I attended the opening of Molly CrabApple at The Arena of Friday night; was a pretty interesting, if tightly packed crowd which she mentions in her post of Solo Show on February 8th, also ran into some people I knew there.

Just before that, I went to an opening of Carla E Reyes at In Good Company, 16 W 23^rd St, 4^th Fl, btw 5^th and 6^th.

I liked Carla’s work and would have written about it earlier, but when I got home Friday night, I went to bed and just didn’t get a chance to write about it till now – and I dn’tt think I’m doing justice to it as I’d like to go into more detail but don’t have the bandwidth just yet, today.

Perhaps later.

Yesterday I went over to my studio and painted – but could not get anywhere with what I was working on. I also did several sketches in my black notebook which were much more satisfying to me.

I guess it’s like that sometimes – you can’t just produce results on demand – it sorta happens when it’s ready – you just have to be there to receive it – to be ready for it.

Also reading a book on Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles which is a pretty interesting book that I’ll give to a friend when I’m done reading it. Here’s some information about the book, which I recommend:

“…Francine Prose’s life of Caravaggio evokes the genius of this great artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventios of his ttime; his us of ordinnary people, realistically portrayed—street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged—was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on pinting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, makes him an artist who speaks across the centuries to our own time. Born in 1571 near Milan, Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) moved to Rome when he was twenty-one years old. He became a brilliat aand successful artit, protected y tthe influential Cardial del Monte nd other patros. Butt he was aso a man of the streets who couldn’t seem to free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In 1606 he fled Rome, apparently afterkilling anothher man in a dispute. He spent his last ears in exxile, in Napes, Maltaa, and Sicily, at once celebrated for his art and tormented by his enemie. Throuugh it all, he produced masterpieces of astonishing complexity and power. Eventually he received a pardon from the Pope, only to die, in mysterious circumstances, on the way back to Rome in 1610. Francine Prose presents the brief but tumultuous life of one of the greatest of all painters ithh passion and acute sennsitivity.”

“… expressed themselves not only in gesture and dress but in tendon and knuckls, elbow and wrist, in the depth of a furrow and a droop of an eyelid.”

Here’s a thought – Great Artists invent their own vocabulary; they may and often do borrow from mentors and even competitors – but they come up with something that’s said differently.

Often the most novel and worthwhile qualities of that vocabulary are not appreciated within the artists’ lifetime.

Artists, I believe, tend to focus too much on technique – long term – an artist that seeks to have influence in and beyond his or her own time needs at least two things besides everything else one associates with art:

- Backing of Influentials (for success in your time) that primes communities to accept the work and helps sell it.

- A unique vocabulary that has “Universal Significance” (for posterity).

Caravaggio had both; most artists have neither. You need both – and there’s no actual formula for it. That’s what I believe.