Zurbarán

Francisco de Zurbarán, "Still life. Bodegón" (1632-42)

Look at these objects. Simply placed next to each other on an anonymous surface, against a dark background. Vessels that were quite mundane in the middle of the 17th century when Zurbarán lined them up and made light shine in from the left. To us they are more exotic, but we can still sense the ordinariness that imbue them.


This simple, little painting was the one that made the strongest impression on me when I visited The Prado almost 20 years ago. That must have been because it communicates so clearly and directly. There are no allusions, no allegory that needs deciphering, just each object presented in its own right, all of them on equal terms.


And then there is the notion that these mundane objects carry a spiritual potential. - Through their simple beauty? - By the light that they reflect? Zurbarán's contemporary, Saint Teresa of Ávila said that "God may be found even among the cooking pots".

Francisco de Zurbarán, "Agnus Dei" 

- Or as a lamb. On a slate. Ready to be butchered. According to the title, this lamb is the Lamb of God, Jesus: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). 


Again, Zurbarán's simple and direct rendering makes his message all the more powerful. Like the vessels above, this lamb is powerfully illuminated. Its tangled wool shines, and it retains its dignity, even when it lies there with all four legs trapped together.


How fitting to look at this painting today, at Epiphany. Later this evening I will remove my Christmas decorations and thus fully be on my way onwards in the new year. Hopefully, Zurbarán's elevation of everyday objects may inform my daily life to come. I wish to develop my ability to see beauty in the small things.

Francisco de Zurbarán, "Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose", 1633. Photo from Agricola

Against the backdrop of the top two paintings, this final still life looks almost too extravagant. But here, too, there is stillness and mystery. As cited at Agricola: 

[. . .] its astonishing realism: every detail in every object is perfectly rendered without the objects losing their strong human quality, especially the basket which is truly exquisite.

[. . .]

It is this precise balance of solid, beautiful objects in empty space that creates the deep sense of stillness, purity, and mystery. And standing receptively in front of this painting evokes the same within the viewer.

The Holmsbu Painters

Oluf Wold-Torne, "Landscape from Holmsbu", 1911. Photo from DigitaltMuseum.

I'll stretch my summer by looking at paintings from Holmsbu in Eastern Norway. The one above was painted by Oluf Wold-Torne in the summer of 1911, the first of many summers when he and other artists came to Holmsbu to work.

By blurring out details from the foreground and simplifying the foliage and shrubs, Wold-Torne leads our attention towards the hill and mountains on the other side of the fjord. Horizontal lines create a calm sensation, and the central stretch of water is framed by trees on the right and sailboats on the left. A large portion of the painting is blue sky which is hazy enough to render that feeling of summer comfort and reverie that I so much want to hold on to now that fall is approaching.

Thorvald Erichsen, "Fra Holmsbu", 1931. Photo from Gwpa.

In this painting by Thorvald Erichsen some of the pink rock that is such a characteristic feature of the Holmsbu area, can be seen bathing in the evening light across the fjord.

Photo from Drammens Museum.

A gallery that houses works by Oluf Wold-Torne, Thorvald Erichsen and Henrik Sørensen (who are considered the three most central Holmsbu Painters) has been built in the woods that stretch inland from the fjord. It is clad in the local pink granite, and it lies well camouflaged on top of a steep trail.

Photo from Drammens Museum.

Holmsbu Billedgalleri, 1963-73, architect: Bjart Mohr. Photo from essential events.

At the back of the building a large window lets the untouched landscape become an important part of the total aesthetic experience that includes architecture, landscape and paintings, among which some depict the same landscape as one can see through the window (like the one below).

Henrik Sørensen, "Trollura i Jahrskogen", 1933. Photo from Drammens Museum.

Dan Colen, "Peanuts"

Dan Colen, "Silent Treatment", gum on canvas, 2010. Photo from afmuseet.

When you Google Pictures search "Dan Colen" you get as many photos of cool art dudes partying as you do artworks he has made. That makes me apprehensive. - Like I was when I arrived at his Astrup Fearnley Museum "Peanuts" show last weekend.

And his chewing gum pictures confirmed my prejudice. They give off an air of art school adolescence, and are not very different from this painting which he has found and included in his show:

Dan Colen, "The Big Swirl", found painting, 2006.
Photo from Joshua Abelow Art Blog.

Colen and the group of art buddies he used to hang out with have been called the "Bowery School", from The Bowery in New York. For a short while in the 1990s I lived on St. Mark's place (close to The Bowery) together with aspiring artists of many different disciplines. And often I would see helpless artwork like the one above put out on the sidewalk to be chucked into a garbage truck.

What was interesting, I thought, when I saw "Silent Treatment" and "The Big Swirl" hanging next to each other in the Astrup Fearnley exhibition, was that Colen's chewing gum canvas only barely rests on the right side of the boarder towards a less than mediocre art school student's desperate attempt to come up with something original ... - Chewing gum!

Dan Colen, "Self-portrait as the wanderer
(as I pause to ponder: do real men break hearts?
I decide yes! They do. Only to later change my mind.)",
 oil on found painting, 2004. Photo from afmuseet.

There are quite a few found paintings in the show to which Colen has painted additions. - Like the one above that I show in a small version to protect under age viewers...

This hangs on a wall all by itself, and becomes quite poetic - even touching - by way of its title.

Dan Colen, "Eviction Party", flowers on canvas, 2010. Photo from afmuseet.

The flower pictures radiate a similar poetic sensibility. - Those fresh, but perishable colors smeared into an unprimed canvas ...

Dan Colen, "The Whole Enchilada", 2010. Photo from Kunstkritikk.

And even this knocked over flagpole becomes an image of general sadness and loss, rather than a political statement.

All this subtle and potent poetry finally managed to outshine Colen's insisting cool, and it proved my visit to the Astrup Fearnley Museum worth while.

With this new - more positive - attitude I was even able to find something interesting in his banal text paintings:

Dan Colen, "Holy Shit", Photo from jameswagner.

"Holy Shit" placed upside down is more interesting than "Holy Shit" placed the right way.

Dan Colen, "Holy Shit", Photo from Peres Projects.

And "Holy Shit" mirrored is more interesting than "Holy Shit" upside down.

Dan Colen, "Holy Shit" t-shirt, Photo from Urban Outfitters.

But "Holy Shit" on t-shirts from Urban Outfitters becomes far too much!
(It is this consumerism - latent in all the text paintings - that makes them annoying.)

***
(Norwegian readers should check out Kjetil Røed's excellent review of "Peanuts" at Kunstkritikk.)

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation"

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation" 1438-1445. Museo di San Marco, Firenze.

This Renaissance fresco painted by Fra Angelico shows a moment which is quite crucial to the fast approaching Christmas holiday: The moment when Archangel Gabriel gave Mary a message that must have seemed quite overwhelming to her.

She is visited by an angel who either is about to tell her - or just has told her - some pretty devastating news. But she looks so calm. And her simple surroundings - the barren walls and the stool she sits on - accentuate her modest, but intent gaze. Mary and her visitor look at each other, both slightly bowing their heads, and they hold their hands in identical positions.

Even though they are situated below different arches, on each side of a column, their calm attentiveness towards each other makes them seem close. And the depth and space that is created by lines of perspective further enhance their intimacy.

Fra Angelico has created a balanced composition, where only the cell-like window far off in the back may distract us from the quiet action in the foreground. The architecture that surrounds the protagonists of this story is very similar to the architecture at the convent where Fra Angelico has painted the fresco, the San Marco Convent in Firenze. His "Annunciation" is the first painting you see as you ascend the stairs to the first floor, where the monks' cells are (many of them have beautiful frescos by Fra Angelico, as well):

Photo: roma-antica.

Fra Angelico has painted several Annunciations (most of them on panel), and in all that I have seen, Gabriel wears a similar dress made from beautiful gold adorned material.

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation", 1433, detail.

In this version Gabriel points up towards God and over towards Mary.

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation", 1433, detail. Museo Diocesano, Cortona.

And as you can see here, this earlier version does not emit the same quiet contemplative mood as the San Marco fresco does:

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation" 1438-1445. Museo di San Marco, Firenze.

Fra Angelico's depiction of this momentous moment will be my Merry Christmas post to you, and my last post this year.

***

I have had some great moments myself this year (though not quite as defining as the one Mary experienced a couple of thousand years ago...). Several of them have been about meeting people I have not seen in a long time. Thank you so much for showing up in my life again! (You know who you are:-)

Also, while talking about calmly accepting what the moment brings (like Mary does), I want to thank my beautiful yoga teacher, Kari, for making me more able to cut through the grime and experience quiet moments of physical and spiritual enlightenment.

I am so happy I started writing MOMENT/C this fall. It gives me great joy. Thank you so much for visiting, and welcome back early next year!

Chris Ofili, "Afrodizzia"

Chris Ofili, "Afrodizzia", second version, 1996. Photo from Tate Britain

Using "Afrodizzia" (second version) by Chris Ofili merely as illustration of what I want to say below, is really quite unfair. Especially since this work lends itself very poorly to photographic reproduction.

It is a canvas filled with layers of lots of different stuff, like paint, cut out photos and elephant dung. And as you can see above, the frame itself also rests on balls of elephant dung. By using that rather untraditional material, Ofili quite blatantly plays with stereotypical notions of African culture. - Like he does when he spreads out images of faces with afro hairdos across a very colorful surface.

The reason why I'm showing this work today is that I want to say something about art and Advent. - Some connection, uh? Well, it's December 1 today, and Sunday was the first of the four last Sundays before Christmas, when we light purple candles. - Four of them in a wreath, and one more to be lit every Sunday.

This year we invited our friends who are originally from Ethiopia to come light the first candle and have dinner with us. So it's not really Advent I want to say something about, but the experience of getting to know Sara and Omar, who are refugees from Ethiopia, and their four children. They are Muslim, and sharing our Christian traditions with them, gave me a fresh perspective on those actions that I perform every year without really thinking about them.

Sara and Omar are great people that I would enjoy hanging out with in any circumstance. But sharing Advent with them and getting to take part in some of their ways and traditions, gives me such a valuable perspective on my own life choices (small and large). And it confronts me with plenty of stereotypical and generalized notions that I have about Africa. - For instance, I realize that Africa is so much more diverse than I tend to assume since I have never been anywhere on that huge continent.

So thinking about all this in relation to Advent, I searched my memory for suitable African art to go with it. But tellingly enough, the British artist Chris Ofili was as close as I got. I think it must have been his "Afrodizzia" (second version) I saw in the SENSATION show at Hamburger Bahnhof in 1998.

I do not know anything about African art, but Ofili's work does more or less the same as getting to know people from Africa: It highlights my prejudice.

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet IV"

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet IV", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

I stopped by Bergen Kunsthall the other day to see the exhibit of four artists that is currently showing there. Among all the works that are included in that show, the one above, by Michael Krebber, gave me the most momentous moment of seeing "something".

But what was it that I saw?

For starters: Three primed canvases in a vertical pile that is halfway covered by a polka dot "hood", with a smear of black paint up towards the right.

This seemed quite meaningless to me. But knowing how rear it is, - that experience of not immediately connecting a visual uttering with some kind of perceived message, I was thrilled. And even more so when I found out that the work is titled "Miami City Ballet IV".

The connection between the covered up canvases and the title "Miami City Ballet IV" made no sense to me. I could find no literal connection, apart from thinking of other artists that have painted ballet, - Degas, for instance. But bringing Degas's impressions of dancers into my moment at Bergen Kunsthall, just seemed like an irrelevant distraction.

- Or maybe the three canvases could be perceived as stopped in moment, lined up and covered by a mutual piece of costume? No, the title "Miami City Ballet IV" left me with an even stronger notion that this work does not give any direct meaning in and of itself. (But the exciting experience of actually trying to find one, and feeling very close to finding it, was what made that moment at Bergen Kunsthall worthy of bringing on.)

What I found when I looked for meaning outside of the artwork itself, you can read below the next pictures. But that is more or less random information which ends up confirming a notion that this work is not a painting in any traditional singular sense, but a "painting" that is only concerned with the premises of "painting" as a general notion, and with the context that makes works like "Miami City Ballet IV" possible.

(If you are uncertain about the term "context", please look at this former post).

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet I", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet II", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet III", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

Since then, I have found the paintings "Miami City Ballet" numbers I-III. They were included in a show Michael Krebber had at Galerie Daniel Buchholz in Berlin this summer.

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet", Installation view, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, 2010

And this was how the paintings were installed: Three of them to the left, and then the covered up ones to the right. With a big box clad in fabric between.

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet", 2010,
invitation card photo,  Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

I also found out where the artist got the title from: The entire show at Daniel Buchholz was titled "Miami City Ballet", and here is an excerpt from the invitation card written by Krebber:

"'Miami City Ballet" shall be the first stop in, or the downbeat of a series of ”new” exhibitions
following a lengthy period of inactivity. I took the photograph on the invitation card during a
Douglas Crimp lecture. It shows the photograph being projected—of Edward Villella—the ballet
dancer and later founder of the "MCB"—in the midst himself of holding a lecture. He shows his
arm; looks at it and—according to Crimp-comments on it. That he is “beholding” his arm is un-
knowable from my blurry photograph. More or less the same applies here, too.

[...] At this point we put in the picture of Paul Swan, the actor and dancer who once held the title: "Most Beautiful Man in the World"; Swan who appears and dances beside a curtain behind which he disappears for a costume change or some other preparation but doesn’t reappear except perhaps when no one can believe it any more.[...]

- So was this what Michael Krebber intended all along: Covering up the paintings ("painting") until no one can believe in them (believe in "it") any more?


***

On December 2, David Joselit will speak about "Painting Stripped Bare" at Bergen Kunsthall.

Robert Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College: experiment in art, ed. Vincent Katz, 2002,
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

When I read that Gagosian Gallery now represents the estate of Robert Rauschenberg and is showing a museum quality retrospective exhibition of his work at their 21st Street Chelsea space, I came to think of the documentary film about Black Mountain College I did research for as an intern at David Royle Productions in New York in the early 1990s. I was only at the production company for a semester, and I never got to see the film finished, but I was fascinated by what I learned:


- Black Mountain College was such a magic place! Beautiful, as you can see from the picture above, and very important as a hub for artistic experimentation and collaboration in the early careers of great artists like John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and many others (...Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Susan Weil, Denise Levertov...)

Robert Rauschenberg, "White Painting", 1951, Gagosian Gallery.

Robert Rauschenberg was adamant about distancing himself from the Abstract Expressionists. He wanted to minimize evidence of the artist's hand, and painted a series of all-white and a series of nearly black paintings. According to Vincent Katz in Black Mountain College: experiment in art, John Cage has said that Rauschenberg's white paintings gave him the push to compose 4'33'', his very important silent piece.


Many collaborative and experimental happenings were staged at Black Mountain College, and "Theater Piece No. 1" which John Cage "orchestrated" in 1952 is considered the first one. There was film, there were slides, Cage talked about music and Zen Buddhism from a stepladder, Cunningham and other dancers moved through and around the audience, and Rauschenberg's white paintings were suspended above.

Viola Farber in "Summerspace", 1958 by M. Cunningham,
Design: Robert Rauschenberg, Photo from: MONDOBLOGO

In 1958 he designed the set and costumes for Cunningham's "Summerspace", first performed in New London, CT, with music by Morton Feldman.

Robert Rauschenberg, "Bed", 1955
Museum of Modern Art, Photo: artnet.

And while he was still at Black Mountain College (the school closed in 1956), he acquired the quilt that he used in one of his first Combines (what he called the kind of works he is most famous for having made, in which he used found objects).


Tornsey and Elsley in their book Quilt Culture: Tracing the Pattern, p. 149:
The Log Cabin quilt used in Bed once belonged to artist Dorothea Rockburne. She recalls, "It was kind of special to me because I had it at the time my daughter Christine was born, and she used to spend a lot of time on it. I didn't actually give Bob the quilt, it just sort of appeared one day. We were living at Black Mountain College then, and when you sent the wash out things had a way of appearing and disappearing. I remember when I first saw the painting he had made of it I thought 'Oh! That's the quilt that I had!' It was a wonderful experience seeing it."

Caravaggio

"The Calling of St. Matthew", 1599-1600, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. (Reproduction cropped top and bottom.)

This is one of Caravaggio's most famous paintings, "The Calling of Saint Matthew". I have seen it in reproduction so many times and was very exited to get to see it "live" when I was in Rome recently.

I enjoyed its technical mastery and composition, - particularly the light that comes in from the top right corner, falls on Christ's hand, and illuminates the sitting men's doubtful looking faces and the money in front of them on the table.

And it was interesting to see, within the walls of a church, the greedy counting of money in such a gritty and cellarlike room. But I experienced an even greater contrast between the next two paintings and their ecclesiastical surroundings. They are placed on either side of the very colorful and celestial "Assumption of the Virgin" by Carracci, in Santa Maria del Popolo.

"The Crucifixion of Saint Peter", 1600-1601, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.

"The Conversion of Saint Paul", 1601, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.

Do you see how literally down to earth Caravaggio has chosen to tell these two stories? - The dirty feet and dug up gravel on the ground below the cross in the first picture. - And the tangle of horse legs and human legs in "The Conversion of Saint Paul". Here, the spiritual is brought down not only to the contemporary everyday, but to the very practical and dirty reality of pushing a cross into a vertical position, or possibly being stepped on by a horse when one has been struck to the ground by a blinding vision of Christ.

In both paintings the light serves not only to accentuate the main character, but also to create a very intimate visual room for us to enter. And you can see how the light creates a similarly intimate setting in the last painting, where Christ helps his mother crush the head of a snake that symbolises original sin.

"Madonna of the Palafrenieri", 1605-1606, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Harald Fenn

Harald Fenn, "Urban Melancholy", Oil on MDF, 1998.

Today I'll give you a small retrospective of the Norwegian artist Harald Fenn's paintings. The exhibition is hung chronologically, and I have chosen paintings that show the change in his work from straight lined abstraction in which the different textures in the lines create a certain depth of field (above), via:

Harald Fenn, "Pastorale Golden Green", 2000.

Straight vertical lines on top of blurred out crossing lines which remind me of squinting my eyes against sunlight reflected on water in the summer.
Then further on to:

Harald Fenn, "Exterior 01", 2005.

Lines that have softened and hang down limply. The title tells us that we are still outdoors. Maybe the light shines through foliage now. We seem to be enclosed in the green somehow, but in the next picture we get a much better overview:

Harald Fenn, "Interventions no 5", 2007

Voila: There is discernable landscape in the background. However, Fenn still keeps a balance between the abstract brush-painted lines in the foreground and figurative spray-paint in the back. So we go on to:

Harald Fenn, "Horizon", 2010.

The lines having disappeared completely. Here we get a clear unfettered view of the ocean and the sky.


This is my favorite painting from Fenn's current show at the Erik Steen Gallery. And it forms a turning point, I think, in his continuous movement toward larger depth. Quite naturally, that is, since one cannot ever gaze further than the horizon...

Georgia O'Keeffe

"Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona 1937"
(© Trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust Collection Center for Creative Photography)

The woman with the sly and teasing look in her eyes is Georgia O'Keeffe, photographed by Ansel Adams  in 1937. He has said the following about this photograph:


“I remember that we watched a group of Navajos riding their horses westward along the wash edge, and we could occasionally hear their singing and the echoes from the opposite cliffs. The cedar and pinyon forests along the plateau rim were gnarled and stunted and fragrant in the sun. The Southwest is O'Keeffe's land; no one else has extracted from it such a style and color, or has revealed the essential forms so beautifully as she has in her paintings.” (Collaborative Arts Resources for Education)

Georgia O'Keeffe, "Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills", 1935, Brooklyn Museum

Georgia O’Keeffe, "Ranchos Church No. 1", 1929, Norton Museum of Art

Ansel Adams, "Saint Francis Church Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico", c. 1929
Gelatin silver print, 13 5/16 x 17 9/16 inches Collection Center for Creative Photography,
University of Arizona © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Do you see how she simplifies the New Mexican landscape in her paintings?
And how her version of the Ranchos church is even more stringent than Adams's black and white photograph of the same church?
She shows us the beauty in those very basic architectural shapes.

Georgia O'Keeffe, "Red Poppy", 1927

"Georgia O'Keeffe" Philippe Halsman,
Gelatin silver print, 1967
Halsman Family Collection,
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman

Her close-up of a red poppy is my favorite, but I must admit that when I first discovered her art, sometime around 1990, I was most fascinated with her as a strong and independent woman, living on her own in her beautiful Ghost Ranch house. That bottom portrait is particularly stunning, I think. Seeing her wise expression and beautiful face makes me a little better able to love my own wrinkles.

Skagenmalerne (The painters at Skagen, Denmark)

Peder S. Krøyer, "Sommeraften på Skagen Sønderstrand" 1893, Skagens Museum.

I had a small reproduction of this painting in my room when I was a school girl still living at my parents' house. - At an age when intimate friendship was so important and stylish clothes were a big part of my dreams about the future.


I thought of it as old fashioned, and did not realize how modern it was considered less than a hundred years earlier, when painters had just started to paint outdoors, rendering clean, clear colors in natural light.


Do you see how the soft evening sunlight makes the dresses and the women's necks shine, so quietly?
The beach continues far into the painting, to where the sky and the sea meet. And the ocean is almost completely still, waiting.