Significant Others : Partners in their Artistic Realms.

LEONORA CARRINGTON and MAX ERNST.

When we think of the perfect picture of "A life Romantic"...I'm inclined to think of the great Surrealist's.Their chosen fields of working were about inventing brand new forms of expression which were mainly based on chance. Max was one of the outstanding exponents of art in the 20th century.

In 1938 Max Ernst fell in love with a young painter, Leonora Carrington...they moved in together in a place called SAINT-MARTIN-D' ARDECHE.......where they discovered and bought a tumbledown seventeenth century farmhouse. Together they renovated the entire complex. Max Ernst, who was persecuted as a "degenerate artist", had to leave Europe after being interned a number of times. Leonora Carrington fled to Spain while he was in German internment. In Marseilles Max Ernst was reunited with many of the Surrealists as well as the collector, PEGGY GUGGENHEIM. Peggy paid for him to fly to New York in 1941. Peggy married Max to save him. Their marriage was about that. In New York...Max meets Dorothea Tanning and once again he finds an old house on Long Island and gets started on making it their nest.

PEGGY GUGGENHEIM.

 Salvador Dali and Gala Dali were also very well placed in terms of their romantic encounters.

She was the significant other of the french poet...Paul Elouard....before Dali decided to call her his own.The jewel couple were very liked across Paris in the 1940's and as Picasso reigned as "The King Of Paris"...in the painting world....Salvador was a close and passionate friend and confidante. It was Picasso who suggested that Dali and Gala should head to America to sell his surrealist sculpture's to the well to do of the American Rockefeller's.......Thirty foot high florescent orange Polar Bear Statues for the lobby of the Rockefeller Centre. Gala and Salvador were the toast of the town. He arrived back in Paris a wealthy man. The band of artists working in Paris during and after the war....were well connected.......with each other....helped each other get through to the next miraculous thing coming their way. Spaniards like Joan Miro Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali....head the brigade of talent and insight for the intelligenzia.......bohemian Paris would never be the same again. Dali many years later told "La Monde".........."When my Gala dies....I will eat her...she will not be eaten by worms or burnt in a fire.....she will live in me".

JACKSON POLLOCK and LEE KRASNER.

An American Saga....was a book written about the Jackson Pollock's life...for me it has to be the best thing ever written about the native roots and cosmopolitan strivings of American modern art.

The Prologue begins and opens with the words of Pollock....."I'm going to kill myself".....carried by his demons Jackson Pollock....was inconsolable.

Lee Krasner took him on when not one single person would even look in his direction.

She managed him..loved him...held him..became his mother/confidante/lover/agent/advocate/mentor and enemy. Love, they say, heightens our senses and lowers our perceptions......this is true of their turbulent lives...to the very frantic end. She was quoted as saying...."He was as exciting as hell".

Falling

Into

The arms

of an

artistic type ......is invincible.

ALFRED STIEGLITZ / GEORGIA O'KEEFFE.

 

 

         

VERTICAL INVADERS: We are all in Exile.

JEAN COCTEAU.

In 1973....... I was in High School loving my time in the Art Room.

My teacher whom I remember with great admiration.....was a man called Max Grierson.
He was so very enthusiastic towards telling stories about Monsieur Picasso.

On Sunday the 8th of April 1973....Pablo Picasso died.
He was buried in the remote seclusion of the CHATEAU DE VAUVENARGUES with the greatest possible privacy.
A heavy fall of snow covered the flowers already abundant in the Provencal spring and a violent thunderstorm announced his arrival.

My teacher went on to say...in nature beauty and ugliness are inextricably partners and Picasso's art expresses this throughout his love of nature as a whole.
He is a scavenger who unearths from the mud abandoned riches and the magician who creates VENUS out of empty space.
He was born with a philosopher's stone in his hand.

Exile is a state in which, in it's subjective effects, never stands still.

To be an artist is to live in exile perpetually....we are outsiders with irrational tendencies for all matters of strange and enlightening elements of thought....the processes are deeply philosophical and without the homages......and the many who shook up the centuries past...we would not be well guided in our plights.

Morandi.....Rothko.....Pollock....Modigliani.....held their own...Morandi painted pots and jugs for 40 years....Rothko and his paintings of self cremation.....Pollock in Long Island was visited by Celestial Aliens from above.....and gave us the galaxy of constellations .......and my most treasured of all bohemian's, Amedeo Modigliani ....could only see his long and seductive women.....all alluring and ready to conquer and bewitch.

As a teacher I often use a text to explain our uncompromising judgements in art....and hold many discussions regarding this text....JOHN BERGER'S....WAYS OF SEEING.

He is so easy for the students to read.....I enjoy his descriptions and knowledge in an area so often overlooked.

Exile.....loneliness.

YVES SAINT LAURENT.

To the artist...... being lonely in the same way a lunatic is lonely is because it seems to the lunatic that, since he never meets opposition, he can do anything. It is by paradox...the loneliness of self-sufficiency.

I almost forgot to tell you...GEORGES BESSON wrote of the homages of Picasso..

This man, whose tastes are not extravagant, has a weakness for black diamonds.
He owns two superb ones.
He will never part with them.
They weigh a good hundred carats each.
He wears them where others have eyes, it's as I tell you...and I assure you that those women on whom these diamonds turn their fire are utterly bowled over.

Great Expectations : Where does it all fit in.

Across my life there have been many experiences involving young adolescents....mainly through teaching and mentoring.

Recently I began teaching a small class of students who, no doubt, will one day be working in the world of fashion and all the mayhem that that entails. When delivering some fashion history to them they are intrigued to learn that YOU are and were there....when it all took shape.

The 1970's in Melbourne was certainly a most prolific decade....with new blood...fresh from the many art schools....bursting onto the streets with a sense of doing things for the very first time!

                                                                     AND THEY WERE!

A generous sprinkle of assorted bands and radical art movements ...gushed out onto the streets.
St.Kilda was the place to be seen and heard....all who walked Fitzroy Street were clad in the notorious BLACK clothes...we so loved with a passion....and still do.

Screeching sounds from over tuned electric guitars and piercing over pitched bemoans were rampant.
We were living in the twilight zone...a zone where what we were doing ....meant everything!
Life was about hanging out in groovy bars in Chapel Street as well as lounging at the Tiger Lounge in Richmond.....all day WARHOL movies at the Valhalla Movie House.....donning a hot pink vespa helmut...with FUCK ART LETS DANCE...written on the back....we wore what we thought was chic with our own inimitable style attached.....hell we were the ones!.....the ones who got the good end of the educational stick.

As a result....we now...many of us..find ourselves teaching and listening to the needs and desires of this over indulged generation.

Don't get me wrong!...I will put my hand up to say there are some who know the value of tutorial and class discussion.....but in a world where their technology rules everything....surely and slowly they are becoming less concerned for the knowledge and creative banter.....we so loved from our mentors and teachers.

The heady days of decades past, is a reminder of the values we placed on all the diverse and experimental approaches in our lives......today their lives are somewhat devoid of experiences.
I am aware of many young people in my charge who have not been to an exhibition in a Gallery or listened to classical music on the radio on a lazy Sunday morning......contemplation or as I like to call it......DREAMING AWAY....unexplored notions to them.

World politics is too hard for most of us to fathom at the best of times...however there is enough written about it on an hourly basis....to warrant some discussion.

My expectations for them are to grab and gauge and hammer their way into this century.

Say something about your world...the world so fast and furious only you can steer...the one you will live in and hold dear.....throttle it with all your might...make it bend to you and scream out loud when it hisses back at you!


Welcome all who ask you what will you do in the FUTURE.............................................................

LEO TOLSTOY..by ILYA REPIN.