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Although it's difficult to ascertain the dimensions by the photo, these playful plastic pieces by Mexican artist Damian Ortega (currently showing at Beaubourg) caught my eye, not only because of the bright colors, but also the play of colors as the plastic objects mingle, making new colors. They also remind me of Japanese plastic toys I had as a kid (never knew who gave them to me though)




Other bright colors not often found in nature

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These reds and berry colors are so lucious, you could eat them. What makes an artist choose the bold-rich-saturated-energetic-aggressive color red for a large room installation (this set of Mark Rothko paintings were originally destined for the Four Season's restaurant in NYC until he cancelled the commission). I'm not sure, but it was as interesting to walk through Sandy Skoglund's "Fox Games" at the Denver Art Museum, if not slightly terrifying. Winding through foxes and so much red brings to mind frightening fairy tales or rabid animals. And Cildo Meireles' monocromatic room at the Tate, with reds both flat and dimensional just make you hungry for something satisfying, like triple chocolate mousse drizzled in raspberry sauce.

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The vivid chrome colors in this piece by Jeff Koons immediately caught my eye; even though these large stylized "flowers" are probably pretty weighty, the finish makes them look like delicate glass. It's funny how we need the slightest hints of identification to help us move more easily in contemporary art; "Big Iron Blobs in Chrome Paint" just doesn't have the same recognition and charm as "Tulips."

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Really enjoyed coming across this exhibit currently showing at the the Pompidou. Featuring the work of Jacques Villegle, it's about what's revealed as posters or paper are pasted in layers then torn over time. That's not unlike self-discovery (or discovery of another) where painful tears can be made to the spirit, prompting us to change, to overcome, to heal. Although we may change (for the better) over time, the essential beauty remains

I found a lot of this in NYC streets a couple of summers ago, and some of the images are quite haunting, as if the faces had something to say, but were trapped in muteness:

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A remarkable woman who lived several distinct lives, Lee Miller's son never knew she was a photographer until rummaging around in their attic after her death, and in addition to modeling, war correspondant, photographer, international artist with other Surrealists, she was quite the spirited and strong woman who dramatically rebelled against the objectification of women. The exhibit SFMOMA, includes video http://www.sfmoma.org/media/features/miller/index.html, one of which recounts that particular story


Another Surrealist, Florence Henri, famously used doppelgängers (mirror images) in her photographic self-portraits, implying a replication of the self, perhaps so the self can be further revealed, portrayed, investigated. There's also the theatrical, shocking element (for the 1930s). Model looks so calm although effectively floating and cut in half, not unlike the beautiful women in magic shows who are seeminly cut in half with their body parts displaced. Although their psychological selves are not on display, we delight in seeing them alive and whole again in the end.

Portrait Composition, 1930

Featured in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lisette Model, influencial photography instructor of Diane Arbus, took then closely cropped images of people on the street, whether in Nice or New York, the images are stark, forthright, sometimes mocking:

Coney Island Bather, Gambler, Albert-Alberta

Folks appearing closer up because of the crop (too bad the images are so small)

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Sometimes our eyes and minds simply need a rest, a moment of respite, especially with the constant blast of negative campaigning, not to mention the implosion of the global economy occuring these days, which is probably why I've recently signed up for a meditation group BBQ.

This image by Uta Barth is restful yet slightly jarring with the red vertical line cutting through it:

"Magnolia Blossom" by Imogen Cunningham reminds me of a late afternoon nap with a warm breeze billowing the drapes covering opened windows:


Similiarly, the silky material on Christo Jeanne-Claude's Pont Neuf billow and create soothing movement transforming stone into something softer (plug for the Christo Jeanne-Claude exhibit going on at the Center for Visual Art in downtown Denver through November)

Some restful, slightly billowy images of my own:

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Although we know Walker Evans for his Great Depression images, he also did a body of work on African masks, which where shown at MOMA in 1935 and again in the Louvre in 2007:

Masque DAN le Cote d'Ivoire, 1935

This weekend I went to a talk sponsored by the Denver Public Library and given by Judy Anderson and Ginny Holye, two book artists in their 60s. These two remarkable women have embedded the joys and sorrows of their lives into their collaborative efforts; Anderson conceives the form and printing of the books while Hoyle writes the poetry element. Anderson taught in Japan and mentioned that the Japanese use masks to reveal and become transparent, while Westerners use masks to obscure.

In marked contrast, Frieda Kahlo had little use for masks and painfully bares her interior life and self for all to see, although we sympathize rather than judge, even admire her for it:

The Broken Column (La columna rota), 1944

Or the mask can be functional, as in Augusta Clawson's welding mask donated to the Smithsonian in 1988. Given an undercover assignment at the Swan Island Shipyard in Portland, Oregon, her mission was to find out why women recruited as welders were quitting as soon as they finished their training, which required another invisible mask of intelligence and secrecy. Her two months' experience as a welder became the basis of her 1944 book Shipyard Diary.

Welding Mask, 1943

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Am working backwards this week using my images as the starting point. This was definitely a month of jolting into a rude but necessary awareness, and it has been a bumpy rough ride that at least has slowed down without quite coming to a stop. Funny that significant change and shakeup is also occurring in the outside world. Although somewhat destructive on some level, also realizing that realism may be a more constructive way of looking at my relationships going forward, but the familiar is looking a little odd these days; the same but not the same:



Although I've personalized and have taken this out of its larger feminist context, this work by Kirsten Justesen, "Sculpture II", a part of Wack! that originated at LACMA and showed at PS1 pretty much sums up how I've been feeling lately; social confusion and isolation, unwelcomed containment or restriction, an unfamiliar desire to remain hidden, being seen without really being seen; however, on second thought, this largely stems from interactions with various men in my life in reaction to their varying and usually hidden levels of traditional male thinking, whether at work or in my personal life, whether I've known them for decades or more recently:

These particularly painful and brutal images by Ryoko Suzuki "Bind," that appeared in the Brooklyn Museum, seems to speak to how women can feel tied up and bound, barely or not able to speak, much less be heard, in the face of outmoded historical chauvinistic views that are taking a long time (maybe not in the history of mankind, but in the generations of women and men since the social upheaval of the 1960s) to fundamentally change into an automatic part of modern social relationships:

Can't give the artist name or title for this image, except that it is part of the "Truthiness, Photography as Sculpture" show at the UC Riverside, California Museum of Photography:

When I saw this deaf-blind-mute-wrapped-enclosed body lost in pastel innocent colors, I thought of my optimism, and therefore reluctance, to label and categorize people, which for the most part has served me well because I remained open, and as a result, enjoy some great relationships. Sometimes, this has not worked out well for the same reason, and I feel mute, at a loss. And there's the interesting position; is she in submission, unable to stand up for herself or merely looking for something?

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Delving into others' work on window reflections, I'm taking a closer look at Lee Friedlander's work. This image was taken in Colorado (currently in the permanent collection of The Art Institute of Chicago) several years after Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1963. What makes this image interesting is the disconnected halves, right from left, outside looking in, inside looking out, Robert Kennedy's head over another man's head hidden underneath and behind, Robert Kennedy being shot in head; people losing their heads.



Over the summer, I found William Eggleston's photo essay, "Faulkner's Mississippi," which is both photography and narrative about the American southern writer, William Faulkner. The thing that strikes me first about Eggleston's images is the deep vivid saturation that shouts for a closer look:



What appeals is Eggleston's everyday view of things, which is easy to overlook, but somehow grabs your attention for a closer second look..."an extraordinary ability to find beauty in the banal...and in its apparent casualness, it is emblematic of Eggleston's art, being both ordinary and loaded with meaning, utterly simple and yet endlessly complex" as Sean O'Hagen from The Observer put it.

Finding beauty in the banel right off the street is Garry Winogrand:



Being from Los Angeles, I'm going to guess this is Grant Street taken in the late afternoon sometime in the 1960s. Something about it appealed before I knew it was taken in LA; maybe it's a subconcious thing. The women look stylish and the intersection of shadows from their legs and window reflections are wonderful. Then there's the folks waiting for the bus. And the young guy sitting in the wheelchair seems unable to lift his head to look at these beautiful women who are looking at him, which is a bit heartbreaking, but maybe not really; maybe it feels good just be sitting out in the LA sun. Several layers of world all meeting in the one transient moment.

Some of my own recent banel reflection images:

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What's appealing about window reflections is the psychological element, and depending on the time of day and where one is standing and who or what is passing by, the myriad possibilities of images. Glass is only a surface, but that surface changes, a hard surface with fluid flexibility. In Philip-Lorca diCorcia's "Mike Miller; 24 years old; Allentown, Pennsylvania", the image is taken through glass at someone who appears to be taking a quiet reflective moment and more reflections and layers on the glass surface farthest from the view; like the subject is caught between different depths and perceptions captured at that particular moment in time.

"Capturing daily life in the form of ‘snapshots’ taken in the street," Daido Moriyama “I. Retrospective 1965-2005″ & “II. Hawaii”





Taking street images out of context makes them a little surreal; capturing what is often overlooked because it's just there like so much noise, or a note of a song, but not looked at individually.

Talking about Ansel Adams with a friend the other day, I realized that his work is the exact opposite of mine. He lugged heavy manual equipment up dizzying heights in nature and was maddeningly deliberate and technical in taking his time-consuming grand landscape images shot in black-and-white.





While my color snapshot images are taken from a lightweight hand-held digital camera on flat streets, often close up, and take seconds to find and capture. Yet there is a joy in taking the pleasing image that captures our attention, compelling us to archive it, whatever it may be.