Category: Artist

This ayatollah’s courage ranks with Ai Weiwei & other world artists & stands against the persecution of Baha’is & other Iranian minorities

From IranWatch we learn that a courageous ayatollah sent a section of his artwork to each of eight of Iran’s persecuted minorities. His vision of a civilized, integrated & compassionate Iran is deeply moving.

This is the whole of his art-piece;

courageous-cleric-divides-painting-for-bahais-other-persecuted-minorities-promotes-unity

To the Baha’is he sent this section;

fragment-of-his-painting-sent-by-ayatollah-to-the-bahais

IranWatch  give us the following report;

The Artwork by Ayatollah Abdol-Hamid Masoumi-Tehrani, … he has divided into eight parts corresponding with eight religious groups in the country. He has dedicated parts of the painting to Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Mandaeans, Yarsanians, Baha’is, and Sunni and Shia Muslims in the country, all of whom he considers “essential aspects of Iran’s national culture as well as the entire region’s spiritual and religious reservoir.”

In recent years, individuals and groups from within and outside of Iran have raised the call for justice, human rights, and a culture of inclusion in the country. Though more and more voices are joining this chorus, it is still rare to see any vocal support from among Iran’s ecclesiastical class. On occasions when a clerical figure in Iran does speak out in support of the rights of citizens and minorities, it can inspire hope in countless hearts.

Against this backdrop, Ayatollah Abdol-Hamid Masoumi-Tehrani, a high-ranking religious cleric in Iran who is also a calligrapher and artist, has stood out for his public dedication to unity. His contributions to social harmony in Iran have drawn attention and acclaim in many parts of the world.

Recently Ayatollah Tehrani has painted a new work which he has divided into eight parts corresponding with eight religious groups in the country. He has dedicated parts of the painting to Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Mandaeans, Yarsanians, Baha’is, and Sunni and Shia Muslims in the country, all of whom he considers “essential aspects of Iran’s national culture as well as the entire region’s spiritual and religious reservoir.”

A group of Iranian Baha’is received the fragment of artwork on behalf of the Baha’is of Iran.

“Our national identity would be incomplete without each one of them,” he writes in a statement on his website.

The dividing of his painting symbolizes the fragmentation of the diverse populations that constitute Iran’s citizenry-a fragmentation he attributes to religious fanaticism and claims of privileged access to truth.

Explaining the symbolism of dividing his painting, he states: “As the body politic of human society would suffer because of estrangements and separations, likewise each section of this piece would be incomplete if it remains unaccompanied by the other sections. This piece is only complete when all the parts are put together.”

A section of artwork by Ayatollah Tehrani, which he has dedicated to the Baha’i community of Iran.

In the past, Ayatollah Tehrani has made other gestures of reconciliation and brotherhood toward religious minorities. In April 2014, for example, he gifted a calligraphic rendering of a sacred verse from the Baha’i writings to the Baha’is of the world. His action at once acknowledged the persecution of Iran’s largest religious minority and expressed a wish that the Baha’is of Iran should be allowed their rightful place beside their fellow citizens, working for the prosperity and happiness of their country.

His courageous actions as a member of Iran’s religious clergy have resonated with many inside and outside of the borders of that country and inspired a number of his counterparts from other Muslim denominations as well as other religions around the world to voice their support for his actions towards peaceful religious coexistence. 

With this latest action, Ayatollah Tehrani captures the yearning of many of his fellow citizens for “a future where this land does not only belong to a certain religion, class, ethnicity, or ideology but belongs, without discrimination, to all Iranians, regardless of religion, attitude, or gender”.

-0- Go to IranWatch for more pictures and the full story -0-

The light of photography and the human spirit – juxtaposed


Here is a first attempt and juxtaposing quotations concerning photography with quotations about spiritual reality.  If spirituality isn’t your thing just dig out the brilliant quotations concerning photography;

1 -“His beauty hath no veiling save light, His face no covering save revelation.” SV p 38

2 A painter works with colour as the medium, a photographer works with light. – Carlotta M. Corpron       (God works with love RP)

3 -‘Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe’    SAB 27

4 “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”     Walker Evans

5 -This is the Day, O my Lord, whose brightness Thou hast exalted above the brightness of the sun and the splendors thereof. I testify that the light it sheddeth proceedeth out of the glory of the light of Thy countenance, and is begotten by the radiance of the morn of Thy Revelation P& M 273

6 Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch– the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to “record,” but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe. -Ruth Bernhard, “Collection of Ginny Williams” by Ruth Bernhard , ISBN: 1881138046

7 -In every moment of genuine love, we are dwelling in God and God is dwelling in us. ~ Paul Tillich

8 Everything is one and I am one with it. -Ruth Bernhard

9 -“There exists only the present instant… a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.”  Meister Eckhart

10 This unexpected image was the record of an inner state that I did not remember seeing and he did not remember experiencing at the moment of exposure. -Minor White, “Mirrors, messages, manifestations” by Minor White. Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1969.

11 -Free thyself from the fetters of this world, and loose thy soul from the prison of self. Seize thy chance, for it will come to thee no more. PHW

12 Inside movement there is one moment in which the elements are in balance. Photography must seize the importance of this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it. – HCB

13 Theological matters: – (There is no such’ thing’ as God. ‘Thingification’ is something we mustn’t do to others (as the Nazis did) – let alone God. So what then is God?  ‘God is love.’  Love is a state of a) being and of b) relating.  However it seems that as Bahá’ís we go beyond Tillich’s ‘the ground of being’ (because it was finistic?) because for us our theology is panentheistic – we believe simultaneously in God immanent and God transcendent. (RP)
Theology can be logical or illogical – but in both cases it is commentary on ineffable, personal experience of that which originates in Mystery, in the unknown & unknowable.  If we are blessed some insights are gained from such experiences. Art photography can be windows to such insights, including glimpses of the ineffable and the divine.  RP)

14 -‘Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit in the heart of Man’. PT 30

15 -“A photograph is neither taken nor seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you…..” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

16 -“ …creative quickening emanates from the breaths of the Holy Spirit”, PUP130

17 To take photographs means to recognize — simultaneously and within a fraction of a second — both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

18 -“The breath of God is breathing me…”

19 *He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment. – HCB

20 -With inward and outward eyes he witnesseth the mysteries of resurrection in the realms of creation and the souls of men SV12

21 I’m not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It’s drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff – being sensitive to coincidence. You can’t go looking for it; you can’t want it, or you wont get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens. – Henri Cartier-B

22 -“That which you are seeking is doing the seeking.” (St. Francis of Assissi)

23 A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. -Diane Arbus

24 -There are certain pillars which have been established as the unshakeable supports of the Faith of God. The mightiest of these is learning and the use of the mind, the expansion of consciousness, and insight into the realities of the universe and the hidden mysteries of Almighty God.  SAB 126

25 Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen. Minor White

26 -“There exists only the present instant… a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.”  Meister Eckhart

27 To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event, as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression.  Henri Cartier-Bresson

28 -Knowledge is of two kinds. One is subjective and the other objective knowledge – that is to say, an intuitive knowledge and a knowledge derived from perception.

The knowledge of things which men universally have is gained by reflection or by evidence – that is to say, either by the power of the mind the conception of an object is formed, or from beholding an object the form is produced in the mirror of the heart. The circle of this knowledge is very limited because it depends upon effort and attainment.
But the second sort of knowledge, which is the knowledge of being, is intuitive…..                                    SAQ157-159

29 Impressionism has induced the study of what we see and shown us that we all see differently; it has done good to photography by showing that we should represent what we see and not what the lens sees . . . What do we see when we go to Nature? We see exactly what we are trained to see, and, if we are lucky, perhaps a little more but not much . . . We see what we are prepared to see and on that I base a theory that we should be very careful what we learn. – Henry Peach Robinson

30 -O SON OF SPIRIT! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.  AHW 2

31 Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing. Henri Cartier-Bresson

32 -How shall we attain the reality of knowledge? By the breaths and promptings of the Holy Spirit, which is light and knowledge itself. Through it the human mind is quickened and fortified into true conclusions and perfect knowledge. PUP p.22

33 This recognition, in real life, of a rhythm of surfaces, lines, and values is for me the essence of photography; composition should be a constant of preoccupation, being a simultaneous coalition – an organic coordination of visual elements. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

34 -Of these truths some can be disclosed only to the extent of the capacity of the repositories of the light of Our knowledge, and the recipients of Our hidden grace. BWF 133

35 Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity. -HCB

36 -(the) heart, ….. is the seat of the revelation of the inner mysteries of God KI 192

37 As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit.
Photography has something to do with death. It’s a trace. -Henri Cartier-Bresson

38 -truth in its essence cannot be put into words. (about pictures of Divinity maybe story) AB in L 22′

39 There is no art which affords less opportunity to execute expression than photography. Everything is concentrated in a few seconds, when after perhaps an hours seeking, waiting, and hesitation, the photographer sees the realization of his inward vision, and in that moment he has one advantage over most arts – his medium is swift enough to record his momentary inspiration.  -Sadakichi Hartmann

40 -Dance, as though no one is watching,
Love, as though you’ve never been hurt before,
Sing, as though no one can hear you,
Work, as though you don’t need the money,
Live, as though heaven is on earth.  ~Rumi~

41 I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help. -Ruth Bernhard

42 -“I was asleep on My couch: the breaths of My Lord the Merciful passed over Me and awakened Me from sleep:  TN7

43 for me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe. -Ruth Bernhard

44 -God has revealed his light many times in order to illumine mankind in the path of evolution.  AB DP 8

45 There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another, and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape. -Henri Cartier-Bresson

46 -Now concerning mental faculties, they are in truth of the inherent properties of the soul, even as the radiation of light is the essential property of the sun.     (Abdu’l-Baha, Tablet to August Forel, p. 8)

47 As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It’s a trace. -Henri Cartier-Bresson

48 -Kill these four birds of prey,” [1] that after death the riddle of life may be unraveled.   4V 50

49 Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time. We play with subjects that disappear; and when they’re gone, it’s impossible to bring them back to life. We can’t alter our subject afterward…. Writers can reflect before they put words on paper…. As photographers, we don’t have the luxury of this reflective time….We can’t redo our shoot once we’re back at the hotel. Our job consists of observing reality with help of our camera (which serves as a kind of sketchbook), of fixing reality in a moment, but not manipulating it, neither during the shoot nor in the darkroom later on. These types of manipulation are always noticed by anyone with a good eye. -Henri Cartier-Bresson, “American Photo”, September/October 1997, page: 76

50 -These sanctified Mirrors, these Day Springs of ancient glory, are, one and all, the Exponents on earth of Him Who is the central Orb of the universe, its Essence and ultimate Purpose. From Him proceed their knowledge and power; from Him is derived their sovereignty. The beauty of their countenance is but a reflection of His image, and their revelation a sign of His deathless glory. They are the Treasuries of Divine knowledge, and the Repositories of celestial wisdom. Through them is transmitted a grace that is infinite, and by them is revealed the Light that can never fade…. These Tabernacles of Holiness, these Primal Mirrors which reflect the light of unfading glory, are but expressions of Him Who is the Invisible of the Invisibles. By the revelation of these Gems of Divine virtue all the names and attributes of God, such as knowledge and power, sovereignty and dominion, mercy and wisdom, glory, bounty, and grace, are made manifest.  GL 47

51 The state of mind of a photographer while creating is a blank…For those who would equate “blank” with a kind of static emptiness, I must explain that this is a special kind of blank. It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with no image pre-formed in it at any time. We should note that the lack of a pre-formed pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank condition. Such a state of mind is not unlike a sheet of film itself – seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second’s exposure conceives a life in it. (Not just life, but “a” life). -Minor White, “The Camera Mind and Eye” . Magazine of Art, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp.16-19

52 -No one else besides Thee hath, at any time, been able to fathom Thy mystery, or befittingly to extol Thy greatness.  GL 4

To be developed

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Posted via email from sunwalking’s posterous

“Watch out the tides coming in!”

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What is the relationship of spirit and form, form to spirit?

“We turn clay to make a vessel, but it is on the space, where there is nothing, that the usefulness of the vessel depends.” – Lao Tzu   

“Nothing is more real than nothing.” – Samuel Beckett      

potter-at-wheel1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“So the call of all Nondual traditions is: Abide as Emptiness, embrace all Form. The liberation is in the Emptiness, never in the Form, but Emptiness embraces all forms as a mirror all its objects…You and the universe are One Taste.”

(Ken Wilber: A Brief History of Everything, 2007, p. 361).

 Ken Wilber

Do you remember when all the world was a giant ice-cream?

This wonderful, simple, perfect, timeless photograph by Benn Mitchell is on the Boca Raton Museum of Art. 

bennmitchellgirleatingicecream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The museums blurb says this; 

Color Me New York – Photographs by Benn Mitchell
Through January 18, 2009
The exhibition honors Benn Mitchell as a forerunner in realistic photography, documenting life in New York City during the 1930s through the 1950s. Mitchell (born in New York City 1926 – ) sold his first photograph to LIFE magazine at the age of 16. Just one year later he became a portrait photographer in Hollywood for Warner Brothers’ studios, capturing classic images of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, among others. In 1948, Mitchell started his own commercial studio in New York City, the beginning of a career lasting over five decades. This exhibition presents 16 color images shot in the streets of New York City between 1947 and 1980, which capture Benn Mitchell’s acute observations, and his award-winning eye for both the artistic and the incidental. Mitchell now lives with his wife Esther in Boca Raton.

 

To go to the museum’s site click HERE

Click HERE to have your say about this…

Click HERE to have your say about this article –  at SEESMIC  video discussion

We enjoyed immensly our visit to Unveiled: New art from the middle-east at London’s Saatchi Gallery.  This ‘review’ is about Ghost by Kader Attia – and how it is great work – including for teachers or home-schoolers.  (Exhibition ends 9th May 2009)

 

kader_attia_ghosts_2

Kader Attia – Ghost – 2007 – Aluminium foil – Dimensions variable – Saatchi Gallery, London

In Ghost, a large installation of a group of Muslim women in prayer, Attia renders their bodies as vacant shells, empty hoods devoid of personhood or spirit. Made from tin foil – a domestic, throw away material – Attia’s figures become alien and futuristic, synthesising the abject and divine. Bowing in shimmering meditation, their ritual is equally seductive and hollow, questioning modern ideologies – from religion to nationalism and consumerism – in relation to individual identity, social perception, devotion and exclusion. Attia’s Ghost evokes contemplation of the human condition as vulnerable and mortal; his impoverished materials suggest alternative histories or understandings of the world, manifest in individual and temporal experience. (This is the gallery description)

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Draft Notes for suggested lessons:

I always admire simplicity – creating a profound piece just by wrapping aluminium foil around a room full of kneeling women – great simplicity.

Presence and absence – traces – how and it what ways do people live on.

Why might the artist have called the piece Ghost as opposed to Ghosts?  Which do you prefer and why?

What makes a person a person?

Which bits of the gallery description of Ghost make good sense to you  – and which don’t – and why?

Two of the most important concerns in a person’s development are 1) identity – who am I? and 2) purpose – what am I dedicating my life to?  What has Ghost to do with identity and purpose?

How powerful might it be if, as a performance piece, a real live woman came and filled one of the places?  Would you dress her in aluminium or not – how else would you dress her?  Would she speak to the audience?  What would she say?

The aluminium creates boundaries, forms – of people who were/are/aren’t no more.  Is there spirit to go with the form – or not?  If so what is it – where is it – whose spirit is it?

What are your feelings about the women whose forms gave rise to the ghost/s?

How might a fundamentalist respond to this piece?  How might a modern believer respond to this piece?  

Create a conversation betwen two such people.  

What would the whole thing be like if the women had been from Christian/Jewish/Hindu/Buddhist etc background?

What conclusions do you come to as a result of viewing the photograph  – or better still having visited the exhibition?

How would you use your/the above ideas to make your own art?

We look but do we see? – seeing by design

Rob Forbes leads us into seeing more by design;

MOBA – How important is bad art – and why?

It’s just a joke –  a museum of bad art?  I suspect that MOBA  provides many interesting questions – and probably insights – what do you think?

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.The WikiPedia article tells us;

The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a world-renowned institution dedicated to showcasing the finest art acquired from Boston-area refuse.

The museum started in a pile of trash in 1994, in a serendipitous moment when an antiques dealer came across a painting of astonishing power and compositional incompetence that had been tragically discarded.

Its magnetic pull was immediate; it has since inspired a collection of 500 masterful pieces of art so awful they prompt viewers to appeal loudly for divine intervention.

Located next to two Massachusetts bathrooms, the museum’s collection aspires to be a monument to creative ecstasy that has resulted in glorious failure.

Only the most arresting paintings and sculptures are accepted by MOBA, but priority goes to those that prominently feature a monkey or a poodle.

Public reaction has been overwhelming, freeing the art-loving community to point and laugh at art everywhere.

Two of their pieces have been stolen, so alarming the museum that they promptly offered a reward in the amount of $6.50 for their return. Some of their more notable pieces show a footless John Ashcroft wearing a diaper, and a hula skirt-wearing wiener dog juggling bones. Such enigmatic images invoke so many mysteries that they are often unable to be explained by artists themselves. (more…)

Tonalism and ‘photography’s greatest artist’

‘Photography’s greatest artist’ – that’s what Carter B. Horsley claims for Edward Steichen, and he puts the Tonalist pictures centre stage in his essay

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Edward Steichen, Across the Salt Marshes, Huntington, c. 1905, oil on canvas, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, Gift of Florence Scott Libbey, reproduced with permission of Joanna T. Steichen
Edward Steichen, Across the Salt Marshes, Huntington, c. 1905, oil on canvas, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, Gift of Florence Scott Libbey, reproduced with permission of Joanna T. Steichen

The above reproduction is better than those in the esaay

The essay is HERE

America stalled, the dollar and Native American Women


stalled-bonita-oil-on-photographfig. 2: Stalled, Oil paint on photograph
© Peña Bonita,1988

Joan M. Jensen, Professor Emerita, at New Mexico State University has written a fine essay on Native American Women Photographers As Storytellers. It combines about a dozen of my interests but has wider resonance, not least in her choice of the above photograph by Bonita.

She says;

As Native women have added cameras to fiber and clay, they have explored ways to combine a search for personal and public identity. Their work has formed a critique, a different story, that explicitly and implicitly critiques the “vanishing race” genre of romantic photography so popular at the turn of the century and since the 1970s revival of Edward Curtis and other photographers of American Indians. These photographers portray their cultures not as vanishing, but as part of a lively, assertive group of people confident about the importance of their cultures in the past, their importance to the present, and their influence on the future. They sometimes use images identified with Indian cultures, but these images are not used as emblems of a generic unified past. Instead the images carry specific messages or stories about how individual artists interpret family and tribal histories, how they experience the present, or what they project for the future. As women, they may employ signifiers identified with female cultures and tell stories that relate to women’s history, but their photographs may also have messages about gender relations, differences among Indian cultures, or commentary about Indian-Euro-American history. Sometimes there are no Indian signifiers at all except in written messages on the photographs or in captions. These photographers portray Native people with a wide range of physical and attitudinal characteristics. Some works are ironic or humorous, others angry, sophisticated, or reflective.

To read the essay go HERE

What is a photograph? What is photography? Some suggestions

Take your most thrilling photograph ( taken by you or by someone else ) and ask, “Is it……..?”

A way of not looking at the world

A framework for searching

A reminder of meditation, silence and stillness

A record of resonance

A creation of resonance

A vain attempt to be King Canute

Self flagellation

Sensual titillation – between is and is not

An attempt to look at looking

A scratching of the itch to tidy up

A prayer for transcendence

A quest to float in self-less harmony

A search for Self

A way-station in the telling of your story

A blink of death

A way of looking at the world

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A re-presentation of reality

A breath visualized

A stuck moment

A freed moment

A heart beat-en

Infinity squeezed

An eternally searching for the eternal

A frozen exhalation

Lines

Is and is-not holding hands

Rapture ruptured

A metaphor machine

A path to follow – inward

Plato’s cave

Living death or death living

Formalized longing

Memory shadows

Your soul’s timbre

A visual hiccup in the flow of consciousness

An invitation to shift consciousness

If not what is a photograph, what is photography?

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What is photography? “It is preserving of commonly perceived appearance achieved with the use of physical, chemical and mechanical processes, as the result of which we receive a plane covered with color spots, ordered in a certain way. The ordering of these spots causes an illusion of perceiving by a viewer three-dimensional objects in space(…)” – Alfred Ligocki – [translation cited in “Archeologia fotografii” (“Archeology of photography”) by Jerzy Lewczynski, Wydawnictwo KROPKA, Wrzesnia 2005, p. 53  (PhotoQuotes)

Nah – it ain’t that………………………………!

Street art celebrated

The Wooster Collective’s celebration of street art is HERE

One I particularly liked is;

 

someones-supermarket

I always find simplicity and re-contextualization powerful – you can’t get much simpler re-contextualization than ‘Someone’s Supermarket’!

Of course it depends on the eye to see and the heart to feel – and the wit to chuckle!

Abraham Obama by Popoganda artist Ron English

Yet another catch-up for me;

 

abraham-obama-ron-english

Billions of bucks and billions of prayers riding on you BO – no pressure there then!

Wonderful video ;

Ron English’s Popoganda site is HERE

Great interview with his long-suffering kids HERE

Don’t miss his agit-pop billboards HERE

Interesting comments o n Ron English plus resources HERE

Cindy Sherman – doesn’t do men – its harder to get the wigs!

sherman-richard-burbidge-paper-mag-arts

David Hershkovits has published a very interesting interview with CS.  It starts;

 

Cindy Sherman: I printed digitally maybe starting five years ago, but I still was shooting film, and I’d never go back now. Forget it. What I used to do is shoot the film and then I would have to take off the makeup, bring film to the lab and wait two or three hours for it to be developed. Then look at it and if I had to re-shoot it, I’d have to do the makeup all over again.

David Hershkovits: On your wall I see pictures of men.

CS: Those are off the Internet — real portraits that I was inspired by and thinking, ‘If I get it together, I’ll do some men.’ I didn’t get it together for this show, but I still might try something. Why not?

DH: Your work has often been cited by post-feminist critics for its ability to parse the dilemma of the modern woman. Men don’t interest you as much?

CS: I’ve done some. Not that many. It’s just a little harder, is all. It’s harder to get the wigs.

To read the full interview go HERE

 

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For other resources on Cindy Sherman use the search thingy on this site.

Relational art – accidentalism celebrated and contextualized?

I was interested to know that there is such a thing as relational art ;

Happy to Meet You: An Introduction to Relational Art

Relational Art is an emerging movement in art identified by Nicolas Bourriaud, a French philosopher, who recognized a growing number of contemporary artists used performative and interactive techniques that rely on the responses of others: pedestrians, shoppers, browsers—the casual observer-turned-participant. As an art critic, Bourriaud has reviewed many internationally renowned exhibitions and performances. Over the course of writing editorials for the French magazine Documents sur l’Art, Bourriaud came to term what he was seeing—more accurately, experiencing—as a movement in Relational Art. Bringing together his many essays on the subject of these artists and their activities, Nicolas Bourriaud, in 1998, launched his theory and book entitled Relational Aesthetics. While art critics, theoreticians, and historians have argued whether Nicolas Bourriaud was accurate in naming what he was seeing as a new movement—or, even a movement at all—artists have been busy carrying out their relational activities.

via PLACE Program.

The best idea I can get from it so far is that it is ‘accidentalism celebrated and contextualized’ – or something like that.

See TIMELINE

See BBC

See WikiPedia

Major academic site HERE

Masks 1 – via Prof Ron Bennett at Carnegie Mellon

Masks are fascinating.
They are projections;
of what we would like to be
of what we fear
of sides or sub-personalities that inhabit us
They can relieve us temporarily of being who we are.
If you get to join one of Prof Bennett’s classes you could end up making your mark in aluminium.

Click on photo to read original article

Two artists Weathering Art: Roni Horn and Jari Silomaki

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Roni Horn has a book about her ongoing project in Iceland

Weather Reports You

 

by Roni Horn

Pub: Steidl & Partners.  Available on Amazon

“Everyone has a story about the weather. This may be the single thing each of us holds in common. And though the weather varies greatly from here to there, it is, ultimately, one weather that we share. Small talk everywhere has occasioned the popular distribution of the weather. Some say talking about the weather is talking about oneself. And with each passing day, the weather increasingly becomes ours, if not us. Weather Reports You is one beginning of a collective self-portrait.” Roni Horn

Over the past two years Roni Horn has been working with a small team in the southwest of Iceland gathering personal testimonies from people talking about the weather. These “weather reports” include descriptions, reflections, memories and stories based on experiences of the weather that range from the matter-of-fact to the marvellous. The different nuances and usages of language suggest that the weather is not just a matter of meteorological conditions but is, in Roni Horn’s words, “a metaphor for the physical, metaphysical, political, social and moral energy of a person and a place”.
A wonderful article HERE

Brilliant set of resources including videos HERE

Jari Silomaki

You might be interested to link Roni Horn’s idea with this Finnish photographer Jari Silomaki

 

Some time ago, when I first saw an exhibition of Silomaki’s work I wrote the following;

Powerful resonance in yoking the subjective eye with the global event

An appreciation of the art of Finnish photographer Jari Silomaki

 The Finnish photographer Jari Silomaki writes on the photographs he shows – in the exhibition I saw he wrote in white ink. He writes about the photograph he took and its context in his life and the fact that it was coincidental with some major event. Several of his arresting photographs can be seen HERE: 

jari-silomaki-finlandia-hallSOURCE

 ‘Since 2001 I have taken a landscape photograph every day. I connect these photographs to important personal and world political events…. The starting point of this work was that world events, personal events and weather will repeat themselves and merge into one continuum……. On the other hand, linking landscape and news concretises how we are in contact with world events through the media. Everything is brought up close, which also means that events that are truly nearby are no longer close.’ 

Jari Silomaki, photographer (Finland)

 For me Silomaki, and this idea, is one of the most exciting finds in many years. The linking of the public events and the choice of a landscape brings powerfully together the subjective and the public.   It’s not only about the cataclysmic such as Kennedy’s assassination or the Twin Towers attack but also anything significant on global news.

Concerning the cataclysmic I remember the Twin Towers collapse because my wife and I were in Ikea having taken an American friend. In the case of Kennedy’s assassination I was in a weight-training club above a green-grocer’s shop where the smell of the potatoes and greens from downstairs was (thankfully) just more powerful than the smell of sweat. I didn’t take those two ‘memory-photographs’, but the Ikea one I could still take, because we all remember where we stood as the sense of horror began to fill in the store.  The green-grocer shop I’m sure is no more.

 One of the interesting elements in Silomaki’s great idea is the sense that you get when you realize that he chose ‘this perspective’h, ‘this angle’, ‘this composition’ as the personal – with the global news circulating in that day’s consciousness. The images become impregnated with the facts both personal and public. They create, for me, an oceanic resonances drawn from time and timelessness and place and placelessness, the subjectively personal and the binding knowledge that comes from global news.  Why because we see what the photographer held to be significant in the ravaging consciounes of the event.  We are seeing his world with his eyes.

In seeing the world with his eyes the question is raised as to the relationship between what he frames in the photograph and the frame created by the writing.   Is that a limiting aesthetic?  Is it limiting because we don’t know more about the web of significances in the photographer’s environment.

Take a look at the BrainForest

Thanks to Elmo at the Hunting Club blog for sharing this breath of delight;

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Brainforest by Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger

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Go HERE to see some more of the same.

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The site argues that real achievement, success and happiness lie in being fully and positively human –

through justice in our caring our creativity and our criticality –

developed via service to the communities to which we belong.

 

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

 

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On this site there are 1000+ ideas that you can put to work straight away.

“Use the SEARCH, CATGORIES or INDEX to find the best ideas for you?”

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Woman photographers 1: Cindy Sherman

This is for general enjoyment or as a set of  suggestions for lessons for use in schools, colleges and universities.

Developed and extended from an earlier posting.    Update posted 19th Dec 2008.

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Starting points for appreciating the artist Cindy Sherman

The woman behind the many constructions of us.
The woman behind the many constructions of us.

 

 

 

One of countless constructions - but she is us not her.
One of countless constructions - but she is us, not her. Whose head is being held?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is she more or less nude than if she were nude? Why leave the body-mask so evident?
Is she more or less nude than if she were really nude? Why leave the body-mask so evident?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

General questions about the photographer Cindy Sheman for reflection or discussion

What other concerns do you see in her work other than re-presentation of the male gaze?

Is she a feminist – or a humanist – or something else?  Does she go beyond what feminists have said abou the ‘male gaze’?  Is she anti-man?  Does she have a ‘political agenda’ or is she working with ‘nuances of cultural meaning pinned irrevocably between shifts back and forth between the objective and subjective’?

Why hasn’t she, or someone else, done for men what she has done for women, and for humanity via women?

As you gather critical comments about her how satisfied are you with what people write about her?

Is she a campaigner?  

How far and in what ways do artists change things?

“Sherman embodies our flickering memories.” – how far do you agree with this?

Things to do

1 Collect photographs by her.

2 Collect statements by her

3 Collect critcal statements and appreciations about her.

4 Who can you find that is like her, or influenced by her.

5 Create photographs inspired by her

6 What do you learn from quotations (allegedly) by her;

“I like making images that from a distance seem kind of seductive, colorful, luscious and engaging, and then you realize what you’re looking at is something totally opposite. It seems boring to me to pursue the typical idea of beauty, because that is the easiest and the most obvious way to see the world. It’s more challenging to look at the other side.”

 

I can’t work without it. And it has to be the right kind, because if it’s not then I get into a bad mood. I work with a remote so that I can change CDs instantly if I need to. (Sherman talking about her need to have music on while working) 

I didn’t want to make “high” art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn’t thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn’t want the work to seem like a commodity.

I was supporting myself, but nothing like the guy painters, as I refer to them. I always resented that actually.. we were all getting the same amount of press, but they were going gangbusters with sales.

When I do work, I get so much done in such a concentrated time that once I’m through a series, I’m so drained I don’t want to get near the camera.

I was feeling guilty in the beginning; it was frustrating to be successful when a lot of my friends weren’t. Also, I was constantly being reminded of that by people in my family making jokes. 

 If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it. It was almost like it was made already.. the challenge is more about trying to make what you can’t think of.

The work is what it is and hopefully it’s seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I’m not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff.

artquotes.net

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“The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told.”

 “I didn’t have any interest in traditional art.”

“I am fine, though it is hard to think of what kind of work to make at this point, other than decorative, escapist or abstract. I suppose I’ll explore one or all of these things.”     

thinkexist.com

 

MY PERSONAL APRECIATION OF CINDY SHERMAN

For me  there are few photographers that we can unhesitatingly say are great photographers, great artists.  Cindy Sherman is one.  

At the simplest level we can say she has made a career out of dressing up and taking photographs of herself.

Ah but its much, much more than that………  Every detail counts, every detail is there because she has consciously constructed it as part of a whole essay of  ‘intended’ meaning, and of meaning-making possibilities of us the viewers. Many enjoyable photographs are created by happenstance – happy chance – you could say that another great Henri Cartier-Bresson built a whole career on capturing the ‘happy accident’.  With Sherman there is no accident – she doesn’t ‘hunt and capture’ she constructs.

For me the frisson of excitement and the essence of her work  I describe as  ‘nuances of cultural meaning pinned irrevocably between shifts back and forth between the objective and subjective‘?  These stimulate us (or at least men) into re-considering not beliefs but memories.  And we are made up of memories (except in the highest mystical sense).

Starting with the B&W film stills she sets up echoes in the bed of memories that exist from having seen endless films. They seem to be the real thing but they are embodiments of rich meaning that were not in any film stills from actual films.  

Unequivocally she made photography subjective in the sense that what she constructs is about interiority of being human.  She constructs and we construct – and re-construct through self-examination of what we thought was normal, fixed, innocent, balanced – the movie stills in our personal memories.

They are about depth of personal and cultural menaning – not the surface

Her photographs will have varying sets of meanings depending on the decade when you started watching films and seeing photographs – especially photographs of women. 

Some individual photographs

sherman-cindy-2001.jpg

Again the body-mask is very evident, emphasized by the contrasting face make-up.  Is that deliberate to tell us that this is not her but woman generally?  If not why would a consummate artist do such a thing?

Is this a come-on or an admixture of all the things/roles that women are subjected to?

 

Additional Resources
    

Great collection of Cindy Sherman photographs HERE

A great ‘mega-site’ on women photographers exists HERE

Variety of biographical statements HERE

News stuff HERE

Check out stuff on Amazon.co. uk and Amazon.com

Check out WikiPedia

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

 

 Update posted 19th Dec 2008

Women artists: Eva Zeisel – and aesthetics as the playful search for beauty

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Eva Zeisel – a 100-year  life-time’s design rooted in a ‘nature and human relationships’ aesthetic.

“I’m not interested in innovation.” (Eva)

“They are so beautiful – like a symbol of eternity!” (Blog commentator)

Zeisel’s Rockland BowlZeisel’s Rockland Bowl

Her TED presentation;

The ceramics designer Eva Zeisel looks back on a 75-year career. What keeps her work as fresh today (her latest line debuted in 2008) as in 1926? Her sense of play and beauty, and her drive for adventure. Listen for stories from a rich, colorful life.

Eva’s  story is indeed as interesting as her work – for more see HERE

There is a documentary about her (2002) HERE

Amazon have several books about Eva, and vases etc designed by her,  HERE

Courtesy of TED

Photo and comments source Metropolismag Mason Currey

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Some questions to include in a school, college or university project on 

Women artists: Eva Zeisel – and aesthetics as the playful search for beauty

Is Eva a designer, an artist or both.

She seems to a) have created beauty and b) been commercially successful against great odds AND impervious to the ‘art-mafia’ that run the fine art world.’  Discuss.

Google Robert Hughes and ‘The Mona Lisa Curse’ – what relevance do you see between the Hughes analysis and the achievement of Eva Zeisel?

Should schools, colleges and universities make a greater effort to find people like Eva who seem to connect to that which is eternal, beyond fashions?

 

How can we be more creative?

 

Creativity as re-contextualization!
Creativity as re-contextualization!

Creativity is difficult to define but some of the characteristics of those that have it have been identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

10 paradoxes characteristic of creative people

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist,i has written about ten paradoxes characteristic of creative people. In summary version they are:

1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they’re also often quiet and at rest. … One manifestation of energy is sexuality. Creative people are paradoxical in this respect also. They seem to have quite a strong dose of eros, or generalized libidinal energy, which some express directly into sexuality. At the same time, a certain spartan celibacy is also a part of their makeup; continence tends to accompany superior achievement. Without eros, it would be difficult to take life on with vigor; without restraint, the energy could easily dissipate.

2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time. … Another way of expressing this dialectic is the contrasting poles of wisdom and childishness. As Howard Gardner remarked in his study of the major creative geniuses of this century, a certain immaturity, both emotional and mental, can go hand in hand with deepest insights. Mozart comes immediately to mind.

3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. … Jacob Rabinow, an electrical engineer, uses an interesting mental technique to slow himself down when work on an invention requires more endurance than intuition: “When I have a job that takes a lot of effort, slowly, I pretend I’m in jail. If I’m in jail, time is of no consequence. In other words, if it takes a week to cut this, it’ll take a week. What else have I got to do? I’m going to be here for twenty years. See? This is a kind of mental trick. Otherwise you say, ‘My God, it’s not working,’ and then you make mistakes. My way, you say time is of absolutely no consequence.”

4. Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality.

5. Creative people trend to be both extroverted and introverted. … in current psychological research, extroversion and introversion are considered the most stable personality traits … Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously.

6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time.

7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping.

8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. … The artist Eva Zeisel, who says that the folk tradition in which she works is “her home,” nevertheless produces ceramics that were recognized by the Museum of Modern Art as masterpieces of contemporary design.

9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.

10. Creative people’s openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment. … Deep interest and involvement in obscure subjects often goes unrewarded, or even brings on ridicule. Divergent thinking is often perceived as deviant by the majority, and so the creative person may feel isolated and misunderstood.

SEE Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, published by HarperCollins, 1996.

Full article is HERE

Thoughts on art No. 1: The Turner Prize, The Stuckists and what do we want from artists.

“Art is worth the consciousness that it raises.”

The Turner prize stinks say the Stuckists.  

The Turner prize is great say others.

What do they, and we, want from our artists and their art?

‘Thoughts on art No. 1’ – in a nutshell:  

Just what do we expect from an artist?  What do we have the right to expect?  Are we asking too much?  

In a world of increasing billions of communications isn’t an artist that informs you just a little bit more about

a) being human,

b) his/her being human

c)  or being human in the world with others worth his/her salt?

This is another way of saying that art is worth the consciousness that it raises.

For example two artists help me experience space differently and think about it differently are  Rachel Whiteread and Antony Gormley

 

'Ghost by Rachel Whiteread. The presence of a room without the room, a memory that fills a space such a room occupied.
'Ghost by Rachel Whiteread. The presence of a room without the room, a memory that fills a space such a room occupied. WikiPedia

 

 

Space, (ghosts of) people in space and the inner space of people.
Antony Gormley's 'Domain Field' Space, (ghosts of) people in space and the inner space of people - and memory.

 SOURCE

 

Of course the two artists I chose are somewhere between very good and great.  But even if they were students showing just single pieces of their work it wouldn’t make any difference.

The gain was in and  around –  ‘space – being human – memory’ – i.e. a deepening and widening of consciousness. 

Whiteread and Gormley –  are both important to me for reasons other than  ‘space – being human – memory‘ but just for extending, deeping, enjoying the resonances of that area, “Thanks – many, many thanks –  I’m so glad I came across you.”


Back to the Eckhart Tolle discussion – intellectuality & the mind are as spiritual as prayer & meditation

sun-and-plant

In the context of discussion with contributor ‘Patrick’ I offer a contribution to the issues I raised concerning the brilliant Eckhart Tolle. I do this via a beautiful poem that describes, with exquisite simplicity, the mystical experience of non-duality, or oneness. The poem is by the renowned Chinese poet Li Po;

The birds have vanished into the sky,

and now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountains and me,

until only the mountains remain.

Li Po (701-762)

IMHO

1 Clearly for Li Po there was, to start with, on that occasion, duality.

2 I’m assuming that Li Po returned from non-duality, back in to duality – unless he sat there until his bones turned to dust.  I assume he returned in order to do the laundry, chop wood, carry water.  Of course he would now do them on the bed-rock of enhanced consciousness derived from his mystical/aesthetic experience of non-duality.  Both wings of being human would be beating – as he scrubbed and carried and chopped. Enlightenment is now – if we let it.

In this world – the contingent world, the world of duality, the ‘Kingdom of Names’ – the complementarity of duality and non-duality is the key. Duality is not a curse, or a failing. When in dynamic inter-relation with non-dual experience it is heaven and perfection. Without non-dual experience it is hell, including the hell of relativity. The purpose of life is not just transcendence and timelessness – it is also immanence and being in time, moment by moment. Complementarity is the key.

3 The non-duality or mystic state is the same as the state of creativity (or the truly aesthetic experience).  We are ‘taken out of ourselves’ as we say in modern parlance.  Art  and ‘religion’ are not similar, they are the same – as Coomaraswami says.  It is the forgetting of self, a loss of ego boundaries, a letting go and letting God etc.  But the artist as well as the mystic comes out of the non-dual state back into the dual state. – and s/he becomes someone who lives with what s/he has created. What s/he has produced might even be a bit of a shock – a bit like the dumb panda who jumps when she sees that something is moving on the floor beneath her i.e the cub to which she has just given birth.  The artist becomes nurturer/appreciator/critic – more or less. They in duality are the left-brain evaluator (criticality mode) to complement their non-dual right-brain creativity mode. Complementarity is the key. One mode, and only one mode is in the foreground at any one time. Duration is from milliseconds to hours in the case of non-duality.

4 The question is are both states normal, desirable and, if the term is acceptable, God-given, i.e. both part of the life’s teaching-machine from which we are supposed to learn.  Or is one state bad, immature, to be got rid of, so that we can be non-dual 24/7?

5 Intellectuality is not the same as intellectualism, just as individuality is not the same as individualism.  In both cases the first is normal, healthy, proper, desirable.  In both cases the second is excessive, unbalanced, undesirable and pathological.  The same difference incidentally exists between sexuality and sexual-obsession. Tolle IMHO makes the mistake of not distinguishing between ego and the egotistic. He also can give the impression that he is trying to invalidate mind per se instead of distinguishing between true mind and the neurotic egotistical mind, trapped as it is by attachment.

Awareness, raised consciousness, is true mind. True mind is ‘xin’ heart-mind, interiority bathed in the light of the intellect and the warmth of true love, without attachment to forms – derived from the complementarity of the modes of duality and non-duality. ‘Without attachment to forms’ doesn’t mean without love of forms. Forms are the means (the only means) by which we can come to understand the essentiality of formlessness.

True love as Tolle says is realization of oneness – complementary to which is the glory of diversity.

God loves our celebrating diversity with Him as much as wanting us to realize oneness.

The one who is awakened is a one as well as a not-one – the Buddha was not non-Buddha – at least as a gateway, a pointer.

Spirituality or transcendence or consciousness is not increased by a diminution of intelligence, or more correctly a diminution of intellectuality. The intellect as enlightened heart-mind is the human spirit. Enlightenment comes from realization of the true Self, as opposed to self, that is the eternal. Unlimited Whole, the Silent One, God the Father, God without Name, the Nameless One etc.

Complementarity is the key. Yin is lovely only in the balanced presence of yang – and vice-versa.

6 ‘Before all else, God created the mind.’ (Koranic tradition)  The intellect is the supreme gift of God to man, the pinnacle of the way in which we are made in His image – providing we realize that all rivers flow back to the one Ocean, from which those parts also have their origin. Complementarity is the key.

7 The fear and misunderstanding of the term ego. The ego is simply the part of the self – the dimension or mode – that deals with immediate reality. As such it is neutral – like the heart or lungs or kidney. Whether it is healthy or diseased – now that is a different matter. The ego is as much part of the enlightened one as with the crass self-obsessive.

God celebrates His Creativity in the uniqueness of me, as well as in His Creation of our species.

We believe what we believe – some we choose to believe, some is ingrained.

The happiest of worlds is one where we can believe different things without feeling an obligation to kill each other! Complementarity is the key.

The ultimate sickness is to know who you are through knowing who you hate.

Enough

Namaste!

Jigsaws, memory, menage a trois and the work of Anton Nickson

Jigsaws are powerfully symbolic and re-presentational of our desire to have a coherent picture of the world and to fit the ‘pieces’ together so as to make sense.  An artist whose I work I like very much Anton Nickson has painted a piece that plays on this idea to great effect especially in relation to the theme of ‘menage a trois’.

For me the work is powerfully resonant with ideas of memory and place and reminds me of Roni Horn’s bringing together of the human form, the mind and landscape.

A piece by Nickson that I would love to own is

Anton Nickson
BLACKADE
41 x 41 cm
Wooden blocks

Nickson is represented by the Lemon Street Gallery, 13 Lemon Street, Truro, Cornwall, TR1 2LS, UK +44 (0) 1872 275757 info@lemonstreetgallery.co.uk http://www.lemonstreetgallery.co.uk
© copyright Lemon Street Gallery 2005

The Anton Nickson page is HERE

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SEE also Learning Motivation for Success

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

The Lemon Street gallery is HERE