Art and Freedom

A wonderfully pithy statement made me think hard recently:

“To the age, its art; to art, its freedom.”

This was a remark made by late 19th century art critic and author, Ludwig Hevesi,who lived in Vienna.

One only has to think of all the daring experiments in art last century, as the innovators – from Braque to Picasso, from Mondrian to Miro, from Motherwell to Rothko, from Sol Le Witt to Richard Serra, from Agnes Martin to Dan Flavin - stretched the world’s definitions of art.

Site-specific Installation, Dan Flavin, 1996 (Courtesy of Menil Collection)

They did so in tandem with the inventors of technology and so many mechanisms that revolutionized our world in daily living, in waging war, in making love and in how we treat our planet. Every tenet of traditional art-making was broken or so radically reinterpreted that little remained of the look of art familiar to the Western world since the early Renaissance or before.

As to the second part of Hevesi’s statement, “to art, its freedom” – that requires more thought.

Picasso’s Guernica immediately comes to mind, for instance.  Picasso used his art to witness the atrocities visited by the Italian and German planes on the small Spanish town of Guernica in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937 (Image courtesy of Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid)

In one sense, the statement means that art should be a political statement. However, I don’t think that all artists create work with politics in mind – cartoons, yes, as political commentary, and certainly films, if one includes them in the category of visual art.

Yet, willy-nilly, as artists, we are witnesses to our times; we create work that reflects our daily concerns and joys, our interests and the lives we lead within the context of our individual worlds. The people who then view the art created are participants in placing energy and time in that art, whether they “like” the art or not.

The art is, in essence, a symbol, a reflection, of that age or period in which they are living. The art signals what is important to the artist and thus can also alert the viewer to issues that are perhaps worth esteeming, preserving, celebrating – in other words, ensuring the freedom of those aspects of life that artists have highlighted.

Probably each of us has our own personal list of artworks that whisper to us of freedom. Freedom to enjoy viewing them, in the first place, without censure or fear; freedom to view them in a gallery, museum or private setting that translates into a society safe and affluent enough to facilitate such situations. Freedom to have the time and energy, and sometimes the money, to view the art; freedom to look at art with enough curiosity and, in some cases, some background education to understand at least a little about the art.

In other words, lots of freedoms that most of us are fortunate enough to take for granted today, when we go off to a museum or an art gallery. Whether the art created today is a guarantor of freedoms in a wider sense is a more complex question.

Perhaps time has a part in that answer, because art has always been subject to fashion, and never more so than today. Certainly today’s wide-open diversity of art forms and approaches is indicative of great liberty in the art world and general acceptance by the public. Whether today’s art will endure long enough to ensure long-term freedoms for the next generations of artists, as was the case for many of last century’s pioneering artists with their work – only time will tell.

Perhaps, in the end, this simple statement, “To the age, its art; to art, its freedom”, reminds us to cherish art, the arts in general, so that we all – not just those who create – can ensure a world that is as free as possible from the prejudices and restrictions that limit. I am sure everyone can think instantly of places where this ideal situation does not currently exist.

Those are the places where works of art treasured down the ages are destroyed, where passions have obliterated a sense of ownership in beauty and culture, or where hard economic times have eliminated a sense of the need for art to enhance our lives in the deepest sense.

We all need to be passionate advocates for art for it is a hallmark of a civilized society.

Positive Aspects of Art

I was reading an interview done with designer Rachel Roy, about her collections and designing clothes.  She was visiting Valencia at the time, and was featured in Diario de Mallorca.

One of her remarks rang so true, for any artist.  She said, "The positive thing about art is that you need to know how to tell your own story, always respecting what you are doing and as well, what others are doing."

I thought it was so simple an observation and so accurate.  It goes back to the issue of one's own personal style as a visual artist, how to achieve it by being true unto oneself, and yet being aware of what one is doing, or trying to do, at the same time as keeping one's eyes open to the world, and art in particular, around one. She went on to say in essence that one should also be fair to oneself, and basically not worry about criticism too much.

Certainly, if one is working seriously and thoughtfully, keeping one's focus on what matters personally and what one is trying to say in the art - or letting the art say things for one - then that is telling your own story. As Picasso remarked, "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."  I think that the "diary entries" and our stories become universal many times without one realising it, and they thus resonate with others, often in ways that the artist cannot foresee.  

Pablo Picasso

In these times of angst, it is interesting to see how many voices are raised about the importance of art - of all kinds - that helps engender curiosity and expansion of the human spirit.  Since each of us is an individual, with individual experiences, those personal stories enrich everyone's life and widen each person's optic on the world around us.

Rachel Roy gave a timely reminder of how positive art can be for us all.

Always Something New to Learn in Art

What started out for me as an e-mail exchange with that most generous and genial Museum Director, John Streetman, at the helm of the Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History, Evansville, Indiana, has evolved into a delicious lesson in another technique for creating art.

I had read a small paragraph in a Spanish paper about the Evansville Museum finding an unrecognised Picasso work that that been mis-catalogued and kept in their holdings for some 50 years, a piece that was now going to be offered at auction.  I know that the Evansville Museum has been in the throes of building an addition and generally struggling to hold its own, as is every museum, in the current economic difficulties.  So I dropped a line to Executive Director Streetman, who has been generosity itself to me and countless other artists, to congratulate and celebrate.

As part of his gracious reply, John Streetman sent me the full text of the press release, and therein began my learning curve.   It turns out that the Picasso in the Evansville Museum holdings was not a painting, but a work done in gemmail.  I quote the definition of this medium from the website, Gemmail:

 "The word “Gemmail” is the contraction of two words « gemmme » or precious stone and  » email  » or enamel, the medium used to assemble pieces of glass. The sound of this word in French describes the essential characteristic of this art form and its unlimited potential."

Using layers of coloured stained glass which are fused by heat with clear liquid enamel, the artist can produce a radiant work which is then set in a deep shadow box and back lit to achieve a jewel-like work of art. Picasso was introduced to this technique by his friend, Jean Cocteau, in 1954.  The Atelier Malherbe, an art studio in France, had perfected the medium, and Picasso immediately seized on its possibilities.  He shared his excitement with his friend, Georges Braque, and together, and separately, they created an important body of work.  Later, Picasso gave half of his fifty-odd pieces to the Malherbe family in recognition of the debt he owed them, and sold many of the other pieces to notable collectors.  He had reproduced in gemmaux (plural of gemmail) many of his most successful paintings.

Picasso, Self-Portrait, gemmaux

Picasso, Woman with Doves, gemmaux

The amazing work discovered at the Evansville Museum,  "Seated Woman with a Red Hat" had been donated in 1963 by Raymond Loewry, but it had been mis-labelled.  When the auction house, Guernsey's, was researching Picasso's gemmaux works, they contacted Evansville about this donated work of art, and the research began. Slowly, slowly, the excitement has been building and will continue until there is a proud new collector enjoying this "Seated Woman", an image of Picasso's mistress and model, Marie-Therese Walter.  Not only the auction world is watching – and many more people have, like me, learnt about another fascinating aspect of art-making.

Picasso, Seated Woman with a Red Hat, gemmaux

That Empty Canvas of Piece of Paper!

Picasso once remarked to Angela Rosengart, the art dealer and collector, "There is nothing so frightening for a painter as to stand in front of an empty canvas."

When an artist has just gone through a creative, productive time, he or she is on a high.  But alas, as we all know, highs don't last for ever, and then the trouble can start.  I found this true - again! - this week, as I returned from a stimulating and fascinating time in south Italy, where I had end my stay at an art residency by being beguiled by the beauty and interest of Matera, the home of the UNESCO-protected Sassi area.  I came home full of ideas and enthusiasm to get right back to work.

Then there comes the first moment in front of the empty paper, in my case... and, indeed, Picasso has it right, albeit expressed rather dramatically.  The creative energy seems to drain out of one, the little voice at the back of one's head starts to murmur about problems, and you end up thinking - oh dear!

So the only thing to do, I have found in the past, is to settle down, turn to more mundane studio chores, scanning art that you have done, attending to paper work, looking at drawings and notes you have made.  You tell your subconscious to go on thinking and planning about the next work you want to embark on, how to go about it, what to try and say in it – and let time help banish the fright at the empty canvas or piece of paper.

I wanted to return to the feel of the area where I had been working, south of Noepoli, in the Basilicata province of Italy.  Humans have walked in those mountains and valleys for so many millennia, and it is good, in dealing with my white paper fright, to think back to the things I want to remember about that area.  Maybe these memories will ease me back into what I want to say about this amazing area of South Italy.

The Sarmento dry river bed, 2012, watercolour, Jeannine Cook artist

Distant Traces: the Sarmento I, 2012, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Inate Artistry

We have just been to a most beautiful concert at the Telfair Museum, in the Savannah Music Festival series of chamber music concerts with Daniel Hope and Friends, Accompanied and punctuated by huge claps of thunder from a dramatic storm, the musicians, playing Mendelssohn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, created beauty and elegance that was soul-moving.

Yet, in the midst of all their amazing skill and the thrumming on the roof of the pelting rain, I could not help but marvel at their obvious delight and seriousness of enjoyment of making beautiful music. I was reminded of Picasso's statement that "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Whether in visual arts, ballet, music, singing, or whatever art form, the hallmark of a successful artist, it seems, is that the person remains childlike at some level. That sense of delight, of inquiry, of inquisitiveness and openness seems so necessary. It goes along with a sense of humour and an ability not to take oneself too seriously. Picasso, of course, embodied the impish and playful aspects of art amongst his many characteristics. Certainly his art bespeaks a childlike delight in the simple, the direct and the playful aspects of life.

The quiet camaraderie and sense of humourous enjoyment that showed in flashes between the musicians we heard today spoke to the same ability. Patrick Messina, the wonderful French clarinetist, or the cellist, Eric Kim, Daniel Hope with his extraordinary ability on the violin, or pianist Sebastian Knauer... all combine musicality with an obvious delight that Picasso would approve of. They have remained artists from childhood onwards. We all, in today's audience, were the richer for such artistry.

How much should one change one's style as an artist over time?

I have read a couple of enthusiastic reviews of an exhibition currently showing at New York's Onassis Cultural Center entitled The Origins of El Greco, the last of which was in February's edition of ARTnews. With a subtitle of Icon Painting in Venetian Crete, the show examined El Greco's early work when he, along with a flourishing school of artists, was a Master of religious icon painting in his native Crete in the 1560s. Young Domenikos Theotokopoulos was most skilled in creating shimmering gilt surrounds and stiffly gesturing figures that were part of the Byzantine heritage of Crete.

Adoration of the Magi, Domenikos Theotokopoulos (later known as El Greco), 1565-67, painted on part of an old chest, (Image courtesy of the Benaki Museum,Athens)

It is hard to credit that these early paintings are done by the same artist whom we know as El Greco, the artist whose elongated figures, clothed in strangely coloured garments, twist in religious fervour beneath dramatic skies. Ascetic-looking men with long faces gaze skyward with clasped hands of piety, while impossibly long-limbed men writhe and contort through the paintings. This later El Greco was, as a review of this exhibition by The New York Times' Holland Cotter observed, the result of "an ambitious career on the move" with Venice and later Spain his sources of patronage and success. By the time El Greco died in 1614, his style of painting had evolved radically from a strict medieval icon tradition to an expressionistic approach that embraced light, movement, colour, passion.

The Baptism of Christ, c. 1614, El Greco, (Image courtesy of Museo  Fundacion Lerma, Hospital de Tavera, Toledo)

This account of the El Greco exhibition made me reflect on the problem-cum-challenge we all face as artists: how to evolve and grow, and yet remain true to ourselves? The examples of artists who have changed their styles over time are innumerable - Picasso is a salient example, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, and so many others. But in our times of emphasis on marketing and branding, when presenting ourselves to the world as artists, how important is it to have consistency?

There is always the temptation for a successful artist, selling well in one type of art or with one approach and subject, to stay in that idiom, and if a gallery is involved, often there is more pressure to stay in the successful lane. Yet we should all be striving to grow as artists, and by definition, that means change and, hopefully, improvement. Sometimes, repetition of one type of art, one subject or medium, allows for a more profound and rewarding exploration. Yet repetition can become boring and a dead end.

There is also another message, I think, in the El Greco or Picasso examples of evolution as artists. That is that we must believe in ourselves as artists and dare to grow and change, even if it means abandoning a successful style and pathway in one's artistic career. Radical change takes courage. Artist Sharon Knettell, writing in the March 2010 issue of The Artist's Magazine, explained that she gets much of her inspiration for paintings while meditating and remarked, "I think meditation makes you fearless. You have to go to the point where your ideas scare and challenge you" (my emphasis).

I believe that point is when you dare to change your style because that inner voice tells you to take the next step in changing and evolving as an artist. What does anyone else think?

Another museum worth visiting in Mallorca

There is another small museum which has recently opened in Mallorca which offers a delightful focus to a visit to the town of Soller, nestled in a grandiose valley beneath towering mountain ranges, to the north of the island. Can Prunera is a small museum of modern art, housed in a refurbished Modernist building built between 1909 and 1911, in the era when Antoni Gaudi's influence was paramount. 

Facade of Can Prunera, Soller, Mallorca (Image courtesy of Can Prunera)

Many of the restored details of the house are delightfully typical of that time. Gaudi had indeed been working in Palma, restoring and improving the interior of the Seu, the wonderful Gothic Cathedral overlooking the sea. He had started work there in 1902 but by 1914, he had fallen out with the ecclesiastical authorities and stopped the work.  His influence, however, showed up in many Mallorcan Modernist buildings, and especially in Soller.

Can Prunera's staircase (Image courtesy of Can Prunera)

Can Prunera houses part of the art collection of newpapers owner, Pedro Serra, who has been instrumental in the refurbishment and launching of the museum through his Fundacion Tren de l'Art and Fundacion d'Art Serra.  His father apparently worked for the Soller-Palma train company for a time, and his son has completed this circle in time.

The day I visited the Museum, only a few rooms were open. Miró acquatints gladdened three galleries, and a collection of Picasso ceramics was exhibited in two other galleries. The connections between Picasso and Miró were underlined by big photo reproductions of the two of them together on different occasions. Apparently, most of the art planned for exhibition will have some connection with Mallorca. 

Playing

I listened with fascination this morning on National Public Radio to a programme, Play, Spirit and Character, on Krista Tippett's show, Speaking of Faith, which talked of playing and its importance in life. Stuart Brown was being interviewed. His wisdom and insights on how animals and humans need to play, in infancy, childhood and adulthood, were fascinating. It is well worth seeking out the interview on the Web.

As Stuart Brown talked about playing, I realised how important playing has always been as I tried to create art. Every time that I want to experiment, to push out boundaries, to improve as an artist, I have always regarded the experience as play. I had not measured, apparently, the vital role play has in daily life, let alone in art. Licence to do something different, unusual, amusing, distracting, lively - these are all versions one can find in the Oxford English Dictionary as definitions, amongst many, of play. Freedom too is a definition. In other words, play is an integral part of one's creativity as an artist: without it, one is liable to be stultified, stuck and dull. Oh!

Think of Manet, Monet, Cezanne, the Fauves, Matisee or Picasso, amongst so many artists - they all show a sense of play in their work, and those works usually herald changes and break-throughs in their development. To say nothing of the spirit of play that one sees among many of the most successful artists of the 20th century, many of whom definitely do not or did not take themselves or the world around them too seriously. It was good to have it reaffirmed in the radio programme today that one needs to play, every day, in all the realms of one's life, but especially in art.

Fishing Boats, Collioure, 1905 , by Andre Derain

The Power of Images

The power and influence of images is a huge and fascinating subject, over which countless experts pore. Professor Georges Didi-Huberman, who teaches social sciences at the Paris School of Advanced Studies, specialises in this subject. He claims that images only possess power when they are being used, and since their juxtaposition to something else inevitably alters them each time, all is relative. Carrying on this line of logic, he asserts that art history has been too lineal and monolithic (and he will be advising a fresh presentation of the art at the Reina Sofia Contemporary Art Museum in Madrid in keeping with this thesis).

Instead of art becoming ossified, he asserts that we should all draw on our past to create our present, like Picasso always remembering El Greco or Malevich being nourished by Russian icons. Interestingly, Didi-Huberman, in a long article in El Pais (http://www.elpais.com/) of June 2nd, 2009, talks of expecting very little from contemporary art, since it is predicated on money-making and networking in galleries and the art market, an "academic system". He contrasts it to the world of flamenco, where an enthusiast expects a great deal - "at a minimum, that flamenco talks of life and death."

Kazimir Malevich - Black Cross, 1915, Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm, Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

That art should ideally talk of passion and "life and death" goes back to my belief that in as many instances as one can manage, an artist should listen to his or her inner voice and be true to it. It is not always possible, of course, but when passion has driven the creation of an artwork, people know it. And they respond to it, even if they don't really know why. Things can go in and out of fashion, but good art rings "true". Dean Valentino, a television executive in Los Angles, was being interviewed in January 2009 in Art + Auction magazine and talked of today being a "time of connoisseurship" where every piece of art created needed to "justify itself" to art that had been created previously, in the same way as Didi-Huberman described Picasso, for instance, drawing on the heritage of El Greco.

Another expert art dealer, New Yorker Jack Gilgore, specialising in Dutch, Flemish and 19th century French paintings, put it more succinctly in a June interview in Art + Auction, (http://www.artinfo.com/artandauction/) : "Art is a form of communication and the pictures must have a soul. They have to have something special. You know it when you see it."

How to create an image of integrity, passion and power? That is the eternal challenge and goal for each of us artists!