Mental Map

Mental Map - surveying my artistic inspirations

I have found this a very difficult exercise to somehow tell my story in 10 sequential images. It just seemed so vast, so many factors involved, and ultimately a bit random. Don't artists perceive the world through their own eyes and visually tell the story that they want others to see? But the assignment intrigued me and I believed that it would, ultimately, be a great process for me to go through as an artist. So, I began at the beginning ..... looking at my 6 year old self (1960) and I started with the creative influences I connected with as a child and then followed the map that it lay out in front of me. 

Visual Stop 1: My first memories of reading were Grimm's fairy tales - most importantly the book illustrated by Arthur Rackham. The stories were lessons and they were stories of character - both good and bad. Rackham's illustrations made the characters real for me. He "dressed" them and placed them in a physical space. In doing so he gave them life and allowed me understand them better.

 

My mother loved the arts and wanted to expose my sister and I to as much as she could. She would get art books from the library and spend hours with my sister and I looking through them and having us paint in the style of. Modigliani is the first artist I remember being fascinated by. His portraits were mesmerizing and drew me in. I felt that with such simplicity of line he was able to capture the essence of each person's character. 

Ahhh ... character. 

Visual Stop 2: 
Music, theatre, and film all played a large role in my childhood and young life. Opera and musical theatre recordings were playing on the stereo all the time - I would lie there and imagine what the characters looked like, what they were wearing, where they were. I was lost in the films of Hitchcock and Cukor. When the movie version of "West Side Story" arrived in 1961 it did two things for me - it introduced me to Shakespeare and that, in turn, taught me that character and place had to be "read", it needed to be explained to the audience. 

and.....Character now leaps off the page! 

Visual Stop 3: The first art book that I purchased for myself was Aubrey Beardsley's illustrated "Salome" by Oscar Wilde. I was drawn to the book by the dramatic black ink illustrations and I was seduced by the world that they created. Salome seen through the eyes of the art nouveau period - undulating and sensuous. The book also introduced me to the plays of Oscar Wilde and opened up the door to explore the work of Louis Tiffany, William Morris, Paul Poiret and Gustav Klimt. 

Connection made.... examine a historical period by looking at the full picture: the art, the clothing, the architecture, and the politics. 








Visual Stop 4: My trip to Italy as a teen changed me because I began to view the world differently. I walked streets and explored buildings that were thousands of years old. The architecture and the art - Gothic, Baroque,Renaissance, Medieval opened up the historical record for me. I put the photo of the Colosseum here because it was an emotionally charged visit for me. It is hard to describe but I felt the energy of the past swirling through me - history became real for me.  

Realization..... we define our surroundings and our surroundings define us.

Visual Stop 5: It seems to me that stops 5 -8 all overlapped time wise in my artistic "coming of age" and I put them in this sequence based solely on their category.  
In black and white portraits Edward Steichen captured the essence of a person and a time. His photographs are paintings in light and shadow. Lewis Hine gave me a different view of the world. His photos of immigrants and child laborers gave me historical insight and his series covering the construction of the Empire State Building presented a profound sense of space, place and character. 

Visual Stop 6: Discovering the sculpture of Henry Moore and Louise Nevelson taught me about spacial relationships. Where the bodies' weight is placed tells me about that person and then where Moore placed his sculptures defines that space. Nevelson's assemblages are like cities to me - small grids containing different elements yet all creating a universe unto itself.

Visual Stop 7: When I realized that I wanted to design costumes for the theatre I also realized that I needed to learn how to draw the human figure... and quickly. I found the drawings of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Peter Paul Rubens, and reconnected with the pastels of Edgar Degas. They became my teachers because each of them - in brevity of line, in the weight of the pencil, in the small gesture and in the subdued color created character, mood and environment. 

Visual Stop 8: Henri Matisse and Alexander Calder brought playfulness into my artistic vision. A box of colors and patterns suddenly spilled out onto the floor. An artist could experiment and have fun! That was a revelation!

I clearly remember the day I encountered this particular Matisse painting as well as each of the times I have had the pleasure to visit Calder's circus. Both of them make me smile.

 

Visual Stop 9: Richard Diebekorn's figure drawings are beautiful and, like Degas, he captures each form in a gesture. But I also connect very strongly to his landscape and figurative paintings because of the way he organizes the forms and colors illustrating how a person interacts with their environment and vice versa. The raw energy in a Willem de Kooning painting takes my breath away. Layers upon layers of a woman creating an amalgam, a patchwork - bold and uncompromising.

 

Visual Stop 10:  So, ultimately, for me I think this mental map is a loop. Because now it seems that I have taken all the elements of the past that have intrigued me - character, history, cities, grids, the interaction between a person and their environment, the human story - and I have come full circle. I am suddenly delving into portraits. 

bibliography

1. Arthur Rackham illustration for Hansel and Gretel; http://www.surlaunefairytales.com

"Young Man" by Amedeo Modigliani;  http://www.modigliani-foundation.org

2. West Side Story movie poster; http://www.wikipedia.org

3. "The Peacock’s Skirt" by Aubrey Beardsley; illustration from Oscar Wilde’s Salome; http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/beardsley/3.html

4. Photo of the Roman Colosseum; http://powertripberkeley.com

5. Photo of Gloria Swanson by Edward Steichen; http://content.time.com

Photo by Lewis Hines; http://www.nytimes.com

6. "Reclining Figure #4" by Henry Moore; http://www.henry-moore.org

"Sky Cathedral #2" by Louise Nevelson; http://www.sanjosemuseumofart.org/

7. "Portrait of  Young Woman" by Rubens; http://www.backtoclassics.com

"Drawing of a Young Man" by Ingres; marinapoca.blogspot.com

"The Singer in Green" by Edgr Degas; metmuseum.org

8. Alexander Calder’s Circus; http://www.whitney.org

"Purple Robe and Anemones" by Henri Matisse; http://www.artbma.org

9. "Woman, I" by Willem de Kooning; http://www.moma.org

"Girl with Plant" by Richard Diebenkorn; http://www.phillipscollection.org