February 2018

Get your cats and your tea ready:

We are painting today!

No, not this: This is from 2010 when I was painting a page from my book Gardens of Awe and Folly with the help of Coco.

This:

This is a photo from the archives of the New York Times, which sent a photographer to Claude Monet’s house in Giverny in 1922.

In 2012 the New York Botanical garden photoshopped the “unidentified person” next to Monet out of the pic and colorized it for a show there, in which Monet’s garden at Giverny was re-created in one of the hot houses (I thought it was an odd show) :

FYI: Monet preferred fawn-colored tweeds for his suits.

I always paint from photo references, and usually I only use my own photos. . . but I’ve been known to borrow pix from other sources (Hi Jeanie! Hi Elizabeth!), and this photo of Monet at age 82 on his Japanese bridge is irresistible, don’t you think? P.S.: I used the black and white photo for my paintings. The colorized one is not helpful.

I gave it a go way back in 2012:

Way back in 2012 I was still getting used to painting “large” pictures (as a miniaturist, my preferred format is about one-eight this scale) so no wonder the pic stinks.

Last year, after painting many “murals” for my garden book (5 inches x 7 inches is about the maximum size I can go), I had another try:

This painting is ripe for a rescue.

The smartest thing I did, when I re-painted this pic in 2012, was to leave a bit of blue sky in the top right corner. It’s not there in the reference photograph from 1922. I made an edit. I like it better with a bit of sky.

I have to rescue this pic two ways: I have to make it not stink, and I have to make it fit a square format. Lately I’ve been playing around with breaking my pictures out of a rectangular format, and playing with Monet’s own style. . . and that’s what I decided to do with this picture. I decided to leave the top bit intact (but make it better with added color and shading), and to expand the bottom, watery bit, but do it to look like this:

Sorry: I forgot that I do watercolor tutorials on my blog so I’ve already re-painted the top section and glued in a new bottom bit, and here is where we pick up this rescue:

Let me tell you, it was not easy to figure out how to add width and length to the bottom part of this pic. I thought I was good at piecing things together, but this one was harder than it looked. After fiddling around for about an hour, I got it right. . . this is what it looks like from the back:

The first order of business is to camouflage the hard edges. The good news is that there are reeds on either side of Monet’s Japanese bridge in his water garden at Giverny:

Spoiler alert: I know YOU see it now, but I will not notice that the sides of this rescue are uneven until the very end and I will have a mini-crisis because of it.

If you examine Monet’s paint surface closely, you will see that he uses short, dabbly brushstrokes:

I actually find Monet’s brushstrokes to be a bit wimpy. He is not very daring with his use of paint. COLOR, oui; paint, non.

I can see that Monet paints his lily pads blue, and the water green: Weird, huh? I can also see where Monet puts his light dabs of paint towards the center of the scene and his dark dabs of paint towards the edges, so I am trying to copy his color placement as best I can but, really, I don’t know what I’m doing and am just guessing, starting with dark green and switching to medium green:

Dashing in dabs of blue:

Finishing with lightest green:

The only advantage that watercolor has over oil paint is that watercolorists can use the whiteness of the paper to add sparkle to the painted surface. I am not trying to cover every bit of paper when I dab because leaving “blank” areas will only improve the faux-impressionist look I am going for.

When painting the reflections of the reed (or the willows) in the “water”, I use broken lines:

I also make sure that I place the darkest “reflections” correctly before I paint in the rest of the bits:

Here is where it occurred to me that I must show you a very handy painting tip: I keep my pre-painted picture safe from spills and dropped brushes loaded with paint  (it happens all the time) by inserting it into one of those plastic sheet protectors that you can get at Staples:

This is pretty close to how I set up my work space:

You can see that I am using my teeny tiny Winsor Newton paint set along with a few of my cheap-o Grumbacher chalky paints for this picture (tea bag included for size ref). And that’s it! It doesn’t take much equipment to paint your heart out!

Back to the rescue: now that I have come to the foreground of this picture, I have a decision to make about the size of the brushstrokes I’ll be using in this area. As a miniaturist, I’m happy using itty bitty strokes with a 00-size brush for the back and middle-ground of this picture. But it seems to me that the length of the strokes should increase as the picture comes “closer” to the viewer. I am not happy doing long brushstrokes with a bigger brush, so I did some practice bits before I committed paint to paper (I would hate to screw this up at this stage of the rescue):

OK, I think I can live with the longer strokes. So now that I have a plan, I go back to the right edge of the picture (because I am left-handed, my pictures usually start on the right side and work towards the left) and fiddle with the last bits of the pond surface. I have differed from the Monet painting which I am using as my guide in that I made a large area of the pond surface blue, rather than paint it in as green, just because I like the blue. I have to admit that, having painted in this nice pool of blue water, I don’t know how I’m going to get out of it in a way that makes sense visually. I am hoping for the best as I lay in the dark reeds’ reflection:

Another thing that I do, just because I like to, is that I “ripple” the surface of the water:

To do this, all you have to do is take a brush loaded with clear, clear water and swipe it back and forth across a painted surface, which picks up the pigment like an eraser (remember to wipe the brush off on a paper towel before you re-load it with clear, clean water for a second swipe).

Now I use my huge (ha ha, that’s a joke: it’s a size 1) brush to make those long strokes I practiced:

I think I painted that area too dark:

So I let it dry and then I use bright white acrylic paint to dab over the dark bits:

Looking at it now, I think I could have left that area alone — the dark bit doesn’t bother me as much as it did when I was in the throes of hoping not to ruin the picture when I was so close to the finish, but what can I say? I panicked.

I dash in some blue paint and look at those ENORMOUS brush strokes!:

For this last bit, I go easy on the vertical reflections (I use very watery paint and I don’t do much detail):

The last thing I have to paint are those damn water lilies. You can see that Monet put a lot of white/pink flowers in his picture:

I don’t want to do as many because although Monet can get away with it, I think that all those flowers in my picture would look cheesy. All you do is dab on some solid blobs of bright white acrylic paint over the watercolor:

Highlight the acrylic with hot pink, leaving at least half the lily in white :

DONE:

When ruling out the picture for the crop, I realize that OMG OMG OMG I measured the scene incorrectly:

Whew. Thank DoG I had barely enough of a margin to go back and fix it!

And this is how this illustration will look on the page:

 

The next time you see this picture I hope it’s in a book about Monet’s garden.

This biography of Stevie Nicks (who needs no introduction) is not an authorized biography, so it has no contact with Stevie’s inner life — but it is excellent when it deals with her work life. The author, Stephen Davis, is a veteran rock journalist so he knows his way around a recording studio and the way in which songwriters cobble together their hits, and I was fascinated to read about the process Stevie went through whenever she had to come up with material for a Fleetwood Mac or a solo album.

Stevie hoarded all her song ideas for years and decades, in notebooks and on cassette tapes, all her bits and pieces — a title, a riff, half a verse, a whole song that never quite gelled — and this is where she started whenever she had to come up with new material. She rifled through her old journals and cassettes and looked for bits of gold dust. I loved reading this because that’s what I do! I never throw anything out!

A few weeks ago I showed you how I re-cycled bits of failed paintings (which I had kept in my Reject File for about three years) into a rescue:

I only wish that I had a producer on hand to direct me on how to spiff-up my pix: Stevie, on the other hand, had access to the best and she was very shrewd when she picked her collaborators and her producers. Producers can be crucial: one will hear something in a song fragment or idea that had been languishing for years, and he can turn into something powerful, something that Stevie would never have thought of on her own.

Edge of Seventeen, for example, is a song that was just a little pop ditty until producer Jimmy Iovine put a stinging Waddy Wachtel guitar riff on it.

Speaking of seventeen:

We must salute the awesomeness of the teenage students of Marjory Stonemason Douglas High School. You can visit the school’s website for tips on how you can support the political action of these amazing kids, or you can to to their  GoFundMe page,  or you can open up a can of whoop-ass and vote to defeat every sniveling, corrupt, crazy, and gutless psycho NRA-loving son of a bitch politician in 2018.

Stay sane this weekend, everyone. I know it’s hard: the NRA idiots are out already, claiming that the latest school shooting is another Sandy Hook hoax. But stay strong. We need you to not let these morons drive you crazy so we can get out and Vote Them Out.

XXOO

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Have you ever tried to paint like Claude Monet? If so, did you attempt one of his huge “Grand Decoration” canvases?

I know, from experience, that using watercolors to copy an oil painting is hard. . .

. . .  so before I took on this scene of Monet’s waterlilies. . .

. . . I practiced:

If I were using oil paint, it would be easy to layer green on top of pink, but when it’s watercolor you have to be very careful because if you let them bleed too much into one another, all you get is a muddy brown soup.

I don’t have any “in progress” photos to show you because I was so sure that this would come out crappy and, in fact, for most of the time I was painting this Monet-esque pic, it did look like crap. I kept losing my place because I had to paint the greens separately and they didn’t make sense to me until very late in the game:

I don’t know if this is how Claude experienced his pictures, but for me it all came together only after I’d added the pink and blue water bits. Then I could see that where this pic was going.  Then I removed the resist that I’d applied to mask out the lily pads:

OK, now it look like a lily pond.

By the way, Monet cheats! If you look carefully at his later paintings, you’ll see that he outlines his lily pads, he doesn’t shadow them, which I call cheating! But I won’t complain too much because outlining them makes painting these things a whole lot easier. Also, Monet was in his 80s when he was painting these enormous murals, and was world famous and stinking rich, so he could outline anything he damn pleased, right?

DONE:

I learned quite a lot about Monet’s methods, and this is not as bad as I thought it was going to be for my first attempt. I am ready to do this again because now I know better where the darks and lights go, and how to use the paint to make the “water surface” shimmer the way Monet does, and make the colors richer and more subtle. (I think.)

Believe it or not, Monet actually sketched out these murals before he painted them:

Obviously, Monet’s sketched in a language that only he could understand. But maybe “sketched” is not the right word; maybe he “mapped” out his paintings beforehand. We will never know: Monet was famously reticent about his process, and he never took pupils or taught anyone (except for his step-daughter, Blanche, but I can’t imagine that he was anything more than an encouraging pater to her). And Monet also lied: he claimed never to work in a studio but he completed almost ALL of his paintings indoors. So, maybe his “sketches” are just scribbles that he jotted to make people wonder what on Earth he was up to.

Scribbles and Earth: do you know about the Nazca lines?

These grand earthworks were scratched into the Nazca Desert in South America approximately 2,000 years ago. The large-scale drawings  depict animals, plants, imaginary creatures and geometric figures that are miles long. The Nazca lines stretch across an area of about 280 square miles in a remote part of Peru.

The first mention of the Nazca Lines in print was by the conquistador Pedre Cieza de Leon in his book of 1553, where he described them as trail markers. They were not fully understood as being earthworks until the 20th century, and are still being studied as the most mysterious remnants of a long-lost desert culture.

UNESCO celebrates the Nazca site as “the most outstanding group of geoglyphs anywhere in the world and are unmatched in its extent, magnitude, quantity, size, diversity, and ancient tradition to any similar work in the world.” In short, the Nazca lines are awesome.

On January 27, 2018, a 40-year old dipshit named Jainer Vigo drove a semitrailer . . .

. . . off-road into the Nazca Desert and plowed thru the fragile topsoil . . .

. . .  and “significantly” damaged three geoglyphs. The dips hit driver claimed that he had mechanical problems and didn’t know the area and didn’t see all the signs warning him against trespassing on this World Heritage Site. But the truth is that he drove off the nearby Pan-American Highway to avoid paying a toll.

Anyway, this dipshit was picked up by Peruvian police and brought before a magistrate, but the magistrate concluded that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to indicate the driver acted with intent, so he was released. Thankfully, someone in the local prosecutor’s office has half a brain and it was announced that the local prosecutor’s office was appealing the judge’s decision, and is seeking nine months of preventive detention and a $1,550 fine while the investigation continues.

I ask you: Why in the world would intent matter in this case?

It’s the same thing as when I watch a defendant on Judge Judy explain why he or she should not have to pay for the damages to the plaintiff’s car because “I didn’t hit that car and smash it to smithereens on purpose!”

I also ask you: Is anyone willing to be held accountable these days?

Such as the Republican party? I only ask since the NRA (National Rifle Association) spent a stupendous $54.4 million in the 2016 election cycle, almost all of it in “independent expenditures,” meaning spending for or against a candidate but not a direct contribution to a campaign. The money went almost entirely to Republicans to a degree that almost looks like a misprint (but isn’t): Of independent expenditures totaling $52.6 million, Democrats received $265. Yes, that’s 265 dollars. [P.S. I have another source that states the NRA gave $106 hundred thousand to Democrats in 2016. It’s still a ridiculous shit-load less, but not the shit-load less that $265 would be.]

The NRA spent more than $30 million to help elect der Drumpf, which includes the $19 million it spent in attack ads against Hillary Clinton.

Thanks to an extensive history of NRA support for Republicans in state legislatures who push through very lax gun ownership laws, a November 2012 Congressional Research Service report found that, as of 2009, there were approx. 310 million firearms in the United States: 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles, and 86 million shotguns.

PARKLAND, FL – FEBRUARY 15: A police check point near the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where 17 people were killed by a gunman on February 15, 2018 in Parkland, Florida. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Of those 310 million firearms that are owned by citizens of the United States, approx. 3.5 million of them are AR15s, which we all know is the favorite weapon of school shooters.

I know that you, Dear Readers, are as depressed as I am. I want to give up. Because now that Republicans have normalized this crazy level of gun ownership in America, mass shootings is what happens. I want to tell you, do not wring your hands and weep and wail and pray for the dead. Nothing is going to change. This is the country that we live in, thanks to the NRA and their Republican allies: in Pew’s latest poll (June, 2017) on gun control, 79% of Republicans favored protecting gun ownership rights over limiting gun access. That compares with 20% of Democrats who felt the same way.

But, then, there’s this:

On Tuesday evening, candidate Margaret Good won a special election for state representative in southwest Florida’s House District 72, becoming the 36th flip for the Democratic Party since President Donald Trump took office last year.

The Democrat won by a margin of almost 8 points and more than 3,000 votes—in the same district der Drumpf clinched during the 2016 presidential elections by 5 points.

I don’t want to get too hopeful here. But maybe there is reason to hope.

I don’t know if you can tell that I started writing this post on Tuesday (it takes days to do one of these posts), when it was going to be all about painting a la Monet and defending Nazca lines. I was also going to chime in on the new portraits of the Obamas for the Smithsonian (his is OK but the painter is a certifiable creep, and hers just plain stinks).

Then the heart-breaking events of Wednesday changed everything and I had to detour into bitter reality. If we lived in a normal, progressive, civilized country, I would not have had to write about people dying in droves again; I would have ended this week’s light hearted get-together this way:

The only reason I know about the Nazca lines at all is because I was reading the lovely book by the elegant travel writer Bruce Chatwin, which you can see in the above photograph. That’s my thermos of hot sweet tea, and my other thermos of ice water on the desk that I sit at when I am on duty at my new volunteer job at a charity book shop. (Things were pretty quiet last Saturday. It rained.)

And until we meet back here next Friday, when I will tell you all the power trips and intrigues of running a charity book shop, please please please paint, or make an earthwork, hug your kitties and smooch your DoGs, make a vodka and champagne cocktail (I have a recipe), do whatever you need to do to stay sane in this nut-job country of ours.

Australians: Stay cool and thank your lucky stars of the southern cross that you are not us.

XXOO

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English is a very efficient language.

Wednesday: Today I had to go to Costco to return a bird feeder, then as I drove homeward I stopped at a hair salon to make an appointment for a hair cut, and then when I did make it home I called my plastic surgeon to verify my scheduled procedure for Thursday (more work to make my nose look normal).

And I was DONE for the day. That’s it. That is all the busy-ness that I care to be involved with in one day. I do not like taking care of business, I dislike being in charge of doing what it takes to keep on keeping on, I do not like running errands. I think it is so unfair that these things don’t do themselves.

I think I would be the perfect person to have servants, because I so deeply deserve to have servants running my errands and answering my email and stuff.

Knowing this about myself, I think I  should probably not get a DoG. I’ve been thinking of getting another DoG for months because:

However, from what I remember about having my first DoG [read blog post Happiness is a Warm Puppy] , dogs demand an ungodly amount of showing-up, and that’s not really my strong point these days. But when I think about living the rest of my life without having another DoG, I could cry.

Usually I am quite good at making decisions, but his is the hardest time I’ve ever had. Yes, I want a DoG; No, I don’t want a Dog; Yes I do; No I don’t…and what would the cats think??

Speaking of cats, today’s story is about this cat:

Meet Bibs. Bibs was one of three grey tabby cats who wandered into our home for wayward strays one Summer. They all got trapped and neutered, but to keep them straight, I called the first one “Stripey”, and when the second showed up, I called him “New Stripey”, and when the third one showed up (he had white patches that the others did not have), I called him “Bib Stripey”.

Bib Stripey got into a vicious fight one day and showed up for breakfast with his ear almost torn off so we immediately  whisked him off to the vet for his rendezvous with destiny and had his head stitched up at the same time. Since I had to make sure his head healed correctly, Bib Stripey then came into our house for convalescence, which usually does not happen when we TNR. He was untouchable, so we had to confine him in a very large DoG crate in the kitchen.

Bib Stripey was a challenge, in that he never got the hang of using a litter box. He preferred to crap in his bed every night, which did not endear him to me. When the vet gave him the all-clear about his head wound, we happily released him into the wilds of our back yard and expected that he would disappear like the other Stripeys. That was eight years ago. Bib Stripey stayed, and stayed, and stayed, and his name was shortened to “Bibs”, and he learned that getting scratched behind the ears was awesome, and he learned to come indoors for all his meals and most of his naps.

Taffy is his mortal enemy, which is why Bibs must always keep tabs on him every moment of the day.

Bibs is now an almost fully integrated into the herd but he does not use a litter box — he’s still a crap-in-the-woods kind of guy.

One other thing that you need to know about Bibs is that he does not share. So, when our Dear Reader Jeanie sent the herd some hand-made catnip toys for ChirsHanuKwanSolstice all the way from the wilds of Michigan, Bibs took one of the toys for his own self. He carried it down to the basement and put it some place that only he knows. So, when Taffy, and Lickety, and Cindy, and Candy are batting around the catnip toys to one another, Bibs does not join in.

The other day I was in the kitchen when Bibs came up from the basement with his toy in his mouth. He padded into the dining room, and dropped his toy next to one that had lately been the object of a spirited game of Keep Away amongst the rest of the herd.

I swear that he was just sitting there, making comparisons between the two. I swear he looked extremely pleased with himself. I crept away to get the camera, but Bibs does not do poses. So all I have to show you is Bib’s prized possession alongside the worse-for-wear comparable. (This cat story was brought to you by Dear Reader Jeanie — thank you!)

OK, considering that I went to all this trouble to tell you Dear Readers a story about two cat toys, maybe I am not a DoG person after all. And see if the following cat-person story doesn’t confirm this:

A few months ago I was invited to join a group of people who share an interest I have … I can’t mention the interest because it’s a give away as to what this organization is and I don’t want to embarrass any one who might be from that org and reading this (It’s possible! It’s not likely, but it’s possible!). So let’s say this interest is decoding Elizabethan handwriting.

Before I commit to going to this meeting, I check out the group’s website. The group meets in a wine bar on Long Island, so the group invites new members to join: If you like decoding Elizabethan handwriting, if you like wine, and if you like meeting new people!”

Well, I, for one, certainly and positively do not like meeting new people, but I like wine and I like decoding Elizabethan handwriting, so against my better judgment I go to the monthly meeting.

I’m the new person there the regulars are chit chatting with me and I’m being an abnormally smiley, friendly version of myself. I say no, I don’t have kids in Long Island schools but I have cats. “How many?”, someone asks.

“8”, I say. I’m just giving information, I’m not bragging.

One woman looks particularly aghast and says, “8 cats! What does your house smell like??”

I let the question hang in the air for a few moments because that, right there, is why I do not like meeting new people. Eventually I say, and I say it slowly, “It smells fine.”

I want to tell you that after that, I did not go back, but hey, it’s not every day that you find people who like to decode Elizabethan handwriting so yes, I did go back the next month.

And at that meeting I was small-talking with a different regular who asked me what I “did”, and I said “I write books about travel.”

She asked me, “Are you famous?”

And no, I did not go back the next month.

I have to admit that I don’t get this but I want that DoG.

OK, so by now you know that I am typing this up on Friday morning because I missed out usually get-together time due to February lethargy but ALSO, on Thursday I had another round of surgery on my nose so I was out of commission for a day and I am sitting here, right now, with a big hospital-grade bandage on my face that does not make me feel exactly spiffy.

I thank you all for stopping by, and for your great feed back last week that verified that it wasn’t me that got small, it was the art.

Wait. I’m a miniaturist. I like being small!

Here’s my Art Rescue of the week:

Before:

After:

I have to fix that green gate. This rescue is not over.

And remember, if you aren’t applauding, you’re being treasonous.

Have a small-talk free weekend, everyone!

XXOO

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What can I say? It’s the middle of Winter and my ass is dragging. If you are reading this it’s because I haven’t posted this week’s scintillating content yet BUT IT’S COMING.

All I need is another cup of tea and some more toast and I’ll be good to go with the typing and the telling and the  enlightening.

And when I get go-going, I will explain this:

No, this is not another work of art by a human being with stellar arts world credentials. This is the work of an arts collective known as “my cats.” The story will make you go-go Awwwwwwww.

In the meantime, get up and do a happy dance! It’s Friday! (We love you always, George Michael.)

 

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I keep making mistakes. In this instance (see below), I made the mistake of painting this little scene too little:

This little scene is from the famous garden of the famous impressionist painter Claude Monet, and I painted it for a little book that I am working on about Claude Monet’s garden. The format of the book has changed since I first conceived to it and now I needed this little scene to grow up, from a little half-page doodle into a full-page picture. I’ve been working on this book idea [off and on] for nearly two years and I am thoroughly sick of it, so I had no intention of going back into it to re-paint any part of this odious garden.

Ha ha, just kidding, in case my future publisher is reading this, I love Monet’s garden and I’m dedicated to capturing its unique forms and inspirational spirit that has charmed and beguiled millions of visitors yadda yadda yadda….

Oh, what to do, what to do? I don’t want to re-paint it, but I need to re-paint it, but I really, really don’t want to.

Time for a rescue!

What you see is what happened after I cut out the bottom bit from a previously-painted picture (a picture that went wrong on the top — never throw anything away!) and glued it on top of the current Work-in-Rescue. Then I painted some background foliage into the upper corner of the pic in order to balance the composition of the scene. As you can suss, the old watercolor was small to completely rescue this picture, so I have to now rescue the rescue. I have to paint something that I can glue into that lower left-hand corner:

The first try was awesome. I love the bleeds that I got there, in the greens and blues.

All I have to do is cut out the part that I need and glue in into place:

I misjudged how big I had to make the rescue-to-the-rescue bit when I cut it out, so I had to add one itty bitty piece of shim when I glued it into place (see above) but it looks to me as if I am going to get away with this rescue.

Next, all I had to do was paint in some tulips and make a few more green blobs and integrate the new rescue into the old rescue and voila:

DONE.

That was fun! But it’s certainly not museum-quality,not like this watercolor  (below)– titled Landscape — from the famous Museum of Modern Art in New York:

Yeah, that (above) is what watercolor looks like when it’s fine art.

Which reminds me:

Last week I asked you, my Dear Readers, your thoughts on how much you have changed since you were 18. Here’s why:

Two weeks ago I happened to read a news item about an artist, who died in 2016, whose family was suing that artist’s estranged husband for his mishandling of her estate — her “estate” being some quantity of art work done by her, that has been kept in inadequate storage by the estranged husband…the family contends that the estranged husband has damaged the art works, valued at half a million dollars. It was a juicy story that the London Daily Mail picked up from the New York Post.

The name of the artist rang a little bell. I googled her.

Sure enough, I knew her: back in 1976 she and I had been in the same Foundation Course (first year) at a well-known east coast art college. I was 22, older than most of the students who were fresh out of high school; she was 18, fresh out of high school.

I left school, and art, after that first year. My young classmate, on the other hand, stuck with it. She graduated, and then went on to get an MFA. She continued to stick with it until she was 37, when she finally caught the attention of the art world and began to win prestigious awards and sell her stuff to museums and collectors and have solo shows in galleries around the world.

That’s her watercolor — Landscape — above. Here’s another of her highly regarded watercolors (titled Untitled):

But watercolor is not actually the thing she does best — she’s a renowned sculptor:

Sorry about her dying so young, but the more I read all her accolades from the New Yorker and the New York Times and ARTNews etc . . .

. . . the less I could hardly believe what I was reading because the thing is, when I knew this girl, she was the last person I would have picked out as talented.

I am not mentioning her name because, well, I only knew her (and didn’t like her, or her sloppy use of materials, her lack of design skill, or her memorable dopiness) when she was 18, and it’s unfair to hold her accountable after 42 years. Maybe people change from the people they are at 18. Maybe she became brilliant. Maybe she became talented. A lot of critics and art collectors seem to think so. . . and some have even extolled her persistent lack of technical skills and general dopiness: Sometimes she emulates traditional media (here and there her painted wood might pass for ceramic); mostly she’s content to look funkily modern. The result is a vital ensemble in which designed inauthenticity produces something original and expressive.

That review (quoted above) was written by a guy who has won a Pulitzer for criticism. So I guess it’s me, I’m the dope who doesn’t understand what “designed inauthenticity” is, or why badly worked materials is so funkily modern. Obviously, I’m the moron who does not understand how to make art.

But I have to say that her work depresses me. It looks so inadequate to me, and so very dumb. It depresses me that this is what we are supposed to look at these days.

But I know that that is the same thing that art critics said about the impressionists, when Claude Monet and his buddies began to exhibit their work in 1874. Art critics hated the impressionists at first and even as late as 1904, when Monet was getting rich and famous, one journalist could still complain about his style: A house should look like a house, not like a scrambled egg going up a stepladder. 

I think that egg is sunny-side up.

I don’t want to be the idiot complaining about scrambled eggs so I have been looking at more of this artist’s later work, trying to train my eye and get with the 21st century:

Here’s a detail of the above sculpture (maybe it’s an an installation; installation seems to be as hot a thing in the art world today as it was in art school back in the 1970s):

OK. THAT’S cute. I don’t get the fabric heap or the finger paintings taped to the wall, but the dead rat is cute.

Well, we did it. WE GOT THROUGH JANUARY!

If you did January dry, like I did, then you know how slap-damn-scrambled-egg happy you are that Dry January is over over over over over over over, as happy as a Long Island cat taking a dirt bath in his favorite patch of  crud:

Speaking of crud, this is what Paris looks like these days:

The Paris Police sent a drone flying over the Seine and this is a screen grab of the Square du Vert-Galant, which I featured in my book Gardens of Awe and Folly. When it’s not under water, it’s a charming little garden on the last bit of low-lying land left on the Ile de la Cite.

Here’s a better look at my bijoux chateau (lower left corner) that I wrote about as my dream Paris pied-à-terre (pages 14, 15, and 16 for those of you reading along). Alors, all my dream antiques and dreamy objets d’art that I have dreamed about decorating my dream bijoux chateau with are drenched with la grand boue.

Great! Now I get to re-decorate!

I’d say that’s worth popping a cork for.

As if I need an excuse.  Happy February, everyone!

 

 

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