JaZzArt en València

A truly phenomenal artist that is definitely part of Art History in a good way.

CHEERS

ROUND ABOUT SUNRISE

(While listening to the Overture of Die Zauberflöte by W. A. Mozart)

I like to whisper in a the doorway,
play with shadows at the bar,
turn the clocks back one long hour
drive a fancy blue sports car.

I’m an atom torn from silence,
causing ripples on a stream,
like a face half-torn from memory
that returns like a disease.

Like a key that fits no doorway,
like a word you cannot find,
like a letter left unopened
in the chambers of my mind.

Like a road that leads to nowhere,
yet you walk it all the same,
seeking answers in the lyrics,
while you mumble the refrain.

Like a circle drawn in water,
like a wheel that spins in sand,
like a heartbeat that remembers
what the soul cannot command.

Round and round the silence carries
every thought you’ve left behind,
and the turning never tarries
runs big circles round your mind.

NOTA BENE

This poem, “Round About Sunrise” is from my upcoming book Jazz Poetry (more about that later). It was written in the free jazz style where the verses flow with rhythm and a sort of string of consciousness attitude. However, each stanza was, in the original first draft, loosely created, allowing for the much needed “jazz” improvisations during the re-writing stages. The title is a play on the tile of Miles Davis’ Round About Midnight album of 1957. The song “Round About Midnight” was composed by Thelonious Munk probably between 1940 and 1941. Since then it has become a jazz standard. But the song was actually copyrighted in 1943 in C minor with the title «I Need You So«, and with lyrics byThelma Murray, a friend of Monk’s. And that is how my jazz poetry is, very similar to my jazz art drawings and paintings. They utilise the principles that guided and allowed for the creation of Jazz which are: Improvisation, the soloist as composer, and swing (rhythm).

* This image, «Let the Sun Shine In«, is available as a Fine Art Print from my gallery at Fine Art America

CHEERS

Welcome to JaZzArt en València. This blog that posts daily articles on art (especially the paintings I make), on artists, music…and musicians…and the poetry that I write and that many of you do too. I will also post here many of the videos that I make for YouTube that comprise my Art History in One Minute (videos) series.

What is «Jazz-Art»? It is the approach to painting that I have been developing for more than twenty years. I believe that painting is the art of the search, and the search for art is eternal. A painting begins in the head then begins to travel down the arms to the fingers that hold the brush and apply colours, lines and ideas on a surface. After the thinking about the painting comes the actual work of putting it on a canvas, or on another surface. To do this I allow room for much improvisation…as would a jazz musician after studying the charts of the song…and in so doing I let the painting…sort of…paint itself, of course with rhythm, which is as essential to jazz as is improvisation.

All of this is contrived, well thought out, well researched and investigated. Art is not intuitive. A painter need not be original. I believe, as many artists throughout art history have stated, that we are all copyists and the original ones copied from nature. I, as an «artist», am researcher of all things social and psychological and create a painting which then becomes my philosophical statement. I am a lover God and I live by faith.

Cheers…

“I once thought of being an artist, then I settled for being me sometimes and the artist at other times and things worked out.” (Francisco Bravo Cabrera)

No lo dudes…

Bienvenidos a FEATURES by VALENCIARTIST. Para participar como protagonista de esta serie, si eres poeta, escritor, o practicas cualquiera de las bellas artes, solo tienes que responder a esta entrada del blog con tu correo electrónico y te mandaremos toda la información.

Hoy os presentamos a un artista e ingeniero mexicano que nos deleita con unas fotografías urbanas fenomenales: Isai Martinez.

EN SUS PROPIAS PALABRAS:

Soy Isai Martínez, nací en Guadalajara el 27 de mayo de 1980. Tuve una infancia feliz en un ambiente modesto, sin lujos, con carencias. Sustituí la falta de juguetes con imaginación. Fui alumno destacado, sobre todo en matemáticas, hasta que la Ingeniería me retó de más, la concluí y después mi camino se fue hacia la Capacitación de empleados en una enorme empresa. En el arte soy aficionado desde hace veinte años, me gustan los poemas, los cuentos y, últimamente, dibujar y la fotografía casual urbana… Sueño con la paz entre los hombres y eso siembro con mi familia que consta de mi esposa y dos princesas.

LA ENTREVISTA:

1) ¿Como creas y practicas tu arte?

Al transitar por la ciudad suelo contemplarlo todo, esas cosas pequeñas y hermosas, esas imágenes e instantes que no se repetirán, es entonces que con un celular tomo la fotografía que representa la emoción de haber está ahí. Más tarde juego con los efectos digitales para darle más carácter a cada imagen.

2) ¿Crees que los artistas tienen alguna responsabilidad con su país, con su pueblo, con su comunidad, y hasta donde la deben llevar?

Definitivamente, no es algo exclusivo de los artistas, todos tenemos dicha responsabilidad; sin embargo al tener el don creativo el alcance es mayor que el ciudadano cotidiano: es el de transformar la realidad, por una mejor.

3) Te sientes amenazado por la IA?

No. Por ahora.

LAS FOTOGRAFIAS:

PARA QUE SIGIÁIS EN CONTACTO CON ISAI:

Redes sociales:

WordPress

funguskingdom.wordpress.com

Pinterest

https://pin.it/7GSGuqMcr

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