art – Dithyramb

The cover of the June 22, 2020 issue of The New Yorker, by artist Kadir Nelson. An interactive version of the work, describing the individuals and events depicted in the piece, can be viewed here. The illustration is entitled “Say Their Names.”

Friend-of-the-blog @robertpatrick saw shades of Robert Motherwell in today’s owl silhouette. I’m not sure if this is the painting he had in mind

— I see a wet raven, not an owl

— but I’m delighted by the Motherwell association.

Beside the Sea #34 / Robert Motherwell / black oil paint on paper / 1962.

Image adapted from the digital collections of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Multiplicity.

I made this digital multiple exposure from my photographs of seated ventriloquist dummies designed by Laurie Simmons on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Simmons fabricated six identical dummies but dressed them in different attire in a sculpture series titled Clothes Make the Man (1991). Her work explores the tension between urges to express individual identity while simultaneously conforming to social norms of behavior and appearance.

When I shoot others’ work in museums I try to avoid shooting pieces in toto. The museum’s curators have better photographic and lighting equipment, and a postcard from the museum gift shop is bound to be superior to any shot I could take. Instead I like to focus on details: the expressiveness of a portrait subject’s hands, the juxtaposition of a painting’s edge with its frame, or the interplay of a sculpture’s bulk with the shadow it casts on its plinth or walls. I want to interpret, or possibly reinterpret and amplify what I see.

With Simmons’s piece I was struck by the bland uniformity of the dummies, despite their differences in dress, and wanted to re-imagine them fragmented and splintered and not quite put back together.

Ye Pirate Bold. Illustration by Howard Pyle, 1903.

The inscription reads: "It is not because of his life & adventure and daring that I admire this one of my favorite heroes; nor is it because of blowing winds nor blue ocean nor balmy islands which he knew so well; nor is it because of gold he spent nor treasure he hid. He was a man who knew his own mind and what he wanted. Howard Pyle"

From the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Ye Pirate Bold. Illustration by Howard Pyle, 1903.

From the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Ciphers and Constellations in Love with a Woman by Joan Miró, 1941.

Gouache and watercolor with traces of graphite on ivory wove paper, marked Chiffres et constellations amoureux / d’une femme on the reverse. From the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Recent star photos by Brian at bag213 got me thinking about Miró’s Constellations series, with a little help from some Miró-inspired upholstery on a booth at the Panera where I stopped for morning coffee. My stream of consciousness meanders a bit if I haven’t had my coffee.

You can see pochoir prints of all of Miró’s Constellations by clicking here. And if you’re not already following bag213 you should be – only two clicks away.

Ciphers and Constellations in Love with a Woman by Joan Miró, 1941.

Gouache and watercolor with traces of graphite on ivory wove paper, marked Chiffres et constellations amoureux / d’une femme on the reverse. From the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago.

You can see pochoir prints of all of Miró’s Constellations by clicking here. And if you’re not already following bag213 you should be – only two clicks away.