Tuesday, November 26, 2013

David Hockney Exhibit and Ipad art

David Hockney:
A Bigger Exhibition
When: Through Jan. 20; 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday; the exhibit will be open until 8:45 p.m. Fridays through Nov. 29
Where: de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
Admission: $15-$25 weekdays, $18-$28 weekends, 415-750-3600, http://deyoung.famsf.org
Thanks to the power of the internet I can tour this exhibit without leaving home.  So I did.  
It looks amazing: 12 foot high prints from his ipad drawings, including quite a few self portraits.   His ipad paintings have his presence and feel as much as the conventionally painted art.  
"Most of these were shown last year at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, drawing mixed -- sometimes withering -- reviews from critics who used such words as "gaudy" and "spectacularly weird."
I don't think many American art lovers will agree with that.  

More on Ipad Art
My interest in ipad art has skyrocketed in the past few days since I've finally decided to spring for the purchase of a new ipad mini.  This will be my first Apple product.  Although I've used those of my family.  It should be delivered Monday.  In the meantime I've been looking up "how he does it".  I have to admit DH's images are fantastic.  It's all for fun because even Hockney doesn't sell them but it's creative, and it's an artist's toy.  I'm all for having fun!
Hockney started with an iPhone and went to the regular size iPad.  I considered getting the regular size but the mini is in between size and will be much easier for me to take with me on sketching trips.  I'll have to consider the stylus after a few months of practice with fingers.
Charlotte Rossmann iPad drawing
"When he first started working on the iPhone, Hockney found painting with one finger awkward. It took him a few months of practice, but soon he began producing pieces that were marvelously free and fresh. He was even quicker to adopt the iPad: It went on sale on April 3, 2010, and by April 6 he had sent me his first iPad drawing. Eight times the size of the iPhone, the iPad’s larger scale allows Hockney to use all his fingers. Lately he has been working with a stylus as well, and his on-screen virtuosity has grown accordingly. While the iPhone drawings were loose and broad, some of the recent iPad images have been complex and highly polished."
http://www.departures.com/articles/david-hockneys-ipad-art?page=2

Monday, November 25, 2013

New Cubist Crazy Faces

 New Cubist Crazy Faces and Quotes ...

David Hockey: "Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at it."

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” Salvador Dali 

Vincent Van Gogh: "If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”  Francis Bacon 
"Good artists copy, great artists steal." Picasso

Marc Chagall: "Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love."

To create one’s own world takes courage.” Georgia O’Keeffe 

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” 
Alberto Giacometti 

Every good painter paints what he is.” Jackson Pollock 

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.” Rene Magritte 
Art by Charlotte

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Anguish

"All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up." 
-- James Baldwin
Line drawing by Charlotte

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Memoir: new book by an American painter

Eric Fischl was a popular painter in the 1980's.  He is one of the artists who hit big when everyone in the world seemed to be young, rich and beautiful.
What the hell happened to cause this insanity?

Fischel discusses this in an interview for the LA Times: 
 "It was almost like a perfect storm. There was a tremendous amount of money being made by people who were very young, were not broadly educated but were more mono-focused educated. They didn't have a broad sense of history, of culture. Then all of a sudden there's this infusion of money into the art world, where they're looking for things that are not deeply understood but are entertaining, and the lifestyle of it is entertaining. They're hedging their bets, so they're buying lots of different young artists. And it's getting younger and younger. In the '90s, collectors started to buy work directly out of studios in graduate schools by artists who hadn't even become professional artists, let alone mature."  (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news) *


In some ways I think the art market has never been "normal".  Maybe what people think it was is just an illusion.  It has to be about money.  People who buy the paintings dictate the market.  Is it so different today than it was several hundred years ago when all artists worked for the church?  The people with money are the people with power.

*American painter and '80s star Eric Fischl offers a sharp critique of the art world's recent evolution in his memoir, "Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas." He elaborated in a conversation from his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. (latimes.com)

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Revisiting still life painting


No, not Cezanne but that's next on the list of "things to do".  
I've been working with ideas in still life painting and interiors.  This is latest incarnation of ideas I've worked on all my life.
Art By Charlotte

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Crazy Abstract Oil Painting

People ask, "What does it mean?"  
Damned if I know.  
I love putting colorful paint on a surface.  
"Joy Glee and Fun".

                      My Etsy Shop


Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Degas

Private Life of Degas
I recently read a novel about Degas and his ballerina model.  In the novel the shocking story line is that the dancers in the French ballet were considered high class prostitutes.  In addition, the ballet master profited from this arrangement. 
"The lives of the dancers were terrible. In order to survive, professionally and financially, they were essentially working a second job as high-brow “ladies of the night” – playing with the hearts of the aristocrats to gain housing, a nice wardrobe, and higher professional standing. Some did this willingly, and others did it to avoid the miserable life that was the working class in Paris in the 17- and 1800′s." (www.artintercepts.org)
Degas said his soul was like a worn pink satin ballet shoe.  The dance was in his blood but by all accounts, he was celibate.  He drew them but did not touch them.
Van Gogh wrote to Bernard: "Degas lives like some petty lawyer and doesn't like women, knowing very well that if he did like them and bedded them frequently, he'd go to seed and be in no position to paint any longer. The very reason Degas's painting is virile and impersonal is that ... he observes human animals who are stronger than himself screwing and fucking away and he paints them so well for the very reason he isn't all that keen on it himself."  (www.guardian.co.uk)
Since Van Gogh's brother was an art dealer, Van Gogh had inside information concerning many of the artists.  Van Gogh admired Degas' restraint since he, himself, had none. 

Degas kept some of his art private which was only discovered after his death.  Several of the pastels are of women in the nude.  His idea was to present the woman unaware as if someone was looking through a key hole.  Many said that Degas hated women but Van Gogh said that Degas painted women "who are stronger than himself".
In later years Degas became anti-Semitic. Fear, frustration and insecurity must have played heavily on his mind.  The end is never happy when these sort of demons dwell inside us. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Pollock and his "last painting"

I'm reading an article on Jackson Pollock and his lover, Ruth Kligman.
It's an interesting tale.  Pollock may or may not have painted his "last painting" for Kligman. 
Pollock's wife, Krasner, never believed the painting was authentic.  Last fall this painting was scheduled to go to auction at a very high price but the auction house removed it or else postponed the sale awaiting an investigation.  As far as I can tell, this painting did not go to auction.

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