Look up…Philippe Petit on a wire above the world. On his toes. Why? Save your breath. ”There is no why” he said. Image from here We all know there are times when words and thoughts get in the way. Sometimes we understand more by just looking.
Visual artists work hard and work to open our eyes and hearts. And render us speechless. Like this person, clearly spellbound by an assemblage of metal pieces dreamed up and joined together by that joyful wonder man Mr Alexander Calder. See more here.If you’ve ever visited a major art gallery, you will likely have found yourself surrounded by the sound of people talking. This lucky visitor seems to have managed the impossible: solitude and quality time–no need for nouns or verbs– with a playful, dazzling Henri Matisse. More.The place we all call home has much to offer close up, but photographers have captured some truly gorgeous sights from above, breathtaking, unexpected, and deeply beautiful. The image above of cut flower fields near Carlsbad, California in 1989 was taken by Alex MacLean. No comment. More here A boy. In Spain. In Valencia. A while ago. Brought to us by Henri Cartier Bresson and his camera. In silence.Ai Weiwei (from here). If there is a prize for rendering people speechless–entranced, agog, breathless, stunned–among living artists, we at the r of l might award it to the inimitable Ai Weiwei.. Here he is just looking apparently at something he dreamed up. More of what he is looking at here.David Milne. Canadian. Mostly landscapes done on the spot. We adore his work. yes moreJoan Miró. Where is this place? How is it someone can have the thing all to herself? We hope she knows not to stand up too quickly. Found hereA lovely portrait by Gerhard Richter. She looked away. For some reason. She was found (and discussed, if you like that sort of thing) hereRembrandt couldn’t keep her awake. With a trusty brush and some nearby ink, he recorded her nap. And left it to us to look at. found here
We can’t get away from words of course. We’d be lost without them. But feasting your eyes while turning down the chatter in our heads is a treat we can all give ourselves from time to time. And you may find the effect is very sweet
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Just looking thanks. While walking past a painting mostly white. By Robert Ryman. found here Hayward Gallery. Photographer Linda Nylind
—————————————-Greenlanders, life on the edge, image found here
Here at the republic, we’ve been hearing it from all over the map:
things have changed,
people have changed
whatever you were counting on, you’ll need to count on something else...
the party’s over, the merry–go–round is broken, and the tools to fix it are all gone.
——–National Snow & Ice Data Centre– iceberg image Greenland found here
We take sorrow seriously here, and sadness, and dispair. And grief. And there is a lot of all of this around, and we are not the ones to say to anyone: just get over itsunshine, nor do we deal in advice.
No matter what any of us feels about all this right now, what we can say for sure is this: nobody knows for sure where we are all headed.(some 8 billion of us, not including household pets).
—————-Photographer Hengki Koentjoro, The Roads of Mount Nebo, found here
But the fact that we don’t/can’t know what will happen tomorrow means, among other things, that we can count on a few surprises, discoveries, and once in a while: a truly “wow” moment or two. And there are lots of people out there who, every day, take on the job of making and delivering a one-of-a-kind experience for us–in music, in sculpture, in paint, in pixels. in steel wire and water. As always.
——————nik wallenda on the high wire across Niagra Falls image found here
Around here, our general approach to what’s going on lately, and to most things before that, is to stand back and look at the big picture while clinging to a few simple, but sometimes overlooked, facts.
Such as the fact that we all live in the middle of nowhere (ok, “space”), there is no backup generator to provide heat, light, and water, virtually all of the people in the world have no idea who we are, each of us has and expiry date, we don’t know what love is, or how to find it….or keep it.
We all know these things to be true, apparently, and yet lots of humans, lots and lots, manage and have always managed, to not just carry on, but to rise above our sketchy circumstances and make something, which is by itself an act of defiance in the face of our precarious circumstances. And among the makers, we have a special fondness for visual artists, for (some) architects, and performers who risk everything.
Whatever is coming down the pipe for us in the next decade and beyond, there is no doubt whatever that all over the map there will be original images, objects, structures, and experiences, made by humans of all sizes and shapes and circumstances. And some of these ‘works’ will stop you in your tracks and adjust your dials. All right here on this rock in the dark. Because that’s who we are.
With that in mind, we had a look around for a few recent examples of what humans get up to when they take on the job making something new. We have made a point of not thinking too much about the impact of work like this. Mostly it is love at first sight followed by “yes” Which sometimes leads to love.
This artist works and lives in Cologne Germany. We first saw this just a few days before selecting it for this post. It definitely says Yes to all the right questions. Thank you Ms Schumann
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Shio Kusaka
Recent work by Shio Kusaka presented at David Zwirner gallery in 2022. You can find more here
Ordinary/Extraordinary. Clay, glass objects suitable for the home, any home, now, tomorrow or 100 years ago. Very nice.
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Vilhelm Sundin
————————————————————————————————————-See some of his work here
We saw from across the room a picture of a heavy snowfall in a city. Up close we saw the snow was moving, falling. It was a beautiful thing. Silent. All of us see so much video all day all night. How much of it is beautiful?
Video art by Swedish born Canadian artist Vilhelm Sundin can be viewed in person at Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver
Scandinavia is always worth a look for the kind of design and production of objects, from cutlery to houses and public buildings, that whispers “quality” “quiet” “sensible” and “uncluttered”. A team of Swedish architects, Bolle Tham and Martin Videgard now at work is producing their own portfolio of houses and public buildings (etc) that embody these qualities –with very clean and quiet and tasty results. Brace yourself
Mr Turrell creates spaces filled with light. People linger. Something happens. He has been doing this for a long time. There is nothing like it and no one like him.
Ai Wei Wei is a truly international/world artist. He delights as much as he disturbs. You feel you might welcome him to your home and yet is one of the most famous people on earth. His work always provokes in some way, it raises issues often overlooked. But he never preaches. He makes things. Happen. For which we can all be grateful
And, just to put this in perspective, a long time ago in a desert in Peru someone and their friends made something to be enjoyed by birds and space travellers. That’s who we are.
it’s always amazing to see what nature is up to when we aren’t there
up there in the wildest places, the farthest places from our small lives, that’s where you’ll see what can happen without us. it is always original, never trivial, never trending.
Even when these farthest places change because of the accumulated effects of our daily lives. the result is all nature’s own–spectacularly un-human, beautifully bereft of our precious cliches.
We can’t help but drop our jaws and shed some tears of admiration before we go back to our day job. But some have chosen to find work, put down roots and raise families right up against the raw originality (and harshness) of remote places.
This is upper Peru. Life unplugged from everything except life. It isn’t easy of course, but the miracle is that it exists at all. Found here
And this village is on Greenland in the upper middle of nowhere looking bright, cheerful, remarkably at ease. Part of a collection here
The only rival to the remoteness of the highest and coldest places on earth are the oceans where, we are told, you might sail for weeks without seeing any land at allThe only mark on this part of the Pacific is an air pocket…
The remotest places have many lessons to teach us, if we will only listen and look, lessons about beauty, humility, responsibility…
Just look .
Image by hiroshi sugimoto (seascape-north-atlantic-cape-breton)
So here at the end of the year/beginning of the year, we find ourselves thinking about what matters most/what matters least. Through all the buzz, all the fear, all the lunacy, all the loss, what starts to matter more and more to some of us is that humans are also very well equipped to make something BEAUTIFUL and never before seen. Hold that thought. And take a look up there, that, made by Robert Motherwell. (it’s now at the MOMA).
Who knows why, but the objects of eye-popping beauty-made-by-humans that rush to the front of the mind, for us at least, so often seem to be those made with the simplest palette of all: Black. White. Black + White. Look up, the amazing Mr Calder, his amazing THING, all BLACK set in a white, light filled room.
And then there is Henri Matisse, no slouch with colour, he was, but often, OFTEN, he put the reds and blues and acid greens to one side and made DRAWINGS–in charcoal, graphite, conte, ink, No colour necessary. None. It’s all there.
Oh good gravy, even simpler even more reduced and amplified. Achingly beautiful. H. Matisse, encore.
Not sure who she is, but Maria Likarz Strauss (1928 Vienna) is up to the challenge embracing colourlessness in the name of striking go-tell-someone-about-this-ness.
The pen + the ink for centuries the main way of conveying information from one hand and one mind to one pair of eyes. We have other tools now, but even so, the power and seductiveness of the inked line has no competitor. Artists everywhere know this. Paul Klee knew it. Intimately. Thankfully
The ‘white’ of Mr Klee’s drawing has drifted in the direction of sand or warm chocolate milk, as opposed to say snow or salt. We approve. Found here.
O
Wassily Kandinsky made some of the most colourful pictures of the last 100 years, but he too sometimes paused, took a breath, and showed us the power of B+W, musical, explosive..
Keith Haring. Young. Subway artist. Gifted draftsman. Brief life. Draped in black. And white.
We are not done with this dark/bright discussion. But for now, a pause, the last word, for now, to A. Calder again. Giving us a wire “drawing”. Aquarium. It’s all there.
Painters, photographers, and law enforcement officers have shown a lot of interest in capturing just one side of us, a side of us we don’t usually see.
Italian artists working 500 years ago and more gave us some of the most arresting one-sided portraits we will ever see. Up top, that’s Federico da Montefeltro giving his wife Battista Sforza the eye, courtesy of Piero della Francesca. And that beautiful face in the round frame belongs to an unnamed Florentina painted by Paolo Uccello (1397-1475). More here
Moving up the road to France and a bit closer to our time, we found this lovely drawing by Jean-Joseph Bernard, 1785, at Vanderbilt University. Just pen and ink with watercolor on paper.
Staying in France for a moment, here is a carved profile of an homme who from this angle seems both aristocratic and capable of beating somebody up. Image found here
This group calledPortraits of Lawgiverslives in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building. Each of the men depicted is a person who, some say, contributed to the laws that now underlie the US justice system. We think that’s Hammurabi up there.
Madame X, as she came to be called, was an American in Paris in the 1880’s who did well in marriage, generated much gossip, and attracted the attention of painter John Singer Sargent who asked if he could paint her. She said yes and the resulting portrait of her, with her gaze averted stage left, was judged just s bit too, you know. Despite the averted gaze and the “X” everyone recognized the woman in black as “that woman”. See her here now, at your leisure.
Jumping ahead to modern scandalous celebrity, getting your “mug” shot shortly after an arrest, profile on one side and full face on the other, is almost a rite of passage for film stars and musicians of the last 70 years or so. Mr Hendrix got out of the Toronto jail soon after and went on to play another day.
20th century artists like Man Ray rediscovered the power of the sidelong view even when no crime had preceded the shot. This is Lee Miller in his Paris studio. Some of course thought it a crime that a woman this beautiful could also be a talented, brave, and prolific photographer.
Isn’t she lovely, actress Billie Dove. We don’t care what she’s done.
Audrey Hepburn photographed by Yousaf Karsh and, bless her, she turned just a little toward us. From Boston.com
The silhouette was not just a fad, it was an obsession at a certain point. If you hadn’t been caught from the side on black paper with scissors well you just hadn’t arrived. This nice example from England found here
Back to where we started, in Italy, this must be counted among the most beautiful portraits ever produced, and it is amazing how much it conveys while only showing us one side of this woman’s story. Her name is Giovanna Tornabuoni, and she died in childbirth. Painted posthumously by Domenico Ghirlandaio about 1490. She now lives in a museum in Madrid and was recently the star of an exhibition there reported here.
Much as we love the profile portaits we found, we are very very glad that Jan Vermeer (go here) coaxed this lady to turn toward his canvas and to us. Perhaps the gift of her gaze is all the more powerful because we have been deprived of it. Maybe that’s the power of the profile–to increase the appetite for more of her face.
Even when these farthest places change because of the accumulated effects of our daily lives. the result is all nature’s own–spectacularly un-human, beautifully bereft of our precious cliches.
The only mark on this part of the Pacific is an air pocket…
Just look .
![Maria Likarz-Strauss: Draft for the FABRIC “Montag” [Monday]](https://www.mak.at/jart/prj3/mak-resp/images/cache/f0d8bd91ab52929aeb93d658598e56cb/0xEB6907BFDC54F1BE34230B006608F918.jpeg)
the republic of less 
