Posts Tagged ‘art’

Yoko Ono

     Dressed all in black, except for the  red flower at the tip of her men’s fedora, Yoko Ono claimed the stage last night on the eve of her 77th birthday with a primal scream that seemed to contain all at once, grief, rage and intense, existential joy. Her journey that night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music began with a poignant series of home movies from her childhood in pre-war Japan and moved from there to  her provocative life as a performance artist in the early 1960’s — and then — to her epic romance with John Lennon.
      Her comrades that night included her son, Sean Lennon — as well as members of the We Are Plastic Ono Band, Justin  Bond,  The Scissor Sisters — as well as members of the original Plastic Ono Band.   That band was launched in 1969 with the hit single “Give Peace a Chance,” and that’s how Yoko ended the evening. W ith everyone singing about peace and love.
     “Love everyone,” she implored. ”Hug everyone, she smiled. “Give peace a chance.”
     

He Who Binds Himself to a Joy
Does the Winged Life Destroy
But he Who Kisses the Joy as it Flies
Lives in Eternity’s Sunrise

William Blake

         Along with her husband and artistic collaborator Christo, she helped wrap the Pont Neuf  in Paris, the Reichstag in Berlin;  swathed the Biscayne Bay Islands near Miami in a luscious  Pink,  and in 2005, she filled  Central Park with 7,503 Saffron Colored Gates .  Those gates transformed a barren winter landscape into something amazing and alive and created a new relationship to a  familiar terrain. 
      French artist Jeanne-Claude – of the  vibrant red hair and even redder lips  – didn’t mind,  she once said, in an interview, that the monumental projects that she and Christo devoted themselves and that took years to complete and cost millions —  were just transient – ephemeral works.  What it was all about – she said – was creating joy.  Their works expressed “the quality of love and tenderness that we human beings have for what does not last.”
       Jeanne-Claude died this week, at the age of 74.

Series I - No. I, 1918

    Before she became known as Georgia O’Keefe, the iconic painter of blisteringly sensual flower paintings and stark landscapes, she was just a young woman coming to New York from Wisconsin with dreams of being an artist.  She wanted to free herself  from inhibition — .to express all the feelings and seemingly inexpressible thoughts that were roiling inside of her. She studied art at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College under Arthur Dow,  a specialist in Oriental art who taught that it was the artist’s personality that should come through a drawing, not just a realistic rendering of a subject.
    In 1915, she emerged onto the New York Art World’s stage with a group of abstract charcoal works, whose purpose, she said in interviews later, were to translate into art what she couldn’t say in words – that it was through imagery and shapes that her thoughts would coalesce.
       From there, she moved onto color, moving gradually from intense cobalt blues to hot pinks and lavenders – blossoming into the forms and flowers for which she later became known.
       The Whitney is showing all these works – some not seen  in New York since her first shows – along with some revelatory photographs taken of her by her lover and mentor, Edward Steichen. 
      Georgia O’Keefe: Abstraction is running till January 17.   Don’t Miss It!

The Milkmaid

       Noone knows exactly who she was now.  A woman ensconced in domesticity, pouring milk — the scene may have  seemed mundane.  But the Dutch  painter Johannes Vermeer saw something majestic and sensual — even monumental in the moment.  The colors seem translucent.  The level of detail makes it seem almost photographic, although it was likely painted sometime during the year  1657- 58.  The painting possesses a moving luminosity.  Currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Nov. 28,  ”The Milkmaid”  is considered the painter’s masterpiece.  She was sent over this year — along with other paintings by Vermeer and his contemporaries as a gift from the Netherlands to pay homage to the 400th anniversary of explorer Henry Hudson’s visit to the island, we now know as Manhattan.
       To see more of the Dutch influence, check out the exhibit at the South Street Seaport,  “New Amsterdam: The Island at the Center of the World.”  And through June, 2010, The Holland on the Hudson festival will celebrate the 400th anniversary with events and exhibitions.