Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself.

Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (often referred to as “the wise”) (April 26, 121 – March 17, 180) was Roman Emperor from 161 to his death in 180. He was the last of the “Five Good Emperors”, and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. His tenure was marked by wars in Asia against a revitalized Parthian Empire, and with Germanic tribes along the Limes Germanicus into Gaul and across the Danube. A revolt in the East, led by Avidius Cassius, failed.

Marcus Aurelius’ work Meditations, written in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, is still revered as a literary monument to a government of service and duty and has been praised for its “exquisite accent and its infinite tenderness.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius

Never leave a painting mediocre; it’s better to take a chance with it

Guy Corriero

Although I have always drawn, my formal art education began at the School of Visual Arts in NY and continued at C.W.Post College where I studied painting with Jules Olitsky and sculpture with Pierre Bourdelle. Immediately after graduation I entered the United State Marine Corps and was assigned to the Marine Corps Gazette as an illustrator. There I learned skills which I was able to use upon my discharge when I worked as a commerical artist in New York. A part time job at the State University of New York at Farmingdale soon led to a full time position in the Commercial Art Division at the college. Shortly after receiving my Master’s from Hostra University, I moved to Upstate New York where I assisted in the establishment of a Fine Arts curriculum at Herkimer County Community College. I enjoyed my teaching career and still recall many wonderful experiences with the enthusiastic young men and women in my classes. Shortly before retiring I received the New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Sharon and I divide our time now between Portland, ME and San Miquel de Allende, MX. where I love painting the scenes and people of this wonderful colonial city.

My approach to painting is constantly changing. I paint both out of doors and in the studio. As one might imagine this apparent inconsistant approach can be most frustrating. Before I begin a painting I pace the floor, make unnecessary phone calls and trips to the store just to delay getting down to the intense business of producing a painting. Even minutes before I put brush to paper I have not decided what subject matter I am going to paint or in what medium. Studies are sometimes done but most often I begin in an attempt to recreate a scene I have in my mind. I do, however, always have a mental and/or drawn value plan. It’s my belief that the piece will be successful if the values are well thought out and kept to a minimum. I am consistant with my palette colors, or I’d drive myself crazy. The challenge really comes down to painting what I have envisioned in my mind’s eye. At times I come really close to the image but often the painting takes on a life of its own. The latter doesn’t always work but when it does, its an award winner. All of the paintings which led to my acceptance as a signature member of AWS were done on location. Conversely, all those paintings which have been accepted into their annual exhibitions have been in studio!

My professional achievements include signature memberships in many watercolor societies including the American Watercolor Society. I have had many one person as well as group shows in galleries, museums and art centers in New York, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maine, Florida, Michigan and San Miquel de Allende, Mexico. I have been honored to receive many awards and purchase prizes in these exhibits.

Currently I show my paintings, both oil and watercolor, in galleries in New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont and Mexico. There are also seventeen instructional videos ranging from painting, sculpture, art history and art appreciation available for sale from Educational Videos of Huntsville, Texas.

http://www.guycorriero.com/NewFiles/bio.html

Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

Eric Gill

Eric Gill was one of the most colourful figures in early 20th century art, despite the majority of his prints being in black and white. Sculptor, typographer, and writer, it was the unequalled clarity of line of his engravings that have made his work so sought after.

Gill’s subject matter swung between the deeply religious and the highly erotic, a direct echo of his eccentric life.

His prints first appeared invariably in tiny editions or as illustrations in limited edition books, such as those he illustrated for the Golden Cockerel Press. We are fortunate that in 1929 his friend and publisher, Douglas Cleverdon, produced a book of his prints, all printed from the original blocks. This was followed 5 years later by a second similar book, this time published by Faber.

Unless otherwise stated the prints available for purchase on this site are from one or other of these volumes.

http://www.ericgill.com/

In whatever one does there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart.

Henri Cartier – Bresson

French, b. 1908, d. 2004

Born in Chanteloup, Seine-et-Marne, Henri Cartier-Bresson developed a strong fascination with painting early on, and particularly with Surrealism. In 1932, after spending a year in the Ivory Coast, he discovered the Leica – his camera of choice thereafter – and began a life-long passion for photography. In 1933 he had his first exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. He later made films with Jean Renoir.

Taken prisoner of war in 1940, he escaped on his third attempt in 1943 and subsequently joined an underground organization to assist prisoners and escapees. In 1945 he photographed the liberation of Paris with a group of professional journalists and then filmed the documentary Le Retour (The Return).

In 1947, with Robert Capa, George Rodger, David ‘Chim’ Seymour and William Vandivert, he founded Magnum Photos. After three years spent travelling in the East, in 1952 he returned to Europe, where he published his first book, Images à la Sauvette (published in English as The Decisive Moment).

He explained his approach to photography in these terms: ‘for me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. … It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.’

From 1968 he began to curtail his photographic activities, preferring to concentrate on drawing and painting. In 2003, with his wife and daughter, he created the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris for the preservation of his work. Cartier-Bresson received an extraordinary number of prizes, awards and honorary doctorates. He died at his home in Provence on 3 August 2004, a few weeks short of his 96th birthday.

http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.Biography_VPage&AID=2K7O3R14T50B

Art is literacy of the heart

Elliot Eisner

Elliot Eisner is emeritus professor of Art and Education at Stanford University. He is active in several fields including arts education, curriculum reform, qualitative research.

Originally trained in the visual arts, Eisner received his Ph.D in education from the University of Chicago in the 1960s, where he studied with Joseph Schwab, Bruno Bettelheim, and Phillip Jackson.

Eisner’s work has supported Discipline-Based Art Education, and he developed the importance of forms of representation in education. During the 1980s, he had a number of exchanges with Denis C. Phillips regarding the status of qualitative research for educational understanding. Eisner also had a well-known debate with Howard Gardner as to whether a work of fiction such as a novel could be submitted as a dissertation (Eisner believed it could, and some novels have since been successfully submitted).

Eisner publishes regularly; his works include hundreds of articles and over a dozen books. He also frequently speaks before teachers, administrators, and at professional conferences.

Eisner has served as president of many professional organizations, including the American Educational Research Association, the National Art Education Association, and the John Dewey Society. In 2005, he received the Grawemeyer Award.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_W._Eisner

Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us.

Roy Adzak

Adzak, who is best known for his plant and animal “dehydrations” and for the Anthropometric man series, built the studio with his own hands in the 1980s, along with the permanent sculpture garden. There are frequent temporary exhibitions of painting, drawing and sculpture by associated artists.

Birth 1927

Death 1987

http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Paris/Museums-Paris/Adzak.shtml

Any work of architecture that has with it some discussion, some polemic, I think is good. It shows that people are interested, people are involved

Happy Birthday Richard Meier

Richard Meier was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1934. Richard Meier graduated from Cornell University in 1957 then worked with a series of architects, including Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and Marcel Breuer. Richard Meier established his own practice in 1963.
His practice has included housing and private residences, museums, high-tech and medical facilities, commercial buildings and such major civic commissions as courthouses and city halls in the United States and Europe: Among his most well-known projects are the High Museum in Atlanta; the Frankfurt Museum for Decorative Arts In Germany; Canal+ Television Headquarters in Paris; the Hartford Seminary In Connecticut; the Atheneun in New Harmony, Indiana, and the Bronx Developmental Center in New York. All of these have received National Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

In 1984, Mr. Richard Meier was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the field’s highest honor and often equated with the Nobel Prize. In the same year, Mr. Richard Meier was selected architect for the prestigious commission to design the new $1 billion Getty Center in Los Angeles, California.

Richard Meier has maintained a specific and unalterable attitude toward the design of buildings from the moment Richard Meier first entered architecture. Although his later projects show a definite refinement from his earlier projects, Richard Meier clearly authored both based on the same design concepts. With admirable consistency and dedication, Richard Meier has ignored the fashion trends of modern architecture and maintained his own design philosophy. Richard Meier has created a series of striking, but related designs. Richard Meier usually designs white Neo-Corbusian forms with enameled panels and glass. These structure usually play with the linear relationships of ramps and handrails. Although all have a similar look, Richard Meier manages to generate endless variations on his singular theme.

Richard Meier, the main figure in the “New York Five”, which by the second half of the 1960’s, included some of the leaders of the Post-Modern movement – Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Michael Graves and Charles Gwathmey, creates designs with a unified theme based on neo-modern beliefs in purist architecture. Richard Meier ‘s white sculptural pieces have created a new vocabulary of design for the 1980s.

The three of the most significant concepts of Richard Meier ‘s work are Light, Color and Place. His architecture shows how plain geometry, layered definition of spaces and effects of light and shade, allow Richard Meier to create clear and comprehensible spaces. The main issue Richard Meier is focusing on as an architect, is what Richard Meier termed placeness: “What is it that makes a space a place.” According to Richard Meier there are ten factors that connect a building to its environment, one or more of which must be present for a space to be a place: factors which cause the Mode of Being; those which emphasize the presence of the building as an independent object; factors which emphasize the presence of the building in its given environment; those which encourage fantasy and play; factors which encourage ecstatic exuberance; factors which preserve a sense of mystery and adventure; ingredients which connect us to reality; those which link the building to its past; facilitate spontaneous exchanges; and affirm people’s identity.

On the grounds of such theoretical definitons, it is interesting to see how space is transformed in Richard Meier ‘s architecture, from a rational play of forms into transcendental, quintessential forms framed by and interlaced in landscape. Especially in view of such declarations as: “Places are goals or foci where we experience the meaningful events of our existence, but there are also points of departure from which we orient ourselves and take possession of the environment. A place is something that evokes a notion of permanence and stability in us.”

The Atheneum (1975-1979) is a Tourist and Information Center situated on the banks of the Wabash River on the outskirts of the historic city of New Harmony. Setting the three-story building diagonally to the river, gives the project a dynamic dimension asa departure point for the tour path. Fragments of the city framed in the windows of the exhibit space prepare the visitor for a general view seen from the roof gallery. Here, “sense of place” is achieved through a series of visual, physical or psychological experiences which gradually establish a relationship to the past, represented by the historic city. Porcelain panels, clear glass, constant play of wall thickness, the breadth of vistas, the height of the columns and openings which interconnect with one another, all create dynamic facades that change according to the interior and exterior experience of the building.

Hartford Seminary of Theology (1978-1981) in Connecticut is a relatively small building (3,000 sqm.), which includes all the campus functions originally distributed in various buildings: the church, Congress Hall, library, bookshop, classrooms, and administration. A building of spirituality, the integral values and characteristics of space and light are radiated without any false pretensions. As a religious introversive institution that also serves the community, the building is based on a fine separation between public and private space. The filtered light, clean forms and expressionist textures successfully contribute to endow a rather sacred atmosphere without disturbing the virtue of openness.

His white is never white since it is subject to constant change through the forces of nature: the sky, the weather, the vegetation, the clouds and, of course – the light. This is clearly portrayed in The High Museum of Art in Atlanta (1980-1983) – a project that has become Richard Meier ‘s hallmark in many respects – a classical manifestation of his profound allegiance to whiteness. A combination of asymmetrical compositions of various types of planes and masses based on transparent straight and curvilinear walls, form the exterior of the building. Its entrance atrium at the corner of one of the four clusters presents a tribute and memorandum to the Guggenheim museum. Yet unlike the original, in this museum a majestic ramp only provides access between the various levels, while the atrium walls include windows to allow for a view of the city brinqinq in natural light.

Spatial clarity and visual diversity create a clear hierarchy of spaces, giving the building a “classical” expression, in spite of its asymmetrical appearance. The monastic whiteness of the interior space maintains the minimalist presence of architecture in relationship to the exhibits, while the natural light causes a constantly changing interior.

The Museum for the Decorative Arts in Frankfurt (1979-1985) is another manifestation of Richard Meier ‘s sense of historic order. Here, Richard Meier converts the plan of a 19th century Villa Melzer into a public complex, reinforcing the connection with the unique historical context. Composed of two tilted grids, the plan balances the deviations of the original building in relation to the river. The choice of Richard Meier ‘s light and white scheme corresponds to the open character of space. Yet, unlike the use of light in Classical or Renaissance architecture, in this building the spiritual illuminating scheme of a Baroque character is adopted. Here again, illumination is not just perceived as a visual occurrence, but rather as an emotional and even spiritual phenomenon. Light and color do not just draw out the structural and functional properties of the building, but also call out an aesthetic response, creating a unique atmosphere, which generates positive emotions. Thus, the continuous dialogue between the building, its environment and its essential functionalism, acquires a didactic meaning.

Situated on a hill above Santa Monica, Los Angeles, the Paul Getty Center (1984-1997) is the most comprehensive work of Richard Meier, yet nonetheless a proof of the final decline of Post-Modernism. However, some would say that this ostentatious project recalls the timeless beauty of sixteenth century Italian villas and gardens, perhaps that of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli. The campus consists of six principal buildings that are situated on two natural ridges incorporated into the site’s topography. The tilting of the plan (that has tumed into Richard Meier ‘s light motive) is based here on the relationship between the route of the freeway to San Diego and the topographic orientation of the site.

Richard Meier ‘s choice of materials in this complex is quite untypical. Although the structure is clear and decipherable, it is complex in plan and overly rich in texture. The play of volumes and proportions, manifested in the cascade of terraces and balconies, flow of ramps, galleries, arcades and staircases, weave the interplay of nature and architecture, yet reflects affinity to Classical architecture.

Thus, one may conclude that the Getty Center portrays three key points that characterize good architecture: interaction, consistency and unity. Architectural quality is experienced when “architecture can be used for a long span of time, when it ages beautifully, is original, comprehensible and simple to use”.

http://architect.architecture.sk/richard-meier-architect/richard-meier-architect.php

Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.

Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko, one of the foremost members of the Abstract Expressionist movement was born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in Russia. In 1913, Rothko, with his mother and sister, immigrated to Portland, Oregon, where they were reunited with his father and two brothers, who had emigrated from Russia previously. After studying at Yale for two years (1921-23), Rothko settled in New York in 1925. In this same year, he began to study painting at the Art Students League under Max Weber. This was Rothko’s only formal artistic training. In 1928, at the time of his first group exhibition at a New York gallery, he established a close friendship with Milton Avery, whose simplified forms and flat color areas informed Rothko’s art.

In 1929 Rothko took a position teaching children at the Center Academy, Brooklyn Jewish Center, a job he retained until 1952. He had his first one-person show in New York in 1933 at the Contemporary Arts Gallery. In 1934 Rothko participated in the organization of the Artists’ Union and later became involved in the American Artists’ Congress and the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. Also in 1934, he joined the newly established Gallery Secession in New York, but a year later he and several other artists left it to form a loosely associated group of progressive artists called The Ten (or The Ten Who Are Nine). From 1936 to 1937, Rothko was working in the Federal Works Progress Administration’s easel project, established during the Depression as a means of supporting artists. The late 1940s marked the beginning of his color field paintings, works for which he is known. In these works he used the technique of soak-staining, applying thinned paint onto the canvas to create abstract fields of color, horizontal cloud-like rectangles, which pervade the picture space with their lyrical presence. His large canvases, typical of his mature style, establish a one-on-one correspondence with the viewer, giving human scale to the experience of the painting and intensifying the effects of color. As a result, the paintings produce in the responsive viewer a sense of the ethereal and a state of spiritual contemplation. Through color alone—applied to suspended rectangles within abstract compositions—Rothko’s work evokes strong emotions ranging from exuberance and awe to despair and anxiety, suggested by the hovering and indeterminate nature of his forms.

During the summers of 1947 and 1949, he was a guest instructor at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco. He also taught at Brooklyn College, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Tulane University. From 1958 to 1969, he worked on three major commissions: monumental canvases for the Four Seasons Restaurant and Seagram Building, both in New York; murals for the Holyoke Center, Harvard University; and canvases for the chapel at the Institute of Religion and Human Development, Houston, known worldwide as “The Rothko Chapel.” The dark and somber works he created for the chapel are thought by some to foreshadow the artist’s suicide in 1970.

http://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/bios/rothko-bio.htm

In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist’s obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.

Happy Birthday Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti was born on 10th October 1901 in Borgonovo in Val Bregaglia to Giovanni, a neo-impressionist painter, and Annetta Stampa. He had a happy childhood. His father introduced him to working in the atelier, his godfather (the painter Cuno Amiet) taught him the latest styles and techniques, and the other members of his family assisted with his artistic development by sitting for him as models. In 1916, during high school, he displayed total mastery of impressionist language in a portrait of his mother modelled with plastilina. He left high school and moved to Geneva to attend the School of Fine Arts. Following a trip to Venice and Rome in 1920, during which he developed a passion for the work of Tintoretto and Giotto, he resolved to recover the innocent gaze of man’s origins through primitive art and anthropology. In 1922 he moved to Paris to attend the courses of sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and partly experimented with the Cubist method. In 1925 his brother Diego joined him in Paris and became his permanent assistant. Alberto shared a sympathy for the surrealist movement with the Swiss artists he met in Paris and in 1927 began to display his first surrealist sculptures at the Salon des Tuileries. Success was not long in coming and Alberto began to frequent artists such as Arp, Mirò, Ernst and Picasso and writers including Prévert, Aragon, Eluard, Bataille and Queneau. He became firm friends with Breton and wrote and drew for his magazine Le surréalisme au Service de la Révolution. But Giacometti felt the need to return to the idea of “absolute resemblance” and after his father’s death in 1933 shut himself off in period of a renewed apprenticeship. From 1935 to 1940 he concentrated on the study of the human head, starting from the gaze, considered the seat of thoughts. He also drew entire figures in an attempt to capture the identity of individual human beings with a single glance. In this period he met Picasso and Beckett and established a dialogue with Sartre which was to influence the work of both. He spent the Second World War years in Geneva. In 1946 he returned to Paris and met up again with his brother Diego, beginning a new artistic phase in which his statues became stretched out, their limbs elongated in a space that contained and complemented them. In 1962 he received the Grand Prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennial. In his later years he worked frenetically and displayed his work at a sequence of large exhibitions throughout Europe. Although seriously ill, he went to New York in 1965 for his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. As his last work he prepared the text for the book Paris sans fin, a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived. He died on 11 January 1966 and is buried in Borgonovo, close to his parents.

http://www.italica.rai.it/eng/principal/topics/bio/giacometti1.htm

One of the wonderful things about a museum is how you’re jolted into confronting art from strange and wonderful civilizations and you look and learn and expand your horizons.

 Sister Wendy Beckett

She was born in South Africa and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland. She became a nun in 1946 in the order of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She was sent to England to begin her novitiate and studied at St Anne’s College at Oxford, where she was awarded a Congratulatory First. Outside of her academic studies, she lived in a convent that maintained a strict code of silence.

After attending a teacher’s training college in Liverpool and earning a teaching diploma in 1954, she returned to South Africa to teach at the University of the Witwatersrand. Health problems in 1970 forced her to abandon teaching and return to England to live in the grounds of a Carmelite monastery. She spent many years translating Medieval Latin scripts before deciding to pursue her favourite subject of art in 1980.

Obtaining papal permission for her to become a Consecrated Virgin in 1970, Sister Wendy’s order arranged for her to live under the protection of the Carmelite nuns at their monastery at Quidenham, Norfolk, in the east of England. She leads a contemplative lifestyle, and currently lives in a caravan on the grounds. Besides receiving the Carmelite prioress and a nun who brings her provisions, she dedicates her life solely to monastic solitude and prayer, but allows herself two hours of work per day.

In 2007, Sister Wendy gave her blessing to Postcards From God, a new West End musical penned loosely around the events in her life.

She was caricatured by the character ‘Sister Bendy’ in the television show Eurotrash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Beckett