A final Netherlands – Belgium vacation mash-up

It’s been two weeks since I returned from my trip to Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Belgium. If you’ve read any of the preceeding posts (about 9 so far I think) about the trip, thank you.

This will be my final post about the trip, with a melange of images that give you a taste of the many places I visited … some of which I haven’t mentioned yet.

(The blogging about the trip begins with the post “Going Dutch” and adds from there – you can also find them if you search my “Travel” tag.)

Boat making its way on a Brugge canal

Travel Tip: Brugge is beautiful, and worth seeing as a day trip. Stay in Gent, Belgium and travel to Brugge for an afternoon.

The Delft town square

The other side of the main square in Delft is this magnificent church

Canal porn – Another tourist taking a canal beauty shot – Delft

Travel Tip: The three images above show you everything you would want see in Delft, in my opinion. I suggest you go elsewhere to spend your limited travel time and budget.

Stitched sculpture of a woman – SMAK Contemporary Art

Travel Tip: And when you go to Gent, if you like contemporary art even a little bit, you would do well to spend an afternoon at SMAK, the Contemporary Art Museum.

Detail – stitched sculpture

Bicycle sculpture – SMAK

Canal in Amsterdam

Don’t get me wrong (from my previous blog posts, I mean) Amsterdam has it’s charms. When the sun peeks out from the clouds, and a lone boat sails down yet another picturesque canal in the center of the city, you could come to like the place.

Me taking a photo of tourists taking a photo of themselves in Rembrandt Square – Amsterdam

Yeah, the place is over run with tourists but what can you do but go with the flow? After all, I was one of them.

Detail of something I liked at the Rijksmuseum

And the art is pretty cool, no matter which museums you like best.

Writer sculpture – Eye Film Institute Amsterdam

Despite all of my experiences, I still found it hard to encapsulate them into blog posts. There was so much to write about, and I didn’t even realize it until I got home.

View from top floor of the Amsterdam library

Top Secret Travel Tip: This is the best view you can get in the city of Amsterdam. Behind Centraal Station, you can take a free ferry across the water. Find the Amsterdam Public Library, and go to the 7th Floor, which is their EXCELLENT restaurant. Go to the outside deck, and snap a couple of incredible shots of the city, then go back inside and get one of the most reasonbly priced, delicious lunches you’re going to find.

Worn Out – Van Gogh sketch

When it was time to leave, I was ready to come home to New York City… still the best city on the planet.

Art in Amsterdam – Contemporary and Classic

Tons of dilapidated tourist bicycles behind Central Station

As a blogger, it’s up to me to decide what images to show you of a place I visit. If I show you a romanticized pic of the perfect bicycle alongside a canal on a sunny day, with the reflection of a bridge mirrored in the water you’d get a “travel-porn” view of Amsterdam.

But that wasn’t my experience, so that’s not what I am going to show.

These images are how I saw bicycles in Amsterdam. They abound by the hundreds, most of them homely and half-broke, locked up with thick metal chains, leaning against buildings, or bound to fences or ugly concrete pillars beside the canals. They are an eyesore; the city is over-run with them.

More bicycles leaning against a building

Art can be like that too. We have expectations of art. We want it to deliver a certain viewing experience. In many cases we romanticize art, particularly classical art.

For instance, when you are in Amsterdam and you go to any of the major museums, you will see the “Dutch Masters.” It’s easy to look at these images and settle back into your chair at your computer desk (unless you are looking at this screen on a tablet, or a cell phone I suppose) and say to yourself, Ah, yes, these are the paintings a tourist would see in Amsterdam. How beautiful.

It requires no thinking, it is a passive viewing experience.

So when we think of famous artists from the Netherlands, we’d call to mind Van Gogh:

Van Gogh self portrait – Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

or a lovely Vermeer:

Vermeer’s The Milkmaod – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

or perhaps Rembrandt:

Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum

I’m not criticizing this art. I’m not suggesting these artworks aren’t worth seeing, but I am saying a viewer will not feel challenged when you look at these works. You will see exactly what you expect.

So, I’d prefer not to just highlight these conventional images, and talk a little bit about images that aren’t as expected.

The original rock and roll smoking skeleton? Maybe. It’s a Van Gogh.

Unfortunately I will be unable to show you photos of the art made an impression on me because I was not allowed to take photographs at FOAM - the contemporary museum of photography. I also forgot to take a photograph of “W139: a contemporary art space” and the current work there called “On Fresh Soil.”

Fortunately for you dear reader, I am a writer – not a professional artist – so I can share what I observed in words and you will come up with your own imagined view of what I saw.

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At FOAM, I saw a large exhibition of the works of Stephen Gill. The show is entitled “Best Before End.” This show will be on view at FOAM from May 17th thru July 14th 2013.

Here is an excerpt of the show’s description by the museum’s curators:  “The exhibition Best Before End incorporates a number of photographic series Gill made in and around the London borough of Hackney over the past 14 years. … Gill made various attempts to jump outside the technical boundaries that photography imposed. … His processes include burying photographs, making exuberant flower collages, places objects inside the camera so that their traces could be encapsulated within the film emulsion.”

One interesting technique Gill used was adding colored energy drinks to his film and the processed photograph would have a large orange, red or other color “splotch” in places on the finished print.

The content of Gill’s show isn’t always as fascinating as his techniques though. One series of a dozen photos was images of different individuals sitting on a train looking out the window. Another series was old women who used shopping carts and the images were centered on the woman with the shopping cart, and not much else in the image. Still another series was different pieces of concrete sitting in the center of the image, with no discernable background.

However, there were other images that strived toward a larger narrative. My favorite piece in the show was a small photo of a field of cone flowers with a yellow base to the flower, graduating to reddish orange on top in the foreground… in the background, were a series of industrial smokestacks, the top portion of which were safety yellow – but processed to look similar in color to the flowers.

Another interesting part of the exhibit was a dozen works on paper – not photos. Each paper had a smashed purplish blue splotch in the center. The contents of these artworks were, according to the description, “blueberry, hammer, paper.” The description of these works actually said “pathetic attempt to capture” … and I think it said something like the essence of that place at a particular time. But it’s a good challenge to a viewer at a photography exhibition, in my opinion.

There were several other galleries with other photographic works on display. The museum is not large, and depending on how you linger over particular exhibits, you can see it in an hour or hour and a half. Still, I found it worthwhile.

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Travel Tip: If you want to purchase some decorative street art from local artists (tourist stuff) … you can stop by the “Art Plein Spui” on Sundays only, in the Spui district. There’s a little something for everybody: landscapes, nudes, abstract, a bit of sculpture … all while being serenaded by a harp player accompanied by a violinist.

Entrance to Art Plein Spui

Artists ready to meet the day’s tourists at Art Plein Spui

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Finally, I didn’t have nearly enough time – or map sense – to find out what the contemporary art scene was like in Amsterdam. There was only one ground-breaking space (literally) that I saw, at W139.

W139 is a pseudo-warehouse looking space, with high ceilings, although accessible at street level. When I visited, W139 had “broken ground” by pulling a small tractor (yes, a farm tractor) into the building to plough a “furrow” into the blacktop macadam they had laid over a concrete floor years ago. The artists collective who run the space decided they are going to remove this blacktop surface, and they had a groundbreaking ceremony where the tractor did its bit to cut into the floor.

Unfortunately I wasn’t there to see that. I saw the aftermath… a tractor parked in the center of the space, behind the tractor are pieces of blacktop thrown to both sides of this “furrow” and the rest of the space looks like (and is) an unfinished construction zone.

The folks at W139 present this as an artwork in progress, and that is what’s on view. They are calling this exhibition “On Fresh Soil.” Entrance to the space is free.

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Just like the random chaos at W139, there is no neat and tidy way to summarize the art I saw in Amsterdam. The museums are the institutional view, the street art is what it is, and the contemporary galleries are mostly unknown to me.

But if you find bicycles to be the moving art of the city of Amsterdam, don’t worry, you’ll see plenty.

SMAK Contemporary Art Museum – Gent Belgium

As a New Yorker it’s difficult not to compare other museums with our world class museums, and in this case, SMAK Contemporary Art Museum in Gent holds its own as an innovative space showcasing European contemporary talent.

At the entrance to the museum you will find SMAK publications called “The Artist in Their Own Words,” which are magazine style printings of interviews with artists who have had shows at SMAK.

Below are some photographs I took of the works on view now, but if you are in Gent and interested in contemporary art, SMAK is a must-see destination.

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KOEN THEYS – Home Made Victories

I was particularly excited about the ground floor galleries dedicated to the work of Belgian artist Koen Theys. The exhibition, “Home Made Victories” is the first major retrospective for the artist and includes extensive use of compelling video and photography and will be on view until mid-August 2013.

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Still Life with Apples

Above: Koen Theys photograph, Still Life with Apples II, 2010

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Series, Still Life with Apples – Koen Theys, 2010

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This photograph I took is a small detail portion of a larger “collage” framed photograph by Koen Theys

The image above is kind of hard to explain, but I’ll try. Koen Theys creates large tableaux photographs where he carefully assembles thousands of objects like clocks, skulls, books, candles, old computer equipment and various other items he uses in these works.

The photograph I took, is a tiny portion of one of these tableaux photographs because unless I took a small part of the image and blew it up there would be no way to see the detail.

Another thing I cannot show, but which I thought was extremely interesting, he set up a video camera on a trolly and slowly rolled the camera through the tableaux, and then showed this video in another room adjacent to where the large-scale photographs were displayed.

This extremely innovative use of technology, photography and found objects made for an extraordinarily compelling viewing experience.

It’s not really possible to see the details of this Koen Theys collage but this is the entire image

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The upper floor exhibitions had a variety of sculpture, painting and photography too, some more thought provoking to me than others, but all worth seeing.

A sample of other items on view at SMAK…

Sculpture: three grotesques holding a pencil, a paint brush and a screwdriver

This sculpture of three artists features grotesque heads, and the artist’s arms are bound one to the other so they cannot move, or ever see one another. The description of the sculpture suggests their poses are like samurai warriors with their pencil, paint brush and screwdriver stuck into their belts like swords.

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Framed photographs of grotesque head sculptures

These framed photographs of grotesque head sculptures was also a part of this exhibit. Text describing these items suggested that some of the heads were modeled loosely on some European politicians.

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Horse hide sculpture – a provocative display of what looks like two decapitated horses

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Mark Manders – MomentenMachine

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This installation features classic art hanging on the walls with grocery shelves of old sacks of flour and other staples blocking the view

This detail view of the installation shows the classic art seen through the shelving and its contents

 

At the Brooklyn Museum: Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art

I recently went to the Brooklyn Museum to see a special exhibition “Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art.”

More than many museum exhibitions I’ve attended in recent years, I found this large and comprehensive exhibit fascinating and accessible. It covers six years of conceptual art activity from the late 1960′s into the early 1970′s. One of the most interesting aspects of the exhibit is that of the 173 “items” on display, many of them (perhaps most of them) are not art objects but the documentation of the conceptual art that was performed during that time period, or if not an art performance, the documentation describes a piece of art that could be assembled from the instructions provided.

If you are familiar with the work of Sol LeWitt, for example, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_LeWitt) you could see some diagrammatic illustrations on paper of some of the pieces Sol LeWitt wanted to either produce himself or to describe sufficiently so that the works could be produced by others. (As a side note, although I’m not necessarily a fan of his work, if you want to see a permanent exhibition of LeWitt’s work as executed by others, you can go to the DIA: Beacon museum in Beacon, NY.)

This exhibition is based on the curatorial work of Lucy R. Lippard, who participated in putting together shows and writing art criticism during this time period. Again, what is very interesting about this exhibition is that Lippard is not an artist, she is a critic and curator. Her “work” was providing the venues for artists to show their work rather than producing the work herself.

In the Brooklyn Museum there is a permanent Judy Chicago piece called The Dinner Party, which is a large set-piece of feminist art based on placemats, ceramic plates and settings for each female guest (such as Emily Dickenson, etc). The Elizabeth Sackler gallery is dedicated to showing feminist art as one of its primary objectives, and the Lippard exhibition surrounds the Judy Chicago set-piece as its center.

I didn’t particularly find this conceptual art exhibition to be feminist in nature, although I don’t know enough about Lippard to say if she was a feminist or not. There was a very good mix of male and female artists represented in this exhibition, and the themes represented were conceptual and not particularly geared towards feminist themes.

One of my favorite pieces in the exhibition was the “Secret Painting,” a piece by British artist Mel Ramsden. (http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/30.2003.a-b/) It is a canvas painted all black, and beside the painting there is another canvas with a message saying “The content of this painting is invisible; the character and dimension of the content are to be kept permanetly secret, known only to the artist.”

However, one of the “dangers” I perceive with Conceptual Art is that it takes the elevated position of an art object and makes anything a possible art object, whether it was specifically created by an artist or not. Of course, so much of the art we see these days is exactly that – not something specifically created by artists, but actually items that have been assembled from pre-existing consumer objects in the world and then we (the viewer) are told (1) this is art, and (2) it is up to you to determine its meaning.

When you enter the exhibit, the first thing you’ll see is a glass case with perhaps two dozen post cards of various scenes of New York City… Central Park, the Empire State Building, whatever. On the back of each post card is a printed text which says “I Got Up At” and then a printed time (4:28 P.M. for example). The only other printed text is the artist’s address (the artist is On Kawara) and the address of Lucy R. Lippard. So in this case, the “art performance” is the sending of a post card through the mail. No one can actually ever see the “art performance” and in the end, Lucy R. Lippard collects and assembles the “art objects” (postcards) from the “art performance” (sending the post cards through the mail.)

While I like the idea that art and artists can be playful with art, can play with the concepts of what is an art object or what is an art performance, I still find it disturbing to think that classical art is basically dead in that world. No where in that exhibition will you find a painting with a subject, you won’t even find abstract expressionist paintings because they aren’t necessarily “conceptual enough” for this crowd.

Of course, in the end, they are all following Marcel DuChamp’s lead from 1917 when he tried to put a urinal on display in an art show and call it a “Fountain.” It’s been all downhill since then.

If you want to see this exhibition, it will be on display at the Brooklyn Museum until February 17, 2013. http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/six_years/. A catalog for this exhibit, in the form of a handsomely published book, is available in the gift shop for $45.oo.

Mark Flood’s Art Star show in Chelsea

I attended an art event in Chelsea at the Zach Feuer Gallery today put on by artist Mark Flood as a part of his new exhibition at the gallery called Art Star.

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The show consists of a series of word paintings with sayings like “Museum Whores” and “Alleged Artists” and a video showing the judges from the Bravo TV show The Next Great Artist, but what the judges are saying is over-dubbed. Instead of giving real critiques, they are dubbed with computer generated voices and completely trashing the hypothetical artist they are discussing… then on the walls of the gallery are large canvases painted black in the center with borders of painted lace. (Lace paintings are works Flood has been known for in his career and how became known.)

The video tape of the judges was, for me, the most amusing part of the exhibition because of the cynicism Flood is showing about the whole way art is promoted by galleries and museums and how artists are commodified and sold.

Today’s event consisted of a panel of 10 men who all claimed to be Mark Flood, and 2 moderators who were there to ask the Mark Floods questions. One of the panel participants was actually Mark Flood, but he never identified himself as the “real artist” and similarly none of the questions that were asked of any of the Mark Floods sitting on the panel were answered seriously. All of the questions and answers were amusing and ironic, with one of the Mark Flood’s pretending to be a tree, another was a cat in a cage, and still others who pretended to represent some part of Mark Flood’s personality (narcissist, sell out, business person, musician, etc.).

Not too many years ago I would have found this kind of art exhibition completely ridiculous, but these days I think I can appreciate the humor and cynicism Flood is depicting in the show. The world of “high art” has become (has always been?) controlled by powerful forces and heavily driven by money. Who becomes the next “art star” has probably very little to do with actual talent and more to do with the proximity of an artist’s relationships to art power structures and influence.

Unfortunately though, I didn’t find the paintings in the exhibition to be “art star” worthy – but I could not figure out if that was purposeful by the artist. Perhaps Mark Flood wanted to create a set of paintings that would be seen as mediocre to underscore his point about how actual talent is irrelevant in the face of all these power structures at play. Or maybe the idea was that mediocre paintings are what galleries are selling today, along with the hype selected artists get by being represented by those galleries.

Regardless, I can appreciate the narrative commentary Flood provides in the word paintings and the video installation to underscore his points, plus the pointed humor he uses to get his message across. The art event today was a lot of fun, although I learned nothing more about Mark Flood as an artist by going, the 45 minutes I spent laughing at myself as an audience participant and laughing at the 10 Mark Floods give silly answers to silly questions makes light of what can normally be a serious endeavor to try and understand what an artist is trying to say with their work.

If you’re in the Chelsea area, I’d recommend checking out the exhibition… the gallery is located on 22nd near 11th Ave. and Art Star will be in residence there until October 15th.

NoLa Diary #4 – Ogden Museum & Contemporary Art Center

Originally I thought the Ogden Museum of Southern Art , located on Camp Street, was free to visitors on Thursdays but I was mistaken. The Ogden is free to any resident of the state of Louisiana on Thursdays, but not a Yankee like me. I was also informed by the helpful desk clerk that the Ogden After Hours program (Thursday evenings between 6-8pm) requires a second admission fee 0f $10.

Travel Tip: However, despite the rain today, there was a silver lining. The Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans  - which is directly across the street from the Ogden was offering a one day $10 “Prospect Pass” which included admission to both the CAC and the Ogden, as well as numerous galleries across the city as part of a group “Prospect” show.

I wish the CAC allowed photography inside their NOLA Today show on the 3rd floor, but alas they did not. The show was well curated and there was a lot of narrative work about New Orleans and artist’s interpretations of life in NoLa now. Of course, references to the flood were plentiful, and the art it inspired was moving. I recommend it highly, and NOLA Today will be on display until the end of January 2012.

Lovely mural on the side of the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, Camp St

Once I took in everything the CAC had to offer today, I went back across the street to the Ogden and I’m so glad I did.

The red and white building on the right is the Ogden and the really old building on the left is a Civil War Museum which I didn’t visit

The one reason I wanted to go to the Ogden was to see native New Orleans artists work and I’m happy to report the work of George Dureau, a well known NoLa French Quarter artist, was worth the visit alone.

Entrance piece (a self portrait by the artist) to the George Dureau exhibition at Ogden

I loved Dureau’s use of color and abstract figuration and I enjoyed the fact that he appears in nearly all of his own work as a model, which is intriguing and I think unusual.

Dureau self portrait red background

Other than the amazing Dureau exhibit, I was really astounded by the work of New Orleans photographer Josephine Sacabo. Her surrealistic negative images of women’s faces are hauntingly beautiful and inspiring. Her work (according to the biography on her website) is in MoMA in NY, the New Orleans Museum of Art – NOMA, the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress collections, just to name a few.

Sacabo piece on display at Ogden

To say the work I saw today was “crazy good” is not an understatement. I was excited by these more contemporary works, even though I thoroughly enjoyed NOMA and the sculpture gardens yesterday. Today I felt like I was putting fuel in my creative furnace as I continue to soak in what the city has to offer.

Another strong Sacabo piece at Ogden – woman with smoke

Although I’ve focused most of my diary entries on museums and art galleries almost exclusively for the first few days of my visit here, I think anyone can easily see why it’s so easy to get pulled in by the artistic heartbeat of New Orleans. The city is so old and has such a strong character, it makes sense to me that so many artists would call this place home.

NoLa Diary #3 – NOMA and adjoining Sculpture Garden

The New Orleans Museum of Art is celebrating a big birthday this week. NOMA turns 100 years old, and this Friday and Saturday (12/16 & 12/17/2011) the museum is planning a bash and is allowing all visitors in for free on both days.

New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA)

Travel Tip: To visit NOMA, just hop on the City Park streetcar on Canal Street (the edge of the French Quarter) and take it to the end. The streetcar trip can take 20-25 minutes so allow plenty of time to get there and back. Cross the street and enter City Park, NOMA is the first building you’ll see.

NOMA celebrates 100 years

Being from New York City, I’m incredibly spoiled when it comes to museums. MoMA, the Metropolitan, the Museum of Natural History are all towering examples of insanely well curated collections so when I travel I love to see what local curators do with their (usually) smaller spaces and budgets.

NOMA does not disappoint, and frankly, they have a wonderfully eclectic mix of art from different time periods and different cultures. The museum is 3 floors and with the exception of a traveling Fabrege exhibition, all of the galleries permitted the use of photography (without flash, of course.) Boy am I glad they allowed photography, I was snap happy today and took over 100 shots of the artworks and sculpture gardens. Some of my shots, sadly, are blurry or show reflections from glass but they give you a flavor of the incredible artworks.

John Biggers – Blessing the People – Detail

Their Contemporary gallery entrance was graced by this wonderful Frank Stella painting. In addition to Stella, they have pieces by Lee Krasner, Richard Serra, Miro, Jean DuBuffet, Dale Chihuly and many others. In an adjoining gallery, they have one piece by Picasso as well.

Work by Frank Stella

Of course, if you are into Native American pottery you would absolutely go crazy over this Hopi pot made by Nampeyo (they had several unbelievable examples of Nampeyo pots in perfect condition displayed as part of their collection, I could hardly believe they had so many).

Nampeyo Hopi pot – NOMA (This is the real deal – a Nampeyo pot is incredibly rare, NOMA has a whole collection of them!)

And of course, if you are going to NOMA you would be crazy to leave city park before taking a stroll through the particularly lovely sculpture garden behind the museum building. The sculpture garden is always free, while NOMA offers free admissions only on Wednesday (this week’s 100 year birthday celebration is the exception.)

This beautiful sculpture of a head by the (very well known French sculptor) Rodin is one of the newest pieces to be added to the garden, but the sculpture garden has over 70 truly fantastic examples of work spanning the classical, modern and post-modern genres.

NOMA’s new sculpture “bauble” – a bust by Rodin

If you get overwhelmed by all that art, you may need to just relax and look at the scenery. The grounds are immaculately kept and graced by beautiful bridges and artful landscaping, like what you see below.

NoLa Diary #2 – Julia Street Art Galleries, French Market Flea

Julia Street

Julia Street – Life is Art

If you are in the Garden District on St. Charles Avenue and heading toward the French Quarter, once you pass the highway overpass and go past the WWII memorial, you’ll come across a small side street: Julia Street, in the Central Business District.

If you like art galleries, you should make a right hand turn and walk towards the river. In the blocks between St. Charles and the river are about a dozen art galleries, some of which are extremely high end and very contemporary – easily on par with what you’d see in the Chelsea art gallery neighborhood of Manhattan. Other galleries have fantastic local art with a distinctly NoLa or Louisiana flare.

 

Life is Art banner - these are up all along Julia Street

 

One of the galleries I really liked was the LeMieux Gallery (332 Julia Street). This gallery mostly shows NoLa, Louisiana or “gulf coast state” artists. One artist whose work I particularly enjoyed was Shirley Rabe Masinter. The textures she achieves in her paintings of local New Orleans buildings are really incredible. Not surprisingly, Ms. Masinter is in her 70′s and has certainly achieved great mastery in her work.

Another gallery I fell in love with was the Soren Christensen (400 Julia Street). There I saw the sculptural figures of Evelyn Jordan. Works like “Inside the Box” blew me away. You can’t really see some of the details in the pictures posted by the gallery, but according to the gallery manager Jordan is “known” for the intense work she does on hands and especially feet, and it shows well in these remarkable pieces.

I would also like to extole the virtues of the Arthur Roger Gallery (434 Julia Street). This gallery has some of the most incredible space on Julia Street. They have a huge exhibition space dedicated to the glassworks of Dale Chihuly, and some of the pieces are large ceiling hung installations. The vibe of this gallery is very contemporary, and on par with what you’d see in NYC for sure. The staff I met there is knowledgeable and friendly (in other words, NOT like NYC in that aspect.)

And although I didn’t get a chance to make a right on Camp Street today, about a block off of Julia (on Camp) you can also find the Contemporary Art Center and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Since I had already spent several hours just perusing the galleries on Julia today, I’m saving the Contemporary Art Center and the Ogden for another day. A few people mentioned that Thursday evenings between 6-8pm are a good time to go to the “Ogden After Hours” where they apparently do live music events, or gallery talks or other events.

From a traveler’s eye view perspective, if you keep walking down Julia Street, you will reach the Riverwalk shops at the intersection of Julia with Canal Street. I went inside out of curiosity, and if you are into high kitch, lots of t-shirts, shot glass and plastic mardi gras stuff, you’ll be in heaven. For the rest of us, it’s worth avoiding altogether. (The ONE nice thing I can say about Riverwalk is you have an elevated view of the Mississippi River.)

French Market Streetcar

 

However, before you go up the escalator to get to Riverwalk, if you go towards the train tracks, you’ll see a streetcar stop marked #8 Julia. If you take the Canal Streetcar heading back to the French Quarter, and you get out at the last stop, you will be within a few 100 feet of the French Quarter Flea Market. The French Quarter Flea is basically tourist fare, but it’s a nice enough neighborhood to walk around and soak up the NoLa vibes.

French Quarter Flea Market

So that’s my take on Julia Street – one of the many, many artist havens in NoLa. I’ll post more of my observations here as my journey continues.

You have to check this out: HitRecord!

HitRecord is the brain child of actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and I think it’s a fantastic idea. The concept behind his website is to bring together thousands of artists from all over the world who are collaborating on hundreds of artistic projects.

One example is The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol I, which was recently published by Harper Collins. It is a collaboration of nearly a hundred artists doing text and drawings for the book. They all found each other and collaborated THROUGH the hitRECord website. The best part is that the fruits of the labors of these artists are paid for through the profits of the project.  The idea is once the production costs are covered, hitRECord splits the remaining amount 50/50 between hitRECord (the company) and the artists involved.

What a wonderful way for Joe (who refers to himself as “Regular Joe” on the website in his recorded video commentaries called “The Regularity”) to share his fame and industry connections with so many other talented artists. I also think it’s a phenomenal use of social media to leverage the collective artistic brain power of so many people.

I’ve joined hitRECord and I can be found under the user name Cdeminski. I’ve already uploaded some audio files of me speaking, a jpg computer drawing I did and some text entries as well. Anyone who has a creative spirit can join and contribute.

The best part of all of this is the collaboration. It’s so exciting to see one person’s idea get REmixed and used or combined with other ideas to make something more interesting.

And based on the information shared on the site, hitRECord will be presenting some of their work at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. My understanding is that the projects for the festival are going on right now, with plenty of opportunities for people to participate.

So come on, what are you waiting for? hitRECord!

Photos: “16″ and other Abstracts

 

16 - Montreal, Canada

Yellow Dot - Montreal

 

Rock - Grand Canyon, AZ

 

My Shadow – Woodstock, NY

 

Abstract Sunset - Shenandoah Natl Park, VA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Artist’s Tuning Fork

Today was a gorgeous day in New York City, and I spent a few hours this afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art to see the William De Kooning exhibition. Now don’t get the wrong idea, I’m actually not a big fan of the artist, but I am very interested in Abstract Expressionism and I wanted the opportunity to re-think some of my ideas about this painter.

As per the MoMA website:

The exhibition, which will only be seen at MoMA, presents an unparalleled opportunity to study the artist’s development over nearly seven decades, beginning with his early academic works, made in Holland before he moved to the United States in 1926, and concluding with his final, sparely abstract paintings of the late 1980s. Bringing together nearly 200 works from public and private collections, the exhibition will occupy the Museum’s entire sixth-floor gallery space, totaling approximately 17,000 square feet.

Despite my internal resistance to the way De Kooning merges traditional body forms with abstraction in his most famous paintings like Woman I,

De Kooning's Woman I - part of the permanent MoMA collection

I really did like his later works in the last two decades of his life, none of which I’ve seen before. These works were much more graphic in nature, brightly colored, with lots of white background to provide space to the drawn forms and lines that marked these canvases.

Regardless, the De Kooning work I have the strongest resistance made me think about my favorite Frank O’Hara poem Why I am Not a Painter. It goes like this:

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

This led me to think about De Kooning’s “positive” and “negative” series including paintings like Zurich, which are all black and white and have words or letters embedded in the paintings. Or his piece called Attic, which De Kooning said had “everything in it.”

I’m not sure why, but all of this led me back around to thinking about the end of De Kooning’s life again, and the last two decades that he painted even though he was in ill health. I thought about how he was unable to paint for at least the last seven years of his life, as his health continued to decline in his late eighty’s and early nineties. It made me wonder if he felt trapped inside his body, with ideas still coming about how he wanted to paint, but his body would have been unable to comply with the demands of the work.

There’s a story in that idea somewhere. I feel that instinctively. And if you’re wondering where all this rambling is leading, I do have a point so bear with me just a bit more.

Yesterday I went to an open air art show where painters, sculptors, potters, and photographers gathered to show the best of what they had to offer. I met a sculptor there, named Brianna Martray of Denver, Colorado. She was displaying a piece called Lighthouse Keeping which really intrigued me. I sensed a feminine energy to her work, and this piece in particular strongly reminded me – not in form but in feeling – of a Dale Chihuly’s installation at the New York Botanical Garden which I saw in 2006.

             Image above courtesy of Brianna Martray

 

                   Chihuly installation of small glass works at the New York Botanical Garden

This weekend was, for me, an opportunity to become inundated – even over-stimulated if you like – with the ideas of other artists. All of these things keep me “in tune” as a writer, with other aspects of art that lead towards a highly diverse set of expressions.

In my short story, Lancaster, the main character comes into close contact with an artist and that experience changes him in some way; it makes him want to strive to be the self the artist has depicted of him, a self that he sees as “other” and yet some possible alternate self to his current way of living.

So, as you sit down to do some reading, whether it be a collection of short stories or a novel, you should also consider using the artist’s tuning fork and get out to see an exhibition of paintings, sculpture, installation art, arthouse films or anything else that intrigues you. While writers are notorious observers of other people, sitting next to them in restaurants, in trains, or elsewhere, we shouldn’t overlook the opportunity to tap directly into the veins of artistic expression and mainline directly from other masters of expression – words are optional.

There are so many possibilities to be inspired by other artists… who do you find yourself most in tune with, and why?