Strange days indeed…I’m having one of those “I have to accept I am never going to learn how to skateboard or surf” days. Even looking at surfboard and skateboard art is depressing. Its almost as bad as those days when you realise you are never going to trendy - or even funky. Lucy Jordan can have her sports car in Paris, I’d just like to be ‘hip’ for 1/2 a day :-)
I also wonder if I’ve missed the contemporary art bus (now there’s a visual image for you). I can’t even come up with a good definition of ‘Contemporary Art’ and I am finding Wikipedia annoying. The word/concept ‘Design’ is also proving challenging today. Does it really mean 1960’s orange German Pottery and $220 a roll modernist/atomic themed wallpaper? Actually the wallpaper is almost acceptable as it meets that ‘form and function’ criteria that I have in my head - but what is the function of art pottery? I guess there in itself, is the art/design delineation. Art does NOT have to have a function (maybe its a bonus if it does?). So is art just ornamentation then?
With all the gloomy talk of a recession I’ve been thinking about about art in that context too (as have others out there who are blogging). I somehow doubt there were schemes in NZ similar the Federal Art Project in the US in the Great Depression, but I think it was an interesting initiative. “New Deal arts projects were guided by two novel assumptions: artists were workers and art was cultural labor worthy of government support.” Didn’t Jackson Pollock (and Lee Krasner) come out of that? Some of the murals are pretty amazing - inspired by the Mexican mural movement and Diego Rivera. Of course there is the infamous Rockefeller Centre Murals incident (ahh - political art in its prime).
Rivera at work on the Rockefeller mural
I guess even in a depression there was money for art and I don’t think that will change much. Prices may drop, collectors may be more conservative, but art will continue to be made. On a slight tangent are the 1930’s murals anything similar to today’s bombing or throw ups or whatever you call it? Intent might be similar but there is the issue of permission - mind you, Rivera’s mural was quickly removed when “the man” didn’t like it.
More discussion on artists, families and sacrfice continues, so what about the aforementioned Lee Krasner? Obviously there was a Pollock influence but look at the earlier works.
Gouache Number 4 ( Study for Lavender)(1942) Lee Krasner
“although she acknowledged Pollock’s superior gifts, she did not become his follower. More than three years his senior, she was a mature artist when they met and throughout her aesthetic evolution retained elements of her early analytical skills and structural sophistication.”
April 11, 2008 at 7:18 pm
I’ll take ya surfing and at the same time you can see Muriwai like Colin did.
April 12, 2008 at 3:54 am
Did Colin surf? (just joking). I’d take you up on that if I lived anywhere near AKL
April 12, 2008 at 6:12 am
Hehe, I’m pretty sure he did…some of his perspectives are very much from the edge of the water looking North, looking South looking back to the land…when you’re out there and looking back at the cliffs at Maori Bay with their pillow lava and impact formations…I couldn’t paint that. Passing through the sea caves is kinda like being inside the land…and i reckon Colin probably tried out the words I AM in the wet whale skin black sand at low tide in Autumn and scrambled back up the cliff to see how it worked…I went and saw the Colin at AKL Gallery some years back…I am not art literate but I had seen a Colin table (another story) and I live at Muriwai so…and I poet and I scratch…so I thought, who is this I AM man?
I nearly died from lack of breath, because i held my breath when I saw the words and the white vege stand figures and the reds and the black and the bible references (raised without religion me)…and he worked with a poet…I couldn’t breathe because i couldn’t believe how good Colin is and i knew what they said about him but I didn’t care because i wanted the paintings in the flesh to be as good as they were and they were, they scream and he’s human and so many greats are not…my guess is that yes, dude was a surfer.
April 12, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I get the lucy jordan blues too sometimes artandmylife, made worse each year past 37! (yesterday was my 39 birthday)
I also dont really know exactly what Im pining for when I get that feeling…
we all want precisely the thing we dont have, n’est-ce pas?
but if I try and figure out which bit of my life I should have changed or done differently, (regrets: yes of course) but finding the bit that might have been some kind of major crossroad, I cant do it. I am who I am after all that I guess.
merc’s description is inspiring. fantastic image of Colin the surfer.
..this girl never learned to surf either, but now I want to.
April 13, 2008 at 12:19 am
Happy belated birthday alibi! I was 39 earlier this year too and feel just the same way. However, I find a good cure for Lucy is listening to Marianne Faithful’s version of ‘Madam George’.
I think perhaps Colin was a surfer in spirit, if not in practice - but then maybe a lot of us are :-)