"There is no Why!"

"Il n'est pas du courage, quand on suit simplement la passion d'une personne." _Philippe Petit

The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-18

The Nasher Museum of Art on the campus of Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, is hosting this exhibition as of September 30, 2010 to January 2, 2011.

" "The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-18" is the first exhibition devoted to this Anglo-American movement to be presented in the United States or Italy. It is also the first to attempt to recreate the three Vorticist exhibitions mounted during World War I that served to define the group's radical aesthetic for the public. An abstracted figurative style, combining machine-age forms and the energetic imagery suggested by a vortex, Vorticism emerged in London at a moment when the staid English art scene had been jolted by the advent of French Cubism and Italian Futurism. Absorbing elements from both, but also defining themselves against these foreign idioms, Vorticism was a short-lived but pivotal modernist movement that spanned the years of World War I (1914-1918)."

From ItalianFuturism.org:
"This seminal exhibition is co-curated by Mark Antliff, Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University, and Vivien Greene, Curator of Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The exhibition will showcase approximately 90 works (paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, photographs and related ephemera) by members of the Vorticist movement drawn from public and private collections throughout Europe and North America. The group took its name from “Vortex,” a term coined by the American expatriate literary great Ezra Pound in 1913, when describing the “maximum energy” he and his colleagues wished to instill among London’s literary and artistic avant-garde. The Vorticist painters created compositions activated by zigzagging, diagonal forms and—in contrast to the Cubists and Futurists—more fully embraced geometric, abstract imagery, while not abandoning three-dimensional space. They harnessed the language of abstraction to convey the industrial dynamism they associated with the “vortex” of the modern city.

Among historians of modernism, Vorticism has been traditionally treated as an insular British art movement. “The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-18″ will overcome that myth by identifying the movement as a distinctly Anglo-American endeavor developed in 1914 as an avant-garde response to the impact of French Cubism and Italian Futurism on artists and writers in London and New York."

From the Tate Glossary:

"The Vorticists were a British avant-garde group formed in London in 1914 by the artist, writer and polemicist, Wyndham Lewis. Their only group exhibition was held in London the following year. Vorticism was launched with the first issue (of two) of the magazine Blast which contained among other material two aggressive manifestos by Lewis 'blasting' what he considered to be the effeteness of British art and culture and proclaiming the Vorticist aesthetic: 'The New Vortex plunges to the heart of the Present we produce a New Living Abstraction'. Vorticist painting combines Cubist fragmentation of reality with hard-edged imagery derived from the machine and the urban environment, to create a highly effective expression of the Vorticists sense of the dynamism of the modern world. It was in effect a British equivalent to Futurism, although with doctrinal differences, and Lewis was deeply hostile to the Futurists. Other artists were Lawrence Atkinson, Jessica Dismorr, Cuthbert Hamilton, William Roberts, Helen Saunders, Edward Wadsworth, and the sculptors Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. David Bomberg was not formally a member of the group but produced major work in a similar style. The First World War brought Vorticism to an end, although in 1920 Lewis made a brief attempt to revive it with Group X."

*Thank-you for that lesson in art history, the Tate!



**This exhibit will travel:

Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice [January 29 - May 15, 2011]
Tate Britain in London [June 14 - September 18, 2011]

What's Happening Now!

There is a small reception for an "en Plein Air" exhibit at the Pegasus Gallery this Thursday from 6 to 9:30-ish, in which my artwork is playing a supporting role with 5 of my works included in this exhibit. (*Find the address & directions on the website.)
Yet the bigger, splashier reception is scheduled for the 2nd Thursday, same time-frame in November! This is the one show that I would like people to consider coming to, to see my work, as the regional landscape show will play host to the Drebing Collection! Quite the local intrigue. Truly!
*Also of note, is the most recent consignment of a Marc Chagall etching, available for viewing on request at Pegasus Gallery. A heads up for the true print collector!

The invitation design for celebrating turning 56

In my Ariadne phase here in midlife, I am navigating the Labyrinth from inside the center of the womb of the Great Mother. Dying to the last of the former once deeply internalized, unconscious dependent daughter identity. I am carefully discovering that I am Theseus, following the string back out into the light and the world, reborn.

The Cosmic Dance of Shiva; Who sees/hears these myths literally?

Listen to this UCSD lecture on: "Neurology and the Passion for Art," given by tenured Professor Ramachandran of the Psychology and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute, and the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, also on the UCSD campus.

Who is a Synaesthete?




Vilayanur Ramachandran on your mind | Video on TED.com

Successful Art Sale

I finally sold this beauty of a painting over the week-end!!

*Don't forget to visit Modest Needs and do whatever you can to help on that project, or contact me via email on the top right side bar_ to purchase a painting from me!

Modest Needs, can you help?

Have you ever heard of Modest Needs?

Even though the link I have provided takes you straight to my particular grant request, you can go to the homepage to check out the whole Modest Needs story from the "Start Here" section on the menu bar. Or really, from the top of any page_ including mine.

My own grant request is modest, as I transition back into new employment, after a recession lay-off 10 months ago. Your donation, of any size to my request, will be ever so appreciated! Just click on the link below and thank-you, very much!!

Application 159557: New Job - Rent Help - Modest Needs®

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