Tilden/Giorgio de Chirico

This week will be governed by the fact that I am leaving for a funeral in Germany. I will write when I can, but things will be in flux.

Understandably, my thought has been about relationships, how much meaning they give to life. That is, of course, not just true for friendship, but also to how one relates to the rest of the world, particularly within one’s specialized sphere of interest.

Celaya/The Calling 2009

I found this echoed in the article linked below, about a nifty, 6 year old program at the Phillips Collection. They have an annual show called One-on- One which encourages a painter to choose a piece or several from their collection and juxtapose them to their own to be exhibited work. Last year they showed Carol Brown Goldberg paired with Henri Matisse. This year it is Celaya who chose Albert Pinkham Ryder, a 19th century painter.

Ryder/Dead Bird ca 1879

Both reference literature, Kierkegaard for Celaya, Shakespeare for Ryder, both use darkness, in particular tar, as a medium, both are masters of simplicity and  veer into mysticism. Celaya, by the way, came to art through science:  He studied Applied & Engineering Physics at Cornell U, received an MA in Quantum Electronics UCBerkeley, and pursued a Phd before abandoning physics for art.

Enrique Martínez Celaya’s “The First Kierkegaard”

Tiden/Paul Klee

I have certainly worked with text, creating montages for poems that mattered to me, and now feel it was a bit too literal an attempt. Distilling some essence, as seen in Celaya, is something to aspire to.

Tilden/ Joan Miro

A different kind of referencing, trying to pay homage to certain painterly styles, was also part of the last years of work, and those are the montages you see today. They took sculpture by Tilden from a show called Horse and made them in pastiches of painters I like.

Tilden/Franz Marc

Tilden/Richter

(I don’t like Richter, but I found it a wonderful challenge to convert him…)

Leading image on the blog cover is Tilden/Max Ernst