Artistic Liaisons......some of them dangerous.

In good faith.....

All my words for the people I care about are always in my good faith.

Kindness towards the constant plight of my artistic friends, is an extra sensory perception of the unconditional kind. Their endeavours are theirs and theirs alone......to be always at the fore of the ideas and the artspeak can bond the many relationships we have with each other. I have been fortunate in my artistic life to know and work with my friends .....across this varied field. The last part of 2012 was and will be, a time I will forever remember as most profound and yet.... some of the most disturbing moments were in the dialogue with a non believer of faith....my faith in him.

Like so often in life we take risks and chances......Iv always been a chance girl.....since my adoration of the Dadaists and Surrealism......they were the mighty with nothing to lose except tradition.....a quantum leap into the modern era. I was seventeen when I was introduced to that world....one that changed my everyday....my religion too.

In love you go forth....you tell all....some mistakes are made....a kind of madness sets in.

My faith in words comes from my Italian heritage.... as a child, a small child....Italian was my only language.....until I was five years old.......I learnt how to see beauty from my Zia's mother..."Rosa."

Love of religious icons and altar placements.... comes from those early years.

Artistic liaisons with people can be a very hard ask.....you see what they like from a distance....and engage with them verbally .....banter about with dates and important times in histories ......connect intellectually and existentially ......charm each other when we don't feel so good about ourselves. Its our personal unspoken union with the world.

After all the words exchanged with the non believer......I can say my shame is like pain....you only feel it once.

Napoleon's Eye.: "Victor Hugo"...Roads and moral philosophy.

Napoleon's Eye.: "Victor Hugo"...Roads and moral philosophy.:                                                                                                      melwitz folino. There was a time....

"Victor Hugo"...Roads and moral philosophy.

                                                                                                    

melwitz folino.

There was a time....not that long ago.....when traveling as a single woman around the world...was a truly memorable experience. My distinctive yet eccentric look including a very wide brimmed floppy hat and Iris Apfel sunglasses...was chic but not highly desirable....after all it was the 80's and Madonna ruled the world.

Interesting!.....Once whilst motoring from Paris all the way down to Italy, I recall the bug like Peugeot I had hired having red upholstery... and an Eiffel Tower hanging from the revision mirror.
As I cranked my way down south...many curious people asked me what I did for a living...."Im an Artist"....I said....Im looking to pull up where ever I like and just look at things!

How marvelous it was...as I meandered south on dirt roads with olive trees in all directions....for some reason the great Victor Hugo....came into my thoughts....people from all walks of life with pig farms and stray goats....hitch hikers looking like serial killers and small horses being ridden by gypsy kids.

Land and geography fascinated me at every turn...driving on the other side of the road was a challenge and often my sightseeing took my concentration away from the wheel....alas quick thinking and strategically placed peaches aligned on the dashboard .....saved the situation and delighted my taste buds...there's something to be said about warm fruit....its delicious.

Where ever I drove my thoughts were alive to the many poets and artists.....they too... would have taken my roads.....only without cars....what a luxury it was to guide the peugeot into sensational countryside....all senses charged and ready to stop along the way.

A look from a passer by....made me smile.... as I realized I was wearing a very long and flowing scarf...as it flew around in the wind...I felt euphoric and free!

melwitz folino.

Victor Hugo.....take me far away to Italy once more.

Close Encounters : Broken Heartstrings...

MADAM DADA.

Today is my Birthday. In all the years it has taken to get here....this morning I awoke to a beautiful spring day and new hope.....mainly for my work.. as an artist... and for me ....as myself. The last few months of my life have been most complex..indeed. Never thought by being connected to Facebook...that so much information could be arrayed....in the strange ways that it has......Life is tangled up most of the time....but this form of communication often leaves me reeling.




To take a chance on a stranger.....is not only mad but god dam ridiculous...to say the least.
Artist's come in all shapes and sizes....most of us have such different agenda's...all working and thinking many number of things.....some of us prefer to be private and some of us are more inclined to socialise about the work. As a teacher I tend to be an active purveyor...of all things fashion/art/design/genre's/histories and all number of playful practise's ......this can create a wonderful experience for many a student and I love to tell stories via the fabulous mother ship...that the Internet is....................HOWEVER.


Recently I was enamoured with someone who seemed friendly enough....and like able.
I discovered this person was informed in certain areas of art...of which I was interested in.
After many back and forths....via chat and messaging.....the daily getting to know of one another rose to other heights. Those intense and overwhelming similarities.....were constant and mind bogglingly attractive.....and rest assured ...deadly.


What people do in this... not so new form of communication.....is anyone's guess...I was new to it..even at my age ..I never really went in there.....never looked around at it....was not at all of the time...that modern etiquette and social networking....delivered. I stayed right away from all of it....just used it for good...so to speak....students were the main priority there.

Time and effort spent on this one person.....was all consuming and took over my affections.
For all that I felt...nothing will surpass those moments....not even a most treasured memory of standing in front of a VINCENT VAN GOGH....in Amsterdam.

It took me over.


If I was a doctor...I would get out my little brown leather doctor's bag....and use every instrument I could find to do my own surgery....to mend and put back together...my broken and beaten heartstrings.
Without them...life would not be as it once was......I'm ready to appear again as I was..trusting in my silent surgery....I feel  like I'm in recovery mode.

Closeness with the intangible is too hard.
What I know and what my experiences have taught me.....is to go with that first bout of intuitiveness.
Believe it through and through.

Its my clock....the one that belongs to me.

Inner workings of my clock. Dedication to Dorothea Tanning.

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.