It's Aht With Heart, People

The bullets are at the end of this piece...

Over at wowOwow, they were asking, "Who's Your Favorite Artist, Toots?"

Too many to choose from, but off the top of my head: Henry Ossawa Tanner, J.M.W. Turner and James Whistler, and all for the same reason. Each began his creative process thoroughly engrossed in depicting their world in finely tuned detail: Tanner and African-American culture (The Banjo Lesson):

Turner’s masts and waves:


Whistler’s ….Mother.

As each artist grew in skill and his search to see with new eyes, they became more and more abstract. (This is true also of Michaelangelo’s unfinished pieces where you can sense the figure in motion, trying to emerge beneath the chipped stone):

Later in their careers, Tanner’s "Annunciation," becomes an angel that is no more than a line of blinding gold:

Whistler’s "Nocturne: The Fallen Rocket: Black and Gold" leads art into Impressionism:

and Turner’s Abstracts from the Biblical Book of Revelation, "The Angel Standing in the Sun," that swirls with the blur between heaven and hell.


Drown in Eternity, Suckahs

Footnotes? We gotta have footnotes and musings, and I did promise you "bullets" and such:

* Bill Cosby owns a lot of Tanner paintings. This reminds us that Bill Cosby is a very rich man.

* Not "too" long ago, The National Gallery of Art had a Turner exhibit. I went on my birthday, taking on the Christmas crowds. I "did" the ships rooms, but I soon tired of the pressing crowds and loud critiques, "Look at that whitecap," and headed for those Bible paintings. That's where I spent the bulk of my time, letting myself fall right into them and hang out for a while."

*You want to see some Whistler? Go to the Freer Gallery of Art, but first go to the National Gallery of Art to pay a visit to "Symphony No. 1, The White Girl," a painting I went to see FIRST, every time my Mama took me to the gallery. Also, often told, but here it is again: the infamous story of being five years old, and my mother and I were going down the winding (and massive) back staircase of the Gallery, me holding Mama's hand and saying "I want to live here." She said,"Oh no, Little Cubie. Wouldn't you be afraid to live here all by yourself? Me: (shooting her a look) "No." Then go on over to the Freer Gallery and do "The Peacock Room." Ask the guard to show you the secret window. Charm him. Get him to say "Okay, but don't tell." Then hit Whistler's "Nocturnes." Old man Freer was loaded and bought a ton of them. Think about fog. Think about London. Think about why London doesn't have fog like that anymore.

*Michelangelo's stuff screams to be touched. We won't go into why David screams to be touched, and how you'd be screaming if you did. Walk tall and carry a big stick, indeed.

*Tanner's "The Annunciation." Lemme tell ya something. I became so obsessed with this painting, that when I was presenting a paper at Georgetown University (with slides people, but no snacks,) I was so gaga over it, I heard a loud "AHEM" from the back of the room, basically my professor saying, "Wind it up." Back then, you could not shut me up about Tanner.

Don't even ask me who my favorite artist is. Talking to a friend while I wrote you guys just now? We both went off on 1) Georg Groz; 2) David Stone Martin; 3) Friedensreich Hundertwasser; 4) Edward Keinholz; 4) Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross; 5) The Belarusian School of Icon Painting and 6) the Desert Eagle large-bore, gas-operated, semi-automatic pistol.

"Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. " ~~ Arthur Koestler