The Judgment of Paris

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

1. I listened to half on my way home from Ohio, and now I'm going to actually READ the second half. I like to see events coincide: the Civil War and the birth of Impressionism and the downfall is it? of Napoleon III of France. I like to learn about art history this way, with new facts tossed in as part of the larger story: : Impasto is paint layered thickly. Chiaroscuro is paint getting gradually lighter, with a dark background, to show volume. Painting for Paris of mid-nineteenth century was like the high-tech world today: exciting! scandalous! picky! The French liked their paintings smooth, detailed, and classically grand. Impressionists tried a new way, with thick paint and not so much care for foreground and background. Everything shifts. Sex happens on the canvas. Crowds are aghast, uppity. Meissonier the classicist is idolized and rich, Manet is poor, but not now, now that he is dead.

2. I've decided to keep on listening. Narrator Tristan Layton pronounces those Parisian place names with aplomb, where I stumble, like they are cobblestones in my mind. As I drove between home and Publix yesterday,  Layton told me about the Franco-Prussian War, in which the Parisians were starved, humiliated, and driven to eating cats. Finally I understand why my Parisian great-great-grandfather disowned his beautiful daughter (my great-grandmother, the mother of Caroline Lily Frey) when she married a German.

3. Now it's over, and I understand this: It took 10 decisive years and more before that for the Impressionists to be respected.  Paris was in political flux at the time. The word Impressionism comes from someone who said it's like painting an impression of a horse, something you'd see from the window of a passing train.




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How many heads of pins can dance on Angel?

Angel's wing has so many tiny white heads of pins that I can barely see the "feathers" they're holding in place. So I'm going to switch to glue -- as little as possible. I think I like the colors, but won't be sure until those pesky pinheads disappear. To make the "feathers" I got in kind of a hypnotic state for several days and snipped and moved color and shape ... like those gold flecks: now I see that they make too straight a line …

Do you see an angel?

My angel is gold, her wings are purple, and she's in the center of it all. Now I'm going to decorate her wing with small, bright feather-ish snips.

Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter

Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter by Patricia Albers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

1. So far it's a tedious review of family history. Interesting that Mitchell's grandfather was an engineer who built bridges, including the original Van Buren Street drawbridge in Chicago.

2. Now I'm in her NY days. I do not like her, which is good. It means the book is honest. It portrays Mitchell as fastidiously self-serving. OK, she's also deeply troubled. And bent on being an artist. I'm at the part where she despises her wealthy parents, while living off their $$, of course. Once her father told a lover that she couldn't possibly marry another artist, unless he was of Picasso stature.

3. Now she's in Paris, where we'd all like to go to forget our troubles. She's trying to moderate her drinking, lose weight, & forget her man. Oh, & paint with French oils that challenge her with their new names & qualities. Her mother is paying, &  I don't resent her for that -- not her fault she was born rich. Who knows if she'd have developed her talents without the time & experiences that provided.

4. I'm writing this months later: What I'll remember about Joan Mitchell is what I loved about her paintings (which I now can see as landscapes) even before reading this -- the color, sweep, and abandon of her work.


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Art Media: Ink

The Grief quilt turned into Angel, and that name gives me new energy. A purple shape in it resembles a wing; puzzling over how to emphasize this, I started layering feathery pieces. For some, yesterday I dyed snips of lace and silk with purple ink. I forgot to wear gloves; when I glanced at my hands they were deltas of color, so I sat in the sun watching rivulets of ink flow down the creases from palm to wrist. It scrubbed off, but my fingernails are still colored. I love it!

April started this, with her Le Moyne class on ink. Here are the facts:

You cannot completely depend on ink to stay where you drew the line. It's like watercolor -- if there's water adjacent, the ink will follow it. Also, you should spend enough;  don't buy cheap ink because -- I can't remember! -- maybe it is not as color-saturated. I bought a little jar of India Ink at Utrecht. April has a bigger bottle, which she decants into a little ink bottle for convenience.

Which leads to pens: We're not talking ballpoint, and not even fountain pen. An art pen is essentially a point on a stick. Or a pointed stick. Or a stick (handle) with a little circle at the tip, for fat marks. You could use a sharp twig.

Dip the pen into a tiny bit of ink. Don't waste the ink! It's amazingly concentrated.

I will try this on stabilized cotton. Hope I remember to pre-wash it because sizing is an impediment. Who knows what that means? Maybe it's harder to write on. I don't intend to wash the fabric after I mark it up, which would introduce new considerations.

This is peripheral to the purple ink I used yesterday. That was for my old fountain pen. Today I read that ink is for paper and dye is for fabric, but the ink seems to like my fabric. I suppose it could wash out or bleed, so I'm not going to wash it! To heat-set the color  I ironed it. It's an experiment; other people know the answers. I'm having purple fun.