An Artist's New Year Thoughts

The New Year dawns grey and soft over the marshes of Georgia, with wood storks sailing high and exquisite little American Goldfinches rushing to feast on the sunflower seeds in the feeders. 2014 - it starts beautifully and gently.  Today is one version of the wide marshland world, but the memory of so many others underpins today's views. 

Another Dawn

The Golden Marshes

It is one of those times when art is more a concept than an action: there do not seem to be enough hours in the day to paint or draw at the moment,  But that will change as everything in life comes in cycles.  It is a time instead to reach out to other artists, to seek opportunities to share with others the art that I have created in past months and years.  That aspect of being an artist is full of fascinations and rewards too: some of my most delightful friends are fellow artists, some of whom I only know via the Internet and telephone.  But their art is eloquent and tells of their inner soul. 

Thinking ahead to the New Year and art endeavours is always exciting - an Artist Residency in Portugal ahead, perhaps others in France if I get accepted, landscapes to celebrate in paint, silverpoint drawings to develop.  Always with the thought that nature, in its wonder and diversity, is the lodestar of my art, for I never tire of its incredible detail and grandiose complexity.  Perhaps the thought of enormous climatic changes impending lends urgency to my desire to celebrate the natural world around me that I know and love so deeply.  

Mallorcan landscape, watercolour, Jeannine Cook

Mallorcan Mountains, watercolour, Jeannine Cook

I came across a quote that I had jotted down on a Post-It note ages ago: I don't know whence it comes and for once, Google does not help me find its source: "And those that limned with magic brush, The fleeting joys of earth."

So many wonderful artists down the ages, from 30,000 years ago until today, who give us joy with their magic brushes - it is a heritage for which we are all the richer, and one which each of us needs to celebrate, mindful of the "fleeting joys of earth".

Somehow, it seems part of an appropriate New Year toast to my friends and my fellow artists as I wish everyone Molts d'Anys, Happy New Year!

Romanesque art in Barcelona

One of the highlights of a trip to Barcelona is the collection of Romanesque art in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) - fittingly, you climb up to Montjuic mountain and enter the impressive, domed Palau Nacional, with its frescoes, huge spaces and wonderful diverse collections of Cataluna's art.

The Romanesque collection of art, however, is reputedly the best in the world assembled in one place, and it is astounding in its breadth and depth, its presentation and its relevance to all the other art that one can see in the same museum.  It is a wonderful reminder of how the 10th-13th century world in Spain was so closely linked with that of France, Italy and Northern Europe.  As a young woman, I used to travel from Paris to Barcelona by car, meandering through France to all the major Romanesque sites.  This Barcelona collection is the perfect continuation of the wonders that one can see in France in the famed churches and chapels.

Taller of La Seu d'Urgeuell

Apse of Sant Climent de Tauli, c. 1123

Frescoes, tenderly rescued from chapels and churches all over Cataluna but mostly to the north, are beautifully mounted in domed reproductions of the churches, or incorporated into arches.  The domes are created from wonderful wooden structures whose complex beauty and carpentry are works of art in themselves, seen from behind the display of each fresco.  Colours are as vivid, in many cases, as if the frescoes were executed yesterday - their directness is arresting, details astonishing.

Detail of the Nativity scene from the front of the Avia Altar

Santa Julitta

Many of the frescoes are done in colours that seem so modern, as can be seen in the excellent presentation on the Museum website. In a way, this religious art is fun - it is imbued with religious fervour, yes, but also with a fresh reflection of life and the things that mattered to those contemporary worshippers.  Details are wonderful and well worth looking at closely as you wander through the beautifully presented rooms (many redone in late 2011).

There were delicious cattle, cockerels, other beasties amid the details of everyday life.  Many of them are the direct link to Antoni Gaudi, for instance, when you look at details of the Sagrada Familia sculptures.  Then when you turn to the rooms of Romanesque sculptures at the Museum, the simplicity and power of the wooden or metal crucifixes were memorable and haunting, especially as they are superbly presented and lit.

This small and gauntly exquisite Christ is from Serdanya in Cataluna (image at right).

This wonderful polychrome crucifix is the Batllo mid-12th century Crucifix.

In similar fashion, the fabulously simple, wooden figures, arrestingly displayed, are very powerful. Some are almost Oriental in the serenity of their faces and expressions, their surfaces beautifully worked and smooth.

Figures from the church of Santa Eulàliain Erill la Vall (Boí Valley, Alta Ribagorça)

As a counterpoint to all the polychromed frescoes, there are rooms of carved capitals on pillars from cloisters and churches, the stone wonderfully worked with saints, plants, fanciful beasties... and in the final room, there was a selection of enamelled religious objects, many in champleve, many from Limoges.  Again, the reminder of how close were the religious communities of France and Spain.

Anyone with an hour or more to spare in Barcelona should do themselves a favour and see this remarkable collection of Romanesque art - it takes one into a world of powerful, direct emotions - joys, sorrows, deep beliefs and hopes, seasoned with humour and respect for life and nature.

Same Exhibit, Different Venues - how to see Miro

Sometimes one is lucky enough to catch the same exhibition at different venues, and it is then extremely interesting to see how the different presentation affects the exhibits feel.

This happened to me when I had first see Joan Miro. The Ladder of Escape at the Tate Modern in London last year, and found that the same exhibition is now showing at the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona until 18th March.

Of course, in my personal opinion, the actual buildings cannot be compared, with the Joan Miró Foundation, white, elegant and sprawling along the hill crest over down town Barcelona as an eloquent evocation of the Mediterranean world, being the far more compatible venue. Nonetheless, it is when you enter the exhibition that its presentation becomes interesting to observe.

The Tilled Field, Joan Miró, 1923-24, Image courtesy of the  Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum

In the Tate version, the early Miró paintings of the Mont-roig world, near Barcelona, in which he grew up and which marked him so deeply, were spread out far apart, even in different rooms. In Barcelona, the Mont-roig world was powerfully evoked by grouping all these wonderful early, seminal paintings together in the same, rather intimate area. One of the most evocative, and important as the first of Miró's Surrealistic paintings, is The Tilled Field, painted in 1923-24.

Santiago Calatrava's Communications Tower, Barcelona

As an aside, this painting also fascinated me because it contains a wonderful herald to Santiago Calatrava's sculpture-communications tower that takes flight into the air nearby in the Montjuic heights of Barcelona, near the 1992 Olympic stadium. Depending on the angle at which you view the Communications Tower, it has very much the same feel as the left-hand symbol in Miró's painting above.

The Miró Foundation grouped together all the Catalan Peasants paintings, with their wonderful shorthand that Miró used to express his feelings about Catalonia, the peasants with guitars, his tussle between voids in the painting and the need to fill these voids or leave them free. The effect was far more powerful and interesting to see these works together, with their progressions and differences, as compared to their spacious presentation by the Tate Modern.

The same intimate, interesting effect was achieved in Barcelona by a much closer juxtaposition of the wonderful Constellations series. Beyond, the presentation was more reminiscent of that done by the Tate, mainly because the later Miró canvases became much bigger, bolder and fewer in series - that meant that they could be hung in rooms, series by series. Nonetheless, there were interesting pauses and changes in pace as at the Miró Foundation, there are Miró sculptures, many small and whimsical, in addition to his single marble sculpture, the Solar Bird and some of the wonderful ceramic ones out on the wide terrace with the Barcelona cityscape as the sunlit backdrop.

This fascinating exhibition travels next to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. It would be so interesting to catch it there too and see what differences can be achieved and nuances explored at yet another, different venue.

Celebrating Drawing

I always love it when out of the blue, one learns of the celebration of the art of drawing.

Just a small entry in today's Spanish papers, but a good piece of news for all of us who think that drawing is just as important as painting. Miquel Barcelo, the highly successful artist from Mallorca, has just been awarded the Penages Award for Drawing from the Mapfre Foundation in Spain. In his acceptance speech, he talked of the fact that he finds that, " Es gracioso pensar que la pintura ha muerto y el dibujo no" -explicó en referencia a aquellos que dan por muerto este arte-. Como si muere Dios pero la Virgen María siguiese viva" ( a quote from the Diario de Mallorca, that it is somewhat ironic to think that painting has died whilst drawing survives, as if God had died but the Virgin Mary remains alive). He received the award in Madrid, with Princess Elena present at the ceremony.

Barcelo's drawings and etchings are indeed a delight with their fluid ease and grace.

Marche de Shange, la Jupe Verte (the Green Skirt),  mixed media, 2000, Miguel Barceló (image courtesy of the website of Paola Curti/Annamaria Gambuzzi & Co)

Barceló has spent a lot of tiime in Africa, especially in Mali, and his images capture the essence of Africa.

This 1999 etching is from his series of works from the Balearic island of Lanzarote, entitled Lanzarote XXV, courtesy of ArtNet.

This is another of the Lanzarote series, a wonderful depiction of dogs.

I delight when an artist celebrates drawing as does Miquel Barceló. He inspires us all to keep drawing.

Art in the Supermarkets

I read of a wonderful, imaginative initiative for handicapped people to create art for supermarkets in Valencia and Palma de Mallorca, Spain. I think it is an example that bears copying, no matter where.

This was a report written by L.R. in the Diario de Mallorca on 19th February about about 200 people with learning disabilities who are creating a special Catalan form of mosaics (trencadis) for murals for the different branches of the supermarket chain, Mercadona. The idea was first put forward in Valencia by someone involved with polishing ceramic tiles: there are inevitably broken tiles and these have traditionally formed the basis of trencadis. The most famous exponent of the use of the irregular tile bits, set in mortar, was Antoni Gaudi. He began to use the brightly coloured, broken pieces of tile in his adornment of architectural elements in Barcelona's hillside garden, Parc Guell at the beginning of the 20th century.

Part of entrance to Parc Guell, Barcelona

This is part of a dragon at the entrance to the Parc, done in these broken ceramic pieces. Beyond, all over the Parc, there are wonderful combinations of brilliantly coloured tiles juxta-posed in joyous - often sinuous - configurations. One of the advantages of this trencadis form of ceramics is that the surfaces can indeed curve, something much more difficult with regular whole ceramic tiles.

Below, these are two other images of Gaudi's use of trencadis in Parc Guell, Barcelona.

Various non-profit organisations involved with caring for people with Down's Syndrome or other learning disabilities got involved in the Mercadona supermarket murals venture. The first mural was done for the fish section in one of Mercadona's supermarkets in Valencia. It was so well received that the meat sections were soon chosen as the next destinations for murals. From there, the idea has snowballed and many more people are involved in the creation of these murals.

Understandably, when they first learn they will be creating a mural some 5 meters long, the participants are somewhat daunted. But they are first taught to sort the ceramic shards by colour. Then comes the assembly of parts according to a design, and as the pieces are placed together on a flat surface, a mesh is then placed over them to secure them. Eventually everything is united in the overall design and mortared into place. In the execution of these murals, there have been many benefits for the participants. They are gainfully employed and taught a new skill, which involves concentration, coordination and application. At the end of the venture, the participants are able to see tangible results which give people pleasure and interest, and they have achieved something they thought initially that they could not do.

To me, it seems the most wonderful alliance of art and skills to enhance the buying experience for everyone in a supermarket, while uplifting and reaffirming the spirit of those who don't always have such opportunities. Good for Mercadona and all those involved in the trencadis murals!

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. 

Off the beaten path in Mallorca

There are plenty of hidden gems in Mallorca that reward the explorer.  One of them that had long tantalised me is the Yannick and Ben Jakober Foundation at Sa Bassa Blanca, just outside Puerto de Alcudia, on the eastern coast.

En route to Sa Bassa Blanca, Mallorca (Rundle Cook photographer)

Nestled on long slopes sweeping down to sapphire waters, the buildings and gardens that form the exhibition spaces are an interesting mixture of foreign exoticism and Mallorcan architecture.  The house and partial exhibition spaces were built by Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathy, with white crenellated walls and an interior courtyard that harks back to the Alhambra.  Latticed windows and elements from Morrocco, Turkey and Andalucia all mingle to form an abode of great character, the backdrop to a collection of art and sculpture that underline Yannick and Ben Jakober's status of artist-citizens of the world.  Outside, oversized sculptures executed in Asia via Internet supervision by Yannick and Ben Jakober are scattered through the landscaped gardens.

View at the Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober, (Rundle Cook photographer)

The core collection that attracts visitors down the four kilometer country lane to the Foundation is hidden elsewhere.  Deep underground in a wonderfully converted Mallorcan "aljibe" or cistern is housed the "Nins" collection of children's portraits dating from the 16th to 19th century. 

The collection began when Yannick purchased a 19th century Mallorcan work by Joan Mestre, "Portrait of a Girl with Cherries" in 1972.

Joan Mestre i Bosch (Escuela mallorquina), Retrato de una niña con cerezas, c. 1843, oil on canvas, Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober, Mallorca

The collection has slowly grown to over a hundred works, mainly of the 16th and 17th century, mostly of children of important historical figures.  There are portraits from most European centres, from England to Italy.  About a third of the collection is on exhibit at any one time in the spacious "aljibe" galleries.

As you walk into the galleries, it is an introduction to aspects of art that are seldom underlined.  Not only are there lovely portraits, of all sizes and styles, many by well-known artists, but you learn how children were cared for, clothed and regarded down the ages.  Swaddled children are depicted, several times.  Little "adults" bedecked with elaborate accoutrements telling of their social status stare out seriously at the viewer.  Later, there were more informal portraits, when children were allowed to be a little more their real age.  Fashions changed, jewels evolved. Dogs come and go as companions, while birds often act as symbols.  Landscapes began to be introduced as backdrops to the portraits, rather than elaborately curtained interiors.  Some close-cropped head studies, particularly from the Netherlands and Spain, are poignant in their directness.  Others hint at illness and a complicated destiny.  Willy nilly, as you walk around the galleries, you find yourself caught up in the dramas and rarified atmospheres of these little children whose positions were often of such privilege that we know today of their existence in exquisite detail.  It is a unique experience to view this "Nins" collection.

Not only are there all these interesting aspects of art to savour, but in May, there is also a rose garden full of heritage roses of great beauty to enjoy.  Planted by Yannick Jakober, it is a perfect complement to everything else to visit at Sa Bassa Blanca.

The photographs above were taken by my photographer husband, along the road to the Foundation, and at the entrance to Sa Bassa Blanca.  Thank you, Rundle.

Back from Mallorca

I can hardly believe that time does not pass at double speed when I am in Mallorca, but seeing the date of my last post here confirms that the weeks have indeed passed in due fashion. Now that I have left behind the brilliant crisp light of the autumnal Mediterranean, clean-washed and windswept, and returned to the soft golden scintillations of coastal Georgia's marshes, I have to refocus my eyes and my mind.

Palma's diversity of music, art and dance was as beguiling as ever, and there are places about which I will write more in depth. However, there was a quote I found from Vincent van Goh, writing to his brother, Theo, which somehow seemed very apt for this visit home to Mallorca. I was in a very lovely place, Son Brull, watching the light play over the mountains in the late afternoon. Above me were wondrous old gnarled olive trees, possibly some of those planted by the Romans who lived in the Pollentia area twenty-two centuries ago. There was a soft tinkling of bells as a flock of sheep drifted into sight as they slowly but deliberately climbed the terraces higher and higher to grazing up the mountain's flanks. The grey dry stone walls and the warm golden brown of the olive tree trunks served to emphasise the subtle green of the olive leaves as they shimmered in the slight breeze. Below, the last glow of pink summer oleanders warmed the foreground and caught the evening sunlight.

In the same tones of delight and wonder, Van Gogh wrote, "Ah, my dear Theo, if you could see the olive trees at this time of year – The old-silver and silver foliage greening up against the blue. And the orangeish ploughed soil. It’s something very different from what one thinks of it in the north – it’s a thing of such delicacy – so refined. It’s like the lopped willows of our Dutch meadows or the oak bushes of our dunes, that’s to say the murmur of an olive grove has something very intimate, immensely old about it. It’s too beautiful for me to dare paint it or be able to form an idea of it. The oleander – ah – it speaks of love and it’s as beautiful as Puvis de Chavannes’ Lesbos, where there were women beside the sea. But the olive tree is something else, it is, if you want to compare it to something, like Delacroix." (Ah mon cher Theo, si tu voyais les oliviers à cette epoque ci – Le feuillage vieil argent & argent verdissant contre le bleu. Et le sol labouré orangeâtre.– C’est quelque chôse de tout autre que ce qu’on en pense dans le nord – c’est d’un fin – d’un distingué.– C’est comme les saules ébranchés de nos prairies hollandaises ou les buissons de chêne de nos dunes, c.à.d. le murmure d’un verger d’oliviers a quelque chose de très intime, d’immensement vieux. C’est trop beau pour que j’ose le peindre ou puisse le concevoir. Le laurier rose – ah – cela parle amour et c’est beau comme le Lesbos de Puvis de Chavannes où il y avait les femmes au bord de la mer. Mais l’olivier c’est autre chôse, c’est si on veut le comparer a quelque chôse, du Delacroix.) Van Gogh was writing on April 28th, 1889, while he was staying in Arles.

Olive Trees, Saint-Rémy, November 1889, Vincent Van Gogh,, (Image courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art)

The Olive Trees, 1889, Vincent van Gogh, (Image courtesy of MOMA)

I could understand his inhibitions about trying to paint the olives - they are such extraordinary trees that they defy many attempts by artists to depict them. I have preferred to draw them in silverpoint, because of that oxidised silver green Theo talks of, but I never seem to have sufficient time to sit down and try to do them justice when I am in Mallorca. Manaña!

Art and the Sense of History

The brilliant sunshine and azure Mediterranean skies in Mallorca seemed to belie the strange atmosphere of a holiday island targeted again by ETA bombs, twice in two weeks. A subtle undertow to my daily life reminded me that Spain has seen many such instances of violence from ETA in the last 50 years. So many people have come down south from the Pyrenees and northern regions of Spain over time to bring amazingly positive developments and some terrible events.

Another example of people moving a long, long time ago from the north was publicised while I was in Palma. Apparently the oldest known map has been deciphered and the news published this month in the Journal of Human Evolution, but I read of it in El Mundo in Spain. The 13.660 year-old stone map, incised on a marl stone (soft outside and harder inside), was created by hunters coming into Navarra in Northern Spain and sheltering in a cave in Abauntz. The stone, some 7" x 5" by less than an inch thick, was found in 1993, but the University of Zaragoza team did not realise what it was until, by chance, Pilar Utrilla, saw that one of the details was the silhouette of a mountain visible from the mouth of the cave, Monte San Gregorio. Not only was the mountain recognisable, but the early artist had also drawn herds of ibex on the mountain. From this realisation, the researchers were able then to understand the layers of information that had been incised, for the benefit of future hunters coming to the area. The map shows mountains, meandering rivers, meadows and areas of good foraging and hunting, a real treasure map in essence.

Image of the rock found in Abauntz cave with a map etched on it

The Magdalenian artist, who was working about three thousand years after the Altamira cave paintings were created, knew how to work in perspective. The nearer animals are larger and more detailed than the distant ones which are more schematic. There are even incised dots which may represent the bellowing male deer trying to attract the does. The map clearly shows the skills of spatial awareness and planning, to say nothing of the artist's hunting skills and knowledge of the animals. Near the map, the archaeologists also found a stone lamp and another stone representing a horse's head.

Somehow, as I read about this fascinating find from nearly 14,000 years ago, I found it made the current violence and political frenzies surrounding us pale in significance. Once again, a long-distant and anonymous artist had, by simple, decisive skill in incising a stone, reminded me of the arc of time and the magical transmission of knowledge and beauty. It is like a bell that rings true: we all know that these are small but extraordinary links, human to human, down time. And how suitable that such a map, the only complex depiction of a landscape known in Europe, should be discovered in our era of space exploration. Again, things are put in perspective.