Cave Art
Geometric forms and paintings, at Marsoulas in France. The form and energy of the animals in ancient cave paintings are electrifying to see, even second-hand. There's the suggestion that some of the geometric signs may be precursors of writing systems.
(https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23230990-700-in-search-of-the-very-first-coded-symbols/)
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-humanoid-stain-ehrenreich
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Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, 1602 Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560 –1627)
Cotan was born and raised in Toledo, Spain. After a career as an artist in Toledo he became a monk in a Carthuisan monastery in Granada.
"Even if you did not know that Sánchez Cotán was a seventeenth-century Spanish priest, you could know that the painter was religious: for this picture is a visual testimony of gratitude for the beauty of those things that sustain us. Once you have seen it, and concentrated your attention on it, you will never take the existence of the humble cabbage—or of anything else—quite so much for granted, but will see its beauty and be thankful for it. The painting is a permanent call to contemplation of the meaning of human life, and as such it arrested people who ordinarily were not, I suspect, much given to quiet contemplation.
The same holds true with the work of the great Dutch still-life painters. On the neo-atheist view, the religious connection between Catholic Spain and Protestant Holland is one of conflict, war, and massacre only: and certainly one cannot deny this history. And yet something more exists. As with Sánchez Cotán, only a deep reverence, an ability not to take existence for granted, could turn a representation of a herring on a pewter plate into an object of transcendent beauty, worthy of serious reflection." (Dalrymple)
I don't think this is particularly an argument for theism or even religion in general, but I enjoyed Theodore Dalrymple's reflections (above) on this painting in an article on the thought of neo-atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, in the City Journal, Autumn, 2007.
London artist, Richard Kolker, did the painting below - 'After Cotan'.
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The Avenue at Middleharnis, Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709)
I'd liked this painting for many years. Then when I was in the Netherlands in 1994, I was on a bus in the south of Holland and saw a sign - Middleharnis 3 km. The landscape outside the bus looked like this, with huge clouds above. Apparently, this scene has changed very little since Hobbema painted it in 1689.
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Ilam, Don Peebles (1922-2010)
Don Peebles was my wife's uncle. I enjoyed meeting him on a number of family occasions. He was an unassuming, witty man, very influential in New Zealand art.
Don Peebles was my wife's uncle. I enjoyed meeting him on a number of family occasions. He was an unassuming, witty man, very influential in New Zealand art.
Don Peebles
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Painting by Janie Porter (Diamond Harbour, Canterbury)
In June, 2017, I was browsing through the online catalogue of an Auckland art gallery and came across a landscape oil painting by the Canterbury painter, Janie Porter: in a little commentary beside the painting, she mentioned a line by the poet Basil Dowling as the inspiration. I'd been reading Dowling's poetry for many years and immediately emailed Janie Porter to see whether the painting was still for sale. It had sold, she told me, but in the correspondence that followed she suggested that she do a painting for me based on a Dowling poem. I chose lines from his poem, Summer Afternoon -
Over the hill white clouds in prosperous masses
Shepherd their shadow on the sunburnt grasses
Shepherd their shadow on the sunburnt grasses
While summer day to summer evening passes.
The painting arrived two months later, carefully wrapped and protected. There was an accompanying note:
Artist's comment:
Clouds were integral to this verse. They are 'white ... in prosperous masses' yet they are also heralding in the evening.
On one side of my studio is a large window. Over the days that I composed this painting, clouds came and went constantly across the hills. Rising and falling, massing and dispersing, reflecting the tones of the day.
Janie Porter
Artist's comment:
Clouds were integral to this verse. They are 'white ... in prosperous masses' yet they are also heralding in the evening.
On one side of my studio is a large window. Over the days that I composed this painting, clouds came and went constantly across the hills. Rising and falling, massing and dispersing, reflecting the tones of the day.
Janie Porter
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Cave Rock, Margaret Stoddart (1865-1934)
I bought this painting in 2014. My mother admired the work of Margaret Stoddart, often spoke of her and, at least once, wrote about her.
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I read this book on a seat near the pond during many lunchtimes at Wintec, June, 2018.
"In this brilliant collection of diverse works-essays, short stories, poems, translations-which spans a lifetime's engagement with art, John Berger reveals how he came to his own unique way of seeing. He challenges readers to rethink their every assumption about the role of creativity in our lives. Paying homage to the writers and thinkers who influenced him, he pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his artist's eye makes him a storyteller, rather than a critic. His expansive perspective takes in artistic movements and individual artists-from the Renaissance to the present-while never neglecting the social and political context of their creation. Landscapes-alongside Portraits-completes a tour through the history of art that will be an intellectual benchmark for many years to come."
On John Berger, by Joshua Sperling, in Aeon
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Andy Goldsworthy - born in England (1956), now living and working in Penpont, Scotland.
I found the art of Goldsworthy some years ago and loved the fragility and transience of his outdoor art: the more enduring art is in the photographs he takes of his works.
According to Goldsworthy, "Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit."
Eva Llorens Roca
