Geometry: A Timeline

Jim and I viewed a collection of Michelangelo’s drawings and sketches at the Phoenix Art Museum while we were in Arizona earlier in March: Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane. According to accompanying written material at the museum: “Based on his reading of Augustine’s Book of Wisdom, Michelangelo, shared the Renaissance view that God built Creation on a foundation of measure and number, i.e. Geometry.” In other words, mimicking God, Michelangelo used Geometry as a means to his own creation. This fascination for God’s means of Creation is also the source of Dutch artist, M. C. Escher’s, fascination with The Alhambra and the development of his sophisticated tessellations.

Escher Reptiles

In Phoenix, we also visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home near Scottsdale, Taliesin West. Our tour guide informed us Taliesin West was designed by Wright to mimic the shapes of the surrounding desert and mountains, based on principles of Geometry.

 

The triangular shape of the pool mimics the mountain behind the house.

According to https://www.khanacademy.org, “Geometry is at the core of everything that exists, including you.” It is interesting how often Geometry comes up with artists and their work. The world is a puzzle, and we all (in general) like to think (obsess) about how to solve it.

 

 

Light and Life: E. A. Burbank at The Phoenix Art Museum

Many years ago, Jim and I spent two weeks with John Rayner, a retired Chief of Fisheries, on his sailboat in the fjords between the coast of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. It was still wilderness then. Eagles swooped down and caught salmon by the boat. We saw schools of Orca, and the bays were clear and almost completely lined with fish. We saw bear and mink. I’ve been told the area is now full of fish farms, that the farmed salmon escape and breed with the native species. But, even back then, John wouldn’t fish for, or eat salmon because he already knew they were being over fished, and polluted.

We were crabbing and fishing for bottom fish. I’m not a fisher person, but I caught a cod and brought it into the boat. While I watched the fishes’ spectacularly wet and glorious rainbow turn dull like asphalt and disappeared, beginning at its tail. The fishes’ life drained from bottom to top.

Ne-I-So-Meh, Yuma, 1904 E. A. Burbank

Our trip to The Phoenix Art Museum was such a highlight that I’ve almost completely changed my mind about that city. I was completely captivated by E. A. Burbank’s small portrait: Ne-I-So-Meh, Yuma, 1904.

Karen: “Oh my gosh, Look! He’s alive. How is that?”

Jim: “It’s the light.”

I’ve heard it said so many times that Rembrandt’s particular gift was the light. That is clearly Burbank’s gift with Ne-I-So-Meh. I still have no idea how some painters get it so right. But clearly, if you can learn to manage light, you can almost save life.

 

James Reynolds at The Phoenix Art Museum

Arriving at Macchu Picchu, I did not weep. Even when that nasty llama bit me, I didn’t weep. Jim and I drive back and forth past the entrance to the Grand Canyon at least once a year lately. We don’t stop. Arches National Park and all that natural splendor, does not make me weep.

Last week at The Phoenix Art Museum I finally realized that besides babies and other children, the fragrance of home* after a long absence, it is certain paintings that can spontaneously bring me to tears.

Still, only after I read the title: The Lord is my Shepherd, did James Reynolds’s effectively cold and bleak painting make me weep. According to the art curator, Paul O’Neill, who I wrote about a few weeks ago, great art has to allow a new and previously unknown emotion in the viewer. I disagree. Sometimes great art also informs the viewer of shared and common knowledge. Sometimes that knowledge is uncomfortable.

*Western Oregon and Washington

 

Edouard Manet

I’ve been to Bookman’s and bought a Time/Life book, The World of Manet, published in 1968, and written by Pierre Schneider, from which I quote: “Shortly after Edouard Manet’s death, his friend, the painter Edgar Degas, remarked: ‘We did not know that he was this great.’”

“For centuries artists basically shared the view that the function of a painting was to mirror a model. The picture’s meaning was the subject’s meaning, and the more faithfully it mirrored a subject, the better the picture was.”

What marks Manet’s greatness? Apparently the answer is found in an early Manet painting, Before the Mirror.Rather than finding the young model reflected back in the mirror, Manet has filled the mirrored space with loose, indistinct brushwork. The painter has declared himself present in the work.

Another quote from the artist Maurice Denis:  “Remember that a picture–before being a war horse, a nude woman, or an anecdote–is essentially a plane surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.” This is the new thought process brought to the canvas by Manet.

This week I realize more than ever that writing the blog turns out largely for my own benefit.