John Murray classes week of September 17, 2012

OUT OF THE RUINS 

 Reimagining the Romantic Tradition

Curated by Elizabeth Thact

Christopher Carroll

Clare Grill

Jane Fox Hipple

Fred H.C.Liang

Ryan McLennan

Gina Ruggeri

Marisa Tesauro

Elizabeth Thach

The one charm of the past is that it is the past.  ~Oscar Wilde

On walking into the gallery the first thing that struck me was the amount of empty space in the room.

Not dramatic space…negative space that seemed to have been forgotten by the curator.

The larger work seemed over-blown and technique heavy.

But amidst the ruins I found a few interesting and evocative pieces;

Christopher Carroll’s split screen video, passenger/pilot, was a powerful and humorous piece that portrayed him wading and investigating with a torch the dark negative space under a stone arch bridge in the Fenway.

Jane Fox Hipple’s, “Painted Bricks”, is a fresh and surprising treatise on expanding painting into sculpture, sort of a subtle and painterly Carl Andre.

The three small paintings by Clare Grill were not so much a comment on the English Romantic Tradition, but to me a welcoming (to a painter) exercise in Provisional Painting, a category of interest to me in my own work.

Sorry to say it, but that’s about all I found to think about in this academic exercise in “Art”.

I was reminded of my own experience in listening to Black Blues music as a young teenager. The African American musical tradition that arose in the Mississippi Delta in the 1920’s, and that I found profoundly moving and artistically exciting as a white kid, has been deserted by Black artists today.

I think it may have been Cornell West who said that Black people look forward, not back.

I would recommend that white elite artists do the same.  

After viewing this show, go upstairs and see Jasmine Chen’s fine small show of paintings, sort of a palette cleansing sherbet after a heavy meal.

If you want an assignment next week, view the two shows and paint a response!

See you next week, john. 

John Murray classes week of September 10, 2012

Welcome to Oil and Acrylic Workshop (Mon. am), John Murray Medley (Mon. pm) and Supercharged Painting (Wed. am and pm). 

Please check the supply list that the New Art Center sent you, and bring enough materials to work at the first class. 

In my  classes I try to provide an opening into a personal visual language by an investigation into materials, and a practice of experimental plastic manipulation. Of course one has to have an honest and sincere (well at least honest!) desire to provide a surprising visual moment. A strenuously self-critical mind and eye helps a lot, too. 

Sounds easy? 

In simpler less pretentious terms: Art is an Investigation into Itself.

So relax, have fun and see you the first week of class.

Thank you for taking my class, John

www.jmurrayart.com 

John murray classes week of August 27, 2012

It's the last week of Summer term. What a great studio experience this has been for me!
The summer evenings in that studio resonate with a quiet creative energy. Some excellent work has been done.
This summer I've been reading "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce. I've read all his other work over the last 50 years, but have always been unable to deal with the postmodern experimental language conceits of this work, so I'm trying again. This time I'm enjoying it in small doses. Below is a portrait of Joyce I did a few years ago and an excerpt form the novel. The going can be rough, but the pay-off in humor and profundity is there for the patient reader. If you're up for a challenge to close the term read the excerpt and try your hand at a visual response. see you next week, john.

O here here how hoth sprowled met the
duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and
body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of
soft advertisement! But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks
of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if
you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the
pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.

John Murray classes week of August 20, 2012

IT'S ALWAYS SUMMER ON THE INSIDE: As Roberta Smith said about this exhibit; "This show at Anton Kern Gallery in Manhattan takes its title from a 1970s wet-suit advertisement. Catch the phrase’s suggestion of interiority — of the freewheeling mind and imagination as the main source of artistic inspiration. Beyond the varied and engaging ways these works converse with one another, each manages to add a further bit of resonance and rightness to the title".

That's how this class has felt to me every night. Some terrific work has been accomplished and we still have 2 more weeks to go. Go online and take a look at some of the work in the show and then try taking the spirit of that theme and painting your response. See you next week, john. 

John Murray classes week of August 13, 2012

We had a male model last Wed. and some really strong painting was accomplished by artists who attended.

This week I would like to get beyond the retinal rods and cones and skin of the illusion and strip down to the skeletal structure of the figure and the painting. What does that mean? Well above is a painting by Les Rogers that does that with that old chestnut "Skeleton and Cigarette". Check Rogers' work online and a show at Half Gallery, "Summer Swells" on the Lower East Side. Art-making is a constantly challenging occupation, but it can be fun!

See you next week, john.  

John Murray classes week of August 6 2012

Wed. the 8th we will have a model (male)  I have been unable to get one for Mon. this term.

If you are signed up for Mon. and want to work from a model please call the office (617 964 3424) and make arrangements to attend that additional class. My recently discovered interest in the work of Francis Bacon pushed me to get a male model, something I rarely do, and I hope you find the male body an interesting metaphorical starting point. We will; however have to pay the model ourselves since there was no model fee included in tuition for the Summer terms. See you next week. john.

John Murray classes week of July 30, 2012

from Cabbage Gardens

from Cabbage Gardens

By Susan Howe b. 1937 Susan Howe

The past

will overtake   

alien force   

our house   

formed

of my mind   

to enter

explorer

in a forest   

of myself

for all

my learning   

Solitude

quiet

and quieter   

fringe

of trees

by a river

bridges black   

on the deep   

the heaving sea   

a watcher stands

to see her ship   

winging away   

Thick noises

merge in moonlight   

dark ripples   

dissolving

and

defining

spheres

and

snares

             Place of importance as in the old days

stood on the ramparts of the fort

                                                 the open sea outside   

alone with water-birds and cattle

                        knee-deep in a stream

grove of reeds

               herons watching from the bank

henges

      whole fields honeycombed with souterrains   

human

                        bones through the gloom

       whose sudden mouth

surrounded my face

                      a thread of blue around the coast   

                                                         feathery moon   

eternity swallows up time

                                     peaceable as foam

                        O cabbage gardens

summer’s elegy

                        sunset survived

Welcome to the first week of  Late Summer Supercharged Painting.

Here's a Summer-ish poem in the postmodern genre of poet Susan Howe. It is full of imagery.

I wonder if you can find a painting here. An unfamiliar picture that explores the surprising world of visual juxtaposition and Postmodern surrealism.