Cruelty

Life is cruel sometimes. And if you are sketching life you’ll become cruel yourself, especially if you cannot edulcorate the reality, if you cannot cheat and will not lie. This isn’t a nice, pretty sketch. Some gentle souls could be shocked or hurt looking at this. But I did not draw this without the model’s permission. I even draw 2 portraits of him and give him the choice of one… Probably it was something nobody gave him (a gift like that: a portrait of himself) and he was happy. (He chose the gentler version of himself, of course).

I did this sketch in 1995, when I came to Râul Vadului – a sort of a hospital for mentaly challenged (and they were a lot – from a few years old to 70-75 – a group of very divers and frightening faulty humans that nobody wanted). I was there with my friend, sister Mary Rose Christie and some of her helping friends from America. Generous people who sacrified their time and money to help people almost nobody would or could help. I remeber only the name of Ron but there were others too. The pacients knew them already and manifested a great joy to see them again, covering the guest with eager hands and sloppy kisses… I would never forget some of their faces. Even if I do not remeber their names. Just people, anonimous people, forgotten by man and, maybe, by God also… Their hospital was next to the national road to the capital and almost every year there were fatal traffic accidents. Some pacients managed somehow to get out on the road to beg for cigarettes from the motorists…

DADA, DANU, de Chirico & André Breton…

I was always fascinated by the quirks and quarks of fate… the way hasard make things happen…

This is a shorted story of my artist name, Danu. In my native language, Romanian, it means YES-NO, sort of Yang-Yin, if you want. My mother-in-law called me that, long time ago, Danu being a diminutive for “Dan”… But this is just the first layer in the cake…

About 6-7 years ago I was browsing on the Internet and I fell over a text of memories from the begining of the DADA mouvement (founded, mainly by a compatriote, Tristan Tzara). I was already calling mysel Ion Vincent Danu, here and there… I was simply shoked reading that in a certain day in February 1916 Tzara and his friends fauded officially the DADA mouvement, at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich! Because I was born exactly the same day, exactly 40 years later! Some coincidence! DADA (yes-yes in Romanian) and DANU (yes-no) ! It really shocked me to see this “simetry of the fate” (Sting would say: “the secret geometry of chance”…) From that moment on, I started to call myself, sistematically, Ion Danu or Ion Vincent Danu…

Later on, continuing to study the surrealism (which , chronologically and not only, was the NEXT level of the Dada mouvement, a lot of the first DADA members became surrealists – Tzara and André Breton being some of the most importants…) I fall upon this Giorgio de Chirico painting:”Le cerveau de l’enfant” (Child’s brain):

It’s a painting from 1914 and de Chirico was considered by the surrealists like a sort of “founding father”, just like Lautremont was in the literary side of the mouvement. André Breton bought this painting and had it with him a long, long time, until 1964 when he sold it (for he wasn’t too rich either…) to the Stockholm Museum for 250.000 F.

You can see that the eyes of the mature (almost old “father” character in the painting) are closed. (It seems that only that way the child could look at him…) André Breton made a photographic “interpretation” of his painting and the character in his photo (unfortunalelly I don’t have at hand…) had the eyes OPEN…

I was inspired by all these little quirks and quarks of cultural history and made my own interpretation of it: I figured the old guy as myself (I already have the bladness and the hair on the chest, I only had to change a bit the galic moustache into a greyer barbiche) The main “quirk” was that I open ONE eye and let the other close… and I have written all the DADA – DANU history over the table (and the orange book was intitled DADA-DANU). There are also some other changes that I let you discover… Ingenious, eh… Well, here it is the “old gorilla” in all his splendor:

The Sting

No, it’s not about the famous Robert Redford-Paul Newman movie… It’s about one of my paintings. I cannot call it abstract (so many diletante-s call “abstract” their works! even if there is almost nothing abstract to it… just look on ebay – if you are really bored and have a lot to time to loose…) because it isn’t…

Non-figurative? Well, if you consider “figurative” only human figures, yes, you can call it like that… But it figures something, no less… Insects, weird insects (but aren’t all insects kind of weird to us, humans? I suppose we are also weird – and scary – to them…), or something like that… I don’t know what’s the freudian significance of all the insects and snakes and other animals I need to draw and paint… and I don’t care much… Take your guess…

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Non, je ne parle pas du film avec Robert Redford and Paul Newman… Je parle d’une de mes peintures. Ce n’est pas une peinture “abstraite” ( il y a tellement des dilletants qui appellent “abstraits” leurs peintures qui n’ont vraiment rien d’abstrait… si vous êtes très, trèeees ennuyé/e et vous avez beaucoup de temps a perdre vous pouvez toujours aller voir sur ebay…) parce qu’il n’est pas “abstraite”…

Non-figurative? Peut-être, si vous considerer “figure” exclusivement les figures humains… Il y a certainement des “figures” la-bàs…des insectes, des insectes bizarres (mais ne sont-ils tous les insectes bizarres? et nous, les humains, très bizarres et effrayants – pour eux?) Aucune idée qu’elle sera l’intérpretation freudiene des insectes, serpents et autre animaux que je sent l’impulsion de dessiner et de peindre… Et je m’en fiche pas mal…

Essayez vous dans la psychanalise, si vous voulez…

The Silence of the Lamb

This is, in a way, a prank… I’ve discovered a very old photograph of my wife when she was, maybe, 7-8 years old. In her arms was not exactly a lamb, since technically a lamb is the little one of a sheep and this one was more the little one of a goat – my wife grown up drinking goat milk – I think this can eventually explain a bit of her character… In the photo she had a sad but hypnotic look (did I told you she has the most weird, truly hypnotic, light blue-gray eyes? when you see her eyes for the first time they marvel and fascinate you… they still work for me…) Since I’m also a great fan of the Silence of the Lambs (my first serious CSI) I did a cocktail and this is the result… A bit  of witch, a devil’s claw… Weird, eh? Halloween’s approaching…

Van Gogh et Nietzsche…

J’ai parlé déjà de l’effet similaire que le Sud ( comme endroit physiuqe mais aussi comme “esprit”) a fait sur Nietzsche et sur Vincent, presque dans la même période – fin de l’année 1888…

Voila encore quelques fragments – dans mon opinion, du plus grand intérêt – extraites de la même source, la biographie de Nietzsche par Stefan Zweig. En parlant de la dernière période créatrice de Nietzsche, Zweig affirme:

…“L’histoire intellectuelle de tous les temps, dans son immensité, n’offre aucun autre exemple de cette abondance, de cette extase aux épanchements enivrés, de cette fureur fanatique de la création; c’est seulement peut-être tout près de lui, et cette même année, dans la même région, qu’un peintre “éprouve” une productivité aussi accélérée et qui déjà confine à la folie: dans son jardin d’Arles et dans son asile d’aliénés, Van Gogh peint avec la même rapidité, avec la même extatique passion de la lumière, avec la même exubérance maniaque de création. A peine a-t-il achevé un de ses tableaux au blanc ardent que déjà son trait impeccable court sur une nouvelle toile, il n’y a plus d’hésitasion, de plan, de réflexion. Il crée comme sous la dictée, avec une lucidité et une rapidité de coup d’oeuil démoniaques, dans une continuité incessante de visions“… (p. 273, “La lutte avec le démon” , Stefan Zweig, Édition Stock, 1948 )

En essence, Zweig a raison et il dit la vérité. Vincent, tout comme Nietzsche, a vecu à Arles, avant de l’arrivée (le 23 octobre 1888) de Paul Gauguin, une période d’extraordinaire créativité. ( Il en a eu quelque autres, aussi…)  Une période pour laquelle vivent toutes les artistes, une période ou tu travaille comme en transe et chaque trait de crayon, chaque trace de pinceau sont parfaites, merveilleux… Il y a pas beaucoup qui ont cette chance, cette joie, cette extraordinaire exaltation qu’on paye souvent, comme Van Gogh, comme Nietzsche, avec sa propre santé (mentale et physique)…

Mais, corrigeons les faits (si l’essence est vraie): Vincent n’a RIEN crée quand il a été malade et “son asile” n’a commencé qu’après le 7 février 1889 (donc des mois après la période de référence qui est les dernières 5 mois du 1888). La première manifestation de sa maladie (que les premiers docteurs qui l’ont traité, le dr. Rey, à Arles, et le dr. Peyron à Saint-Remy, ont diagnostiqué comme “une forme d’épilepsie”, tout comme la maladie de Dostoïevski, un autre kindred spirit) a été le 23 décembre 1888, quand il s’est coupé non pas l’oreille mais un lobe seulement et c’est pour cette blessure qu’il a été interné à l’hôpital (et non pas à l’asile… effectivement, il s’est fait lui-même interné, le 08 mai 1889, à l’asile Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, à Saint-Rémy de Provence).

Ce qui est cert c’est que Van Gogh, tout comme Nietzsche, a payé cher, de sa propre chair, de sa “substance profonde” (comme le demandait plus tard – peut-être en pensant à Vincent, Georges Braque…) les précieux moments de délir créateur…

Sur la courte cohabitation de Van Gogh et de Gauguin, une autre fois…

Almost finished…

Just a painting whose methamorphoses seem endless…

Pas plus qu’une peinture dont les metamorphoses semble sans fin….

Doar o pictura ale carui  metamorfoze par fara de sfärsit…

Nietzsche and Van Gogh

En parlant des derniers 5 mois lucides (et extrêmement productifs!) de Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, dans son livre “Le combat avec le démon” fait des associations et des paraleles très intéressantes entre le philosophe allemand et le peintre hollandais, les deux, hommes “du septentrion”, tombé en amour avec la lumière du Sud…

Voilà les mots  de Stefan Zweig (page 259,  “Le combat avec le démon”, Éditions Stock, 1948) :

…” Peut-être que jamais la langue d’un poète allemand ne s’est rajeunie aussi vite, aussi soudainement et aussi complètement; et, à coup sûr, nulle autre n’a été à ce point pénétrée de soleil et n,est devenue aussi livbre, aussi méridionale, aussi divinement dansante, aussi “vineuse, aussi païenne.  Ce n’est que dans l’élément fraternel de van gogh que nous assistons une autre fois à ce miracle d’une pareille et soudaine irruption du soleil chez un homme du Nord: seul le passage du coloris triste, brun et lourd de ses années hollandaises aux couleurs violentes, crues, chantantes et d’un blanc ardent de la Provence, seule cette irruption de la folie de la lumière dans un esprit à demi-aveuglé peut se comparer à l”illumination que le Sud produit dans l’être de Nietzsche.”

Ce n’est pas la seule troublante analogie de destin entre ces deux génies fous de la culture universelle… Mais je vais continuer avec ces “vies paralleles” au autre fois…  J’ajoute un “Verger en fleurs” d’Arles, que Van Gogh a peint pratiquement en même temps (1888) que les derniers mois de lucidité de Nietzsche…

“A deadly genius”

I will tell you a story about the quirks of memory…

Years ago I was visiting Tate National Gallery in London( 1993? 1994?). A lot to see, especially if you are an artist and you like impressionists and post-impressionists, for instance. Cézanne, Pissaro, Renoir, Van Gogh…, as I said, A LOT to see…

Years later, I found out my memory wasn’t as good as I thought. I did remember, like in a dream, a turmoil of colors and maybe a landscape or two… Pissaro? Renoir? Van Gogh?… Vaguely, very vaguely…

And yet, a small, very small painting, haunted me. I was dreaming it and the details were quite precise… Bizarre little people, painted with precision but in a marvelous textured way, with saturated colors but not excessively bright… Something like Bosh or Pieter Brueguel the Old... I could NOT remember, even tortured, the name of the painter… I knew just that he wasn’t a very famous one…

A few years ago, I was flipping a pile of junk magazines in a garage sale and BAM! there it was!! my little painting from the Tate National Gallery… it was only a small, bad, reproduction, in B & W, but I could have recognise it in millions! And the story behind that, the story of the mad painter Richard Dadd was even more hauting and interesting… But about his story – connected with the subject of madness and art - next time…(canned laughter)

A taste, although… the portrait of Richard Dadd, painting in a English asylum…

The Ghost of Madness…

This is the title of one of my “kind of abstract” little paintings (acrylics- see bellow). It is also a temptations and a problem for a lot of artists… I don’t know if a connection – a causal relationship – between madness (well, call it mental sickness if you want) and artist (geniuses, at the highest…) was made before Schopenhauer… He is although the one who made this connextion famous…

The number of artists who were (a bit or a lot) crazy, mad, excentric, loony, etc. is not at all small. To cite a few : Hugo van der Goes, Vincent Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Dali (by his own confession), Jackson Pollock, etc. Since suicide is considered by some the extreme symptom of mental illness, a lot of others could enter the ranks : Pascin, Rothko, Nicholas de Staël… And I limited myself to painters only…

Of course, the myth of the “cursed artist” (l’artiste maudit) is the general, public perception of this, in a very simplified manner. But to study the phenomenon would take volumes and volumes…

One thing is clear: if the above mentionned artists were mad they create their art only when they were perfectly lucid. I do not know a single mentionable work of art created during a crysis… but a mentally ill artist has a different, an original view of the world, a visionary one, sometimes… If we are to believe Jean Dubuffet we need to be a bit crazy and we are never crazy ENOUGH in order to create original art… Maybe it’s true, maybe not…

Cézanne and Michelangelo

Robert Genn site “The Painter’s Keys” is a very interesting and rewarding art site… there aren’t so many out there… (see more at http://www.painterskeys.com/)

Today, he wrote something about “Cezanne’s Ghost”… Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:

“Cezanne was a plodder, never far from feelings of personal
failure. Persisting in relatively uninspiring subject matter,
he worked and reworked until a distinctive style emerged. In a
way, it was his sense of failure that drove him in his
obsession–trying to get it right–trying to improve on his
ideas. There’s a lesson in this. By his own admission he was
not a great artist. “Chance has not favoured me with
self-assurance,” he said. At another time in a rare moment of
bluff, he said, “I have come only to show the way.”

His alternating between extreme humility and extreme pride, his cited words about his lack of “self-assurance” made me think of Michelangelo, in the interpretation of Romain Rolland (a well written, well documented and very balanced biography of Michelangelo from 1908). In his biography, Rolland spoke about the very unsure character of Michelangelo, about his difficulty to decide one way or the other… In fact, a lack of self-assurance and a similar pendulation between extreme modesty and extreme pride.

And I was simply wondering if genius and contradictory, oscillating character, “lack of self-assurance” are not connected? Maybe because a superior intelligence sees very quickly both sides of an issue? Because there is no good thing without a bit of bad, and no bad thing without a bit of good?

Creatures of the night/Les créatures de la nuit/ Creaturile noptzii…

A friend posted today an interesting, erudit, text concerning Lilith, a creature of the night (in ancient Greek: Hapax Legomenon)… And I remembered that not only had Dracula called his kind tenderly “children of the night” (memorable Gary Oldman (?) in Francis Ford Coppolla’s “Dracula”) but also that  myself, I’ve painted a small composition called exactly that but in French “Les créatures de la nuit”… La voilà!

The Angel of Death has Snake Eyes….

This is the new title I gave to my previously featured work “Cleopatra at Sibiu”. Here is also a new photo of the thing, more truthful to the real colors (reproduction can be a true pain in the a…)

As for the why of the new title, I’ve recently seen again “Unforgiven” ( I think I’ve mentioned this already) and there the killer played by Eastwood had a nightmare where “the Angel of Death Had Snake Eyes” . Literally, I think the phrase is a better, more suitable title for my painting…

The worst thing/ Le pire/ Cel mai rau lucru…

 

In a letter addressed to his mother and sister Wil (April 1890) Vincent Van Gogh wrote:

…”When I found out that my paintings had some praising and I read the article in question*, I was immediately afraid that this will depress me. It’s almost always like that, in the life of the painter; SUCCES IS THE WORST THING that can happen to him…”

( * the “article” is the famous G.-Albert Aurier article in “Mercure de France” (January 1890)

Was Vincent supersticious? Why was “succes” scarying him so much? And why is “succes the worst thing” for an artist?

I just ask the questions for now… And there is maybe another one, quite weird, an hypothesis which is not totally absurde: in the motives (because one thing is for sure, Vincent did not commit suicide just for ONE reason…) of his suicide, isn’t it this fear of succes ANOTHER one?

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Dans une lettre qu’il écrit a sa mère et soeur Wil, en avril 1890, Vincent Van Gogh dit:

…” Quand j’ai appris que mes oeuvres avait eu un peu de succès et que j’ai lu l’article en question, j’ai craint immédiatement que céla me décourage. Il en va presque toujours ainsi, dans la vie du peintre; le succès est ce qu’il y a de pire…”

Était Vincent superstitieux? Pourquoi le “succès” lui faisait tant peur? Et pourquoi est-t-il le succès “la pire de choses” qui peuvent arriver a l’artiste?

Pour le moment, je ne fait que poser les quéstions. Mais il y a une, encore plus troublante, qui fait place à une hypothese peut-être pas aussi absurde que ça: dans les motifs (parce qu’ily a eu plusieurs, ça c’est sur) qui ont poussé Vincent au suicide, la peur de succèes n’est-t-elle aussi de mise?

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Într-o scrisoare din aprilie 1890, adresa mamei si surorii sale Wil, vincent Van gogh scria:

…”Când am aflat ca lucrarile mele au avut un pic de succes si am citit articolul în chestiune, m-am temut imediat ca asta ma va descuraja. Asa se întâmpla aproape întotdeauna, în viatza pictorului; succesul e lucrurl cel mai rau care i se poate întâmpla…”

Era vincent superstitzios? De ce succesul îl înspaimânta ? Si este oare succesul “cel mai rau” lucru care i se poate întâmpla unui artist?

Deocamdata nu fac decât sa pun întrebarile. De fapt, mai este înca una, tulburatoare, care face loc unei ipoteze care nu e asa de absurda cum poate parea; între motivele (fiindca în mod sigur, n-a fost doar unul singur…) care l-au împins pe Vincent la sinucidere, nu se afla oare si frica de succes?