First lines of Hugh Eakin's "Picasso's War"

 "One afternoon shortly after his forty-first birthday, John Quinn ascended to the top of an undistinguished five-story building on Fifth Avenue. He had come to see the work of an artist who had never been shown in the United States before."

- Hugh Eakin, Picasso's War 

Compelling story of the planning and energy that went into breaking modern art into America. Insightful stories about modern artists, their dealers, and the collectors (well, really just one: John Quinn) that strove to bring the art of Picasso, Braque, et al to the United States. Or, to be more precise, to have this modern art understood by the American public rather than denounced as degenerate. It's hard to imagine pictures arising such passions these days - until you reflect upon the recent trend towards book banning and other censorship and realize that this conservative, puritanical streak has always been part of American society. And, as such, the efforts of Quinn and others are sorely needed to help bring modern ideas and forms into the discussion.

First Lines of John Richardson's "A Life of Picasso Vol 4"

"Of all of the problems besetting Picasso in late 1932, foremost was the misery of married life with his Russian wife, Olga. As recounted in volume III, the former ballerina, who had prided herself, to Picasso's ever-increasing dismay, on being an impeccably ladylike consort and hostess, had become a termagant at home."

- John Richardson, from A Life of Picasso: The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943

Another excellent volume in Richardson's Picasso multi-volume biography. I appreciate how he blends facts, antidotes, and observations about Picasso's artwork in a brisk narrative. He doesn't get too bogged down in details while giving important events the space they need to thrive. My only objection about this book is that it felt too brief: It ended in 1943 as WWII was still raging and affecting everything about Picasso's life. I understand the choice - Picasso's art was about to change as he changed mistresses from Dora Marr to Francoise Gilot (as Richardson puts it, "Picasso's love for [Gilot], and hers for him, would be that of master and pupil rather than master and slave.") Still, I longed for the narrative to continue until the end of the war. With Richardson recently dying, I'm bummed that this will be the last volume and won't continue to cover the latter years of this fascinating artist's life.

First Lines of Maria Popova's "Figuring"

 "This is how I picture it:

A spindly, middle-aged mathematician with a soaring mind, a sunken heart, and bad skin is being thrown about the back of a carriage in the bone-hollowing cold of a German January. Since his youth, he has been inscribing into family books and friendship albums his personal motto, borrowed from a verse by the ancient poet Perseus: "O the cares of man, how much of everything is futile." He has weathered personal tragedies that would level most. He is now racing through the icy alabaster expanse of the countryside in the precarious hope of averting another: Four days after Christmas and two days after his forty-fourth birthday, a letter from his sister has informed him that their widowed mother is on trial for witchcraft--a fact for which he holds himself responsible."

- Maria Popova, from Figuring.

Maria Popova, the author of The Marginalian blog (nee Brain Pickings), is one of the best authors I have ever read. She summarizes the thoughts of top-notch artists and scientists, and links their works to other artists and scientists in a beautiful, thoughtful analysis that also includes artistic imagery (as seen above). The first essay in Figuring is about Johannes Kepler followed by Maria Mitchell, and along the way touches on Emerson, Douglass, Caroline Herschel (the worlds first professional women astronomer) among others. Figuring looks to be a brilliant if unclassifiable examination of the thoughts of our best thinkers on the nature of reality and beauty. I'm relishing this one.

First Lines of Julia Voss' "Hilma af Klint"

 "What kind of world was Hilma af Klint born into in 1862? Which paths were set, which doors were closed, and which were open to a young girl? When the English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft visited Sweden at the end of the eighteenth century, she was appalled by what she saw." 

- Julia Voss, Hilma af Klint, a Biography

I only recently discovered Hilma af Klint's amazing paintings. She creates colorful organic mandala-like patterns that pulse and vibrate with life. This book is one of the first biographies that I know of her life. It's interesting and readable and filled with reproductions and full-color prints. So far my only quibble is that while i'm gaining insights into af Klint's life, it doesn't have the immediacy of seeing her life though her personality (like, say, John Richardson's Picasso bios) perhaps due to the lack of primary materials. Still, there's a lot to learn about af Klint's situation and motivations; one of the most interesting so far is that her work drawing illustrations for veterinarian reference books inspired some of her best paintings:

"The photographs' black backgrounds set off the bright circle of the petri dish where the tiny life forms swarm and grow. Hilma would later use the composition in the 1907 series The Large Figure Paintings, which looked at the world as if through a microscope." p. 108  

I have a print of The Ten Largest No 2 - Childhood and this book helps me to explore it's depths though the eyes of it's creator - no small feat.

The Blue Girl

 An older acrylic painting - can't even remember from when, but memory serves to remind me that it's modeled off of an old girlfriend. I've always struggled with color, but found that a monochrome palate makes shading easier than one that's wide open. Of course, that didn't prevent me from going with blocks of color like in the shade, but here I think it works. I tried to get an icy effect on the window with mixed results. Seeing this one again makes me want to give it another go!

Mother and child

I've always liked this picture I drew of Kelly and Hunter, way back when the H-man was a toddler. I was happy with how the background came out - always a struggle for me. I also find drawing kids hard, and feel that I was able to capture the essence of little Hunter's innocent surprise even if I'm not satisfied technically.

2021 in Art: the Tab Dump

Partly for your benefit, but also partly as a reference for me to come back to, please enjoy the Art-related open tabs I collected over 2021:

Shen Wei at the Elizabeth Stewart Gardner

1. This summer I went through a Paul Klee obsession. More on that later, but until then this is an insightful examination of his famous late work Death and Fire.

2. One of the artists Klee leaned on as he learned how to paint - it took him years to master the craft, was Robert Delaunay. This article about Delaunay's use of color was insightful in how he used color and how it was inspiring to others.

3. We took the family to see Shen Wei: Painting in Motion at the Elizabeth Stewart Gardner museum in the Spring. Such a creative and inspiring collection.

4. The collection Tom Thompson and the group of Seven contains some of the best landscape art I've seen in some time. While painting in diverse styles, the group captures the energy and finds a wild meaning in the rural areas of Canada that I find absolutely compelling. I've tried sketching landscapes like some of the pictures in this book it's much easier said than done.

5. I like the semi-cartoonish quality of Robert Dufresne's paintings. 

Someone pointed me to the compelling posters of Palestinian artist Farah Fayyad. Capturing scenes in posters is an interesting mixture of playing with icons while retaining the individuality of the scene that is quite challenging but powerfully resonant when done well. 

Dogs!

I fell in love with this picture when I drew it years ago - if memory serves it was from an old issue of National Geographic. Dogs can be difficult to capture in line drawings - but I'm happy with how this came out using a mixture of solid blacks with some hashing. 

Dante's Inferno

 Here's an older one I drew when I had the time to take my drawing pad into the MFA. This is Dante from Henri de Triqueti's Dante and Virgil statue. 

Maine Canoeing

 Got inspired a while back to do a drawing of last year's Moose River Bow Trip.

Yesterday's Drawing

Here's a fun picture I drew over ten years ago and inked last week. I love her angular face and the big black blob of a coat.

Peter Garrett

"I know that the sunset empire shudders and shakes
I know there's a floodgate and a raging river...
Sometimes you're beaten to the call
Sometimes you're taken to the wall
But you don't give in"
Sometimes, by Midnight Oil, as sung by Peter Garrett, shown above

Happy Anniversary!

A few days late for celebrating their 10th anniversary, but here's my brother and his lovely wife. To many years more!

It Simply Stops

"A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places."

- Paul Gardner

Miles Drawing

Check out a few pictures I drew for Miles in the last year or so:

Miles' Xmas Present 2018

Miles at 5 years old

Metablogging: I recently realized that I don't have a place where I can show people my drawings. So i'm created a new tag for when I occasionally get inspired to post something i've done: TGMArt.

The Mysterious

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

- Albert Einstein

Random Tab Dump

Have always liked Giovanni Piranesi's (1720–1778) architectural drawings (see some here). Thought of it because the Dish quoted Frances Stonor Saunders, who "suggests that urban wrecks offer a shortcut to self-transcendence, “a steroidal sublime that enables us to enlarge the past since we cannot enlarge the present.”"

400 year old "cubist" art from Giovanni Battista Bracelli. Insane drawings for the time. I'm amazed he wasn't burned at the stake!


The rebooted Cosmos debuted last Sunday. I'm always up for a good space documentary, and this didn't disappoint. Neil deGrasse Tyson - the scientist with the Barry White voice - was excellent as always, and the sfx were impressive. Nice to see a show that's honest about our space in the universe in prime time competing with modern distractions (reality TV!). Just about the only thing I didn't really get was the "Spaceship of the Imagination" but I can deal with it. Looking forward to next week. Until then, here's an interview with Tyson about the series.

Developments in nanotechnology are making the idea of space elevators less far fetched everyday.

What is string theory? Take it away Brian Greene: "It's an attempt to unify all matter and all forces into one mathematical tapestry."