Conversation

Imagine the conversation in this room.

Now imagine how the painting affects the conversation. Or doesn’t it?

Replace the painting with a reproduction of a 16^th century nude. A portrait of Henry VIII.  The descent from the cross by Rubens.  A Bruegel landscape.  A Norman Rockwell, the boys running past the “No Swimming” sign, blown up to 6 feet high.

We all know that a painting profoundly affects the feeling of a room.  How  does this painting by Albert Oehlen affect the feeling of the room?

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/seeing-something-awful/

Photo of interior with Albert Oehlen painting from National Geographic.

Titian 1488-1576

Hans Holbein the Younger 1497-1543

Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640

Pieter Bruegel the Elder 1525-1569

Norman Rockwell 1894-1978

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

http://facefame.wordpress.com

http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

www.katherinehilden.com

www.khilden.com

Read Full Post »

Shibui

It must be about fifteen years ago that I read an article in National Geographic on Japanese aesthetic.  Just now  I found a reference to it online:  “Shibui: A Messenger of Peace in Nature, Humanity and Diplomacy” by Carol Miller.

Does not the sight of a single leaf, seen through a fence, capture your     breath? In this split second of perception and veneration, motion ceases and mindfulness increases. This moment awakens one to enlightenment and wisdom. This moment is shibui.

I don’t remember the text in that National Geo article but the image of that leaf sticking through a fence has stayed with me.  When I saw the image I didn’t have to be instructed about this “other culture’s “ sensibility. I was already acquainted with the term shibui. But this magazine picture triggered  a moment of recognition.  This was my sensibility and there was a word for it.

Writers like to say, they don’t know what they’re thinking until they write it.  Painters also don’t know what they feel until they have painted it.  Art making is not about premeditation but about recognition and discovery.

About four years ago I built a fence and a little seating enclosure at my side door.  A narrow planter box became part of the structure.  I needed it, actually, to strengthen the whole arrangement, since my carpentry skills are rather feeble.  But I planned it in such a way that the full blast of the annuals would be towards the street, to be seen by the public, while on the private side where the benches are, the inpatients would be peaking through the fence.  That sight is for me.  As I go in and out and muck about my daily chores, there’s a moment of recognition.

http://www.questia.com/read/1G1-167387917/shibui-a-messenger-of-peace-in-nature-humanity-and

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

www.khilden.com

http://facefame.wordpress.com

http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

Read Full Post »

The Hand and the Occipital Lobe

The National Geographic article (May 2012) called “The Common Hand,” starts like this:  “The hand is where the mind meets the world.  We humans use our hands to build fires and sew quilts, to steer airplanes, to write, dig, remove tumors, pull a rabbit out of a hat.  The human brain, with its open-ended creativity, may be the thing that makes our species unique.  But without hands, all the grand ideas we concoct would come to nothing but a very long to-do list.”

Hey, what about drawing!!!

I attended a lecture at the Fermi Lab in Batavia last Friday, called “Sleights of Mind.”  The researchers, Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde,  talked about how and why we are taken in by magic.  The brain, it turns out, cannot multi-task.  It can only focus on one thing at a time, which is why misdirection, the fundamental trick in sleight of hand, works.  Visual information is so complex for the brain to process that it takes 18% of the cerebral cortex to do the work, in the lump at the back called the Occipital Lobe.  Your eyes can only focus on one thing at a time, which is why we keep shifting our gaze if we want to take in a larger scene.  If we didn’t have to shift, i.e. if we could put our peripheral vision also into focus, the brain would have to be 500 times bigger than it is.

Seeing is a big deal:  hasn’t that been the thread through what I’m saying here!?

Just think, almost one fifth of your brain is about seeing.  And you’re telling me you don’t have time to refine your seeing…to practice drawing!!???

Master magician, Apollo Robbins, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjPVx4MNXoQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LBbmvXM0WY&feature=related

Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde,  “Sleights of Mind,”  2010

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

www.khilden.com

http://facefame.wordpress.com

http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

Read Full Post »