I know

I know I'm not tired of you

Maybe you got tired of me

Seems like every little thing I do 

Makes you pull yourself away

Vidal Sassoon

Paris in march

I have the worst love-hate relationship with New York. When I'm away I can't stand to be far. When I'm close I want to be back in Paris. Besides the fact that this last Paris trip was the most mentally and perhaps physically (my ankle still hurts from the couches and Katy) exhausting trip I miss it so much. I miss waking up and passing by the tabac brasserie and looking in to see if my chinese neighbor is there, walking down rue Oberkampf to the bakery and holding back my excitement to say an pain au chocolat svp and being deliciously rewarded with the most amazing flaky sweet buttery chcocolately croissant ever.

Kirchner and the Berlin Street

Street, Dresden 1908

Two Women on the Street 1918

 

Frauen auf der Strasse 1915

Out of the naturalistic surface with all its variations I wanted to derive the pictorially determined surface.

Born from movement

One of the loneliest times of my life during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night.
- Kirchner

desperate, graphic, hungry
upward angles, looming figures
furious energy

In 1905, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), Fritz Bleyl and two students named Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel founded the art group called “The Bridge”. The choice in naming was an interesting notion for an avant garde movement whose official motto was "…freedom in our work and in our lives, independence from older, established forces…” because the “bridge” represented a link between the art of the past and the art of the future. They maintained a deep respect for the early traditions of Durer and Cranach, while forging the essentials of what would become one of the great movements in the 20th century—German Expressionism.

Kirchner was a leading painter of the expressionist movement and the forms and techniques seen in this remarkable collection comprise some of his greatest work with the female body. He twists this concept by turning most of these women into prostitutes on the streets of Berlin, but these paintings represent the darkest period in Kirchner’s life and perhaps an ominous prologue to the violence and anxiety of Germany on the brink of war.

The most obvious traits of Kircherner’s work at this time is the violence of his brush and pen strokes. This is not the same madness of a Dekooning, in that the faces and bodies are rarely deconstructed, but the chins taper into points, the women’s collars soar in giant arches, their necklines hang like daggers and the muted and the anonymous faces of black-suited men troll the backgrounds. There is an explosive quality to the composition of these works which is inherent in the brushstrokes and in the colors used. A canvas titled Two women on the Street unfolds from the center upward like a bomb going off. With their heads thrown back, their teeth are bared in what could be laughter or a shriek of terror. The blurred faces of men lined up in the background haunt the edges of the canvas and show the desperate ugliness of the men gathered on street corners. No one knows who these men are in Kirchener’s paintings, but for me they represent the sickness of the world and the emptiness found in pleasure at a time when the world was on the brink of disaster.

Ironically, these images are no less pertinent as reminders of the state of humanity in our own times. These are terrifying and deeply psychological paintings. Much has been written about these techniques, his hard lines, the jagged angles of the brushstrokes, etc. and these deeply psychological paintings are a reaction to his wandering the streets of Berlin at night, and a physical manifestation in paint of what must have been a violent sense of foreboding. The sexual element within this traumatic depiction of the metropolis adds to the sense of pure perversion in the images. These are paintings onto which a thousand messages and meaning can be attached, the most obvious being the alienation and sexual violence of Berlin before the war, the prostitutes as a symbol of the degeneration of love, the plight of women, the rapaciousness of men, and so on. But these are facile interpretations and can be reconstructed or destroyed in countless ways. The purely aesthetic triumph of these pictures is what is most interesting—the fact that Kirchner translated a visceral reaction to his time in Berlin through his paintings, that he managed to subvert the traditional depiction of the female form without betraying his gift and traditions, that his work was revolutionary because he found himself in a historical and personal moment which left no other alternative—not because he felt that would bring him fame or money.

Art is the product of imaginative, unconventional, and sometimes suffering minds. Our current obsessions with conceptualism and consumerism, mass culture and fame, fall flat before these paintings that speak to us of something far more crucial to the human condition. I was struck by the durability of these images, as well as the honesty in execution, something that I find increasingly lacking in contemporary art.

Kirchner may not be necessarily classically "good" but his immediate passion and hunger- a desperation for portraying life- for giving himself life through art is apparent.
Looking at his works I feel the immense isolation and loneliness in his hands. His desperation to feel something, to feel life, to feel anything.

I just want to think, ha! so people come to this big city thinking that they'll feel more, when in fact, the city will suck them dry, demoralize them, turn them into apathetic, callous people. Numb. Was Kirchner searching, searching for something, anything to make him feel more human? Haunting places seemingly alive with movement in order to gain just a little life from them? What did he find? Did he find it? Did he gain life?

No, he enlisted in the army and eventually committed suicide on June 15, 1938.

I want love to: roll me over slowly,

Stick a knife inside me, and twist it all around.
I want love to: grab my fingers gently,
Slam them in a doorway, Put my face into the ground.
I want love to: murder my own mother,
Take her off to somewhere, like hell, or up above.
And I want love to: change my friends to enemies,
Change my friends to enemies, and show me how it's all my fault.

And I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me
I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me
Yeah I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me, anymore.

I want love to: walk right up and bite me,
Grab a hold of me and fight me, leave me dying on the ground.
I want love to: split my mouth wide open,
And cover up my ears and never let me hear a sound
I want love to: forget that you offended me,
Or how you have defended me when everybody talked me down
Yeah and I want love to: change my friends to enemies,
Change my friends to enemies, and show me how it's all my fault.

Yeah I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me
I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me
Yeah I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me, anymore.

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN AT THE GUGGENHEIM

There is something slightly unsettling about seeing Chamberlaine's works. Almost like seeing a dead body wash ashore.  Or picking through a trash bin and finding a lost child. Seeing something in his sculptures that once belonged to something else, soemthing that once was- crying out to be released from the crumpled confines of it's new predicament. An object that once had pride in itself, a purpose, and a maker, now bent over in imprisonment, subjugated to gawkers. To say "Release me from man." 



I feel Chamberlain is the mortal enemy of Josef Hoffmann, who proclaims the unity between designer, craftsman, and consumer. The joy of the object is in the thought process, the care of the craft, and the enjoyment of the user. Chamberlain seems to dismiss completely this love, murdering objects for his own usage instead. 


I find his artwork forceful and egotistically macho. As if he chooses his medium based on his physical strength. Rawness, steel, strength, americana, young men, muscle cars - all of these things bound together, mashed, manipulated, squeezed, forced, bent - all to show his strength over these objects. 

And the paint that tops each of these beings are like that last proclamation of "You are mine! Here, I have marked you as mine." That last shiver, that last shout of exultation. 
Or like a slasher's blood on its victims. Slain across each breast as a final marking, a final humiliation for one, and a prideful signature of the other. Congealing in drips, running and pooling in sweet rust and iron. 

 

 "Kiss #12" 1979 

Painted Steel

An oilcan laying on the floor beaten and defeated. Painted and made up in brightly feminine colors like a done up housewife in lipstick, apron, and pearls. Now laying crumpled and defeated, twisted and broken. Why? She seems to ask. What have I done wrong?

STEVIE NICKS

loving her was surprising to me. her and fleetwood mac.
i feel like this is the era i know least about and should investigate more of.