I liked this sketch so much I decided to stop and keep it light and fluffy.





Then I did this version, spending a few hours developing richer colors and patterns.

Kind of enjoy drawing rabbits. They're easier to dress than dragons.

Erl at Art Supply warehouse on Sunday february 6th

Good ole Erl...
This model is always so fun to draw.
Very nice guy, too.

detail of new triptych

"Night Parade of a Hundred Demons/ Kasha with DDT"

15 1/4" x 31 3/4"
2010

My friend Leah Friedenrich, SCC Librarian and Japanese art aficionado, organized this educational display of the making of my woodblock print in Tokyo, over the past year, and the history of Japanese Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) from the mid-nineteenth century until the present. Thank you, Leah!

A watercolor painting of mine ("Heaven and Hell III") and my first Japanese woodblock print("Blue Moon") will be on display in an exhibition entitled “SugiPOP!: The Influence of Anime and Manga on Contemporary Art.” The show will open next week at the Portsmouth Museum of Art in Portsmouth, NH.

The show will run from October 13th 2010 – January 16th 2011. It's a collaborative effort, co-curated by Beau Basse of LeBasse Projects in Los Angeles and Katherine Doyle,a wonderful figurative artist and curator of the Portsmouth Museum of Art.

I met Kate and her husband Simon on the beach in Waimanalo, Hawaii in 1985, where I lived at the time, as I apologized profusely for my dog having blissfully booted sand into their beautiful plein air oil paintings. Happy they didn't hold it against me! Anyway, the Sugi-show features the work of approximately thirty artists tracing the origins of manga, the rise of Japanese Contemporary Art, and how the art forms have influenced artists around the world.

Sugi, the Japanese word for ‘too much,’ represents the extreme characteristics of Japanese manga and anime, which have merged with the American phenomenon of Pop, to become SugiPOP – a blend of Japanese and American contemporary art shaped and defined by over-the-top pop.

The exhibition features an international roster of artists including Japanese historic icons Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Kuniyoshi in a display of original Edo period (mid-nineteenth century) ukiyo-e (woodblock) prints, depicting Japan's traditional 'floating world' of beauty and entertainment.

The exhibit also features Japanese Contemporary artists Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Yoshitaka Amano, Mr., Ai Yamaguchi, Junko Mizuno and Hisashi Tenmyouya.

International artists contributing to the exhibit include KAWS, Gary Baseman, Simone Legno, Natalia Fabia, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Yumiko Kayukawa, Moira Hahn, Seonna Hong, Hush, Morgan Slade, Edwin Ushiro, Luke Chueh, Andrew Hem, Mike Shinoda, SharkToof, Yoskay Yamamoto and others.

In addition, the exhibition is complemented by original cels from some of the most significant anime ever made, including Cowboy Bebop and Princess Mononoke.

The Portsmouth Museum of Art is located at One Harbour Place in downtown Portsmouth. Admission is free.

Jean Leon Gerome at the J. Paul Getty Museum

Visited the Getty yesterday to see the Gerome exhibition, on view through September 12th.

Fantastic show.

I've seen a number of these paintings in person, at the Tate Museum, in London, 3 years ago (Orientalism exhibition, January 2007) and, throughout my childhood, at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (permanent collection). This, however, is a more comprehensive survey of his subjects and media, including sculpture.

Primary emphasis is placed on Gerome's oil paintings, his primary artistic milieux, spanning over six decades from portrait commissions through historical tableaux, mythological and religious subjects and Orientalist fantasies.

Gerome may have been one of the first 19th century French painters to take full advantage of photography in preparation for his work, from the 1840s through the early years of the twentieth century.

Several rooms are devoted to photography and printmaking, both with reference to Gerome's use of photography to plan his paintings, and to how photography of the completed art formed a basis for derivative lithographic prints and coffee-table art books made from the paintings, which added to his fame, wealth, and criticism at the time for being too 'commercial'.

Then as now, some critics considered the use of photographic references 'cheating'. One can't imagine how any artist could create works with this degree of pictorial complexity and accuracy without the use of photography, but art critics, of any day and age, require something to write about.

I'd have liked to have seen drawings and more preparatory studies. If there were any drawings at all, I missed them. A few painted 'sketches' are included.

The paintings' composition, color, patterns, use of light and attention to detail are mind boggling. Gerome's drafting and painting technique and the anatomical perfection of the portraits and figures in most of the work is amazing and exciting.

I'm sure his work reflects all of the prejudices of upper-class French social strata toward the 'exotic', 'hot-blooded' cultures portrayed. One would expect that, it didn't detract in the slightest from my enjoyment of his imagination in composing tableaux of Roman, Moorish, Egyptian and Turkish worlds. I'm fascinated not only by what artists paint, but by the filters that form their judgment of what is worthy to be painted and how the narrative should be presented to viewers...the lens that informs us. One sees similarly coupled juxtapositions in Bodmer's studies of Native American tribal life, modeled (by Bodmer or his publisher) after Neo-Classical French historical painting by David and Ingres.

Looking at Gerome's subjects from the context of contemporary American values, his depictions of women are far fewer than of men, and almost always emphasize their sexuality and objectification, entertainment or slave value. One senses his closest friends were men and wonders if he so much as knew any women artists.

A bust of French actress Sarah Bernhardt, towards the end of the exhibition and the end of his prolific artistic life, seems almost to have been created by another artist. One remembers that Mucha and the Art Nouveau movement dovetailed with the end of traditional Academic French painting. One realises too that Gerome's work was overshadowed by Impressionism, through the last decades of the nineteenth century, and appreciates his wisdom in sticking to what he excelled at, rather than jumping ship for the next critically acclaimed art movement.

Not everything Gerome made 'worked', or at least, what remains to be seen of it. Attempts to tint marble busts with natural looking pigments to create a life-like aura may have faded unevenly. What's left looked slightly cheesy. The uniform, cool brown tint applied to Bernhardt's elaborately coifed 'do', for example, looks a bit like a dead possum. Perhaps a century ago the pigments on the statue were more varied, hadn't faded or gained a layer of soot, and gave a life-like impression.

If you have a chance, hope you'll see this show. Few artists of any age drew, painted, or could put together a composition better than Gerome. His Orientalist paintings, such as 'The Snake Charmer' (detail above)are among my favorites.

August visit to Astoria Oregon

We had a great time with Wiley in Astoria. The 'Cathedral Tree' trail by the Astoria Column was a wonderful hike!