MADRASSA
In Morocco, you can’t go into any Mosque. Well, actually there is one in Casablanca that you can go in. Personally, I think it is great that they maintain this separation. In the medinas...
Monthly Archive: May 2017
SHOOT DOWN
Always take advantage of the opportunity to take photos looking down. When traveling, you are given many opportunities to go up into things. This might be the camponeili of a cathedral. You might be...
REASON OF OBJECTS
Most of us would agree that our concept of representational drawing is “a mere feeble analogue of a reality which overflows it in every direction. “ Drawing is “an absolute positing of that which,...
LEON FERRARI
Let’s start the week off with this consideration of this great quote from Leon Ferrari: “I draw silent handwritten words, which tell things, with lines that recall voices. And I write drawings that recite...
NEO-CONCRETE
Architecture or drawing can be understood only thru the filter of a viewer’s subjectivity. This is a core belief of a Brazilian group of artists working in the late 1950s. They called themselves Grupo...
ISLAMIC POLLOCK
I take photos of Islamic calligraphic writing on buildings. In a Madrassa in Morocco, I was struck by the caligraphic similarities of this Koranic text and Jackson Pollock’s paintings, photo above. This building was...
FES TANNERIES
The tanneries in Fes, Morocco are of course world famous. Animal hides are tanned and colored in large vats. All of the dyes are natural. Saffron is yellow. Mint is used for green. Poppies...
BEAUTIFUL FUNCTION
The road from Tinghir to Midelt in Morocco has to be one of the world’s great drives. Take the R703. The mountainous scenery on either side is like no other. There was hardly any...
ACT OF DRAWING
This is an excellent and concise meditation on the act of drawing: “Drawing is…at its most basic the product of no more than a pen or pencil taken to a sheet of paper. Any...
SPACE NOT SPACE
Space is a word that we all use when talking about art, or composition, or layout, etc. We toss it around as if we know what we are talking about. But the word space...
EXACT OBSERVATIONS
Ellsworth Kelly on his plant drawings: “They are exact observations…Nothing is changed or added: no shading, no surface marking. They are not an approximation of the thing seen nor are they a personal expression...
MODERNIST FORM GIVERS
A couple of pages ago, we established that the basic goal of modernism is to reveal the unseen. We know that the 20th C modernists rejected the mimetic representational renaissance picture plane construct. Crucially,...
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