timeless beauty never dates

'The Village Beauty'

From the first generation after Manaku and Nainsukh, 1785
Opaque watercolor on paper

(image from Master Painters of India at the Met)

The beauty in this picture is lifting her right shoulder very slightly as she

flirtatiously gazes at something behind her. Its almost like she knew she was 

being watched by an appreciator of her timeless fecund beauty, and ripeness.

She could just as well be a girl today, standing on the tram self-consciously aware

of herself, yet probably innocent of her power: timeless feminine beauty.

Dil Hildebrand ~ beautiful paintings about the present

I came across this Canadian painter Dil Hildebrand, a few days ago when I was signing up to a great blogging site called posterous, where I have now started a blog about my Yoga classes (amongst other things).

I love the illusion of photographs taken in a mirror, or something like that. It gives the feeling of other dimensions, which is always of great interest to me.

I will keep an eye on Dil Hildebrand, and the blog where I found him: collections from the last place.

Piet Mondriaan ~ his influence continues to enrich us ~

I took this photo at Gemeente Museum ~ The Hague when I was last in the Netherlands a few months ago. I've tried to find it on their site or elsewhere online to find the title and when it was painted etc, but to no avail! And my picture here is not ideal, as the glass reflection undermines the luminosity and beauty of this work. I think it was quite an early piece, before his more famous works, which everyone knows off by heart.

I notice that there's an exhibition on at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and there's an excellent little film clip about that here.

Picture on the left shows the beautiful original Art Deco design of the Gemeente Museum in The Hague. All the interior, fittings and everything are elegantly original Art Deco. The whole building is a museum to that.

Its worth a visit if you're in Europe.

Helen Frankenthaler and the magic carpet

When I was at art school one of my hero's was Helen Frankenthaler, American abstract expressionist, and later married to Robert Motherwell.
Not only was she one of the few women working in this genre who was as renowned as some of her male colleagues at that time, but her works have a luminosity and vulnerability I've rarely seen elsewhere.

Whenever I've seen some of these huge paintings, my heart has skipped a beat, as I breathe in the courage and power in front of me.

I am so grateful for her work, she continues to inspire me and nourish my apetite for new frontiers of colour usage and expression.

the beauty and sensuality of Saida, by Kees van Dongen ca 1913

Kees van Dongen (image here) who I got re-acquainted with recently on my visit to Amsterdam and The Hague, was a Dutch painter born near Rotterdam, who's earlier works were way ahead of their time. He was a fauvist, one of my favorite groups, because everything was about colour.

I didn't see this particular painting, but the paintings I did see inspired me deeply. I haven't put them here because the ones I saw are ubiquitous, you just have to google his name and up they come. I haven't seen 'Saida' before, and it did indeed remind me of an earlier time in my life in Morocco where I met one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, even to this day, called Saida, who was the daughter of a family in Rabat where we were guests.
This Saida pictured here has the same quality of serenity, yet sensual femininity, and depth of gaze.

wow in 1936 Edward Weston rocked

And not only with this photograph or in this year!
I first came across Edward Weston's work when I was at art school (about three hundred years ago..hmmm) and was struck by how his nudes had a painting sensibility about them: his eye somehow stroked every surface, rather like the brush wields paint to bring light and dark to the senses...a tactile surface translating into a vision of the Soul inhabiting the flesh..oh, I can't find the words...
I suggest you just allow your eye to linger over this image for a minute, or any of his images for that matter, and your Soul will be nourished.
The 'design' of this, imbues the elegant, rhythmic minimalism of that time, but could also have been taken today.

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• Edward Weston Photos & Biography (brighthub.com)

an ode to Matisse's dance

I first saw this painting 'in-the-flesh', when I visited MOMA in NYC in 1999. I didn't expect to be quite so profoundly thrown and moved...It was a painting I had often soaked in from reproductions in books and on posters. It is so very famous. When I was a child, I thought it might be some kind of tarot card, its magical impact on my psyche had already begun by the time I was about eleven, when I saw a book my aunt, the Dutch sculptor, Katinka van Rood-Bruin, had in her Amsterdam studio.  

Her brother, my father had died just months before, and that day my heart was aching and heavy with grief.  So when I stood in front of this work, the tears flooded and I had to take deep breaths so that I didn't wail with passion and emotion. I was in front of it for about half an hour. All the wonderful works in that Museum were calling me, their voice faint and easily put on hold while Matisse's dance and I communed. 

I felt so deeply held and healed by the Spirit of this extraordinarily rhythmic and beautiful work.

Corot

Today I went to the NGV and saw the European Masters: Städel Museum, 19th–20th Century. I hadn't really planned to go, but a friend of mine was down from Byron Bay and hungry for culture, and also very knowledgeable herself.

I was very pleasantly surprised, I got educated and nourished with some wonderful works. 

One of my favorites was a small luminous painting of Corot's. (not the one shown here, but of the same ilk).

Also the Bonnard was hauntingly emotive and fine. I also loved the Oscar Schlemmer, very strong. All I wanted to do when we left there was come home and paint...but I had admin to do, my office is a mess etc. I was very glad to go, and will definitely go again to drink it in.

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moskow in 1866. He is credited with being the first abstract painter. He was an intellectual and art theorist as well as obviously being an extraordinary painter. I've always loved his work. I can see Sergi Diaghilev must surely have known about these paintings, or maybe they knew each other, the whole influence they must have had on each other is one of those wondrous synchronicities, which goes on influencing and inspiring others. From dance, costume, poetry, literature, music (Stravinsky)...these people have been giants in the world of art.

Giorgio Morandi and the Stillness

Giorgio Morandi - 'Still Life' (Natura morta), 1956

I can't believe that I've been somehow involved one way and another with the visual arts for most of my adult life, and I hadn't familiarized myself with this incredible still life artist, Giorgio Morandi. With the six days of painting intensive behind me now(see last entry), I can look at this remarkable artist's work online, at least.

I found this image at the Met Museum. I gasped, as I experience the Stillness... 

Degas and the light

I am currently doing Geoffrey Dupree's 'From Drawing to Painting' course. For the last three days we have focused pretty solidly on tone, and how it indicates space. Most of us look at colour and shape all the time. I found that I rarely look at tone. And then I thought about the painting of Degas' that I saw at the French masters recently. It's just a small painting which is probably the first painting you look at when you enter the exhibition. I stood in front of it for a long time, just absorbing the light and the space he created with light, and the absence of light. And then ofcourse there's his flawless draughtsmanship. Need I say more. But with very little colour, he allows you to enter into his illuminated world of light and space. Magic.

inspirations from Canberra

Paul Cezanne - Rochers pres des grottes au-dessus du Chateau-Noir

The soft eloquence of the colours and the paint strokes made me feel like I was being held in the arms of an angel...

Claude Monet - need I say more! This painting, not very well represented here, brought me to tears. I felt deeply that this was painted from his heart, and that my heart was opened by just standing in front of it. I can't explain why...

A beautiful collection of Jude Rae's paintings were at the Canberra Museum and Gallery, the other dimemsions brought forth with her sparse cool style.

 I took this picture when we came out of the National Portrait Gallery. (which I highly recommend!) It was bucketing down in Canberra. The cab driver told us that they hadn't seen rain like this for four months, maybe 'years'...

does this look wet or what?

I come across works that make me stop, and gaze and lose myself in the world offered, the three dimensions within the two dimensions. And here he does it again! Gerhard Richter, the blend of photography and paint, the surface is another surface, which mystifies and takes you deeper into the undefinable.

Mickalene Thomas

Another artist I discovered by looking into the exhibition at the International Center of Photography called 'Dress Codes'. These works remind me of the Eighties (again!). I can't help thinking about Grace Jones, and Jean Paul Goude, in this marriage of art, black woman, big cat and graphics. Somehow there I sense a subtext of movement and dance too. They are almost caricatures of those previously mentioned qualities, which I attribute to a particular 'thing' going on in my world, at least, in the early Eighties.

painting the digital - eg Gerhard Richter

Here we have Gerhard Richter's painting of Ema (1966), which must have been a sort of premonition of things to come. It really looks like he painted this from a digital image, and quite honestly I'm not sure whether digital was around at that time. Maybe only in watches and computers. (if you know, let me know!). Anyway, I love the cross-over. And I admire his work.

timeless colour gets to us all

Oh I remember coming across Sam Francis when I was at art school three hundred years ago. I found this beautiful work this morning at MOMA. I always thought his work was a little underrated, I guess he was around with those stellar painters like Rothko and Pollock. But his use of colour has always inspired me so much.

Helen Frankenthaler - painter

'Southern Exposure' Serigraph 2006.

I was thinking about women painters who have influenced the way I look at painting, and searched to find Helen Frankenthaler. I was glad to see she is still alive and active. She was married to Robert Motherwell, and influenced by Jackson Pollock. Whenever I come across her work I go 'aaahhh....yes, I've come home', I can sense the feminine Spirit, the languid strokes, lush and sensual, the intimacy of the colours and the open spaces in which your eye can linger.

Mantle Cats pose

Chico, the live cat in this picture, discovered a new place to be above it all. He sat right beneath the painting I did a couple of years ago of his predecessor, Nino. (although, really it always looked more like Kali, the brown Burmese girl, who died last year, after twenty years of being our companion and rowdy family member).
This is also a picture of the work in progress on our new apartment...