Happy Birthday to Gerard Manley Hopkins

                               Pied Beauty
    Glory be to God for dappled things—
        For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
            For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
    Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
    Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
            And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
    All things counter, original, spare, strange;
        Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
            With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
    He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                                Praise him.  

Today is the birthday of poet and Jesuit Priest Gerard Manley Hopkins ( 1844-1889).  His poetry, especially Pied Beauty (above) and God's Grandeur (below) was the first to reach into my adolescent brain and whisper "Hey, wait a minute ... there is something here for you in all this poetry stuff."

Manley Hopkins was one of the great poets of the Victorian age and it is in his poetry I think that you can most easily see the bridge the Victorian poets constructed between the poetry of the Romantics;

 UP with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;
Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,
With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find
That spot which seems so to thy mind!

                                              William Wordsworth,  To A Skylark, 1805


And the Modern poetry of the 20th Century;

the
    sky
       was

can  dy  lu
minious
        edible
spry                                                                   
     pinks   shy
lemons
greens   coo   l  choc
olate
s.

  un   der,
  a  lo
co
mo
      tive     s    pout
                           ing
                                vi
                                 o
                                 lets

e.e. cummings

e. e. cummings



Here is Gerard Manley Hopkins' God's Grandeur from 1877;

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 Each of these 3 poems is an enthusiastic celebration of nature ( you've got to love Wordsworth exclamation points!) but, my God - like shining from shook foil and the ooze of oil crushed - in 1877! The tiny, perfect mouthfuls these words combined make are so delicious I can hardly bear them.  Enjoy some more Gerard Manley Hopkins  (click his name)- delightful, invigorating, spirit-filled celebrations.

Then, if you are in the mood, below is my very favorite e. e. cummings.  Not praise of the natural world here. Rather, his own seductive understanding of the nature of things;

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers.  Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

John Baldessari: Pure Beauty at LACMA- for kids?

The intention of this post is to help you and your kids best experience John Baldessari: Pure Beauty,  on view now through September 12th at LACMA. This is not a review of the show. There is a reason I am focusing on things like the size of the paintings and the colors used;  size, color, shape - this is what kids see, so let's use it to our advantage.

I have to be honest with you,  if you really want to experience the whole show,  if you want to spend some time with the work in order to understand and appreciate it,  don't take kids under 10.  Why? Because  much of the work in the first half of the show is just too small to grab their attention. You will want to slow down and look closely and you won't be able to.  You will be chasing them through LACMA, craning your neck to try to get a glimpse of something. You will be frustrated.

This is not to say that the show isn't for kids. It is. Well, the second half is.  And therein lies the trick to experiencing Pure Beauty.  If you can, have at least one other adult with you and plan to divide and conquer. Send the willing adult ahead with the kids through the first several rooms and straight to  Brain Cloud with Palm Trees and Seascape, a supremely fun and kid-friendly installation conceived for this retrospective. Your kids won't want to leave this wonderful room. You can then take some time in the galleries and when you get to Brain Cloud,  switch.  And should your children eventually tire of the fun in the installation, or should the room be so crowded that they can't play around with the piece as they will want to, fear not.  The rest of the show covers Baldessari's later work, much of it larger, much of it using color in interesting ways. Your kids will likely be willing to take at least a few moments with the work.

This Sunday, July 25th, from 12:30 to 3:30 is the final Andell Family Sundays Program featuring art your kids can make inspired by Baldessari's Brain.  The Family Sundays Programs in August will feature food-inspired art in connection with Fallen Fruit Presents: The Fruit of LACMA part of the very cool,  year long EATLACMA installation.

 An image from Fallen Fruit Presents:The Fruit of LACMA on view now through November 11th.

Kid Friendly Art Mashup in Culver City

Scion Presents: Ed Emberley and Friends from Scion ART on Vimeo.

Everyone can draw. At least, that's what Ed Emberley believes.  He has published several fun, easy to use books that teach kids and adults alike how to break almost anything down into its simplest shapes, put them all together and voila! you have a cat that started with your own thumb print or  a rocket ship based on circles, squares and triangles.  I would bet money that most of you, if you have kids, have at least one Ed Emberley book in the cupboard next to the crayons.

Here's a fun activity; get out the book, sit down with your kids and draw.  Then take a ride down to  Scion Space in Culver City.  From tomorrow July 17th through August 7 the space is showing several 1970s Emberley mockups alongside the work of 5 adult artists who were inspired by him.  Scion Space is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 to 6.  Click on the link for more information.

LA Street Food Fest

LA Street Food Fest's Summer Tasting Event is coming up on July 24th at the Rose Bowl.

General Admission $45 with entry at 5:30
VIP Preview is $65 and includes entry at 4pm and access to a VIP parking lot.

Click here for more event info

On the Fourth of July

  The Right Way by Norman Rockwell. The beautifully attentive boy seated on the right is my dad.

The 4th of July is a slightly fraught holiday for me.  I love America and am deeply grateful to live here but I dislike the attitudes of those who wear our flag not proudly and gratefully but as a sort of challenge to their fellow citizens, the "my country right or wrong" folks who see this day as an opportunity to paint their prodigious, french-fry filled bellies red, white and blue and barrel down the streets in gas guzzling toys loaded with illegal fireworks looking to scare the elderly. But maybe that's just in my neighborhood. 

Fittingly on the 4th of July, today's Arts and Leisure section of The Times features "America Illustrated" about the recently opened Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg at the Smithsonian.   Subtitled Collectors and museumgoers embrace Norman Rockwell: harmony and freckles for tough times, if you are annoyed by the mild cynicism in Times reporter Deborah Solomon's  "freckles" you will have a field day with this article in the Washington Post.

 The Smithsonian has gathered the collections of movie directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (Blake Gopnik, The Post's art critic and apparently bilious sibling of superior writer Adam Gopnik, refers to them as "Hollywood celebrities," which pretty much tells you all you need to know about his point of view)  in what will likely be a blockbuster of another kind this summer.  But not if Gopnik can help it - "I don't want to live by the cliches of a bland, Rockwellian America and I don't admire pictures that suggest that all of us do."   Gopnik allows that it may, in fact, be worthwhile to see the exhibit as long as, instead of admiring them, you keep the following question in mind as you look at the pictures; why have so many of us "been soothed by their vision?"

What Spielberg the film director honors; "I had  a great deal of respect for how he could tell a story in a single frozen image. Entire stories..." Gopnik, the self-described "metrosexual, half-Canadian art critic with a fondness for offal, spinets and kilts" despairs of; "to sell the publications and goods his pictures were in aid of, Rockwell's images needed to be grasped and digested in seconds - and unlike really notable art, they reliably achieved such fast-food effects."

 It is certainly true that with images like The Jury, above, from 1959  you know the whole story almost immediately.  But why does ease of understanding mean lack of seriousness or emotional power? Perhaps if Mr. Gopnik could more easily relate to the central figure, a young woman on the eve of the feminist movement,  alone in a group of men who have literally surrounded her and are quite obviously badgering her as she firmly sticks to an opinion that may have a profound impact on the life of another, unseen individual, he would be less dismissive of the ease with which an essential truth is conveyed. You would think a man running around Washington D.C. in a kilt might understand what it feels like to be alone in a crowd.

And what of Gopnik's contention that "really notable art" cannot be "digested in seconds?"

Not too hard to grasp the above now, is it? And, I would venture to say, most people agree that the Pieta is rightly thought of as "notable art."

Gopnik contends "America isn't about Rockwell's one-note image of it - or anyone elses'. This country is about the game-changing guarantee that equal room will be made for the Latino socialists,  disgruntled lesbian spinsters ( yikes! perhaps they are "disgruntled spinsters" because a) they aren't allowed to marry in most of these 50 states and b) because people are still using the word "spinster," ) foul-mouthed Jewish comics..."  I agree, but Gopnik's  "equal room" version of America, and the imaginary art that goes along with it, is as much of an ideal as anything Rockwell ever drew.  Nobody makes art that tells everybody's story.  What Gopnik and other critics who call Rockwell "one note" and "homogenized" fail to see is that to dismiss Norman Rockwell because he never illustrated a gay pride parade is as idealistic as believing that any of Rockwell's images tell the whole complicated messy story of America, or are meant to.   Of course the whole truth is deeper, often uglier than what Rockwell showed us. But that doesn't mean there isn't also very real truth in his work.   

 A preliminary version of  Freedom of Speech, 1943, part of the Four Freedoms series. The national tour of the series generated more that $132 million in war bonds sales.


It's the beauty of essential truth skilfully illustrated that is worth cherishing in Norman Rockwell.  Just like in the 4th of July. Is this a perfect country? Everything the founders envisioned when they pledged their lives, their liberty and sacred honor?  Members of Congress apologizing to foreign-owned oil companies whose negligence fouled some of our most beautiful, bountiful waters and destroyed the ability of so many of our people to make a living in an already tough economic climate; people running for Governor who haven't exercised their basic rights and duties as citizens and gone to a voting booth in 28 years? Of course not. But this great land, founded by idealistic people with messy personal lives, still cradles the essential truths of its founding; the ideals of freedom, of liberty and equal room for all.  So go watch your parades believing that one day soon we will have full equality in our Armed Services.  Enjoy the beauty of the fire works without telling your 4 year old that they were first made to remind us of bombs. You don't have to love everything that's going on in this country right now to celebrate it. The beauty of the 4th of July lies in celebrating essential truths, skilfully and boisterously remembered .


Riders
The surest thing there is is we are riders
And though none too successful at it, guiders,
Through everything presented, land and tide
And now the very air, of what we ride.

What is this talked-of mystery of birth
But being mounted bareback on the earth?
We can just see the infant up astride,
His small fist buried in the bushy hide.

There is our wildest mount - a headless horse.
But though it runs unbridled off its course,
And all blandishments would seem defied,
We have ideas yet that we haven't tried.

Robert Frost