Too bad I wasn’t in Denver yesterday…well…I’m rarely in Denver at all ..but if I had been, I’d would have gone to a group opening at Robischon Gallery for a friend, Marsha Wooley, who had 4 paintings in the show.

I reviewed Marsha’s New York art opening last year and also went on a Paris Trip with a group of painters she led in late May/early June in Paris and Aix-en-Provence.   I definably want to do that trip again, hopefully next year.

I met with Marsha Wooley yesterday to discuss art and the Paris Trip she leads on a yearly basis; I don’t have the one for 2007 yet and there’s much time to make a trip like that come together with time, money, family or all three.   

I ended up following Marsha uptown to see the opening of Janet Fish at the DC MOORE Gallery - which was crowded and attended by a couple of other well known artists including Alex Katz (who I did not speak to), and I decided not to talk with Janet Fish but I could have.  Most of my questions were covered in the press release which is also on Artnet.  If Janet Fish were someone I’d really wanted to talk to….I would have, yet despite knowing of her for 20 years (since my summer in Vermont during 1987) I did not feel a need to connect.

I found Janet Fish’s work even in quality and, more or less, predictable - still overall, pretty good (but not cutting edge).   I guess Janet Fish can get attention without being shocking and annoying (which is so common today in both painting and online media).  People are so saturated with media messages – to just be yourself - to just paint, and make attractive paintings, takes a certain about of courage.  Because selling out today, might be to attempt to be “cutting edge” and not being “yourself”.    So, whatever you think of Janet Fish, she stays within her range.  

However, risk taking, I think, is what makes Art and Artists really interesting.  If you don’t take some risks in your work, it’s easy to knock out work, and she had a lot of work at the opening, and I’m told, most of the show was sold out (I did not look at the price list, I’m sure Janet Fish’s paintings are expensive).

You can see a collection of what was in the show here but I took some photos too – and here’s what I liked.

This red vase was part of a painting I liked – the red symbolized something, and I could feel it.  Is the red vase symbolic of something in the artist’s life that’s broken or is it just a vase she toppled so it would make more of an “effect” which the broken glass?  I guess we’ll never know because I did not ask her. 

But I’d like to think these arrangements work because they are also symbolic of something broken in the Artist’s life and she’s conveying that with the “red” vase – and the red carries because it’s fused with her feelings.  And it’s not the red vase that’s broken, it’s the blue glass jar .. and who knows that that means?   Oh well, I can go on and on at this level, but as along as a painting poses a question – it’s interesting,

I think all of Janet Fish’s work has color – color tone – each painting has it’s own range – in some it’s reddish, and in other lilac while others could be Naples yellow.

So, while her work is predictable – there’ passion in it = and it’s probably among the best that you’ll see on 57th Street. 

I could say more, but I’ll stop here – best to stop while your ahead. Right?

I still did not get fully down what the next step for the Paris trip – but I hope I got the ball rolling – would have liked to have a brochure but ended bumping into Marsha Wooley as she was leaving her gallery here, and she left the brochures at the gallery.  Maybe I got enough information as it was.

I usually paint on Saturdays but I’ll probably be meeting with Marsha Wooley, a Denver artist, who is in town this week for the annual Collage Art Association conference here in New York.  I’ve interviewed Marsha Wooley last year for ArtNewYorkCity.com – I put a lot of work in that interview which actually have two parts.

Actually, I’m interested in the Paris trip that Marsha conducts through the college she teaches at in Colorado; I’d actually like to go but I don’t think I’m going to have the time or money (one or the other, or both) – and then again, I’d like to think that maybe I can make it happen – 2 weeks in France, part of it painting in Aix and around there ….. that would be a dream of mine, something I’ve wanted to do since I was a teenager and found that Paul Cezanne was my favorite artist.

I’ve always wanted to go to his studio, sorta connect with the energy since it’s contributed so much to me.  But as I age, and know myself better, I realize I’m very different in my artistic sensibilities than the artists I admire; still, I like what I like.

Sure, there are other parts of France that this course goes to – and I’ve only been to Europe once, and only to Paris for 8 days in 1987 (and the only people I had conversations with, were Americans – mostly woman – I found it very difficult to just go to Paris and not speak French at that time – now it may be different, I don’t know).

In my fantasy….. I get to go on this trip for free, blogging it up and raising publicity – maybe just paying for my trip and hotel….do you think I could talk the college into granting me something like that?   Maybe it’s just a pipe dream.  

There’s also the issue of timing – I think this Paris trip happens sometime in May, and so does the Emetrics Summit in San Francisco (although Emetrics happens at the beginning of May) and I’d like to go to Emetrics (and I’m not sure I’ll be able to either).

So there’s a lot of “ifs” here that I need to see if I can bring together – and that’s partly what I’ll talk to Marsha Wooley about Saturday (if it does not get rescheduled - it seems to be our pattern that meetings get shifted around a lot – last time she was in NY, we rescheduled 4 times).

And then, maybe I’ll take in an opening or two – so that’s what I’ve got on my agenda for Saturday. 

 

By accident, I went into the bathroom at my local Barnes and Noble and saw a book next to the toilet called The Accidental Masterpiece - On the Art of Life and Vice Versa – by Michael Kimmelman, art critic for the New York Times.  I started reading the book and liked it so once I left the bathroom, I bought a fresh copy.  I’m half way through the book and this is what I noticed so far:

First, I have not been able to put the book down – it’s not a long book - The Accidental Masterpiece touches on so many of the the artists and movements I’m familar with (and some that i was not familar with); I think it’s one of the best books about Art that I have read.

I just learned, in the first chapter, The Art of Making A World,  that Pierre Bonnard was married to a woman named Marthe de Meligny who turned out to be a recluse whom Bonnard needed to adapt to – but which fueled his creativity (and isolation).

In chapter 2, The Art of Being Artless, Kimmelman talks about what sketching and painting used to be for (until photography was invented).

“Cameras made the task of keeping a record of people and things simpler and more widely available, and in the process reduced the care and intensity with which people needed to look at the things they wanted to remember well, becasue pressing a button required less concentration and effort than composing a precise and comely drawing.”

“…..our inherent laziness and to guarantee our satisfaction, a promise, if you think about it, that should be antithetical to the premise of making art, which presumes effort and risk.”

Kimmelman then goes on to talk about Bob Ross, who he calls ”the most famous artist on the earth”.

“…His psychedelic palette dovetailed with his famously narcotic voice–a voice that, according to Ross’s mysterious calculation, was the reason that the other 97 percent of viewers, from Akron to Ankara, from Harrisburg to Hong Kong, tuned in. ”

Further on I noted something else -

“…Sometimes, as Ross knew, the artistic value of a painting, as with a family photograph, or any personal momento, is it’s least important quality.”

“…that art is out there waiting to be captured, the only question being whether we are prepared to recognize it.”

In the third chapter, “The Art of Having a Lofty Perspective”, I learned that Mountains have not always been associated with Spirituality.

“In fact, our modern attitude toward mountains – to what we consider to their natural beauty – is a matter of conditioned learning, inherited through literature and theology, which has evolved during the last few centuries to encompass a notion of the sublime in nature: we have been trained on what to see and how to feel.  The evolution of the whole modern world exmplified by the evolution of our feelings towards mountains.”

The author then talks about going to climb Montage Saint Victoire, Cezanne’s mountain, and also Mont Ventoux- turned out that Kimmelman did not enjoy the climb or view as much as he thought he would.  It’s strange that I’d be reading this in light of the interview I did a couple of weeks ago with Marsha Wooley - who teaches a landscape painting class around Montage Saint Victoire every few years, a trip I would love to go the next time she does it.

I still have the rest of the book to read; if your going to read a book about Art, this is one of the better books I’ve found.