My thoughts on the craft, the process and the subjects
Visited the 21st Century museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa yesterday and saw Shinsuke Yoshitake’s exhibit. Amazing amount of work, creativity and attention to detail! Not to mention, a great sense of humour.
It’s the beginning of a rainy season in the Hokuriku region in Japan. I saw this building, which was almost overtaken by the vegetation, from a bus yesterday and snapped a quick photo with my phone. As much as I like live sketching, yesterday’s heavy downpour could have given the word “watercolour” a new meaning. So I used the snapshot as reference, sketching in the comfort of our temporary home, listening to the sound of rain outside.
I’ve been thinking about how much we value things made for us by someone special. Two of such things are on top of the mind for me personally (probably because they are sitting on my desk right in front of me).
One is a small leather wallet made by a long-time friend, who is a wife of my shodo (Japanese calligraphy) teacher. She has always amazed me with her curiosity in learning various crafts and ability to execute them at a very high level and with tremendous attention to detail. There is also a 5 yen (go-en) coin that she put inside the wallet as a symbol of friendship, and which I always keep there.
Another special thing is a wooden caster for my coffee mug. It was made by my daughter about a year ago. She used a wood-burner to engrave a cute coded love message for me, which always makes me smile. Later, I tried to reciprocate in kind and made a desk decoration for my daughter with some of the things that were on my mind – symbols of ancient Greek cardinal virtues. Curiously, the word “cardinal” is derived from the Greek “cardo” – meaning “heart” or “hinge”. I particularly like a poetic interpretation that the practice of the cardinal virtues is the hinge on which hangs the door to the good life.
Last summer in Paris, I saw, almost by chance, the sculpture by Giuseppe Penone called “L’Arbre des voyelles”, or “The tree of vowels.” I wasn’t specifically planning on visiting it, but it was marked as a point of interest on Google Maps, and I was curious to see what it was. It is located in the Tuillleries garden, in the somewhat wilder and greener part of the park. As the name suggests, it’s a sculpture of a tree. It is incredibly realistic, despite being mage of bronze. As I later learned upon doing some reading, Penone used a 30-meter uprooted oak tree as a model, eventually casting it in bronze. The bronze tree looks like it really belongs in the garden. In fact, my first thought was that it could have been easily replaced by the original tree without any loss of artistic value. But then, of course, provoking this kind of thoughts was probably the artist’s intention.
Regarding the deeper meaning, when I was looking at the sculpture, I was focussed on the roots and completely missed the significance of the five branches. At the points where the branches touch the ground, there were planted five different species of oak trees. So the significance of the artwork (or at least one of the points it conveys) is to show the role of human creativity in the evolution of the environment.
Initially, I also didn’t understand the significance of the name of the sculpture, but reading about it later, learned that the roots apparently resemble the vowels A, E, I, O, U. Penone mentioned that he was inspired by the hypothetical alphabet of the druids. On the other hand, these letters are also associated with the famous sonnet “Voyelles,” written by Arthur Rimbaud in 1871. (I read it on the Internet, so it must be true!)
For what it’s worth, it’s a nice association. Here is the original sonnet:
Voyelles
A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,
Golfes d’ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d’ombelles;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;
U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d’animaux, paix des rides
Que l’alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;
O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges:
—O l’Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux!
Here is a English translation by Oliver Bernard: (“Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962)”):
Vowels
A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue : vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
Which buzz around cruel smells,
Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips In anger or in the raptures of penitence;
U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;
O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:
O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes!
And I also liked this translation into Russian by Nikolai Gumilev:
Гласные
А — черно, бело — Е, У — зелено, О — сине,
И — красно… Я хочу открыть рождение гласных.
А — траурный корсет под стаей мух ужасных,
Роящихся вокруг как в падали иль в тине,
Мир мрака; Е — покой тумана над пустыней,
Дрожание цветов, взлет ледников опасных.
И — пурпур, сгустком кровь, улыбка губ прекрасных
В их ярости иль в их безумье пред святыней.
У — дивные круги морей зеленоватых,
Луг, пестрый от зверья, покой морщин, измятых
Алхимией на лбах задумчивых людей.
О — звона медного глухое окончанье,
Кометой, ангелом пронзенное молчанье,
Омега, луч Её сиреневых очей.
I came across a poem by Roger S. Keys called “Hokusai says” a couple of weeks ago. Among other things, it’s an illustration of the principle that I keep telling my students, who work on their papers and theses – even though, objectively, most of the writing out there is actually re-writing of someone else’s thoughts or findings, there is value in re-wording and summarizing those thoughts again. The very act of re-processing and condensing the “old” information adds something new to it and makes it more accessible to others.
The poem is about Katsushika Hokusai – a monumental figure in the history of art. To me personally, it is fascinating how he was both influenced by and had a strong influence on the Western art. Somehow, he seems similar to Leonardo da Vinci in his incredible skills of observation and distilling the essence of phenomena simply by looking and thinking.
Hokusai’s writing is less known than his art, but he left some incredible bits of wisdom over the course of his long life. And this is what Roger Keys talking about in his poem. It’s a fantastic portrait of Hokusai, the philosopher. Curiously, I couldn’t find much info about Roger Keys himself after some casual poking around online, besides the fact that he is a scholar of Japanese art and has some association with Brown University.
Here is the poem. Enjoy.
Hokusai says
Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.
He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.
He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.
He says everything is alive —
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.
He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn’t matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.
Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.
He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.
Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.
— Roger S. Keyes
While flipping through my sketchbook yesterday, I came across this picture, which I sketched exactly four years ago to the day. My wife and I were on sabbatical in Milan, and our daughter and I were drawing plants on a sunny day in the Brera Botanical Garden – a quiet green nook in the middle of the city. There, we met a local artist, who came over and mentioned that he used to have the same kind of sketchbook. We chatted and looked through each other’s sketches – mine on paper and his on his phone. It was one of those fascinating “one chance – one meeting” moments, which I often go back to in my memory. Actually, it turned out to be not just one meeting, because we later had a chance to visit the artist’s home studio, being somewhat overwhelmed by his and his wife’s hospitality.
I took thousands of photographs and video clips during our six-months stay in Italy, but the sketches, which I got into a habit of doing fairly regularly, definitely carry more emotional content for me personally. On reflection, this makes me want to pick up the sketching habit again.
A gadget I’ve been enjoying over the past week is a robotic vacuum Roomba. In fact our entire family has been having fun with it. My daughter aptly named it Dobby, after the house-elf from “Harry Potter”. I find it particularly ironic in the context of the recent International Women’s Day. I was looking online at some old Soviet postcards celebrating the 8th of March and came across this one (see below). A rough translation of the verse is that giving this kind of robot as a present for your spouse (it says “wife” specifically – in case there were any doubts that this is from pre-PC days) would stop nagging in the household, making life easier for everyone.
In the “Harry Potter”, incidentally, Hermione Granger advocated for liberation of house-elves from oppression by the wizarding society by founding S.P.E.W. – Society for the Promotion of Elfish Wellfare. She originally wanted to call the organization “Stop the Outrageous Abuse of Our Fellow Magical Creatures and Campaign for a Change in Their Legal Status,” but the name would not fit on a badge.
So happy house-robot day, everybody! Oh, and don’t forget to join S.P.E.W.!
I’ve always enjoyed building scale models, and lately this interest has been rekindled after my daughter and I started working on a Gunpla (Japanese abbreviation for Gundam plastic model). The specific model we chose proved to be too advanced for a nine-year-old, both in terms of her ability to focus on the intricate instructions and the sheer complexity of the construction itself. It’s been just perfect for me, though – challenging enough to be entertaining, and providing an attractive result at each stage of the build, which maintained my daughter’s interest in the project.
As I’ve been building this model, I’ve been thinking why it feels so satisfying to do it. There is no creative aspect in it, at least not until (and if) one decides to paint and customize the model. In that case, there are limitless opportunities for creativity, as evidenced by many YouTube videos that show insane levels of detail and realism that some modellers can achieve. The model can be “weathered”, for example, to simulate realistic wear, tear and battle damage.
Building a Gunpla is similar to painting-by-numbers colouring books that are popular with kids (and some adults, I am sure). Only in the case of plastic models, you are sculpting by numbers. the process goes like this: consult the schematics in the instructional booklet, find the numbered part, cut it from the “sprue tree” (the plastic frame that connects the moulded parts), file away the excess plastic, polish the surface, snap the parts together, et voilà! – a miniature sculpture emerges. You’ve got almost all the benefits of creative surprise without the hard work of problem-solving.
As I’ve been working on my video-making skills during the COVID-forced remote teaching terms, I’ve noticed that photo- and videography offer very different experiences both from the creator’s and the viewer’s standpoint. I tried to analyze why this is the case, and came to the following hypothesis.
A still image creates a synthetic experience for the viewer. All the information in the picture is presented at once, so the viewer can make up their own version of the story. This doesn’t mean that it’s a synthetic experience for the creator, though. Actually, it takes a series of distinct, sequential steps to create a still image. For example, in the photography context, it could mean setting up the lighting, taking the photo and post-processing it. The sequential nature of still image-creation is even more apparent in classical painting, which involves sketching, mixing colours and painting multiple layers to render the form to various degrees of detail in the different parts of the image. The the finished painting is presented to the viewer, they see it all at once: the entirety of the shapes, colours and all the paint layers. It is then the job for the viewer’s brain to synthesize this information and formulate a story.
A movie, on the other hand, is an actual story. The viewer cannot ingest it all at once. The information has to be consumed as a sequence that was deliberately laid out by the author. Ironically, the process of creating a video is, in a sense, synthetic in that the author needs to have the entire process in their head, from how the footage needs to be shot to how it is going to be edited. Of course, post-processing is a big part of still photography too, but when I shoot photos, I am generally not making specific plans of how I am going to process them. With video, though, I am constantly re-evaluating how the footage I am capturing would be spliced together in the final product.
I think this difference in how the still and moving images are created and consumed is the reason that the emergence of mainstream video production did not result in extinction of still photography. The two genres are simply too different.
I realized a while ago that sketching is a good exercise for developing observation skills and, more generally, memory. It requires full concentration, because the subject is usually not standing still, and one needs to be able to consciously think about which features of the subject are essential and which are superficial. The deliberate thinking is important, because it is the mechanism that allows committing the visual information to long(er)-term memory. The short-term memory (the one in which information lives for a couple of seconds) is not sufficient for preserving the visual details until they can be captured on paper.
Lately, I’ve been recording video highlights to supplement lectures in my Advanced Fluid Mechanics course, and one of those is about the importance of being able to make conceptual sketches of flow features for understanding of the underlying physics. Incidentally, one of the forefathers of studies of fluid mechanics was Leonardo da Vinci, whose approach was based on (some would say it entirely consisted of) observation and sketching of the natural phenomena. We are not aiming at Leonardo’s level of artistry in my fluids course, but observation is an important skill for a scientist and an engineer, and sketching is way to develop it.
The book I am recommending in the video is “Boundary-Layer Theory