Art Np2

"IT IS one of the most provocative suggestions in art history: did some Renaissance artists use lenses or mirrors to help them paint more accurately? Analysis of a 16th-century artwork dubbed a "Rosetta stone" for optical techniques suggests they did. The theory that Renaissance artists used optical projection was proposed in 2000 by artist David Hockney and optical scientist Charles Falco of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Most art historians have yet to be convinced..."  - Samuel Reich, New Scientist Link Full Text, Samuel Reich, "Did Renaissance painters cheat with optical aids?", New Scientist Image: Lorenzo Lotto, Husband and Wife, Oil, 1523, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

"I dream of it."  - Yo-Yo Ma Mission: The Lewis Center for the Arts is designed to put the creative and performing arts at the heart of the Princeton experience. This mission is based on the conviction that exposure to the arts, particularly to the experience of producing art, helps each of us to make sense of our life and the lives of our neighbors. The Lewis Center for the Arts will allow Princeton to fully engage with a range of programs that integrate the creative and performing arts into a broad liberal arts education. The Center will give a new focus and force to the Programs in Creative Writing, Dance, Theater, and Visual Arts, as well as to Film and Video, Musical Performance and to the Princeton Atelier. It will also have close links to the Center for African American Studies, School of Architecture, Department of Art and Archaeology, Council of the Humanities, Department of Comparative Literature, Department of English, Department of Music, Princeton University Art

First published in 1962, John Steinback's "Travels with Charley" chronicles the author's automobile journey across the United States with his elderly french poodle Charley.  I read the low priced Bantam paperback edition (proud Goodwill purchase)  which was published in July, 1963. The book contains Steinback's impression of the diverse American landscape and people as he drove from state to state, not only to see but to understand the condition of the country he often wrote of in his novels.   The reader views America from John Steinback's wise, learned and subjective perspective.  At the age of fifty-eight, he described the substance of all journeys as different from other journeys; we think that we are taking a trip, but sometimes it is the trip that takes us to unexpected places. (4). Steinback traveled from Long Island, New York, to Maine, through the Midwest into Montana, to California, Texas, and New Orleans in a truck attached to his trailer which he n

Irrepressibly enthusiastic about his art, Middleman is steeped in the roots of the imagery of Western painting. His tumultuous canvases with their splashing brushstrokes -- landscapes, seascapes, portraits, still life’s or narratives -- each one conveys his sense of joy and pleasure in its creation. Middleman explores the whole range of the painter’s art. His portraits -- perverse and confrontational -- take as their subjects his family, friends, neighbors, street people, pulling truths from these faces his subjects may not have known were there. His landscapes are like cantatas composed of painterly fugues of light and shadow, line and color. He’s painted the French countryside, the Cape Cod seacoast, the farmlands of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Tramping around the Baltimore harbor area for most of his adult life he finds beauty in rotting wharves, abandoned factories, rusted oil tanks. The thread that holds this explosion of productivity together is the joy he encounters in his work.

And so I will never get the chance to meet her and tell how she wrote about parts of me in her poems that I did not know existed until I read her work. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-02-14/news/bal-md.ob.clifton14feb14_1_fred-clifton-poet-laureate-lucille-clifton One of my favorite poems and bio: Telling Our Stories  Written by Lucille Clifton The fox came every evening to my door asking for nothing. my fear trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her but she sat till morning, waiting. At dawn we would, each of us, rise from our haunches, look through the glass then walk away. Did she gather her village around her and sing of the hairless moon face, the trembling snout, the ignorant eyes? Child, i tell you now it was not the animal blood i was hiding from, it was the poet in her, the poet and the terrible stories she could tell. http://www.afropoets.net/lucilleclifton.html   She will truly be missed.  Lucille Clifton was a poet for the wonderful and mysterious common woman.

When I decided to read at least two books a week, I had no idea of the change it would bring over my life.  I have no time to watch television or be very involved in any kind of social networking, unless of course it has something to do with reading or writing.  I find myself consumed by the amount of good literature in the world and I feel sad that I will never get to read everything that I want to.  There are thousands of books that will never have the chance to influence my thinking.  And yet I have to say that I will never be able to get used to a Kindle or any kind of electronic reading device.  I like to be able to hold a book in my hand, the problem is that they take up a lot of room and so I am having to get rid of half of my book and keep only the ones that I have, so I need to choose carefully.  I also have to choose carefully which tv shows I will be watching because there are so many new shows out there that I have no idea about and will never see.

Descent from the Cross, Rembrandt Workshop, Oil/Linen, 1650/52, NGA Adoration of the Magi, Fra Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Tempera/Wood, 1440/1460, NGA The Kitchen Maid, Chardin, Oil/Linen, 1738, NGA On Sunday, I went to the National Gallery of Art - West Building. These are some of my observations. The Rembrandt paintings express such a broad range of thought and feeling - like life. Regardless of subject matter, he seems to consistently explore a portraiture of sorts. During this visit, I thought about the connections between the way he thinks about the head and the way he approaches landscape and narrative. I think his deep understanding of the head infuses his work with unrivaled emotional depth and awareness. I look at his work as often as possible and each time experience something different and new. This time, the Italians offered me a fresh look at the round format. Aware of linear perspective and yet unencumbered by it, they freely altered scale to better express their ideas.

Primed and prepared, I like to put myself into position to experience life from the perspective of someone else's thoughts and ideas.  But you see,  because I am deeply affected by what I read, I have to carefully choose which books I spend my time in. There are parts of "Beloved" by Toni Morrison that upset me so much that I ended up in bed with the covers over my head.  It helps to balance novels that stir up my grief with books that give me hope and make me laugh.  It has taken a while to understand what I need. I have to level my reading out with comedy, biography, satire, fantasy, mystery, travel books, and fairy tales.  A few of my favorites are Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal,"  "The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson, and "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston, though I still don't understand the meaning of the title to Hurston's book.   What I am trying to say is I have found it important to expose myself

Grande Odalisque, Ingres, 1814, The Louvre, Paris, France "What is dark is not light and what is light is not dark. This is the basis of all design and an important guiding principle of art. It seems so simple but an artist can spend a lifetime exploring the possibilities of light and dark. "Notan" is the term used by the Japanese to express "light-dark" as an element of design. In the west we use separate terms such as positive space and negative space, dividing the idea of light-dark into separate components. On paper it is easy to see that dark shapes cannot exist without a surrounding area of white. White shapes cannot exist without dark to define it. The two elements are really one. This is an eastern concept of yin-yang that each is what the other is not... ...All art is based on light and dark even when color is involved. In a low-light situation we can only see the values, or light and dark of a painting. Hang a painting in a dim room and only the str

Charles Addams Who could resist such an invitation? The city street is dark and deserted. The buildings are empty. There are no witnesses. A lone man carrying a briefcase, after a long day at the office perhaps, approaches a subway staircase. Out of the subterranean gloom, a giant human hand protrudes, its index finger beckoning the office worker, inviting him into the depths. His eyes are wide with astonishment, his face showing the hint of a grin, as if the bizarre, illicit invitation were not entirely unwelcome... Edward Rothstein, NY Times, March 4, 2010 Link Full Text, Edward Rothstein, NY Times, March 4, 2010 “Charles Addams’s New York” is on view through May 16 at the Museum of the City of New York, Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street; (212) 534-1672, mcny.org.

"An enlightening new exhibition in Madrid traces Claude Monet’s influence on Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Gerhard Richter and other abstract masters." Link The Daily Beast