The Magic of Line

More than once I've argued that drawing is the harder discipline than painting.  Painting in many respects is blocking out objects in space in color, so that, in even some of the crudest paintings, the objects can still be distinguishable.  Drawing, on the other hand, relies not only on the quality of line but the conscious choice of how and where to use lines to represent form and shape.  I think it one of the great ironies that John Singer Sargent was criticized in his time for drawing with the paint (as opposed to painting with the paint?).  And yet the two are so elegantly co-dependent: my drawing informs my painting as much and as often as my painting informs my drawing.

So, on opening day, I marched up the hill (literally, the tram was packed and taking far too long) to the Getty Center in Los Angeles to take in a show of Gustav Klimt's drawings.  In all, fighting an enormous crowd, I went through it piece by piece three separate times.  Well, more accurately, I went through it once, then cleansed my palate (or arguably cluttered it) by going through the entire Getty collection, then went through it a second time, and when the second time came to a close, I merely looped around and started pass #3.  Somewhere in that third pass, I became overwhelmed to the extent that I was then ready to make a swift exit.

So what happened?

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) produced thousands of drawings in his lifetime, and so despite the breadth of work that was on display, it was still only a glimpse.  The show presents the work consecutively, starting with his most classical work through to his mature style.  As with many retrospectives of this type, it's the early work that often provides the most surprise, since the public is usually most familiar with the more popular work.  This is especially true here, as the early work is so detailed and lovingly rendered compared to the pieces that would follow.  In fact, as well rendered as many of the figures in his paintings are, it was surprising just how loose the drawing became.  Not that Klimt would need that level of detail in studies having spent so much time at the drawing board, but I couldn't help but wonder  why it had become so simple.  Ultimately, it's likely a moot point. Most everything on display was studies for future paintings, and not meant to be works unto themselves.  Also, no matter how simply or quickly rendered, there was still an expert yet sensual line on display.

But it was these contradictions of sorts that led to the doubts that had me so ridiculously in my head that eventually, I couldn't look at them anymore.

Admittedly, the crowd was not of much help.  Multiple times I heard people bemoaning the lack of paintings (For those of you wondering, there are 2: one small completed work, and one finished study for another work).  First of all, the show is clearly advertised as "The Magic of Line" with every indication that it's meant to be a show of drawings.  Second: as a master draughtsman, this side of Klimt's work is more than deserving of its own show (The curators did a lovely job of featuring images and details of the finished works that the drawings corresponded to). Finally, with the endless parade of coffee table books, posters, and calendars, it is far less difficult to see at least a reproduction of a Klimt painting than his drawings!  Mainly the problem was just volume, both in terms of noise and simply numbers.  The drawings have a very intimate feel, but that's tough to get at with people squeezing and squishing to jockey for a clearer view.  But, it is a summer show, and it is the highly populated Getty...where more people are often outside snapping photos of each other before a smog-blanketed view of the city than inside looking at the art.

On the flip side, I'm not sure that if I had been allowed to go through it alone I wouldn't have been even more in my head.

I should mention that in the West Pavilion, there's a small room that's referenced a few times in the show for contemporaries of Klimt.  Though it's only a few pieces, I must recommend seeking it out, if only to see a lovely pastel study by Alfons Mucha for one of his famous illustrations.

Gustav Klimt: The Magic of Line is on display through September 23rd at the Getty in Los Angeles.

Flinging Ink...

Famed film director John Frankenheimer once said something about how Los Angeles is not a town for artists.  I'd cite it, but I can't remember where I read it and google's no help.  It's a thought that's stuck with me over the years.  William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, two of America's greatest novelists couldn't hack it writing screenplays here.  Many of the world's greatest directors struggled making films here.  The "art", as it were, is primarily driven by money, and if it wouldn't make money, it didn't get made...and yet it's still a town filled with creatives making whatever they want.

I brought along a lot of these thoughts when reading Jim Mahfood's recently published Los Angeles Ink Stains Volume 1, a collection of autobiographical comic strips that Mahfood has penned in the years since he arrived in Southern California.  The experience comes across as a pretty gonzo ride and provides an intimate portrait of a man who works both in and outside the system.  His work has appeared in or on everything from comics to hair care products, but you might also find it scrawled on a bar room wall.

From comic conventions to art shows in cities around the world, the strips spend equal time balancing the trials and tribulations of being a working creative with the wild times that such a venture often opens.  But it's not all random encounters with musicians, filmmakers, and other creatives as the series is never above giving a grocery list of what was eaten and where a bed was found for that night.  In fact, it's these little mundane moments that humanizes the experience in a way most Hunter Thompson-style adventures do not.

The lesson, as I took it, was to do what you do and do it to the hilt.  With talent, passion, and the will to walk outside, you'll catch up with those moments where you'll be in the right place at the right time.  Mahfood's not above spilling some churned up bile in the course of the story, but it's the open-eyed excitement of meeting each day, each person, and each experience that makes even the monotony of working at home or working a convention seem like a new opportunity.  It doles out a generous dose of hope, if you're willing to meet life halfway.  And most of all it's honest.  At one point in one nightly adventure, one of the characters asks if what they're doing will end up in Ink Stains, and Mahfood answers "Probably."

The artwork of Ink Stains is quick and simple cartoon sketches that jump cut the reader from one moment, one day, or one week to the next which keeps the read lively.  The book is punctuated with collages of photos for a different view of the variety of characters who've been rendered by Mahfood's pen.  The opening by Herbert Russel is also a fun-filled and frank exploration of the contents contained therein. In all, Ink Stains presents the sort of vigorously scribbled commotion that you would only dream of finding in someone's diary or journal.

Portrait of this blog's author by Jim Mahfood

Jim Mahfood and his work can be found HERE and HERE.

...and YET another new beginning...

Here we are again.  We just keep coming back.  And rather than rip off this festered, pestilent, gangrenous bandage, we try and make it work one more time.

I enjoyed the challenge of trying to keep a semi-regular stream of new fiction in the blog format.  It made for an easy to meet regular deadline, and always insured that I was working on something new.  Unfortunately, while the internet likes things short, it seems like it gets a little too serialized when you're only posting a page or two at a time.  Add any time off from that because of holidays or a busy schedule, and no one can follow whatever blather you were posting as a storyline.

As promised, I've removed all the fiction from the blog.  If you enjoyed reading my literary creations, I've got a new page up over at Jottify (Click it all up).  Being able to post whole works, both long and short, helps insure a better continuity in the reading experience...though admittedly, I did start a new novel-length experiment that's currently languishing without update for at least a month.

What do I plan to put into this space?  Well, my first blog, The B-List Super Hero Roll Call began as something of a review and rant site, but has since become a place for me to post my art endeavors.  So I thought that maybe I would bring some of that back over here.  True, the internet is perhaps overrun with "reviews" of things...but maybe I really have something to say.  Guess, we'll find out.

I hope to have the first new stab at this up this week, so tune back in, and let's see where the new ride takes us.  Could be Cleaveland...or it could be Paradise.

Here's some 80's schlock with Kevin Bacon to illustrate my point:

Hope to see you soon.