Catalyst or Catastrophe?

Look out!   Feline loose in the art studio!   Catalyst for creativity or catastrophe?

An Unlikely Duo: Norman Rockwell and Rene Magritte

Rockwell, Triple Self-Portrait (1960)

Magritte, Clairvoyance (1936)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) painted people and so did Rene Magritte (1898-1967).  What is the difference?

Many art critics look down on Rockwell and many people may not like Magritte too much.  I have found that those who do not know much about Magritte, however, think his artwork is intriguing enough to view, while few art critics take Rockwell seriously as anything other than an illustrator.

It would be an interesting survey of people to see how many find interest in a Magritte, and how many art critics think of Rockwell as anything but an illustrator. 

One parallel between the two artists is that both put their hand to commercial art, as Magritte took to designing wallpaper early in his career in order to earn an income.  

Rockwell, of course, is famous for his covers adorning the Saturday Evening Post and, later, illustrations for Look magazine and other periodicals.  

A point to ponder is how much of the commercial aspect infused Magritte’s art and how much fine art found its way into Rockwell’s painting. 

Interestingly, there are two Rockwells and there are two Magrittes.  

There is the Magritte of early cubism and futurism, struggling to get at another way to see the world.  Then he saw a painting by Chirico and—eureka!—it inspired to him take another route as in 1926 he created his first “Magritte” work, The Lost Jockey.  It is close to the approach of the movement of Surrealism and, eventually, the group invited him to become a member.  Magritte’s art was the iconic type of surrealism with its everyday views given a strange twist.

Painting in this style, it occupied him for the rest of his life except for the vache or “nasty” period during WW2.

Rockwell began illustration right at the beginning and always thought of himself as such.  Nonetheless, after his long association with the Post, he took on work with Look magazine and began to paint about the Civil Rights movement.  He had already painted the Golden Rule in 1961 after reading some ideas about comparative religion, and having failed to begin a similar project for the UN, he set about to represent a diverse depiction of ethnic and religious groups.

Following this, one of his paintings, The Problem We All Live With, remains a strong statement during a time of unrest.

So what is the difference?  Rockwell painted scenes as one may like to remember them, the romanticizing of illustration, but later he perceived how conflict might bring together humanity.  Magritte painted scenes that he derived from other styles, but soon broke out to present his haunting vision of the unexpected in human perception.

Art as Prophetic: Walter Benjamin and Marshall McLuhan

Considering how the direction of some Western nations seem to be questioning the role of a liberal democracy (i.e., a nation founded upon individual rights), I wondered about the role of artist as a prophet rather than as only working as a poet.  A couple of thinkers from the past, Walter Benjamin and Marshall McLuhan, came to mind.  The quotations here are courtesy of
https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2016/11/21/artists-as-distant-early-warning-systems/

Walter Benjamin, 1892-1940

“It is well known that art will often – for example, in pictures – precede the perceptible reality by years,” wrote the philosopher Walter Benjamin in the 1930s. “It was possible to see streets or rooms (in paintings) that show all sorts of fiery colors long before technology, by means of illuminated signs and other arrangements, actually set them under such a light. Whoever understands how to read these semaphores in advance not only knows about currents in the arts but also about legal codes, wars and revolutions.”

Marshall McLuhan, 1911-1980

Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan offered a different metaphor with a similar point. “I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it,” he wrote in the sixties.

Niagara Falls and Inspire: Beyond the Barrel 2018

This year for the 14th annual Beyond the Barrel exhibit the theme is "Inspire."  What is Art?  Why do people create Art?  From May 12 to July 29 the exhibit will present artwork that will portray the inspiration of various artists.  While it was not required of artists to do this, it should be intriguing to see how others understand the concept of inspiration and how it leads to the final conception--the work of Art itself.

I entered two works into the show, one of them is on exhibit for the first time, Self-Portraits.  Using a drawing that I completed a few years ago I decided to enlarge it on a 30" x 40" panel.  Portraits have been a source of inspiration in the Western Art heritage and I thought it was appropriate for this theme.

Self-Portraits; mixed-media on panel, 40" x 30"

Erich Fromm on Art, Productiveness, and Human Personality

Reading through Fromm's work from over 70 years ago caused me to remember some of the discussions back in my college days over 40 years ago concerning both the question of Art and the inherent creativity of humanity.  I think Fromm may have misused the notion of "photographic fashion" in trying to label Realism, but that hardly detracts from his point.

"Generally, the word 'productiveness' is associated with creativeness, particularly artistic creativeness.  The real artist, indeed, is the most convincing representative of productiveness.  But not all artists are productive; a conventional painting, e.g., may exhibit nothing more than the technical skill to reproduce the likeness of a person in photographic fashion on a canvas.  But a person can experience, see, feel, and think productively without having the gift to create something visible or communicable.  Productiveness is an attitude which every human being is capable of, unless he is mentally and emotionally crippled." 

---Erich Fromm, "Human Nature and Character," Man for Himself (1947), p. 85.