John murray classes week of Dec. 3, 2012

We have a model next week all classes.
Female nude.

See you next week john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 26, 2012

(nothing whichful about

thick big this

friendly

himself of

a boulder)nothing

mean in tenderly

whoms

of sizeless a

silence by noises

called people called

sunlight

(elsewhere flat the mechanical

itmaking

sickness of mind sprawls)

here

a living free mysterious

dreamsoul floatstands

oak by birch by maple

pine

by hemlock spruce by

tamarack(

nothing pampered puny

impatient

and nothing

ignoble

)everywhere wonder

if (touched by love’s own secret)we, like homing

through welcoming sweet miracles of air

(and joyfully all truths of wing resuming)

selves,into infinite tomorrow steer

-souls under whom flow(mountain valley forest)

a million wheres which never may become

one(wholly strange;familiar wholly)dearest

more than reality of more than dream-

how should contented fools of fact envision

the mystery of freedom?yet,among

their loud exactitudes of imprecision,

you’ll(silently alighting)and I’ll sing

while at us very deafly a most stares

colossal hoax of clocks and calendars

  

I love this poem by ee cummings and wondered if you could use it as grist for your visual mill.
See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 19, 2012

Sometimes I wonder whether I am painting pictures of words or whether I’m painting pictures with words.
—Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha’s oeuvre has never been confined to established categories of style or media; for instance, books, drawings, prints, photography, and painting are used in parallel, together with materials as unconventional as gunpowder, fruit juice, bleach, coffee, and syrup. But throughout Ruscha's restrained yet daring experimentation, writing as act and subject, in print form or painted on canvas, has remained a constant inspiration for his iconic images of the American vernacular. His singular, sometimes oblique use of words allows for the exploration of the role of signifiers in language and thought, while his range of artistic means allows the act of reading to be literally manipulated as a process by which to generate meaning.

This exhibition follows “Reading Ed Ruscha” at Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, which fully explored Ruscha's obsession with books and language from the outset of his career. In New York the focus is exclusively on his consideration of the book over the last twenty-five years as a subject, as a support for pictures, or as an actual object. It includes acrylic and oil paintings, drawings on paper, watercolors on vellum, photographs, and book works.

In the small painting History (2005), Ruscha deflates a huge topic with an austere yet highly illusionistic side view of a rather-too-slim book spine on which the word appears. Whereas in the large-format painting Gilded, Marbled and Foibled (2011–12), he lets loose in a richly patterned description of traditional decorative bookmaking techniques, while the title provides a riposte to early Conceptual Art instruction. The Open Book series (2002–05), finely executed on untreated linen as a direct allusion to traditional bookbinding materials, appears as life-size images inviting closer perusal, while the giant works of the Old Book series present age-worn pages as monumental artifacts.

Various bookworks provide corollaries to the paintings. A strategy for a series of insidious small abstract paintings from 1994–95, where words forming threats are rendered as blank widths of contrasting color like Morse communication, resurfaces a decade later in book covers, where the oppositional actions of enunciation and erasure meet. In another book series, Ruscha has again used bleach to leach a single large initial on the colored linen covers of found books, such as a gothic M on the cover of Imaginary Gardens, or L L on two matching Shakespeare tomes entitled Twins (diptych), by which he deftly transforms one medium and format into another. In another, monochrome books mimic Minimalist objects and sport appropriately generic titles such as Atlas or Bible.

Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1937 and studied painting, photography, and graphic design at the Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts). His work is collected by major museums worldwide. Major museum exhibitions include the drawing retrospective “Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips®, Smoke and Mirrors,” which toured U.S. museums in 2004–05; “Ed Ruscha: Photographer,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Musée National Jeu de Paume, Paris (2006); and, “Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting,” Hayward Gallery, London (2009, traveling to Haus der Kunst, Munich and Moderna Museet, Stockholm in 2010). “Ed Ruscha: Road Tested,” Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2011); “On the Road,” The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2011). “Reading Ed Ruscha” concluded at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria in mid-October, just as “The Ancients Stole All Our Great Ideas” opened at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, an exhibition that Ruscha was invited to curate, working from the national art and natural history collections. It remains on view until December 2, 2012.

Nice work, by a great artist.Do some research online see if you agree.

See you next week (mon.). john.

No class on wed. day before thanksgiving!

John Murray classes week of Nov.12, 2012

No class mon. the 12th (Veterans Day).

To commemorate the holiday here is a poem by e.e. cummings;

why must itself up every of a park

anus stick some quote statue unquote to

prove that a hero equals any jerk

who was afraid to answer "no"?

quote citizen unquote might otherwise

forget(to err is human;to forgive

divine)that if the quote state unquote says

"kill" killing is an act of christian love.

"Nothing" in 1944 A D

"can stand against the argument of mil

itary necessity" (generalissimo e)

and echo answers "there is no appeal

from reason" (freud)-you pays your money and

you doesn't take your choice. Ain't freedom grand

-e.e. cummings circa 1950 from Xaipe

Above is a painting I did 5 years ago "Silverline" that to me is a reference to my own military service.

Does this poem bring to mind a work of visual art for you?

See you wed. john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 5, 2012

Monday classes have a model next week. A female nude series of poses.
I have thus far been unable to get a model for Wed. (Supercharged a.m. and p.m.), so if anyone is desparate to work from the model swap class from wed. to mon. (preferably the afternoon class which is small on mon.). I will keep trying to get a model for wed.; however.
Please bring charcoal and fixatif and a new prepared canvas on mon.