Sunset, Friday, 15 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Happy Birthday, MLK. My parents – even my parents made us shut up and listen to that speech, on the radio on the way back from the beach.

Following from yesterday’s mention of Andy Warhol: Something I appreciated, as a painter and in a larger way as an artist, was Louis Menand’s essay on Warhol in the January 11th New Yorker. While commenting, more or less, on recent books about Warhol, Menand manages to distill the history of contemporary art criticism. For anyone like me who missed the meeting about Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art and what has come after, it’s a brilliantly accessible and illuminating short course. 

Sunset, Thursday, 14 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

A recent excursion to the very fun letterheady.com (collecting all kinds of notable stationery – my personal favorite so far is Hal Roach Studios) included the 1960s letterhead used by the Rolling Stones. I was telling friends how much I liked the 1969 letter from Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol I saw when I visited the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. That letter can be found at lettersofnote.com.

I’m afraid I’m going to get nostalgic here. The letterheads, along with the offhand intelligent charm of the typewritten Jagger note, reminded me of the “good old days” of New York publishing, when I’d encounter correspondence like this all the time.

Yes, cut this post open – you can count the rings, quite a few of them.

Update on Friday, January 15, 2010 at 06:32PM by BVD

One note about letterheady.com – I could do without the Adolf Hitler stationery. I don’t think there’s any reason to display it, except perhaps in a true museum context.

Sunset, Tuesday, 1 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

I was very excited tonight to see, I think for the first time since this site started, a perfectly clear, ‘blank’ sky to work with. I’d been wondering what I’d do if I got one of these again; although this may not seem like much of a departure, it reflects development that’s been going on in the paintings for the past six weeks or so.

As soon as this painting was done, the sky went through a phenomenal series of twilight changes. The result was a deeply glowing old-gold horizon, a dome of intense blue-violet and, in between, a rose-violet aura that shimmered like Northern Lights. Yes, yes, I just may have to try to paint it tomorrow.

I’ve spent much of the day catching up with posts and images from Pittsburgh, and find myself not having thought of a single thing to say for tonight, so I’ll break style a bit and post some ‘home photos’ that each reprise aspects of the trip.

From the 27th, this is my Aunt Millie and me in her kitchen on her 90th birthday. In case you somehow can’t tell from the photo, Millie is a joy.

As reported on the 28th, we went up the Duquesne Incline – and here we’re at the top. The trio of yellow bridges that you can perhaps just make out on the Allegheny River, after the first yellow bridge, as mentioned on the 29th, are the Roberto Clemente, the Andy Warhol, and the Rachel Carson.

Finally, we’ve also discussed Pittsburgh (“SIXBURGH”) and football. Well, amazingly, everywhere we went, even at the top of the Duquesne Incline ...

... we spotted celebrity athletes with names like Hines Ward, Troy Polamalu, and Ben Roethlisberger. Fantastic!

Sunset, Saturday, 29 August 2009 / Notes from Pittsburgh, Part 3

William Theodore Van Doren. Neville Island, Pittsburgh, Pa. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

One of the best parts of our trip to Pittsburgh was going through the Andy Warhol Museum, where we spent about four solid hours. One of the best designed, most intelligently curated museums I’ve ever seen. Whether you love Warhol, or feel just lukewarm about him, or think you hate his stuff or just don’t get it – doesn’t matter, I think. Naturally this can’t be true for everyone, but I think almost anyone would come out of the museum enjoying and appreciating the man and his work.

It was a blast.

One thing I think I finally understood was how Warhol’s aesthetic could be at one and the same time absolutely rigorous and in a sense promiscuous. The peculiar unity of those elements made him a great image-monger and image-maker; for him mongering and creating became one thing. As much as he could create original personal imagery, and he could, he used that great natural talent to recognize and respond to the imagery of society, and so created not simply images but icons.

And there you have an aesthetically naive, backward writer sounding as if he’s just discovered something really new. But for me it was, so there you go.

Along similar lines, I’d love to rave about the beauty of Pittsburgh, and especially the bridges, but here again I think it’s been done many times before. Nevertheless, I’ll say it: I can hardly believe how beautiful the bridges are. And to have one named for Roberto Clemente (The Great One), next to another named for Andy Warhol, next to another named for Rachel Carson – all three of splendid design – is really almost too good.

Sunset, Wednesday, 19 August 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

In the vast museum gallery of the woods, walking with Flint, the sun through cloud cover skylight, I see art in reverse – Courbets and Corots, Constables, Sisleys, Homers and Sargents before they became these things. They started here, somehow. Even the most visionary Cézannes, the O’Keeffes, Dalis, Kandinskys, Rothkos, Warhols, Hockneys: What a room ...

Flint stops to drink from a stream, in the museum cafeteria.