Frumsceaft

A boy's drawing, an ancestor, an Asmat Shield, a helmet-like shape.

The pattern reminded me of swaddling. It all combines with the foundling king of Northern mythology.

Henry Moore

Henry Moore, Mother and Child, 1921


Another coalminer's son. A different one.
Compare his treatment of life and procreation to Lawrence's.
Lawrence has the drift towards death. Moore shows real vitality.
Apollinic on the surface, there are much darker sides to his work than most people will realize.

Gassed in World War I
Worked as a bayonet fighting instructor
The horror of the trenches
The London Blitz Shelters
The child wish - (and loss of hope?)


I came to realize this on reading Sir Herbert Read's book (in German, incidentally):
D.H. Lawrence grew up in exactly the same environment [as Moore] and has described it for all time in books like The White Peacock and Sons and Lovers and some of his essays [...] Moore was never to experience the resentment and humiliation that Lawrence felt. Lawrence projects an unhappy family life into his environment; his surroundings are ugly because his life is ugly.

Herbert Read (Henry Moore, New York, 1965)


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African art

This might be the model of the West African Statuette in Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence

From Chapter VI. Creme de Menthe
Gerald looked round the room. It was an ordinary London sitting-room in a flat, evidently taken furnished, rather common and ugly. But there were several negro statues, wood-carvings from West Africa, strange and disturbing, the carved negroes looked almost like the foetus of a human being. One was a woman sitting naked in a strange posture, and looking tortured, her abdomen stuck out. The young Russian explained that she was sitting in child-birth, clutching the ends of the band that hung from her neck, one in each hand, so that she could bear down, and help labour. The strange, transfixed, rudimentary face of the woman again reminded Gerald of a foetus, it was also rather wonderful, conveying the suggestion of the extreme of physical sensation, beyond the limits of mental consciousness.

`Aren't they rather obscene?' he asked, disapproving.

`I don't know,' murmured the other rapidly. `I have never defined the obscene. I think they are very good.'


From Chapter VII. Fetish

Birkin suddenly appeared in the doorway, in white pyjamas and wet hair, and a towel over his arm. He was aloof and white, and somehow evanescent.

`There's the bath-room now, if you want it,' he said generally, and was going away again, when Gerald called:

`I say, Rupert!'

`What?' The single white figure appeared again, a presence in the room.

`What do you think of that figure there? I want to know,' Gerald asked.

Birkin, white and strangely ghostly, went over to the carved figure of the negro woman in labour. Her nude, protuberant body crouched in a strange, clutching posture, her hands gripping the ends of the band, above her breast.

`It is art,' said Birkin.

`Very beautiful, it's very beautiful,' said the Russian.

They all drew near to look. Gerald looked at the group of men, the Russian golden and like a water-plant, Halliday tall and heavily, brokenly beautiful, Birkin very white and indefinite, not to be assigned, as he looked closely at the carven woman. Strangely elated, Gerald also lifted his eyes to the face of the wooden figure. And his heart contracted.

He saw vividly with his spirit the grey, forward-stretching face of the negro woman, African and tense, abstracted in utter physical stress. It was a terrible face, void, peaked, abstracted almost into meaninglessness by the weight of sensation beneath. He saw the Pussum in it. As in a dream, he knew her.

`Why is it art?' Gerald asked, shocked, resentful.

`It conveys a complete truth,' said Birkin. `It contains the whole truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.'

`But you can't call it high art,' said Gerald.

`High! There are centuries and hundreds of centuries of development in a straight line, behind that carving; it is an awful pitch of culture, of a definite sort.'

`What culture?' Gerald asked, in opposition. He hated the sheer African thing.


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Loerke's statue

Joseph Moest Godiva 1906.
It may have inspired DH Lawrence to illustrate his Loerke character.
See JB Bullen, DH Lawrence, German Sculpture and Women in Love, 2005.

From Chapter XXIX. Continental
He paused a moment, then rose, and went out of the room. He returned almost immediately with a little roll of paper, which he handed to her. She unrolled it. It was a photogravure reproduction of a statuette, signed F. Loerke.

Liège/Luik Cathédrale St Paul

 

Green Man, Leaf Mask or Feuillou


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Eye of Providence Luik/Liège

The beautiful vaults of Liège Cathedral remind one of Catherine of Cleves' Book of Hours.
The Eye of Providence and the Trinity, as well as several Green Men are but a few manifestations of this lavish decoration.


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Oceania

Stunning.



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Inspiring...

Wereldmuseum Rotterdam

Reminiscences of childhood

It was a time when you could still park your car in front of the department store in the centre of town. No circular roads or circulation plans. Sunday afternoon, fivish, after dark. Return from a visit to our relatives in the southern part of town.
I used to look through the window of our Volkswagen Beetle. Neon signs, shop's windows, the church tower, statues.

Bronze statues.

The Big Nude Lass.

(My mother told me the locals called her so: t Grote Blote Wicht)

Their mother must be dead...

(I felt pity for them, every time we passed)

Is that a statue?

(It was, my dad told me)


But He looks so different there...

(a stern and grim Christ of the Sacred Heart, whitish sandstone)

Reminiscences of childhood. They have no order



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Kple kple

 

Holy see turned into an African mask.
Completed today.
To be painted BLACK


The metamorphosis.

The main disc was (jig)sawn from the lid; the seat was cut up and turned into the horns. By glueing together numerous bits and pieces I managed to shape the mask as I wanted it to be. Sawdust and polyurethane glue make a perfect putty to smoothe anything.

The Idea
Wood is something precious. It is wonderful to make art from waste. This process is just as important as the result
I like Baule art and I do like the Kple Kple mask. Now was the occasion to make one.
More about the Kple Kple mask



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The Holy See

Today we removed the washbasin, wall tiles, toilet tank and seat.
The wooden seat and lid are to be recycled - my way ;-]



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Sad day - bad day

[text in progress]

They were playing Cinderella Rockefella in the department store, so I must have been about eight. My parents were probably buying a lamp or an electric hand mixer on the same floor. I was bored and I turned over the record sleeves. Matthäus Passion it read - but that was all foreign language to me. It was the painting that horrified me.

I still don't know what upset me more. The orange, poisonous colour of the blood, or the thorns all over the body, or the crossbeam bent under the weight of the dead body. He was dead, I could tell by the halfopen mouth. Was this really the same as the friendly young man in white, with his neat orange sash [orange it was, not red, on the stained glass window in our Lutheran church]? I could not believe it. And yet I felt it must be so. But he looked squalid and I sort of felt guilty noticing it. One could not tell where the thorns ended and the hair began. But long hair was squalid in those days anyway, at least when worn by men.


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crucifixion_Grunewald.jpg

One or two years before that, a slightly older boy living nearby, had told that God was Jesus' father. That did not really upset me. Jesus was the name of that baby which had something to do with Christmas Trees. Then another boy started discussing the death on the cross. And I imagined a little baby bundle tied to the midst of a cross. It was a concrete cross, the first boy said. And I imagined the washing line pole that my father got over his shin - he nearly fainted and my mother was almost in tears. Then they were talking about nails 'crossed' through the hands and I imagined a quincunx-like pattern. We were protestants and our part of the country was protestant. Crucifixes were a rarity.

My parents sent me to Sunday school, where I could ask all the questions that I wanted to ask. And the first visit was a hit. Jephta's daughter, but I did not fully understand why she was burned at the stake. Anyway I made a drawing of it.
We had to draw the pictures ourselves, we were not shown any.
Later, around Easter, I made a pencil drawing of the cross [cast in one piece, still concrete?] men holding Jesus, a hammer and a box of nails.

A children's anthology, published by the Dutch Labour Press, proved rather informative, with a crucifixion story after a combined version of the four gospels. And then there were Catholic families, with crucifixes in their living rooms. Since it was a strictly observed custom in the Netherlands to have all curtains opened [for honest people have nothing to hide], I could easily peep into some houses while on my way to school, to satisfy my curiosity.

What did Jesus look like?
I asked my mother how they knew.
She said that the artists had seen it with their inner eyes.
So.

[to be continued]

In 2012 I  went to see the Issenheim Altar in Colmar, France.
It was so huge and overwhelming.


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Trinity Sunday

Still, more than I had ever expected, in just three evenings.
[And I started on a second panel in the meantime]



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Povoloka

What happens if you wipe a wet face with a towel and then make a negative?
This is the cloth the iconboard is to be lined with, but since it is meant for the "Not Painted By Hands Icon" there is that association with the Turin Shroud so I had to do this little experiment. And I gessoed the edges of the icon board as well.



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Action Painting

Acrilic Paint
Gesso
Varnish
Gold paint (spray can)
Brushes
Palette knives
I got everything for about €15 in the Action Shop.
Simple Living Rules!





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HansK in GdansK

My encounter with Günter Grass' Flounder in the Ulica Mariacka (Mariengasse), Gdansk.












Meiner war und ist ein sogenannter Steinbutt ...
(Der Butt, S. 33-34)


More on the Steinbutt
The Psetta maxima or European Turbot (Steinbutt in German) has both eyes on the left side. The European Flounder (Platichthys flesus) however, has both eyes on its right side, as has Grass' etching on the book cover...
The stone relief in Gdansk is definitely a Turbot, not a flounder.








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Spas nerukotvornyi

Or, the [Icon of the] Saviour Not-Made-By-Hands. I first saw this most impressive icon in the Uspensky Sobor(Cathedral of the Dormition) in the Moscow Kremlin in 1991.
It has been a favourite ever since, together with the Vladimirskaya and the Saviour of the Fiery Eye.



On this terrible day I found some peace of mind and some consolation in making a first sketch. The result was beyond all expectations. As if my hands had been guided. As if this face drew itself. As if theMan is Coming Around.





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Transformation

I took the sideboards of our IKEA bathroom cabinet and glued them together, on Tuesday evening.





On Wednesday morning I sawed them to the right dimensions, and added "sponki" to strengthen the board.




In the afternoon I cut out the indentation or kovcheg with a router, hammer and chisel and did lots of sandpapering. A thin coat of linseed oil was applied.



This is going to be an icon board.
Povoloka (cloth) and levkas (gesso) have not been applied yet.



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Dutch Cow

I scrapped my old bike today, as it was beyond repair.


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Wheel of fortune - still that Wheel

Roue de Fortune - Roue à carrillons.
First seen in Koñforzh-Meilar a.k.a. Confort-Meil(l)ars, Finistère/Breizh in 2007

click here for Youtube clip

And then there's Marcel Duchamp's Roue de Bicyclette, of course.

Just a temporary gadget which I made today. I added bells but they can hardly be heard or seen in the clip. The neighbouring children kept moving the Wheel all afternoon, though.


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Man of the Woods

Uath? Enkidu? The Green Knight?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_man