The pleasure of sketching

Since I’ve started with drawings and sketchings and cartoons I’ll give you one more: little boy I’ve sketched during the Bromont Art Symposium… Was it 2002? 2003? I don’t remember any more. But I know I did a lot of skethcing then, waiting for a collector to come and buy everything… Usually,  they didn’t bother but I still covered my expenses and leave there with a little profit… Danu, the capitalist… Anyway, recently I’ve seen some sketches by Watteau, this “artiste maudit” avant la lettre, dead at 37, like Rafael, like Modigliani, Van Gogh and others who “kicked the bucket” at this fatidic age… I was impressed by the spontaneity, the vigour and, at the same time, the exquisite delicacy of his drawings. I could only imagine him, drawing. All the pleasure that sketching would have brought in his poor life, all the joy. Painter of the so called “fêtes galantes of the end of the 17th and beginning of the 17th century in France, associated with “joie de vivre” and eroticism, he was quite and auster artist. Delicat, discretely erotic but not at all as Fragonnard or Boucher. I would say I will appreciate him even more for that… and he was a great draftsman, just as good as Bruegel and Rembrandt an Rubens. It is not rare to be able to tell more about an artist looking at his/her drawins. No “comission” for that… Just the artist, unadulterated,  “pure”…

So long for now/ Au revoir les amis/ Adio pana una alta, prieteni!

Since all things end at a time or another and since my energy is not, unfortunatelly, unlimited, I’ve decided to limit myself to one blog only, the most visited, “Van Gogh & I”. I’ll try to do there what I was doing on my other blogs too… Of course, I will not delete this present blog and those interested would be able to browse it and to comment, if they so wish… I promise to answer. So that’s it, folks: so long and have a good, interesting life…

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J’ai décidé d’abandonner, du moins pour le moment, ce blog. Mon énergie n’est pas, malheureusement, illimit et je vais garder seulement un blog, celui qui marche, apparement, le mieux: ‘Van Gogh & I‘. Il devra me suffire et je vais essayer d’écrire là ce que j’écrivais dans mes autres blogs. Bien sur, ceux intéréssés pouront fureter toujours ce blog and laisser leurs commentaires, s’ils/elles le désirent. Je promets d’y répondre. Au revoir, donc, mes amis et j’espére que vous allez avoir une bonne, intéressante vie…

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Pana una alta, adio, dragi prieteni! Fiindca energia mea nu e fara limite am decis sa ma limitez la un singur blog, cel cu cresterea cea mai rapida, ‘ Van Gogh & I‘. Voi incerca sa fac pe un singur blog ceea ce faceam pe 3. Desigur, nu sterg blogul de fatza si daca vetzi dori, il vetzi putea explora fara probleme si comentata, daca vetzi dori. promit sa raspund prompt si va dorest o viatza buna si interesanta…

Ion Vincent Danu

Le paradoxe Nietzsche – intro

J’ai terminé à lire, il y a quelques jours, “Le Crépuscule des idoles”. C’est la première livre de Nietzsche que j’ai lu depuis la première jusqu’à la dernière page… Évidement, ça ne me fait pas un expert en Nietzsche… Mais il y a dans ce livre (et je crois que ce n’est pas le seul…) un paradoxe qui m’intrigue. Et je travaille à un petit essai sur le sujet… Comme je ne l’ai pas terminé encore je vais vous donner seulement ma première impression (et pour l’illustrer, la dernière variante, finale, de ma peinture “Le cinquième journée de la Création”…)

Quand tu lis un livre de Nietzsche c’est un peu comme si tu regarde certains films de David Lynch; tu te dis: celui-ci c’est soit un génie, soit un lunatique. Ou les deux. Plus probablement, les deux…

Quand je “faisais” les Symposiums de peinture…

Deux ou trois années de suite, 2002-2003 je crois, j’ai participé au Symposium de peinture apellé Bromont on art. Bromont étant un petit ville touristique, fameuse pour son Festival du chocolat et pour son chateau (jamais vu par moi) et pour ses pistes de ski d,un proche montagne. Dans le temps, je partageait avec mon fils cadet, Theodore, une Mazda 323 qui avait 7-8 ans. C’est avec elle – et dans elle – que j,ai participé au Symposium. Je l’ai utilisée – Red Green would have been satisfait parce que j’ai use beaucoup de ruban a coller – même comme support d’exposition et j’ai dormi dedans 2 nuits (et je peux témoigner que la petite Mazda 323 n’était pas faite pour dormir, seulement si tu veux la considérer comme une sorte de lit de Procust…) L’exposition se faisait autour de l’Église anglicaine (je crois) de Bromont et les participants était pas mal les mêmes caque année… pas mal de figures pittoresques, moi inclus…

Cette peinture, un peu naive, avec des forts couleurs (j’étais encore ébloui par la force des couleurs acrylique, par leur vivacité…) c’est une de 2 ou 3 que j’ai vendu. Chaque fois que j’ai participé (avant que les organisateurs devient trop “gourmands” et demande des frais de participation impossible – avec la promesse de t’inclure dans un sorte de livre-catalogue…) j’ai reussi à vendre juste assez pour avoir un petit bénéfice – pas grand chose 100-150$ en plus des dépenses… D’habitude, la merveille se passait au dernires moments, quand j’avais perdu presque l’espérance… La petite histoire avec celui-ci c’est que le jeune couple d’Américains qui l’a achété m’a payé 20 $ DE PLUS que j’ai démandé ce qui m’a faite une enorme plaisirs. Ceux-là, ils ons vraiment aimé m’a petite peinture; il l’ont achété PARCE QU’ILS L’AIMAIENT et pas pour faire un investissement ou parce que la couleur allait avec celle du sofa du salon… Je leur fait cadeau un autre dessin, à leur choix et ils l’ont accépté avec plaisir et sans façons… Un jeune couple (étudiants, probablement) très très sympatique… Je crois surtout que la fille a aimé la combinaison de l’expression de la fille du fauteuil (ma fille, bien sur) avec l’expression satisfaite et les “griffes” impressionantes du chat…et de la fille… (Elle en as toujours).

Dan Quixote

I’ve wrote something lately: about Nietzsche. Again… But it puzzles me and I’m not yet entirely satisfied. So I’ll entertain you (I hope so!) with a drawing – well, a graphic work – I used to do quite often in the years of my depression… 2000-2001… I have entitled it Dan Quixote because I always felt a bit like battling the windmills since I’ve become a full time artist… At the time, I was experimenting with composition and new graphic techniques; I’ll have to tell you one thing: depression has it’s bright side, paradoxically… If you are an artist, it could happen very well that your creativity – and productivity – increase very much, a lot, during depression. Well, not if you are catatonic (I never was)…but a bit of depression can stimulate the hell of your peripheral vision, can encourage you to explore roads you wouldn’t take otherwise… I’m not saying get depressed to get creative; I’m just saying, if this is the case and you ARE depressed, and this increase your creativity-productivity, why not take advantage of it? Even the worst situation MUST have some good sides… When somebody dies, someone else inherits… It’s sad, it’s cruel, maybe, but these are the facts of life (you can call it Wall Mart philosophy or such but it doesn’t make it less true… I remember reading an interview with Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver. When he wrote the screenplay made famous by Martin Scorsese and Robert de Niro, he was depressed au bout, comme disent les francophones…

Metropolis

 

I’m not absolutely sure that Bucharest, with his 4 million people, qualifies for a “metropolis”… for me it was that… A big city, hysterically agitated, cruel, tense, inhuman, full of sound and fury… I never had a chance to know it better, to see also its “good” sides… I had some relatives and some friends, over the years, in Bucharest, Romania’s capital, but never yet had the time, the patience, the chance to know it otherwise. I was a stranger there. Afraid to be robbed. Prone to be a victim of all those big city slicks, of all the gypsies and notoriously (for the provincial sucker I felt I was) dishonest taxi drivers and stuff…

Since I’ve bragged I was a photographer (well, still am, not dead yet…) I will show you this time a photo I took when I was no more than a young adult (he-he-he, many years ago…) . It was taken with a very primitive camera, well know at the time in a URSS allied country like Romania, a “Smena’. Almost the equivalent of a disposable camera in US, not very complicated but with a good, sharp objective. The films weren’t much better, in those days of communist Romania: if you got an east-German made Orwo film you had top quality…

The place: before the “Patria” cinema, somewhere on one of the main boulevards of Bucharest. People were circulating upstream and downstream without even looking. For me, young provincial, it was shocking this big city indifference of the people. I was naive, of course. What could have you done? Call the Ambulance? The lying man was a victim of some robbery or simply a drunkard? Was he dead or still breathing? What should I do? Eventually, I took a picture. I’m not proud of the way I solved the dilemma… But them, it wasn’t my town. I had no friends there. I was myself, almost as the man laying there, a stranger in a strange land…

The Little Redhood

I was a lot of things in my life. Photographer was one of them. Here is a photo I took one or two years before immigrating with my whole family to Canada. Of course, the litlle redhood is my daughter and the place is an orchard near my native town of Sibiu, Transylvania. A place called Cisnadioara where there is, not far away, on a high hill, a very old castle, well preserved. A place where somebody smart (and rich) could shoot a movie with Dracula, for instance… A small village where it should be good to live (eventually to paint) if the rich people from Sibiu wouldn’t have already bought most of the houses and lands…

Getting drunk, as a solution…

“Life is cruel” – “life is real” – isn’t it what they say in some classic songs?

Well, just because Supertramp or Freddie Mercury said it in a song it doesn’t make it untrue automatically… But I would say that, in my humble experience, life is cruel only because it’s indifferent. Why is “real”, well, I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Freddie about that (yes, I know he’s dead…) Anyhow…being in what the French call “une disposition massacrante” I need (and badly!) some (auto) encouragement… All I could find was a famous (?) text by Charles Baudelaire. (I’m too damn nervous and angry to translate it so I hope you know French; sorry!)

“Enivrez-vous

Il faut être toujours ivre. Tout est là: c’est l’unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l’horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve. Mais de quoi? (Good question!) De vin, de poesie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous.

Et si quelquesfois, sur les marches d’un palais, sur l’herbe verte d’un fossé, dans la solitude morne de votre chambre, vous vous reveillez, l’ivresse déjà diminuée, ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l’étoile, à l’oiseau, à l’horloge, à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est; et le vent, la vague, l’étoile, l’oiseau, l’horloge vous répondront: “Il est l’heure de s’enivrer! Pour n’être pas les esclaves martirisés du Temps, enivrez-vous sans cesse! (OK) De vin, de poesie ou de vertu, à votre guise.”

Charles Baudelaire, “Sa vie, son oeuvre”, p. 407, Bibliothèque Fixot, Paris, 1992.

Since I have no wine, some poetry (see above) and very little virtue (I don’t brag about it, anyway), I have to get drunk with what I have: ink and colors, pens and brushes, or, in other words, drawing and painting. I add a sample.

Excerpts cocktail…

The fate manifest itself often by chance. Or maybe chance, hasard IS fate? I don’t really know (and I don’t insist; it gets me misty, to cite Mel Gibson in Payback…) and now that I cited Mel Gibson, I will offer you a feast, intelectual feast… here are some famous and less famous citations from Nietzsche (he’s getting often in my way, I don’t know why?) and John Steinbeck (a writer I admire and enjoy). To accompany the word feast I’ve chosen a semi-abstract painting I did back in 2003-2004 I hope you’ll like both…

” It isn’t true that there’s a community of light, a bonfire of the world. Everyone carries his own, his lonely own.”
p. 281, John Steinbeck, The Winter of our discontent

“Voilà un artiste comme je les aime:modeste dans ses besoins. Il ne demande, au fond, que deux choses, son pain et son art…Panem et circen…”
p. 12, Nietzsche, Crépuscule des idoles

“Appris à l’École de Guerre de la vie:ce qui ne me tue pas me fortie.”
p.12, Nietzsche, Crépuscule des idoles

“What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately.”
p. 82, John Steinbeck, The Winter of our discontent

“The things we couldn’t explain went right on but surely not with our blessing. We did not see what we couldn’t explain, and meanwhile a great part of the world was abandoned to children, insane people, fools, and mystics, who were more interested in what is than in why is it. So many old and lovely things are stored in the world’s attic, because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.”
John Steinbeck, The Winter of our discontent

“Je me méfie de tous faiseurs de systèmes et m’écarte de leur chemin. L’esprit de système est un manque de probité.” p. 15, Nietzsche, Crépuscule des idoles.

Mixing techniques

I’ve always like to try new things… to mix techniques and try new drawing instruments (for instance, the dry reed is an excellent one, used by Rembrandt, Bruegel and Van Gogh). Practically, with acrylics, and acrylic mediums and pastas you can use almost anything to shape your painting: a comb,  all kind of plastic dinner forks and knifes, knitting needles, your hands and nails, the other side of the brush (the handle) etc. etc. Only your imagination puts a limit to this… The excellent adherence of the acrylic paint – inks included – makes very interesting the combination acrylic base + pastel (oil pastel is preferable because of its better adherence and simplicity – no need to apply a fixer…) This is one of my first experiments in mixing acrylics, watercolor and pastel. Not a masterpiece but it can give you an idea of what I’m talking about… And it will make a contrast with some sad, melodramatic postings I did lately…

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Mi-a placut intotdeauna sa experimentez. Sa incerc noi tehnici picturale, noi materiale, noi instrumente de desin…de ex., trestia taiata pe care atat Rembrandt cat si Bruegel si Van Gogh au folosit-o…Practic, odata cu culorile de tip acrilic (inclusiv tusurile, ca si nenumaratele varietatzi de paste si mediumuri acrilice) campul de experiementare a devenit practic nelimitat (doar limitele propriei imaginatzii constinuie “limita”…) Datorita excelentei lor aderentze si a faptului ca potzi modela tabloul tau cu practic aproape orice instrument, de la piepteni la ace de crosetat, etc. o baza ade acrilice poate fi foarte usor si bine “desenata” cu pasteluri (personal le prefer pe cele de ulei – in cazul acesta – fiindca adera mai bine si nu trebuie fixate, ca cel seci…)

Nudul prezent e una din primele mele incercari de “tehnica mixta” . Nu e o capodopera, dar va putetzi face o idee despre ce inseamna “tehnica mixta” acrilice-pastel, cu ceva acuarele in plus…Si face un contrast interesant fatza de unele postari triste si melodramatice pe care le-am facut recent…

Essential loneliness / Singuratate fundamentala

I’ve chosen this drawing to illustrate this title. It’s a couple, they probably make love – or have sex – together. But they are essentialy alone. Same as we are… each and everyone…

There will be a lot to say: no, I’m not alone, I have a wife, a lover, children, parents, friends, etc.

The truth is – and it’s sad, very sad (as I am tonight) that we are, finally, alone. No lover, no wife, no children, no friend (and I value friendship a lot) can fill in the emptyness, the essential loneliness we feel sometimes. Happly, it doesn’t happen often. A few minutes, maybe, in a lifetime. If you are moderately smart, you’ll recognise it. If not it will be only a very unpleasent feeling, a strangeness, something you will put aside as quick as you can, trying to forget about it… If not, you will be prone to cleaning rifles accidents, like Hemingway and his father…

Why do we feel it? I don’t know. It could be a negligent word from some of your dear ones, a mean remarks of a person you thought (how stupid can one be?) was a friend, the fact that your child doesn’t have 2 minutes to ask how are you? Or a stranger’s mean look, with no reason that you know (maybe he or she doesn’t like your mug, as simply as that?)

Very few of us will wish to analyse too much this odd, unpleasent, sickening feeling. Neither do I.

But then, maybe I am disturbed?

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Am ales desenul acesta al unui cuplu pentru a ilustra titlu de mai sus. Probabil ca cei doi fac dragoste – sau au sex – impreuna dar, in mod esentail, ei sunt singuri. La fel ca fiecare dintre noi. Fara exceptzie.

Vor fi multzi care sa spuna: nu, eu nu sunt singur, am o nevasta, o iubita, copii, parintzi, prieteni, etc. Se poate. Dar adevarul este – si e trist, foarte trist (asa cum sunt eu in seara asta) – ca fiecare suntem, pana la urma, singuri. Nici o iubita, nici o nevasta, nici copiii si nici prietenii (si eu am o idee foarte inalta despre prietenie) pot sa umple golul acele, singuratatea noastra fundamentala pe care o simtzim uneori. din fericire, nu se intampla prea des. cateva minute, poate, intr-o viataza de om. Daca esti destul de destept, vei recunoaste momentul, cand se intampla. Daca nu, va ramana doar ca o senzatzie neplacuta, ca un sentiment bizar, ca ceva ciudat, ceva de care te grabesti sa scapi cat mai repede si incerci sa uitzi… Daca intarzii prea mult s-ar putea sa ai accidente de curatzat pusca, ca Hemingway si tatal sau…

De ce se intampla? Habar n-am de ce. Poate sa fie un cuvant aruncat neglijent de catre cineva iubit. Sau o remarca rautacioasa din partea cuiva pe care (oare cat de prost potzi fi?) l-ai crezut prieten, sau faptul ca copilul tau nu are 2 minute ca sa te intrebe de sanatate… Sau, pur si simplu, o uitatura urata de la un strain sau straina (de ce? cum ai putea stii? poate ca nu le place moaca ta?)

Foarte putzini dintre noi vor vrea sa analizeze pe indelete acest sentiment, bizar, neplacut, care-tzi provoaca greatza. Nici eu nu vreau.

Dar, cine stie? poate ca sunt deranjat?

Disturbing stuff in yellow & orange…

This is for my friend Alfred Faltiska (but not exclusively…)

At my post “Cruelty” he made a comment and it seem that he believes dark, angry, disturbing stuff cannot be made with sunny colors like yellow or  pink… I won’t cite him some Vincent paintings I know – in bright, powerful colors – and which are profoundly disturbing. I’ll just post one of ime – Van Gogh don’t need any publicity any more, eh?

I wouldn’t put any limitation on the colors or techniques able to convey disturbing stuf… You can do angry, dark (metaphorically dark…), disturbing, weird, wild stuff with almost all colors, in almost any technique.

This is just a study of the “Adam” figure for a large composition I plan to paint in an unforseen future…if I will gain the lottery or find a Mecena…

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…