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”…

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.

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…

One minute drawing

Rapid sketching could be very revealing for an artist, for his “talent”… Bruegel, Rembrandt, Rubens, Delacroix, as well as modern painters like Manet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Modigliani, Picasso, all did rapid sketches, catching in a blink and in a few fewerishly lines, the essence of a movement or of a move…

Only this enumeration of great names an make me humble. But not that humble… after all, right now, I’m about in the same stage as Vincent Van Gogh coming to Paris: unknown, with still a lot to learn but, however, with some years of hard work and even some good drawings and paintings in my portfolio… I have nothing to lose, except, maybe, the sympathy of some friends who thought I’m modest (which I am and which I am NOT, I cannot really explain…)

So, rapid sketching… There is a “fashion” of the “ateliers d’après modèle vivant” : I don’t know why, exactly, but all do conform to this (in my opinion) stupid rule of the “warming up” poses… the model is tortured for 5-7 minutes in all sort of difficult, artificial postures in the so called “worming up one minute pose”… Rarely, very rarely did I succeed anything else than to waste the paper… I would warm up a lot easier and more gradually doing a 10 minutes pose… But if this is the fashion…well, you have to conform…

This one minute drawing is one of the rare one…one in which I succeeded, I think, to catch “something”… I hope you’ll like it. And when I will gain the lottery I will organize free nude sessions in which the models will pose in natural postures for 10-15 minutes. No fashion. Just beautiful women posing in natural, simple postures…

Funny looking Nietzsche – creators paradox

I found this funny looking photo of Nietzsche, with a drawn sword and the “patriotic” look of a “prussian” officer (plus a moustache that would have look good on one of the Marx brothers – of course, I’m not talking about Karl…) And I’ve read about him, enlisting as a “voluntary” in the French-Prussian war of 1870-71… Of course, I know about his “living dangerously” stuff and about some of his aphorism recommanding war as an interesting and revigorating experience…

Anyway, my point is than often, even VERY often, we are puzzled by the aspect, the behavior and some of the ideas of people considered, by general acceptation, as geniuses… Dali, for instance, cultivated with an equal genius his paradoxes, his weirdness… He sympatized with the Spanish fascists, he went bathing in the nude with his wife Gala (of course, equally nude) in the Atlantic ocean (not without letting know the international press about the exact date and place and hour…)

Toulouse-Lautrec, with his dwarf-like aspect and many excentricities, is another example. And even the most uncultivated and not-art-oriented persons have heard about Vincent Van Gogh’s ear cutting… Maybe, in geniuses, the paradoxes (quite usual, in some mesure, in ordinary people) are brought to paroxism? The Yang-Yin thing being much more accentuated, more powerfully revealed? Not an uninteresting theme, I think…

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 and Andre 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…