John Murray classes week of Nov. 28, 2011

Barnet Newman made these paintings in 1960 and I still find them interesting and beautiful.

The simple and elegant use of tape to establish edges and the emphasis on the edge/vector in a time when painting was moving from the abstract expressionist emotionally-charged brush stroke and about to enter the ironic flatness of pop art is still fresh to my eye.

Try a piece using tape as the medium.

See you next week,john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 21, 2011

National Day of Mourning, Coles Hill Plymouth Ma at noon Nov. 24, 2011, near the Massasoit statue overlooking plymouth rock monument.

Again this year I, my wife, Mary, her teenage niece Catherine and nephew, Garrett will attend the United Indians of New England memorial ceremony and parade on Thanksgiving Day.

It is a moving and educational counterpoint to the holiday season propaganda that bombards us in postmodern America. Maybe I'll see you there!

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. An excellent show that I saw last summer in DC has moved to the Brooklyn Museum. If you have a chance to see when in NY you should. It is a very different take on the standard American idea of portraiture. When I saw it at the National Portrait Gallery it made a striking contrast to the rooms full of Colonial Fathers of America...I'm sure it will stand up well in Brooklyn, too. It includes this

homage to the suicide of the gay poet Hart Crane (he jumped from a ship in the Gulf of Mexico at the age of 32), by Marsden Hartley, as well as works by Warhol, Rauschenburg and Johns among others.

See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 14, 2011

When an artist has a block or dry spell.

When this happens to me I read Herman Melville and consider Frank Stella's "Moby Dick". On the afternoon of Dec. 1, 1850 Melville wrote how for millions of years whales had been filling the atmosphere over the waters of the Pacific with the haze of their spouts-"sprinkling and mystifying the the gardens of the deep". it was then that he made note of the exact time and date when he was writing these words: "fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock pm of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1850". what a moment for the artist! What an opportunity for creativity! The Modernist concept of the self-conscious hand of the artist in full bloom and connected to that exquisite sentence of prose about the "...gardens of of the deep."

One hundred and forty years later Frank Stella took this language/concept and constructed 135 sculpture /paintings from this amazing book; one for each chapter. This brilliant sense of self and material is the true key to Modernist art as well as its biggest difficulty. How to record the moment of creation and depict some profound aspect of the world simultaneously.

Next week try working from a piece of writing that inspires you.

see you then. john.

John Murray classes week of Nov. 7, 2011

All Newart center classes:

I love this Warhol painting of knives, if you have an object that resonates and is somehow provocative bring it to class and use it as a model or in an assemblage...the choice of object is as crucial as the manner of execution you select for the art work.

If you have a chance, go on line and take a look at the work of Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim...the NYTimes.com. Very interesting to discuss.

Decordova Supercharged painting:

We have a female model this week. If you are interested in experimenting, either come to class with a canvas covered with newspaper either/or bring some sticks to attach to (with a superglue or epoxy) the canvas as you work. You're the artist!

See you next week , john.