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Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Friday, June 11, 2010
The visual arts have been at the center of my life from my earliest memories. My mother was a painter and she taught me to observe the world intently; she also conveyed the mysteries of the creative artist; a love of introspection; and an intelligence built on association. My father had a passion for classical literature and he taught me the importance of words, sentences, logic. He introduced thematic concerns. My own form of expression, I like to believe, is a combination of the two.
My sentimental education was not based on failed romances, or successful ones, for that matter. But my maturity to appreciate art. I believe visual art is born in the emotional realm, that it lives in emotion as a human being lives in the open air. A poet once said that art leaves the imprint of the artist’s emotions as she creates.
I hope these essays carry a sense of experimental wonder to whomever reads them; also a love of beautiful forms, and a sadness toward self-destruction. Because I am not a visual artist, I have the privilege of looking on, the privilege of an outsider’s point of view. I admire painting, drawing, illustration, photography, architecture, even music, like a little boy mystified by a magic trick. Literature and writing, on the other hand, is a trick I wish to learn.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Julie Heffernan, Self-portrait Sitting on a World
We have an outstanding line-up of art essays, poetry, and reviews this issue. Personally, I am grateful for the contributors to this online art journal. Month after month, we receive erudite, well-researched submissions on interesting topics, and it's my pleasure to present them to readers.
"No symbols where none intended": Samuel Beckett's Doodles . . . Bill Prosser has recently completed a three-year research project into Samuel Beckett’s doodles at the University of Oxford. Here is a brilliant condensation of his work.
The Prose-poetry of Nin Andrews . . . The writing of Nin Andrews doesn't fit into any easy categories, but it's effect is undeniable. She writes a lot about sex and orgasms. I think you'll like her work.
Julie Heffernan's Constructions of Self . . . Julie Heffernan is currently the most popular artist on Escape into Life, receiving over 100,000 visitors on a single page. I recently asked Linnea West to explore the symbolism in Heffernan's paintings, and she offered in return one of the most fascinating art reviews I've ever read.
The Spaces in Between . . . Lara Cory, a regular contributor to Escape into Life, always selects the most rich, interesting subject-matter. Here she examines the work of three printmaking artists, Frans Masereel, Dan Rickwood, and Leon Sidwell, and their capacity to use "crude imagery to express sophisticated themes."
What is Escape into Life?
Escape into Life hosts over 900 contemporary artist profiles, and is also an online arts journal with contributions from nearly 25 different writers. Many of our contributors—ranging from well-known published authors, university professors, and freelance journalists—continue to publish art reviews and art history essays month after month. In addition, our poetry editor selects a new poet to feature in the journal every issue.
The Escape into Life digest comes out about twice monthly and you can subscribe at the top of the website, next to the search bar.
As an organization, we seek to promote the arts in all its forms. Our next milestone is to merge the thriving online publication with a viable online art store.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
The popularity of Escape into Life on the web is reaching unforeseen levels. According to a conservative estimate, we received nearly 50,000 unique visitors last month. By blending artist profiles, multimedia, poetry, and journal-length essays, I am finding that people really do enjoy a mixture of content relating to the arts.
Escape into Life hosts over 700 contemporary artist profiles, and is also an online arts journal with contributions from nearly 25 different writers. Many of our contributors--ranging from well-known published authors, university professors, and freelance journalists--continue to publish art reviews and art history essays month after month. In addition, our poetry editor selects a new poet to feature in the journal every issue.
Also, this month a new writer joined the team. We feature Marc Nash's essay, "Approaching Non-Linearity in Literature," and Marc will be focusing on literary criticism for Escape into Life in future issues. Here are some of the highlights of this issue:
Approaching Non-Linearity in Literature . . . Marc brings together insights in science and literature to show some of the ways in which contemporary fiction might be rejuvenated.
French Rococo: Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard . . . Arts critic Stephen Pain introduces us to the "three tenors" of French Rococo in the history of painting.
Poetry by Susan Rich . . . In "Curating My Own Death," Rich offers us an ironic and humorous contemplation of her own death.
Fernando Botero at the Museum of Fine Arts . . . Mark Kerstetter recently visited the Fernando Botero exhibit in St. Petersburg, Florida. Here is his review.
From the Showcase Series:
28 Recommended Art and Design Tumblrs . . . These blogs range from contemporary, modern, and classical art; vintage illustration; vintage photography; design and typography.
What is Escape into Life?
Escape into Life hosts over 700 contemporary artist profiles, and is also an online arts journal with contributions from nearly 25 different writers. Many of our contributors--ranging from well-known published authors, university professors, and freelance journalists--continue to publish art reviews and art history essays month after month. In addition, our poetry editor selects a new poet to feature in the journal every issue.
The Escape into Life digest comes out about twice monthly and you can subscribe at the top of the website, next to the search bar.
As an organization, we seek to promote the arts in all its forms. Our next milestone is to merge the thriving online publication with a viable online art store and auction.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
eX de Medici, Blue (Bower/Bauer) 1998-2000
In addition to the six new artists we feature daily, one of my goals has been to incorporate multimedia onto Escape into Life. Now you'll find art videos, movie trailers (relating to the arts), and short films. We try to keep it interesting. One such "find" is the brilliant interview with Francis Bacon.
This issue is exceptional, if only for the marvelous contributions by Lara Cory who has been dedicating time and effort to this arts journal. Thank you Lara. We have two new poets in this issue, as well as another outstanding art history essay by Stephen Pain.
Russian and Soviet Art: Levitan and Pimenov . . . Seasoned arts writer Stephen Pain introduces us to two Russian masters and describes the dramatic changes in Russian painting from the 1890’s to the 1960’s.
Russian and Soviet Art: Levitan and Pimenov . . . Seasoned arts writer Stephen Pain introduces us to two Russian masters and describes the dramatic changes in Russian painting from the 1890’s to the 1960’s.
eX de Medici: Emblems of Death Transformed . . . Arts writer Lara Cory, who hails from Australia, reviews the meticulous work of Australian artist eX de Medici.
The Poetry of William Taylor Jr. . . . Poetry that rises out of the San Francisco soul.
Gig Poster Artists: Travis Bone, Rob Jones, Justin Hampton . . . This interview with three prominent rock poster artists is a follow-up to Lara Cory's recent article on the genre.
Poetry by Robert Lee Brewer . . . Robert Lee Brewer is the editor of Writer's Market, and an accomplished poet.
What is Escape into Life?
EIL is a publication based on the concept of citizen journalism. The goal is to create a journal of poetry, essays, and art from writers who are already publishing on the Web and who would like to gain more exposure to their blogs. The artists we feature are the very best we can find, and the writers have a background in writing and a passion for the arts.
More information here
EIL is a publication based on the concept of citizen journalism. The goal is to create a journal of poetry, essays, and art from writers who are already publishing on the Web and who would like to gain more exposure to their blogs. The artists we feature are the very best we can find, and the writers have a background in writing and a passion for the arts.
More information here
Monday, February 22, 2010
Pierre Bonnard, The French Window (Morning at Le Cannet) 1932
We've decided to publish new content to Escape into Life on an ongoing basis. This way you should be able to check the site every day or so and always see new poetry, essays or reviews. In addition we publish 6 new artists a day to Escape into Life, which you can always find on our Artist Watch page.
We have another marvelous issue for our readers this week. Here are some of the highlights:
Pierre Bonnard: The Intimiste . . . Read Tony Thomas's superbly written account of the life and work of French painter, Pierre Bonnard.
Poetry by Kathleen Kirk . . . These poems come from Living on the Earth, Kathleen Kirk’s forthcoming poetry chapbook.
Interview with Julian Duron: Art, Humor, Enlightenment . . . Escape writer, Chip Schwartz, gives an outstanding interview with New York city artist Julian Duron.
The Talented Miss Highsmith . . . Gretta Barclay reviews Joan Schenekar's biography of crime writer, Patricia Highsmith.
The Talented Miss Highsmith . . . Gretta Barclay reviews Joan Schenekar's biography of crime writer, Patricia Highsmith.
Art and Poetry by Ernest Williamson III . . . Ernest Williamson III is both a poet and a visual artist. Enjoy his creations!
What is Escape into Life?
EIL is a publication based on the concept of citizen journalism. The goal is to create a journal of poetry, essays, and art from writers who are already publishing on the Web and who would like to gain more exposure to their blogs. The artists we feature are the very best we can find, and the writers have a background in writing and a passion for the arts.
More information here
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
1. Kipling West
The works of these artists are viewed in the tens of thousands on Escape into Life. Please enjoy their extraordinary creations and visit their websites as well.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Tino Sehgal's live sculptures at the Guggenheim challenge our notions of "object-based" art. Sehgal's actors respond to museum-goers, and remain in the exhibit the entire time the museum is open. What is even more far-fetched is that the artist sells these works. Writer and artist Fraser MacIver, with editorial work done by Tony Thomas, covers Sehgal in our latest issue of Escape into Life.
Also in this issue, you'll find poems by Alane Rollings, a Chicago poet who has mentored me in writing for over ten years. I hope you enjoy the new issue.
Tino Sehgal's Living Sculptures . . . Documentation of Tino Sehgal's exhibits is banned but we found a picture on the Internet along with a video to accompany this outstanding review of Sehgal's work.
Poetry by Alane Rollings . . . These heartbreakingly beautiful poems are taken from Rollings's collection, In Your Own Sweet Time.
Figuring Out the Abstract: Gender, Politics, and Art . . . Writer Stephen Pain shows how art critics and patrons have marginalized women in art, and how male artists have painted women. He focuses his discussion on the work of female artists Eva Hesse and Carolee Schneemann.
Poetry by Graham Nunn . . . With his well-wrought verse, Graham Nunn has the power to situate us right beside the river he is describing.
What is Escape into Life?
EIL is a publication based on the concept of citizen journalism. The goal is to create a journal of poetry, essays, and art from writers who are already publishing on the Web and who would like to gain more exposure to their blogs. The artists we feature are the very best we can find, and the writers have a background in writing and a passion for the arts.
More information here
Thursday, February 4, 2010
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Tuesday, December 15, 2009
DRIP DRIP by Mel Kadel
This issue of Escape into Life caught me by surprise . . . I received an email from a friend, telling me about his band's latest EP, Hearts on Faces. After listening to the album for about a song and a half, I just knew it had to be in the next issue of Escape into Life. Here are some highlights:
The Museum of Everything . . . author and art critic, David Maclagan, takes us inside a truly original setting for London's latest collection of Outsider Art.
The Poetry of Peter Davis . . . poetry like you've never read before, be prepared to laugh hard.
Electric Literature . . . Gretta Barclay, EIL Book Critic, reviews a new literary magazine hailed by The Washington Post as a "refreshingly bold act of optimism."
Hearts on Faces . . . hear the full EP of The Equines and read all about this indie pop act with a contagious sound.
What is Escape into Life?
Escape into Life, arts and culture webzine, is a publication based on the concept of citizen journalism. The goal is to create a journal of poetry, essays, and art from writers who are already publishing on the Web and who would like to gain more exposure to their blogs. The artists we feature are the very best we can find, and the writers have a background in writing and a passion for the arts.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Paper Geography by Letha Colleen
What is Genius? . . . . Tony Thomas examines the question of genius in the arts and science.
Creativity, Institutions, and Outsider Art . . . David Maclagan, author of Outsider Art: from the margins to the marketplace, discusses defiant creativity and the use of the term "outsider art”.
Poetry by Emari DiGiorgio . . . In this double feature, the poetry of Emari DiGiorgio is presented alongside the illustration art of Raphael Vicenzi.
Jam Tape 2: A Musical Mix . . . Experience a musical blend of blues, electronic, jazz, and Irish music by Jamreilly, the Official Escape into Life DJ.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Rene Margritte, Clairvoyance (Self-Portrait)
Reading the New York Times Book Review, one frequently comes across assertions like:
But looking at her writing from this perspective misses the most interesting part: her sentences. No one writing in English today produces anything quite like them. Take, for example, the following passage, early in the novel, in which the principal narrator, an authorial stand-in named Mimi, looks east from the track around the Central Park (or, properly speaking, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) Reservoir.The reviewer has chosen a specimen, if you will, in order to demonstrate the author's genius. This hardly seems offensive to most of us; this is the critic's job, to make statements like that. But this morning, whether it was because I hadn't slept the night before or because something had finally occurred to me, I found myself questioning the way in which we--I do it too--talk about artists and their work.
“Windows high above Fifth Avenue flashed the bronze setting of the sun. I will never understand how that brilliant display, mostly blocked by the apartment houses on Central Park West, leaps the reservoir’s expanse. And do not care to understand, demanding magic from this forbidden journey, though the simple refraction of light at end of day may be grammar-school science.”(1)
Specifically, their finest work.
We read, "No one writing in English today produces anything quite like them." And then, a passage that illustrates the reviewer's claim.
The passage is beautiful; I was certainly moved by it. But let me challenge you to another point of view, a point of view which is provisional and openly philosophical . . .
What we think of as a writer's unique and individual gifts, those sparkling sentences that critics extol--in my present understanding--are really the effervescence of language itself.
What I mean to say by that is, art in poetry or prose is language in its purest, most accessible, most fluid form, nearly on a separate wavelength. It's on a wavelength most of us can hear, just not all of the time. When we hear it, our hearts swoon, our minds expand.
This is a language that is common to all, a language that resonates with large numbers of people. My immediate reaction, like the critic of the New York Times Book Review, is to elevate the artist who created these lines, to point to the individual. But there is something behind this reaction that bothers me.
It seems we like to pick out the gifted as if they were our own shiny fruit. We like to exclaim, "Ah, this is genius!" It gratifies us to make these declarations, and it somehow serves us.
A critic will point to a work of art, or a beautiful sentence, as if it were possible to isolate perfection--to sever the part from the whole, the text from the context. I am doubtful of this ability to zero in on transcendence.
I believe the magical passage, the stunning work of art, is not the watermark of individual genius, but instead the reflection of a higher state of mind. The artwork is evidence of some journey. Art criticism flattens the journey, however, by making it into a vacation. Now it's as if the artist went on a vacation and brought us back a souvenir. We grab for the souvenir at our first chance because it really is magnificent to have such a beautiful thing in our hands. Blinded by the act of possession, having stamped our names across the material object, we see no further--
In this mode of appreciating art, the furthest I can see is not far enough. Fixated on the individual and her gifts, I lose sight of the deeper meaning or beauty in the work of art. By reducing art to the individual, and setting a spotlight on the hand that wrought perfection, I mistakenly short-circuit the whole enterprise of art.
The author's passages, or the artist's brushstrokes, should be signaling the opposite reaction. Art is a universal language, not an individual one. What if we approached the appreciation of art from the other side, from the side closest to the collective "we"? Do we even have a universal language to praise art? Or is our criticism and praise decidedly individualistic?
Furthermore, all art is in flux, even after its creation. This makes it hard to pin down exact marks of genius; evidence for genius seems to move around a lot and vacillate. After all, the concept "art" is in our minds.
In sum, there is no permanent, eternal art. Art wavers between a radiant work of genius, an emblem of culture, a historical artifact, and a hundred other possibilities. Art can be or mean almost anything, as recent -isms have shown. Culture will continue to see it differently as it passes through the kaleidoscope of history.
Artists have in fact done themselves a great disservice by allowing others to praise their works. (I expect you to disagree with me here.) But, suspend disbelief for a moment, what if we attributed an author's sparkling sentences to a state of mind rather than an individual person?
What if we looked upon great works of art, looking beyond the individual creator, and toward something common to all--the underlying language that makes this art so moving in the first place.
Prior to these insights, I trumpeted individualism. I trumpeted individualism because I felt a strong sense of being an individual myself, and I felt a strong sense of being able to identify other individuals. I saw the enterprise of art as essentially individualistic. The artist works alone, the works are understood alone. Art is the conversation between two individuals, one real and one imaginary (the author's ideal reader, or artist's ideal viewer).
But now I'm coming to believe that individualism in art is not what makes it special. Individualism is the coat an artist sheds over time, growing closer to the patterns of her art as she moves further and further away from her individual sense of self. And those moments of greatness, the superb execution, exists outside of the artist. What we point to when we declare, "What genius!" is the second space the artist has created between herself and her work, the plane onto which the universal occurs. Exquisite sentences arise here, but so do many other things, such as wisdom and love and a profound synthesis of mankind and nature.
Could it be that the beauty we perceive in art is not the mark of an individual genius, but instead evidence of a higher consciousness, evidence of a God I don't believe in, or simply the invisible rails between two people who have never met?
Friday, September 25, 2009
Gustave Baumann (1881, Magdeburg, Germany - 1971, Santa Fe, New Mexico) was a printmaker and painter, and one of the leading figures of the color woodcut revival in America. (Wikipedia)Thursday, September 24, 2009
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