Monday Morning Art #6 - Arthur Lismer

We Canadians are big fans of our landscape and wildlife painters. Sometimes they drift off into the kitsch, the precious, or the overly commercial, but regardless, we've had a long history of spawning or embracing artists who interpret the wilds of the world around us.

There are no better examples of the inspiration of nature in painting than the 'Group of Seven' - an inaccurately named group of artists numbering perhaps 10 or 12, when you look at those with whom they met, discussed and created art.

One of my favourites from that gang is Arthur Lismer.

 This magical island landscape is Georgian Bay (1946), and is representative of his style.  The enchanted trees, the vibrant skies, the power of the water.  It evokes too the work of Emily Carr who is generally seen as part of the same movement.

His works west of the prairies and in our far north are also noteworthy,  as in this Rocky Mountains piece. 

Lismer was born in Britain, and studied in Europe, particularly Antwerp where he was influenced by Post-Impressionist and Barbizon school artists and techniques, says Wikipedia.  Certainly the freedom of form and interpretive approach echoes the works of Cezanne and Gauguin perhaps, two icons of that earlier era.

The magical feelings embodied in Lismer's work gains him lots of fans.  He has many works in Ottawa's National Gallery, and as well, the McMichael Collection north of Toronto, which  is a must-visit spot for Group of Seven admirers.
Lismer's body was in fact interred in a small cemetery at the grounds of the McMichael gallery when he passed away in 1969.

I quite like this next piece - the big rocks at what is now Bon Echo Provincial Park.  I've been known to spend many summer/spring/fall nights camping there over the years, and the dramatic rocks and their interplay with the big sky over Mazinaw lake would have enchanted Lismer too.

Also among my favourite themes in his works are his snowy scenes. There are some excellent ones viewable at the National Gallery. Well-displayed and lighted for maximum impact, it's a thrill to see one of those pieces in a gallery far ahead of you, and work your way towards it.

Finally, here is his Pine Trees. Not sure what year this would be, but guessing 1920-ish. The sun breaks through over the choppy waters of what I would guess is probably Lake Huron.

A Cob of Corn

It's corn season again!  It's a short period of the year where the roadside corn sellers are out, and you can eat stuff in the evening that was picked in the previous 24 hours.  Indeed, by even a day later there's a noticable degradation in the flavour.

Anyway, here's a nice picture I snapped of an ear of corn for no reason in particular, and shared on Twitter.  Doesn't it make you want to cook it up and smother it in butter?

Monday Morning Art #5 - Mark Rothko

Here are some bold shapes and colours for Monday Morning Art.

We're in the middle of the twentieth century, when abstract art was exploring how basic forms and bold colours can represent the world around us, or make us feel. Mark Rothko was an important part of a movement that built on the structured geometries of Mondrian decades before, but went further from the representational, deep into the abstract.  His big bold panels of colour evoke quick emotions and visceral responses.

This piece above is from 1950 and is called "Number5/Number22"  A big stripe of vibrant red through the yellow and gold, and the scratched away red. Is it a foreground, a horizon and a setting sun? Is it the close-up of a commercial logo or label?  It's left to us, but we certainly feel something in its bold colour and strong shapes.

About these pieces Rothko said he wanted us, the viewers, to feel "the tragedy, ecstasy and doom."  It's about the extremes of emotion and thus the strong, deep colours and shapes.

Rothko too explored a variety of styles in his earlier works.  He did slightly more representational stuff in the '30s and '40s but settled soon on the blocky shapes and colour blocks for which he's remembered.

I see a strong influence of Kandinsky in some of Rothko's mid-1940s pieces.  There are a number of surrealist-looking 'untitled' pieces. One called "Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea (1944) explored a similar style to the one I've pasted here, which is called  "Archaic Idol" (1945)  Compare this and those other contemporary pieces  to Kandinsky's 1920s abstracts.  Here is Kandinsky's "Small Dream in Red" from 1925.  Was this a major influence on Rothko's early exploration of shape and colour? Probably.

Ultimately though, Rothko is known for broad patches of colour.  The complex geometries go away, and soon it's all about emotion and amorphous shapes. 




Scrolling through Rothko's chronological works through the late 1940s and into the 1950s is very illustrative of his evolving approach.   In this image here I've reduce down to postage-stamp sizes a view of his work from the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s.

Isn't that interesting? By the end the shapes become bigger and the detail is reduced, one might say, to pure emotion.

In conclusion I give you these two pieces. The red with white and black is "No. 46 (Black, Ochre, Red Over Red)" (1957) and the orange and yellow piece is called, strangely enough, "Orange and Yellow" and was completed in 1956. 

If these pictures, and their price tags make you angry, might I suggest you explore the works of Barnett Newman? He'll really piss you off.

Our Top Five Worst Drive-Thru Restaurant Ideas

When driving sometimes we came up with some terrible (and thus funny) ideas as we discussed the American penchant for drive-thru's and noted their steadily-increasing numbers around Canada.

We speculated, what would be the worst concepts for a drive-thru restaurant location?  Perhaps we were inspired by the scene in the movie "Sideways" where two characters are driving away for a weekend. While on the road they have a wine tasting, with their big red-wine glasses, right there in the car.  

So here are our Five Worst Ideas for a Drive Thru Restaurants

1. "Fogo To Go" Lamb-on-a-Sword. Drive Thru Brazilian Churrascaria
2. "The Raja's Temple Zip-in, Zip-out Mulligatawny Window"
3. "Dairy Dip's Flaming Alaska on a Stick" drive thru.
4. Little Ethiopia Floppy Injera and Lentil Stew Roll-Ups.
5. Jean-Pierre's Hot Oil Fondeu Drive Threu.

Some day we'll have to make up some catchy signage. 

Monday Morning Art #4 - Henri Matisse

The life's work of Henri Matisse is an interesting cross section of the art from the Belle Époque through the Avant-Garde and early Post-Modern.  From classical to borderline non-representational.

This early piece called "Interior with Top Hat" was completed in 1896.  It's a nice mix of subject matter. The composition has a nice asymmetry, but so too is the lighting nice, from the deep black of the under-desk area to the translucent white of the porcelain vase.  You can see that the artist was interested in the blocks of shape and value, as would some-day dominate his exploration of other subjects, particularly the human form.

The early works of artists are always interesting - searching for hints of which direction they were headed.  The early influences of artists give them a visual vocabulary which they draw from for years to come.  

These two paintings are a great example of that.  On the left, is Matisse from 1898, and on the right is Cezanne from 1879.  Matisse would have known this piece, and perhaps even intentionally sought to create something in that vibrant style and colour palette.  (Forgive the grey bar, that's me quickly juxtaposing two pics snagged off the web).

By the 1940s and 50s, Matisse has explored the figure in distorted, colourful and rudimentary shapes, and further sketched the form within the landscape. 

Matisse's 1910 'Dance" depicts figures in orange against a blue and green field.  His work becomes more 'primitivist' perhaps as the years pass.  By the 1950s he reaches the simplicity of his "Blue Nude" series, this one from 1952.

Like his contemporaries in Cubism and Dadaism and other multi-varied reductions of the world into contorted shapes, or simple lines,  Matisse's works were revered by art fans eager to see new ideas explored in art.

Still, others - even today - react with anger and frustration at the apparent simplicity of the work and the distortions of reality.   In that, the artist succeeds on another front, making the viewer look at the world around them. There's no right or wrong in these abstractions.  They merely give us a lens to re-interpret reality and find beauty in the ordinary.

Monday Morning Art #3 - Edward Hopper

The American painter Edward Hopper constructed gripping urban and rural scenes.  Not so much interested in landscapes per se, his stuff focussed on how people inhabit our spaces. 

Many of his works - the most well known ones - seem to focus on urban life, but his small town or rural pieces are gripping as well.    This piece is "Adam's House" from 1928.

The elements that I notice in Hopper's work are three things: diagonals, contrasting/dramatic lighting effects, and windows.   Hopper LOVES him some prominent diagonal lines, and virtually none of his pieces don't feature the diagonal.

I can't help but think he was strongly influenced by Degas' piece "Absinthe Drinker" painted 50 years earlier.   In fact, now that I think of it, Hopper seems to draw a lot from Degas.  The diagonals sure - there are few rooms which Degas doesn't approach from an oblique angle – but his dour subjects too, captured in realistic situations of the time.

The interactions of humans and the spaces they inhabit are his subject matter, and the capturing of their spirit and hinting at heavy weights upon their shoulders as well.

And their positions!  Like Degas, Hopper captures people in the corner of the picture, or truncates part of their bodies, or shows us the back of their head instead of a classical pose. 



Hopper's "New York Restaurant" completed in 1922 is such a great capture of motion and movement. Like one of Degas' studio shots perhaps?

But while Degas focussed so much on the dance studio and the personalities among the footlights, Hopper gives us windows, windows, windows.  They're peeks into people's lives, and troubles, and souls perhaps in the end.

His most famous work is surely the cult-favourite "Nighthawks" shown here.

The peeks into people's homes and workplaces, through his well-placed window frames capture the atmosphere so well, that there becomes an undercurrent that it's hard to put our collective fingers upon.  The pieces become almost surrealist, but we don't know why.

The maid working away, on we don't know what.  The businessman leaning over the evening paper, and the woman in the red dress. We know they all have stories and we want to know what they are.


Anyway - I'm rambling 'cuz I like this stuff.  But go ahead and read a bit more about Hopper, his conservative upbringing and the people in his life. It's an interesting world of which he captures scenes and gives us glimpses.