Graffiti Is Calligraphy

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Mention the word graffiti and an image comes to mind of spray painted words on city walls, subways, bridges and abandoned buildings. I won't take the time to argue about the root meanings of the words graffiti and calligraphy, but in reality the distinctions are rather blurry. Actually, graffiti is just another form of calligraphy, no matter where it's practiced and the works of JONONE help us to see the similarity, or transition between the two.
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Nowadays, a lot of graffiti artists are coming in from the cold and enjoying successful exhibits in galleries. Just as eastern and Asian calligraphy influenced high art many years ago, graffiti too has made tremendous inroads into the oeuvres of famous and respected artists the world over. Little by little we've come to appreciate the genre's place in art history and started to embrace some of these newly socialized taggers.
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JONONE (technically Jon One - but I pronounce it like I see it) is one such artist whose made the transition from tagger to exhibitor. The above image is from, "Urban Calligrapy" in 2005 at the Gallery Speerstra, where he's exhibited every year since 2002


He's represented by Galerie Magda Danysz where you'll find a slideshow of his work and more.

The top image is from star and drama.

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Collaged Pointillism

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When I view works that are all about the division of the picture plane into smaller, mostly equal units , I tend to categorize them as pointillist works. The original Pointillists had a specific agenda that we tend to keep within narrow boundaries, but Postmodern Pointillism on the other hand embraces a wide and varied field of artists, each with their own agenda who probably don't even identify themselves with the term. This is another facet of Postmodern Pointillism as interpreted through collage.

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"Grounded" 2008, Collage on Panel 24" x 24"
And a beautiful interpretation it is ! The image, by Glenn Fischer, is from his Web Site. How fascinating to go through his Archives and see how he has gradually come to this point. It's a beautiful oeuvre that you'll enjoy viewing. Whether you like collage, abstracts or pointillism, you'll be quite pleased.
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The New, New

It dawned on me this afternoon that I don't have enough, or rather, hardly any music in my life. So it was a real treat to come across something so fresh and artistic, musically and visually. Nice tune and the visuals keep getting better as it goes along. Enjoy !
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Animal Collective "My Girls" from Chad von Nau on Vimeo.

Found this on Supertouchart.

Blinded By Emotion

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The wonderful thing about being an artist is that you make a work and then get to enjoy it. What is truly spectacular is when someone else enjoys it too and so much so, that they want to buy it. So you aim well and work hard and voila!, repeat. There is one itsy bitsy problem though: the emotional attachment. Maybe I should say emotional investment. Either way, there are times when we've poured our heart out or made a very self conscious effort of expressing ourselves and the hopes for that work tend to blind us to the reality of what's really going on visually.

Take, for example, the painting above, titled "and then some". It's bright and obvious and gets your attention for a minute, but it totally fails. How do you fix something like this without a complete redo?

In this case, you take it to an artist friend and have him paint on it for a while and then when you get home you add great big balls of color. When I finished with the balls of color I took it back to Corky's, hung it in his gallery and had a great laugh at myself. And, as is the case whenever one artist offers a painting for an opinion, we had a discussion of what could be done to salvage this masterpiece.

It's hung over my desk, it's hung in the bedroom on several walls, but the more I view it, the more comfortable it feels. It almost seems right. And in a way it's a classic example of my work. Am I blinded by my emotional investment ?

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In general this painting works for me now, but as with some other paintings, upon closer inspection you can find some really ugly passages. There are times of much study and planning as to how to improve it and then there is an equal amount of time where it gives me pleasure and a good laugh.

Your comments would be welcome !

Abstracts With Scribbles

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What would the painters of yore would think of our abstract art today? I wonder if they'd be able to appreciate simple works like this abstract with scribbles.

At any rate, this is Michael Napper and he's definitely into including writing elements(or at the least, scribbles) into his abstracts. What fascinates me is the seemingly careless way with which his images are made and yet how they tease our mind to "see" things. The longer you look, the more important the subject matter becomes. I'm always reminded of how quickly our mind tries to recognize icons and associate one thing with another. Michael presents us with a light concoction of abstraction and writing gestures and our mind proceeds to put together a story.
The image is from, and he's represented by d.e.n. contemporary where you'll find 6 more examples of his work. And Here's a couple of shots from his exhibit in 2005.

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Unreadable Stop Signs

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This may not look like much to you, but for me it was a WOW, stop in my tracks kind of moment. It's a long story about why I'm so interested in abstract paintings with writing in them and I'll spare you the details. For me there is something personal and raw about work with unreadable language in it. It's like a stop sign; you read the English stop sign and that's that. If the word stop was in a different language you'd be intrigued by the sign and it's design instead. (And you'd also probably stop because the sign itself is a well known icon.) Being able to read what we see is like looking at clear glass - you look through and see what's on the other side. There's depth of field beyond the pane of glass. The inability to perceive what's written is like looking at dirty or frosted glass, which keeps our gaze at bay, limiting the dimensions of perception and forcing us to understand what we're seeing in a new way.
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This looks like somethings been written and we automatically want to know what information it held. So, like the unreadable stop sign, we're forced to see the design. The mystery of what might have been said in those scuffed words is the extra something that makes this and others like it so special to me.

The image is from Ron's Web Album at Picasa. If you know who he is or how I could contact him to learn more of his work, please contact me. Here are more examples of this oeuvre from his album with similar woks.

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The Artist In His Studio

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Christopher Wool has always fascinated me. His oeuvre is something of an acquired taste. Whenever I've tried to study his work, there seemed to be pitiful few images available at the time, so it was pretty cool to find HIS Website. There are waaaay more images than you can shake a stick at. And it's always good to see installation shots to put the work in context - from the Simon Lee Gallery.
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Even though I don't understand completely what's going on, or like all his work; it seems like he knows what he's doing. This partial quote from Christopher Wool: Painting about Painting
BY ELLEN S. WILSON sums it up. - "But even then, he had honed in on his particular vision, and had established what was important to him, and what he wanted to say.” (Madeleine Grynsztejn is speaking of her visit to his Chinatown studio in the mid 80's.)

Image is from the Shawn Mortensen Website, where you can find images of other famous artists.
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