Songs About Art

Pablo Picasso by David Bowie
Swinging on the back porch
Jumping off a big log
Pablo's feeling better now
Hanging by his finger nails

Swinging on the back porch
Jumping off a big log
Pablo's feeling better now
Hanging by his finger nails

Well some people try to pick up girls
They get called assholes
This never happened to Pablo Picasso

The girls would turn the colour of a juicy avocado
When he would drive down their street in his El Dorado

He could walk down your street
Girls could not resist his stare
So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole
Not like you
Wow!

Swinging on the back porch
Jumping off a big log
Pablo's feeling better now
Hanging by his finger nails

Swinging on the back porch
Jumping off a big log
Pablo's feeling better now
Hanging by his finger nails

He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole

Well the girls would turn the colour of a juicy avocado
When he would drive down their street in his El Dorado

Well he was only 5'3"
But girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not in New York
Wow!

Swinging on the back porch
Jumping off a big log
Pablo's feeling better now
Hanging by his finger nails

Swinging on the back porch
Jumping off a big log
Pablo's feeling better now
Hanging by his picture nails

Wordless Wednesday

18th Century French Rococo Sedan Chair

Coloring Page

Another coloring page for those interested; the famous "Sunflowers" by Vincent Van Gogh 1888, originally painted as decoration for Gauguin's room in Arles France.

Wordless Wednesday

"Day of the Iguanas" by Graciela Iturbide

Songs About Art

"In the Gallery" by Dire Straits
...Some people have got to paint and draw
Harry had to work in clay and stone
Like the waves coming to the shore
It was in his blood and in his bones
Ignored by all the trendy boys in London and in Leeds
He might as well have been making toys or strings of beads
He could not be in the gallery

And then you get an artist says he doesn't want to paint at all
He takes an empty canvas and sticks it on the wall
The birds of a feather all the phonies and all of the fakes
While the dealers they get together
And they decide who gets the breaks
And who's going to be in the gallery

No lies he wouldn't compromise
No junk no bits of string
And all the lies we subsidize
That just don't mean a thing
I've got to say he passed away in obscurity
And now all the vultures are coming down from the tree
So he's going to be in the gallery

The Huntington

I have been craving a museum trip lately and yesterday I finally had a chance to go to one; the Huntington Library. According to my parents I had been there before, but I have no memory of it, and for some reason the Huntington was not on the list of museums we had to visit for Chapman. So yesterday my mom and I maneuvered our way through freeways and hunted for little "Huntington Library" signs, hidden throughout the affluent Pasadena area, until we made our way into the crowded parking lot. It was the opening day of an orchid show and the "Greene and Greene" exhibit, so we were accompanied by a whole slew of orchid lovers and architecture enthusiasts. It was nice to get out though, I needed some culture.

Amongst the other art lovers and students writing papers, there was also a group of boyscouts. They made me laugh when I overheard them discussing Gainsborough's Blue Boy, "That outfit looks itchy." Yup, I suppose it does.



This device is intriguing, at the center of the rings is the earth. Yup, the universe rotating around the earth.





This was my favorite portrait; I like the informality of the pose. Of course the subject reading seems appropriate for the location as well.

There is a family of deer...

...that roam around in my back yard. This morning I heard them outside my window and ran to grab my camera. By the time I got back to my window the doe and the buck were gone but the two fawns stayed in my sight long enough to catch them on film.

Blog Action Day

This years Blog Acton Day topic is poverty. One of my all time favorite artists, Dorothea Lange, seems the perfect artist to feature for this topic. A documentary photographer, her most famous project was the documentation of migrant farm workers and their families during The Great Depression for the U.S. Farm Security Administration; the FSA was interested in the living conditions of those hired to work in cotton fields and farms in Arizona and California. Though she did document those conditions, her photographs told more of the workers and their spirit than of any environment. I love the way her framing highlights the pursed, determined lips, and furrowed brows. I am fascinated by the strong hands, worn from working in the fields and posed against withered faces. These portraits do more to highlight the character of the workers than any report on living conditions is truly intended to do. This is why Dorothea is one of the photographic greats; here are some of my favorites.

Wordless Wednesday

Richard Avedon "Dovima with Elephants"

Why is it...

...that workout videos have such terrible music? I have a weird schedule lately and it's just easier to find a cardio video to do when I have time. However, they all make me want to vomit. Why is it that each one has some cheesy techno beat that runs throughout the program while some former cheer leader shouts out commands that I dance as if I'm in a '90s dance club. Even the videos that have dance moves that look like fun have terrible techno crap as music. How hard would it be to just put some normal songs on one of these workouts, classic rock anyone? I'm sure it has something to do with copyrights, but there has to be a better alternative than finding a techno drum beat that reminds me of something I used to create on my mom's plastic Casio piano. My yoga dvds are fine, but then again it's hard to mess up a soundtrack when it basically consists of a steady cello line accompanied by a new agey flute and harp. *Sigh* I mean *deep inhale...and...exhale*

Songs About Art

Sadly, I couldn't find this song in English, so those who don't speak French will have to read the English lyrics posted bellow.
"Pavement Artist" from Mary Poppins

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey
Chim chim cher-oo!
I does what I likes and I likes what I do

Today I'm a screever and as you can see
A screever's an artist of 'ighest degree
And it's all me own work
From me own memory

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey
Chim chim cher-oo!
I draws what I likes and I likes what I drew
No remuneration do I ask of you
But me cap would be glad of a copper or two

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey
Chim chim cher-oo!
La dum, de da dum
da da da da dum
Mmm hmm...

Arts Vote

I am well aware that there are more pressing issues in this presidential election; economics, environment, health care, etc. However, one issue that interests me is how our presidential candidates feel about arts funding. I recently found a website called ArtsVote that specifically highlights the Democratic and Republican platforms concerning the arts and arts education. The following is an excerpt from the Democratic fact sheet.

"To remain competitive in the global economy, America needs to reinvigorate the kind of creativity and innovation that has made this country great. To do so, we must nourish our childrens creative skills. In addition to giving our children the science and math skills they need to compete in the new global context, we should also encourage the ability to think creatively that comes from a meaningful arts education. Unfortunately, many school districts are cutting instructional time for art and music education. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that the arts should be a central part of effective teaching and learning. The Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts recently said “The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.”

Dr. Sketchy

The traditional academic life drawing class; subdued, classical poses. Dr. Sketchy is the opposite of that academic environment. It was founded in 2005 by an artist in Brooklyn, Molly Crabapple. In her explanation of the project she states, "We combed New York to find the most beautiful burlesque dancers, the most bizarre circus freaks, and the most rippling hunks of man. Then, every other Saturday, we let you draw them for three hours. Interspersed with posing are comedy skits and ridiculous drawing contests (best left handed drawing? Best incorporation of a woodland animal?)" Sounds like fun to me.

R.I.P. Larry

Larry is gone. I noticed while walking across the bridge today. The beautiful sculpture molded by the hands of a creative chaperon about a week ago disappeared some time today. I was hoping he would survive the season, but some one stole him from his home. Poor Larry, I will miss your smiling purple face.

Wordless Wednesday

"The Red Lacquer Box" by Henry R Rittenberg 1879

Hidden Van Gogh

This article was written by Stephen Adams for The Telegraph

Previous research had discovered an outline of the peasant's head behind the Dutch painter's later work, Patch of Grass.

But this latest technique, which has never been used before, has unveiled the pigments van Gogh used in the original painting.

Over two days the scientists bombarded the painting with a powerful pencil-thin beam of X-rays, which caused the atoms in the picture to release "fluorescent" X-rays of their own which the scientists measured.

As the different chemicals that van Gogh used to paint the image release differing amounts of fluorescence, they were able to map the picture in great detail.

Elements from specific paint pigments allowed the team - led by Dr Joris Dik, from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and Professor Koen Janssens from the University of Antwerp in Belgium, - to build up a "colour photo" of the picture.

They said the distribution of two chemicals, mercury and antimony, were particularly useful in reconstructing the image.

Vermillion, the red pigment important for pink flesh tones, contains the former while antimony is a component of Naples yellow, which van Gogh also used to paint the woman's face.

Writing in the journal Analytical Chemistry, they said: "We present the first-time use of synchrotron radiation based X-ray fluorescence mapping, applied to visualise a woman's head hidden under the work Patch of Grass by van Gogh.

"We recorded decimetre-scale X-ray fluorescence intensity maps, reflecting the distribution of specific elements in the paint layers. In doing so, we succeeded in visualising the hidden face with unprecedented detail."

Experts in van Gogh believe he often over-painted his work, doing so on about a third of his early works.

Art historians think van Gogh painted the peasant's image while staying in the Dutch village of Nuenen in 1884 or 1885.

Banned Books

I know I'm a little behind on Banned Books Week, but I'm posting a list of books anyways. These are all books that, at one time or another, were banned. Some of my favorite books of all time are in this list; I've marked the books that I have read in bold.

# The Bible
# Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
# Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
# Arabian Nights
# Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
# Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
# Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
# Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
# Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
# Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
# Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
# Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
# Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
# Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
# Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
# Dracula by Bram Stoker
# Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
# Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
# Essays by Michel de Montaigne
# Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
# History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
# Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
# Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
# Ulysses by James Joyce
# Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
# Animal Farm by George Orwell
# Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
# Candide by Voltaire
# To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
# Analects by Confucius
# Dubliners by James Joyce
# Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
# Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
# Red and the Black by Stendhal
# Capital by Karl Marx
# Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
# Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
# Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
# Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
# Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
# Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
# Jungle by Upton Sinclair
# All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
# Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
# Lord of the Flies by William Golding
# Diary by Samuel Pepys
# Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
# Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
# Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
# Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
# Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
# One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
# Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
# Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
# Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
# Color Purple by Alice Walker
# Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
# Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
# Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison
# Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
# One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
# East of Eden by John Steinbeck
# Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
# I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
# Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
# Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
# Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
# The Talmud
# Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
# Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
# Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
# American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
# Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
# A Separate Peace by John Knowles
# Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
# Red Pony by John Steinbeck
# Popol Vuh
# Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
# Satyricon by Petronius
# James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
# Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
# Black Boy by Richard Wright
# Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
# Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
# Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
# Metaphysics by Aristotle
# Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
# Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
# Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
# Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
# Sanctuary by William Faulkner
# As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
# Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
# Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
# Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
# Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
# A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
# Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
# Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
# Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
# Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
# Nana by Émile Zola
# Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
# Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
# Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
# Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
# Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
# Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Wordless Wednesday

"First Oil Well Burning" by James Hamilton 1853-1894