Russian Futurism is accepted to emerge in 1912, lead by a Moscow based group called Hylaea. Even though Hylaea did not consider themselves as futurists around the time they were formed, by 1912 they issued a manifesto, “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste“  which was majorly influenced by Italian Futuristic movement.

The Russian Futurists had much in common with the Italians – they too romanticized technology. But there were differences from the start.  Russian Futurism movement was also highly influenced by neo-primitivism and French Cubism, and therefore was also called Cubo-Futurism. Against its Italian counterparts, the Russians saw the future in schematic, distorted figures drawn by anonymous peasant artists. Paintings and book illustrations by Kasimir Malevich and Natalia Goncharova show the influence of Russian folk art, particularly the “lubok”, or woodcut.

Some notable Russian Cubo – Futurists are Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Archipenko, Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine and Aleksandra Ekster. It’s also notable, considering Marinetti’s inclusion of “scorn for woman” in his Futurist Manifesto, that nearly half the Russian Futurists were female – Varvara Stepanova, Olga Rozanova, Lyubov Popova and Natalia Goncharova being the most known.

Russian artists who engaged with cubo-futurism has also originated and/or followed art movements like  Suprematism and Russian constructivism. Therefore some of  their work reflects the transitions between these latter art movements.

I think, therefore I creatively paint!

Yesterday, my wife and I were walking and she made a comment about wanting to learn how to paint using watercolors. She also said that she has never been able to create a painting that is “good.” She said she is not creative!

I responded by saying that I thought creativity could be learned, and if one’s standards for painting were “lowered,” then anyone could create a good painting. I used examples of impressionism and cubism which, from my point of view, have standards that allow the result to not look like a photo of the model for the painting. Also, regarding one’s standards, I think the artist should set her/his own standards. This is especially true when the artist is creating for her/himself.

I think creative people are not born creative. In other words, I don’t think the nature part of us dictates our creativity, but I do think the nurture part plays a role. Children, that are raised in an environment that stifles their creativity by forcing them to live up to unreasonable standards, will tend to think they aren’t able to create art. They will not attempt to create and will exemplify the old adage of, “use it or lose it.” They don’t use their creative thinking and therefore, lose it.

Creating Creative Thinking!

Creativity requires us to use our creative mind. Think of it as a muscle. If you don’t use a muscle, it will become weak and eventually, will be unable to perform as it normally would. We all know that exercising our muscles make them stronger. The same is true for our “creative mind.”

Here's a creation representing our solar system!

So what should we do in order to become a painter, musician, sculptor, builder, writer, cook, dancer, etc….? Well, one thing we shouldn’t do is nothing. The best way to become more creative is to create. Generate lots of ideas and decide, using your own standards, which ones to keep. Break a routine and do something differently. Generally, creativity means change and doing something in a different way.

So, what should we do if we want to paint a picture using watercolor? Get a brush, some watercolor and a surface to paint on and paint. Simple? Yes, if you can obtain the materials.

How do you become more creative? Exercise your creative mind!

How do you exercise your creative mind? One way is to get a brush, some watercolor and a surface to paint on and paint!

Please create a comment!

Do American poetasters love their William Carlos Williams, or what?  They dream William Carlos Williams. Their tails wag when they hear the name, “William Carlos Williams.”   At the end of their lives, with their last breath, they cry out, “William Carlos Williams!”

William Carlos Williams is both naked and covered in –isms.  He’s everything!

Here’s a typical gushing paean from Curtis Faville on Silliman’s blog– the whole sentiment expressed has become a ritual repeated ad nauseam:

“Williams began as a very traditional poet, writing rhymed poems about Spring and love and delicate ironies. But by the mid-’Twenties he had pushed into formally challenging constructions influenced by Cubism, Surrealism and the speech of the common people. Hardly anyone had thought to make poems out of the simple vocabulary and inflections of conversational speech, he was really the first to do it well.

In addition, he managed to throw out all the fluff and lace of traditional cliches and make little naked constructions from the raw timber of American life. They look like scaffoldings, their structure plain and unadorned like a newly framed house. “The pure products of America go crazy”–who else would have thought to write a line as accessible (and telling at the same time) as Williams? Their deceptive simplicity masks a complex kinetic energy which the line-breaks and stanzaic pauses and settings underscore.”

–Curtis Faville,  July 2008, Silliman’s blog

Among the chattering classes, sprachgefuhl will take on a mind of its own, but Williams-worship is unconsciously ingrained to the point  now where a healthy curiosity on these matters has been bottled up completely.

Faville and his somnambulant ilk are apparently too sleepy to see the contradictions here.   We count 13 in Faville’s brief post alone:

1. ‘Williams began as a very traditional poet.’  He did, and he was being published in ‘Poetry’ as a very traditional poet with his friend Pound.  All but the very gullible will quickly assume Williams was an item not because of his groundbreaking poetry, but because of his membership in a clique.  Why would his hack rhymes be published, otherwise?
2. ‘By the mid-‘Twenties he pushed into formally challenging constructions.’   Ahem.  The Dial Prize in 1926 was Williams’ first real public recognition; the editor of ‘The Dial’ in 1926 was Marianne Moore.  The content of the ‘The Dial’ was mostly European avant-garde: Picasso, Cezanne & T.S. Eliot (who won the ‘Dial Prize’ in 1922).  Williams was not ‘pushing.’  He was being pulled.  He was 43 years old and had known Pound for years—he was finally ‘getting with the program’ and doing what the clique required.  Moore won the Dial Prize in 1924—she had known then-Dial editor Scofield Thayer (T.S. Eliot’s old schoolmate at Milton Academy), as well as Pound and William Carlos Williams for years at that time.
3. ‘Influenced by Cubism, Surrealism and the speech of the common people.   How nifty.  ‘Cubism’ (!) and ‘Surrealism’ (!) ‘the speech of the common people.’  Yea, they go hand in hand.  Maybe in some pedant’s dream…
4. ‘Hardly anyone had thought to make poems out of the simple vocabulary…’  This is utterly false.  Compare any century of poetry with Williams–his vocabulary is not simpler.
5. ‘Hardly anyone had thought to make poems out of the inflections of conversational speech.’  Again, false.  Robert Browning is far more conversational than Williams.  Williams’ poetry is actually less ‘conversational’ than examples from the 17th century.
6. ‘He was really the first to do it well.’  Another whopper.
7. ‘He managed to throw out all the fluff and lace of traditional clichés…’  Oh-kay…   William Carlos Williams personally threw out ALL the so-called ‘fluff and lace’ which centuries of poetry is burdened with.  Every so-called ‘traditional cliché’ evaporated before Williams’ magic touch.
8. ‘Little naked constructions.’  What are these?  Elf robots which dance in poetaster’s dreams?
9. ‘raw timber of American life.’  William Carlos Williams as Paul Bunyan…
10. ‘They look like scaffoldings’   We are not sure what ‘they’ are.  Ideas? Poems?  Fragments of poems?   By now, of course, it doesn’t matter…
11. ‘their structure plain and unadorned…’   Ah, yes.  They’re ‘raw.’  They’re honest.
12. ‘Who else would have thought to write a line as accessible (and telling at the same time) as… “The pure products of America go crazy.”  This is accessible?  And telling?
13. ‘Their deceptive simplicity masks a complex kinetic energy…’  OK, we’ve heard enough.

Egad!   We can quote from this hyperbole no longer. 

What’s that?  WC Williams’ ghost is a Martian! and he’s beaming radio transmissions of kinetic energy to selected earthlings like Curtis Faville? 

Why didn’t  someone tell me?  

This explains everything!

iHockney iPainter

Painter, print maker, stage designer, photographer and most influential British artist, David Hockney persistently explored British Pop Art, Expressionism, Cubism. The late 60s and early 70s communicated his concepts of naturalism as Hockney was  greatly inspired by ” the way human vision works”. He explored  the technique of Joiners by using Polaroids (Time sync shots) of a single subject  by arranging them into a patchwork composite image. In mid 80s Hockney was commissioned  to draw with the Quantel Paintbox a computer program that allowed the artist to sketch direct onto the monitor screen. His sketches using Quantel were featured on BBC. Hockney was also commissioned to design December 1985 issue of the French  Vogue magazine. The Review’s October 09 issue discusses the new drawings that David Hockney has been making with the Brushes application on his iPhone, including a series of large-scale paintings based on his relationship with technology that will be on view at  PaceWildenstein this fall.  Well … The new iphone art is indeed quite an addiction !! Popular British Designer Paul Smith hosts the upcoming exhibition of Hockney’s early works  http://www.paulsmith.co.uk/news/hockney-christmas-at-willoughby-house,300,PNP.html

Background

Cubism began at a time of great change in our history – the Modern period. The Modern period was influenced and instigated by the industrial revolution. It is recognised as a revolution due to the vast amount and speed at which new technologies and inventions were introduced to the world. For example, within the period ranging from around the 1860s to 1930s saw the introduction of the car and the internal combustion engine as the main mode of transport, electricity was being introduced in cities across Europe and the US, with electricity came the lightbulb replacing oil and gas lamps, developments in production meant that products could be made quicker, in larger quantities and distributed further. So, technology and science was taking a hold and changing our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

At the beginning of the 20th century art, as it so often does, reflected life and with a new, modern world came Modern Art. The beginning of which was Cubism.

Process of seeing

Paul Cezanne, a post-impressionist painter, first introduced the idea of showing the process of seeing in his paintings not just the result. You can see slight changes in positioning of lines and tones in his later paintings. The Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque would take this idea to an extreme in what is now considered Cubism.

Analytical Cubism

The idea of Analytical Cubism was to use the painters whole understanding of the subject (how it is seen from all angles) in one single viewpoint. The subject would be studied, simplified and drafted into a single painting.

Georges Braque – ‘Woman with a guitar’

The analytical paintings produced by Picasso and Braque were often monochromatic in tone and recognisable forms (if any) were simplified making the paintings increasingly abstract. The following painting by Picasso is almost entirely abstract in it’s visual appearance, we are only aware of the fact that it is a painting of a guitarist by it’s title.

Although visually radical the Cubists opted for traditional subject matter focussing on portraits, still life and landscapes. Braque produced many paintings  of areas that Cezanne had painted before him but in the cubist style – simplifying the forms to basic shapes and tones.

Synthetic Cubism

Synthetic Cubism evolved from the analytical style and included elements of collage. Picasso and Braque included various textured elements into their paintings. The synthetic paintings would also include cuttings from newspapers and hand-rendered type inspired by the signs found on their favourite cafes and club houses.

Juan Gris

Gris joined the Cubist movement at a later date as a student of Picasso’s and in doing so developed his own style. Gris paintings from both Analytical and Synthetic styles differ from Picasso and Braque’s in that they have more depth in colour and are visually more recognisable.

Although the movement was short lived (until 1919) it remains today one of the most recognised and respected movements of the 20th century.

Cubism (Taschen Basic Art Series)

Joan Shelley Rubin, author of Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America, said the 1920s belonged as much to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as it did to Thomas Stearns Eliot—and this is true.

The anti-Victorian, Imagism revolution of Bloomsbury, which gradually changed poetry from an art of song to an art of image through the ’trickle-down’ effort of its elites, gained the overwhelming momentum of  great numbers when its ‘trickle-down’ effort became  normalized and taught in the academy–both in English departments and Creative Writing Workshops–during the second half of the 20th century.

Are there any prominent musicians who bother to set contemporary poetry to music?

The image in poetry became associated with art, while the music of poetry became associated with vulgarity.

Two brief examples, from last century, will suffice:

First: these lines from J.V. Cunningham, the anti-modernist poet, who is largely forgotten:

Second:  Bloomsbury author Aldous Huxley’s infamous slam against Poe’s verse as “vulgar.”  The prim Englishman’s distaste for musical Poe was quoted approvingly in Brooks & Penn Warren’s well-placed textbook, Understanding Poetry (first edition, 1938) which also solidified the reputations of Imagist classics, ‘At A Station In the Metro’ (Pound) and ‘The Red Wheel Barrow’ (Williams) in its unalloyed praise for these two works.

Could poetry change radically today?  And, if it did, would the public even notice?    The answer to both quesitons is, ‘no,’ and the reason the first answer is ’no,’ is because the second answer is ‘no.’

How did poetry change so radically in the early part of the 20th century?

First, it did have a public, but not a particularly large or enthusiastic one, and secondly, poetry was understood by the public to have a certain definite identity: it looked like work by Longfellow and Tennyson.

An art whose practioners are disunited, who have no common expertise, will not be seen as an art at all.  Poetry had a common expertise: the ability to compose memorable music with mere words, like Longfellow and Tennsyon.

“Verse is not easy,” Cunningham wrote.    But the skill of verse is no longer a part of poetry; poetry no longer has a specific “skill.”

The Imagists never got beyond a very minor, little magazine existence, but they believed what they were offering would be very popular, like a portable camera; now you can just point and shoot!  Anyone can appreciate images–and put them into simple poems–like haiku.  Poetry for democracy!  Poetry that was selfless and natural!  It will be a phenomenon!  But the public didn’t buy it–they still wanted their Tennyson and their Longfellow with their gadgets and their telephones and their cars.  Imagism, like Futurism, Cubism and 12-Tone Music, failed to inspire anyone except the core of elites who were pushing them.  Imagism was a flop.

Or, was it?

People ‘on the street’ today define poetry as vaguely expressive, and the public’s perception of something, we have learned, should not be underestimated.  ‘Vaguely’ is the chief term here.  No longer does the public think of poetry as Longfellow.  They think of it as vaguely expressive.

100 years ago the American public had a more sharply defined view of poetry.  It was like what those fellows, Mr. Alfred Lord Tennyson and Mr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote.  That was what poetry was.

The zen joke of ‘The Red Wheel Barrow’ and ‘The women come and go/talking of Michelangelo’ resonated once, but these jokes are no longer funny.  But Longfellow is gone, too.

Image truly belongs to other arts: painting, photography, and film;  further, these arts do not need to look to poetry at all as they wrestle with the image.

Song belongs to songwriters, and songwriters, the good ones, are poets, but they are known to the world as songwriters; poetry’s identity carries on in the sister art of songwriting, and unlike the filmmakers, photographers and painters, songwriters do consult poetry, not contemporary poetry, but old poetry, the art, for inspiration.

Since poetry has given up song for image as its current identity, poetry manifests no contemporary attachment with any other art.  No glory belongs to poetry, or is even reflected back on poetry.  Poetry is in the dark.

Poetry, with no public identity, is stuck: it has nowhere to go.

History affords countless examples of  technical changes which have improved music’s expressive qualities as a whole even as music, the art, remains, in its simplicity, recongizable to everyone.   When the piano replaced the harpsichord, all composers took notice, not just some.

The modernist revolution changed poetry so that everyone took notice,  but unfortunately in a way that made poetry no longer recognizable to everyone.  Nor is it easy to say if expressive qualities have increased–certainly not in the public’s perception.  As far as prose and how it perhaps opens things up, the problem poetry has, is that in prose, one would naturally think poetry could express itself with greater variety, but fiction owns prose, and poetry is expected to do something different than fiction; poetry as art has been developed in different ways than prose.   Yes, poetry should be as good as good prose, and all that, but how does poetry keep from disappearing into it?  And so poetry–sans the music that separates it from prose, as the art which the public knows as poetry–has been at sea for 100 years.

T.S. Eliot, an honorary Bloomsbury member, and the most respected critic of the 20th century, recommended minor poetry 300 years old as superior to major poetry composed  250, 200, 150, 100, and 50 years before his day.  This, in some ways, was counter to the whole modernist revolution.  John Donne?  Andrew Marvell?  Henry King, Bishop of Chichester?  What was Eliot thinking?  Eliot was thinking this: If my friends and I are to effect this modernist revolution of ours, we must not seem like mere brick-throwers; we need erudition, scholarship, appreciation of certain aspects of the past, and if we are to become professors and editors of modernist verse, it will be well to be able to make the past our clay, for revolutions must feed off the past; no revolution lives in the present day; Eliot knew he and Pound were not Bach, the master, at the keyboard, re-inventing music itself; he knew they were merely sullying a grand tradition with a little sleight-of-hand: Goodbye, Milton, Shelley, Poe, Shakespeare, Keats.  Hello, Kyd, King, Corbiere.  Eliot knew that when a revolution happens, the past will not disappear; a certain respect for the past must not only be feigned, but enthusiastically pursued, for every manifesto needs food; actual ’new’ material (Waste Lands, cantos, wheel barrow haiku,) will run out in a week, so the past has to be transformed.  Every revolution needs a professor; Mary Ann and Ginger alone will not do.

The image is free-standing and pre-verbal; it is not necessary for image to fit, or be coherent–it simply is. Why should such a thing be the essence of poetry?  Ask that Bloomsbury elite.  After a snort and a sigh and a sip of their very expensive wine, they will tell you.

.

Click image to enlarge. I built this avenue of trees to explore shadows over time and the depiction of  trees not as the eye, but as the mind might see them, as you walk around and through them.  A willy wagtail later investigated the site.

Click image to enlarge. Forty crows flew, perched,  squarked around this mound… when I climbed up and pushed a spinal bone into the ground, the crows abandonned the site. After 10 minutes, two curious crows returned to check out the alien object.

see it in live auction on Ebay

CuBisT. The style of presented composition is known as synthetic cubism, created and developed by Pablo Picasso in 1912. In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism’s distinct characteristics.

Art historians have a problem telling the story of 20th century art.

The tale gets a running start from Post-Impressionism, picks up speed with Cubism, then jogs through Abstract Expressionism on its way to Pop Art and Conceptual Art, but the story line peters out somewhere after about 1980.

Then the thread of the narrative vanishes into a welter of conflicting styles.

Post-modern art “cultivates the variety of incoherence,” Jonathan Fineberg stated in the textbook “Art Since 1940.”

After the 1980s, the art world split into fragments that “disintegrated, becoming the sluggish mishmash that has prevailed in art ever since,” New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote.

Now along comes economist David Galenson to offer a remedy for art historians’ problem. His alternative version of 20th century art has a beginning, a middle and – not an end, but a narrative thread that continues up to the present.

Galenson’s comprehensive and data-based account of modern art, set forth in his new book Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art might win acceptance from art critics and art historians.

Maybe.

But if so it would have to overcome their sharp distaste for how Galenson approaches the subject. He examines how the art market has influenced artists and their styles. He categorizes artists as either slow-moving experimental innovators or quick-changing — and now increasingly dominant — conceptual innovators. And he uses economic analysis to rank artists’ importance.

Each of those approaches yields insights into 20th century art, allowing for new understandings both of its early days and of its late “mishmash.”

Galenson’s history of the art market starts traditionally, in 1874, with the French Impressionists’ destruction of the Salon’s monopoly on acceptable art. Next comes Picasso’s cultivation of a handful of key gallery owners and art collectors who reward his stylistic innovations. Finally an open marketplace allows Andy Warhol and now Damien Hirst to grow rich by appealing to a mass audience.

The contemporary marketplace rewards the latest bright ideas from brilliant conceptual innovators, which leads to the proliferation of contemporary styles, Galenson says.

According to Galenson, who were the dominant artists during the last quarter of the 20th century? Perhaps not exactly whom you would guess, although Galenson’s numeric analysis is based simply on how often artists’ works appear in all art textbooks published from 2000 on. No. 1 is photographer Cindy Sherman, with 25 illustrations. She’s followed by Gerhard Richter, with 23; Jeff Koons, with 22; and Damien Hirst, just 19.

Galenson’s previous work has been scorned by art scholars, so he doesn’t try to win them over with honeyed words.

“I persevered in spite of their unfortunate lack of intellectual curiosity,” he writes. As a result, “I have learned fascinating things about modern art that art historians do not know.”

Perhaps they will be fascinated by this new book. More likely it will be greeted with silence.

If you’re interested in buying Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art, click on the book title.

Click image to enlarge. The inverted umbrella symbolises climate change and catches sand, not rain in Australian desert. Fragmenting one point perspective below the horizon line.

you may view this painting on ebay too just click on the image!

an cubist horse

I’m currently working on fragmentation of  the  landscape.

Click image to enlarge. I’m using an Epson EMP-TW700 projector; white cubes; ramps; perforated wood; and ‘extinct’ walking boots I found abandonned in the Cawnpore Hills near Winton QLD, 2007.

Landscape encourages us to dream – Chinese scholar

So I think I’m going to look into this disney thing more. Alan made an interesting point about both the age of the Fountain and the age of mickey mouse being quite similar. It will be interesting to see the comparisons. However, the are slightly different ages, fountain was made in 1917 and mickey mouse was created in 1928 as my brooch does indeed say.

I may look into other art at the time of 1928 in order to draw direct comparisons.

An artist who was born the day before steamboat willie, mickey’s debut (18th November, 1928), was Armand Pierre Arman. Arman tended to deal in multiples of the same object as so:

He was also very interested in the deconstruction of objects such as this case in his violin. This kind of reminds me of Braque and the cubists but it may be completely irrelevant.

I believe maybe he was referencing Braque’s work? He liked to reference artists, even the way he signed was reminiscent of Van Gogh’s signature.

Arman signed with his first name as an ode to Vincent Van Gogh who also signed as his first name.

Mickey Mouse’s first appearance was actually in Plane Crazy, but this was a silent film with a soundtrack added in Decmber of that year. It aired on May 15th, 1928 almost six months after Steamboat Willie. Wladyslaw Hasior was born a day before. Supposedly he was a famous Polish sculptor but there isn’t much information on him on the web.

I would maybe research him more, but I really feel he is irrelevant to this project, and I also amn’t intregued by his works.

OH OH OH!! The treachery of images was made by Magritte in this time!! EXCITED

Its a series of paintings depicting several things, the most famous being “ceci n’est pas une pipe” One of Magritte’s most famous paintings:

Beautiful.

So this piece of work was being made around the time of Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy.

Its also the same time as Salvador Dali. Maybe trip down to waxwork museum is necessary.

Yeah thats a nice picture too and it was done in the same time as well.

But what is the relation to money and art? What is the value?

If i take a trip to the modern art gallery and get a picture of me beside a piece of work done in 1928 then I can directly compare it to disney.

Steamboat Willie (notice the bit where mickey plays with the pigs nipples, that was cut out in disneyland.

Plane Crazy

Also my favourite disney cartoon