My Paintings In My Office Building

Last weekend, I replaced my works on display in the lunch lounge of my office building. The four works I put on last weekend are mostly abstract and monochromatic. Not my usual style but somehow they worked:



Details of the four paintings are can be examined more closed with the close-ups:


Homeland Impression, III


Tree Trunks in Gray Landscape


Urban Forest


Dark Trees, II

More on Craftsmanship and Inspiration

A day after I posted Craftsmanship versus Inspiration, on the merit of craftsmanship versus pure inspiration or a good idea, I saw this very intriguing image on San Francisco Chronicle:


 
It is an installation by Michele Pred, "Red, White and Black" (2011), made of razor blades confiscated by airport security in the wake of 9/11.

This image is very strong and have enormous story behind it.  However, it is obvious that craftsmanship was not a concern.  This very interesting installation can be viewed at the Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco.

However, yesterday, Bay Area writer Steve Masover commented on my post as following:

Betsy Lerner is an agent and former editor whose acerbic and incisive and often hilarious blog I follow pretty closely. Next up in my Google Reader after your post was one she wrote called Things are Happening Every Day.

In this post, Lerner is responding to a frequent question, along the lines of 'I have an interesting story to tell, what should I do?' She writes: This is probably the most frequently asked question I get and yet somehow it always makes me apoplectic. Your story is not interesting, or not inherently interesting. Great writing and great storytelling is the only thing that is interesting.

Hmmmm... a strong argument for craft, from an experienced hand.

I'm very confused.


Related articles:
--> Craftsmanship versus Inspiration
--> Great Leap Forward to Make Oil Paintings in China

Craftsmanship versus Inspiration

I'm reading the introduction chapters of "The Renaissance Artist at Work" by Bruce Cole and was very intrigued by the discussion on the roles and functions of the artist guilds.  I'm going to quote some sentences in the book to demonstrate the argument:

Before an apprentice could even begin to think about style, he had to learn how to make art.  From the very first, Renaissance apprentices were introduced to the materials at the art store; in the Renaissance, most of the things used in the shop were made by the artist and his helpers.  This early -- and lasting -- knowledge of the material, physical aspect of his craft endowed the artist with an almost instinctive feeling for the most basic properties of a picture, a sculpture, or an illustrated book.  His understanding of materials and his skill in using them were extraordinary.

Any careful, first-hand examination of Renaissance art reveals that craft is of remarkable importance: paintings and sculpture from the period are among the most beautifully made objects in the entire history of Western art.

The Assumption of the Virgin, 1362, Luca di Tommè

The Renaissance concept that all works of art were functional and skillfully made objects renders the apprenticeship system more understandable.

Today, art is a manifestation of the artist's creative spirit.  Certainly the sale of art is an important element, but thousands of artists who have little hope of ever selling their work still continue to paint and carve with great energy.  Art is their calling and catharsis; financial rewards, most of them believe, are important but consideration of a lower order.

The apprenticeship system, with its long period of study, early acquaintance with varied materials, copying, and collaborative work, somehow allowed boys who were probably quite ordinary in every respect to be turned into men possessing a high degree of artistic skill.  Art -- so the Renaissance believed -- could be taught by a series of progressive steps from grinding colors, to making copies, to work on the master's design, to inventing one's own paintings or sculptures.
All this may appear incredible to those who feel that the role of the art school is to encourage and train the already gifted.  We do not believe that education alone can create a good artist: some kind of talent, of inspiration (divine or otherwise) marks a person for further artistic study.

Yet the vast majority of drawings, paintings, and sculptures produced in the Renaissance give clear evidence of the acquired skill of their authors.

It appears that it was indeed possible to train boys, who may or may not have had much talent, to a remarkable proficiency.  Of course, the question remains: Could the Renaissance system of artistic education not only train most artists to be highly competent but also teach some of them to be great?  Our immediate answer is no.

In the early sixteenth century, new attitudes began to form in some of the more intellectual artistic circles: Vasari, for example, looking into the history of Florentine art, calls Giotto divinely inspired.  The idea that the artist was a special creator standing apart from society, above the guild-workshop system, was being born.

Nowadays, the value of art seems more to lie in its originality, its ideas rather than its execution.  No doubt, this line of thinking, for better or worse, helped to usher in the mixed genres of art and the most talked about pieces of our time are often installations or works with performance built-in.

Furthermore, this book made me think about current very democratic art scene.  Everyone who can draw a line, piece together a collage, or smear some paints on canvas can style himself or herself as an artist.  Art making is not some lofty ideas one needs a license to practice.  Art schools inspire students more on new ideas than tradition.  This seems to agree with the believe of the Renaissance time, that every boy, and girl, can be trained to competent proficiency.  But that argument is a false one.  During the Renaissance time, as argued in the book, apprentices were trained rigorously and in our time, such discipline has been seriously compromised if not disregarded completely.

Then, we come to a crucial question:  How much further can an artist push, if being new is the supreme goal?  All ideas have been built on the previously exploited.  Trying to cling to the current trend of new fad or technology would only make the values of such art creations temporal rather than timeless.

What a confusing time we live in.


Related articles:
--> More on Craftsmanship and Inspiration
--> Great Leap Forward to Make Oil Paintings in China

Two Abstract Paintings Completed

 Several days ago, I posted the two abstract paintings I'd been working on for a while and was struggling to decide if they were done or not.

They were rather beautiful - in a transparent and shallow way.  I decided to push a bit further and the result was the two paintings are less apparently pleasing and less airy but with added depth.  A reasonable tradeoff, I think:





Related article: Two Abstract Paintings In Progress

China - Five Thousand Years Old? No, One Hundred!

Whiling reading Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part II and the historical background essays, I was struck by the tenacity of many usurpers or claimants's efforts in establishing their kinship connections to earlier and legitimate rules, or invented such blood connections.  Without exception, they all styled themselves the Kings of England, and not as a King of York, or King of Lancaster.  Dynasties changed with their family names, but the Kingdom was always England.  England's monarchs can be trace back to 927 A.D.

This is decidedly different from the historical events took place in the land now called China.

People often believe that the history of China is four thousand to five thousand years old.  In a sense, it is correct - the land and people and its continuous, predominant culture can be traced back as far as four to five thousands years ago.  However, during those ancient and imperial times, the concept of China didn't exist.  The land the emperors of various dynasties ruled, gradually grew into the size and shape largely overlapping with current China, was simple called the world (天下).  The succeeding dynasties had no connections to one another except for the land and the people they ruled.  The emperors were the Emperors of Qin, Emperors of Han, Emperors of Tang, Emperors of Ming, and Emperors of Qing, etc., but never Emperor of China.  As a matter of fact, a new dynasty always made great effort to sever any connections, if existed, from the ones they superseded.  The one they replaced was inevitably bad and must be condemned and destroyed and never to be spoken of in any good light.  It was purely incidental that they ruled the same land and people.  Inevitably they claimed their mandates from the Heaven to rule the earth.  The world belonged to their houses.  They didn't need consent to rule from the people lived in that land.  They owned the world and only the by their grace that the people live.

China, (in Chinese 中国), means Middle or Central Country.  This term was used as early as more than two thousand years ago.  However, at that time, it simple meant capital.  Many kingdoms and empires in that land had mentioned themselves as Middle Kingdom, mostly in an egotistic way.

Flag of the Republic of China 1912-1928

China, was really a modern concept came into existence with the overthrown of the last dynasty (Qing) and the birth of the Republic of China in 1911.  When the Republic of China was founded in January 1912, its national flag had five color stripes (red, yellow, blue, white and black), representing the five main ethnic groups - Han, Manchu, Mongol, Muslim Hui and Tibetan.  The land was called China, instead of the World.  The president was the President of China, not the President of the World.  Arguably, the concept of China was a one-hundred-year-old modern concept.

To modern Chinese people, politicians and scholars alike, whoever ruled that land and the people lived on that land, was considered part of the history of China, including the period the land and people was conquered by foreigner invaders and the majority Han was treated slightly better than slaves, such as during the entire Mogol's (Yuan Dynasty) and the early Manchu's (Qing Dynasty) rules.  Chinese generally proudly took pride in their ancient and continuous history and unbroken governance from legendary time through dynasties and republics.  That really bends the truth a bit.  Those conquered periods were really like the conquered Poland during World War II, which at that time, as the political entity, ceased to exist, though the land was still the same land, and the people were still the same Polish people.  Or to imagine that Japan had succeeded in conquering China and called it its province, even if the Japanese capital moved from Tokyo to Beijing or Shanghai.

Of course, in ancient times, the term China had been used in other part of the world to refer to many ancient Chinese dynasties, or the land and the people.  But it was merely a point of reference.  It didn't have the geopolitical meaning in it.  Some people called that land china, other called it silk or tea.

The history in that vast land is long.  But China as a political concept, is still very young.

Photographer Robert Welsh - Black & White Spider Awards Finalist

San Francisco Photographer Robert Welsh had made great stride in recent years, as witnessed by numerous shows and museum collections.

Outside his main theme of culture clash, one of his black and white photograph was nominated for "Black & White Spider Awards".  

Black & White Spider Awards online exhibition represents the world's finest contemporary photographers as nominated by the Jury. Thousands of images are submitted each year with only a few hundred images making it to Nominee status by consensus of the Jury. The Nominee shortlist consists of images that have received the highest percentage of votes overall and is the shortlist from which the winners are decided.

Welsh's photograph was titled "Child on Ferry".  The description goes: This child who seems deep in thought with the Statue of Liberty in the background is from an on-going series of the Staten Island Ferry. I tried to capture the light and the manner in which it reflects the varying moods of its passengers.

The short biography of Robert Welsh states that Robert Welsh (b. 1953) captures the spirit of various communities and settings to convey a sense of universalism. He documents urban neighborhoods as a reminder of his childhood in working class Boston. Robert works in both B&W and color using traditional methods. His work has been described as painterly and layered. Garnering numerous awards and exhibitions, his photographs are in the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Denver Art Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Hispanic Society of America, Worcester Art Museum, and Griffin Museum of Photography.

Congratulations!