May 4, 2020
That’s what the top of the website said when I searched for images of Jon Foreman’s land art. The suggested psychological benefit of signing up for a daily newsletter or some such seemed as surreal as the idea that anyone might buy into such a claim. But then again, we know that of all the claims people buy into these days, a link between advertisement and happiness probably is among the least outrageous….
In any case, here is the history: I get several minutes of pleasure on my daily walks in the neighborhood when finding little art projects that are left behind to cheer us all up. They spurred me to look at other artists who put something in the landscape on a greater scale, with snazzier means, often closer to design than art, but so be it. I vaguely remembered having seen something about Foreman and sand-rakings, but then found the site that had me roll my eyes for five seconds rather than experiencing happiness. Eventually there was a successful search result for this video showing the artist raking his neighborhood in Wales. Using sand and stones – available to all of us to some degree – maybe we could come up with something a little bit more unconstrained, or witty? My neighbors are certainly on up there.
Land painting on a larger scale is something you can currently find in Switzerland. The site surely beckons, although the landscape painting is probably long grown out or washed over when travel becomes available once again, 100 years from now. Think of a canvas 3000 square meters wide to be filled with imagery of hope, employing tromp l’oeil at its best. The 3-D manipulation is remarkable!
Saype, born in 1989, has been visible on the art scene since about 2013, increasingly known for his large grass paintings that use biodegradable paints that he produces himself. They get absorbed into the landscape once the grass grows over it. Last year he won a Forbes 30/under/30 award, that declared the 30 personalities under 30 who are the most influential in the contemporary Art & Culture world.
I, of course, like his work with political impetus the best, although he is very careful to position himself as a humanist, rather than an affiliate with any political movement. Here is a beautiful clip about his work in honor of the SOS Mediterranee, an organization that saves refugees from drowning. The artist is not exactly witty, as I had hoped. He is, however, very good at what he does, and he also likes clothes that carry his brand name. Hm.
Saype’s most recent project is called Beyond Walls – “it shows interlaced hands, reaching out, shaking and united in a common effort beyond all walls separating humans and enclosing them in mental or geographical spaces. Thus, the walls erected in mentalities become fictive partitions, wiped out by artistic imagination. It merely opens a breach in the real walls, the ones built by humanity within and against itself. ” Here are the sites that already have been painted, Andorra, Berlin and Paris among them.
It’s big, it’s pretty literal, it’s a notch too obvious. But it is clearly done with good intentions.
Back to my neighborhood artists, then, who are also reaching out, lending a hand, giving all indications that they understand mutual aid and solidarity, and for whom small scale is just enough.
Now that makes me happy.
Music today from a Swiss composer, Arthur Honegger, who provides us with a sufficiently chipper entry into this new week and something fresh assuming that you as much as I are not too familiar with this composer…
Roger Porter
I loved hearing the Honegger, in part because when I was in a college chorus we sang his “Le Roi David (a dramatic psalm).” I haven’t heard much of his music in the intervening years, but he is a decidedly underrated (and under-performed) composer.