The Rational Artist

Sinatra and Armstrong

2011-02-14T09:32:00.003-05:00

Two of my favorite peformers of all time.

Department Store Art

2011-01-20T10:59:00.000-05:00

A couple years ago, I took some photos of a New York department store's window displays with my i-phone. A couple of the pics turned out great and seemed ready made for a painting. So far, I have painted two. Below are the original picture and then my painting. I hesitated to display my first one because the picture of the painting is so bad (you can see a huge glare and I took it with my i-phone which has a terrible camera). I'm displaying it anyway and I will take a better picture at some point.

Fred Astaire - They All Laughed

2010-12-18T23:11:00.006-05:00

Gold

2010-09-11T22:46:00.002-04:00

Gold by Donald Hall

Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.

We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.

Carvaggio Study, continued

2010-09-08T10:13:00.010-04:00

In a previous post, I mentioned I had started a Caravaggio study. I am posting pics of the last several sittings here to see the progress. As a student of oil painting, I find these studies very educational as it forces me to focus on technical details of the painting that are hard to see if you just look at it. I started this originally as just an effot to "draw" the figures in darks and lights and now I have begun to glaze some color. I'm pretty close to being done with the study as my goal was not to "perfectly" render this (since I can't!), but to understand some techniques better and learn what I need to work on next to advance my skill. Also, it should be noted that there is a huge difference between painting a picture or painting a painting and drawing from real life in terms of difficulty and approach. In a study like this, I find that I am really just focused on how the other artist rendered the subject rather than on rendering the subject the way I would see it. (I should also mention that these pics were taken with an i-phone and the quality of the photos generally suck.)

A Little Diddy

2010-08-30T10:06:00.005-04:00

I love this tune composed by Jeff Beal. It was the original theme to the show "Monk", but then was replaced and moved to the end of the show. The tune is very reminiscent of guitar genius, Django Reinhardt - here is a wonderful Django tune I randomly pulled (featuring Freddy Taylor vocals). Of course, they are all wonderful!

Walt Mason: The Big Men

2010-08-28T10:54:00.002-04:00

Here is a post I did in 2009 containing Walt Mason's poem "The Big Men" - a quintessential example of the 19th century American spirit.

The big men dare, and the big men do.
They dream great dreams, which they make come true:
They bridge the rivers and link the plains,
And gird the land with their railway trains;
They make the desert break forth in bloom,
They send the cataract through a flume
To turn the wheels of a thousand mills,
And bring the coin to a nation's tills.
The big men work, and the big men plan,
And, helping themselves, help their fellowman.
And the cheap men yelp at their carriage wheels,
As the small dogs bark at the big dogs' heels.
The big men sow while the cheap men sleep,
And when they go to their fields to reap,
The cheap men cry, "We must have a share
Of all the grain that they harvest there!
These men are pirates who sow and reap,
And plan and build while we are asleep!
We'll legislate till they lose their hair!
We'll pass new laws that will strip them bare!
We'll tax them right and we'll tax them left,
Till of their plunder they are bereft;
We'll show these men that we all despise
Their skill, their courage, and enterprise!"
So the small men yap at the big men's heels,
The fake reformer with the uplift spiels;
The four-eyed dreamers with theories fine,
Which bring them maybe three cents a line;
The tin-horn grafters who always yearn
To collar coin that they do not earn.
And the big men sigh as they go their way:
"They'll balk at the whole blamed thing some day!"

-Walt Mason, c. 1910

See the post for more on Walt Mason.

Thomas Anshutz

2010-08-24T22:18:00.005-04:00

Below are two paintings by another 19th century artist that I admire, Thomas Anshutz (1851-1912). He was a student of Eakins, one of my favorite painters.

The Ironworkers Noontime (1880)

A Rose (1907)

Jusepe de Ribera

2010-08-22T18:00:00.000-04:00

Jusepe de Ribera was a 17th century Spanish painter very much influenced by Caravaggio. I was not familiar with Ribera until recently and I love not only his tenebrist style but his subject matter as well. He did a series of Greek philosopher paintings, and from some quick googling, it appears there is some controversy over whether some of the works in this series are copies or originals and who exactly they are supposed to represent. Here are two of his paintings I really enjoy.

Prometheus c. 1630

Aristotle c. 1637

"The Curse"

2010-08-21T21:14:00.005-04:00

I really enjoyed this.

Caravaggio: The Stolen and the Not So Stolen

2010-08-20T15:13:00.006-04:00

I have been working on an oil study of the painting The Taking of Christ, or The Kiss of Judas, by one of my favorite all time painters, Caravaggio. Little did I know that this painting was stolen several years ago by an international gang of art thieves and recently recovered. Here is the story and the picture of the recovered painting.

Knowledge in a Bottle

2010-08-20T10:16:00.002-04:00

Been real busy, so here is a post from a while back, Knowledge in a Bottle.

Jefferson, Voltaire, and Turgot

2010-08-09T22:42:00.017-04:00

When I visited Monticello, I noticed two busts prominently displayed above the front door in the Entrance Hall, but I did not recognize the figures. Surely, whoever Jefferson might have chosen to grace his entry must be vital. The tour guide informed me that one bust was Voltaire, the quintessential man of the Enlightenment. No surprise there. The other bust, I was told, is Turgot. Hmmmm.

Well, it shouldn't surprise me that in a lecture I recently heard on the history of economic thought, the late Austrian economist and historian, Murray Rothbard, held Turgot to be among the seminal economists of the Enlightenment period, a pre-Austrian whose work and insights championing free markets and laissez faire pre-dated other Austrians by almost a century. Rothbard's paper on Turgot can be found here and in more detail in the two volume set, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Rothbard considers Turgot superior to Adam Smith and his work to be within an intellectual tradition linking Cantillon, Say and the Austrian tradition beginning with Menger and Bohm-Bawerk in the 19th century through Von Mises and continuing today. That Jefferson had pretty good taste...

The two busts are modern plaster copies of the originals by the famed sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. The originals have not been located, but notes found after Jefferson's death indicate their location to have been the Entrance Hall. Jefferson's home also contained busts of Washington, Marquis de Lafayette, Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones, and others. I highly recommend a book titled The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, which is a beautifully illustrated encyclopedia of the works located there. The Monticello site has a virtual tour of the home including the Entrance Hall.

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

2010-08-05T21:47:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite singer songwriters of the last ten years is Rufus Wainwright. He combines virtuoso technical ability with rich vocals, poetic lyrics, soaring melodies, and a theatrical flair for the profound and dramatic.

While some songs feature just Wainwright and his piano, his later work is often accompanied by rock instrumentation or a symphony orchestra, displaying complex layering and harmonies with an operatic feel. Wainwright is an opera fan and likes Franz Schubert's Lieder. Some of Wainwright's songs are described as "popera" (pop opera) or "baroque pop". Many of his compositions are densely packed amalgams of strings, horns, operatic choruses, ragtime rhythms, with a warm vocal timbre.

Here is a video of him performing "Foolish Love", the first song off of his debut album back in 1998. And here is a video of a rather informal performance of one of my favorites, "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk", along with the lyrics.

Chopin Etude Op. 10, No. 3

2010-08-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) composed 27 etudes meant as solo studies for piano.

Chopin's Études are the foundation of a new system of technical piano playing that was radical and revolutionary the first time they appeared. They are some of the most challenging and evocative pieces of all the works in concert piano repertoire.

Here is one of my favorites -Chopin Etude Op. 10, No. 3, performed by Valentina Igoshina. Enjoy.

Gerome Style

2010-08-04T18:08:00.001-04:00

When I was in college, I would go to The Minneapolis Institute of the Arts and was always in awe of this painting, The Carpet Merchant, by Jean-Leon Gerome (c.1887). It is so crystal clear in person, I thought it was a photograph. The vivid colors, the perspective of the building, and of course, the details of the carpets and the clothing are exquisite.

My enjoyment of this painting relates more to its stylistic components rather than any subject matter, although I find the setting exotic and interesting. The technical ability to render such a work is off the charts, and I believe the enjoyment of clarity within a work of art, in and of itself, follows from the fact that clarity is an expression of an epistemological abstraction. The abstraction is that the world can be grasped, understood, and represented. In this way, an art work containing even uninteresting subject matter, e.g., a simple still life, is wonderful to me if it is done in a particular style. That is not to say that "clarity" or photographic-like style is the only style I enjoy, in fact, I rather dislike certain paintings that are too "photographic", and I enjoy many different styles.

My main point is that a work of art can be appreciated on many different levels beyond subject matter. For example, often I will enjoy a film if it is done a certain way, even if the story isn't that interesting. At least, I can appreciate that aspect of it. It's crucial to make these distinctions, because I find it enhances the artistic experience and brings in many types of art that someone without this level of appreciation might immediately dismiss.

Serious Swagger

2010-08-02T22:19:00.001-04:00

I heard this on the radio the other day, and I found this version. Call this whatever you will, but this tune takes some serious swagger. I would love to walk into a room some day in a tuxedo, and just bust this out in exactly this style. What a world it would be. I love it.

Grand Opening

2010-07-30T09:07:00.000-04:00

I said last year that I was going to start a sister blog devoted to art. Rather than wait to make it fancy, I decided to just start posting something and worry about the details later.

The purpose of this blog is to enjoy and discuss art of every kind. So, what is art? That's the other twist to this particular blog. We will not only attempt to enjoy and appreciate art, we will discuss philosophical issues related to aesthetics, the branch of philosophy dealing with art. Why is that different? Most modern intellectuals seem to take the position that art is undefinable. That it is some mystery beyond human reason and comprehension. This view, stemming from the broader modern assault on objectivity, has resulted in a deluge of nonsense masquerading as art being foisted upon the public. I titled the blog, The Rational Artist, not only for symmetry with my main site, The Rational Capitalist, but to emphasize what would seem to be a contradiction in today's subjectivist intellectual milieu, namely, that however difficult, art can be defined, analyzed, understood, and enjoyed.

Another important aspect of this blog is that while I appreciate certain forms of art, and I am a part-time musician and oil painter, my tastes are my tastes and my knowledge base, particularly in certain forms of art, is limited to say the least. Therefore, while I will certainly drive the site, I regard this site to be more of a collaborative effort in which I encourage readers to send me ideas, commentary, analysis, etc. (at the above email address or in the comment forms), and I will gladly make it a part of the proceedings.

I chose the quote above (from a Dave Matthew's song...), "come in from the noise", because this is, in a sense, the function of art. In a very real way, art is an attempt to select out from the noise of our daily experience a concrete representation of some aspect of reality for our contemplation. Whether that representation is a sculpture, story, painting, music, physical movement, or some combination, the artist selects, in Ayn Rand's words, "those aspects of reality which represent man's fundamental view of himself and of existence." While we will discuss these topics in more detail later, for now I hope you regard this site as a way to come in from the noise of the world - a world that seems to be getting increasingly noisier.

For now, I will leave you with a recent article sent to me by a friend about one of my all time favorite painters, Thomas Eakins. I also wrote about Eakins's medical paintings in a broader context here. At the top is one of my favorite paintings of his, Portrait of Maud Cook, which I saw in person and wrote about here. Enjoy.