chelydra

clor, These are fine, thanks much! five's cathedral is fine too.

Q: I'm trying to stay quiet for a while, but beg to differ on the mannikin observation. Store mannikins borrow classical poses; so did RD. But despite the 'geometricization" Delaunay's figures seem to me fully alive, organic, and natural. I think that may lie at the heart of the appeal of this thing I'm calling 'Mild Cubism' — the theories and the 'deconstruction' don't interfere with the natural life of the subject. These folks showed that modernism can be as human as the old masters, and doesn't have to turn everything into machinery or pure mathematics.

Doug

I'm with Clorophilla on this one....WOW! Never seen a challenge that became a "word" thread. We do have one of those...ThinkWrite.. Anyway don't know if this fits in, but it does pop and have some 3D type qualities to it. Cubism? Perhaps...

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103610

chelydra

Starting in the very first message, and repeated about five or ten times since, we've been saying LOOK AT THE PICTURES and don't get bogged down in the words (1000 words = 1 picture)! Anyway, thanks, this is on the right track. There's usually a recognizable subject in Mild Cubism but maybe not always.

chelydra

artdillon's gallery has 2 pix that would've been a perfect entries here:
http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=97040
http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=100657

These aren't quite as adventurous as Mild Cubism, but they do have the same kind of approach to space and color:
http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=99371
http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103188
http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=102500


This one nicely illustrates that idea about the back of the head being important to include in a portrait, even though it's not it view — in other words, the viewer should get the feeling her or she can reach around the head and find something substantial and weighty on the far side:
http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103144

danila

WOW Chelydra, are you an "Art" teacher? Incredible what you have express in here..for me too it's to much reading ..quite complex..I've been always mostly bored entering too much into Art expression, Artist development, techniques etc.details. I just love to watch , study just with my eyes,feelings,senses, Artists creations, it was easy for me being Italian,living in Italy till I was adult, or now visiting, and coming from Painters ancestors, and adore to paint/create ,but being in the past 10 years much too busy with my work, I couldn't paint really, and TD saved me!!! I t's a great pleasure for me to see that you have chosen some of my picture...I thank you so much for this..... .

chelydra

You newest one belongs here too!

chelydra

I guess I'll just go fetch it myself, since you didn't mind the others being appropriated...

chelydra

Decided to let Danila enter it, if she wants to.
YET AGAIN: Go to the pictures that SHOW what the Mild Cubism idea is about. Save the words for some day when you're in the mood for words.

danila

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103630 - THANKS CHELYDRA...HERE IT IS..HOPE I'M DOING RIGHT -
Marlene's Home -full of memories.

danila

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103360 LIGHT FROM UP STAIRS
http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103322 LITTLE BABY TALKS TO HER FAIRY.
http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103214 WALKERS...

Qsilv

danila -- *I* think you're doing excellently right! These consturctions have intriguing shapes and color combos... and the concepts are thoughtful.


chelydra -- no offense, but I've thought about this and seriously disagree on the mannequins interpretation. Far from "classic poses", store window mannequins are a VERY current mirror of how we see ourselves.

They are idealized, but exactly as we attempt to adjust our own bodies to fit the styles of each period. The industry of mannequin manufacture works bloody hard at representing the broad variety of "us" from high fashionista excess down to bluest collar functional.

And surely if you've driven through Europe you've noticed that you can tell whether you're in Holland or France or Germany or Italy by the merest glance out your car window at the shop windows mannequins?!

;>

danila

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103665 A FULL MOON NIGHT

danila

THANKS QSILV!!

chelydra

I just realized I neglected to set down a deadline. I'm of two minds — should we put this enterprise out of its misery and send it to an early grave? or should we hang on and see if we pick up some momentum? Any opinions?

Qsliv, You obviously know more about mannikins/mannequins than I ever will, but I still I'm right to defend Bob Delaunay's ladies. Despite my admiration for Cezanne (the first and greatest cubist), I'd take Delaunay's nudes over C's any day, or just about anyone else's for that matter.

Danila, these are right on track. Keep 'em coming!

five, if you're around, maybe you and I (with Qsliv if she has the patience, and of course everyone else is more than welcome to hop aboard) should set up our own little forum for visual philosophizing, or philosophical visualizations. I'm getting addicted, and missed my fix today. If we want any company, though, we should be including more visual examples in the future, so our verbiage isn't so overwhelming.

Qsilv

*grinning here

I vote for keeping it alive a good while yet. Some of these things take a while to get momentum. Some last beyond being handed off, too!

What I'd like you to understand, Chelydra, is that in no way was I disparaging the reality of BD's ladies by pointing out that what I see there makes me think of seeing the whole scene as a reflection in glass.

(And by the by, I'm quite smitten with the pastel drawings by Mercedes Matter.)

chelydra

I'm delighted to hear that, especially about MM. Don't recall if I mentioned she was the founder of NY Studio School, which I attended for a year with her as my drawing teacher (when I bothered to show up). The place was a monastery/nunnery devoted to Art, where I learned a great deal (with a little help from pharmaceuticals when the exhortations were too mystifying to absorb), including that I wasn't as serious about being an Artist (with a capital A) as I'd imagined I was. I found making cartoons for Rat Subterranean News more gratifying than trying to surf the death throes of Art History (abstraction and Pop and Op had pretty much come and gone by 1969-69, with conceptual art arriving to fill the vacuum with an even more voracious vacuum). However, thanks to the Internet, I've discovered to my amazement I am just three teachers removed from Henri Matisse, who taught MM's dad a bit in Paris (who then taught her). Kinda like those pianists (and piano teachers and piano tuners and page turners) who claimed direct musical descent from Beethoven — probably half a dozen in every Austrian village, just as MM and her school filled New York with Matisse's great-grandchildren. Wondering how how to cash in on this connection... Anyway, I was under MM's influence (far more than I knew, until I saw those drawings a few weeks ago) when I suddenly started seeing things in a Marin/Villon-ish way. So that (plus on-going flashbacks from that dollop of acid 40 yrs ago) is where this drawing challenge came from.

five

I'm up for it, Chelydra. The art teacher who taught me the most about space and color studied under Hans Hoffman ...

chelydra

Hot diggity! What shall we call it? (We might also poll Qsliv what on to call it, since has such a nice way with words.)
back shortly...

Qsilv

I think "Art Theory Discussions" pretty well covers it.

The 'discussions' makes it more instantly obvious that it's not just a couple erudite fossils lecturing... other TDers are invited to add their thoughts, questions, gripes... and yes, pix too.

With enough stick-to-it-ive-ness, it could become what Baldur's has... a very long-running room where people feel comfortable sharing.

Qsilv

I think too that I'd better just mention a fact of life. Short comments, nicely broken up into paragraphs, get read more easily.

In novels this translates to a strong attempt to keep each paragraph to no more than 3 to 5 lines unless there's an unarguably damned good reason to make it longer.

In forums it's particularly helpful to have separate posts for each major idea clump... partly because it's more palatable (you wouldn't normally cram a fork laden high with potatoes AND peas AND a chunk of meat AND a leaf of lettuce all into your mouth in one bite...) and partly because it's so much easier to refer back to a neat idea by stating its post #.