S+ART

Orchids of Latin America

    Now I know that the spring weather has been eluding everyone with unexpected cold fronts and the snowstorms but there is a way to experience the spring that we know and love. The way to get out of the winter-like weather that is keen on sticking around is a visit to the ! 

    The Orchids of Latin America exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History  curated by Smithsonian Gardens reminds visitors what spring is like. Walking through this exhibit, you feel like you entering a tropical rain forest. The exhibit contains beautiful orchids indigenous to Latin America and highlights the threats to their habitat. One of these flowers is the Cattleya purpurata (below), which is an orchid native to Brazil, found high in the canopy of wooded hillsides. It begins to flower in late spring and early summer and is very popular among orchid growers.

Cattleya purpurata Smithsonian Gardens Orchid Collection, James Osen, photographer

        So remember when you are walking around outside, wishing that the spring weather would finally come to Washington, know that there is a tropical sanctuary, The National Natural History Museum. Hurry though; the exhibit closes on April 21st! 

 

---- Dylan Planeta

Women's Suffrage Exhibit

               Official program-Woman suffrage procession March 3, 1913 photo credit: Adam Cuerden

    In the early 20th century American Suffragists held many organized marches to voice their support for a woman’s right to vote. This fight for the right to vote was picked up by many news outlets including The New York Times, which gave the movement national attention.

    Alice Paul, who was a dedicated activist of woman’s rights, planned the demonstration. Paul was committed to the idea that men and women should have equal rights. She organized the World Woman’s Party that campaigned for equal rights on an international basis along with founding the National Woman’s Party. Paul also authored the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, which finally passed in 1970, granting voting rights for women in the United States. This occasion had 24 floats, 9 bands, 6 chariots etc. as the parade went from the Capitol to the Treasury building the day before the presidential inauguration. The attention President-elect Woodrow Wilson received paled in comparison.

    The procession received an unprecedented amount of attention over President Woodrow Wilson who arrived on the same day of the parade for the presidential inauguration, receiving almost no attention.

    The event program featuring artwork by Ben M. Dale advertised what became one of the most notable Women’s suffrage events. The cover depicts a woman riding on a white horse wearing elegant attire while blowing a trumpet with a banner draped over it reading “votes for women”. On exhibit at Smithsonian National Museum of American History until October 2013, the program shares a display with items that reveal the impact of the event from the costumes worn to banners, sashes, postcards, letters and photographs.

 

---- Dylan Planeta

Francis Bacon's Study for Portrait V

    Francis Bacon was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1909. Bacon had a troubled childhood and was often left alone at home when he was very young. Eventually, Bacon was forced out of his home in 1926 when he was 17 years old and his father caught him trying on his mother’s clothing. When Bacon moved to London he met Roy de Maistre, an artist, who became Bacon’s mentor and encouraged him to take up oil painting. On a trip to Paris, Bacon saw surrealist art works and began to model his works after the style.

    Inspired by the sale of his painting Crucifixion, he opened an exhibition of his own, which went unnoticed. He was then rejected by the International Surrealist Exhibition; experiencing depression he destroyed many of his works. Bacon preferred to work from photographs and was influenced by the work of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge’s attempts to capture motion intrigued Bacon and peaked his interest in painting in series. After years of frustration and rejection by established art organizations, Bacon was granted a solo exhibition in the Hanover Gallery where his Heads series, which included interpretations of Pope Innocent X, was featured. This series was the beginning of many of Bacon’s sinister interpretations of Diego Velasquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X. The style Bacon used was painting on the unprimed side of the canvas to give the painting a rough texture.

    The painting Study for Portrait V (1953 Oil on Canvas) is the fifth of eight paintings that was Bacon’s interpretation of Diego Velasquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X. Bacon decided to portray Innocent as a very crude, evil looking being without a soul. The image reflects on the corruptness of Pope Innocent X through the dark nature of the painting.

 

---- Dylan Planeta

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  

Pont Neuf, Paris by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1872)

     Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, France in 1841.  Renoir’s interest in art began when his family moved near the Louvre art museum in Paris in 1844. As a teenager, Renoir was an apprentice to a porcelain painter and copied designs in order to decorate dishware. This imitation technique would help Renoir with his painting as he would copy various works in the Louvre.  In 1862 he entered a famous art school; the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Two years later he was accepted in the Paris Salon exhibit. Even though the exhibit helped Renoir make a name for himself in the art world, Renoir had difficulty making a living.  Renoir was drafted into the French military in 1870 to help fight the Germans. After the war ended, Renoir and his artist friends; Pissarro, Monet, Cézanne and Edgar Degas, displayed their works in what is known as the first Impressionist exhibition. The paintings were dubbed as “impressions” due to the untraditional methods used in the paintings.

    In Renoir’s 1872 oil painting Pont Neuf, Paris, he captured the oldest bridge in Paris along with the landscape. Renoir used a bright color palette in this painting giving it a “summer” feel. Renoir also used minimal strokes to give little detail to the figures on the bridge to demonstrate how light effects the senses. Renoir’s brother, Edmond, appears twice in the painting because Renoir asked him to stop people on the bridge so he could add them into the painting. Due to Edmond stopping people at different points on the bridge, Renoir ended up including him twice in the painting according to the National Gallery of Art.

---Dylan Planeta

Henri Rousseau's The Dream

The Dream by Henri Rousseau 1910

“Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see. ”
- Henri Rousseau

The Cyrus Cylinder

The Cyrus Cylinder Clay, Babylon, Mesopotamia, after 539 BCE  D x H: 7.8-10 x 21.9-22.8 cm British Museum,  London,ME 90920 Photo: ©The Trustees of the British Museum

    On March 9th the Cyrus Cylinder, inscribed by King Cyrus of Persia (559-530 BC), is making its first trip to the United States and debuting at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. This famous object is on loan from the British Museum for a nine month tour around the United States.  

    The Cyrus Cylinder gained its fame as being arguably the first “bill of human rights” according to the Sackler Gallery’s website. The Babylonian “cuneiform” on the cylinder announces victory over former ruler Nabonidus and successful conquest of Babylon.  According to the Iran Chamber Society the cuneiform reveals that Cyrus intended to allow religious, racial and linguistic freedoms of the conquered people of Babylon. Cyrus’ respect of humanity caused him to be adored by his subjects as he put his human rights ideals, as described on the cylinder, into practice; many of these principles are still practiced today. For example, a replica of the cylinder is kept at the United Nations HQ in New York City and has been translated into the six official U.N languages. 

    The Washington tour at the Smithsonian Arthur M. Sackler Gallery will end on the 28th of April and move onto its next museum destination on its five museum tour in the U.S before returning to the British Museum. 

---Dylan Planeta

Beauty and the Brain Part II

    This is the second blog post following Shahin Shikhaliyev’s lecture Beauty and the Brain, who is a TSA instructor and artist. After the lecture, he took part in a panel discussion moderated by Andrew Taylor that consisted of Terry Davidson, who is the director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at American University, and Art Shapiro, who is a psychology professor at American University that specializes in areas of visual perception and cognitive neuroscience.
Shahin Shikhaliyev (far left) Terry Davidson (left) Art Shapiro (right) Andrew Taylor (far right)

    Davidson opened the discussion by stating that we engage in all types of behaviors and psychological functions. Behavioral function, according to Davidson, includes memory, learning, emotion and perceptions, all part of a very complex process.

    Demonstrating visual perception, Shapiro used a water bottle as an example of how incorrectly perceive the water bottle. Shapiro pointed out that our pre-conceived notion about the water bottle is not an accurate representation of the water bottle in the physical world.  Shapiro then asked the audience to examine the bottle and asked if the circumference of the bottle was smaller or larger than the height. I, along with the crowd, all answered smaller. Shapiro then wrapped his power cord around the bottle and shocked the crowd, unraveling the cord and compared the measurement to the height; it was taller. This caused an “oooooo-ahhhhh” in the crowd.

Art Shapiro and his magic water bottle

    Shapiro explained why this happens; our eye begins a process called transduction, changing one form of energy into another. Our eye uses this process in this instance by taking the protons from the light reflecting off the bottle, some of which is absorbed by the water bottle, and combining it with another form of energy. This turns that energy into a neurological signal that changes the configuration of the bottle.  

    Davidson chimes in on perspective, stating that in order to be able to identify an object we need to have prior experience with that object. Without prior experience we will not know what it is and be unable to identify it. In the case of abstract art; a viewer’s perception of the artwork, the person deciding if they like the artwork or not, depends on their past experience with abstract art.

    Davidson goes on to mention that our brain perceives beauty through experience, though at first our brains do not register a positive response. However, the more experience with something we have, the less complicated our brain perceives it to be, which makes us like it more.

Shahin Shikhaliyev answering the question

 Moderator Andrew Taylor asked how Shikhaliyev would tell his students to draw the water bottle. Shikhaliyev’s response was “I would tell them not to think about it as a bottle, the more you think about it as a bottle the less likely you will be able to draw it. You have to make it an abstract object and establish some kind of parameters that are proportionate to scale. Then start trying to define the edges and go on from there”.



-- Dylan Planeta

Introduction to Calligraphy with Shane Perry

    On February 28th, I was able to sit in on Shane Perry’s Introduction to Calligraphy class, an eight session evening course part of TSA’s winter course line-up. Shane began the class by showcasing a student’s work along with bringing in examples. This class focused on Roman capital letters which requires more work than one would guess.

    Roman capitals are all based on the geography of the roman capitals template (shown below) and use of intersections in order to get the proportions of the letters correctly.

    Shane then explained the difference of their new Mitchell nib that allows for more flexibility. Shane then demonstrated how to correctly put the nib on the pen holder while going around the room helping students put them on.  Once this process was done, Shane used a projector in order to demonstrate how to form these capital letters by showing correct letters versus wrongly proportioned letters. For example, Shane showed the class a “B that looks 8 months pregnant” as a demonstration of incorrect proportion while also getting laughs.

Shane using a projector to show how to make Roman Capitals

    Shane’s classroom is also a very calm environment that allows students to work stress free. Shane offers tea to the class while playing calming music in the background, offering advice to students to help build their techniques.

    I even got my chisel-edge pen wet and tried my hand at calligraphy; needless to say I need much more practice. However, I did learn how important pen angles are along with the number of strokes are in the construction of the letter.

    Shane told the class “when you do something in fewer strokes, it takes away from the formality” as he was demonstrating what letters look like in fewer strokes compared to higher stroke count letters they were learning.

Shane giving his class advice on line spacing

    I walked away with tips for taking on a solo project; always make lines for spacing before you start and practice in regular pen before beginning your final project to get a feel for how the letters are constructed before using the chisel-edge pen.   

--- Dylan Planeta

Beauty and the Brain

    On February 22nd, TSA teacher and artist Shahin Shikhaliyev gave a lecture titled “Beauty and the Brain” in the Katzen Arts Center at American University. Shahin discussed how our brain perceives beautiful pieces of art along with how to construct works of art piece by piece.
Shahin speaking at the Katzen Arts Center

    “I like to learn new things, it’s like image painting, you’re staring at this blank space and you have no clue what’s there. Then slowly some kind of structure begins to emerge, then the parts and they all start working together and it gets clearer and clearer and has some meaning to it and then you understand”
    
    Shahin discusses how lines, shape, light, color and spatial organization on their own can be used to create the illusion of motion and also create meaning. One of the examples that Shahin used was Sandro Botticelli’s Venus and Mars.
    Botticelli's Venus and Mars 1483

     Shahin analyzed the picture to demonstrate how special organization and lines can alter how the viewer sees a picture. For example, Shahin points out how the picture feels claustrophobic due to its spatial organization. In the painting, Shahin discusses how Venus seems like she wants to leave the painting compared to Mars who is stretched out, relaxing and appears to be dominating over Venus who seems confined to a small space. Another point Shahin made about this picture is about how lines can affect a painting. Shahin points out the Satyrs holding a lance, which appear to be going right into Mars’ head. This adds an aggressive nature to the painting.
Shahin Shikhaliyev's Bicyclist 2012

    Shahin on spatial organization; “Spatial organization is the place where the artist are the most psychologically charged. I don’t think the picture of the object has anything to do with that.” He goes on to say that “it seems that objects are becoming obstacles rather than connecting with the viewer. I think that composition in general is the pathway to deal with this problem of objects.”

--Dylan Planeta

Storing Digital Files

    In my last post, I wrote about a potential problem related to film processing and only getting the images back on a disk (the negatives were inconveniently discarded by the lab).  Some of you may wonder, "What's the big deal?"  Well, for starters, the negatives are mine and I want them.  Second, disks don't last forever.
 
    I've written several posts on what archival means and how it applies to the actual, physical artwork, but I haven't talked about storing digital files.  Now, how many of you have had hard drives fail?  How many of you had hard drives fail and lost files that were not backed up?  How many didn't learn their lesson the first time?  (My hand is still raised...). 
 
    Lucky for me, the majority of the files that I lost when my hard drives died were scans of negatives, which I can totally just scan, again.  In this case, the only thing I've really lost is time.  If those had been the only copies of digital photographs, then they most likely would be gone forever.  Even if I had stored those files on a disk, after about five years, they'll likely be gone, too. 
 
    How should these fleeting images be stored?  The Library of Congress offers these tips for archiving digital files:
•  Make at least two copies of your selected photos—more copies are better.
•  One copy can stay on your computer or laptop; put other copies on separate media such as DVDs, CDs, portable hard drives, thumb drives or Internet storage.
•  Check your photos at least once a year to make sure you can read them.
•  Create new media copies every five years or when necessary to avoid data loss.
 
By the way, here is possibly the oldest known photographic negative, dating back 178 years. 
 
To summarize, back up your files.  And, then, back up the back ups.  Or, you know, just shoot film and make sure you get your negatives back.
 
-Angela