Category: Art

Tim Jones, here. From my blog, Old World Swine;

The painting at left, by Italian artist Angelo Casciello is an illustration that is part of the new lectionary approved by the Italian bishops. Sandro Magister comments;

The Italian bishops’ conference has entrusted the illustration of the
new Lectionary to thirty contemporary artists, with their styles. It’s
the first time that a liturgical book has been associated with modern
images. An audacious undertaking – and one immediately criticized

I have tried to find a clearer version of this piece of art online, but
so far have been unsuccessful. I would like to see it better so that I
can do a more fair critique. I realize there might be objections to
critiqueing the piece in this format, but right now it is all I have to
go on.

I also Googled up the websites of the other artists named in the
Magister article, and they all seem to be pretty well within the same
broad stylistic milieu.

Where to begin?

Let me just say what this painting is not; It isn’t beautiful, it
isn’t technically accomplished, well composed or evocative.
It probes none of the human experience of the event it depicts (the healing of the man born blind), and it
utterly fails to draw the viewer in or make them care about seeing it
again.

It is not really a work of art. Like so many modern abstract pieces, it
is a placeholder representing the idea of a work of art. There should
be a little rectangle in the middle with the words "place artwork
here". What this painting is, is easy. The shame of it is, there are
probably many living artists in Italy who could have provided, even in a very simple format, art of beauty and depth.

Now, of course, there will be those who will counter that they like
this piece and find it terrific in all kinds of ways, but I can only
respond in advance that lots of people liked disco, too. I would like
to hear explained why and how this is a good painting. To fall back on
"beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a cop-out. There is certainly
a subjective element to beauty, but that is not nearly the end of it.
Some things are really beautiful and some things are really ugly, to
the point of making mere opinion superfluous. This is why people drive
as fast as they can through Nebraska to get to Yellowstone Park, and
not the other way around. Sorry, Nebraska. I give thanks for you every
time I open a bag of tortilla chips, but there is just not much to look
at there.

According to Catholic News Service, there are a number of translation
and typographical errors in this new Italian lectionary… so many that
they are issuing a set of corrective adhesive stickers to cover them
all. One wonders if they could not issue a new set of illustrations
in the same way.

GET THE STORY.

I just wanted to thank everyone who came by my blog, Old World Swine, to participate in may first ever "Combox Crit" (this is when I put up a piece of art for critique on my blog).

The project was a rousing success. I have posted a summary of my thoughts on the painting and the comments I received. I will definitely do this again soon.

Again… thanks!

I want to ask Jimmy’s readers for some help with an experiment over at my new blog, Old World Swine.

From time to time I would like to gather opinions on a selected piece of artwork posted on my site. This critique is not restricted to artists or art professionals, though they will be much appreciated. All that is necessary is that you give a brief, honest response – including negative stuff – and be as specific as possible. For the purposes of the online "crits" I would rather you take a pass on comments such as, "I like it, you’re very talented" or "I hate it. I hate realism". That doesn’t really help.

Other than that, I would like to get your thoughts. The usual rules of combox etiquette still apply, of course.

Thankee!

Jimmy’s 3D Mars Man post reminded me of those 3D posters that were popular for a while back in the ’80s/’90s. They usually resembled a cross between the white noise on your TV screen and some kind of LSD trip (at least, from what I hear). It was said that if you looked at the posters in just the right way (kind of crossing your eyes) that a 3D image would emerge.

It took me a while to actually make one of these work, but after that it got easier, and eventually I could make out the 3D image within a few seconds. Not that the actual image was anything to write home about… they were really sort of like crude paper cut-outs, but they were there, if you looked hard. It was a moderately interesting effect.

WARNING! ANALOGY ALERT! Barely thought-out spiritual musings ahead…

It occurred to me that in some ways, these posters are like the way we might approach religious faith. I heard from numbers of people I trusted that these posters really worked, and that there was something – some kind of image not immediately visible – "inside" them. There was the apparent image (which could look pretty chaotic), and then there was the image within the image. Thing is, to make out the deeper image took a little work. It did not just leap off the paper. To even give the thing a decent effort required a certain amount of trust. It took me quite a while, looking at a number of different images, before I could see what others already saw. If I hadn’t kept at it, I would never have seen that deeper dimension.

Now, that reminded me of another sorta-related thing which I found very cool;

INAKA’S 3D SPACE WORLD!

Akira Inaka creates 3D images of pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. These images work in much the same way as the 3D posters I mentioned above. It might take some experimentation, but they really do work, and the effect on some of the images is pretty striking, giving the viewer a little sense of the spatial depth that is lacking in regular photos of galaxies and nebulae and other neat stuff. Inaka gives instructions on the site on how to make the things work. One note of advice; if you do this for too long, you might run into some serious eye fatigue, and maybe a headache. If you start to notice that happening, just quit and come back to the site later.

I found the site by following a link on the Hubble Heritage website (which I’ve plugged before). The site offers a convenient way to look at some very beautiful images of the cosmos. The captions can be as fascinating to read as the images are to see. The vast distances, mind-boggling dimensions and sheer energy represented by some of these photos can be truly staggering.

Pretty SCARY, eh keeds?! Ooooohh…

Hey, Tim Jones, here (not Jimmy).

I did a series of posts on the nature of art a long time ago, which I left unfinished, due to the fact that I had not thought through all the implications of my earlier assumptions and categories of thought, especially in regard to the place of non-objective art ("abstract" art that depicts no recognizable subject).

I have been doing more thinking on this recently, and though I am still not prepared to draw any huge, sweeping conclusions, I have clarified my thought considerably. I will be completing that series of art posts soon, but in the meanwhile, I stumbled on an interesting art blog, where the author and I have been engaging in a discussion about non-objective art that some readers might want to scan.

Basically, I’m not convinced, yet, that non-objective art is really capable of substantive communication, but I am open to argument.

The subject came up as a result of an upcoming opportunity I have to meet and view the work of artist Makoto Fujimura (above). I have heard a great deal about his work, and have been reading some of his articles and interviews, trying to get some insight into his understanding of the function of art, and why he prefers to work in such a highly abstract way. Fujimura is very open about his Christian faith, and his work has found increasing recognition in the secular art community. He speaks with great conviction both about the Christian faith and about the power of art, and so I look forward to meeting him and seeing his work. I will post about his exhibit afterward.

Visit The Aesthetic Elevator blog. In addition to our discussion, he addresses the chocolate Jesus sculpture of recent infamy. My take on it? Flippant, empty and of no consequence, artistic or sociological. Calculated to gin up publicity by means of controversy… *yawn*. Anyone could think up a project like this every twenty minutes.

See the work of Makoto Fujimura.

Well, this is a more effective argument for the existence of God than most.

CHT to the reader who e-mailed!

MORE.

Yes, the red name above isn’t Jimmy, Michelle, or Tim J. In a rare foray from guest-blogging limbo, I’ve returned to… share some pictures from my summer vacation.

Wait! Come back! Don’t worry, I’m not talking about a slide show of My Trip to the Grand Canyon or anything like that. It’s just that last week, vacationing in North Carolina, I contributed an entry to a sand sculpture contest — and won — and, given the subject matter, I thought Jimmy’s readers might like to see the results.

See more pictures.

Granted, on this particular blog, graced as it is from time to time with Tim J’s stunning artwork, my summer-day diversion isn’t as impressive as it might somewhere else, but still, I’m pretty pleased with the results.

This was my first complete crucifixion sculpture; last year I made a couple of unfinished studies that gave me the confidence to tackle this project in spite of having only 75 minutes to do it in before the contest judging.

(The conditions weren’t ideal… The tide was high and rising; the time to sculpt sand is when the tide is receding, which allows the best access to wet sand. For awhile I wasn’t even going to enter the contest, but eventually I decided to give it a try, and was pleasantly surprised at how well the relatively dry sand above the tide line handled.)

In previous years, I’ve done sharks, crocodiles, mermaids and sea serpents.

Well, that’s all I have to say about that, so… see you next summer!

"Remember, O man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return." –Ash Wednesday liturgy

A few weeks ago, Jimmy mentioned the unexpected death of a friend. This person was also a friend of mine and a colleague here at Catholic Answers. Let’s call him T. Although T. had been ill for quite a while, his death came as an unexpected shock. I had known him for over five years and had worked closely with him for several of them. His death was particularly difficult for me since he and I had had a couple of meetings earlier in the week before he died and it was stunning that it seemed that he was there one day and gone the next.

In the weeks following T.’s funeral, another colleague who was quite close to T. was allowed by T.’s survivors to go through T.’s apartment and collect any religious items that he thought might find a good home with Catholic Answers’ staff members. When the announcement was made that the items were available in the library for the taking, I hotfooted it over to see if I could find something by which to remember T.

What caught my eye immediately was a large handsomely-framed print of the painting you see on the left side of this post.  (You can click on the image to enlarge it.)  To me, it appeared to be a monk holding a jar. Since it was a rather large picture, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it but I took it back to my office to decide. I figured that I could always return it to the library if need be.

The back of the print said that it was a painting of St. Francis of Assisi by the seventeenth-century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran, a master from Spain’s Golden Age. A colleague in the next office who came over to look at it pointed out that St. Francis wasn’t holding a jar; he was holding a skull! Right away then I knew that this was a painting from the memento mori genre, an artistic genre in which the subjects are intended to remind the viewer of death.

Some research on the painting revealed that De Zurbaran was very interested in the memento mori genre and did more than one painting of his namesake saint contemplating death.

CLICK HERE FOR IMAGES.

It might seem strange to think of St. Francis of Assisi contemplating death.  In the popular imagination, he is a happy-go-lucky friar who liked to preach to birds and commune with nature.  In the minds of some, he might even be considered a prototype for the radical Sixties hippies.  But St. Francis himself would not have considered it strange for an artist to portray him in such a seemingly "morbid" manner.

"May Thou be praised, my Lord, for our sister, bodily death,
whom no man living can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin:
blessed those whom she will find in Thy most holy desires,
because the second death will do them no evil."

The quote above is taken from St. Francis’s Canticle of Brother Sun.

Once I realized what I had, my decision was made. There could be no more significant memento of T., one that would remind me of him and remind me of the ephemeral nature of this life and the need to be always prepared for the next.

Please take a few moments and pray for the repose of T.’s soul and for the final perseverance of all who will die today.

"Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. … Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect" (Matt. 24:42, 44).

I was in good spirits Monday, as I drove to the local community college. I had received word a few weeks before that I would be teaching some classes there in the fall, and was on my way to sign my employment contract. The job seemed ideal. It would provide me with a solid, steady income, yet leave me a good deal of free time to work at my fine art projects, especially the religious and liturgical art that I hoped to pursue.

It had been a grindingly long year, as my art income had been spotty, and this new job promised to ease things considerably. I had applied for several positions, and tried to drum up as much freelance business as I could, but we had slowly and continually lost ground. Maybe now I wouldn’t have to worry about stopping at Sonic occasionally to buy the kids a milk shake. We could buy a few clothes, perhaps even replace my old Dodge Neon next year.

While driving, I tuned in to the local Catholic radio station. It was the feast day of St. Maximilian Kolbe, and I listened as the hosts and guests discussed Kolbe’s spirituality. Standing out in my mind was  Kolbe’s understanding that any apostolate goes through three stages; preparation, the apostolate itself, and then the suffering that makes the apostolate fruitful. I considered that my new focus on liturgical art could be understood as an apostolate, and I looked back on how God might have prepered me for it, how I felt that He called me to it, and how we had even suffered financially, somewhat. I quickly decided that, though it had been a rough several months, I really couldn’t call it suffering… not in the big scheme of things… especially in comparison to the suffering of saints like Maximilian Kolbe. Nonetheless, I was happy and relieved to have my new teaching position.

Tomorrow would be the Feast of the Assumption, and we (me, my wife Martha, and kids) would attend the vigil mass at our parish that night. It would be a great opportunity to offer thanks for my new job. It also happened to be the day that I finished, and officially signed, my first real liturgical art piece, an Immaculate Heart image, in the classical realist style that I have happily, even gratefully, settled into over the last few years. I had prayed for some time about this new direction in my art and had decided to paint the Immaculate Heart as a way of expressing my new devotion to the Blessed Mother, as well as to ask her blessing on all my artwork, especially any religious pieces. Finishing the piece just as we would be celebrating Mary’s assumption was very gratifying and meant a great deal to me.

Overall, it was a day of milestones. Everything seemed steeped in significance.

I arrived early to sign my contract, and so decided to drop in and visit for a minute with the head of the art department. She had someone in her office, but looked up and greeted me, introducing me to her guest, another art instructor. Then she said "Did you get my message?".

"No", I replied. My cell phone had been in need of a charge.

"Oh… well, I’m sorry…" she began, "but I’m afraid we had to take away your classes." She went on to explain that class enrollment had not been as heavy as they had anticipated, and that one teacher they thought would be gone had indeed decided to stay. My classes were needed for the full-time faculty already on board. She was apologetic. She had never had to do this before. Things just didn’t work out. She had tried to call me that morning to let me know that I did not need to come out to sign my contract.

I don’t mind telling you that I was numb. It was something like having the wind knocked out of me. I said some things about how it was okay, and to keep me in mind if something opened up. I said thanks, I think.

At mass that night, I was comforted by the readings, and was reminded that my trust is in God, and not in any created thing. Had I put too much stock in this job, and lost my focus on Christ? If my priorities had been straight, would I have been so deeply stunned and disappointed? It wasn’t really a time to look for easy answers, though, more a time to lay everything before Christ and to trust in his providence. A time, also, to petition the Blessed Virgin and ask for her prayers.

So now the painting above takes on, for me, even more significance. I had thought for some weeks that in this new venture into liturgical art, I would be working with a net – so to speak. I am now, once again, working without a net.

And so comes the shameless plug. The photo above is a rather poor digital camera snapshot of my Immacualte Heart oil painting. The original is 18 x 24 inches, and is on wood panel. The model is a lovely lady from my parish, who condescended to pose for me. I have high quality prints of the original available in a variety of sizes which are appropriate for individuals or churches. The original is also for sale. If you like, you can find out more on MY WEBSITE.

I am also anxious (and this is the whole point, I guess) to execute more custom fine art pieces for churches that are in need of liturgical or devotional artwork. I will be happy to consider murals, as well. I pray that this piece is only the beginning of a fruitful career providing very high quality artwork that will be truly edifying to Catholic worship and devotion, both public and private. My art is informed by very traditional sensibilities, but is executed in a way that I hope is powerful and fresh.

I covet your prayers. If you have read this far… God bless you!

Hey, Tim Jones, here.

I just wanted to share with you all a neat experience I had lately in my work. The recently finished painting at left will always hold a special place for me, for a few reasons.

For one thing, it is the first portrait commission that I received through MY WEBSITE. It’s pretty cool that we live in a time when artists can find customers anywhere in the world. The entire thing was done through e-mail. The client sent me a photo as an attachment, and I sent a preliminary sketch (as well as the final painting for their approval) in the same way. The fees were handled through PayPal. The client even commented in one e-mail how odd it was that we had this transaction without ever speaking to one another. And they were right!

Another thing that made this a good experience was the fact that the customer was a very kind Catholic family, and the boy in the painting is their recently adopted son. I’m thrilled that my work allowed me to be involved with this family in such a personal way. I know the painting is very meaningful for them. Our families have actually been praying for one another since pretty early in the process, and that is a perk for which I am really grateful.

Finally, the whole thing went so smoothly. I am always a bit nervous to begin a commission because things can go off the rails. I recently had to pass on a nice commission because the customer’s needs and my artistic goals just didn’t fit well in the end. I didn’t want to take on a project that I wouldn’t be proud to put my name on. Alot of things can happen; what if the customer doesn’t like the sketch? What if they like the sketch, but don’t like the final painting? What if they want changes that you feel make the artwork worse, rather than better?

I have been blessed, in that I have not yet had a commission go south on me like that, but it does happen. It would be especially uncomfortable if the project fell apart when it was half finished and half paid for! I’ve heard horror stories.

So, as I said, I was a bit nervous while I waited to see what kind of portrait it was that the client had in mind. I usually work from life, or at least from my own photos. Working from someone else’s photography is a crapshoot. The goal is to end up with a painting of a person, not something that looks like a painting of a photo of a person.

I was delighted to see that the photo was not a cheesy commercial portrait or a badly composed snapshot, but was worthy of framing on its own. Portraits of young children always run the risk of being overly sentimental, but this photo had depth and subtlety. I was intrigued by the boy’s gaze, and found the soft lighting a worthy challenge. I also found his Russian features very striking. Overall, I could not have asked for better source material from a client.

The painting does lose something in reproduction, but it did turn out well, and I am glad to have a copy of a high resolution digital scan of it tucked away in my files.

Jobs come and go, but this is one that I will always remember fondly, and for which I will always be grateful.

I just reorganized my website, and have added a few new paintings. Y’all drop by, ya hear?