Ding Dong
Freedom – 36" x 36" Oils on Canvas by Jennie Rosenbaum
The block is dead..
thank god! I was going crazy there for a minute! nothing like some visual stimulus to help get out of that mindset. Sometimes it’s looking at art and being inspired, sometimes it’s sitting down and watching a movie. ok, often it’s watching a movie. Last night it was V which is still brilliant, even on the umteenth rewatching. combining the beautiful imagery of V and then putting on Rent on my iPod allowed me to drift into my painting state.
I’m not ready to post what I painted, it’s not quite finished. It’s another blindfold piece so I have to glaze the blindfold on still. but so far I am happy with it.
so far.
Feeling Exposed
Well that didn’t go too well, I will keep trying until I get through this block. when I am blocked it affects everything, I don’t want to work online, I don’t want to think about promotions or shows, I just want to hide.
So today I played around with making a facebook app. you can now add my blog to your facebook page and invite others t do the same! how cool is that! go here to add the app, or add me as a friend and I will send you an invite! I am going to try not to spam everyone and anyone with it because I hate it when people do that – but I would love to see it spread!
RIP
RIP by Insane Jennie
One of the unfortunate aspects of my detoxing from my nerve medication is the incredible mood swings. the rage, depression and fear override everything else making me almost insane. The drug reaction emphasizes my obsessive characteristics making me pick away at things incessantly. This was one of the results during my second stage which I am now, thankfully, over. (one more stage to go)
When I paint one of these white pieces I have to repeat lines over and over again to get the perfect result. it’s obsessive in nature and frustrating but almost meditative. it gives me a chance to examine each line – is that the best I can do? does it have the right shape/clarity/gravity? was the last one better? there is no going back and I get stuck between my expectations for myself and what I can realistically accomplish with a fast drying medium.
Add the two together and well, you get this. This piece started out pretty well, in fact I finished it in record time. then the obsession started – maybe I can do better, this isn’t quite right, this line isn’t perfect.. so I changed a little bit. then I changed a little more, then I started to descend into madness. The magnified obsession started to take hold and I slipped into a spiral of picking away at the piece until I took it apart and slowly killed it. there is no other word for it. I flew into a rage and destroyed the piece, stabbing and ripping the canvas and ruining my knives, then collapsed in depressed misery.
I haven’t been able to paint since.
I am going to lock myself in my studio tonight and paint something – I have to get over this block. I feel like I killed this work in cold blood and I am afraid of doing it again. but I am going crazy not painting either. which is worse? insanity while painting or insanity without painting?
Hasty Turnaround on Nude Ad Ban
Water Nymph Resting by Lucas Cranach
London reverses ‘overtly sexual’ Tube poster ban – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):
“On reflection in this context, the Cranach exhibition poster should not have been rejected and we’ve now approved the advertisement to be carried on the Tube.”
Conservative lawmaker John Whittingdale, chairman of the influential House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee, described the original ban as “absolutely bonkers” earlier this week.
talk about your quick turnaround! good on them for reversing the decision quickly and admitting a mistake. it strikes me as an oh shit! fix it quick! sort of response but it certainly was the correct decision and I am impressed that they didn’t immediately go on the defensive and make this situation boil rapidly out of control as happens so often when nudes are the subject!
personally I wish I was in London and able to see it – it looks like a very interesting exhibition.
Technorati Tags: art, art news, art world, censorship, controversy
Dark Ages attitues towards the Nude
Venus Poster by Lucas Cranach the Elder:
Nude Venus poster banned on Tube:
A 16th Century painting of Venus featuring the Roman goddess of love wearing little but a smile has been deemed too risque for the eyes of London’s Tube travellers.
London Underground bosses have banned a poster of the 1532 work by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, promoting an upcoming Royal Academy exhibition.
The Academy is outraged.
“We are disappointed and find it quite ridiculous in this day and age,” said Head of Press and Marketing, Jennifer Francis.
This piece was a revolutionary creation in it’s day. Cranach was one of the first of the renaissance european artists to paint such bold nudes and is considered by many to have helped define the genre. It astounds me that a piece that was painted so long ago, and in such a comparatively prudish era, is being reviled now as too explicit. Cranach probably would have been pleased.
we are getting to a stage of prudery now where even the works of the past are enough to make people blush. Art history should apparently be swept under the rug, all nudes, gone. they didn’t happen, they are too much for our delicate sensibilities. heaven forfend we now have to pull every single reference to Botticelli’s venus, or all of the nude sculpture in Europe. David with his puppyish hands and classic pose, let’s forget the artistry, after all there’s a penis on display.
it boggles the mind that despite all appearances we are less enlightened now than in the Renaissance. where we can see nudity everywhere on TV, in magazines and billboards, where nudity seems to be featured purely for nudity’s sake, where people dress in outfits that are more revealing than skin, an artwork by a master from the 16th century is the focus of censorship and derision.
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