Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son

Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son

Another writer recently asked me if I had ever examined the reasons behind my art museum pilgrimages. Fact is, that very existence of that process had never even occurred to me. But, as I have been thinking about my fascination, I have realized, first of all, it’s not an art museum pilgrimage; it’s a painting pilgrimage. And I have remembered the thrill of discovery at Rembrandt’s Inspiration of Saint Matthew, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.

Now I have also remembered that I first became interested in Rembrandt’s painting when I read Henri Nouwen’s Return of the Prodigal Son about twenty years ago (Thank you, Chris). http://www.amazon.com/Return-Prodigal-Son-Story-Homecoming  I was shocked and thrilled when I read Nouwen’s discovery in that painting as the result of his own study and pilgrimages to that particular work, on display at Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. And, I have remembered the friend’s challenge, “Now, you’ll have to go to St. Petersburg and see the painting for yourself.”

Politics aside, the real question is not whether I should travel to St. Petersburg to see that painting. The more important question is whether a painting that thrilled someone else will produce the same effect on me after that element of surprise is gone?

 

 

 

 

 

Arlo and Jackie on Display at Open Shutter Gallery in Durango

Last year in May, my husband and I stepped into The Open Shutter Gallery in Durango, Colorado, one evening while a young couple showed slides from their recent trip through Turkey. That slide show was energetically and well attended. I’ve been to poetry readings and book signings by famous authors easily attended by fewer than five people. I think you have to love a town that comes out that strongly for a travel slide show. Check out some of Craig Semetko’s striking and memorable photography then on display at Open Shutter (openshuttergallery.com/past/semetko2013/about.html). the photographer whose work was on display at the time.

Last week, in Durango again and at Open Shutter Gallery, we saw photography by Jonathan Blair, much of it formerly published in National Geographic Magazine (http://www.openshuttergallery.com/current/show.html). I loved coming across the photo of Arlo and Jackie Guthrie at their wedding in nineteen-sixty-eight. The caption next to the photo described the situation surrounding Blair’s presence at that event. I read that Arlo and Jackie were still together after forty-four years. That caption worried me because we saw Arlo in concert at The Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing, Minnesota, October, 2012, only a few days after his wife, Jackie, had died.

As a chronic worrier about health, my own and others’, Arlo has always been on my mind for about the same number of years as his marriage. I’m not sure I cared much for the song, Alice’s Restaurant, or that I took Arlo very seriously. But, I took his health seriously, and I must have started consistently following his career.

Somewhere along the years I decided our children should see Arlo in concert, (as well as Doc Watson) since they grew up (even though passively) on a constant diet of those two musicians’ work. Our family saw Arlo in concert at St. John’s University in St. Cloud, Minnesota, somewhere in the early nineties, and on numerous other occasions leading up to the Sheldon Threatre concert a year ago last October, when Arlo said he and Jackie would be together again in the end. So, I’ve been checking on him again (www.arlo.net ). I’m happy to report that Arlo seems to be doing exceptionally well. And this matters because somehow over all these years that I’ve been paying attention, Arlo has brought me a lot of enjoyment. He is one of the people who keeps me feeling connected to this world, the earth at this time when I have been living on it.

Danish Painter Niels Strobek

… and this is an occupation known as painting, which calls for imagination, and skill of hand, in order to discover things not seen, hiding themselves under the shadow of natural objects, and to fix them with the hand, presenting to plain sight what does not actually exist.

The Craftman’s Handbook ”Il Libro dell’ Arte”

Cennino Cennini 

(c.1370 – c.1440)

BATHSEBA. 2007. Oil on canvas. 153 x 136 cm.

SISTERS. 2007. Oil on canvas. 165 x 110 cm

MALE PORTRAIT. 1993. Oil on canvas. 92 x 65 cm.

“Reality, which I previously felt I had reduced to a hostile slave of art, now became again a familiar ally which showed a limitless space where even the least component was waiting to be observed, understood, and interpreted. I now understood the significance of this insight. I had dedicated myself to painting it. The flat field of the painting became a precious, refined instrument that I aspired to use to express even the faintest sign of reality.”                          Niels Strobek

As I looked through images of Strobek’s paintings on his official website, I chose to include the first two above because of the similarity of the two settings and the woman on the right is the same woman in both paintings. I included the portrait of the young man because when I saw the second painting, Sisters, I had to look back and check similarities on the left woman’s face with the face, as I remembered it, of the young man in the much earlier painting.

Do we live in a complicated world without any unifying feature? Do we live in a complicated world with one unifying design? Is our world simple and completely visible, or simple and largely mysterious? In our current environment, a myriad of possible explanations are available, many answers for any question. The quote at the top of the page is taken from the homepage of Strobek’s website. It holds a nice tension and contrast from the older quote (above) taken from the artist himself, referring to his painting, The Three, a print of which is found in the book, Danish painting 1870-1985: catalogue, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek / by Vera Rasmussen and Susanne Thestrup Truelsen.

THE THREE. 1970. Oil and tempera on board. 110 x 150 cm. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.

Hey, What’s Going On?

aes·thet·ics

esˈTHetiks/

noun

noun: aesthetics; noun: esthetics

1. a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, especially in art.

   • the branch of philosophy that deals with the principles of beauty and artistic taste.

      

      

      

      

     The Norwegian painter, Odd Nerdrum, lashes out against the inclination of modern artists to speak or write about their work. The artist’s work should speak for itself on the sensory level, where it is meant to communicate. Nerdrum seems to agree with the implied assertion at the St. Olaf Dance Concert organizers last December when they titled their concert What Words Can/Not.  Some things can be better communicated by other artistic means than language.

      

      

     “Well, I’ve always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can’t exactly describe the sensations, but they’re entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics. ”
     -Edward Hopper

      

      

     Edward Hopper, on the other hand, refers to human sensations that exclude artistic principles and taste. He implies aspects of the human experience that cannot be expressed. In their professional lives, both Einstein and the Dutch artist, MC Escher, admit they were  trying to solve the creation mystery. Both men suffered exhaustion; Einstein collapsed. Einstein’s name is almost universally known for his world-changing scientific discoveries. MC Escher was invited to speak at international mathematics conferences because of the sophisticated principles that made his artwork possible, about which the artist denied any knowledge or comprehension.

      

      

     It’s hard to know (really) what it feels like to be another person. Sometimes I wonder how life feels to other people. Are we all afraid, as I often am? Do other people spend (waste) as much time as I have spent looking for physical patterns, wondering what’s here that I just don’t see? Does everything add up to One Thing, as we are sometimes told? Are we all completely unique?

      

      

     Recently, my husband, Jim, enlarged a tiny snapshot of me on his iPhone. I was shocked to see the look on my toddler face. Perched high on my father’s shoulder, staring off across the top of the picnicking congregation–not happy–not relaxed–clearly a puzzled child. Already the question:

      

      

     

     “Hey! What’s going on?”
     Nikko