John Murray classes week of April 25, 2011

Welcome to the artists who have joined my deCordova tues. morning Supercharged painting class.
All classes: please think about the abstract potential that is within the traditional landscape. Matisse's "View of Notre Dame" is an amazing example of where one can take a de-constructed vision of the commonplace. The artist filtered the view through the lens of formalism and eccentricity simultaneously and arrived at a fresh and challenging way to create a work of art. Working from a sketch or photo try this yourself.
On wed. the 27th at 7pm I will be giving a talk at the NewArt Center on the Isolated Artist, covering the work and lives of three artists: Michael Heizer, Bas Jan Ader and Ray Johnson...see you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of April 11, 2011

The quotitian object:

All classes, please try making a painting from a small and insignificant object that you find at home or here in the studio. The grandiose subject is not essential to the artwork...it is the freshness of interpretation that delivers the work. Postmodern Assemblage sculptors: try assembling/modifying the odd and ubitqitous pieces you have found and don't know what to with...this is a chance to embrace the trivial and see what happens. See you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of April 4, 2011

Welcome to the Spring term!

All classes: Let's try a celebration of Spring, (bring earplugs if music bothers you!). i will play a recording of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" we will attempt to paint and/or interpret in plastic form our response to the music and the unsettling Vernal Equinox going on outside of the studio. Igor Stravinsky's famous composition was inspired by the painter Nicholas Roerich, who shared his vision with Stravinski of a pagan ritual in which a young girl dances herself to death. It was composed for Serge Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, and when it premiered on May 29, 1913 at the Theatre des Champs-Elsees in Paris caused one of the most famous music riots in history. The audience erupted in catcalls, whistles and fist fights.

i'm sure we can do better than that...see you next week, john.

John Murray make-up class wed. march 30, 2011

Snow cancelation make-up all day wed.

Bring any work you want critqued or paint and make-up. see you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of March 21, 2011

Richard Serra drawings at the Metropolitan Museum in April.

Serra has been a gestural Minimal sculptor for the last 45 years. He has also produced many strong gritty drawings to amplify his ouvre and a show of these is opening at the Met on April 13. If you are in New York at that time try and see it. His massive sheets of propped rusted iron are amazingly expressive icons. i've shown above a drawing in oil stick and an early molten lead throw, which i believe he executed in San Francisco in the late 60's.

This is last class this term for Monday Oil and Acrylic Painting Workshop and Postmodern Assemblage. If you have work you would like critqued please bring it to class.

Supercharged Painting: Due to snow cancelation makeup on March 30, there are still 2 classes left for Wed. artists. See you next week, john.

John murray classes week of March 14, 2011

i've been amazed by the work of Cy Twombly for years... the leap of imagination required to make these paintings and then the decades of development and movement he brought to this ouvre. MOMA has just aquired five of his paintings. His work has been under-represented in America for many years. the piece above, "Tiznit" is from 1953 and is Dutch Boy house paint pencil and crayon. Let's try a personal vision in reductive terms, perhaps monochromatic....this painting was homage to tribal objects Mr. Twombly saw at the ethnographic museum in Rome. This is akin to Picasso and Matisses's use of African masks 4 decades earlier...it also shows his obligation to Paul Klee's iconic renditions of figures and ground fom the thirties and forties...in art nothing exists in a vacuum, but the graphic surprise that occurs when visions appear out of the box of convention can belie their heritage. see you next week, john.

John Murray classes week of March 7, 2011

Expanding painting beyond the obvious.

Painting has been around for 50,000 years.

Since hunter gathers began expressing themselves with pigment and animal fat on the walls of European caves, the human race has been involved in painterly activity.

The two illustration above are interesting example of recent avant-garde painting. Cy Twombly's curtain at the Vienna Opera House (thanks Denise) and katharina Grosse's painterly installation at Mass MOCA. In my own work, i have begun a simple and direct oil painting series that belies this concept, but for years i've struggled with the idea of break-through painting and feel the need to simplify and allow myself to just paint for awhile. i think that all contemporary painters should try and move their art toward some plastic ineffable. see you next week, john.