Back to the art studio where I was taking a class. An art studio is a place where passions run deep, usually unseen, undetected, until a provoking moment brings forth a torrent of intensity. I tried to copy a painting by Austrian expressionist Oskar Kokoschka, The Bride of the Wind. Copying has been standard practice…
Art is either plagiarism or revolution. Paul Gauguin Artists constantly debate what art is. Among, as well as within, themselves. Often the conflict, or at least the point of contention is whether art is or has to be an original creation. But what qualifies as original anyway? More likely than not, our ideas or at…
Art is: A Tube of Paint. On first blush, this makes sense, at least when it comes to painting: Most paintings start with a canvas and a tube (or tubes) of paint. But, before Marcel Duchamp and, perhaps, Russian avant-garde painter Wassily Kandinsky—credited with producing the first abstract paintings—a painting also needed an idea and/or…
A curious intrigue surrounded Marcel Duchamp’s urinal aka Fountain by R. Mutt. The original urinal not only never graced the show it sought to get into. It had mysteriously disappeared. Where to and taken by whom? No one knew or would say. It is, in fact, this disappearance that bestowed on Fountain its notoriety and…
This is a reblog from my old “lost” site, Journey On A Limb. But, I believe it deals with a question we revisit all the time. What is art? Is it what YOU call art? What an art critic calls art? An art historian, perhaps? Or, is it what WE all collectively call art? Is…
The Net is flooded with food blogs, so I haven’t written much about food though it’s for me one of the pleasures of life. But it’s that time of year again to put that diet on hold and relish the food you love preferably in the company of those close to you. Then, worry about…
Art is in every book you read. Marcel Duchamp, notorious in the art world for having successfully argued that a urinal is art—thus ushering in the Avant Garde—would probably agree with me. Monsieur Duchamp aside, images are both essential and important for all modern-day book covers. They’re the first and most obvious means authors and…
Munich: What a city! Beautiful, clean and orderly, and friendly. We both readily chose it over London. The good weather in April definitely worked in its favor as well as ours. On our way here, in a train trip with two long delays and more train changes than we had planned, time passed quite pleasantly…
I remember, as a child, eating dark, sweet,and fragrant cake/pudding so sticky it stuck to my teeth. It was made of rice, the only kind of cake I ever ate until my mother learned to bake. She didn’t make those rice cakes. Generous aunts usually brought them. Or, we bought them from street vendors, and…
It was inevitable—the leap from Duchamp’s readymades (like the infamous urinal) to paintings of readymades. This was exactly what Jasper Johns did in the 1950s. But his interest was in iconographic objects, things that were symbols, that stood for something within a culture. And what icon in American culture could be more famous than the…
‘We’ll always have Paris.“ Remember that famous line from Bogey to Bergman (Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, in case you’re too young to know) in the film classic Casablanca? Done in black and white, it’s vintage Hollywood. A must-see for film lovers. Here’s a short trailer. Paris fascinates Hollywood. Hollywood fascinates Paris, by far the…
Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.Al Capp Purely abstract art has always puzzled me. You know, the type of art in which you cannot see a recognizable object—human or otherwise. Usually, I look at such a painting and wonder if I am supposed to read…
In Paris, amble along, without objective, but merely for the pleasure of watching and observing. Treat yourself to the unexpected.
Sounds We live directly across from L’Eglise Saint Louis. Right next to it is a grade school. We’re constantly reminded of these neighbors by sounds. Sounds that, to some, might be noise but to us signify the daily flow of life on the island. The bells of the church ring a few times a day…
Inside, the apartment is furnished in both vintage and Ikea. A cupboard proclaims its age on numbers carved on its middle door: 1779.
Ah, the freedom of getting vaccinated against covid. I’m looking forward to museum-hopping again. Preferably in Paris, to me, the museum capital of the world. Many visitors to Paris scribble art-viewing into their itinerary. Not as often, though, I think as shopping and eating. But museums are great on a rainy day. Plenty of them…
One of the first things we used to do after settling in a little in Paris was to scope the neighborhood of our rented apartment. Our first objective—to find a bakery that offered baguette de tradition française. Made with a special kind of flour and given a long time to rise, its tangy goodness came…
Artsy Rambler 