Mood:
spaceyTopic: art in progress
Now I know how the museum survives. The entire year's budget is supplied by a nuclear power plant! Money, power, and charity are a very old triad. Sometimes I've worried a little about the dangerous monster sitting on the side of the river five miles away. Now my feelings are stirred. I love the museum and have always wanted the best for it while I have always viewed the nuclear power plant as a blight upon the soil. Now I understand that the existence of both are inter-related.
My three hours at the museum yesterday went very well. A new retrospective exhibit by the artist Wolf Kahn opened and we are getting a sharp rise in attendence. I'm excited because there is a lot I can learn from looking at this artist. He will be speaking at the museum about his art on August 10th and I'm going to take a tranquilizer and go hear him talk. The drug will be for mild anxiety. From experience I've learned that people at these popular lectures get sandwiched in together uncomfortatbly close. Too many human bodies makes me self conscious and my guts begin to rumble.
A good tactic for work days at the museum is to arrive having done little else in the morning. It is a mistake to exhaust my reserves of energy before work. Yesterday I wanted to paint really bad but instead I put a muzzle on Plum and brushed her. A very basic, repetative activity requiring no sophistication of thought.
Wolf Kahn spends half his year living on a property in West Brattleboro. He likes to paint his barn and other Vermont barns quite a bit. I didn't know it but for the last 10 years every time I've visited my psychiatrist the enormus red barn art print she has framed opposite the therapy couch is a Wolf Kahn barn. The original is in the show, and my, doesn't it look better than the print.
I've been thinking what to ask for Christmas - because confused parents sometimes are greatful for a little help. I want big, fat art books with lots of pictures on artists who have now grabbed my attention. They are artists who I want to steal technique from. I need
El Grecco
Gaugain
Francis Bacon
I'm starting to think more than ever about color and how the paint lies on the canvass. Clumps, dashes, raked bits or flat. I need to look at original artwork by the masters and try to ask of it new questions. Like, under the yellow, was there blue painted first and does it peek out from under the yellow?
