Leto's Death

 He's crying.  He's crying! What does it mean, Piter?!

Recent Pencil Drawings of Derron Thweatt

 

I had the good fortune of late to draw these pencil drawings and sketches from the particular live model whom I most enjoy drawing.  I've posted many drawings of him in the past but since the Covid 19 Pandemic struck I was only able to view him via ZOOM, which is definitely not my preferred method.  In this case I actually got to sit a few feet away from him as I drew.  It makes a great deal of difference for the draughsman, and I suspect for the model as well.  I hope for the better.  Many thanks to the other artists who took part in the three sessions during which these pictures were produced, to Thomasina DeMaio for footing the bill and setting up the use of the space at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center and the Sidewalk Salon at Noe & Market, and above all to Derron Thweatt for his compelling presence.  

 

9 Silverpoint Life Drawings

The drawings are all done directly from life in 30 minute sittings by Dale Wittig. Thanks to Gregg Woolard for the prepared and toned paper and to Thomasina DeMaio for the gift of the silver stylus and for hiring the models.  Thanks as well to the three models.  

Maggie SO 29Sept21

Martin Moulton 2&3Oct21

Aaron Bogan 9Oct21

Laboratory of the Imaginist Bauhaus

Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio (1902–1964) together with Asger Jorn founded this experimental laboratory in 1955 and Pinot-Gallizio continued to work at it until the end of his working life.  He was another of the founders of the Situationist International and he collaborated with Debord on the painting Abolition of Alienated Labor (1959-63).  He had quit the Situationist group in 1960, but continued on good terms with, as did his cohort, Jorn.  I've written about Jorn elsewhere on this blog and will do so again soon, but I want to concentrate here on Pinot Gallizio and his industrial painting techniques and concepts.  I once tried to use his idea of selling paintings by the yard.  I made huge paintings made up of smaller paintings and or scenes and sold them by section.  So I'm rather indebted to this great Italian painter and mean here to pay him back.  Consider it an act of Potlatch

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The next two are collaborations, the first with Debord and the second with Jorn.  The rest are paintings from after his break with the SI.

Lyubov Popova April 24, 1889 – May 25, 1924

She didn't  have the luxury of a long life, but in other regards Popova benefited from her family's wealth and influence, which put her in the right place and time for her gifts to flower.  Though she came from a bourgeois background, she embraced the proletarian revolution when it occurred (and died before the party turned its back on revolutionary principles and enforced a standard realism on working artists.)  The images below are only some of the paintings.  They're presented in reverse order, beginning with the Space Force Constructions from 1921, a hundred years ago.  The following few years (her last) were well spent designing patterns for fabrics, costumes  and sets for theater productions, layouts for books and executing other utilitarian projects. She also wrote a few manifestos.  The earlier paintings , those she made while a member of Malevich's Suprematist group, already betray her interest in presenting their ideal forms in actual space.  She began making the Cubist paintings in France under the tutelage of Metzinger and Le Fauconnier in 1912.  She was most deeply inspired by traditional Russian icons, whose spirit can be felt in all her great work, without it ever being explicit in its derivation.  She worked alongside women and men in forming the first great artist collectives, which became the models for those of my own youth, seventy years later.