Documenta rambles ...

after the bath 18" x 24" oil on arches #140 2005
The painting above was created from an old, not exactly antique sketch I did in college, 30 years ago. So it must be vintage or aged?

Sunday Scribblings
Studio Friday


My first love is and always has been art. Can you be in love at age 6? I think I was... with my crayon box. In 1963, Crayola came out with a new color called magenta. I was in heaven. Everything became that color or had that color incorporated into it. It was so exciting. Since that time I have pursued an artistic life. Every day is filled, in my mind or my studio, with something visually stimulating. Not always pretty, because art, like life is NOT always pretty.
I think that I enjoy more art than ever before as I have been exposed to much more art in the past six years.
Going to the Documenta 11 was a major eyeopener. When we went as a family in 2002, there was so much video installation which was so well done and it was hard to pick our favorite. The outdoor sculptures around the city of Kassel were great too. It was incredible to go to France and see artwork there, to travel to NYC and view works at the Met and MoMa and Guggenheim and the galleries. To see my favorite works of historical art in Vienna and Münich by Klee and Marc were astounding but the Documenta holds something much more special. It holds the pulse of what the world is doing today, right now, just like you and me in a visual sense.
Thank goodness that in 1955, Professor Bode brought the European art world back together for the first time since WW II. He said about the first exhibition:
"It should be seen as a broad, if initial attempt, to regain international contacts across the board and thus at home re-engage in a conversation that has been interrupted for so long, as it were. Haftmann believed that the exhibition also had a didactic brief: It is devised with our young generation in mind, and the artists, poets and thinkers they follow, so that they may recognize what foundations have been laid for them, what inheritance they must nurture and what inheritance must be overcome.

It was a huge sucess on a lot of levels. In future years they saw the need to go beyond their own part of the world (Europe) to expose the rest of us to something non-Western, something of equal importance something global, a representation from an artist from each country all over the world and in most every media conceivableable. Every four years. Next year is Documenta 12. Will you be there?

The word for the day is .... completion ... as in finish. that. damn. project.