Monica D. Murgia

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The Art Spirit

Currently Reading: The Non-Objective World

September 15, 2013 / Leave a Comment
All my favorite books have pictures.  While I enjoy reading and writing immensely, sometimes words are insufficient.  How do you describe a perfect sunset?  Or that moment you realize that you’re in love with someone?  Of course there are wonderful adjectives that can help explain the experience to another person, but somehow that magic moment is inexpressible with words.  I find myself in this situation often.   It’s frustrating to be unable to share a feeling or experience with someone because you can’t describe it.   This frustration is what leads me to draw or paint.
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When I enjoy the work of other artists, I’m curious as to what they are trying to express.   Looking at art always makes me feel something.  It stirs up my emotions and thoughts.  So I’m eager to see if what I feel is what the artist was hoping to express.

 

cosmos-1917.jpg!Blog

 

Cosmos by Kazimir Malevich, 1917.  Image courtesy of Wikipaintings.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Russian abstract painter and costume designer Kazimir Malevich.  His work really fascinated me, initially because his experience as a costume designer influenced his later path as a painter.  So, I started to look at his artwork.

 

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Mystical Suprematism (Black Cross on Red Oval) by Kazimir Malevich, c. 1920-7.  Image courtesy of Malevich Paintings.

Malevich is most known for starting the art movement Suprematism. He conceived the idea of Suprematism around 1913, which focuses on basic geometric forms painted in a limited range of colors.  Malevich believed that the true power of art was it’s ability to evoke emotion in the viewer.  By using simple geometric forms, there was no way for political or social meanings to be imparted on the work of art. I loved the ideas behind his work.   He saw painting as a way to make people feel something that could not be manipulated or placed out of context.

 

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Mystical Religious Rotation of Shapes by Kazimir Malevich.  Image courtesy of Wikipaintings.

Lucky for me, Malevich wrote a manifesto on what his artwork was trying to make people feel.  He traveled to Berlin in the 1920s to exhibit his work and network with the faculty at Bauhaus. (New to my site?  You should read my previous posts on the Bauhaus.) His manifesto, The Non-Obective World, was published as book 11 in the series Die Gegenstandslose Welt.  (A friend told me this title translates to something like “a spirit without products” or “the spirit of the abstract”)

 

formula-of-suprematism.jpg!Blog
Formula of Suprematism by Kazimir Malevich.  Image courtesy of Wikipaintings.

NYPL had a copy of The Non-Objective World, and I’m reading it now.  The introduction was really powerful.  It explains that, according to Malevich, art is eternally powerful because it originates from a feeling.  Artists are inspired to create something because of an almost mystical experience.  The urge to make something and share it with others is what makes an art object beautiful.

He insisted that art and the feelings which generate it are more basic and meaningful than religious beliefs and political conceptions.  Religions and the state, in the past, employed art as a means to further their aim.  The usefulness of works of technology is of short-lived but art endures forever.  If humanity is to achieve a real and absolute order this must be founded on eternal values, that is, on art.

 

 

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Posted in: Art's Influence on Fashion, artists, artists i love, Books, Designers I love Tagged: abstract art, art, bauhaus, geometric art, Kazemir Malevich, mystic art, mysticism, Russian painter, Suprematism, The Art Spirit, The Non Objective World

Find of the Week: The Art Spirit by Robert Henri

March 24, 2013 / 1 Comment

 

 

My previous posts about the “Find of the Week” have always been about clothing.  But today’s post is all about a wonderful book I discovered.  The Art Spirit by Robert Henri is a collection of the artist’s beliefs, theories, and teachings on painting.  I can’t tell you how excited I was to accidentally discover this book!

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Robert Henri (1865-1929) was an American artist, primarily know for his portraits, and the leader of the Ashcan School.  Around 1900, this group of painters focused on depicting scenes as they were (Realism) instead of in the dreamy, staccato way of the American (and French) Impressionists.

Henri attracted droves of students to The Art Students League of New York, including George Bellows. (New to my site?  Please take a moment to read my previous post on George Bellows) Henri was an excellent communicator, mostly because of the passion which drove him to create art.  He saw no separation between art and life, constantly stating that art is a matter in which everyone is vitally concerned.  Why?  Henri opens the book with the following:

“Art, when really understood, is the province of every human being.  It is simply a question of doing things – anything – well.  It is not an outside, extra thing.  When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching , daring, self-expressing creature,  He becomes interesting to other people.“

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Current course catalog for The Art Students League

The Art Students League is still in operation.  After finding Henri’s book, I took a trip to the school.  There classes are extremely flexible and affordable.  You simply select the type of class you’d like to take, and pay for a month of enrollment.  Classes offered range in price from $80  to $240 for the month, and meet either once, twice, or five times a week.  The Art Students League also offers workshops, as well!  I’m hoping to enroll in a class or two this summer.

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Classroom storage at The Art Students League.

The book is so inspiring.  It is no wonder to me that Henri had so many students.  When I read his words now, so long after they were written in the 1920s, I can feel this dormant creativity in myself waking up.  A particular passage in the book really touched me:

“There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual.  Such are the moments of greatest happiness.  Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.  If one could but recall his visions by some sort of sign.  It was in this hope that the arts were invented.  Signposts on the way to what might be. Signposts towards greater knowledge.”

1908 Jessica Penn in Black with White Plumes oil on canvas 196 x 97 cm

 

Jessica Penn in Black and White Plumes by Robert Henri, 1908.

That is what made Henri such a great artist.  He could observe daily life in such extraordinary detail.  Looking at his portrait of Jessica Penn, I imagine that he captured her likeness very well.  Penn seems very self-assured with her bold pose: shoulders back, hip thrust back and jutted out to the side, arms positioning the fabric of her skirt to show her silhouette more closely.  She has that s-shaped silhouette so typical of the time period. But look at her face: doesn’t she look a bit, well, bored?  Maybe she is just tired – those extreme corsets of the day certainly made daily activities, like walking and breathing, difficult.

Her outfit is really skillful depicted.  It really reminds me a lot of this dress by Jaques Doucet from 1903.

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Dress by Jacques Doucet, 1903.  Image courtesy of The Kyoto Costume Institute.  

 

 

 

 

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Posted in: art, artists, artists i love, Books, find of the week, Inspiration, Shopping Tagged: daily life, fashion, fashion from 1900-1910, George Bellows, Inspiration, Jacques Doucet, painting, Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, The Art Students League, The Ashcan School

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