Lopez Garcia and Giacometti Also Inspired Ann Gale

Continuing directly from yesterday, Alberto Giacometti and Antonio Lopez Garcia are the other two artists Ann Gale cited as being influential in her development. The sculptor who places his subjects in motion with his control of his modeling has the spotlight on the left. A search on the "internets" and you'll find any number of other images of the people and creatures he has created to come into our lives. 

Antonio Lopez Garcia, on the right, is an amazing painter whose paintings look like photographs from a distance but as you come closer to them you find his brushstrokes adding atmosphere to his scenes. 

Another Ann Gale self-portrait is at the top looking towards two of the ones who influenced her.

Ann Gale Cites Lucian Freud

It was no surprise to me to read that Ann Gale credits three artists as influencing her work – Lopez Garcia, Alberto Giacometti and Lucian Freud. Freud's work has a similar effect, the subject is anchored to the painting but you very much feel that there you are sharing the same environment. It must have to do with the mark that each painter leaves creating light and movement. See if you can see the influences Sigmund Freud's grandson has had on Gale's work in these two self-portraits.

Sketches of Gary

Ann Gale’s portrait, Gary, hangs in the northwest gallery. When I find him, I stop. I don’t know what to think, so I don’t, I feel.

I am reminded of Miles Davis’ album, Sketches of Spain. It arrests me in a similar psychological place. Between being pulled in and pushed away.


In an attempt to understand this corner of my mind where these two pieces meet, I am going to do an experiment.
I will find out what happens when I sit with Gary for the duration of the Sketches of Spain album playing on my i-pod.

To be continued.

Last Day for Bouguereau

What could be better than slides of Bouguereau with violins in accompaniment? Perhaps cello, viola and bass or maybe piano. Art and music were definitely different in the 19th century. If you wanted to hear music, you played an instrument. Groups of friends would get together and play. Maybe not concert quality, but they would play. No records, no cds, no iTunes, no mp3 or 4. We were all a bit more talented, not as passive at art and music. Since I'm a full fledged member of the 20th and 21st centuries and am a listener, here are slides of Bouguereau with piano and violin accompaniment composed by Ren.

Art by Bouguereau

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: french painter)

True to Life

Looking at an artist's works, what may be the most true to life, drawings or paintings? An important question, especially when considering the late 19th century academic artists like Bouguereau. Spending much of his life creating works such as Pieta only to have it repudiated as too much like Michelangelo, Bouguereau seems to have turned to idealized peasant life –– paintings that would sell and also keep his work accepted by the Academy. His paintings are beautiful, extraordinary views of a life that others could choose to hang in their homes. Can we look to his drawings and see how he might have chosen to paint if he weren't painting to a paying clientele? You be the judge, what happened between his drawing and painting? 

A Girl in Peasant Costume, Seated ca. 1875         La Petite Tricoteuse, 1875

Graphite on Paper  (click for larger image)                  Oil on Canvas (click for larger image)

                                                            

Rambling Thought

Today I am running from one commitment to the next. Wake up, walk the dog, off to docent training, then on to work, to the cleaners and the grocery store, home again, make dinner, and don't forget to post on the blog.

Luckily LaValle, Roger, and I had five peaceful minutes with Nature's Fan between my two tours of the European galleries. These five minutes were spent contemplating the girl's inward and contemplative expression, the baby's grubby paws, the painting as a scene of a simpler life, patrons of these pieces as nouveau riche Americans, and who is this guy who spends his whole life painting little girls? This man who lost his wife and hoped to remarry, but listened to his mother. Think Moonlighting. This gifted man who had so many children to feed and lived on commissions. Would he have chosen other subjects if he hadn't needed money?

Would I? Today I wanted to crawl into that scene. I wanted to take off my shoes, grab some leaves, tickle that little baby, let him kick me if that's what his floating foot is all about. I want to be as impersonal and off in la la land as that nanny peasant girl. It isn't so much that the grass is greener, but that there is grass at all.

Another Nature's Fan

“You become responsible for what you see... The surroundings are relative to your engagement.” So saith Olafur Eliasson, the Icelandic artist whose retrospective toured the United States with shows in New York, San Francisco, Dallas and other places. The Ventilator was part of this exhibit in which Eliasson exhorted visitors to Take Your Time, the name of the exhibit. His works make the viewer use all of their senses and most of the time not in their traditional ways. The docent in New York spoke of the fan in the lobby bringing the "wind" inside. As it whirled around the lobby, you felt it and heard it and saw its source. Outside you would feel the wind and hear it and see its effects. There are many articles on the "internets" about this exhibit; I've linked to one from Dallas.

Taking to heart Take Your Time, we should all take time looking at Bouguereau.