JaZzArt en València

“Pinball Wizard” was written by Pete Townshend and released by The Who in the UK in 1969…

This is also from my origina collection of Art Digital. Now it acquires a new life.

Look for this one, and others, here.

And…

Cheers…

From an image of a jazz ensemble in my head, came this drawing in graphite and ink on paper. Now comes the evolution…after all I have always said that art is the search…and it has become a work of Art Digital and from there to a fine art print available at my gallery in Pixels. com access right here.

And as I have been doing, I leave you with some more to consider…

I do hope you get into some meditation, and if you fancy that, there is more, a full meditation session here:

Cheers…

Texas governor today in a press conference said the problem was a lack of mental health centres in the area of the city of Uvalde…

Does he think that we are all stupid?

The problem is the proliferation of guns! Who ever heard of a civilised society that allows 18 year olds, without any training or background checks, to buy guns!

The governor and the lawmakers have lied to America. Folks with mental health issues do not massacre children. But those who somehow decide to do so, find it very easy to get guns, military weapons and bullets to do it.

The problem in America is guns!

May those innocents rest in peace.

So, Leonardo da Vinci…

The great Renaissance man? The genius? The artist, inventor, poet, researcher? Or the lazy rich boy who coasted through the years, living in comfort with servants and being trained by some of the masters of the time?

I think the latter description suits him better…

First I must say that I do think he was a great illustrator and painter. No doubt. But I also must ask myself, how many other young students of art also painted as good…or better…than the famous Tuscan? If other young lads would have had the same opportunity to train with the great Master Andrea del Verrocchio, like Leonardo had, thanks to his rich father, I am sure they too would have created incredible works of art.

Leonardo da Vinci hardly ever finished what he started. When he found the going rough, he abandoned the project. The famous fresco «The Last Supper», which he painted on the wall of the refractory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the church and convent of the Dominican Order in Milan, has had to be restored many times because it was painted using tempera and now little of the original remains. What kind of artist…with the experience of Leonardo…would be so careless?

Leonardo left many paintings unfinished, not only the «Monna Lisa» (which I will return to promptly), but «The Virgin and Child with St. Anne», «Saint Jerome in the Wilderness», «The Adoration of the Magi» as well as many other projects. All of his inventions were left unfinished and none of them would have worked had they ever been built, which they were not. Actually Duke Ludovico Sforza only engaged Leonardo to make entertaining objects, and such that could be used for decoration. The equestrian statute he commissioned from him was never even started, it remained as a sketch.

One of his greatest failures was the fresco of The Battle of Anghiari (1505) which he was commissioned to paint on the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence ,and which he never painted. Leonardo, (the great innovator?), tried to paint with oil but placed a much too thick undercoat with wax and when he applied the colours they began to drip and he gave up and abandoned the project.

So, in conclusion…and in my opinion…Leonardo da Vinci was no greater…and much lesser…than his contemporaries, great artists, who truly worked hard, like: Michelangelo, Raphael, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Donatelo, and the master of masters, Filippo Brunelleschi, the architect/engineer/artist that truly kicked off the Renaissance in Italy.

Reference Monna Lisa…

I look at it as a little painting of not much importance to me. I looked at it (when I visited Le Louvre) for less than a second and the painting did not really catch my eye. It is small, 77 x 53 centimetres and not very interesting. I would say it is a second rate portrait. Well, then why is it so famous? Because it was stolen and remained missing for two years and during that time it received a lot of press, making the painting famous…

Can anyone really say that this painting, Monna Lisa, is better than this one:

Now it is your turn to tell me what you think.

And I do think he was a great artist, a great illustrator but he did not really pay too much attention to his craft and gave up too quickly when things went wrong…

Cheers…

I’ve travelled much…

I visited Turkey, starting with Istanbul (which my grandmother always called Constantinopla) and I began to learn about the country’s history…

I learned that Atatürk was a great man. Should have been honoured as “Man of the Century “…

He created a secular and democratic nation from a part of what had been the Ottoman Empire…

He wanted his fellow Turks to look to the West…

I have read about him and greatly admire him.

I suggest, if you like history and you want to get to know some of those that have made history in outstanding manners, that you read more about Atatürk…

I leave you with this short video I made a few years ago:

Cheers

This drawing…graphite on paper…is from the old days and now it has made its leap forward into a new form, fine art prints. Look for it in my Fine Art America gallery here.

There are more to share:

Cheers…

Veurem si us agrada…

El 24 de febrer del 2001 Josep Maria Bardagí mor d’un infart…

Aquesta cançó és un adéu a aquest musico, compositor i intèrpret català…

Moltes gràcies…

Dear Diary today I woke up dreaming that life was like a bouquet of tulips, in a bunch, on a vase on top of a dinner table, in an apartment on a hill, next to a lake, surrounded by mountains, under a cloudy sky and enjoying the mildness of a sunny day with little humidity and a temperature of 16 degrees Celsius…

If you think this is some kind of hallucination, you would be quite wrong. Sometimes I just like to let an unconscious stream of words flow unimpeded, unchecked, unedited and smooth. And the tulips are quite real. They are actually my favourite flowers, especially the yellow ones. When you bring them home, hopefully a very fresh bunch, they look amazing. They are standing like soldiers at attention.

But soon the sun will begin to filter through a window, a sliding glass door, a hole in the wall, wherever, and the tulips will begin to turn towards those magical and invisible rays and they will begin to lean forwards, backwards, to the right, to the left and the bunch will go from «attention» to «at ease»…

So life is like a bunch of tulips, we go from attention to relaxation, from standing firm to leaning, from fresh and new to withered and old. There is no shame in ageing, on the contrary, there should be gratitude. And I think tulips are always grateful to exist, even in a bunch, in a vase, on top of the dinning room table, in an apartment on a hill, close to the lake, surrounded by mountains and blessed with the light of the sun.

Cheers…

Created in the Soviet Union and destined to become propaganda for the state and for the spread of socialism. However, some other artists embraced the style and altered it a bit and made something a little more interesting than what the Soviet artists were doing…

Cheers…