Morris Graves and Machine Age Noise

Spring with Machine Age Noise No. 4, Morris Graves, Tempra on Paper, 1957

Days getting long, sun shining, windows open and by the deafening assault on the senses you might  well believe the Apocalypse is at hand. Power mowers roar against the high piercing scream of weed eaters only pausing for the rare moment to remind you that a bird can still sing before they rev up again... ah, the sounds of the machine age. Here in this tourist town even the screaming massacre of the grass is regularly overwhelmed by the constant traffic of small aircraft overhead. Is there no peace? In my last post I wrote about David Hockney's embrace of the latest technology in his art. But to critique the darker side of the machine age we turn to the one and only Morris Graves.

 Machine Age Noise No. 2, Morris Graves, Ink on Paper, 1957

Morris Graves, renowned Northwest artist and the original Northwest Mystic appreciated peace and quiet to a high degree. Here are his responses to machine age noise. In the Sumi painting Machine Age Noise No. 2 Graves used a broom for a brush giving it an energetic thwack.

David Hockney's iPad illuminations

David Hockney© , Digital image, iPad 2011

David Hockney, the British artist known for his mid-century paintings of Southern California's swimming pools and sprinklers emerged last year with artwork created on his iphone and ipad. He began by drawing fresh flowers on an iphone, using mainly the edge of his thumb, and sending them to his friends. He now uses an iPad, more fingers or a stylus. Last year his exhibit, Fleurs Fraiches, in Paris at the Foundation Pierre Berge featured his iphone and iPad art with the work displayed on iphones, ipads, and as animations. Digital art has the advantage of being easy to transport and copy without loosing any quality in fact the duplicates will be exactly the same as the original.  Possibilities of drawing with an iPad include duplicating the process with a finger tap and the Brushes app can generate animations of the actual drawing process. Plus, the medium when viewed on-screen has the luminosity of a Cathedral stained-glass window on a brilliant day. Hockney, whose early paintings explored qualities of water and light continues to pursue luminous subject matter like the sunny windows and cut flowers in glass pictured here.

Link to show: Paris Fleurs Fraiches exhibition 

At 73 Hockney resides at his family home in Bridlington on the English coast. He still paints large canvases in his enormous studio but keeps his iPad with him like a sketchbook. He says, "What fascinates me is not just technology but the technology of picture-making. I spend more time painting of course, but I treat the iPad as a serious tool. The iPad is influencing the paintings now with its boldness and speed."

David Hockney© , Digital image, iPad 2011

Sex, Flowers and American Abstraction: O'Keeffe

Today is May Day and in the spirit of celebrating fertility, flowers and Spring I bring you Georgia O'Keeffe, photographed by Alfred Stieglitz with her painting, Flower Abstraction, 1924.

"When I make a photograph I make love." Alfred Stieglitz

 Photograph of Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz

Flower Abstraction, Oil on Canvas, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1924

"I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, 
you could not ignore its beauty." 
Georgia O'Keeffe

Painter Georgia O'Keeffe was ahead of her time in many ways including her exploration of abstraction in early twentieth century art. Sadly, the sensuality of her over-sized floral abstractions only gave her male critics ammunition to attack her. They could not see past the sex (expressions of sexuality belonged to men!). If she pointed out that it was their projection and really, she was just painting flowers, they called her prissy. If she didn't they accused her of sexual obsession. She could not win. Considering the chauvinism of the New York art world in the twentieth century it is no wonder she preferred her desert oasis in New Mexico.

Sign Petition to Release Ai Weiwei

Members of the international arts community are petitioning the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China to release artist, Ai Weiwei. You can sign the petition, started by the Guggenheim Foundation, here. 

Link to: Petition for the Release of Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei

Change.org, host of the petition, has been under cyber attack from China in an effort to shut down the site and stop the petition. Change.org engineers are working around the clock to keep the site up.

Protests for Ai Weiwei

 "What can they do to me? 

Nothing more than to banish, kidnap, to imprison me. 

Perhaps they could fabricate my disappearance into thin air, 

but they don't have any creativity or imagination. 

And they lack both joy and the ability to fly."

Ai Weiwei's last blog entry before his April 3 detention.

 Photo: Elisa Haberer

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has still not been seen by his friends and family. Officials claim that he is under investigation for "economic crimes" but the police have still not informed his family regarding his detention from the Beijing airport two weeks ago. Colleagues of Ai also remain missing.

 Artists and activists protest the detention of Ai Weiwei in Hong Kong.

Photograph: Tyrone Siu/Reuters The Guardian

According to the British newspaper The Guardian a Canadian curator organized artists around the world to protest Ai Weiwei's detention by taking chairs into the streets and sitting in silent protest. This idea stemmed from the 2007 installation, Fairytale, of Ai Weiwei's where he took 1,001 Qing Dynasty wooden chairs and 1,001 Chinese citizens to Germany. The German curator of that show, Roger Brugel, sat in protest outside of the Chinese Embassy in Berlin. Said Brugel, "It's crucial to exert pressure now, before they come up with a verdict."

Fairytale, Installation, Ai Weiwei 2007

photo: Galerie Urs Meile

 

Censored in China, Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, has just been made available through MIT Press.