Regionalist on a Math Trip

So this may qualify me as a bit of a nutcake, but oh well.

Lately I've been thinking about art and math and psychadellics. Specifically DMT, Alex Colville and geometry including fractals. Far out man.

But no, really. I find them strangely related too, since Colville's paintings are strangely spiritual and certainly reverencial to classical geometry such as the notion of the golden mean, which is clear when looking at his preliminary drawings.

Colville's drawing for Woman in Bathtub, painted in 1973.

All of this coincides with a recent conversation I had with a friend who told me about the documentary DMT: The Spirit Molecule. I watched it last night, and it got me thinking about mathematical laws of nature we might not have figured out scientifically yet, but that nonetheless exist and have a profound effect on us. Check out the trailer here. Alex Grey features in the film, another artist sensitive to the possibility of mysticism in mathematics.

"Vision Crystal" by Alex Grey

Which leads me to my next point: Fractals. The above image by Alex Grey actually portrays a fractal (in red, embellished with the eyes). Fractals were discovered in the 70's as explained by Benoit Mandelbrot, and in short explained as a pattern repeating and encompassing itself. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it well, but my point is, they're really cool, apparently useful, and in my humble opinion have to have something to do with our perception and understanding of visual beauty, which in a way is what we all deal with.

For more on fractals, here's a great PBS Nova episode on the matter. I wonder what Alex Colville thinks about it all, or if he knows about it at all...

Curnoe, Favro and Colville Today

Never mind the news that this blog has stopped being for Gemey's Art History class! The second part of this class also requires a journal, so this class blog a' keeps a' goin'. So bare with me a little longer. For those of you from the class who might be new to this blog, welcome, and please don't hesitate to comment (here or by responding on your own blog) or share and steal things from here and adapt them in your own ways. Cheers.

Today's Art History class, amongst other things, gave an overview of regionalist artists Greg Curnoe, Murray Favro, and Alex Colville. As I mentioned in class, I was pleasantly surprised at the relevance of these artists to contemporary discourse, artistic and otherwise.

Artistically, Favro brings in the methods and the craft of other disciplines to explore his concepts, particularly in his "Projected Reconstruction" series. In these, he sculpts, builds and arranges white objects onto which he projected slides or videos. The result is visually enchanting, such as in his installation "Van Gogh's Room" reconstructing Van Gogh's painting "Bedroom in Arles" (1888).

"Van Gogh's Room" at the Art Gallery of Ontario (1973-74). The projection fills the warped white furniture sculptures with colour. If you haven't seen the original painting, check it out here.

Favro's medium of choice, installation, is still still talks to us and challenges us today. Artists such as Tony Oursler and Krysztof Wodiczko continue and extend his practice of projection.

Oursler's "Marlboro, Camel, Winston, Parliament, Salem, Marlboro Light, American Spirit" (2009) source

Wodiczko's "Hiroshima Projection" (1999-2000) source

I was also struck by Colville's attention to detail and to the skills of his craft. His paintings are meticulous, but full of mysticism and symbolism. This reminds me of a talk by my painting teacher Chris Down, and of how there seems to be a resurgence of representational painting in the department and in contemporary art, or perhaps a new lack of distinction between abstract and representational painting.

"Horse and Train"(1954) by Alex Colville. The painting was inspired by the line “Against a regiment I oppose a brain, and a dark horse against an armoured train.” in South African writer Roy Campbell's poem “Dedication to Mary Campbell”. source

Additionally, in terms of subject matter, all three artists had works depicting what we refer to today as "sustainable transportation", a coincidence (?) I couldn't pass up. The trains in Colville's famous painting "Horse and Train" and Murray Favro's "SD40 Diesel Engine" refer to very different ideas, but capture my interest just the same, since I wish little else more than a Canadian (passenger and freight) train revival. As for Greg Curnoe, he was a notorious bike enthusiast, a fact that spilled over evidently into his art practice, and I'm sure he would have loved the current revived interest for the green mode of transportation.

Favro's "SD40 Diesel Engine" (2000) source

One of Curnoe's many paintings of bikes, "Untitled (orange bicycle)" (1990).

That's all for now!

Labours of Time

I find myself thinking about time a whole lot and the mechanical watch. It's wonderful how such an object, at an intersection of craft and engineering, quantifies and solidifies our concept of time, which is debatibly an illusion. The movie Hugo got me romanticizing about it when it associated clocks to trains and trainstations, my other current obsessions.

Hugo is an orphaned boy living in the great clock at Gare Montparnasse in Paris. The story is nothing short of magical in all the best ways, weaving fact and fiction about the beginnings of cinema and its illusions.

Watch (haha) this National Film Board documentary called À l'abri du temps by Stéphane Drolet and discover one Canadian watch-maker's (and his family's) venture to further his craft in Switzerland.

Also, a brief overview of clock-making by How It's Made. Gotta love that show.