During a lovely lunch today with friends who know the PDX art scene well – and are part of it – we talked about the disconnect between artists, gallerists and potential patrons. I was relieved not to focus exclusively on current politics on the one hand, but also dismayed, once again, of how difficult it is to get a foothold in the art world. Then again, I’m not working on it either. Where is an agent when woman needs one?

But then I thought of Tiggy Ticehurst. I had met this British artist on the street in NYC, where he simply displayed his current obsession – making fun of contemporary artists who’ve “made it.”  We chatted for a very short time, me signaling that I was amused by his posters, he complaining that most people don’t even get the jokes.

He felt that was particularly troubling given that he “exhibited” in front of the Met or the Whitney or at MOMA where you’d expect the educated classes to congregate.

In any case, he made me smile, and today I thought maybe I just hang up a laundry line in the park blocks, in front of the Portland Art Museum and display the wares. If the weather gods are approving. At least I might get to chat with interesting tourists!

Between the 14th and the 17th century European merchant guilds formed a loose confederation to protect and enhance their commercial interest – it was called the Hanseatic League.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

Bremen was part of this alliance; it has, as so many of the cities that belonged to the League, a rich cultural and architectural history. Most of these cities were wealthy (really wealthy in fact) and for centuries were able to sustain large building activity. They also prominently displayed some of their wealth in sculptural detail, architectural adornments and often through the sheer size of the municipal and religious buildings.

You probably know the city for its fairy tale town musicians who went out for adventures, and so famously insisted that there were worse things than death.  The sign of the live models reads: we are the real Bremen musicians.

With the roads no longer icy, I went there to visit the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum which had a show, ending this week, that juxtaposed her’s with some of Nolde’s works. The two had met for a single week during a stay in Paris in 1900 and comparing their output is fascinating.  I still think she is one of the most daring, focused, observant painters of her era, can’t find the word for the intensity of my admiration for her both as a person and as an artist. I cannot begin to imagine what her paintings would have looked like with the advantage of age – she died so freakishly young.

Nolde is such a master with color that I can almost forgive him his political leanings and obsequiousness – almost. I thought today I saw some hidden violence in almost all of his portraits in the museum, will show more later, at some point.

His nudes were faintly leaning towards the Third Reich culture of body worship, the suggestive hints at superiority ( and so I did not photograph them.) PMB’s nudes, on the other hand, were painted more abstractly, and yet hyper-realistically capturing less than healthy feet, for example, or the bulging noses of older age, or the way pregnancy extends the folds. I found myself holding my breath frequently, just trying to take it in and learn. As I’ve said before, in my next life I’ll be a painter.

The Refugees’ Dreams

If you are interested in seeing my work on paper rather than on the computer screen and would like to hear what I have to say about it, join me on February 5th, from 2 – 4 pm.

2255 NW Northrup – enter through the plaza of the nursing school – gallery is downstairs.

The exhibit runs through February – hope to see you there.

I’m off to my adventures – will blog about travels, when internet access available.

I, for the life of me, cannot tell why the article below and the photos depicting the work made me feel such joy. Perhaps it’s because I frequently run into artificial creatures in the strangest places?

Artists in Detroit putting fake animals on the street that fail to glow in the intended fluorescent toxic green? I guess it has to do with the playfulness of it all – never mind that there is a “message” behind it. The results are somewhat magical – judge for yourself.

Setting Aluminum Animals Loose on the Streets of Detroit

I think in times where worry and fear has us all in their claws, a bit of levity or simple surprise helps.

For the levity part, go here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhAJiz2ixuY

Perhaps you remember the play, I do remember the movie (1968) Lion in Winter. I had a crush on Katherine Hepburn, closely followed by Anthony Hopkins. Peter O’Toole left me cold….

Wikipedia’s synopsis: Set during Christmas 1183 at Henry II of England’s castle in Chinon, Anjou, Angevin Empire, the story opens with the arrival of Henry’s wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he has had imprisoned since 1173. The story concerns the gamesmanship between Henry, Eleanor, their three surviving sons Richard, Geoffrey, and John, and their Christmas Court guest, the King of France, Philip II Augustus (French: Philippe Auguste), who was the son of Eleanor’s ex-husband, Louis VII of France (by his third wife, Adelaide). Also involved is Philip’s half-sister Alais (by Louis VII’s second wife Constance), who has been at court since she was betrothed to Richard at age eight, but has since become Henry’s mistress.

Let us imagine the lions below in these roles. Or let us exchange them for the current king, his imprisoned wife in the White House North, his three children, and whoever the mistress of the moment might be (Henry II was no slouch on that score either…..)

Henry II:

             with Alais

Eleanor of Aquitaine:

The royal boys:

  Anthony on the far right

German artist, working in New York, exhibiting (currently) in Paris. Meet Josephine Meckseper.  gagosian_josephine_meckseper_press_release-2

Her artwork (photo above) and artist statement (in the link above) connects her work to Walter Benjamin’s Arcade Project. I sometimes wonder if just attaching that name and mentioning consumerism makes you seem learned enough that art becomes Art…

You caught me in a cynical mood today. My images are simply photographs from the streets, albeit from those three countries as well.

This one was paired, for the series Fugue, with the poem by German exile Hilde Domin:

Exile

The mouth dying

The mouth twisted

The mouth trying

to say the word right

in a strange language.

Hilde Domin (translated by Eavan Boland)

A friend sent me this link some weeks ago – it is a fun romp through specialty terms in German… most people younger than I would probably be unfamiliar with several of these. Not sure how many not trained or interested in art would know any of them.

https://www.artsy.net/article/the-art-genome-project-6-german-art-terms-you-should-know

Here is the short version:

Wunderkammer – curiosity cabinet

Gesamtkunstwerk – total art work (really “enveloping you in its entirety”)

(Cafe at the Venice Biennale)

Gestalt – form or more likely figure – often misunderstood in the context of psychology….

Kunstwollen – the rarest of these terms – art will – but one of the most interesting, coined in the 1890s in Austria. It’s a political call for autonomous realms of art, freedom for art, but also often read as an expression of a particular’s time era’s or nation’s style.  A kind of Zeitgeist, then.

Einfühlung – empathy, a term used in art history to pave the way for an understanding of abstract expressionist art

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   Engram – a word for the assumed entity that stores personal or collective memory in the brain, as if there’s a representational slide. Hm. My research area was memory. No engrams found. No homunculus in there either, who directs the show…..
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