Quotes I enjoy ( this will change and be added to over time)

What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers. Jean Dubuffet Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction. Jean Dubuffet What interests me about thoughts is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas but its earlier stages. Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, Vol. I, Jean Dubuffet, Gallimard, Paris 1967, p. 97 In all my works.. .. I have always had recourse to one never-varying method. It consists in making the delineation of the objects represented heavily dependent on a system of necessities which itself looks strange. These necessities are sometimes due to the inappropriate and awkward character of the material used, sometimes to some strange obsessive notion (frequently changed for another). In a word, it is always a matter of giving the person who is looking at the picture a startling impression that a weird logic has directed the painting of it, a logic to which the delineation of every object is subjected, is even sacrificed, in such a peremptory way that, curiously enough, it forces the most unexpected solutions, and, in spite of the obstacles it creates, brings out the desired figuration. Peter Selz and Jean Dubuffet: The work of Jean Dubuffet, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1962 With respect to the use of this sparkling coloured material (butterfly wings around 1955, fh) – the constituent parts of which remain indistinguishable – with the aim of producing a very vivid effect of scintillation, I realised that, for me, this responds to needs of the same order as those that formerly led me, in many drawings and paintings, to organize my lines and patches of colour so that the objects represented would meld into everything around them, so that the result would be a sort of continuous, universal soup with an intensive flavour of life. Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, Vol. II, Jean Dubuffet, Gallimard, Paris 1967, p. 116

USA: MET: Works of art that I respond to

Please Note: This section of the blog will be changing and a work in progress. Please be patient with this as I work on this gradually.

Also I would love to return to some of these countries - I have missed some galleries in these countries due to time.

I haven't as yet been to Florence/Rome/Madrid/Amsterdam/Japan/China...

So I hope this will be added to over my lifetime.

To be able to not violate copyright laws I have added links to artworks.

I have also tried to choose artists that I have not mentioned in other blogs/countries. Comments are limited to images that were available online. 

USA:

MET:

This museum is the most amazing museum I have ever been to. I went there nearly every day over the month I was in New York. The collection of Impressionist works (Degas and Cezanne in particular) is an immense enviable resource for the New York painters. I was hoping though to see more Hans Hoffman there in NY...

My favorite works:

De Kooning: Attic
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/210002690?high=on&rpp=15&pg=4&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=50

(Made early in his life from basic material. Printed with newspaper in sections - very felt and very forceful presence)

Braque: The Billard Table

http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/210010207

( there was another one like this at the MET - no image available- late Braque. Th textured areas and divisons that disappear and reappear fragmented, yet frontal is something that I would like to capture in my own work and thinking about this in the studio at the moment)

Anslem Kiefer: Bohemia Lies by the Sea
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/210007212?high=on&rpp=15&pg=35&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=525
( best of the postmodern work - forceful afn strong and direct)

Robert Motherwell : Elegy to the Spanish Repulic, 70
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/210009638?high=on&rpp=15&pg=37&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=547
( wanted to see these in flesh- but some versions of these were going through the motions- energy and urgency missing)

Vermeer: Young Woman with a Water Pitcher
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110002334?high=on&rpp=15&pg=39&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=571
( breathtaking)

Administrative tablet with cylinder seal impression of a male figure, hunting dogs, and boars

Date:ca. 3100–2900 B.C; Geography:Mesopotamia, probably from Uruk (modern Warka); Culture:Sumerian

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/30008828?high=on&rpp=15&pg=47&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=696

( I love these clay works, small tablets that can be held in your hand. There is a sense of urgency and need to be able to communicate through scratching)

Unidentified Artist: Scholar Viewing Plum Blossoms

Period:Yuan dynasty (1271–1368); China
http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/60007663
( these works make me want to go to China and learn more about Chinese painting - especially the screens, ink and calligraphy - The forms and content is mysterious/disguised, the space curves rhythmically)

Anthony van Dyck: James Stuart (1612–1655), Duke of Richmond and Lennox

http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/110000692
( what a master of black..... love to be able to get these passages of black in my own work...the shape of the dog and the echo of the shape in the material ( especially the golden material at the back )amazes me in this work. Very triangle based and upward in composition).

Kano Sansetsu : The Old Plum, Japan; ca. 1645

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/60012562?high=on&rpp=15&pg=59&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=872
(Again these works makes me want to explore Asia ( go to Japan and China in particular) , there is such a richness in visual culture. West is so infatuated with illusion, progression - these works explore beauty and timelessness. Yearning to go East and understand more)

Max Beckmann: Beginning
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/210009860?high=on&rpp=15&pg=63&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=933
( what a draftsman!)

Human-headed winged bull and winged lion (lamassu); Neo-Assyrian, ca. 883–859 B.C.

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/30009052?high=on&rpp=15&pg=65&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=964
( I do love Assyrian sculpture- very commanding -more than Egyptian- the wall friezes in particular)

Arshile Gorky:Water of the Flowery Mill

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/210009143?high=on&rpp=15&pg=72&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=1080

( if only I could grasp a little of this man's talent....the open weaved spaces, colors everything. I have not seen a failed artwork/artwork that didn't speak to me by Arshile Gorky, all so authentically discovered, free flowing Kandinsky)

Georges de La Tour: The Penitent Magdalen

http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/110001283
( very elegant, controlled, modern in many ways - the flatness and simplification in the shapes)

El Greco: View of Toledo
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110001017?high=on&rpp=15&pg=96&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=1432

( best painting in the museum - very surreal, risky, perspective, lighting and pictorial rhythms)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) : Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110000987?high=on&rpp=15&pg=97&rndkey=20111117&ft=*&pos=1454
( I haven't seen enough of Goya - but it seems to me that his earlier commissions with children are the most interesting - need to go to Madrid yet to fully understand him )

Space

“The aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space in which the subjects of the paintings can live” (1)

Much of my work has been concerned with this problem in Abstraction outlined in Frank Stella’s collection of essays in Working Space. Stella has concerns about post modern Abstraction (especially post 1960), where grid locked, shallow, mannerist space has closed off fundamental drawing and composition principals.

My work seeks to understand space through re-configuration and directing the eye to tensions, whilst sustaining the picture plane. This architectonic process of building and understanding an authentic expression of form through drawing I believe connects with the experience of the human body. Abstraction to me is the synthesis of inner and outer pedagogical forms.

I believe that these concerns Stella raises can be resolved not purely through direct figurative sources but through ensuring variation in form is selected schematically, created through collage, accidental elements and pushed through drawing principles. I also believe that this approach to creating art through collage elements has not been completely explored within modern Abstraction.

Two completed art residences are linked with issues raised in Stella's Working Space:

The purpose for my art residency in Spain at Can Serrat International Art Centre was to understand how Catalan artists were influenced by Tachism, Art Informal, collage and Automatism and its influence on Abstraction. Within my work accidental marks and collage offers variation in form and can function as a figurative component in composition. Incorporating these elements or Happy Accidents I feel can stimulate the imagination and can open up the space in Abstraction and can guard against “The trouble in which recent Abstraction finds itself, its inability to project a real sense of space” (2). An exploration of the possibilities within collage, assemblage and arrangement of accidental forms had just started to be explored by Pollock and Gorky, De Kooning and many Catalan and Surrealist artists.

Barcelona in the heart of Catalonia (near Can Serrat International Art Centre) embraced this approach to art, even in its architecture. Gaudi’s buildings respond directly to the materials. His architectural plans are basically preconceived, but like nature they are flexible enough to embrace built in spontaneous, assembled additions and able to respond to a sense of place/materials used. With Gaudi’s influential architecture in Barcelona it is not surprising that Miro would respond to Surrealism and capitalize on collage/assembled elements to create form. This responsive approach to creating art I believe opened up possibilities for Abstract Artists in New York (in particular 1940’s – 1960’s) and helped shape Abstract Expressionism and Lyrical Abstraction. The reason for the two residencies Can Serrat International Art Centre and Point B Studio (New York) was to explore this connection between Catalonian art and development of Abstraction and explore issues in Stella’s Working Space.

I do hope to complete another residency in the near future to the desert region of Australia to understand first hand my own country and what Abstract Art can be created that reflects the uniqueness of Australia and expands on pictorial discoveries in the New World. I plan to use collage, monotype cardboard intaglio prints and Chine Colle as a direct medium to record my experiences outside of suburban Melbourne and expanding to the natural, untouched landscape and the sacred. This experience will hopefully assist with understanding the significance of Indigenous art and culture and can consulate thoughts on how Australian artists can sense and interpret place, identity and pictorial discoveries.

Spatial concepts can be defined broadly and can encompass intervals, place, cosmic, practical, physical areas; these are all valid explorations within art, but my focus is concerned with plastic picture-making issues that are virtual, linked directly with my sensibility, the materials and conditioned by the picture plane. The two main elements that are often in dialogue in my work are the contrasts between line/calligraphic mark and textured, expansive, vague areas. To me, Calligraphic mark making translates perception and through drawing, internal impulses can be transferred into the pictorial. In my art lines and marks function as skeletal structure and provide a direct opportunity for “lines to go for a walk”(3).

I hope to expand on understanding these textured, expansive, vague areas within my work and further study in Art Informal to understand marks and forms that are authentic in feeling and reflect an Inner Necessity (4).

(1) Stella, F. (1986), Working Space. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, p.5

(2) Stella, Working Space. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1986, p.46

(3) Moholy-Nagy (1968), Pedagogical Sketchbook, UK, Faber & Faber, 1968, p.16

(4) Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, UK, Dover, 1977, p.53