PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST IN TIMES OF CHANGE

You think you've got career problems? Russian artist Zinaida Serebriakova launched her career just as the world was starting to unravel.

Self-portrait as a young art student

Zinaida turned 21 during the Russian Revolution of 1905 when widespread violence, poverty and political upheaval did little to help the art market.  Even bigger revolutions were just around the corner.  In 1905, a young patent clerk named Albert Einstein published the theories that would overturn centuries of scientific beliefs and transform our understanding of space and time. 

 That same year, Sigmund Freud published his revolutionary book describing how our "logical" behavior was really governed by subliminal compulsions and irrational urges.  As if to confirm that the Age of Reason was truly dead, hostile nations were already spiraling toward World War I.

It was in this unpromising environment that Zinaida set out in search of beauty.

Zinaida brushing her hair in the mirror

During her lifetime search, Zinaida painted a remarkable series of self-portraits.

Newly married at age 22

Age 27, by candle light

Modeling a scarf

Age 30: a mother

In art as in politics, the old rules were coming apart like wet tissue paper.  Zinaida had been trained traditionally by the great Russian illustrator Repin but now artists such as Picasso and Matisse were pursuing what Hilton Kramer called "a netherworld of strange gods and violent emotions."  Soon the futurist painters would add their own fiery polemic:

What is the use of looking behind?... Time and Space died yesterday.... We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman....We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism....

Despite all this, Zinaida steadfastly continued to pursue her own notion of beauty, lovingly painting the human body in a representational style.

During times of disintegration, revolutionaries, priests and utopian ideologues compete to fill the vacuum (usually causing widespread misery for the innocents caught in the crossfire).

Zinaida fell in love with a young engineering student but the church barred their marriage due to questions about the young man's faith. The couple got around the church's objections, married and had children shortly before politics intervened in the form of the February Revolution of 1917. Violence returned again that same year with the October Revolution, when Zinaida's lifelong home on the grounds of the Neskuchnoye estate was burned and its food supply plundered.  The new Bolshevik government rejected democracy in favor of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and threw many people in jail, including Zinaida's husband.  There he contracted typhus.  He was released shortly before he died in 1919.

In the words of Leon Trotsky,

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Zinaida was left with no money, four hungry children and a sick mother.

She managed to feed her family by drawing pencil illustrations for the Kharkov Anthropological Museum.

Then in 1924 she learned of an art job in Paris. Zinaida left Russia temporarily only to find when her project was completed that hostile relations between the countries prevented her from returning to her family.  With the help of the red cross, the distraught mother was able to smuggle her two smallest children out of the country.  However, she remained separated from her two older children for over 30 years.

Zinaida felt relatively safe working in France until the Nazis invaded.  Then her  Russian citizenship was sure to get her arrested, so she became a French citizen.  All the while, she continued to draw and paint.

Age 54

Age 62

Age 71

Looking over this lifetime of self-portraits, I am struck by the persistence of Zinaida's smile, and the tenderness that seems to have outlasted the forces that buffeted her.

She resisted assignments painting Soviet generals and commissars and refused to become caught up in ideological painting of her day.  Instead, she turned again and again to the purity and tenderness of the naked human form.  Her daughter recalled:

The female nude was mother's favourite subject. While she was in Russia young peasant women would pose for her. In Paris her friends would come over to her studio, drink a cup of tea, then they would stay and pose for her. They were not the professional models that you might find in Montparnasse and maybe this is the reason why they are so natural and graceful.

Today on the cusp of 2012, we can already see the next crop of despots eager to impose their solutions.  They've had a century to refine Lenin's special math that justifies sacrificing individual human beings to achieve some glorious future for humankind.  By now, they have become positively glib at it.

But Zinaida's joyous pictures suggest that she viewed the math differently, from the side of the equation where the individual is everything.  Pink cheeks here and now outweighed any blueprint for a distant utopia. Her math seems to have helped her remain indomitable during the years when artists with a more intellectual approach reacted with cynicism and despair. If you ever meet a person with such an attitude, marry them quick.  It will be the best thing you can do for the quality of your day-to-day life.

I wish all of you a happy, healthy 2012.

ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH

It's too early in the season for the star of Bethlehem, so that glow in the sky last week could only have been the neon lights from "the most prestigious art show in the Americas," Art Basel Miami Beach:

photo by Casey Kelbaugh, New York Times

The Miami show, we are told,  brought together 250 "leading galleries" from around the world, "including the world's most respected art dealers offering exceptional pieces by both renowned artists and cutting-edge newcomers."

Photo by Casey Kelbaugh, New York Times

Don't bother looking for any crass illustration art at Art Basel Miami, Jocko.  This was 100% fine art, in all its finery.  The New York Times described it as "a holy gathering on the annual pilgrimage route of the super rich."  The number of private jets arriving at the local airport rivaled those of the Super Bowl, and a "line of quarter million dollar cars [was] idling while their owners waited for a parking valet."

You cannot attract such an audience of billionaires, socialites, celebrities and arrivistes with mere commercial art.  They would recoil at the notion of art commissioned for functional purposes.  Instead, such buyers must be flattered into believing they are purchasing something spiritual which demonstrates their sensitivity and perceptivity.

For example, in the panel convened to discuss The Future of Artistic Practice, the moderator began with a common theme:

Poetry is always what can't be sold....It has no usefulness.  It is merely useful through the ethical and aesthetic awareness that results from it. Poetry.... holds out in a world where people tend to lose all their spiritual values in favor of practical, predatory goals.  

This year more than 50,000 seekers of spiritual values clogged the bars and spas of Miami, buying at lavish prices.

And these weren't just your traditional tired old billionaires and hedge fund managers.  A whole new generation of the artistically sensitive has emerged:  Paris Hilton, of the Hilton hotel dynasty; Dasha Zhukova (daughter of a Russian oil mogul and accused international arms smuggler, wife of a multi-billionaire alleged to have made his first fortune as a ruthless Russian gangster);  Vito Schnabel (son of famous blowhard Julian Schnabel); Diana Picasso (great granddaughter of Pablo); even the tasteful Donald Trump dynasty was represented.  This new generation of talent is what comes of outlawing the guillotine.

Noted performance artist Ryan ("I'm an artist so I'm not, like, an asshole") McNamara took the microphone to speak about the artistic challenge of staging "subversive" performance art at the parties of such wealthy people:  "Halfway through the party I had these revolutionaries come in, run through the crowd screaming and then attack the cake with frosting... all they wanted to do was make the cake more delicious."

Also present was famed British artist Tracey Emin.

Art by Tracey Emin

The Saatchi Gallery describes this work of art as "a transient crowning glory," continuing (for the benefit of those who may have trouble recognizing glory): "Emin's triumphed over all and has money up the whazoo to boot." Emin was at Basel to share her technique: "I like to lie in bed in the morning for an hour just thinking, thinking thoughts.  And that's one of my favorite things to do."

Artwork produced using Tracy Emin's patented technique of "thinking thoughts"

Other great thinkers joined in to advance the path of culture.   For example, Jonas Mekas took the stage to read his poem which sheds light on the nature of beauty:

Their beauty
Was beautiful....
It was so totally somewhere else
And so far from what's on TV....

 If there was ever a time when illustration was more "commercial" than fine art, that time is long gone.  Today's gallery art is far more commercial.  But even worse, the quality and seriousness of fine art has been eroded by the current emetic marketing model.

A.B. FROST, BETWEEN THE LINES

The great A.B. Frost (1851 - 1928) drew a story about a man who wanted to learn hypnotism.  At one point, the man foolishly decides to practice on his wife:

Frost was a master at using the gaps between his drawings to imply a larger story.  People normally focus on Frost's visible lines, but today let's spend a little time focusing on the valuable real estate between the pictures.

Frost's line primes our imagination to fill in that empty space.  By setting our imagination to work, he can make a humble little line boundless.

This is a good example of how drawing can be superior to movies as an art form.  A movie doesn't leave the same gaps for us to fill.  At a rate of 24 pictures (or frames) per second, movies could effortlessly take up all the vacant space between Frost's first and second drawings, and give our imaginations a rest.

But that space performs an important function. As Debussy pointed out,

Music is the space between the notes.

As another example of the importance of empty space, check out the pacing of Frost's story of some local scamps who torment a homeless man looking for food:

While the dog keeps him pinned down, the boys have fun pelting the man with their slingshots

Frost carefully selects each moment to drop you to another level of the poor man's downfall.  Drawings spaced too far apart or too close together would not be as effective.  A movie could fill in all the details but it would likely reduce the artistry.  As Kathy Sierra wrote,

Comedians say that "timing is everything." But by "timing," they almost always mean "the pause." The pause is not merely a void between Things That Matter.

In the next drawing, note how the promise of a sneeze is more effective than if Frost had explicitly drawn a  sneeze:

Don't think we are talking merely about the gap between Frost's sequential pictures; it's also the gap between his pen strokes, the gap between an object and its representation, the gap between artist and viewer. Lots of important things take place in the apparently vacant parts of art.

Movies hug us close and in the future will hug us closer, invading any remaining gaps.  24 frames per second will soon become 48 frames per second. Scenes in movies are tailored in lengths that electronic brain scans show are optimal for keeping your mind from wandering. Improved IMAX screens thwart your peripheral vision from straying off the movie, and 3D effects pull you into that screen. Surround sound or earphones seal you off from distracting noises.  Even smell-o-vision or scratch and sniff invade your nostrils to make the movie a "complete experience."
 
People who like their art administered intravenously rarely exert themselves looking for invisible things in empty spaces, but I think they miss out on a lot.

After all, dark energy occupies more than 70% of the universe but scientists haven't been able to locate it yet. We can't touch or taste or see it but we know it's out there because of its impact on our universe. NASA reports:

the nature of dark energy is probably the most important question in astronomy today. It has been called the deepest mystery in physics, and its resolution is likely to greatly advance our understanding of matter, space, and time.

NASA even proposed to form a posse called the Joint Dark Energy Mission to track down the stuff. They want to look for it in all the obvious places-- abandoned warehouses on the far side of Saturn, or hanging out with the juvies around the pillars of creation in the Eagle Nebula, smoking Camels.

But personally, I'm guessing dark energy is hiding in that empty space between us and art. That's the only place big enough.

ERICH SOKOL'S PRELIMINARY SKETCHES

I have previously written about my admiration for illustrator / cartoonist Erich Sokol, whose brilliant work appeared in Playboy Magazine.  A collection of his work recently published by Residenzverlag includes some of his preliminary studies.

Napoleon (preliminary study)

Napoleon  (finished version)

Sokol does not wait until the final image to worry about good design and composition.  They are present in the very first small fragments.

Note how strongly Sokol locates this sketch on the page...

 ...or how he starts out early identifying and then emphasizing the rhythm and harmony of the human forms:

Like many other  artists, Sokol's building blocks contain the DNA of a finished artistic statement.

No matter how small or incomplete, details and fragments such as these can encompass the artist's  genetic code and are well worth our attention.

THE SLAV EPIC

 

I spent the past week in Prague where I was working on the World Forum on Governance.  Away from my books and art materials, I resigned myself to skipping this week's post.

However, the cultural attache at the embassy shared with me the happy news that Alphonse Mucha's masterpiece, the Slav Epic, will go on display in Prague next year, just 84 years after Mucha donated it to the city.

For those who only know Mucha for his art nouveau posters, the Slav Epic was Mucha's most important and meaningful work: 20 huge patriotic murals of key moments from the history of the Slavic people.

Mucha posing in front of two of his murals

In times of trouble and uncertainty, Mucha "wanted to talk in my own way to the soul of the nation," reminding them of their proud heritage and the heroism and sacrifice of their ancestors.

The origin of the Slavic homeland around 200 - 300 AD: peaceful Slav farmers flee invading Goths (seen galloping away from the burning village with their loot).  As the young Adam and Eve of the Slavs escape, a holy man with outstretched arms implores the gods for mercy.

Mucha's reference photo for the holy man

"The Celebration of Svantovit: When Gods Are At War, Salvation Is In The Arts."  The earliest Slavic center of civilization from 700-900 AD was centered around the shrine of Svantovit (later destroyed by Danish warriors in the 12th century)  

The Introduction of the Slavonic Liturgy: Praise The Lord in Your Native Tongue 

"After the Battle of Grunwald: The Solidarity of the Northern Slavs." Here we see the first great defeat of the previously invincible Teutonic Knights, demonstrating the rising power of the Slavic empire. 

"After the Battle of Vitkov: God Represents Truth, Not Power"

"Peter Chelcicky at Vodnany: Do Not Repay Evil With Evil." A famous Slavic pacifist implores the victims of a Hussite raid not to become too caught up in revenge. 

"The Defense of Sziget by Nikola Zrinski: The Shield of Christendom"

Mucha presented his murals to the city of Prague in 1928, but some criticized them as old fashioned and nationalistic.  By 1933 the canvases were rolled up and placed in storage, and Mucha's hopes for his native land seemed farther and farther away.  In 1939 the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia and the gestapo arrested the aging artist.  He died shortly after his release.  The Slav Epic murals were stored away in a basement that flooded, damaging the paintings.  After many years, the canvases were retrieved and restored, and were put on display in 1968 in southern Moravia.  In 2012, these lovely works will return to Prague where they will be displayed with the honor and dignity they deserve.

"The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia: Work in Freedom is the Foundation of a State"

I think Mucha's accomplishment was an act of courage comparable to the accomplishments he was celebrating.  He put aside his commercially successful decorative art to make a lasting statement about the spirit of his country. He originally planned to make each painting approximately 20' x 26' but war, political repression and economic hardship repeatedly forced him to change his plans.  After his first few paintings, the Belgian factory which manufactured the oversized linen was occupied by the German army and converted to military use.  Mucha switched to painting on sailcloth from Scotland, and later was forced to reduce the size of the last murals.  Still, he persisted.  The Czech avant garde artistic community ridiculed his work as a "monstrosity of spurious artistic and allegorical pathos which, if exhibited permanently could harm the taste of the public."  His murals were nearly confiscated during World War I for their "Czech patriotic content" and he made plans to bury them in the woods to protect them.  The work was frowned upon by Nazis in World War II and by communist occupiers in the postwar era. 

Time and again, Mucha was presented with obstacles but he persisted and left behind an important work of art.

"Jan Amos Komensky: A Flicker of Hope."  A religious exile dies in his chair by the sea, looking out at eternity and thinking about returning to his beloved homeland.

NEW BOOK FROM STERLING HUNDLEY

Award winning illustrator Sterling Hundley has come out with a collection of his art, Blue Collar / White Collar.

The book melds Hundley's commercial illustration, his gallery art, and his thoughts on working "between the demands of  Blue Collar ethic and the ambitions of a White Collar aesthetic."
 

Readers may recall that I admire Hundley's talent, his enthusiasm for nurturing young artists, and his thoughtful efforts to adapt to the circumstances confronting a 21st century artist. Many illustrators talk about diversifying and selling "fine" art to gallery audiences, but Hundley is one who seems to have pulled it off.  I was pleased to be asked to write the introduction for his book.

 

This compact volume (6" x 9") includes revealing preliminary sketches for some of his better known works.

I recommend that you check it out.