The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600 - 1700

The Sacred Made Real, Exhibition Catalog Cover

The National Gallery, London

‘The Sacred Made Real’ presents a landmark reappraisal of religious art from the Spanish Golden Age with works created to shock the senses and stir the soul.

Paintings, including masterpieces by Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán, are displayed for the very first time alongside Spain’s remarkable polychrome wooden sculptures.

Inspiring devotion

The religious artists of 17th-century Spain pursued a quest for realism with uncompromising zeal and genius, creating works to inspire devotion among believers.

By displaying works side by side, this exhibition explores the intense dialogue between the arts of sculpture and painting, revealing that they were intricately linked and Interdependent.‘The Sacred Made Real’ presents a landmark reappraisal of religious art from the Spanish Golden Age with works created to shock the senses and stir the soul.

Paintings, including masterpieces by Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán, are displayed for the very first time alongside Spain’s remarkable polychrome wooden sculptures. - National Gallery (London) Web Site

Oct 21 - Jan 24, 2010

Link The Sacred Made Real Web Site, National Gallery, London

John Wonnacott - Painter

Red Tablecloth Two, Oyster Eaters, John Wonnacott, 1996-99

"What I’m really trying to do is to bridge this gap between my own world of feelings, thoughts and ideas and that world out there. When it works, when one reaches the point of balance between them, it’s a wonderful thing." - excerpt, Ray Atkins in conversation with John Wonnacott

John Wonnacott was born in London in 1940. He trained at the Slade School from 1958-63 before moving to Southend in Essex where he still lives and paints in a studio overlooking the Thames Estuary. - John Wonnacott Online Gallery

His paintings and drawings are known for their panoramic and unexpected pictorial space which is a dynamic of working from direct observation.

Link Interview, Ray Atkins in conversation with John Wonnacott

Link John Wonnacott Online Gallery

Link Slade School of Art

Back to the Land - a visual essay by Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman, NY Times

Maira Kalman is an illustrator, author and designer whose last column for Op-Extra (NY Times), "The Principles of Uncertainty," ran from May of 2006 to April of 2007 and has been published as a book. She has written and illustrated 12 children's books, and her artwork is featured in a recent edition of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style." She recently created a panel story for The Rosenbach Museum and Library's 21st-Century Abe Web project. Her work is shown at the Julie Saul Gallery in Manhattan. Ms. Kalman lives in New York City and teaches graduate courses in design at the School of Visual Arts. "And the Pursuit of Happiness," about American democracy, will appear on the last Friday of each month. - NY Times

Link Full Illustrated Article, Back to the Land, NY Times, Maira Kalman

Calm Things - an essay about still life by Shawna Lemay

Ginger Jar with Fruit, Paul Cezanne

Calm Things

...We live in the world as little as possible. When the phone rings in this quiet house, there is genuine shock. We answer, incredulous, stuttering and stumbling over too few words. I wonder what most people talk about at mealtimes. For us, the subject is usually still life. Rob says what area of his painting he’s been working on. He works from a photo that I’ve seen beforehand, and still there is news. The grapes were much darker than he thought they would be before mixing the paint. Adjustments have to be made continually from photo to canvas. A shadow has to be deepened, a band of light refined. The calligraphy of stems needs to be rewritten...

...In a book on the painter Balthus, Claude Roy notes that in Japan, during the Meiji era, the term seibutso was formed. This translates as “calm things” and is the term used by the Japanese when talking about what we most commonly call “still life.” Roy says that “the peaceful contemplation of calm things, has its roots deep in the Japanese past, in politeness with regard to those objects that man has fashioned, generated, humanized.”...

- excerpt, Shawna Lemay, Cezanne's Carrot Literary Journal, Winter Solstice, 2007, Volume 3, Issue 1

Link Calm Things, Full Text by Shawna Lemay

Link Cezanne's Carrot, A Literary Journal

Euan Uglow - Painter

Ali, 1995-97, Oil on Canvas, 32 7/8" x 30 3/4", Euan Uglow

+ Giacometti always wanted to look into the eyes of the models, but I don't want the scrutiny of the model on me whilst I'm working, so you will very rarely find the eyes are looking at me.

+ I'm painting an idea not an ideal. Basically I'm trying to paint a structured painting full of controlled, and therefore potent, emotion.

+ I don't do wristy paintings because I want the brain to intervene between the observation and the mark.

+ I'm interested in color belonging to something, where it takes on a completely new kind of vibrancy, rather than being what you would call straight abstract paintings.. And anyway it is so much more exciting trying to find out about the three dimensions of color and sticking it down on a two dimensional surface.

Link Euan Uglow, Wikipedia

Link Euan Uglow, Google Image Search

Frank Auerbach - Working After The Masters

Link Part 2, Rembrandt

Link Part 3, Titian

Link Part 4, Constable, Etc.

In this 4 part series, Frank Auerbach talks about his use of the National Gallery of Art (UK), as a life long resource for his development as an artist.

Frank Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-born British painter. His work typically portrays either one of a small group of mainly female models, or scenes around London, especially Camden Town. - Wikipedia

Ben Aronson - Painter

Woman in a Sun Hat, Ben Aronson, 2007

...In working from familiar surroundings, as I often do, I find that in order to raise a work from the commonplace to the extraordinary – from a simple descriptive record to a work of art, the main objective is not merely physical likeness, but rather to aim for the most concentrated form of a powerful visual experience. Perfect spelling alone does not make great poetry, just as the realistic rendering of numerous visual facts will not alone amount to high art. One can consider masters as different in style as Vermeer and DeKooning and still agree that all great painting is derived through some process of interaction with, or distillation from the visible world...

Link Ben Aronson Website

Tim Burton at MoMA, Nov 22 - April 26, 2010

Behind the Scenes with Tim Burton

Taking inspiration from popular culture, Tim Burton (American, b. 1958) has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering for himself an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics. This exhibition explores the full range of his creative work, tracing the current of his visual imagination from early childhood drawings through his mature work in film. - MoMA

Link Tim Burton, MoMA

Link Tim Burton, Wikipedia

FATE - Foundations in Art: Theory and Education

Foundations is a coordinated set of courses for students who

are seeking degrees in an art or design discipline. These courses
focus on basic conceptual, craft, critical-thinking, research, and
working discipline...

Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) is a
national association of college-level art educators that is
specially focused on issues related to first year programs. As
part of our mission, we support excellence in foundation
teaching and learning in the structures that support first-year art
and design... - FATE website

Link FATE Guidelines

Link FATE website

Antonio Lopez Garcia - Painter

The beauty of López García's work begins with an appreciation of his craft. Paintings such as The Sideboard (1965–66), or the atmospheric views of Madrid from the 1970s show an acute perception and understanding of the beauty of the objects he portrays.

Though López García is devoted to the mundane—he depicts humble people, buildings, plants, and cluttered interiors—his portrayal of these subjects is compelling and beautiful. Starkly lit studies of his studio, bathroom, and the red brick wall in his backyard underscore an interest in prosaic subject matter. His deftness brings attention to these simple forms, encouraging the viewer to re-examine the presence of ordinary objects...

...The pictures are sometimes worked on for more than twenty years, some of them remaining unfinished.

As the artist explains, "the pictorial nucleus begins to grow and you work until the whole surface has an expressive intensity equivalent to what you have before you, converted into a pictorial reality." - Wikipedia

Link Full Text, Wikipedia

Ann Gale - Painter

Shannon, Ann Gale, Oil/Masonite, 14x11

Ann Gale (born 1966) is an American figurative painter based in Seattle, Washington. She is known for her portrait paintings, which consist of an accumulation of small color patches expressing the changing light and the shifting position of her models over time. Some of her main influences include Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti, and Antonio Garcia López.[1]

Gale works from live models and her process is lengthy. Once she begins to paint, she works for three-hour sessions[2], and takes from four months to two years to complete a painting[3]. Her pieces possess a strong psychological component due to the amount of time she spends with her models... - Wikipedia

Link Ann Gale, Full Text, Wikipedia

Link Ann Gale, Christopher Jagers' Blog

Jo Weiss - Painter

Embolden, Jo Weiss, 2000

Jo Weiss is a contemporary figurative painter living and working in Washington, DC. Through the act of painting, she expresses a deep pictorial intelligence and visual poetry. Her work possesses a strong emotional and personal presence and a gravity earned from years of dedication to the art and practice of painting.

Link Jo Weiss, Website

Chuck Close and the Painting Process

Excerpt from the public program Painting Process/Process Painting, featuring artists Chuck Close and Carroll Dunham.

Held in conjunction with the exhibition, What Is Painting? Contemporary Art from the Collection.

For more information about the exhibition, please visit http://www.moma.org/exhibitions.php?i... For a full audio recording of the presentation as well as the conversation with Chuck Close, Carroll Dunham, and curator Anne Umland, please visit http://www.moma.org/audio or the ThinkModern podcast in iTunes.

© 2007 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Category: Film & Animation

Link Google, Chuck Close Images