pagan potpourri

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

Scientist believes Vincent Van Gogh was colorblind

"…light and darkness, brightness and obscurity, or if a more general expression is preferred, light and its absence, are necessary to the production of colour… Colour itself is a degree of darkness.

From Theory of Colour by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Edward Gorey illustrates famous fairytales

The quotable Anne Lamott - on writing:

(a valuable resource for anyone who wants to help aspiring writers.  I've gained wisdom from this wonderful little book that I've passed on to children as young as six.)

"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

~ From Bird by Bird

Art Humor

If you're the first to identify the artist whose work this cartoon parodies, I will send you an art related prize in snail mail. 

Today's Iconic Photo

Jackson Pollock at work

by  Martha Holmes

By now I'm sure most people have seen this news from Borja, Spain but just in case here is a link to The Botched Jesus story

What do you plan on being for Halloween?

Artist Birthdays in March

 It's artist birthday remembrance for March!

Van Gogh has a birthday coming up March 30 and surely by then I can start thinking if not of Irises just yet, at least of a crocus or two. 

A long before Van Gogh but on the same day,  Francisco de Goya was born in 1746.

March 6 was the birthday of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni ((6 March 1475 – 18 February).

American photographer Diane (Nemerov) Arbus was born on March 14, 1923 and died in 1971, in New York City.

Diane Arbus

Self-Portrait

March 7 was American modernist painter Milton Avery's birthday, born in 1885 in Sand Bank, New York

Self-Portrait

Babar Spoofs The Masters

Above:  a "reworking" of Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - 1884

Laurent de Brunhoff  (1900-1937) , the son of Babar's creator, Jean de Brunhoff, picked up where his father left off, continuing to create new storybook adventures for Babar and his friends. Although Jean de Brunhoff created Babar with his art, it was the imagination of his wife, Cecile, from which Babar originated. She originally invented Babar as a character in bedtime stories which she told to her sons. Meet the family that gave us Babar

The watercolors depicted here are a few of several illustrations in a book called Babar's Museum of Art.The original works were also part of an exhibition geared toward children which toured U.S. museums and galleries in the summer of 2009.

 Shown in the exhibition are illustrations created for the children’s book Babar’s Museum of Art. “The book tells the story of how Babar the Elephant and his wife Celeste transform an old train station into an art museum,” says Tomio. “In the book, de Brunhoff pays tribute to artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Paul Cezanne, and Picasso by adorning the museum’s walls with classic works of art with a clever twist – the characters depicted in those works of art are all elephants.”

 

That must have been some job to cut the ear of an elephant version of Van Gogh. ;-)

de Brunhoff's version of The Dream by Henri Rousseau

What's Goin On

I have been rather dry on ideas for art posts lately and I do apologize to anyone who comes here just for the art images and their accompanying tidbits. The weather is good now and that means that I'm out there enjoying it and taking lots of photos. Those of you who visit regularly know my fondness for my camera and the occasional good photo it sometimes surprises me with.

I do have two art posts in the works right now:  one feature on the work of Georges Seurat and another in the series A Letter from Vincent. The latter is a mixture of excerpts from the letters of Van Gogh to his brother Theo and corresponding images of the paintings he was working on or those by other painters that fueled Vincent's intensity and passion.

 On June 23rd, I'm leaving for Santa Barbara to visit my daughter (SG1) and her wife, whom I call Beloved. I haven't seen SG1 since August of 2009, so I'm very much looking forward to spending time. I'll be back on July 6, which means I'll be celebrating my 51st birthday in sunny Santa Barbara, as well as the 4th festivities. SG1's Americorp stint will be over for the summer (she's enlisted for another year) and Beloved will have a light class load at UCSB, where she finished the master's portion of her degree and will begin work on the phd part in the fall. All is going according to plan for the happy couple, I'm pleased to say.  :-)

A week or so later, WP and I are leaving for the fairy cottage in Nova Scotia until the end of July. I plan on being home all of August to work on some house projects and enjoy my yard, the river and a few day trips here and there. We may even sneak in a visit to New York City, as there are lots of cool things going on at MoMA.

Peace, love and all groovy things,
Pagan Sphinx

For now, here are two images for you to enjoy - one each from Van Gogh and Seurat. 

Georges Seurat

The Seine at Courbevoie  

c1886

Flower Pot with Chives

Artist of the Week: Louis Anquetin

Louis Anquentin

 

1861-1932

 Self-portrait

French painter. He came to Paris in 1882 and studied art at the Ateliers of Bonnat and Cormon, where he was a contemporary and friend of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. His early work shows the influence of Impressionism and of Edgar Degas. In 1887 Anquetin and Bernard devised an innovative method of painting using strong black contour lines and flat areas of colour; Anquetin aroused much comment when he showed his new paintings, including the striking Avenue de Clichy: Five O’Clock in the Evening (1887; Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum) at the exhibition of Les XX in Brussels and at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1888. The new style, dubbed Cloisonnisme by the critic Edouard Dujardin (1861–1949), resulted from a study of stained glass, Japanese prints and other so-called ‘primitive’ sources; it was close to the Synthetist experiments of Paul Gauguin and was adopted briefly by van Gogh during his Arles period. Anquetin’s works were shown alongside Gauguin’s and Bernard’s at the Café Volpini exhibition in 1889, where they attracted considerable attention among younger artists.


The contemporary critic Edouard Dujardin praised Anquetin for inventing a style based on heavy outlines and flat areas of color, which resembled cloisonne enamels.

In 1882, he came to Paris and began studying art at Léon Bonnat's studio, where he met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The two artists later moved to the studio of Fernand Cormon, where they befriended Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. wikipedia

Photograph from 1886 of Vincent Van Gogh and Emile Bernard

 After viewing this painting Van Gogh wrote in a letter that influenced his painting 

Cafe Terrace at Night (below) . I had previously assumed it was the other way around.

Portrait of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

The Van Gogh Museum recently acquired this painting by Anquentin

Art Knowledge News

Moulin Rouge

1893

Joni Mitchell Spoofs Joni Mitchell

With a little help from Van Gogh.

This self-portrait by Joni Mitchell was used as the cover to her 1994 release Turbulent Indigo.

National Poetry Month - Mary Oliver

 Lilies

I have been thinking

about living

like the lilies 

that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall

in the wedge of the wind,

and have no shelter

from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,

and have no legs.

Still I would like to be

as wonderful

as that old idea.

But if I were a lily

I think I would wait all day

for the green face

of the hummingbird

to touch me.

What I mean is,

could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?

When van Gogh

preached to the poor

of course he wanted to save someone -

most of all himself.

He wasn't a lily,

and wandering through the bright fields

only gave him more ideas

it would take his life to solve.

I think I will always be lonely

in this world, where the cattle

graze like a black and white river -

where the ravishing lilies 

melt, without protest, on their tongues -

where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,

just rises and floats away.

~ Mary Oliver

A Letter From Vincent

Two Excerpts from a Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
Arles, c. 5 April 1889

read the entire letter here 

This first excerpt regards the work that Van Gogh was undertaking while simultaneously dealing with so many other difficulties:  poverty, ill health - both physical and mental, and rejection from an entire village who wanted him to leave. Heartbreaking.

 P.S. 

 

La Crau with Peach Trees in Blossom

 "Just now I have on the easel an orchard of peach trees beside a road with the Alpilles in the background. It seems that there was a fine article in the Figaro on Monet, Roulin had read it and been struck by it, he said. Altogether it is a rather difficult problem to decide whether to take a new flat, and even to find it, especially by the month."

In this second excerpt from the same letter, Van Gogh shares with his brother Theo a little about his friendship with Joseph Roulin, the postmaster:

Postman Joseph Roulin

1888

 

 Van Gogh actually preferred this later sketch of the original:

"Roulin, though he is not quite old enough to be like a father to me, has all the same a silent gravity and tenderness for me such as an old soldier might have for a young one. All the time - but without a word - a something which seems to say, We do not know what will happen to us tomorrow, but whatever it may be, think of me. And it does one good when it comes from a man who is neither embittered, nor sad, nor perfect, nor happy, nor always irreproachably right. But such a good soul and so wise and so full of feeling and so trustful. I tell you I have no right to complain of anything whatever about Arles, when I think of some things I have seen there which I shall never be able to forget.

NOTE: I visited an exhibition of Van Gogh's portraits at the MFA Boston in the year 2000 or so. Paintings from the MFA's collection were there, as well as all of the Roulin family paintings and several depicting people Van Gogh was able to get to sit for him. The Roulin family paintings were the most memorable and evocative. I moved to tears.  P.S.

"What impassions me most – much, much more than all the rest of my métier – is the portrait, the modern portrait," Vincent wrote to his younger sister in early June 1890, a month before his death. "I should like – you see, I'm far from saying that I can, but I'm going to try anyway – I should like to do portraits which will appear as revelations to people in a hundred years' time."  
~Vincent Van Gogh

 Above:
1. Mother Roulin and her Baby

2. Armand Roudin

3. Portrait of Madame Roudin

A Letter from Vincent

Excerpt from a Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh

The Hague, c. 2 or 3 November 1882

Up to Millet and Jules Breton, however, there was always in my opinion progress, but to surpass these two - don't even mention it.  Read th entire letter here

Van Gogh's Letters

unabridged and annotated 

Women Miners

November, 1882

Jean-François Millet

1814-1875

Jean Breton

  1827-1906