Nobody doesn't like Banksy

OK, maybe Queen Elizabeth doesn't like Banksy. And maybe if you're the building landlord, depending on what image he puts on your wall, you might not like Banksy. But it's hard not to love the work of an anonymous graffiti artist who has this much wit and such a comprehensive command of potent imagery as this fellow has. The image above, done in New York City, is rumored to have been commissioned by the building owner.

His work is in a number of museums. Or was, anyway. In some, it only stayed for a couple of hours before the guards noticed that something new had been smuggled into the place and surreptitiously stuck on the wall.

Banksy is the nom de brush of a so-far-unidentified British graffiti artist who is believed to be male and born about 1974. His renderings can be witty and edgy commentaries on our consumer culture but they can just as easily be damning political commentary. They are never mundane.

Executed quickly with the aid of large-scale, pre-cut stencils and a limited palette of spray-paint colors, Banksy's works, when they can be removed or pried loose from their building exteriors, have sometimes commanded sums in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, though it's not clear that the artist himself realizes any of that profit.

Soon we'll get to see a film made with his co-operation. Exit Through the Gift Shop is scheduled for release, Spring, 2010.

There's a link to his own web-site here, which includes the trailer for the movie, graffiti he has posted around the world and photos of Banksy art in museums.

Channeling Vermeer

The painter Jonathan Janson does an amazing job channeling the spirit of Jan Vermeer in the creation of his nonetheless rather contemporary paintings. (His website here.)

You might be surprised to know that Janson is not shy about sharing the secrets of painting like this old master. His website offers discs and a book on how to imitate the working method and technique of the 17th century Delft painter. The book is a very worthy effort, but like a lot of self-published books it suffers terribly from a lack of editing. (The copy I bought has substantial groups of pages that were cut and pasted to reappear in other places in the book as if Janson was not quite sure where they really belonged.) Nonetheless, his gist of the method is reasonably presented and very workable for the average painter.

Janson's affection for Vermeer goes even further in his highly developed website, the Essential Vermeer, which includes a number of quite useful devices seldom encountered on the internet, like a scale comparison of each of Vermeer's paintings and a thorough discussion of Vermeer's probable use of the camera obsucra.

Lucian Freud, a shy painter speaks

What looks like a fascinating film about Lucian Freud will be released next week in Paris to coincide with the artist's birthday. Called The God of Small Things, Lucian Freud Captured on Film was put together by Tim Meara. There is a trailer for the film that one can see on the website, Painting Perceptions, maintained by Larry Groff, here.

Groff has also put up an extensive and thoughtful multi-part video interview that will provide considerable insight into the work of this artist, whom Robert Hughes called "our greatest living painter." The normally shy and somewhat reclusive Freud was filmed in 1988 for that interview.

More pine cones

For reasons described in an earlier post, I have a thing for pine cones. Readers will also know that I have a similar sort of affection for sea shells, loose feathers and odd rocks.

Here is a larger painting, 30 x 36 inches, oil on Belgian linen. I did this a year ago looking at pine cones and the shadows they cast in the sunlight through a nearby window. I liked the way the pine cones and thier shadows seemed to dance in a line against the sunlight.

The painting is titled, "Bear Mountain Boogie Woogie."

Re-evaluation

Above is a painting I did almost three years ago. Oil on linen, 9 x 12 inches. I didn't think much of it at the time but came across it recently and, looking at it fresh, felt better about it. My wife, Renee, does not care for the odd assemblage of subject matter, but when I did it I was thinking about how much I admired the work of mid-20th century artist and art director Walter Murch.

Murch did some wonderful paintings that one might call industrial still-life. As an illustrator he did covers for magazines like Fortune. In his fine art, Murch was not afraid to combine disparate objects into a painting that left people wondering what the odd combination meant. His seemed to be a representational artist's response in the conversation about surrealism.

By the light which defines them

My father used to pick up pine cones while he hiked looking for birds. I don't know what recommended certain pine cones for transport back to our house. Among the thousands along his path a few came back and tended to end up on dresser tops and mantle pieces. I will admit to being partial to them in the same way.

He also picked up the odd bird feather, stone or seashell. All that looking at the ground for things to pick up, it's a wonder he ever saw the birds he claimed to be looking for. Maybe his neck hurt from looking up in the sky so much and scanning the ground below was a nice change of pace.

Carnival in Web World

Alan Taylor, a web developer for Boston.com, has assembled a really beautiful collection of 39 photos from around the world, centered on the theme of Carnival. The costumes are astounding, the exuberance is contagious and the photography is mesmerizing. And, no, they're not all from Rio. See the photos in large format, here.