Did DeKooning ever design a dress? Not that we know of. Yet one of his favorite inspirations was the feminine form. Think of the Women series. Did Kawakubo ever depict the feminine form, as in a drawing or a painting? Not that we know of. Yet she completely redefined what a human being can wear. […]
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25Sep
2017
PROFANE REPRESENTATION
2017
Let’s say you are an artist in the Middle Ages. In that guise, you did not want your drawings or paintings to look representational. Instead, you deliberately constructed your images in a non linear manner. Why? You did it to keep your images sacred. Your religious beliefs kept you from sinking to the profane level […]
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21Sep
2017
WHAT MONDRIAN KNEW
2017
Any time the great poet Charles Wright uses the word transparent, we take notice. “As Mondrian knew, Art is the image of an image of an image, More vacant, more transparent With each repeat and slouth: ____________________one skin, two skins, it comes clear, An old idea not that old.” Image of an image; or Drawing […]
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18Sep
2017
MUSEUM SKETCHERS
2017
Possibly you have heard of the organization Urban Sketchers. Urban Sketchers do what the title suggests; they sketch in urban settings. And they do it in a group. So there is a social component to the activity. Sketching in a group serves as an incentive for some to pick up the pencil. And they then […]
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14Sep
2017
SOTTSASS AT MET BREURER
2017
The Sottsass exhibition at the Met Breurer shows some of the inspiration of the designer’s work. The exhibition made a specific point of showing some of the exact things that Sottsass was looking at as he made his designs. It was refreshing to see this sort of inspirational context of a famous designer. An early […]
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11Sep
2017
MCLUHAN AND TRANSPARENCY
2017
WhenMarshall McLuhan uses the word transparency, we take note. In the passage below, they give us the following description at what happened at the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance: “The rebirth of continuous visual space after a thousand years militated against the interfaces of transparency and overlay.” p81 It is interesting that […]
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7Sep
2017
CREATION STORY
2017
We are not taught the story of creation. As I have said before in these pages, when we are taught about famous buildings, is it a flashcard mentality. We are taught to recognize the piece. We are taught to match the floor plan with the picture. We are not taught the creation story. While reading […]
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4Sep
2017
KAWAKUBO – ABSTRACT EXCELLENCE
2017
I can’t stop drawing Kawakubo. Since I saw the Comme des Garcons exhibit at the Met, I have made a Kawakubo inspired Transparent Drawing every day. The more that I look at the photos that I took in the exhibit, the more I try to understand the form and how it is resolved. The first […]
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