Art - Binding People Together

One of the most fascinating books I have recently read is Eric R. Kandel's newly published book, "The Age of Insight.  The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain. FromVienna 1900 to the Present".  It is dense, interesting and challenging, as it details the many new discoveries of how the brain works and the many dimensions of humankind's involvement with art over millennia. There are so many aspects of the book that are worth talking about, but one short passage resonated with me because of my recent visit to South Italy, a place so rich in history.

In a chapter entitled "Artistic Universals and the Austrian Expressionists", Kandel delves into the large questions as to whether art has "universal functions and features" (p. 440).  He goes on to state that, "Since the artist's creation of art and the viewer's response to art are products of brain function, one of the most fascinating challenges for the new science of mind lies in the nature of art." The questions then multiply: do we respond to art because our biology dictates our reactions, do we respond to art instead as individuals with our own personal experience and taste?  Kandel refers to one opinion formed by Dennis Dutton, a philosopher of art, that art is not simply "a by-product of evolution, but rather an evolutionary adaption - a instinctive trait - that helps us survive because it is crucial to our well-being." (my emphasis)

Kandel goes on to allude to Cro-Magnon man painting those marvellous images in the Grotte Chauvet, 33,000 years ago, and reminds us that apparently, the Neanderthals, also living in Europe during that same period, did not create representational art.  The conclusion which experts, such as social psychologist Ellen Dissanayake and art theorist Nancy Aiken, have reached is that art was a crucial means of binding people together during the Paleolithic age.  People gathered together in communities and thus enhanced their likelihood of survival; one way to create this social glue was to make objects, images, and events that were important to these people, memorable and pleasurable.  Just like the festivals celebrated all summer in Southern European towns and villages today, despite economic gloom; people enjoy themselves and reinvigorate their social ties, enhancing their daily life with religious or ceremonial events.

I immediately remembered two humble, but to me very powerful, objects I had seen and drawn quickly in the Matera Archaeological Museum in South Italy.

Upper Paleolithic stones from Matera area, South Italy, Prismacolor, Jeannine Cook artist

Hasty drawings, but what fascinated me was the literal binding-together marks that were on these stones, of a shape and size that would fit comfortably into a human hand.  Just my interpretation of the marks, but I found them compelling.  Even then, so many thousands of years ago, for the Upper Paleolithic age officially lasts from 45,000 to 10,000 years ago, our ancestors were scoring careful, thoughtful marks into stone, driven by a need to create art, art to bind those communities together most likely.  

The fact that those stones can still compel our attention today makes an even stronger case for art's universal power to bind humans together.

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

Architecture's Links between Old and New

Back on April 28th, 2012, I.M. Pei, the architect, was quoted by William Cook in The Spectator  as saying, "What interests me about architecture are the links between old and new – art, history and architecture are indeed one."

I found the most wonderful example of this happy marriage between history, art and architecture during my visit to Matera, South Italy.  In amongst the astonishing labyrinth of caves, grottoes, vaulted homes and churches in the golden tufa Sassi area, many inhabited for millennia, is MUSMA, the Contemporary Sculpture Museum of Matera.  The museum of a many fingered series of tamped-earth floored grottoes, full of niches and wells dug deep into the cool tufa limestone, was originally a palace, the Palazzo Pomarici, dating from the 17th century onwards with some outer constructed rooms added on to the caves. The original caves go back, probably, to neolithic times, and have been used as dwellings or places of worship and refuge ever since.

All images courtesy of the Sassiland website

Yet today, the inspired marriage of art, history and architecture has resulted in an amazing structure that houses a really impressive collection of modern sculpture, Italian and international, from 1800 onwards, but mainly from the 20th century.  Imaginatively displayed and placed in these cavernous grottoes or in the more traditional rooms, the collection is broad in scope and of very high quality overall.  To complement the sculpture, there is a collection of prints and drawings, with a few small paintings, by many stars of the international modern art scene, mostly artists whose oeuvre has included some form of sculpture.

I found the links between the old and the new, through this museum of most unusual architecture, to be really memorable.  It was a highlight of my trip to Matera, and well worth a visit for anyone who is in the Basilicata area of Italy.

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

Some Thoughts about Art Residencies

Whilst I have been lucky enough to have been given artist residencies in the United States in the past, my latest residency was in South Italy, a part of the world I had never before visited.

I have just spent two weeks learning about this wonderfully dramatic area of the world, where mountains soar in serried splendour from the Adriatic or Ionian seas and wide, rocky dry river beds speak of dramatic volumes of water hurtling down them during the winter rains.

As with most new parts of the world, it takes a little while to begin to understand the people and the landscapes. To get under its skin, learn about its long history and see how things work, you need more than a few days.

I had originally been allocated a two-week residency slot in June at the Palazzo Rinald, in the small hill town of Noepoli, in Basilicata province, in the instep of South Italy. The time had to be changed because of a family emergency, and so I went for ten days in early August.

My first reaction was – what about the heat? But no, despite one or two days of searing, dry heat, the evening breezes, nay - winds, that spring up make life possible – as long as you assiduously drink lots of water.

The actual residency set up at Palazzo Rinaldi is a family-run situation, and like all such situations, there are good and bad things.

For me, essentially a plein air artist, the immutable requirement that breakfast be available to you only at 9 a.m. was unfortunate – by then, the best light and the coolest temperatures have almost gone.

Whilst there are also artists from different disciplines – writing, photography, etc. – visual artists’ needs seemed not to be well understood, particularly if you work on paper which requires protection before you can exhibit. I got swept up into a Plein Air competition that was being run for the first time, and the ensuing exhibition for the townspeople had not been thought through at all and far more was promised to us than was delivered.

The best aspects of any such residency are that one is allowed to stretch and grow as an artist, in new surroundings that challenge one, and that one meets interesting artists with whom to interact.

In the Palazzo Rinaldi residency, the surroundings were indeed wonderful, with landscapes and village-scapes that were memorable. The atmosphere generated by the residency “management” was not always conducive to serene creativity, but my fellow artists were marvellous companions. I met several American-based artists my first days there, but the week I then spent with two Spanish ladies and one artist from Poland was indeed rewarding.

The Barcelona-based artist, Rosa Calull, who won the Plein Air contest with her luminous painting of an old village doorway, was my nearest neighbor in the Palazzo. Her fellow Spanish artist, Sargam, from San Sebastian in the Basque Country, was a talented, multidimensional artist, while the third of my companions was Anna Bocek, a dramatic portraitist based in Gdansk, Poland, but who spends time preparing exhibitions in different parts of the world.

All were highly intelligent, dynamic people, with a lot of experience of different artist residencies. They all concurred that a creative, supportive and knowledgeable infrastructure is vital for a good residency.

What every entity offering an artist residency – be it a state or national park, an artist colony, a non-profit foundation or whatever – should remember is that, de facto, the artist community is a small one, with very easy communication in this internet-connected world. Artists talk to each other, even when unknown to each other personally, and they evaluate residencies.

Are they good, do they support the artist? Are they expensive (if fees are required, as in the Rinaldi case), are there surprises like requests for donations that were not spelled out ahead? Are the people running them helpful and polite?

Pretty soon, unfortunate experiences get shared around and the residency’s reputation gets tarnished.

Conversely, good experiences are remembered and the residency name given to other artists. So those in the artist community gather a list of places to try to go to in the future, and other residencies to avoid or never return to.

Granted, the optic of an American artist may be different from a European artist, given the differences in culture, but nonetheless, at the end of the day, all artists want a positive, creative experience. That is what they travel many miles to seek, often with an expensive journey, to achieve a much-appreciated hiatus from their usual lives that allows them to expand their artistic horizons.

The Sassi, Matera

South Italy is a wonderfully stimulating area, with millennia of tangible history, dramatic scenery, enchanting towns like Matera and Lecce.  I was very grateful indeed to Palazzo Rinaldi for being the reason for my visit.

But the jury is still out on whether I would return to that residency.

Imagine a World without Art or Music

Remarks reported the other day about the role of culture in society left me trying to imagine how our world would be today without art, music, dance, sculpture – not a pretty picture!

Leire Giral, reporting in the Diario de Mallorca, was interviewing mezzo-soprano Maria Jose Montiel before her recital in Palma de Mallorca's Bellver Castle circular keep.  Reflecting the parlous state of Spain's economy and its consequent lack of financial support of any type of cultural activity, she was quoted as saying, "Without culture, our minds cannot develop; art, painting, sculpture, music – all lead to moral growth, the only pathway out of darkness."  She later added that for her, "singing is the voice of the soul".

Maria Jose is right - it was not an idle name that was given in the past to the "Dark Ages" when culture was in very short supply for most people.  Today, when there has been such a flowering of cultural opportunities during the boom days of most countries' economies, we all need to become inventive and diligent to ensure that the arts survive and still flourish.

The mere thought that one could not attend concerts, visit museums and art galleries or read wonderful books drives home to me just how integral such culture is to life.  Without them, the days would be decidedly dull and grim, with far fewer moments of beauty and uplifting delight and stimulation.

Mysterious Metalpoint

Silverpoint, or metalpoint when one refers to all the metals potentially used to make marks, seems to be a drawing medium which elicits instant interest in everyone to whom one talks about it.  It always surprises me how its mysterious attraction remains intact.

I was recently reminded of this attraction when I mentioned to a Spanish friend that I draw in silver, and also gold, copper, etc.  What had been interest in what I said became intense attention as I was carefully quizzed about just was this drawing medium.

Telling the story of how the monks started using lead for their lines in handwritten manuscripts  and outlines for illumination from possibly the 8th century onwards, as demonstrated by the Lindesfarne Gospels, brings home the antiquity of this medium.  The fact that, later, all the great artists whose names everyone knows - Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Lorenzo di Credi, Albrecht Durer - all used metalpoint, especially silverpoint, elicits even more interest.

Rogier van der Weyden - Head of the Virgin

Leonardo da Vinci - Studies of Horses

Raphael - Study for St. Thomas 1502-03

Graphite's appearance helping to decrease the popularity and use of drawing in metal is another surprise.  Most people have never even thought about the origins and history of the "lead pencils" they use so often. 

The virtual disappearance of metalpoint after Rembrandt's few silverpoint drawingsand Judith Leyster's botanical studies in silver are the next chapter in the story I find myself frequently telling about this medium. 

Rembrandt - His fiancee, Saskia, 1733

When Cennino Cennini's manuscript of the Il Libro dell' Arte was re-found in the early 19th century in an Italian archive, and people learned once more about silverpoint from Cennini talking of this medium and how to prepare all the materials to draw in metalpoint, there was a renewal of the medium.

Now, in the early 21st century, after spluttering interest during the 20th century, there seems to be another renaissance in metalpoint, despite its relentless aspects of narrow value range, impossibility to erase marks and slow development of the work.   With increased interest in drawing media in general, it is natural that metalpoint be one of the voices in the drawing chorus.  There is a wonderful diversity in the work being done, from classical approaches to very experimental work.  Realistic (helped by the very fine lines which characterise drawing with a metal stylus) approaches are complemented by strictly abstract work, but share the shimmering, discreetly elegant characteristics of these drawings.

Tom Mazzullo - Elliptical, 2011 (courtesy of the artist)

Lori Field - Ducky in Pinky Talky Town (courtesy of the artist)

Koo Schadler - Titmouse (courtesy of the artist)

Jeannine Cook - Havre de Grace, gold and silverpoint

Jeannine Cook - Ariadne's Thread II - Pine Bark, silverpoint

Metalpoint's allure, a medium that to me seems very much of our contemporary often sleek and understated approach to art and design, comes from its lustrous appearance and also, as I keep finding, its mystery of origins and history.  I must admit, I thoroughly enjoy telling people about this drawing medium, and I suspect that my hundred or so fellow metalpoint artists also relish their role of ambassador for this special way of drawing.

Not Art but Bankers

In the midst of trying to accomplish things generally in life and in painting in particular, I have been reading a really wonderful book, Robert Peel, a Biography by Douglas Hurd, published a while ago in 2007.

Sir Robert Peel, painting by John Linnell, 1838; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The vivid accounts of Peel's political career in the early to mid 1800s are unnerving in their relevancy and parallels with today's economic and political woes. But the quote that stopped me in my tracks is about bankers.  Pithy and so apt for today's world that I could not resist quoting it - rather than talking about one of banking's step-children, namely art.

Describing Peel's assessment of different aspects of the state of Britain in 1841, Douglas Hurd wrote,

"Bankers would always be busy up the back stairs."

What a perfect description of the shenanigans we have all witnessed from the international banking community in recent years!

Attitudes about Flower Painting

I have always been interested to listen to the "intonations" with which people speak or write about flower paintings.  Floral art has often had a difficult time ascending high on the ladder of art appreciation, in circles of art officialdom.

Despite flower painting having illustrious beginnings from the 16th century onwards, with Northern Renaissance Dutch and Flemish artists, flower painting has historically been associated with amateur lady painters who pursued art as a pleasant, genteel past time.  Very few male artists have painted flowers as their main subjects - Manet, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh and other 19th century artists did some wonderful paintings of flowers, very much as still life. This painting done in 1883 by Edouard Manet is a perfect example.

Carnations and Clematis in a Crystal Vase, Edouard Manet, 1882, (image courtesy of the Musee d'Orsay).

Henri Fatin-Latourwas one of the most amazingly passionate painter of flowers, again as still life. These artists did however observe the flowers carefully and closely, and knew how these plants grew.

H. Fatin-Latour, White Roses, 1875, (Image courtesy of York Art Gallery, York, UK)

Other later male artists, from Picasso to Matisse and beyond, occasionally painted or drew flowers, but often, the results were more generic.

Matisse, Flowers, 1945

Meanwhile, women artists were creating beautiful "portraits" of plants and flowers, many using the botanical approach as their springboard.

Ellis Rowan was travelling through Australia and South East Asia in her quest to paint brilliant and exotic flora.  Perhaps the conscious or unconscious links between gardening and flower paintings in British circles helped foster the interest in such art in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as well as Great Britain.

Carolina Jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens, Ellis Rowan

Another wonderful result of celebrating a garden was the art Childe Hassam created in Celia Thaxter's garden on the Isle of Shoals, Maine. This is one such painting Hassam did in 1890, now in the Metropolitan Museum.

Celia Thaxter's Garden, Childe Hassam, 1890, oil on canvas, (Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York)

Despite all these - and many, many other - instances of superb floral paintings, I cannot help being aware of a certain tone when such art is talked to in today's art world.  Almost a sneer, not quite?  As if paintings about flowers are, really, not quite "up to snuff".  Despite a huge renaissance of botanical art (mostly done, need  I say, by women artists), despite the trail blazed so memorably by Georgia O'Keeffe with her sensual, strong interpretations of  flowers, there is still a je ne sais quoi in the air on the subject of floral art.

G. O'Keeffe, Two Calla Lilies,1928 (Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art)

This attitude fascinates me because, as I struggle to draw or paint flowers, I realise, repeatedly, that tackling flowers as a subject is very complex.  In fact, just as challenging a subject as nudes, landscapes or anything else that are considered more "serious".  By the time that an artist has mastered the intricacies of plants, their flowers and leaves, he or she is pretty capable of tackling any other type of art subject imaginable, and in any medium..

Maybe the decades when drawing was considered unnecessary contributed to the dismissal of flower-based art.  Perhaps today's emphasis on conceptual art also is a factor, with the overtones of floral paintings lacking "gravitas" and deeper meanings.  It is however ironic that part of the art world is so dismissive of floral painting, because another, large part of the art-loving world is very happy to embrace it.

Just as well, I conclude.  Think what complexities and delights artists would miss if they never looked closely at a flower!.

Kintsugi or the Art of "Golden Joinery"

A little while ago, I read on a friend's Facebook page of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold.  I thought it was truly fascinating as a concept, and also as a metaphor.

According to the Wikipedia entry for Kintsugi, this skill of making a new and beautiful object out of a broken and probably worthless and useless vessel came about because the late 15th century shogun Ashikaga Yoshimaga sent a damaged Chinese tea vessel back to China to be repaired.  The resultant repairs, with ugly metal staples, were so shocking that the Japanese began to seek better ways to repair broken ceramics. Firing lacquer resin sprinkled with gold dust as infill, Japanese created this new art form of kintsugi, an art that became so popular that purportedly, people deliberately broke important ceramics simply to enhance them with Kintsugi. Apparently silver was also sometimes used in the lacquer resins.

There is a growing interest in this art form, which allows vessels to take on a fresh and enhanced life, complementing originally refined work or adding new and more modern dimensions to classical vessels. Ironically in our parlous economic times, when repairs and renewals have again often become the order of the day,

kintsugi seems to be very relevant as a philosophy and example of ways of repairing and recycling objects. I also feel that kintsugi is a wonderful metaphor for dealing with daily life.  If disaster or adversity strikes, how can each of us use the equivalent of gold dust to repair the cracks in life, at least to some degree, and create something new and viable, if not beautiful, out of what has happened.  In other words, how can we turn a negative into a transformed but luminous positive?