Dennis Hollingsworth

Armature

Rebuild Them

I'm glad that Banksy agrees with me.

Rebuild Them.

(Source.)

Mental Flies Filed

What follows are pages of notes jotted down on the fly -mental flies pinned to the wall- as I visit the shows about town.

They're butterflies, actually.

But then again, that's all "eyes in the beholder" territory.

Chris Burden at the New Museum

UPDATE: après-Young Chris Burden, discuss...

Whitney: American Legends, Robert Indiana

Christopher Wool at the Guggenheim

Mike Kelly at PS1

Ahora

"Painting 101" at Sargent's Daughters

Links:
Sargent's Daughters
Gallerist
Art F City
ARTINFO
Culture Craver

Meanwhile in Tossa...

...Kiko just brought in the wood for his stove for the winter.

Ahora

C.I.C. to Yam Span

Apropos of periodic references to my early years as a sailor (7th Fleet, USS Truxtun CGN-35) working in the Combat Information Center, we have some news about the evolution of the kind of work environment that has to gather an avalanche of information, digest it and act on it. We see it in NASA, the stock exchange, news rooms, and increasingly -if abstractedly and in smaller scale- in our own homes and workplaces.

The Navy's newest warship is powered by Linux
The USS Zumwalt will be a floating data center--armed with missiles and robot guns.
...the operations center of the Zumwalt will have more in common with the fictional starship USS Enterprise's bridge than it does with the combat information centers of the ships I went to sea on. Every console on the Zumwalt will be equipped with touch screens and software capable of taking on the needs of any operator on duty, and big screens on the forward bulkhead will display tactical plots of sea, air, and land.

Of course, I am automatically compelled to jam in a correlation to art, the Yam adventures of yore...

Black Figure

The Metropolitan Museum has several rooms full archaic Greek pottery, the figuration on shaped surfaces fascinate me. On one of the wall texts, the museum explained the technique:

Athenian Vase Painting: Black- and Red-Figure Techniques
...In black-figure vase painting, figural and ornamental motifs were applied with a slip that turned black during firing, while the background was left the color of the clay. Vase painters articulated individual forms by incising the slip or by adding white and purple enhancements (mixtures of pigment and clay)...

So I fired up the Brushes App in my iPad and tried my hand. I think I'll be back for more. There are a multitude of models to draw from!

Black Figure Greek Pottery at the Met

ca. 550B.C. Symposium, the subject is the return of Hephaistos to Olympus. He was cast out of Olympus by his mother Hera...

(LoopCam)

Terracotta column-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water) Attributed to Lydos at the Metroploitain Museum of Art, NYC.

The subject, which encompasses both sides of the vase, is the return of Hephaistos to Mount Olympos, the home of the gods. Hephaistos, the divine smith, was the son of Hera and Zeus. Because he was born lame, his mother cast him out of Olympos. In revenge, Hephaistos fashioned a throne that held Hera fast when she sat on it. only Hephaistos could release her. Therefore, he was given wine and escorted to Olympos by Dionysos, the god of wine, accompanied by his male and female followers, the satyrs and maenads.

Ahora

Churchill on Painting

I'm listening to an audiobook on Winston Churchill by William Manchester. In volume one, during World War I, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he was scapegoated by a host of incompetents in charge of government and edged out of public office. In an interlude before he rejoined the British Army and served in the trenches of the Western Front, he started painting -initially introduced by his wife as means to distract him from his troubles- and he took to it avidly and naturally. But his entry into this new world wasn't without difficulty or risk:

With everything assembled, "...the next step was to begin. But what a step to take! The palette gleamed with beads of color. Fair and white was the canvas. The exotic brush hung poised heavy with destiny, irresolute in the air. My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto. But after all, the sky on this occasion was unquestionably blue and a pale blue at that. Then there could be no doubt that blue paint mixed with white should be put on top of the canvas. One does not need an artists' training to see that. It is a starting point open to all. So, gingerly I mixed a little blue paint on the palette with a very small brush and then with infinite proportion I made a mark as big as a pea upon the affronted snow white shield. It was a challenge, a deliberate challenge. But so subdued, so halting indeed, so cataleptic, that it deserved no response."

"...deserved no response..."

A horrible feeling, that.

Beyond Reason

Beyond Reason
2013
#428
60"x48"