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.

Master Oh Waily Update

I haven’t quite managed to overtake myself, but as a treat for actually keeping on keeping on with laundry, daycare drop-offs and collections, jungle gym visits, gardening and general child and house-care, I am taking a bit of time out today to write this update.

At one day shy of 5 weeks old Master Oh Waily’s vital statistics were…

Weight: 5.12 kg
Head: 39.5 cm
Length: 57 cm

So my little love has grown 5.5 cm in length, his head has expanded 3 cm and he has added 1.22 kg to his little frame.  Of course, those stats are sooo last week and we are putting much effort into growing.  No doubt we have an extra centimetre in length and another 200 grams to add for this last week, but who’s counting.  Oh yeah, the Plunket nurse is.  Well, we’ll see if that prediction is accurate at next week’s clinic visit.

Just by way of comparison, I took a look at his sister’s statistics and found that at her 6 week mark she was just a little shy of him – 4.4kg, 38 cm head diameter and 54 cm long.  In fact it takes her until 11 weeks to hit or pass his 5 weeks statistics.  I guess that’s why he’s between the 85th and 97th percentile on the WHO growth charts and his sister is just hovering on the 50th.

Variety is the spice of life.   Anyway, that’s how he is stacking up in the growth department.

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Just a note about my earlier comment about my blog entries becoming an even more endangered species due to my need to not ignore “stuff” anymore, I have to say that I may have been a bit premature on making that pronouncement.  Having squeezed in quite a bit of reading time over this past week, mostly Montessori related, I have become more enthusiastic and determined to eke out some blogging time.  Therefore I countermand my earlier suggestion that you will be seeing less of me.  In fact, you may actually see more of me than I have managed for the past year.  How ironic.

Master Oh Waily’s Arrival

“Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.”
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

That’s the idea anyway.  Or so the Emperor would have us believe.
I’m hoping he’s right.

I am now testing my mettle in the world of parenting multiple children.  Are my knees quaking at the thought of entire days where I juggle the needs of my bright, beautiful toddler daughter and my sweet, relaxed, new baby boy?

“Oh yes !”, as my lovely little daughter has taken to saying.

Still, I’m sure it won’t be all that bad.  Other people do it, and some of them with more than two kids.  Good grief, what is there to be afraid of?
Perhaps it’s the ability of my dear toddler to wander off to any room in the house and potentially create varying forms of havoc on unsuspecting walls with her marker pens, crayons or chalk.  Thankfully the chalk masterpieces that have previously adorned our various walls have been very easily removed from display.  We have yet to witness similar marker or crayon art, but I suspect it is only a matter of time and inclination.

In the meantime, what has Master Oh Waily’s arrival meant for the Oh Waily family?

The main change has been sleep.  Everyone’s ability to get some, the quality of it and the longevity of it.

The OWW parents are living in the land of sleep deprivation and are currently working on an evil master plan to counteract that particular side-effect of having a new infant in the house.  Currently it mostly revolves around the toddler and the timeshare use of a grandparent and spare bedroom.

The most obvious change for Miss Oh Waily has been the alterations in her normally good sleep pattern.
Perhaps the disappearance of Mum & Dad in the middle of the night* and the non-appearance of Mum for a couple of days** spooked young Miss Oh Waily.  We no longer seem to have a happy-to-go-to-bed daughter and have received a stupendous number of “curtain calls” some nights before she finally gives in and falls asleep.  That would, in itself, be almost livable but for the fact that during Master Oh Waily’s first two weeks she also made an irregular habit of waking up some time around 2am and doing the same sort of thing – only instead of going back to the living room it became our bedroom.
Fortunately over the last week and a bit (fingers crossed, touch wood, throw that pinch of salt over the shoulder…) she seems to have settled out of the middle-of-the-night visits and the evening curtain calls have become intermittent.

I’m just hazarding a guess, but I am inclined to put this down to the often touted “regression” that toddlers go through when a new member of the family arrives.  On top of that Miss Oh Waily appears to have been cutting all four of her back molars during this time – and that’s also interfering with her usually lovely temper.

Other than that, Ms Oh Waily is learning that she needs to add at least another half an hour to her prep-them-to-go-out-anywhere time.  And even that may be a tad close when attempting to make an appointment time.
She also notes that there are only two choices with regards to everything else that isn’t directly baby or toddler related – you either keep working while the children are having synchronised sleeps until “stuff” is done, including using that precious little amount of time that belongs to you to wash the poopy nappies, or; you ignore it.   Personally I find I can ignore quite a bit of stuff, for quite a bit of time.  Then I find that ignoring it for quite a bit of time makes it even harder to catch up with and worse yet, to live with.  So ignoring it is now a non-option in Ms Oh Waily’s daily life.
What that means in practice is – this blog entry is going be an even rarer species than it’s stablemates already are (unless my non-ignorance of “stuff” means I catch up and overtake myself); my “fun” reading time is cut to about 30 minutes once a week; my eyes occasionally take on the look of a panda’s and I may tragically find myself becoming a Mummy-Bore***.

As a result of this alteration in my daily life a little part of me is looking forward to and admiring this stage of motherhood where reading books while drinking good coffee is a possibility.  I am particularly relishing the opportunity to indulge in such glorious in-and-on-the-bed reading sessions with both of my kids.  Little Miss has had some of that – Hairy Maclary surely counts as much as Harry Potter for a toddler.
This has to be the ultimate in family time.

So the upshot is – we’re tired, but we’re adjusting and getting used to the new rhythm of our family life.
And yes, I will become a bit of a Mummy-Bore with my blog entries.  Mostly because I don’t get enough reading time.  Honest.

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* why did both of my children decide that getting down to the nitty-gritty of arrival should occur some time between midnight and sunrise ??
** despite visits to Birthcare (the very nice place our actual hospital shunts you off to within 3-4 hours of giving birth, complicated or caesarian births excluded) to see Mum and new baby.
*** these are the women you previously crossed the road to avoid.  No conversation can be held about anything except children – their children specifically, and just how great they are and what they are doing that will astound and amaze you.

Around the World in 80 Clicks meme

I was tagged by Charlotte recently and I am finally getting around to catching up.

This is a global conversation about motherhood, specifically what (if anything) we enjoy about being a mother.  Are there differences between cultures, countries or even your friends down the road?   To get a better idea of what started this off, take a visit to the original post and blogger in Canada, Her Bad Mother.

I am now joining the conversation of Around The World Mums, and here are five things I like and/or dislike about being a Mum.

1. I love the exuberant cuddles and laughter of my daughter.  There truly is nothing quite like her unadulterated love and affection to bring an enormous smile to my face and a warm fuzzy feeling to my heart.
2. I love being able to watch her mind growing.  I find myself constantly amazed by her ability to learn new skills and fearlessly explore her environment.  Such curiosity and adventure is wonderful to watch.  It does make me slightly wistful to think how much of that natural ability we tend to lose as we grow older.
3. I don’t always love the constancy of being a parent.  It’s darned hard work being “on duty” all of the time, and it has been taking me quite a while to balance out my conflict of interest – Mummy-duty vs Individuality-maintenance.   I guess it’s the mother’s equivalent of work-life balance issues.
4. It’s been an interesting adventure in self-discovery.  Motherhood has definitely been a patience-teacher and a flaw-exposer.  This is a double edged sword.  The realisation that some of your bad habits are bound to turn up in your children is not a wonderful epiphany.  The upside is that at least you know what you want to work on not passing on.   And, of course, you know that your good qualities are going to make the trip too.
5. I love the ability to share experiences, fun, knowledge and skills.   What better thing can there be than watching your children becoming a “person” with their own distinct personality and preferences?  For me, it’s one of the best things about being a Mum.

Okay, now is the hard part.  I culled my blog reading a while ago as it was taking up so much time, and that leaves me with only a few potential onward links.  Funny though, the remaining blogs tend to have a mother as their author even if the blog has little or nothing specifically to do with family life.  What that means is: a couple of these folk may be surprised by the link – as I tend to lurk and enjoy their various forms of creativity. I hope they don’t mind the intrusion.

Here are my mothers:  Andie in NZ; Sol in the UK; Patricia in the US; and Heidi in the US.