Last night I woke up a number of times from dreams with the image of a painting in my head and the letter "F." I assumed the letter was for the name of the artist.
It was strange, as unlike my good friend and fellow artist, Emmerline Smy (www.emmerline.com) who keeps a dream journal and is endlessly inspired by her dreams, I usually remember 2 or 3 a year. And then they are usually bereft of meaning and terribly boring.
So, it was even more interesting when I did a search this morning for the image and suddenly remembered that it was a Manet. See "The Fifer," from 1866 pictured above (from Artchive.com). I could remember Professor Paul Hayes Tucker (major Monet historian, curator-extraordinaire, and one of the most dynamic, creative, interesting and intelligent educators in the history of teaching) explaining, in a discussion on impressionism, that it was shocking at the time for being so flat and that it "looked as if it had been cut out and pasted on the canvas." So, I am not sure now if the "F" was for "flute" (I never remember the instrument as "fife," but as "flute") or if it was for "flat," which is such a major aspect of line-based work- and comes up again and again in my own work.
It was also fun to then be reminded of the Manet painting, "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère," (borrowed here from en.wikipedia.org); another example of a woman in a mirror- if not one of the most famous ones.
To go back to the Paul Tucker quote; I can't help but also notice the tie in between me actually cutting out forms and pasting them on canvas now. Funny how the mind works. I find the tension between linear and painterly; flat vs. depth in my work, and it is something I try and capture very consciously (I think some of the most interesting painters - Rothko, Pollock, de Kooning; even Johns and Rosenquist- work in this in-between place quite a bit). But I haven't thought about that Manet for years. Weird.
It was strange, as unlike my good friend and fellow artist, Emmerline Smy (www.emmerline.com) who keeps a dream journal and is endlessly inspired by her dreams, I usually remember 2 or 3 a year. And then they are usually bereft of meaning and terribly boring.
So, it was even more interesting when I did a search this morning for the image and suddenly remembered that it was a Manet. See "The Fifer," from 1866 pictured above (from Artchive.com). I could remember Professor Paul Hayes Tucker (major Monet historian, curator-extraordinaire, and one of the most dynamic, creative, interesting and intelligent educators in the history of teaching) explaining, in a discussion on impressionism, that it was shocking at the time for being so flat and that it "looked as if it had been cut out and pasted on the canvas." So, I am not sure now if the "F" was for "flute" (I never remember the instrument as "fife," but as "flute") or if it was for "flat," which is such a major aspect of line-based work- and comes up again and again in my own work.
It was also fun to then be reminded of the Manet painting, "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère," (borrowed here from en.wikipedia.org); another example of a woman in a mirror- if not one of the most famous ones.
To go back to the Paul Tucker quote; I can't help but also notice the tie in between me actually cutting out forms and pasting them on canvas now. Funny how the mind works. I find the tension between linear and painterly; flat vs. depth in my work, and it is something I try and capture very consciously (I think some of the most interesting painters - Rothko, Pollock, de Kooning; even Johns and Rosenquist- work in this in-between place quite a bit). But I haven't thought about that Manet for years. Weird.
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