Artists, particularly painters, as a group can be self-centered, arrogant, vain, egotistical, and in some instances simply brilliant. But hiding beneath that favorable surface lays a secret. A great many of them are just insane and I'm not even talking about myself. Of my own favorite painters Van Gogh and Picasso were debatably insane while Goya and Pollock suffered from depression. There is even a term for it, outsider art or art brut was first used by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created in an insane asylum.
The idea of a 'mad genius' actually goes as far back as ancient Greece, where Socrates dismissed any poet "untouched by the madness of the muses." Socrates warned that such poets are doomed to find their "sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the inspired madman." In Phaedrus Plato wrote that artists were bestowed with a divine madness, and Aristotle was in all probability the first to connect creativity with depression.
In 1991 Dr. Arnold M. Ludwig, a psychiatrist at the University of Kentucky, did survey of 1,000 famous 20th-century artists and writers, comparing their mental health with those of normal professions. Ludwig discovered that artists and writers had two to three times the rate of psychosis, suicide attempts, mood disorders, and substance abuse than did successful people in business or science. Freudian psychiatry offers an explanation in the theory that people who are creative are much more in touch with their unconscious which makes them more creative which makes them think in crazier ways which makes them more creative. God, no wonder we all need therapy.
Once again I have taken forever to get to my point of writing this. I have been in a very artistic mood this week to the point that I was thinking about painting something. Always my dark guardian angel Ash took it upon herself to remind me of what I'm like when I paint. Pretty much it involves days of isolation and copious quantities of tequila, nicotine, and caffeine with very little or no food at all. Totally immersed I will paint until that moment comes when I stand back and realize that one way or another it's finished. Hopefully what I saw in my head is on the canvas because one time I did take a scissors to a painting and I have been known to burn others.
So those thoughts led to all the insanity thoughts which led to this post. I started to write a post about art and my thinking of painting again but I finished this post first so when it seems I'm out of order here, well, just another sign of my insanity.
Nine Inch Nails - The Hand That Feeds
(Love the coloring of that vid.)
Showing posts with label artgasmic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artgasmic. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Thirty Days of Truths, Day 29
Something I hope to change about myself. And why ....
Can I use location on this one? Why? Because Paris seems to be calling me. Damnit I’ll just think of something else. I knew that was too easy an answer.
I don't think it's ever going to be possible but if I could change anything I would tame that slight flaw in my personality that makes me so damn emo sometimes. A friend recently said I have a 'dark, lonerish, superior, arrogant bitch' attitude and I like that. It's a cover I have worked long and hard at over the years and I believe I may have finally perfected it. But still it seems to fail me at times.
The problem is the fact that under that veneer is a soul that can suddenly be torn with emotion. I'll usually mange to keep it safely hidden away and under control only to have it explode out of nowhere. There are times I don’t even know why it happens but still it does. It can last hours or it can last days than it will suddenly fade away as fast as it appeared. My mom once called it 'the mood' and it's a name that has stuck ever since.
Granted I love to paint when I'm in one of those moods. It's as if I can see the colors swirling around my head and can smell even feel the paint as I put on canvas. At moments like that every creative nerve in my body seems so alive I honestly think I could paint what I see with a blindfold on. It has to be the closest thing to an artistic orgasm as I have ever found.
Maybe I won't change that flaw after all. I mean seriously, who am I to turn down an orgasm?
Can I use location on this one? Why? Because Paris seems to be calling me. Damnit I’ll just think of something else. I knew that was too easy an answer.
I don't think it's ever going to be possible but if I could change anything I would tame that slight flaw in my personality that makes me so damn emo sometimes. A friend recently said I have a 'dark, lonerish, superior, arrogant bitch' attitude and I like that. It's a cover I have worked long and hard at over the years and I believe I may have finally perfected it. But still it seems to fail me at times.
The problem is the fact that under that veneer is a soul that can suddenly be torn with emotion. I'll usually mange to keep it safely hidden away and under control only to have it explode out of nowhere. There are times I don’t even know why it happens but still it does. It can last hours or it can last days than it will suddenly fade away as fast as it appeared. My mom once called it 'the mood' and it's a name that has stuck ever since.
Granted I love to paint when I'm in one of those moods. It's as if I can see the colors swirling around my head and can smell even feel the paint as I put on canvas. At moments like that every creative nerve in my body seems so alive I honestly think I could paint what I see with a blindfold on. It has to be the closest thing to an artistic orgasm as I have ever found.
Maybe I won't change that flaw after all. I mean seriously, who am I to turn down an orgasm?
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Observations on Art 7.18
Today was declared a VQ holiday in lieu of the fact that my friend and sometimes roomie scored some tickets to the first day of the Matisse exhibit at MOMA. So the gallery remained closed this Sunday and I’m not sure what those poor socializers did with their afternoon. But I’m not about to worry because I found myself in a state close to artgasmic.
“Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–17” runs through October 11th at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibit is a stunning collection of over a hundred paintings, sculptures, and sketches done by Henri Matisse between 1913 and 1917. This is the early so-called dark period of Matisse’s career, so you can see the draw for me right there.
Of all the works two paintings stand out in my mind, two works with totally different looks. The first is “Flowers and Ceramic Plate" (p) which was painted in 1913. Almost the entire canvas is a stunning blue with a green ‘plate’ suspended above a vase of red and orange flowers. I can’t really convey the shade of blue, close to a palatinate blue, but it is so totally dazzling that it seems to fill the entire gallery with blue light. I had never seen this painting before as it is owned by the Städel Museum in Germany and I was a bit in awe of it. One of those paintings that you can not really see in a photo.
The second painting is “Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg” (p) which was painted the following year, 1914. The background of the portrait is as dark as the former was bright. I picture them in a room together with one drawing the light from the other. I am very familiar with this painting as it is owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I have seen it many times. What is fascinating about this painting is the series of arcs around the body, the way Matisse dug into the paint of the black background to further delineate her shoulders and arms. It’s impossible to know but the theory is he used the butt end of his brush to do this. In his book “Matisse Portraits” John Klein described Matisse’s working on this painting as an “extended period of evolution, and the intensive labor suggested by the appearance — scraped, rubbed, scumbled — of the painting itself.” I always wanted to take this one home and I still do.
I could go on and on because there is a little known Matisse story I want to pass on but that will have to wait for another day. I don’t know if the exhibit will travel elsewhere, it has already been at the Art Institute of Chicago, but it is worth seeing if it does.
Charlotte Hatherley - White
“Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–17” runs through October 11th at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibit is a stunning collection of over a hundred paintings, sculptures, and sketches done by Henri Matisse between 1913 and 1917. This is the early so-called dark period of Matisse’s career, so you can see the draw for me right there.
Of all the works two paintings stand out in my mind, two works with totally different looks. The first is “Flowers and Ceramic Plate" (p) which was painted in 1913. Almost the entire canvas is a stunning blue with a green ‘plate’ suspended above a vase of red and orange flowers. I can’t really convey the shade of blue, close to a palatinate blue, but it is so totally dazzling that it seems to fill the entire gallery with blue light. I had never seen this painting before as it is owned by the Städel Museum in Germany and I was a bit in awe of it. One of those paintings that you can not really see in a photo.
The second painting is “Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg” (p) which was painted the following year, 1914. The background of the portrait is as dark as the former was bright. I picture them in a room together with one drawing the light from the other. I am very familiar with this painting as it is owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I have seen it many times. What is fascinating about this painting is the series of arcs around the body, the way Matisse dug into the paint of the black background to further delineate her shoulders and arms. It’s impossible to know but the theory is he used the butt end of his brush to do this. In his book “Matisse Portraits” John Klein described Matisse’s working on this painting as an “extended period of evolution, and the intensive labor suggested by the appearance — scraped, rubbed, scumbled — of the painting itself.” I always wanted to take this one home and I still do.
I could go on and on because there is a little known Matisse story I want to pass on but that will have to wait for another day. I don’t know if the exhibit will travel elsewhere, it has already been at the Art Institute of Chicago, but it is worth seeing if it does.
Charlotte Hatherley - White
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