Modern Love

At the Guggenheim there is an exhibit about Frank Lloyd Wright. One thing that is frustrating about going to the big museums in the city to see a show is that they are often maddeningly crowded. Then, you are forced to peer over some middle aged woman’s Chico’s clad shoulder to see something that was at one time groundbreaking and still may be presently moving. But to hear the talk is the worst. I didnt come hear to hear your banal adjectives and humdrum analogies. I didnt come to hear you praise novel thinking that now sits quaintly and safely in the past.

I came to see the work. and it got me thinking about the movement of Modernism in all of its forms. In art, literature, architecture, design, science and in thought:

So naturally I looked it up on wikipedia first. {The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the “traditional” forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.}

and technically Frank Lloyd Wright was part of the Praire School, which is considered a prelude to Modernism and related to the Arts and Crafts Movement of the 1930s.

But mostly, Modernism in all of its manifestations was a rejection of tradition. And because the tradition prior to Modernism seemed to encompass more ornate, fussy and formal forms and ideas-Modernism was by rebellion, more spare and unaffected. and of course not only did Modernism mean that roofs were flat and so were canvases-but the prose of James Joyce and the ideas of Darwin were also part of the movement (at the bookstore at the Whitney they even sell a small paperback about Darwin!)

At the core, it begins with the idea of questioning what is, that then spreads wildly throughout many disciplines. It is part of our Zeitgeist so much today that its hard to recognize it as a cohesive set of shifts. but in retrospect, I guess it kind of was. Without Modernism there would be no graphic design and no primate evolutionary genetics!

what does Modernism mean to you?

{image of Guggenheim taken from The New Yorker, click on the first Frank Lloyd Wright for a link to the article}

No science without fancy, No art without facts

A favorite passage of mine from Vladimir Nabokov who was a great novelist of the 20th century and also a professional Lepidopterist:

{The tactile delights of precise delineation, the silent paradise of the camera lucida, and the precision of poetry in taxonomic description represent the artistic side of the thrill which accumulation of new knowledge, absoulutely useless to the layman, gives its first begetter...There is no science without fancy, and no art without facts.}*

*excerpt taken from a book called {I Have Landed} by Stephen Jay Gould.


Oh, and thank you for coming to the new blog.

trove

Please be sure to click on the new website {{trove}} that is listed under my favorites.

A dear friend of mine started an amazing, novel and adorable business that is very worth checking out. Click in the {about} section and read about her inspiration, Hebbie. Its completely heartwarming.

A Few New Blogs

Be sure to check out two new blogs I just put in my favorites:

Louise Fili Ltd {the legendary type and logo designer who does elegant, sweeping and layered work. I almost forgot how much I admired her work, but then I didnt.}

Pixels&Arrows-->the super fun blog of a friend of mine who I used to have the pleasure of working with.

First Reactions from Kenya

I have returned from Kenya and am feeling like my head is floating. I will have to write several days of blog posts to explain all the things that happened there. Today, since I am extra spacey I will just start with a few quick reactions:

totally and completely out of my comfort zone-which is a very VERY narrow zone I have realized, cold showers outside at sunset, working all day in the hot sun, being around people all the time, nowhere to hide, weak coffee, eating only carbohydrates, early rising. Felt *very* white Italian-american girl from New York goes to Kenya, felt uncultured as hell and like my normal everyday life is pretty boring.

Amazing and astonishing birds, bugs, plants, people, fossils, food and oh the LIONS! the lions.

I know everyone wants to hear the good things about the trip how everything was teeming with life and it was...but mostly I was operating exclusively with the constant buzz of a broken heart because Joe was not there to see it all with me. He would have loved it, much more than I even did. There, I said it.

anemones ranunculus tomatoes olives cheese chianti and perfect light

This is what I think I want my life to look like.

(Via the small stump portfolio-click on the title of this post for a link to their site).

The Silence Experiment

I spent the last two days of this week at the museum. I was looking, and I was drawing with a fine tipped mechanical pencil on light brown craft paper. My ipod was blasting calm fluttering tunes. Its been so long since I have drawn. Its been so long since I have really looked at something without the rushed and stressed semester steadily breathing down on me. Because of the stress and because of the slow drudgery of school related requirements, I had almost forgotten what it is that I like to do. 

But on Thursday, I remembered. 

I was looking at the skeletons of various mammals in preparation for my trip. On my trip, I will be going to Africa to look for fossils at a Miocene site that is approximately 17 million years old. The mammals that I was looking at in the museum this week were not 17 million years old, but they were sort of general representatives of the types of things I might be finding in the dirt.  

I am very lucky to have the opportunity and the time to look at this material. 

It was occasionally raining. Clear rainy day light was spilling in the large old window in front of me. I was at a table, alone. Pencil on paper gently explaining the outline of the shape. look. look. look. The quiet sound of drawing. The silence of looking. The intimacy of shading of gradual gradual gradual gradual shading. I make the drawing twirl because the bones do. I think the bones are beautiful. I said that to a classmate once, he left me feeling silly, naturally. But there was no one there to make me feel silly this time. Just me, my three pencils, a kneaded eraser, the poor deceased Potamochoerus larvatus and exactly how only I see it.