I’m SO damn psyched about today! Warum? Just LOOK at my calendar. There ain’t nothin’ on it! No doc appointments, no work that’s GOT to be done, no officiously official bullshit that I have to see to. I’m FREE! OK, ok, I gotta hit the gym but that’s IT. I believe I’ll curl up with Coco and my new library book (Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller) and play in the paint. Yup, I like this plan.
The other day, Ten and I went to the Harvard Art Museums (all under one
roof now) – it's an inspiring joint. I wanted to visit my old chums –
Max Beckmann’s Self Portrait in a Tuxedo and his big-ass triptych, The
Actors (seen below), Paul Klee’s Hot Pursuit (below), David Smith’s Detroit Queen (also down there), Picasso’s
Woman with a Chignon (from his brief stint at Vogue, ya know?) Ernst Barlach’s The Avenger, Käthe Kollwitz’s Rest in the Peace of His Hands.
Interestingly, the Kollwitz piece was created to be a part of her family’s gravestone BUT, instead, it’s hanging on a wall at Harvard. Wonder which Kollwitz family member made that call.
The long-ass title is from a poem by Goethe, “God is master of the East. God is master of the West. All the northern and southern lands rest in peace within his hands.”
Also…did you know? Munch was so overwhelmed by his “autobiographical” painting The Scream that, afterward, he mostly stuck to nice safe stuff, like landscapes. Huh. If he had a Janice, the art world might be far more rich and strange. There’s a lesson in there for me – I just know it!
While at the museums, we found a coupla paintings that RILLY sparked me up. They’re by a dude I hadn’t seen or heard of before, Herbert Bayer. Born in Austria, he lived in Germany until 1937 when some of his work was included in the Nazi propaganda exhibit Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) The term was used to describe modern art in general – it was considered an insult to German “feeling.” OR fee-fees as we now call ‘em. How long before preznint Clownstick von Shit-for-Brains and his scary-ass band of bullies declare Touba Alipour Danielle Siegelbaum, Joel Tretin and so many others degenerate artists?Back to Bayer though, he was a font designer (HEY, like my cousin Martin!), graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and architect. Yup, yur basic overachiever. I’m absolutely wild about his two painting at The Fogg. They feel like beautiful universes ready for occupancy. I could float, bob and swim in those waves.
