Picasso and Art

I am currently reading Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot and am finding it quite enjoyable.
I had thought that it might be a bit dry or worse a bit voyeuristic, but it is in fact a dispassionate and well presented insight into Ms Gilot’s time with the painter. (So far.)

Before I go into what made me stop and write this, a brief review of my life in art.
There is none.  The closest I come to having a relationship with art is the old chestnut: “I know what I like.” Other than that, my general experience with the true biggies of the international art world is some twenty years old and comes from my OE where we dutifully traipsed around nearly all the major art galleries in Europe.  I really do mean nearly all of them. The standard fare of the Louvre, Prado and National Gallery down to those dedicated to individual artists, like Chagall and even Picasso himself.
Basically what I’m saying is…”I didn’t do Art History at uni so you will need to excuse me if the following is something you consider a simpleton should know.”

Right.  Here is what provoked me into writing today.

Part of a conversation between Pablo and Françoise about his philosophy and the choices he makes regarding his creation of art contained the following comment by Picasso:

Someone, at least, who might be able to get painting back on the rails again.

Françoise comes back with this:

Where had it gone off, I asked him.

Then comes the insight that made me stop and actually think about art history.

‘That’s a long story,’ he said, ‘but you’re a good listener, so I’ll tell you.  You have to go all the way back to the Greeks and the Egyptians.  Today we are in the unfortunate position of having no order or canon whereby all artistic production is submitted to rules.  They – the Greeks, Romans, the Egyptians – did.  Their canon was inescapable because beauty, so called, was, by definition, contained in those rules.  But as soon as art lost all link with tradition, and the kind of liberation that came in with Impressionism permitted every painter to do what he wanted to do, painting was finished.  When they decided it was the painter’s sensations and emotions that mattered, and every man could re-create painting as he understood it from any basis whatever, then there was no more painting; there were only individuals.  Sculpture died the same death.

I found this quite an eye-opener.  Being a complete simpleton in matters of art I hadn’t really come to the conscious realisation that the Impressionists provide a boundary between the very traditional, mostly realistic painters and the modernists of Cubism, Surrealism and latterly Pop Art.
It is interesting that in the 1940s Picasso considered there to be no more painting and that there hadn’t really been any from before his youth.

Little did I know, before today, that my love of Monet meant I was supporting the downfall of painting. According to Picasso, anyway.

Once again it proves that there is so much to know and consider in life, that sometimes we barely scratch the surface of understanding.  It’s also a reminder that small comments like these – a single paragraph – can provide a moment of awakening to the obvious and spark an interest in finding out more.

Does anyone else have these sorts of moments?
The “ah-ha”, that’s so obvious, why didn’t I see it before moment.

Oh, and if there are any art historian types reading this, can you please leave a comment with recommendations for “potted history” type books that would be a good starting point for me.

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On another note: the Oh Waily blog went silent this past week, not through lack of things to say but the means to say it.  Miss Oh brought home a lovely cough/cold combination from daycare just before last weekend and kindly shared it with the rest of the family.  Master Oh is the only one to have remained fairly immune to the whole thing.  Personally I came a hair breadth away from losing my voice, which some might say is a blessing for those around me.
We are still not quite out of the woods yet, but at least I don’t feel completely flattened now and I may even manage to create a post or two this week.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

A Borders Coupon – 2009 Booker Shortlist

Our Border’s coupon emailer has arrived today and it is offering a 20% discount on all 2009 Booker Prize shortlisted offerings.

That means the following:
Summertime by J. M. Coetzee
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.

Has anyone read one or more of these yet?
If so, any recommendations for frittering spending my tiny amount of personal time on reading?

Three Cups of Tea

No, this isn’t a variation on the recipe re-posting currently occuring at Oh Waily.

Normally I’m not willing to be dictatorial regarding other people’s reading material.  I will strongly recommend that you may find value in reading a particular work (as per my post on Piero Ferucci’s book “The Power of Kindness”), but am less willing to insist a book is a “must read”. After all, we each have our own tastes and pleasures in the reading world.  But for this work of non-fiction I am willing to set that reticence aside and would venture to suggest that not only might you enjoy this book, and learn something new at the same time, but in fact should add this to the “must read” pile by your bedside.  I don’t think you’ll be sorry.

It is bound to be in your local library, it was in mine.  Admittedly I had to wait for a while before it stayed on the shelf long enough to get it out, but it was there.

It is the remarkable story of Greg Mortenson and the work he began carrying out in the northern most region of Pakistan over twenty years ago.  It is a testament to the idea that each of us can invoke the butterfly effect in our lives for the betterment of everyone around us.

What sort of real effect can one man have on the fortunes of others?
Try building 78 schools in some of the poorest and harshest rural areas in central Asia. And have girls attending them.

This sort of hard work and philanthropy is enough to warm the cockles of most fair-minded peoples hearts, but perhaps the best and most interesting side effect is learning about how poverty and ignorance has the potential to cause a vacuum into which unscrupulous people can seed and nurture terrorist activity.  Reading this may, depending on your current understanding, change the way you view Pakistan and Afghanistan.  It may also change the way you view those beloved politicians who say they have “pledged” to rebuild and support communities into which their armies have carved great gouges through rockets, missiles and land mines.

It certainly opened my eyes to a non-media (i.e. sensational headlines driven) view of recent history as seen by someone who had been living and working with people in the regions propelled forwards into the international glare and condemned after the tragedy of September 11.

If you want to know more, visit the official Three Cups of Tea website.  They use their Amazon account to generate funds for the non-profit organisation, Central Asia Institute, that funds Mortenson’s work in this region of the world.

And, if you have time and the inclination to use Internet Explorer (the video wouldn’t load in Firefox for me), then the link to The Girl Effect that comes from the CAI website is also worth the few minutes of screen time.  Hopefully it will inspire you to learn more and perhaps even take some sort of action – donating, volunteering, or spreading the word about Three Cups of Tea.

Robyn Martin Bakes

I must recommend this book to you.  Sadly I could find no one selling it on line.  The closest was The Book Depository, but they have it as out of stock at the moment.

I checked it out of the library about a month or so ago and found that I was able to make more than half a dozen recipes with what meagre stocks were in our cupboards.  That’s a rarity in my baking experience.
Since then I have had a birthday, and as a lovely gift this arrived.

So far we have tried and liked the following recipes:

• American brownies
• Ginger crisps (freeze the batter and you can roll it out to make gingerbread men too)
• Louise cake
• Belgium slice
• Gateau Basque
• Cheese scones

The only let down has been the cheese scones recipe.

But, to prove to you how yummy the other recipes are, I will share the American Brownie recipe in the next post.  It’s for those who like their brownies just moist, not doughy or gooey in the centre.

If you find an online retailer with this in stock, let me know and I’ll update this post to include a link to them.