Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Welcome to the Abstract Expessionism Room


 Mira Lisa Schiratis      one of three Laguna Beach artists interviewed here, creates brightly colored, abstract paintings. Working with oils, acrylics, palette knifes and brushes, she strives to connect artistically to the larger world. She recalls the history of abstract art and especially the philosophy of artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944): "He believed in the social responsibility of artists."
                Abstract Expressionism | A Meditative Art Style

                                                  Winter Time, Mira Lisa Schiratis


                       I Become One With The Canvas
            "Primitive people created art to connect with the spiritual world. They were in rhythm with nature. Once I started painting seriously again, I felt purpose in life, knowing I could make a difference."
Mira Lisa says, "Art is an act of connecting with 'beauty,' that profound and mystical realm which soothes and uplifts, strengthening the true self. The canvas is a place where I become one with life. I experience an authenticity, an indescribable universality and a oneness with all humanity."
She studied art with Francoise Gilot - Picasso's former lover and apprentice - who taught her the elements of abstract expressionism: "She was very elegant and patient. She taught me about the importance of passion in art and the essence of composition and design," Mira Lisa says.
For several years, Mira Lisa has painted abstractly - often incorporating a face (similar to her own face) into the completed works. "I surround each face with expressive figures, influenced by petroglyphs and work with colors inspired by Matisse, Chagall and Gauguin."
These paintings are mystical and iconographic, filled with symbolism and figures, reminiscent of jewels. She explains, "Primitive people created art to connect with the spiritual world. They were in rhythm with nature. Once I started painting seriously, I felt purpose in life, knowing I could make a difference."

          Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), perhaps the most famous painter of abstract expressionism said, "When I am in a painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own.
"I try to let it come through," Pollock continued. "It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well. When I am painting I have a general notion as to what I am about. I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident."


"Primitive people created art to connect with the spiritual world. They were in rhythm with nature. Once I started painting seriously again, I felt purpose in life, knowing I could make a difference."

Jackson Pollack: an exhibit of Abstract Expressionism


       
                 
                                   Jackson Pollack      The Key      1946

                   Opening the Door of Your Imagination


             Jackson Pollack    One of the most famous painters when using abstract expressionism, uses violent strokes and markings that really explain what this trend is all about. He believed that when he painted he was not aware of what he was doing, he just let it happen. Action painting is clear here because you can see the different angles the paint brush went and you can almost feel him intensely spreading the paint. Again, in abstract expressionism, color is a big aspect. The colors in this painting help us see how he was feeling at the time when he painted this work of art. To me, it looks as if he was excited or motivates about something in his life. Expression through the freedom of technique is illustrated well in this painting by Jackson Pollock.



Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Poverty in black and white



Welcome into the tragic era of the Great American Depression
A photographic black and white glimpse into the past.


        Life was not easy during the 1930s, as you will easily see through these pictures of the Great Depression.


Great Depression Picture: A Wife and Children of a Sharecropper







Picture of a woman and her three children standing in a doorway during the Great Depression.


(Picture from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.) Wife and children of a sharecropper in Washington County, Arkansas. (Circa 1935)

       A Classic picture of the Depression era captures the poverty and loss of hope of a now almost forgotten time in America



          John Steinbeck wrote the American Pulitzer Prize winning classic The Grapes of Wrath about a family who loses their farm during the great drought of the dust bowl. This tragedy that has sometimes been called the American holocaust, was not unlike another famine that happened in Ireland, where people starved to death while the government stood by and did nothing. This great American tragedy had politicians out on the steps of the Capitol Building, staring in wonder, as they were awed by the dark black wall out on the far horizon. It took this sighting from the steps of the Capital building in Washington for politicians to realize the almost biblical proportions of this great tragedy. Only then did they feel the scope of this famine. In Steinbeck's novel, starting out from Oklahoma, the family migrates west to California, detailing along the way the great poverty of the depression period, were workers try to unite to get a decent wage to feed their families.

                                                                                           Robert Falvey

   This is the depression era photography of Dorothea Lange


                            Dorothea Lange, 1939


(Picture from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.) Farm Security Administration: Children of Oklahoma drought refugees near Bakersfield, California. (Circa June 1935)
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Sunday, February 12, 2012

Welcome to the Photography of Dorothea Lange








                   Born of second generation German immigrants on May 26, 1895, in Hoboken, New Jersey, Dorothea Lange was named Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn at birth. She dropped her middle name and assumed her mother's maiden name after her father abandoned the family when she was 12 years old, one of two traumatic incidents in her early life. The other was her contraction of polio at age seven which left her with a weakened right leg and a permanent limp, "It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me," Lange once said of her altered gait. "I've never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it."[





               Dorothea Lange: Great Depression Photograph

The Famous Dorothea Lange


    This is the depression era photography of Dorothea Lange




                            Dorothea Lange, 1939






The Great Depression                                                                    This is a picture called “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange.      
     The photo was taken in 1936 when Dorothea visited the mother where she lived in a “pea picker’s camp” in California. The women was 32 years old, had seven kids, and her husband was a “native Californian” who could not support the family any better than she could. The result was that the women in the photo and her children could only eat peas and the occasional bird that her children shot down with sling shots. This picture has become one of the biggest iconic pictures of the Great Depression,
       Lange was a famous American photographer who got her education in New York City by a man named Clarence White. After she received her education she went and apprenticed at many studios in New York, and in 1918 she moved to San Fransisco to open up her own portrait studio which she succeeded in. In 1920 she married a famous painter by the name of Maynard Dixon and in 1929, when the Great Depression set in, she took to the streets to get photos such as the one shown above. She lived the remainder of her life in Berkeley. The women in Lange’s photo is a perfect icon of the Great Depression.


Grandma Catherine-Oleary Falvey picking Rubarb



         I remember my grandmother picking what looked like weeds out of the prairy at 79th and Dobson and puting them into her Marshall Fields shopping bag on the southside of Chicago. I was embarassed and asked her, "Grandma what are you doing, there's people looking at us?" She with a strong stoicism in her voice said, "I fed my ten children during the depression after your grandfather died on these weeds." She then went home and promptly boiled them in a big pot. I asked her again what it was? Rubarb she replied. She worked at Marshall Fields for forty years in the cafeteria before retiring. Mrs. Catherine Falvey came from Ireland when she was fourteen. She said there was no room for her on the farm. She died at ninety seven leaving fifty-seven grandchildren and fifty-six great grandchildren.
                                                                     True Story.


          Power farming displaces tenants. Texas panhandle, 1938.    Photographer: Dorothea Lange.



Saturday, February 11, 2012

Welcome to the New American Modern Exhibit Room

                     
                          Welcome to the John Sloan room
                                A series of four John Sloan paintings in the Ashcan Tradition


       I would venture to warn against too great intimacy with artists as it is very seductive and a little dangerous. Queen Victoria
               

                                                                   John Sloan      Self Portrait


  

John Sloan Ashcan Exhibit


           
           Modernism and the new Avante-garde Tradition

         In 1907 John Sloan, George Luks, and William Glackens were rejected for exhibition by New York’s conservative National Academy of Design, which slavishly upheld classical European academic painting. Robert Henri pulled his own works from the Academy exhibit in protest, and then they set about mounting an alternative exhibition of works

    
                In order to create, there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent      than  love?  -- Igor Stravinsky


     Beautiful vibrant night life in the city of an America ever on the move .
product image

Thursday, February 9, 2012

John Sloan Vibrant American Realism


                                                      Beautiful colors
                Because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
                -- Martha Graham


      Interested in formal theories of color and composition. Chronicling life in the form of visual anecdotes.


                                          JOHN SLOAN 1871-1951
                        Recruiting in Union Square, 1909


Ashcan Artist John Sloan


                      American Realism from the Ashcan School

                                                            

 
        Watching the three from his studio at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street, Sloan called them      unselfconscious performers in “another of the human comedies which were regularly staged for my enjoyment by the humble roof-top players of Cornelia Street,”

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.   -- Charles Mingus


            “Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair,” from 1912.
                                      John Sloan  Artist


Sunday, February 5, 2012

The Ashcan school of American Art

                                        

                  Welcome to the William Glacken Exibit 
                                       Do not fear mistakes - there are none.
                                                            - Miles Davis



        Glackens' formative years started at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1892-93). There, like his contemporaries John Sloan, Everett Shinn and George Luks, fell under the spell of Robert Henri, a gifted painter and superb teacher. Henri enticed his young students to capture with swiftness the 'reality' around them, blemishes and all. Their seamy portrayals of down-to-earth themes gained them the nicknames of The Black Gang and Devotees of the Ugly.

                               Rocks and Lighthouse
                                    Oil on canvas
                                    Circa 1908



A true Artist inspires





                  The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from  the  sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.                -- Pablo Picasso



                           William Glacken   1905
At Mouquin'sOil on canvas
1905

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Pictures at an Exhibition for William Glackens


            Despite his marrying into wealth, Glackens continued to work for close to thirty years as a newspaper, magazine and book illustrator. His income as a graphic artist afforded him the luxury of painting to fulfill his creative needs rather than to satisfy a capricious market. Thus, he accomplished every painter's dream of conceiving art for art's sake.
                We are what we create, and we create Art to bring a piece of ourselves to others.
                       -- Chris Peden




                                      William Glackens      Umbrellas at Blue Point   1915


The Soda Fountain, by William Glackens, 1935.


The Soda Fountain, by William Glackens, of Philadelphia. Considered the most skillful, quick sketch artist of the members of the "Ashcan School" William Glackens, a native Philadelphian, began working as a reporter-illustrator for several newspapers in the city in 1891, shortly after graduating from Central High School.
    True Art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
-- Albert Einstein
Two ladies sit at the soda fountain booth, while a man in a clean, crisp, uniform stands behind the counter.

William Glackens (1870–1938)



 
William James Glackens was an American painter and illustrator who co-founded the Ashcan School art movement. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the Ashcan School group developed a new aesthetic – without preapproval or favor of the art establishment – that depicted realistic portraits of American urban life. Dubbed by the press as The Eight Independent Painters, or The Eight, the group exhibited their work in America’s first ‘no jury, no prizes’ exhibitions. Glackens became known for his dark paintings of street scenes and unsentimental portraits of entertainers
The man who is born with a talent which he was meant to use, finds his greatest happiness in using it.  -- Goethe
William Glackens (1870–1938)
Narcissus and Anemones
Oil on canvass

Samois sur Seine William Glackens


                                                      William Glackens  1870-1938
                                                         Samois sur Seine   1925

If you know exactly what you are going to do, then what is the point of doing it?
 -- Pablo Picasso

           Glackens never limited himself to any particular subject matter, successfully painting land- and seascapes, still lifes, city scenes, portraits and figural studies, including nudes, of which he painted many in the 1920s and 30s. Under Henri’s prior guidance, the early work of Glackens maintained "strong ties to Edouard Manet’s darkened palette and brushy style of realism." However, after 1910 Glackens’ palette began to brighten in response to his strong admiration of the work of French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

A long Career as a Painter


                 
                                                          William Glackens  1870-1938
                                                    Study forThe Dream Ride’   c. 1923
In 1923 Glackens created The Dream Ride (Collection of Mrs. Patricia Arden, New York), a large, imaginative “dream” picture of Lenna [his daughter] mounted on Spit Fire, her hobbyhorse, against a fanciful landscape The painting is derived from one of Lenna’s crayon drawings based on her toys (Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale) and on stories that father and daughter made up.
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.   -- Henry Ward Beecher


The Art of William Glackens

    
                                       William Glackens  1870-1938
                                   Seated Nude with Orange Background   c. 1924
In the painting illustrated here, Seated Nude with Orange Background , all of these elements are present. The model’s smooth, fair skin appears to glow with a luminescence created by Glackens’ use of unexpected hues, particularly in the shadowed areas. Her pearly skin allows her figure to stand out from the rich red-orange background. As Dr. Gerdts states, “Glackens’ liquid brushwork caresses the flesh, playing off the bright skin tones against deep greens and reds.”
Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist when one grows up.
-- Pablo Picasso

The Gilded Age of Chicago Architecture

                             
                                            Welcome to one of the most beutiful buildings in Chicago
                                                           Come on in and feast your eyes!

                                  Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.
                                                                 -- Natalie Goldberg

A look into the treasured past of the Cultural Center




                                     Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us.
                                                              -   Roy Adzak


Worlds Largest Stained Glass Dome

     Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I      don't think you can go wrong.  -CHESS RECORDING ARTIST- Ella Fitzgerald

The largest Stained Glass Dome in the world    The Gilded Age         The Chicago Cultural Center
Tiffany Glass Dome

Tiffany glass dome in Preston Bradley Hall at Chicago Cultural Center

Chicago Cultural Center Built in 1890

File:Chicago Cultural Center.jpg
The Chicago Cultural Center, opened in 1897, is a Chicago Landmark building that houses the city's official reception venue where the Mayor of Chicago has welcomed Presidents and royalty, diplomats and community leaders. It is located in the Loop, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park. Originally the central library building, it was converted to an arts and culture center at the instigation of Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg. The Center opened in 1991. As the nation's first free municipal cultural center, the Chicago Cultural Center is one of the city's most popular attractions and is considered one of the most comprehensive arts showcases in the United States. Each year, the Chicago Cultural Center features more than 1,000 programs and exhibitions covering a wide range of the performing, visual and literary arts.

the Gilded age Grand Staircase Irish Marble inlay

Chicago Cultural Center Grand Staircase and Preston Bradley Hall.
Art is about opening the windows and doors.. not shutting them.
-- Randy Keenan

 Grand Staircase and Preston Bradley Hall. The 38-foot dome is by J. A. Holtzer of the Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company. The cultural center states that it is the largest Tiffany dome in the world. File:Chicago Cultural Center - Grand Staircase and Preston Bradley Hall.JPG

The Gar Rotunda Chicago Cultural Center


Being with real people who warm us, who endorse us and exhault our creativity
is essential to the flow of the creative life...otherwise we freeze. When women are out in the cold, they tend to live on fantasies instead of action.
-- Clarissa Pinkola Estes


The Chicago Cultural Center, opened in 1897, is a Chicago Landmark building that houses the city's official reception venue where the Mayor of Chicago has welcomed Presidents and royalty, diplomats and community leaders. It is located in the Loop, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park. Originally the central library building, it was converted to an arts and culture center at the instigation of Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg  the Chicago Cultural Center features more than 1,000 programs and exhibitions covering a wide range of the performing, visual and literary arts.stained glass dome in the Grand Army of the Republic rotunda at the Chicago Cultural Center