Limits

"Life is not only stranger than we imagine; life is stranger than we can imagine."
~ J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964)

As quoted in Robert Sapolsky's "Emperor Has No Clothes Award" acceptance speech, at the 25th annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (23 November 2003)

More J.B.S. Haldane online.

Breakthroughs

Helen Frankenthaler, "The Bay" (1963); acrylic on canvas

"There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about."
~ Helen Frankenthaler

Bonus Link:
The Wrigley School of Art Criticism
Twelve-year-old boy ignores rules; no art born.

Show and Tell

by Tom Gauld

Tom Gauld's illustrations the Guardian Saturday Review letters page. "Each image relates to a letter sent to the newspaper about literature or the arts."

~ via Making Light, where I also found these intriguing recipes for Cold Weather Drinks and a sidebar of Commonplaces with these gems:

• "The whole point of society is to be less unforgiving than nature." (Arthur D. Hlavaty)
• "But isn't all of human history simultaneously a disaster novel and a celebrity gossip column?" (Anonymous LJ commenter)
• "Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." (Gustav Mahler)

The Struggle

"The painters and sculptors of today cannot remain indifferent in the struggle to free humanity and art from oppression."
~ David Alfaro Siqueiros (1933)


David Alfaro Siqueiros, "Después De La Grand Tormenta [After the Great Storm]"
(1966); pyroxolin on masonite, 12" x 18"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

Links:

• The Artist as Activist: David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896 - 1974)
• David Alfaro Siqueiros at Humanities Web
• David Alfaro Siqueiros at MoMA
• Philip Stein's biography, Siqueiros: His Life and Works
• David Alfaro Siqueiros at Wikipedia

It is interesting to note that 75 years after his statement about freeing art from oppression (and 34 years after his death), many images of Siqueiros' work have been removed from the web at the request of a "copyright collective" which presents itself as "an artists [sic] rights organization." Siqueiros may have been on to something when, in 1922, he wrote "We repudiate so-called easel painting and every kind of art favored by the ultra-intellectual circles, because it is aristocratic and we praise monumental art in all its forms, because it is public property."

Being More Human

David C. Driskell, "Movement, The Mountain"
(1980), egg tempera on canvas, 31.20" x 22.70"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"I've always felt that art was a special or particular calling. I've even described it as being priestly in function... I do think that [as an artist] I am being more human and extending my humanity to others."
~ David C. Driskell (b. 1931), from "A Conversation between David Driskell and Richard Klank," as quoted in David C. Driskell: Artist and Scholar, by Julie L. McGee (2006)

Charles Demuth

Charles Demuth, "Buildings, Lancaster" (1930);
oil and graphite on composition board, 24" x 20"
Click on image to see larger version at Artdaily site.

Charles Demuth exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, today through 27 April 2008. [Artdaily]

Charles Demuth (1883-1935): "The History of Lancaster [Pennsylvania]'s Most Famous Artist." [Demuth Foundation / Charles Demuth Museum]

"Precisionism was an artistic movement that emerged in the United States after World War I and was at its height during the inter-War period. The term itself was first coined in the early 1920s. Influenced strongly by Cubism and Futurism, its main themes included industrialization and the modernization of the American landscape, which were depicted in precise, sharply defined, geometrical forms." [Wikipedia]


Charles Demuth, "The Figure 5 in Gold" (1928); oil on cardboard; 35.5" x 30"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

The Great Figure
by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

[from Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems (1921)]

Audacious

Passing this along...

Call for work: The Audacity of Desperation

Deadline: March 10, 2008
Exhibition dates:
April 4- May 11, Indy Media Center (Urbana, IL)
Fall 2008, Sea and Space (Los Angeles, CA)

The Audacity of Desperation is an art exhibition, political action, and on-going dialogue. We are currently seeking distributable artworks addressing the topic of "desperation." Works should exist in multiples with the intention to be freely distributed to audiences. Media can include, but is not at all limited to: posters, stickers, stencils, zines, stamps -- ink and postage -- buttons, CDs/DVDs, postcards, t-shirts and manifestos.

We are working with a grassroots, anti-authoritarian philosophy that includes the anti-capitalist, non-competitive principle of mutual aid.

Much more at the Audacity of Desperation blog.

[via Just Seeds]