{"id":2751,"date":"2009-02-03T20:22:33","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T04:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/?p=2751"},"modified":"2009-02-07T15:15:43","modified_gmt":"2009-02-07T23:45:43","slug":"snow-and-the-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/snow-and-the-studio\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow, the studio and a lifetime burning"},"content":{"rendered":"

It snowed all day yesterday and we have a lovely, thick blanket of white. The sky behind the trees this morning was a liquid and fierce pale gold. Now everything is a cool blue against the dark evergreens.<\/p>\n

I found myself in two Etsy treasuries\u00c2\u00a0this week. A treasury\u00c2\u00a0means you choose other artisans’ work to highlight. I’m finding some very unique painters there, good abstract expressionists and one prolific Belgian artist,\u00c2\u00a0Sylvie Van Hulle,\u00c2\u00a0highlighted my site on her own blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0I’m reading\u00c2\u00a0Alexander Liberman’s<\/a>, ‘The Artist in his Studio’, originally published in 1960. \u00c2\u00a0Liberman<\/a>‘s step-daughter is the writer Francine du Plessix Gray. He spent 40 years getting the book published and met many of the artists who are now icons; Matisse, Chagall, Rouault, Picasso. It’s thrilling to read about his lunch with Pablo or his tea with Chagall and his obvious repulsion by Utrillo’s ‘incessantly chatty’<\/em> wife. There are superb photographs of artists at the height of their powers in these studio settings.<\/p>\n

He offers a personal and intimate portrait of these artists that I haven’t found in many other writings on artists. Anthony Haden-Guest<\/a> comes to mind, but Liberman’s book is more of a tender tribute to the giants of the past.<\/p>\n

Here’s what Jacques Villon at 86 said about artists: ‘Before starting to paint one should follow Cennini’s advice and say a prayer.’<\/em> Liberman notes that he was impressed most by the artists’ ‘obsessive, unswerving dedication to creation. In the words of the poet, they are ‘a lifetime burning’. Their dedication to art, like that of men to religious orders, is a self-imposed vow. These artists are the priests of a new religion – Art.’<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0Duchamp said that\u00c2\u00a0‘the artist should have no social obligations…an artist must be an egotist, completely blind to other human beings – egocentric in the grand manner. It is unavoidable, one cannot create great things if he is only half involved and in doubt.’<\/em> Well, there you have it, the politically incorrect artist speaking what we often suspect.<\/p>\n

We may also forget how long it takes to build a life based on this devotion. Rouault, Kupka, Villon all had to wait until they were over 70 for recognition.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Braque’s studio.<\/p>\n

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It snowed all day yesterday and we have a lovely, thick blanket of white. The sky behind the trees this morning was a liquid and fierce pale gold. Now everything is a cool blue against the dark evergreens. I found … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[290,292,27,1714,297,288,293,25,291,294,295,280,296,289],"class_list":["post-2751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-meanderings","category-paintings","tag-abstract","tag-alexander-liberman","tag-art","tag-painting-drawing-conceptual","tag-belgian","tag-braque","tag-duchamp","tag-etsy","tag-original-art","tag-picasso","tag-rouault","tag-snow","tag-sylvie-van-hulle","tag-treasury"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2751"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2760,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751\/revisions\/2760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}