Sabbatical Exhibition: William Scarlato __________and Doll Exhibition at Krasa Center

An art exhibition -Sabbatical Exhibition: William Scarlato-  is being held in the Kindlon Hall of the Benedictine  University in Lisle, from November 5 through December 22, 2010.  I had a chance to visit the exhibition and attend the opening reception on Friday November 5.

William Scarlato, a professor at Fine Art Department of the Benedictine University, is presenting seventeen paintings (oil on canvas) and two drawings (graphite on paper) which were made during his sabbatical year from teaching.  There are two kinds of paintings: rural landscapes   of Iowa and Illinois, and images considered to be the Modernist aesthetic utilizing abstraction to express transcendence.  Professor Scarlato expressed that he perceived the beauty and romanticism in the rural landscapes of the Midwestern states when he came back from travel abroad widely.  He explained the abstraction in his Modernist concept is constructed by utilizing recognizable world.  His main intention is to create an ontological reality where the visual world of the sense is met by the creative world of the mind.  Two of the paintings were made with thinking about teaching the color-theory and the style of Post-Impressionist painter, George Seurat, and the Cubist style painting.

  A visit to an exhibition for dolls is recommended.  It is being held at the level of Krasa Center of the same campus.  A collection of beautiful dolls is presented with many supplemental photographs. 

Paul Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912, and grew up in Arizona and California. In 1930, he moved to New York City studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League of New York. Pollock was influenced by Benton, Pablo Picasso, and Surrealist automatism. Pollock was introduced to the use of liquid paint in 1936 by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. He developed what was later called his "drip" technique. He used hardened brushes, sticks, and even basting syringes as paint applicators. With this technique, Pollock was able to achieve a more immediate means of creating art, the paint literally flowing from his tool onto the canvas laid on floor. By defying the convention of painting on an upright surface, he added a new dimension, literally, by being able to view and apply paint to his canvases from all directions. In the process of making paintings in this way, he moved away from figurative representation, and challenged the Western tradition of using easel and brush. He also moved away from the use of only the hand and wrist, since he used his whole body to paint. Pollock wanted an end to the viewer's search for representational elements in his paintings, and so he abandoned titles and started numbering the paintings instead. Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related car accident. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, sometimes struggling with alcoholism. In 1945, he married the painting artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy. Peggy Guggenheim was one of his patrons.

Pollock's work has always polarized critics and has been the focus of many important critical debates. Studies by Taylor, Micolich and Jonas speculated that Pollock may have had an intuition of the nature of chaotic motion. Other experts suggest that Pollock may have merely imitated popular theories of the time in order to give his paintings a depth not previously seen. Many people assumed that Harold Rosenberg had modeled his "action painter" paradigm on Pollock. Clement Greenberg supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds. It fit well with Greenberg's view of art history as a progressive purification in form and elimination of historical content.  Pollock's works were sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Some argue that the U.S. government and wealthy elite embraced Pollock and abstract expressionism in order to place the U.S. in the forefront of global art. Others such as artist, critic, and satirist Craig Brown, have been "astonished that decorative 'wallpaper', essentially brainless.." Reynold's News in a 1959 headline said, "This is not art — it's a joke in bad taste."

References

1.      Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_pollock"

2.      Edward Lucie-Smith, “Movements in art since 1945: Issues and Concepts,” Publisher: Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-20282-6 (1995)

3.      Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel, “Jackson Pollock,” Publisher: Museum of Modern Art, New York, ISBN0-87070-068-5 (1998)

Alberto Giacometti

Giacometti was one of the outstanding artists of the 20th century. He tried to achieve reality with an approach to rendering distance. He introduced into the art of sculpture a new concept of rendering distance. Massless and weightless, his figures and heads are immediately seen from a specific frontal point of view and therefore perceived as situated in distance and space. The elongated and textured figures are seen as in distance and in an imaginary space. He felt that reality was not dependent on being perceived by someone. Space and time have their origin in the core of each being.

Alberto attended the School of Fine Arts in Geneva. In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. There he experimented with cubism and surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors. Later he broke with the Surrealist group in 1935.  Between 1936 and 1940, Giacometti concentrated on sculpture of the human head, focusing on the sitter's gaze. His statues became stretched out and limbs elongated.  Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisaged through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. After his marriage to Annette Arm his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. He reworked models over many times, often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later. Giacometti also produced paintings and drawings, mostly portraits and interiors in a mass of lines and a delicacy of light. The figures appear isolated, are severely attenuated, and are the result of continuous reworking. The attenuated forms of Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly devoid of meaning and empty. Giacometti created more than three hundred fifty prints. He worked in etching and lithography, mainly depicting people close to him or recording studio views of his own sculptures and paintings. Giacometti's work is displayed in numerous public collections.

References

1.     Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti"

2.     Reinhold Hohl (1971) "Alberto Giacometti", Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje

3.     Die Sammlung der Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung (1990), Zürich, Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft

4.     Jacques Dupin (1962) "Alberto Giacometti", Paris, Maeght

      Femme debout (1993)      Chariot (1950)               Cubic head (1933)          Rue d'Alesia (1954)
      bronze with patina           bronze sculpture           engraving plate               color lithograph
      45.1 cm                            167.1 h x 62 w cm        50.8 x 38 cm                    68 x 53.3 cm
      conceived in 1961

Edible Art

Lefteris Pitarakis of the Associates Press showed photographs of art pieces seen at an edible art exhibition entitled 'Art you can Eat ... Cake Britain' in a central London gallery, Friday Aug. 27, 2010. (Fig.1) The exhibition, according to the organizers is the world's first ever entirely edible art exhibition and teamed the UK's most creative bakers with artists who want to create art using sugar, cake and other sweet stuff. All exhibits will be devoured over the three days by visitors to the exhibition.

Artistic expression could be achieved with many edible objects.  The field of edible art could includes a wide range and under various names; culinary art, plating, cutlery, art of garnishing, edible creation, food styling, cookie design, cake decoration, bakery, and so on.  The food artist, Prudence Staite, used varieties of apples to make scenes from the film, Snow White. (Fig. 2)  Way of food presentation is as much important as preparation.  It would unquestionably affect appetite and artistic feeling about it.  Artistic view points for food presentation may vary among different cultures.  For example, among three Asian countries, China, Korea, and Japan, to my observations, Chinese dishes are generally presented in grandeur plates, trying to include all the important basic materials [bird, meat, fish, and vegetable], Korean dishes are presented with many small side dishes of various materials in five different colors in balance [the 5-phase colors - green, red, yellow, white, black], while Japanese dishes are in relatively petit, but more simple artistic arrangements.  I may somehow be prejudiced to prefer most Japanese food presentations which are in simplistic art forms. (Fig. 3 and 4)

Edible art is a 3-D visual art, but it is different and special because it does communicate the notion of edibility to viewers. In that sense, I would think that edible art should be inclusive of the ambiance around the work presented and the taste. Our appetite really depends on the surrounding atmosphere.  Edible art becomes popular to  children as well as grown-ups because it is fun to learn and to perform.  There are many schools to teach edible art and stores to sell edible art products and services.

My Favorite Artist - Paul Klee

Last April at my first drawing class, one of the classmates showed me some of Paul Klee’s work. I Immediately find myself attracted to his work. I do not have exact wordings why I like Klee.  Perhaps it could be that his works are in enchanting colors and forms, filled with childlikeness, friendliness, and some kind of allusions to dreams.

Paul Klee was born in Switzerland in 1879 and spent most of his adult life in Germany until he was expelled by the Nazis in 1933. He grew up in a musical family and was himself a violinist. But later he began to study art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich 1900 with the popular symbolist and society painter Franz von Stuck. In 1920 Klee was invited to teach at the Bauhaus school after World War I, where Kandinsky was also a faculty member. Klee was also a member of the Die Blau Vier, a group contributed much to the development of abstract art. In 1931 he began teaching at Dusseldorf Academy, but he was dismissed by the Nazis. In 1933, Klee went to Switzerland. There he came down with the crippling collagen disease scleroderma, which forced him to develop a simpler style and eventually killed him in 1940.

Klee created about 9000 works of art. He was an introverted artist and his work is difficult to clarify, except that it is hardly ever wholly abstract, but equally, never truly realistic. He had a natural sensitivity to music, the least material of the arts, and it runs through all his work, clarifying his spellbinding color and dematerializing his images. Primitive art, surrealism, cubism, and children's art all seem blended into his small-scale, delicate paintings, watercolors, and drawings. Klee's early works are mostly etchings and pen-and-ink drawings. These combine satirical, grotesque, and surreal elements and reveal the influence of Francisco de Goya and James Ensor. Klee often incorporated letters and numerals into his paintings. These, part of Klee's complex language of symbols and signs, are drawn from the unconscious and used to obtain a poetic amalgam of abstraction and reality. The late works, characterized by heavy black lines, are often reflections on death and war, and his life's concerns as a creator.

Klee influenced the work of other noted artists of the early 20^th century. Klee married the art forms of music and visual art. The psychedelic nature of Klee’s pieces was revived musically. The National Gallery released the album Performing Musical Interpretations of the Paintings of Paul Klee in 1968.

[References]

1.     Will Grohmann, “Paul Klee,” Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publisher, New York (1985) ISBN 081091208-2.

2.     Susanna Partsch, “Paul Klee 1879-1940,” Taschen Basic Art, Koeln (1993) ISBN 3822802999.

3.     Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://www.wikipedia.org/

A Visit to the Exhibition, "Back to the Nest"



  Memorial of Turmoil by Mieszczanska                                           Corporeal Conundrum by Tufano

  Digital Print                                                                                    Oil On Canvas



An alumni art exhibition by Izabela Mieszczanska  and Gabrielle Tufano is being held at the Krasa Building of the Benedictine  University in Lisle, from September 12 through October 12, 2010.  I had a chance to visit the exhibition and attend the opening reception on Sunday September 12.

Izabela Mieszczanska presented a series of thirteen digital print photographs.   After WWII, the survived post traumatic Varshavians returned to a city and began to rebuild their homes from the ashes, leaving some ruins untouched to remind them of what had happened during WWII and the Warsaw Uprising, in spite of the communist government and the Stalinism smothered their attempt to memorialize.  Today, in post communism, it is difficult to find an avenue or plaza not dedicated to the heroes of WWII.  The monuments are integrated in modern architectures. The memory of turmoil always remains with Varshavians, whether they lived through it or heard about it on a stroll through the Old Town with their grandparents. The series of photographs were taken during the artist’s visit home in the years 2007-2009.

Gabrielle Tufano presented nine drawings of pen on paper, pen and acrylic on paper, and oil on paper. Tufano wishes to communicate that the subjects in her still-lives are contrived and theatrical. The dramatic light turns each pice into a performance that explores the construction of identity. As subjects, we create ourselves through the repeated putting on, removing and manipulation of the trappings that communicate selfhood to the world we live in. These effects include everything from clothing and accessories to our very own skin. We are what we present. The effort to uncover the essence of self is often endeavored by attempt to shed those effects. Dissection is perhaps the most extreme expression of this obsession, where one tries to see beyond even the skin, to the very truths of the body itself. 

The exhibitions threw me down to a melancholily philosophical state of mind. At the end, however, I very much enjoyed the wine and cheese at the reception.  Two glasses of merlot and several slices of Swiss cheese gave me a peace and easiness to my mind.  The exhibitions are good art works, relatively easy to comprehend, and worthy of visit.