Hudson River Schooled

The Hudson River school presents an almost idealistic view of the American landscape.  I like to call it enhanced realism.  Who wouldn't want to explore and settle in the Hudson River area after seeing the paintings.

I get the same feeling after seeing the California Plein Air paintings.  The California lanscape is given aromantic sense.  It's so different than the cityscapes. I happen to like the dry brown mountains in California (Southern California) dotted with lonely green trees in the Summer.  A California sunset is a majestic site in November.

I also like the atmospheric black and white photographs taken by Ansell Adams.

There's just something about America that gives itself to landscape paintings and photography...and dreams of the frontier, and dreams of the future. Something to keep in mind so close to the Election.

The Hudson River School is a classic example of why my favorite section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the American Wing.  There is also a gorgeous collection of HRS paintings at the Museum of the City of New York.  Their idyllic depiction of the Hudson River Valley and surrounding area puts me in mind of a funny poem:

I do not think I'll ever see

A billboard lovely as a tree

Indeed unless the billboards fall

I'll never see a tree at all

What a lovely revelation! I know it's terribly unhip, but I SO prefer representational art to modern. Spatters on canvas, blocks of color, and swoops of metal do nothing for me. I disagree that something is art just because some depressed guy in black SAYS it is. Picasso was great til he went off the rails and started painting his nightmares, but Dali and Escher managed to combine reality and fantasy in a way that appeals to me. I viewed the Turner exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art, and was astonished at how totally cool he was. His real-time paintings of the burning of Parliament were incredible! The huge canvases were overwhelming, like frozen movies. Sublime.

Soon, if our Alice keeps her acquisitional engines humming, it'll be a short drive up the road to view the best art in the world. Can't wait. Not bad for a hick five-and-dimer. Yes, what a low point for the coastal snobs that Arkies are snapping up the underappreciated masterpieces formerly taken for granted as rightfully belonging to the big city elites, hoarded in musty libraries and basements. Now they'll be available to the hoi polloi-OMG, Mencken must be spinning in his grave. Thanks, Sam!

Isn't use of a definite article off-limits with hoi polloi? The phrase comes unvarnished from Greek into English, and in Greek the charcters transliterated as hoi are a definite article.I've been figuratively spanked by writing mentors over this issue.

Expat:

I love the high desert of southern California immensely. I personally think that Michelangelo Antonioni was the best "catcher" of the psychic signifcance of Americn deserts in his films, particularly "Red Desert", amd "Zabriskie Point." Sadly the latter film has not yet made it to DVD format.

Any opinion on the phtography of Sebastiao Salgado?

As usual the wikipedia entry on the Hudson River School is well worth reading  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_School .  Interesting that Turner was an influence... I, like Olivia, once had the opportunity of seeing an exhibition of Turner's work and was completely overwhelmed.  Two things I've learned by seeing paintings in museums: (1) No reproductions ever capture the colors adequately.  (I suspect in part this is because of the limitations of ink on paper...)(2) The editors of 'art books' are butchers who crop paintings in their reproductions.  This completely destroys the mathematical underpinnings of a painter's compositions.

I think a very cool job would be to act as a docent at an art museum showing elementary school kids around...  'Now, let's count the number of sheep in this painting'.  'Does anybody know what this stick in the shepherd's is called?' 'Would you like to climb up this mountain all covered in trees?'  'Why is the furthest hill all fuzzy, but the one in front is not?'  Etc.

I was absolutely blessed in childhood in many ways.  One 'wonder' I only learned to appreciate later was Dr. Thelin, undoubtedly one of the best fathers a kid could have.  By day a cigar chomping research chemist and lab tinkerer, by night he would go down to the basement, put on a black beret and work on his palette knife landscapes, applying the thick gobs of oil paint after looking and looking.  He would spend a very, very long time mixing from one tube and from another tube until he had precisely the color he had in mind.  (I can still remember the unforgetable smells of oil paint and turpentine!).  As Dr. Thelin painted (and chewed on his never-to-be-smoked cigars) he'd talk to us kids as we watched in wonder.  Sometimes he'd just give us photo reproductions from Time magazine and ask us to find triangles, squares and other geometric forms buried in the images.  Other times he would explain planes of images.  And he is the man who explained to us the Golden Rectangle.  I could write a book of praise about this man (underappreciated by his wife who made no secret of the fact she wished he were 'successful', i.e. in management).  My love of art, unfortunately constrained by pressures of my harried life, is due in large part to him.  He opened a door that fortunately still remains open.  

Periodically I'll slip away, take a 'long lunch', and wander through the Houston Museum of Fine Art, and enjoy.  And I think of long-ago visits to the Uffizi, the Louvre, the New York Metropolitan, the old (snail shell) Guggenheim, and so on.... Ah, memories!

Olivia,

We are very much on the same page here.  I've never really enjoyed Picasso's work.  But I do respect his position as a trailblazer.  Without Picasso, there would never have been a Dali.  Right now, there is a great Dali exhibit at MoMA.  But the best Dali exhibit I've ever seen was the permanent collection at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL.

By the way, Mark Rothko strikes me as an out-and-out fraud.

The Turner exhibit you saw in Dallas has made its way to the Met.  Oddly, it is the first major retrospective of Turner's work the Met has ever done and it's about bloody time.  I haven't had the chance to go yet but I'm on pins and needles.

I grew up near the Gilcrease and Philbrook museums in Tulsa, OK.  When I was eight, I saw the classical armor collection at the Denver Museum about six months before I took my first trip to the Metropolitan.  And, of course, the Chicago Art Institute is world class (I'd like to go back but I'm excluded from the Peterman's Eye trip due to my sex).  So I hope my rhapsodizing about my own city does not place me among the "coastal snobs".  I am well aware of the fine art that is available throughout the nation.  New York's greatest advantage is its number and variety of options:

The Asia Society, El Museo del Barrio, Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, Japan Society Gallery, The Jewish Museum, The Kurdish Library & Museum, the Museum for African Art, the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Ukrainian Museum, and about 139 others.

But the problem with museum culture in large cities OR small towns is not a question of "rightful ownership" (which is just silly) but of generating interest among the locals.  The vast majority of the natives of both my small hometown in Missouri and my adopted home in New York have never been to a museum and have expressed no interest in visiting one.  The reputation of big city museums on the two coasts is based less on a question of quality or even size but the fact that big coastal cities like mine have a tourism trade.  Tourists go to the Smithsonian in Washington and the Met in New York far more often than Washingtonians and New Yorkers do.

To: mark swaim,

I didn't know anyone else knew about salgado....His black and white photograhs of Third World countries are very revealing.  You know he was trained as an economist and worked in the coffee indusrty as an economist before becoming a photographer.

I would love to own some of his work.

Mark-You should not be surprised to 'hear' me say that of course I researched usage of hoi polloi before I ever employed it, ages ago. While hoi means the in Greek, most authoritative references agree that the phrase is considered a single allusion. Since Greek and English are very different in their exercise of the term, and nothing that English borrows from other tongues is used in its unvarnished form (see al jabr etc), my application is considered correct. Your mentors are wrong, and in danger of seeming to affect a stuffed-shirt posture. Here's a succinct summary (not my primary reference, but it does collate relevant opinion) of the raging debate:

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

Take, therefore, this that I have given you, the great stick of learned opinion, and go forth with confident assurance to conversationally smite those who would admonish your practice of this convention.

On another note, the conceit that anything is off-limits in the dynamic and ever-evolving innovative brandishment of our language is nothing short of wishful thinking. While there is much to rue in current speech, the notion that these developments can be retarded or reversed is doomed. Resistance is commendable, but ultimately futile. In an astonishingly short time, I predict, current slang will be considered as quaint as the speech of Elizabethans, and contortions of the meaning of current words, and frank neologisms, will arise to confound traditional speakers. 

Also sprach Olivia...

Robert-I agree that Pablo (he always liked me calling him Pablo *smirk*) was a trailblazer, but he just got too odd, like my Irish great-aunt who lived in the Mourne countryside. She quit riding her bicycle about in the wee lanes and began to stay indoors and talk to people only she could see...

By coastal snobs, I refer to those who never cared about those lovely and sequestered works until, horror of horrors, they sparked the interest of the nouveau riche hicks in flyover country. Then, it was all stops out to save these precious works from disappearing into the hinterland. I've read several pieces whose thinly veiled elitism and disdain for the common folk and their desire to perhaps have some local access to great paintings was disappointing to say the least, unworthy and hypocritically unpleasant, forsooth. I'll say no more upon that arch debate, except that you, Robert, would be the last person I'd ever consider a snob of any sort, and your list of venues has engendered great longing in my peripatetic heart.

Go and see the Turner exhibit-it'll knock your socks off! Be sure and have a sandwich before you go, you may be there some time.

We here in LA have long been considered the vast waste land of art....but now we have the Getty, L.A. County Museum of Art, The LA City art museum, every ethnic museum  you can think of, hundreds of galleries with a wide range of artists represented, and, of course, our new buildings down town (some of which are works of art).

I remember in the 60's going to art galleries and wondering what everyone else was seeing that I didn't see in the Waste Land.

We also have a a leading design industry and many hundreds of antique stoes and malls.

We also have a fantastic music scene (all styles). If I want blues, rock, country, hip hop, rap, punk, opera, metal, heavy metal, bluegrass, jazz, ethnic, classical, I can find a venue any night of the week. And a theater scene (and many small community theaters run by well-known actors).  Cinema also...foreign, domestic, art house, and for those who like it the nations largest porn movie industry.

There is something for everyone in L.A. There may be snobs here but most people just like the variety and the opportunity.

For what it's worth, I'll add that I'm currently enamoured of the works of several artists, both near and far...

Argentinian Fabian Perez:   http://www.fabianperez.com/

Watercolourist Dean Mitchell, who reminds me of Andrew Wyeth: http://hearnefineart.com/hfa2/artist2_dean.html

William McNamara, Arkansas watercolourist, painter of wonderful landscapes: http://www.mcnamarawatercolors.com/

Magical realist Warren Criswell, who lives just down the road from me: http://www.warrencriswell.com/

and Michael Parkes, whose more affordable prints I collect, albeit very selectively. He has a distressing tendency to put little wings on the backs of humanoid figures, a practice that I loathe. So, in my opinion, those works are not done, as T. H. White would say.

Here's the link for a photographer I like a lot. He used to snap for the local rag, but he's far beyond that now:                                                      http://asiaphotos.net/photo.php?id=355

Sunday with a cuppa joe and the world of art-can it get any better?

ExPat-I'm SO THERE! Oh, for a round-trip train ticket! Flying's such a PITA anymore...

ExPat,

In the long rivalry between our two cities, I have often said that each one of us is the number one and number two depending on style.  If a young musician wants to go into rock & roll, he should set his sights on L.A. but New York would be an acceptable second choice.  On the other hand, if he wants to go into jazz, he should come to New York, though L.A. would be a good second choice.  Etc.

Olivia,

I see now the type you are describing.  Snobbery is not even their most disgusting trait.  The hypocrisy you mention is far more grating to my craw.  My MIL has a house in Saratoga Springs which she chose primarily because it is the Summer home of the New York City Ballet.  There was recently some discussion of the ballet leaving the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.  It was discovered that many Saratogans who had never set foot in the arts center in their lives had campaigned to keep the ballet in town because of the prestige it afforded their address.  I found this absolutely grotesque.  These people wanted others to be envious of something they, themselves, would not envy if the roles were reversed!

Olivia!  Your links are fantastic!  Thank you!  If some of you haven't 'clicked through' do it now  (and drag the URLs to your toolbar or put 'em in your favorites for future enjoyment!)

The music on the Fabian Perez website is playing as I write these words... mmmmmmm....

Thanks, Doc. I thought you all might enjoy them...

John McDermott's photos of hill tribe folks in Burma took me back many years to my 1970s time in Chiang Mai (when it was still a sleepy little town and when you had to fly there because Communist guerrillas operating across central Thailand made ground travel impossible.)  I hired a taxi and went to Lamphun, which was famous as having the most beautiful women in the country.  Maybe, maybe not.  But this mountainous area was indeed beautiful. A highlight was watching teak carvers in their tiny open air shops turn wood into furniture.  I bought a lot of things in Lamphun as gifts to bring back to family in the U.S.  (They were unimpressed.  I learned yet another lesson about 'pearls before swine' and have never repeated this gaffe...)

In retrospect, a 15-minute stop at a now-forgotten village along the road was one of the best things about my 'exploration'. I stumbled on a Buddhist temple with dozens of paintings illustrating the life of Guatama.  I photographed all of them (and I'm sure I still have them somewhere in my rat's nest of papers, boxes, etc). It was on this trip to Chiang Mai that I learned of Mara, the Buddhist counterpart of Satan.  (How little we know about our neighbors scattered around the world.)

In those days, the incredibly poor hilltribe women came down to sell incredible handcrafted necklaces and bracelets made of tiny brown seeds.  The going price was a nickel.  I bought one, and I wish I still had it.  Things slip away... one grasps, but sometimes only memories remain.  But McDermott's photos captured something hidden inside me -- and brought that something back to a flickering existence.... I'll have to look into the faces of these hard-working folks from time to time and time-travel back to those days.  

I love McDermott's pictures! I wish I had some framed on the walls, but the problem would be WHICH? Any of them would be edifying.

I'm glad they struck a chord, Doc.

Oh, and Roberts-you nailed it (um, my reference to snobs, that is), you naughty boy...

Olivia,

What else could you possibly have meant?  After all, you are always a lady in public.

Exactement

if we're going for 'enhanced realism', (to race, helter skelter, back to the original topic) my faves are the California Impressionists like Rose and Redmond...even more romantic than the Hudsonites and they love color.

Ex Pat...LA really turned a corner when the Getty opened.  There had been such a yearning for it for decades.  When my Ps lived in PV long, long ago, they said the same people would all show up at every mildly curtural event hoping...

For contemporary photogs, I'm partial to Kirk.  He's just starting out, but I like his eye.  I like some of the Treasure Island shots and some of the Environs ones

http://www.kirkcrippens.com/portfolio.html 

My wife and daughters having got together and planned some shopping, they were in agreement that it might be a perfect time to set me free for a few hours.

Their itinerary probably included visits to places with cauldrons of potpourri on eternal simmer in back rooms beneath large slow fans the better to fend off competing big city aromas, crawling or flying insects and guys like me.

Hours to myself in London. I didn't even bother affecting abandonment and bolted before they had finished advising me how not to behave.

I saw Scotland Yard, a disappointment looking a lot like a big city police station and St. James Park where an acquaintance had asked me to ascertain if something he had said had happened there, could have happened there. It not only could have done, it was as I stood watching. Perfect.

On a Westminster street corner, I stood beside a very large, well dressed, man with a mustache so imposing that it cast its own shadow.

Between us darted a man in an interesting looking gray suit of an unusual slubby fabric, wearing a red and navy school tie. He had, in his haste, ignored both the "Do Not Walk" and "Look Right" cautions and was flipped by the side of a quiet and heavy looking car, onto his back at our feet.

I had a close look at the leather soles and curiously reinforced heels of his footwear as they whistled under my nose. "Hmm, bespoke I shouldn't wonder," I remember thinking.

The big, more thoughtful man, reached down and with a hand under each arm, hoisted the fellow up, shook him gently into alignment and set him on his feet.

"A boisting holden scroppen sure vooggen?" he asked in a Scandinavian accent.

"Yes, thank you," repled the victim, "I'm fine, really. Thanks so much."

Bit of a dilemma: Which one to follow? The large, slower, nurturing, living embodiment of Wally Walrus or the faster guy who, if he spoke, would be understandable.

Having, at that time-as now to be honest- more speed than wit, I chose the latter.

It was a challenge to keep him in sight but it wasn't long before he met an attractive woman and two curly headed kids in riding habits and they all piled into a London cab.

Finding myself on the threshold of the Tate Gallery, the question was: Do you really want to spend money to be able for the rest of your life to say: "One day, I guess it was at The Tate..."

That problem was solved when a stylish lady approached to offer a packet that included admission and some other amenities that I didn't understand on the promise that I would take the time to make the most of them.

"Do you swear?" she demanded with a beautiful smile.

Resisting the temptation to say: "Well, yeah but I am trying to cut down on it," I shrugged and shuffled in.

The admissions person was impressed. Arching an eyebrow, she asked: "Friend of her ladyship are we?"

I was issued a tag on a lanyard and left to wonder if the look was privileged, knowledgeable art enthusiast or right proper tourist dork. Not especially caring, I forgot about it and just wandered around watching and eavesdropping.

- and here it comes: a wee, thin connection to topic-

I passed with a glance, a huge landscape oil but then came back for a look and then, another. If hard to ignore is any kind of meaningful criterion in art appreciation, something was at least beginning to happen.

It would have amounted to little had it not been for a tall, tidy gray haired man who hurried over to say: "You are so close, it is driving my crazy. Please let me help."

With that, he asked me to close my eyes, take about four guided steps and open them.

I could feel the soft moist stream side earth beneath my feet, the dappled sun through oaks leaves seemed to extend well past where I stood and a flock of small birds on the right flew past my head.

"Jesus, " I muttered, breaking an old commandment while fulfilling a recent promise.

He had just time enough to explain that the phenomenon was peculiar to that painting and to persons of a certain height in a receptive mood and then, he was yoo-hooed away by a woman in a large hat whom I still find myself hoping not to have been his wife.

Though ever forgetting the name of the artist or the painting seemed, at the time, impossible, I've managed both.

On the bright side, I have come away with a very useful phrase in pidgin Nordic walrus should the need ever arise. It probably won't. When's the last time you heard of a guy with a concealed weapon getting mugged?

To Tajar,

The Getty is really a good place to go.  The admission is free, parking fee reasonable, food expensive (eat before going or eat afterwards). Great view, impressive architecture, excellent exhibits.

Before the end of this month I plan to see the Bernini exhibit.  Bernini's potrait busts will be displayed. Having only seen them in a book on  late Renaissance/Baroque sculpture, I'm looking forward to it...in fact Im excited.

There is a little place in Utica NY which houses Thomas Cole's "Voyages of Life".  I was fortunate enough to grow up staring at them in fascination and continue to go back and see them regularly.  Well, the little place was designed by Philip Johnson, now has an art school affiliated with the Pratt and houses all sorts of pieces, the Calder on the front lawn, the Pollock on the back wall, the Picasso(s) on the second floor.  http://www.mwpai.org/

Perhaps the greatest paintings of the Hudson River School:

http://www.mwpai.org/museum/collections/thevoyageoflife/

Look for the ghosts.  Next weekend off to Providence see my daughter and the Chihuly exhibit.  And if you happen upon Utica, definitely try the beer.

Chihuly was here, and it was wonderful! Thanks for the links!

Olivia, I compliment you on your links.  Too many things to see and not enough time.  We head to Truro MA in a few weeks and will visit where Hopper painted.  Missed the show in Boston sadly. (MWPI has a one though.)

 DPR-- in all my trips to Saratoga, I have not seen the ballet.  Heard many good things, a case again of too much to see.  But if you venture upstate, try the opera in Cooperstown.  And I will look for the ballet.

ExPat:

I became interested in Salgado in the mid90's when I had undertaken a writing project about polio. He had a polio portfolio shot in rare places where it hasn't been eradicated. If memory served, his photographs figured heavily in liner notes for an album by Jerry Harrison (lead guitarist for Talking Heads) and his style was heavily imitated in arty Smashing Pumpkins videos. (Both groups insist there is no "The" in their names.) The writing project was for a book put out in 1996 by Encyclopedia Britannica, and I spent a significant amount of time discussing it, and arguing about it, face to face, with Mortimer Adler and John van Doren. I was trying to use hoi polloi to desscribe the downtrodden people suffering in Salgado's photographs, and in an early draft, Adler and van Doren nixed "the hoi polloi."

The chapter I wrote became a conversation piece with a woman I met who was from Thessaloniki, Greece, and had moved to the US.  We fell totally in love with each other.

Stoney,

Another gorgeous story to be sure.  The smartest thing you did was to forget the names of the painting and artist.  It gives you the best excuse in the world to go back.  Though I'm not sure it's wise to follow people who ignore traffic signals and get sideswiped by cars.

unhinged,

Is that the Glimmerglass Opera you mean?  I would LOVE to go sometime.  It is a legendary venue, renowned for top of the line productions.  The day will come.

I've actually never attended a performance at SPAC myself but my MIL has taken me to see the place and the surrounding park.  I went to the races shortly before my daughter was born and had a grand time.  Now that she's four, I really wanted to take her to see the horses this year but we didn't make it.  Maybe next year.  It's hard to get away in the summertime when you're in the tourism trade.

DeadPirateRoberts,

You're a peach. Thanks

mark swaim

I knew a hypochondriac, actually their king, not the best read or most literate guy but miles in front of me.

The room in which he was more or less self-confined, within a wonderful arts and crafts oddly spacious seeming bungalow was furnished to 1940's Mercy Hospital standards and decor in cream and woebegone green,

It was never known exactly how he achieved and maintained the cloying chemical/body odor atmosphere but it seemed perfectly authentic.

He had six pages of a piece by Adler about a book by Adler that were never out of his reach. Someone finally thought to laminate them in scroll form before they fell completely to bits.

Much later than sooner, he became actually ill and did actually die. His marker does not say: "I told you so," but it should.

Around here, Adler's volume: "How To Read A Book." has long long hung around the little room upstairs fitted out in porcelain and enamel and has the look of something into which a number of people have at least dipped. God knows they've had the time.

Until this moment, it hadn't dawned on me that I'd had a quirky devotion of my own to a chapter in Witold Rybczynski's "A Short History of an Idea." Endlessly rereading it for the simplicity of its language and premise both of which seemed to me, understandable. And all without canned farts or ether.

Thanks, unhinged-those links were just off the cuff...

Isn't 'too many things to see and not enough time' a grand thing entirely?

Mark, by those guys' reasoning you couldn't say 'the algebra', or 'the LeSabre', or 'the El Nino' and on and on. Even smart people can forget that just because they are an expert in one field it doesn't make them, or anybody, a knowitall. My grandmother, the 4th grade teacher, would've made short work of them...

Salgado's work always reminds me of Dorthea Lange's work...different but similar, I can't quite explain it, but it something about how they portray the landscape without showing it, simply by portraying the people who live there.  Actually a lot of photographers do that, Bresson, Parada, Eugene Smith, Leibovitz (I know, 'sellout'  and controversy always come up when people talk about her but she is visionary), and poor Kevin Carter.

Have you ever felt that you both loved and hated any particular landscape?  There are a lot of gorgeous places in this world and there are a lot of places people would consider "ugly" or depressing or desolate.  Is a naturally beautiful and desirable landscape and more worthwhile than an unpopular one.  As a child I always hated summer and autumn here in northern Utah because everything dried up and was brown and dusty, but the older I get the more I appreciate the desert beauty in our state.  Making that long drive down the length of the state on I-15 can be monotonous as it is scrubby and dry, but you catch it in the right light or notice the right details and it can be more beautiful for its "ugliness".  Does that make any sense? 

Its easy for a lush green forest to look good, but I sometimes think the desert more beautiful for not being easily appreciated.  And now I am rambling.  Life has taught me to appreciate everything, even if I hate it at first blush, beauty is everywhere if you choose to see it, not just in a poster of a white sand beach in Tahiti.

DPR my favorite Dali piece isn't a painting, it is a dream sequence in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Spellbound", but then I'm a sucker for anything that has to do with Ingrid Bergman or Gregory Peck.  I "get" why people are enthralled with artists like Rothko, Stella, Pollack and Mondrian, it bothers me when I'm in a museum or class and here people say "I could paint that" or "It looks like something my 2 year old would paint"...if it were really that simple to make something like that we all would do it.  The difference between them and joe-six pack is that they had the foresight and courage to do it and put it out in the world.  Why do people have to knock art that they don't like?  I don't want to hear it, even if I agree with the person's opinion.  I would rather say nothing about what I don't like and praise what I do like, but that's just me.

I never understood people who say "I don't like Picasso", he was so prolific and ever evolving that I truly believe that everyone can find at least one of his pieces that they truly feel connected to.  That said I don't feel moved by a lot of his 'well-known' or 'important' pieces.  His sketches move me more than any of his finished paintings.  The man produced 20,000 known works of art and he made people think and feel and discuss (notice I didn't say that they liked it or felt moved, but he was and is a conversation starter).

Doc I agree with you about slides in art books not living up to the glory of the physical paintings themselves.  I loved my Art History and History of Photography classes at uni, but nothing compares to seeing the real works in person.  Remember the desert island topic a few weeks ago?  I said that a smart person would take a computer with all the books they wanted to read on it, instaed of limited themselves to a handful of selections, but that I couldn't do it because I loved the look and smell of books and physical experience of reading a real book, even though you get the exact same information?  Its very much the same with art.  But not everyone feels that way, I've tried time and again to explain why I love going to museums to my husband and he doesn't get it, he hates going to museums and I can't understand why.  I think its sort of like the difference between dog people and cat people in a weird way.

What about artists who don't paint landscapes, but instead MAKE landscapes?  We have a prime example of that here in our state.  "Spiral Jetty" but Robert Smithson was a massive undertaking and can really only be fully seen from the air and a lot of people think its worthless, but has a stark beauty to it (when its not sumberged and unviewable).  Or all the Christo type artists?  Love them or hate them, they have an impact.

I am not an artist, that's why I dropped out of the photography program I was in at school.  I don't have a "vision" and photography, as beautiful and moving as it can be, never felt "honest" to me, always felt like a fraud.  I didn't make the landscape or interpret it, I didn't create the moments I was photographing.  Truth be told I wasn't a good photographer so it didn't matter if I felt like an artist or not.  But I learned that I've been given the gift of appreciating, everthing.  Music, stories, art, nature, people.  I just can't show others how I view these things like an artist can, but it doesn't mean I feel or experience them to a lesser degree.  With the photography training I realised that I could tell the difference between a lucky shot (we called them happy accidents) and someone with a real talent or "eye" that consistently not only caught beautiful scenes but could translate what they saw in texture, patterns, depth, emotion, light into a print that the rest of us could understand even if we didn't notice those things ourselves in the same situation.

Hmmmmm the above doesn't have a lot to do directly with today's discussion.  So I'll say this:  Landscape artists I like Blakelock, Wyeth, Cotman, Weir, Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Moran, any of the "Group of Seven", and the WPA artists, many of whom have never been credited for the art they created for the posters. 

Ooh another thought about Landscapes, I love the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena.  They are like living paintings, truly works of art.

I say all hail Bob Ross, whose shows of himself painting landscapes are in syndication all over the world. He originally appeared on PBS. I am sure many were dismissive of him, but people began to see he was fascinating, at mesmeric and alway patiently demonstrating brushing techniques.

A German friend told me there is a German cable chanel that just shows episodes of Bob Ross's show continuously. Rather like the German station that broadcasts continuously a close-up surveillance, wiht fixed, tripodded camera of the goings on in someone's large home aquarium

Mark Swaim I was actually thinking about him when I was typing my neverending post, he was like human prozac.  He made it look so easy, I tried to "paint along" once and I still have no idea how he did it because mine wasn't even good enough to hang on the fridge.

My husband and I still laugh everytime we hear someone say "a happy little...".  I posted a blog about Bob after spending a lazy Sunday afternoon watching "The Joy of Painting" you can read it here (about half way down.)

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