Haulage aid
May 23rd, 2012 § Leave a Comment
I’m excited to learn that word is spreading about the Lost arts of The Republic of Singapore exhibition that will be presented at Pop-up Singapore house in September here in London. Thanks to Geraldene and to all the people she contacted in goodwill! I am at the moment still on the lookout for haulage sponsors for transporting the objects to and fro. Some confirmed objects which the craftsmen have kindly agreed to contribute are:
1. 3 big chinese hand-painted lanterns
2. 1 dragon head(1 to 2m)
3. A number of small chinese lanterns(20″ x 15″)
4. Medium sized joss sticks(25″ x 6″)
5. Woodclay sculpture figurines (7″ x 5″)
6. Tapestries
If anyone has contacts with haulage companies, please send me an email on how I may contact the person-in-charge. Thanks very much! In the midst of preparation and we are full steam ahead!
Like this:
Then there’s nothing to it but to do it
April 13th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
As an artist I believe in free will–but I also believe in preparatory exercises. Whether a series of exploratory roughs, comps, a-painting-a-day, or thumbnails before a more ambitious project, sketches pave the way to professionalism. Here’s a reminder of what sketches can do for you:
+ Make your mistakes smaller, not larger.
+ By including “notan” sketches (simple black and white patterns) you learn to find better compositions.
+ Discover the best angles, aspects and forms of a subject.
+ Learn to work fresher and looser so you’ll have less investment and obligation.
+ Ask yourself, “What could be?” and have more fun wherever you go.
+ Make more sense of your visual world and its manifestation in your art. Preparatory sketches help you understand what you are trying to do while helping you to feel less precious about your work.
Life is an exercise, but it’s not a rehearsal. Many artists find that the sketch stage is just as vital and rewarding as themagnum opus that comes later. Sketches, to the dismay of many artists, may even be superior in quality. Particularly in rough form, it’s important to cave in to your most expedient inclinations, happiest pathways and most endearing sensibilities. “Preparation does not take away any of the enthusiasm of the final painting. In fact, the preliminaries in color and tonal studies free up the artist for an unbridled yet focused trip to the finish.
– excerpt from Robert Genn Twice-Weekly Letter April 13 2012
Like this:
The act of waving
March 23rd, 2012 Comments Off
Early portrait photography did not approve of any kind of physical display on the part of the sitters. At best, discreet hand gestures were permitted. In this respect, the daguerreotype from around 1840 displayed in Thorvaldsen Museum Copenhagen has become a famous exception. It shows sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen who during the exposure made a gesture with his left hand, supposedly to ward off the evil eye.
As a rule, the first people to have their photographs taken sat motionless, patiently following the photographer’s instruction and then waited excitedly for the resulting image. Soon, photographer’s studios took on the character of salons, a certain refinement became the norm, dictating the behavior of the visitors. There was no waving, no rabbit ears, no messing about in front of the camera,. Photographs were expensive and any physical activity would have caused blurring, undesirable both to the photographer, who wanted to supply high quality works and collect his fee, and to those portrayed, who wished to take home likenesses that were as true to life as possible, or better than real life.
The amateur photographs taken later by snapshooters, due to the mobility of the apparatuses, the growing technical precision of the exposure time and fine-tuning of the chemicals, which made it possible to record an image within seconds, paved the way for the varied use of photography and allowed a certain freedom of behavior in front of the camera. Waving can be considered one such freedom.
Waving is the visual expression of the joy of meeting again, a greeting, or when combined with the wafting of a handkerchief, the sorrow of parting. Waving can be highly expressive, making extensive use of the body rather than just the arm. At the same time, it can be hidden or tentative, subtle and delicate, and is a complex, reserved gesture when compared to hugging or direct physical contact.
The German born artist Sigune Hamann has been collecting and making still and moving images of waving figures over the last four years. She started with a collection of 1950s photographs of Berliners waving to relatives across the newly-erected Berlin wall, a practice soon declared illegal by the East German authorities. Since any kind of greeting was against the law and one was always in danger of being deported within East Germany, the inhabitants had the ingenious idea of cleaning their windows extensively, using large expansive movements. This was understood by those on the other side and united the people of the two towns. Waving reveals an intriguing and multifaceted code of visual communication that deserves to be further examined.
– excerpt from Hello and Goodbye! Photography and the wave by Bodo von Dewitz
Sigune Hamann: Wave
28/02/12–23/03/12
Wellcome Collection, London
Like this:
Failure
February 5th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
In the realm of art, failure has a different currency. Failure, by definition, takes us beyond assumptions and what we think we know. Artists have long turned their attention to the unrealizability of the quest for perfection, or the open-endness of experiment, using both dissatisfaction and error as means to rethink how we understand our place in the world. The inevitable gap between the intention and realization of an artwork makes failure impossible to avoid. This very condition of art-making makes failure central to the complexities of artistic practice and its resonance with the surrounding world. Through failure one has the potential to stumble on the unexpected. When the conventions of representation are no longer fit for purpose, failure can open new possibilities. The judgement involved in naming something a success or a failure is symptomatic of the time and place, and contingent on the critical apparatus one uses to define it. While speculative thought strives for ever-deepening levels of understanding in search for content, irony asks questions, not to receive an answer but to draw out of content and form yet more questions. The ironist deals with the how of something being said rather than the what, paying a distanced attention to the surface of statements so as to identify gaps in knowledge and productive miscommunication. Where we embrace the irony of bad taste, we distance ourselves from the assumed natural order of things.
– FAILURE Documents of contemporary art
Like this:
Formalism
January 26th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
In general, the term formalism describes the critical position that the most important aspect of a work of art is its form, that is, the way it is made and its purely visual aspects, rather than its narrative, content or its relationship to the visible world. In painting, a formalist critic would focus exclusively on the qualities of color, brushwork,form,line and composition. Formalism as a critical stance came into being in response to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in which unprecedented emphasis was placed on the purely visual aspects of the work. In 1890 the Post-Impressionist painter Maurice Denise wrote, ‘Remember, that a picture, before it is a picture of a battle horse, a nude woman, or some story, is essentially a flat surface covered in colors arranged in a certain order.’ Denis emphasised that aesthetic pleasure was to be found in the painting itself, not its subject. Writer Clive Bell formulated the notion of ‘significant form’, that form itself can convey feeling. All these led to Abstract art, an art of pure form.
– The Tate guide to Modern art terms
Like this:
We must create(1922)
January 15th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Excerpts from Huidobro’s Manifestes(1925) which provoked thoughts in me today, over a cup of yoghurt with honey cashews
Vicente Huidobro was a cosmopolitan Chilean poet, exponent of the artistic movement of Creacionismo, which held that artists of any stripe should ‘create’ rather than ‘imitate’, that is to say invent or ‘add to the facts of the world’.
We must create. That is the sign of our times.
Inventing is making things that are parallel in space, meet in time or vice versa, so that they present a new fact in their conjunction.
The totality of the diverse new facts united by a single spirit constitutes the created work. If they are not united by a single spirit, the result will be an impure work with an amorphous look, resulting from a fantasy with no laws.
The study of art throughout history shows us clearly this tendency of imitation to move towards creation in all human productions.
In art the power of the creator interests us more than that of the observer, and besides the former contains in itself the second, to a higher degree.
David Hockney
January 4th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
“It’s a little insulting to craftsmen,” he said. “I used to point out, at art school you can teach the craft; it’s the poetry you can’t teach. But now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft.” He quoted a Chinese proverb that to be a painter “you need the eye, the hand and the heart. Two won’t do.”
Like this:
Red is the color
September 21st, 2011 § Leave a Comment
the young Yeo Hung Teo. doing what he does best
embroidered lanterns! from Taiwan
printed graphics on cardboard then folded to give wingssss
monster hand! for a larger than life figure at a festival
bamboo structure
sticking gold paper onto sides of boat
handwritten characters by the boss
boss Yeo Hung Teo
A visit to Yeo Swee Huat paper agency which produces various objects for Chinese festivals n rituals, mostly hand-made using paper, wood and a few other low cost materials. The current boss Yeo Hung Teo, specialises in writing Chinese characters and drawing imagery on huge lanterns. Not many craftsmen can do both jobs. He is also Teochew. I knew it.
