Children are not fashionable

When I was a kid, I remember there was a season during which this was my favorite painting.  Memory is fickle, of course.  I don’t know whether the season of my enthusiasm lasted a week or an afternoon.  I also don’t recall whether or not I had ever seen the actual painting.  It belongs to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where we were visitors from time to time.  But my mother also owned a book on the museum’s “highlights,” and I liked to pour over the book during island moments of my childhood.

Certainly my choice of a favorite wasn’t fashionable.  Tiepolo hasn’t really been on anybody’s Top Forties List since the 1750s when this picture was painted.  But children don’t care about things like that.  Children love or hate with great abandon and with no respect for ceremony.  Pondering this now, I must say the subject matter looks rather politically incorrect.  And I can only surmise now what it was that attracted my childish attention then.  My guess is that I was reeled in on a draughtsman’s line. 

Drawing in Tiepolo’s works is so crisp.  The shapely arms and hands of the seated woman and the forceful, aggressive gesture of her would-be attacker (we might call him her alleged assailant) arrive on the canvas by means of the most thorough-going and keen sense of contour.  The artist’s love for dynamic, sinuous line is equally evident in a subordinate feature such as the rolling folds of the woman’s bright skirt.

If it happened that I had seen the actual canvas in childhood, I was no doubt impressed by scale, too.  Size matters.  This painting is 55 x 43 inches.  A large enough oval to command one’s respect — one that puts these persons quite resolutely into the dramatic space of the room. 

It’s not a family-themed picture.  From this distance in time, the museum seems unsure what to make of its narrative, calling the painting simply: “Scene from Ancient History,” though historian John Walker in the National Gallery’s 1975 catalog was venturesome enough to call it “Timocleia and the Thracian Commander.”  Enterprising readers can google that to see what pops up.  Suffice it to say, judging by visual clues alone, male violence is a central theme.  The soldier’s shoulder is the pivot point of the whole composition.  What befell poor Timocleia, I cannot say.

But I doubt I contemplated the question of its story very deeply.  I had as much narrative as my mother’s book provided — that catalog dated from 1941 when art historians were more garrulous.  The book now resides in another state, so I’ll have to get back to you regarding this cliff-hanger (in perhaps some future post).  Meanwhile, I suspect that my chief delight was visual.  In even Tiepolo’s violent image the bright, vivid colors abound – held tightly and tensely inside Tiepolo’s razor sharp lines.

Kids aren’t fashionable, and thus they provide a model for every artist to emulate.  A child likes what she likes, and artists do well to reserve the same whimsical and fervent emotions as their privilege.  The heart doesn’t really enjoy being asked to obey rules.  If you find yourself loving all the gauche things, care not.  You cannot fool your true self.  In finding what binds you to the world, you have to indulge some self-acceptance.

My first love for incisive line began somewhere rather near Venice of the 18th century.  On the map of my early enthusiasm I place a big “X” to mark Gallery 32 where Tiepolo’s painting hangs.

You have to know these things about yourself.  You have to discover what really matters, for from out of those things your own imagination’s designs grow.

[Top of the Post:  Scene from Ancient History, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, c. 1750, Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art in Washington]

Stream of Consciousness

And this is the stream of consciousness!

Pixel With Colors

Pixel swims into so many of my pictures.  Here he is all colored with crayon.  He usually lives and swims in this painting.  “Il faut refaire la meme chose, dix fois, cents fois ….” Degas said.  I took it very much to heart.  I’ve lost count how many times I’ve drawn Pixel.  (“You must redraw the same thing, ten times, a hundred times….”)

[Top of the post:  Pixel with Colors, by Aletha Kuschan, pencil and crayon]

Dream of Three Fish

I had a dream of three fish once.  I had driven a long way on the highway to a large building with a tall wall with no windows.  It was beside a pond.  And I got out of my car and unaccountably threw my keys into the pond!

Realizing I wouldn’t be able to drive my car further, I rushed to the water’s edge to fish out my keys.  I threw in a line and pulled out three bright fish that looked at me with their eyes.

[Top of the post: Drawing of Three Fish, by Aletha Kuschan, ballpoint pen]

I am in full fish-mode

A very pencil-y fish here, where lines wiggle like waves of motion in the stream of ideas.  This one has lovely dots, too.  When my daughter was a baby and got her first lessons in art, they consisted of me dotting a paper over which she crawled, which I did while saying, “dot, dot, dot, dot” as I watched her laugh and squeal with delight.

[Top of the post:  Drawing of a Fish I named Pixel, by Aletha Kuschan, pencil]

Collage as “Environment” and Ideas

To make this photo, I took two collages and set them at 90 degree angles, one lying flat on the floor, the other propped on the wall, and I photographed them from the center.  The result is the dimensional blending of the two. 

The wonderful thing for artists living today is that modern technology offers up so many new avenues for getting ideas.  I take things like this and paint them.  I still pursue my thought in direct and traditional tools, but I use the new gadgets to produce ideas.

When I look at something like this, it’s like trying to enter a dream.  This is my way of looking for the doorway that opens onto thought.

[Top of the post:  Two collages photographed together, by Aletha Kuschan]

Collage of apples, close up

Here’s another shot of the “Heirloom Apples” collage, a detail of two apples first posted June 22.  This kind of collage is similar in character to what Henri Matisse made in the latter part of his career.  The paper is painted with tempera and then cut into shapes.  Streaks from the application of the paint show in the cuttings and become accidental elements of the work, giving it additional texture and interest.

This is like drawing with scissors.

[Top of the post:  Detail of a Study of Apples, by Aletha Kuschan, collage]

Fourth of July, Some Fireworks!

Look very closely to see why this is Fireworks. (See the landscape, the little house and trees on the dark horizon of this sunset scene with floral fireworks.)  I saw this wonderful painting by Donna Phipps Stout this past spring where it was still available for sale.  Can’t vouch for its availability now, but interested parties should contact the Jerald Melberg Gallery in Charlotte, NC.  Please mention that you saw Stout’s painting here!  I think her fireworks are lovely for celebrating this Fourth of July.  Our hot dogs (actually “Good Dogs by Yves” — we’re vegetarians) are heating up right now.  To all Americans finding this post, Happy Independence Day to you!  To visitor’s from other countries, wish you could be here for our party!  Please consider yourself a virtual guest!  And welcome!

[Top of the post:  Fireworks, by Donna Phipps Stout, oil on panel, 48 x 50 inches, Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina]

Fourth of July, Funny hats

Oh no!  He’s been out there with the squirrels!  This is Lewis St. Lewis’s fabulous painting of himself as something like Carmen Miranda (his source, a Carmen of an earlier era I think).  If you want to see Lewis’s paintings, you’ve got to go to Jane Tyndall’s wonderful gallery in beautiful Chapel Hill, North Carolina!  If you do, whether in person or virtually via the internet, please tell Jane that you saw Lewis’s painting here!

In the meantime, Lewis!  Get away from those squirrels!

[Top of the post:  Fanciful Self Portrait, mixed collage and paint, by Lewis St. Lewis, Jane Tyndall Gallery, Chapel Hill, NC]

Festive Squirrel

Well, Forth of July celebrations are having an intriguing affect on animals in our backyard habitat.  Never again do we give tequilas to the squirrels.  This one thinks she’s Carmen Miranda.  Hope all of you in the US are having a great Independence day, and to visitors from other places — wish you could be here to enjoy our party!

[Top of the post:  Tropical Squirrel, detail of a children's mural, by Aletha Kuschan]