinking about it; like it's exactly what i should be doing, and couldn't be spending my time doing anything better.
and it's a beautiful, beautiful sweet subject that i will probably love looking at.

shirin neshat

video: shirin neshat: art in exile

nir hod - the 'genius' portraits

hmmm

"the kids are alright? the paintings of nir hod"
"That [photo] was a big influence to me," says Hod of a snapshot of former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan sharing a cigarette after signing the 1994 peace agreement. "It's almost like Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent meeting in Milan." The artist is intrigued by the way the cigarette adds elements of spontaneity and civility. "If Obama took a picture with a leader like that it would be such a craze, but look how interesting it is, just because of the cigarette. There's some magic here."

"precocious and melancholic"
"Nir Hod has opposed the ideology that labels sumptuousness an esthetic sin. His work openly substitutes the pleasure principle and a fluid multiplicity of selves for the old notions of high seriousness and personal authenticity."

SF soon

1. People are exhausting
2. I should care about selling paintings so I can fund my trips

at the vag and other pics

1. i watched 'la jetee' by chris marker.

2.

I can't believe this starts in may and I'm here in April

I will have to come back this summer

Vancouver art gallery

i am usually not vengeful

but i really want revenge. someone stealing something of yours, and then pretending not to steal it. when it's obvious, both physically and metaphysically, that it was stolen. and obvious to more than just one person. the only thing i can do is take comfort in the fact that there is karma. maybe one day i will be able to hurt him.

post-colonialist theory

this is the theoretical hook of every serious artist of non-european descent in the western world. the intellectual trinity of post-colonialist theory: 1. edward said 2. homi k. bhabha 3. gayatri spivak. i have to admit, bhabha's theories of hybridity and the ambivalent third space really hit me. it was exactly how i was feeling about my life, and what i felt the meaning was of what was ending up on the canvas.

henri rousseau [aka self-analysisII]

starting so late in life and being untrained, my work will always look naive. with a blind optimism, and sympathy to religion, belief in some sort of noble aspects to man, life and death -- away from cynicism, the unaesthetic and meaninglessness, i will probably never fit into any contemporary art scene. i would just like to continue to paint and have these little hidden away shows. to be seen and not seen. selling work is not really a priority, and becoming any sort of spectacle is very unappealing. the only thing i'm interested in being right now with my art is relevant.

chris marker

"passengers"

i know you want to hide all the time, but that just didn't work out

"zeeny, eclecticism, hybridity. the optimism of those ideas! the certainty on which they rested: of will, of choice! but zeeny mine, life just happens to you: like an accident. No: it happens to you as a result of your condition. Not choice, but - at best - process, and, at worst, shocking, total change. Newness: he had sought a different kind, but this was what he got."

'the morning hours'

in the name of God, beneficent, merciful 1. by the morning hours 2. and by the night when it is stillest 3. your Lord has not forsaken thee, nor does He hate thee 4. and verily the latter portion will be better for thee than the former 5. and verily thy Lord will give unto thee so that thou wilt be content 6. did He not find thee an orphan and protect [thee]? 7. did He not find thee wandering and direct [thee]? 8. did He not find thee destitute and enrich [thee]? 9. therefore, the orphan oppress not 10. the beggar drive not away 11. therefore of the bounty of thy Lord be thy discourse

basquiat - radiant child film

"Inverse asceticism, apparently, is PC-speak for addiction." [this is not from the movie]. the most interesting part is his crossing out letters, words, items. so the art world tried to make him into an other, caged, wild pet.

"...and all this explaining is tedious" [unlike when making art]

Julian Schnabel's 'miral', one minute interview.

language of art lecture [notes]

the view of old european immigrants.

art itself is not a language but an insight. the truth is not told, it is shown. it's purpose is the improvement of human experience. it is not didactic. when philosophy fails, use poetry. it can serve a revolution and be propaganda. it is the quality and not the literal content or the colour arrangement that compels. art has her own language - a silent language - but is not a language herself]. it involves meticulous execution and colour choosing.

the self is a limited universe. in midieval art, there was communication without effort and artists were teachers. the eastern european saint icon was a window of communication. renaissance art was true to life and had depth and volume. in the 19th century the pre-raphaelites had a language of flowers. so did manet. lemon=sour disposition; mirror=vanity or self-knowledge. the reformation killed the renaissance. the counter reformation was an uncreative period with church propaganda. the ecstasy of st. terese. [exception to the otherwise mediocre].

art of 1600s Holland read like a book with the sophisticated bourgeois. the 1900s bourgeois academic painting told short stories and anecdotes, until the impressionists arrived. the pre-raphaelites exhibited passionate emotion restricted by victorian culture and was rich in symbolism. rosetti painted elizabeth, and jane morris as narcisstic beauties.

art improves our skill in handling the world.

impressionists caught contemporary life. lower, middle class girls - a new emerging class - who could spend on leisure. 1860s france - joie de vie. manet painted the scandalous 'olympia'. 'nana'. clear language. ridiculed for painting a contemporary kept woman.

baudelaire said that the artist creates a universal language. work, suffering, gift. art is always in opposition to its predecessor.

now: language has fallen through, where only the ego remains, and critics are left to speak.

cezanne can express ideas in colour. can drink it. can lose yourself in it. there was a new way to perceive nature. a new literacy that was away from the academy. the louvre shows us the dictionary. how do we develop our language skills of art? by comparing, comparing, comparing.

every great artist invents a new language in opposition to themaster and to the current scheme of things. interpreting every aspect of reality. the artist creates a new scheme of things.

mirror photos

quote

...He also goes on to point out that, within this poetical realm, like that of the subconscious, such haunting and powerful images exist autonomously and for their own sake. 'Do we still have to recall' he asks, 'that the life of creatures populating the surface of canvases and the world of poetry obeys conditions of life different from creatures populating the surface of the earth? That plastic and poetic physiology is not the physiology of living beings? That the plastic or poetic of life of a painting or of a poem obeys other laws than those of the circulation of the blood? That in the plastic or poetic world, a decapitated figure is not a figure without a head?' (Salvador Dalí, quoted in ibid., p. 67).

albrecht durer

post mod?

post modern art = bad
post modern theory = not so bad

the Roses

by American artist Will Ryman, in nyc, jan. 25, 2011

kamrooz aram

iranian-american painter based in ny

"The idea of controlled chance is found in traditional Persian music, as well as in American Jazz, in which the musician improvises over distinct melodic systems and specific rhythmic patterns. Likewise, the paintings start with a grid, which sometimes disappears completely, yet still affects the painting in its development"

"These paintings are representative of an exploration of the parts (i.e., struggle, contradiction, transformation, longing, etc.) as well as the search for the whole (i.e., the beautiful, complete, balanced image). In these paintings, Islamic geometric patterns are combined with loosely painted organic forms, at times deliberately breaking the steady rhythms, other times quite randomly allowing the painting to paint itself."

"I want to emphasize the struggle and contradiction one experiences in attempt to preserve traditions while at the same time enjoying the nontraditional contemporary Western culture that at times seems to contradict almost every aspect of the tradition. In such an attempt one is almost inevitable left in a position that reeks of hypocrisy."