Dora Maar, revisited

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I want to talk about Jeanette’s painting.

To begin, I’ll say the following: I’ve never seen any painting quite like it.

It is a representation of Dora Maar. But it contains pictures within pictures. Dora Maar’s face is littered with lines running through it. I have sat for hours looking at the patterns. Sometimes I feel as if I can put it all together; and then I can’t.

Jeanette's Dora is fractured. Her head tilts forward in resignation. It is the face of a woman who may have been fierce at one point but who now mostly just copes.

The reds in the painting pop out immediately. But they lead immediately to the blues and the tans, which oddly enough both recess into the background and extend forward beyond the reds. They recess because of their lightness compared to the reds and extend because of the shape of the face.

The total effect is really quite striking. And like all excellent paintings, it has a tangible presence in person that a picture of it cannot capture.

I wish I could be more articulate in describing Jeanette’s painting. But ultimately I can only keep staring at it.

I suppose that is one of the glorious aspects of art.

At times, one can only gape at it, speechless.

Thank you, Jeanette, for trading your painting.

I love it.

Dora Maar

My new painting is called ‘Dora Maar’. What a work of art! I love it.

It is by Jeanette Jones and is 30’ x 40’.

Jeanette has many other paintings. Here is a link to her work:

http://www.jeanettejonesart.com/

I could try to describe Jeanette and her art. But my description could not improve upon her artist’s statement, which is one of the best I’ve ever read.

Jeanette Jones

Please excuse me, I suffer from verbal constipation.

Most of the time I make decisions based on intuition and don't realize until after the fact just what the significance was.

Case in point, I was so struck by Dora Maar, the fact that she was so intelligent and fiery when Picasso met her, yet he broke her down and she was never the same.

I was moved by empathy to paint the portraits of Picasso's women.

The only portrait I treated differently was Francoise Gilot, because she was never broken.

I think I like underdogs, not taking something for face value.

Ok, here is the part I am really bad at... selling myself

I've shown in galleries in Florida & Seattle.

For a year I actually ran a gallery. I've been featured in a few magazines.

I was featured on a local public art showcase.

Here are links to videos that my work is in

http://vimeo.com/groups/6630/videos/10424564

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA-fR7CKMkw

Crazy, huh. I know. I am a bit unbalanced.

It's horrible.

Thank you so much for reading.

I have so much to say about Jeanette and her art I can barely take it. But for now I will restrain myself and instead be content to note the convergence of factors that in my experience hardly ever align: the conceptual, the existential, and the astrological.

The astrological factor should be clear: yesterday at 11:23, the Earth's axis was inclined neither away from nor toward the sun. Ahhhh...I just love the equinox. And getting this painting on a day whose beginning was a mere seven minutes removed from that point surely bodes well. It is as if the Universe has blessed the painting, given it the significance of a new beginning.

And from a conceptual and existential level, this project is indeed, at least in some sense, at a new beginning. To explain why, however, will take some time; and so I will postpone the explanation until a future post.

I will, however, mention a fact that is of interest in its own right and is also crucial in understanding just how the conceptual and the existential have aligned.

In addition to creating such brilliant works of art and having such an awesome artist’s statement, Jeanette also has a characteristic that is terribly significant for this project. She has a precise description of the economic value of her art. She sells her paintings for $1 per square inch.

Ok. Enough for now. Except to say: if anyone wants to trade a painting for Jeanette Jones' Dora Maar, let me know.

Yay!

My next trade is on the way.

I shipped Take Me Home Toto on Saturday to an artist in Seattle, who shipped me one of her paintings on Friday. It is supposed to arrive in three days. I cannot wait.

Philosophers are often accused of not paying enough attention to emotion. Their critics contend: Reason -- that is all philosophers want to talk about; they completely overlook emotion.

I must admit to being somewhat guilty of such a charge. I sometimes think that with an appropriate amount of reason any problem can be solved. In my more reflective moments, I am willing to admit that such an attitude may be some sort of affliction. But it persists nonetheless.

So I found it interesting that I was emotionally affected when I shipped off Monika’s Take Me Home Toto. As I talked to the UPS agent who was about to package it, I could not help but feel sad at seeing it go. That sadness, then, turned into an exuberant pride, which led me to blurt out to the agent and two of his coworkers: this painting might be famous one day.

Will it be famous? Well, who knows? But I couldn’t help making that claim anyway. And I couldn’t help but be overcome by a feeling of loss when I saw the UPS agent remove the painting from my sight. For the brief time that painting hung on my wall, I loved it.

(Just as an aside, I will say that UPS has been absolutely fantastic so far in arranging the packing and shipping of the paintings involved in this process. So I would heartily recommend their services to anyone thinking about shipping a painting.)

The fact that I became so emotionally attached to Monika’s Take Me Home Toto made me think that I had perhaps isolated a source of the irrationality involved in art. If art stimulates emotion, and if emotion is fundamentally irrational, then of course the art world will be rife with irrationality.

But then I couldn't help but think about a view put forward by Franz Brentano according to which emotions are what track value in the world. According to Brentano, emotions stand to value as sight stands to features of physical objects. If Brentano is right, perhaps emotional experience, far from causing irrationality, in fact injects reason into the art world.

But I didn’t think about any of that for too long, since I was too excited by the prospect of receiving my next painting.

Yay!

I am once again pleased with the Universe.

So once again: Thank you. Universe.

Thank you.