Speaking of Jorgen Speaking

Speaking of Jorgen, (or Jurgen?). Here is a 3-part video of most of his Circle Presentation from 1995

This was always the way he started each term with this lecture. There always seemed to be at least one new student so that justified a repeat performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv1jgm-2m48

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iJOqG58OtE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXXfJPx8KPs

Painting of Jorgen Hansen

Here is one painting one artist made of our mentor, Jorgen Hansen.

Heard Jorgen sing Tonite

I got to the room 23 class early tonight. The Last Class of the session, ya know with the next one two months away.

I scanned the room.

Jorgen's picture was on the wall but it was ajar. at a crooked angle. Out of respect for my mentor, the late Jorgen Hansen, I went over to straighten the painting. Not that this painting was so outstanding. Better portraits of the Dane were surely during the King's twentysome year reign in room 23. This was just the one on duty now.

As I straighten the painting, a folded envelop slips out and falls. Instinctively my hand jerks out and I intercept the paper before it escapes to the floor.

On the envelop I read the Fourscore and 3 Leons ago speech that somehow Jorgen wrote on the letter and I am the Messenger reading aloud his message.

Tonight? Jorgen's picture askew so I went to straighten it and I hear him singing, like he used to sometimes, being Bob Dylan 'how do you feeeeel.....'

I say, 'Jorgen, I want to be an artist'

I hear him shaking his head. Don't know how much he is amused but I hear him say,

GET ... A... LIFE!!!

He is still a guru supreme. A reminder that you need to have Life to experience first to explain later. And how did HE know from Beyond that I happen to be reading two books at the same time. This isn't unusual, two books. It is just that they both have the same title.

LIFE.

One is the Life of Chuck Close the artist.

Two is the Life of Keith Richards the artist.

There are lots of life lessons here, different for different folks.

and that is our goal, isn't it?

to be different.

Life by Keith Richards

Strangely enough, I happen to be reading two books at the same time. What's strange is they both have the same title, Life.

One is about artist Chuck Close and one is about artist Keith Richards.

See the previous post to learn about the Chuck Close book.

Here are some interesting ideas I got from the Keith Richards book.

Keith grew up in rural England just after world war II in the generation influenced by Chicago Blues and early American Rock and Roll. His generation were anti-Establishment, revolting against Victorian Age morality and straight in line conformity. An artist like Keith wanted to create music and create his own world to live in. There was a lot of harassment towards those who wanted to be different and make their own rules to live by. Rednecks all around disapproving of your long hair.

One constant throughout the book is Keith's Process for making music. It seems on every page he is writing phrases in his notebook to make into songs collaborating to compose a song. His process is to record and dub layer over previous layers. Likes to use a smaller portable basic recorder and write the lyrics at the microphone. Their passion is performing this music. Process involves Persistence. His band, the Rolling Stones, performed as the house band in a club in London and played there at least once every day for over 3 years. Their 'instant success' as they went on a concert tour was the result of giving over a thousand performances.

I enjoy in the act of creation how as an artist I am in charge of the world I create in my art-making. Sometimes the world I create in is 20 by 24 inches. Some artists can create a whole new world culture because the music they made transformed the physical world we live in.

Book Review Life-Chuck Close by Christopher Finch

Several items I found interesting from Life, Christopher Finch's biography of Chuck Close.

The artist Chuck Close early on had a clear idea that he wanted HUGE success as an artist. He wanted to have his paintings seen by MILLIONS of PEOPLE. His work had to be in Public Museums .

That meant in his 1950's he had to be in the right place to get an art education. Yale was a great follow-up to the quite amazing JC he first studied art at in Washington. He moved to New York City. At this time the Art Community was small and the major museum for contemporary artists -New York's Museum of Modern Art-was collecting artists just a few years older that Chuck Close.

He was a figurative artist. Abstract Expressionism was king of the hill still. Learning to paint in the stroke of A.E.'s most figurative Willem DeKoonings, he went for his own identity. The whole figure seemed to have hot spots. Portraits. A 'mug-shot'.

the genius of Chuck Close is that his portraits are paintings not of the 3-D subject itself but of a 2-D photograph translated from the subject. And he painted how the photograph was composed and convinced into being the subject now.

The cool thing is he used the method of process that he observed from his grandmother. She worked for hours knitting small squares of material and then spent more hours knitting all these pieces into a bigger something useful. From then on Chuck Close was about PROCESS, no matter what medium he was creating in.

In his life he had continual struggles with health issues -- later even suddenly paralyzed from the neck down. Slowed him down but didn't stop him painting. It was just a little more complicated process. but it was still a process.