JaZzArt en València

ART AND THE ARTIST

(Francisco Bravo Cabrera, while listening to the Sonata no. 9 by Beethoven)

Well, maybe I should rather say ART AND LIFE or THE ARTIST AND LIFE, something like that, I don’t know, I think it may have been a better title, but no, the one I’ve chosen I like…

Life, what is life? José Saramago in his book All the Names said: “Life is like paintings; it’s best to look at them four steps back.” Four steps… phenomenal.

The distinguished writer, whom I admire very much, has told us what life is similar to, but he has not told us what life actually is, nor why he relates it to paintings. Well, could it be that paintings are similar to life? I don’t think so, but anything is possible.

Paintings are representations. Nothing that is portrayed on the canvas, wood, or whatever surface the painter uses is truth. Moreover, I remind you that nothing in art is reality. The closest it comes is to a reflection, if the artist does it well, and if you immerse yourself in the painting, you may see something in it that you associate with real life. But you won’t find reality in any painting. However, if you’re lucky, you’ll see how the author has perceived it. A painting, like a movie, a play, or a ballet, lies. Finally, don’t delude yourself into thinking that you’ll find sincerity in art. Perhaps art is the most cynical thing on the face of the earth. Don’t doubt it.

And why do I tell you this? Because I am an artist. My professional and academic training taught me that reality is not art. Art feeds on reality, uses it, embellishes or tarnishes it, but always changes it. The actor does not feel what you think he is feeling when you see him in the theater or in a movie. Neither does the painter nor the poet. Yes, we all play with emotions, but as the great director and co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, Konstantin Stanislavski, said, “Raw emotion (human) is not art.” We play with real emotions, but the ones we represent are artistic creations, period.

So, why take four steps back? Frankly, I don’t know. Looking for a better perspective? Maybe…

But well, let’s see, what is an artist? The great masters of the European Renaissance did not consider themselves artists. They viewed themselves as craftsmen, men (and women) who had learned their trade well and had also been trained in other disciplines. Moreover, they painted not what they wanted, but what was commissioned by their great patrons, who were the church, royalty, nobility, and to some extent, the emerging bourgeois class.

It may have been Michelangelo who first considered himself an artist, but that’s debatable. The thing is that artisans and craftsmen began to turn into artists. Once they were artists, they could choose the themes they were going to paint, and the subject matter shifted from biblical scenes and portraits of kings to something more casual, everyday, and completely secular. Art began to gain value, and collectors emerged. Then came the museums, and with them, art history started to be written. In 1793, the Louvre Museum was founded in Paris, the Prado Museum opened its doors in Madrid in 1819, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1870.

That’s how things began to change. The avant-gardes of the 20th century came along, and art took on previously unthinkable directions, causing artists to evolve. But now, after the great artistic milestones of geniuses like Picasso and Matisse, artists no longer know what to do. They seek to experiment, draw attention, shock, alarm, scandalize, and even offend. They also enjoy making people think they are exceptional beings with almost supernatural abilities. But don’t you dare believe that; it’s all nonsense.

Artists today are neither geniuses nor avant-garde. Everything has already been done, so don’t think that for art to be good it has to be original because nothing is original anymore in art. A good artist, as Picasso said, imitates, but a brilliant artist steals. However, what they have stolen is transformed into something better. And I remind you that we create art for only one reason: to earn a living. Nobody enters a studio for ten hours a day, painting like a madman, for the love of art. We do it because we want to sell our work. And if they talk to you about inspiration, don’t believe it either. It’s a myth, nonsense, a fairy tale, a con trick. The artist works and dedicates themselves to their craft not because a muse with magical powers has inspired them, but because they are hungry.

Perhaps a better title would have been The Great Deception…

It is said that Dalí and Gala once found a little bunny rabbit and they kept it as a pet. But since they usually, come November, left to spend the winters in the United States, they did not know what to do with their furry little pet. So, Gala called their cook and said to him, «tomorrow we have stuffed rabbit». The poor cook had to comply and with sadness in his heart and tears in his eyes, he cooked the rabbit. His tears rolled down his cheeks as he served Dalí and Gala the meat of what had been their beloved little pet.

And, to be able to create (see below) «Dalí Atomicus«. This 1948 photograph by Phillipe Halsman required 26 attempts, where they threw three cats and water into the air. How little regard for these poor animals they both showed.

A final anecdote is that Dalí often organised bullfights, and in one of them, he took and filled a dummy bull with live cats and bags filled with fish into the round and with some pyrotechnic devise blew it up so that the live animals inside would fly through the air landing on the spectators. Of course all of this was «surrealistic» and created by the self-named «genius» of modern art.

So, if you want to know why I have such a strong distaste for this non-genius, well here are some of them…

See also: Art History in One Minute (videos): Dalí

CHEERS

Those Little Purple Trees
(Listening to Mozart’s Oboe Quartet K.370)

So they’ve discovered space and planets,
with telescopes and instruments that measure
even the slightest degrees of their absolute silence,
and they say it’s a void dark and eternal,
they call it the universe and say it’s empty.
But it isn’t, no, not at all.
In those places, that now we cannot see, there are forests,
not of oak or pine,
but of little purple trees whose leaves and branches
are whispering about the futility of their discoveries
and how they waste our time.

Little purple trees grow,
as do those imagined asteroids
that orbit moons and dance with icy comets,
and become the daring iconoclasts sipping tea in earthly gardens.

Astronomers deny them as they do not fit within their schemes,
which are filled with laws and theories like gravity.
They’ve convinced us there are things we’ve never seen, or ever will,
like light years and black holes in outer space,
but for purple trees, in their schemes there’s no place.

Little purple trees are a judgement against closed-minded reason,
existing just to mock outlandish theories,
with their tiny roots and purple shade
which they provide in every season…

They’re the essence of truth,
the more absurd, the more phenomenal,
precise, perfect, fantastic,
makes them more real than quantum calculations
and more meaningful than algebraic equations.

And when the day arrives and we sail through purple groves
in wooden ships smelling faintly of lilac,
we will know with certainty there is no space,
that we exist within a garden,
where nothing’s empty,
and we will see,
next to apple, olive, pear and orange,
little purple trees.

C.2025 – Francisco Bravo Cabrera – 20/30 SEP 2025 – Chios, Greece

CHEERS

Welcome to part 10 of «Art History in One Minute (videos)» and on this one we are referring to an artist who, no one said was a genius, so he told everybody that he was… Salvador Dalí, the man who said that he was surrealism, is a great artist to many, not so much to me. Personally, I have read some of his books and I think he was a better writer…

Now I want to know what you think. Genius or bufoon?

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AETERNA CAELI CHICA La última vez que caminé por aquí sentí que el calor, sofocante e intensobrillaba en el centro,muy dentro de mí… Y luego… cuando …

AETERNA CAELI CHICA…Poema de Francisco Bravo Cabrera

From one of the iconic voices of rock…

De una de las voces icónicas del rock…

GRACIAS – CHEERS

I sustain that cats are superior animals, meaning they are superior to dogs. And I am sorry if I upset/anger those who think dogs are the ultimate pets. But a dog just cannot compare with the intelligence, agility, usefulness and absolute brilliance of a cat. Most artists have loved cats and have had cats. Mark Twain even rented cats when he travelled then he sent money to the owners to ensure the wellbeing of his feline friends. When cats purr they send healing vibrations. They can sense danger. They can jump more than six times their height, they can see in the dark. And, as opposed to their canine friends (or enemies), they never lost the instinct to hunt and to be wild, although they repress those instincts willingly around their adopted humans…

I do not know why all those people in Europe and in America who, supposedly, hate war, only think of the war in Gaza. They complain about genocide and have been even committing crimes against Israelis in such places like Spain and the US. Yet, there are many armed conflicts going on around the world that they seem to ignore. The most important one is the war in Ukraine. I do not see huge manifestations of these peace-seeking people against the government of Putin. I do not see them manifesting against Kim Jung Un and the fact that he uses Koreans as slave labour to build his fabulous structures, especially the new beach resort. And who exactly is that beach resort in North Korea for? These lovers of Palestinians don’t seem to care for Venezuelans being driven out of their country by dictator Maduro, or Cubans, whose civil and human rights have been denied for decades by the Castro-communist regime on the island. I think these are the children of hypocrisy and I am sick and tired of having to hear the propaganda that they have manged to place in just about every news entity in the Western World.

And Picasso? Leave him alone. Now apparently some crazed out, irrational and bellicose feminists have started to label Pablo as a misogynist and an abuser, even a macho man who used women without proper respect. Well, I say that you do not judge people from other times with the standards of yours. And if he was so bad then why didn’t any of these supposed victims accuse him? On the contrary, they all loved him and he was quite generous with all of them. So piss off…

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Sostengo que los gatos son animales superiores, lo que significa que son superiores a los perros. Y lamento si molesto/enfado a aquellos que piensan que los perros son las mascotas definitivas. Pero un perro simplemente no puede compararse con la inteligencia, agilidad, utilidad y absoluta brillantez de un gato. La mayoría de los artistas han amado a los gatos y han tenido gatos. Mark Twain incluso alquilaba gatos cuando viajaba y luego les enviaba dinero a los dueños para asegurar el bienestar de sus amigos felinos. Cuando los gatos ronronean, envían vibraciones curativas. Pueden sentir el peligro. Pueden saltar más de seis veces su altura, pueden ver en la oscuridad. Y, a diferencia de sus amigos (o enemigos) caninos, nunca han perdido el instinto de cazar y ser salvajes, aunque reprimen esos instintos voluntariamente alrededor de sus humanos adoptados…

No sé por qué todas esas personas en Europa y América que, supuestamente, odian la guerra, solo piensan en la guerra en Gaza. Se quejan de genocidio e incluso han cometido crímenes contra israelíes en lugares como España y Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, hay muchos conflictos armados en todo el mundo que parecen ignorar. El más importante es la guerra en Ucrania. No veo grandes manifestaciones, de estas personas que buscan la paz, en contra del gobierno de Putin. No los veo manifestándose contra Kim Jong Un y el hecho de que utiliza a los coreanos como mano de obra esclava para construir sus fabulosas estructuras, especialmente el nuevo complejo turístico. ¿Y para quién exactamente es ese complejo turístico en Corea del Norte? Estos amantes de los palestinos parecen no preocuparse por los venezolanos que son desplazados de su país por el dictador Maduro, o por los cubanos, cuyos derechos civiles y humanos han sido negados durante décadas por el régimen comunista de Castro en la isla. Creo que estos son los hijos de la hipocresía y estoy cansado de tener que escuchar la propaganda que han logrado colocar en prácticamente todas las entidades informativas del mundo occidental.

Y Picasso? Mejor dejadlo tranquilo pues resulta que ahora un grupúsculo de loquillas, irracionales, o sea feministas belicosas, quiere condenar al genio del Siglo 20 y tacharlo de misógino, de machista y de abusador. Escuchad bien antes de contar por ahí esas chorradas y dejad de juzgar a la gente de otra época por los estándares de esta. Además, Pablito no pudo haber sido tan malo porque ninguna de sus mujeres lo acuso y él, en cambio, era muy generoso con ellas todas. Asi que no vengáis aqui a cortar el bacalao y mejor iros a freír espárragos…

CHAPTER 3
Fernande Olivier

I would consider Fernande Olivier to be the first woman, or first real relationship in Picasso’s life. He met her in Paris while living at the now famous Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre. This apartment building was baptised with the name Bateau Lavoir by Picasso and his cronies in 1904. They thought that its wooden structure made it look like the laundry boats moored on the River Seine. The name stuck with all the other artists, poets and members of the bohemian crowd prevalent in those years, mostly composed of young artists, very idealists and equally as poor.

In any event, Fernande, besides being Picasso’s first Parisian romance, was a model who also aspired to be an artist herself. She was born in Paris in 1881 and she did write her memoirs about her life with Picasso. The couple took up residence at the Bateau Lavoir in 1905. Their relationship lasted approximately seven years and it was not an easy-going relationship at all. Both of them were of the jealous type and given to bursts of violence.

One could say that she was the muse that inspired some of his phenomenal early works, including the sculpture, Head of a Woman (1909). It might have been Fernande who catapulted him into his rose period. And she might have also been one of the prostitutes painted in his seminal work Las Señoritas de Aviñón. All in all, she was the model for over fifty paintings from those early years in Paris.

Yet, Picasso was moving on. By 1911, after having become a successful artist, Picasso began to consider her a reminder of harder times and lost interest in her. He left her and in 1912 found a new woman, a new muse, lover, obsession, whom he called ma jolie and whose name was Eva Guel. Eva was born in 1885, and probably, like Fernande, also in Paris. Eva was quite the opposite of Fernande. She was a petite woman of fine chiselled features and of mild temperament. However, the relationship was not to last as ma jolie succumbed to either cancer or tuberculosis and died in 1915. She was his inspiration, one could suppose, for the cubist period where in some of his work he wrote “ma jolie”.

Picasso was very distraught by the death of Eva. He even said to Gertrude Stein that his life was hell. Yet, although ma jolie, the love of his life, his petite Eva, was sick and dying, Picasso was already shopping around for a replacement. By autumn of 1915 he had already met, and had a romantic interlude with, Gabrielle Lapeyre, and with several other young, beautiful women, including with Emilienne Pâquerette, the most sought after model of the time. This all happened between 1915 and 1917.

Even though I have stated that Fernande Olivier was Picasso’s first romance, to speak of, there had been others in Paris before Fernande. However, they were short-lived affairs mostly and really, with perhaps one exception that I will explain, had little to do with influencing the art of the great master.

The exception, in my opinion was Germaine Gargallo, née Laure Antoine, who later became Germaine Pichot, born in Paris in 1880. She had been the girlfriend of Carles Casagemas, Catalan artist and poet, good friend of Pablo Picasso, who committed suicide in France in 1901. Immediately following the death of Casagemas Germaina starts an affair with Picasso. In his painting Los dos saltimbanquis the two figures might just well be either him and Germaine or Germaine and Casagemas. That is the sum total, in my opinion, of Germaine’s influence in the emerging art of Picasso.

Other women did form part of his life between 1900 and 1904, mostly art models. There was a model named Madeleine in early 1904 who might have become pregnant with Picasso’s child but who aborted. She could have been the model for a 1904 gouache on pulp board painting titled Woman with a Helmet of Hair, which is now in the Art Institute of Chicago.

The next chapter will deal with a very important woman in Picasso’s life, Olga Kochlova. She would be his first wife and the woman who guided him into the realm of the rich and powerful, something that would turn his world around.

CHEERS

WHO IS THE GREATEST PAINTER OF ALL TIME?

Well, it could be said that it may be Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)…
Art history has emphasised that he is the ultimate synthesis of art and science. And furthermore, and these are simply facts, that his Mona Lisa (to me a second rate portrait), and The Last Supper (phenomenal but badly done and due to that it is almost totally deteriorated), are among the most studied and reproduced images on Earth.

It has also been said (mostly by “experts”, good grief!) that he transformed painting into a form of intellectual inquiry. That he was able to merge light, anatomy, spirit and mystery into his paintings successfully.
And finally “experts” simply conclude that he was a genius.

I do not think he was a genius. I think he was a painter of his time and that there were probably many other “Leonardos” in abundance during the Renaissance, especially in Italy. He was not, in my opinion, the author of intellectual inquiry. And reference merging light, anatomy, spirit and mystery to create, well, allow me to introduce you to the real master, Sandro Botticelli, the author of La Nascita di Venere (The Birth of Venus). And let me add that Leonardo was also a bit lazy. Most of his paintings are unfinished and many times he had been commissioned, and paid, to create either a painting or a sculpture and he would leave the job either half done or not at all. Is that the work of a genius? I do not think so…

And The Mona Lisa, definitely not his best portrait and it would not have become so famous had it not been stolen. After the theft the “marketing” campaign created the mystique and after it was recovered the museum sent the painting on a world tour to ensure its fame. If you really want to admire a great Leonardo portrait take a look at “Lady With An Ermine” totally superior to The Mona Lisa.

Now, if we mean the most “famous” painter in art history, one might say it is Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)…
His life story, along with his art, was woven into a myth. He was the mad painter, victim of suffering and of course his death made him a martyr, and martyrs sell. They (“experts”) say that the struggle, the passion, the vision. I don’t buy it, and it reminds me of another artist, one that I do not like, because I do like and admire van Gogh, which is Frida Kahlo…

Art historians claim that his style, i.e. his use of colour and of “swirling emotion” changed the language of painting forever. Well, perhaps, but the language of painting has been changing and by his day, it had changed much and still is. So that is nothing so big that it can elevate him to that level.
Finally they claim that he put his soul into his work. I would remind the “experts” that most good painters have done that and still do.

So I would conclude that Vincent van Gogh was a great painter and a reference to all artists that study art history. And if you are, or aspire to be, an artist you must study art history. But to me he is not the most famous painter in art history.

But if we mean to say the “most influential painter on modern art”, without a doubt it would be Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)…
Picasso was the true genius of art. He totally reinvented painting and opened the door for all the other painters of the 20th Century. When he invented cubism he created a new way of expression on the canvas that allowed for all the other art vanguards of the 20th Century to come forth. He did not create surrealism, or abstract art, but his break with tradition and classicism allowed others to become surrealists, expressionists, or abstract artists. His innovations even allowed for the clear and unequivocal development of realism and ultra-realism.

Picasso worked tirelessly. His incredible body of work proves that he was the consummate professional of art. He delved into sculpture, poetry, theatre, set and costume design and let us not forget that he invented the collage.
Picasso was the true revolutionary of art.

So, who is the greatest painter in history? Well, you tell me. But, to not let you wondering, here are a few contenders:

• Michelangelo – unmatched in power and divine drama.
• Rembrandt – master of human light and introspection.
• Claude Monet – father of Impressionism and modern vision.
• Caravaggio – light and darkness turned into revelation.
• Diego Velázquez – painter of truth before photography existed.
• Francisco de Goya – Arguably the first modern painter.

CHEERS