Instruments with painted decorations

[Craig Tucker]

Now, I have seen instruments painted and drawn on the inside, that were amazing ... and the whole subject takes on a new "shade" when one considers painting the inside surface.

 

Yes, in my opinion, of course. This is something I have always considered doing. But haven't. (...yet that is.)

[Craig Tucker]

What is this, four posts in a row?

[Craig Tucker]

NO... it's five.

[Stephen Faulk]

I'll be right with you Craig, the voices in my head are arguing now. 

[romberg flat]

Now, with all that has been said about context, how does one place an image on a violin in such a way that it creates something more than just a violin with a painting on it?

 

Like how can an image and a violin come together to create something that is a third object?  

 

Not easy is it. 

 

Not so difficult either.   There are hundreds of them out there and some are really good.

But Art Installations are two-way streets. First there is a code (not del Gesú’s  ) sent by the artist, and second, decoding feed-back process which depends of recipient’s subjective experience and knowledge.       

 

Here are two intriguing ones:

First, series of State of Being (cello, violin and guitar, this especially for Stephen) by Chiharu Shiota:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiharu_Shiota

 

  

 

And second, Wind Violins by Ronald van der Meijs:

http://zone2source.net/en/wind-violins-ronald-van-der-meijs/

 

[Craig Tucker]

Wow, the cello piece blows me away. My wife even said "how cool". And she rarely likes 'modern art' of this sort.

 

The other pieces I could easily do without.

The wind violins? target practice would be necessary.

[Craig Tucker]

Part of what blows me away with the cello piece, is also the location of the piece. 

It works there so much better than the 'glass case' attempts which don't work nearly as well and seem, well, rather stilted.

After seeing and appreciating the cello, the other two seem weak and contrived - while the cello seems like it was a product of nature.

 

Again, a very cool work of art.

[Craig Tucker]

Thanks Mr. flat.

 

 

(it is "Mr." isn't it?)

[violins88]

I've seen a few violins decorated with transparent dyes. If you go that route, you can have the artwork without entirely losing the character of the wood. Perhaps you could experiment with a piece of varnished wood and some aniline colors.

Thanks,

 

I agree, it should work.

[Ben Hebbert]

Stephen, 

 

Thanks for that. I really enjoyed your post. But what humoured me most about Duchamps is that I think that was secondary, if not tertiary in my mind. Although I will admit that I purposefully used some old and well patinated tin templates and a very old violin back for the background which has darkened over the last 40 years, because it gives the effect of a mid-20th Century piece, so it looks as old as three standard stoppages, or something by Rauschenberg, Hepworth, or wherever exactly you want to go between the 1920s and 1950s. 

 

The superficial irony though, is that my conscious inspiration was not Arte Poveria but rather a take on the cubist depictions of violins that are typical for Picasso and Georges Braques. I love the way that they deconstruct the violin form (almost to the idea of a violin makers templates) because they give over the immediate impression and familiarity of a musical - specifically a violinistic - intention, but don't in any way trespass on the art of music. They are not pretentious or precocious enough as to claim they can say as much for the art of music as they can say for the visual arts. 

 

Picasso: 

 

Picasso sculptures (mandolin, guitar) , (and, ahem..) 

 

Braque:

 

 

 

 

 

By contrast, for as much as I like Chiharu Shiota's State of Being, I can't help feeling that as a *snobbish viewer* (I use those words incredibly carefully) I can't get away from the fact that the whole musical premise is based on a cheap chinese double bass, which for a musician represents a culture of music (high school band camp) that contradicts the idea of elevated art that Shiota is evidently attempting to deal with. Rebecca Horn's Concert for Anarchy (1990) at least uses a piano that would once have been fit for Chopin or Rubinstein to concertise on - I am not advocating that Arman should have chopped del Gesu's Canone into two dozen slices to represent 24 caprices de Paganini.. or perhaps I am - in an extreme sense, would that be the extra mile to achieve artistic credibility - HENCE the whole problem in a nutshell (peanut-nutshell perhaps?) I think there are still problems, although the unrestorable nature of the grand piano makes it more acceptable. 

 

Concert for Anarchy

 

 

I'm having fun with this post, thank you!  

[romberg flat]

...fourth piano in violin thread...  

[romberg flat]

Thanks Mr. flat.

 

 

(it is "Mr." isn't it?)

 ...yes Craig, I'm "he" (nobody is perfect), but Chiharu is "she" (and she is perfect spider-woman) 

[Bruce Carlson]

Stephen,

 

Here is the inside of the violin I posted in #50. Help! We need Hans Pluhar for the graduation map!

 

Bruce

 

[Evan Smith]

This is probably photoshopped,

but I still love it.

[Stephen Faulk]

Stephen, 

 

Thanks for that. I really enjoyed your post. But what humoured me most about Duchamps is that I think that was secondary, if not tertiary in my mind. Although I will admit that I purposefully used some old and well patinated tin templates and a very old violin back for the background which has darkened over the last 40 years, because it gives the effect of a mid-20th Century piece, so it looks as old as three standard stoppages, or something by Rauschenberg, Hepworth, or wherever exactly you want to go between the 1920s and 1950s. 

 

The superficial irony though, is that my conscious inspiration was not Arte Poveria but rather a take on the cubist depictions of violins that are typical for Picasso and Georges Braques. I love the way that they deconstruct the violin form (almost to the idea of a violin makers templates) because they give over the immediate impression and familiarity of a musical - specifically a violinistic - intention, but don't in any way trespass on the art of music. They are not pretentious or precocious enough as to claim they can say as much for the art of music as they can say for the visual arts. 

 

Picasso: 

Picasso_ViolinHangingontheWall-1.jpgviolin-1.jpgCRI_151268.jpg

 

Picasso sculptures (mandolin, guitar) , (and, ahem..) 

 

pablo_picasso_1.jpg1175431_245565465568122_1529420323_n.jpgmandolin.jpg

Braque:

 

 

violin-and-sheet-music-on-a-table-petit-oiseau-1913.jpg4.jpgstill-life-with-a-violin-1912.jpg

 

 

 

By contrast, for as much as I like Chiharu Shiota's State of Being, I can't help feeling that as a *snobbish viewer* (I use those words incredibly carefully) I can't get away from the fact that the whole musical premise is based on a cheap chinese double bass, which for a musician represents a culture of music (high school band camp) that contradicts the idea of elevated art that Shiota is evidently attempting to deal with. Rebecca Horn's Concert for Anarchy (1990) at least uses a piano that would once have been fit for Chopin or Rubinstein to concertise on - I am not advocating that Arman should have chopped del Gesu's Canone into two dozen slices to represent 24 caprices de Paganini.. or perhaps I am - in an extreme sense, would that be the extra mile to achieve artistic credibility - HENCE the whole problem in a nutshell (peanut-nutshell perhaps?) I think there are still problems, although the unrestorable nature of the grand piano makes it more acceptable. 

 

Concert for Anarchy

 

T07517_10.jpg

 

I'm having fun with this post, thank you!  

 

Wonderful, you played the Rebecca Horn card, excellent. I've always liked her work. 

 

When you lowered the boom on me and told me the pattern set was not "art" work, but a still a pattern set I turned to Duchamp in desperation because I knew I could spin it in any way that would dig me out of the trench I had lowered myself into by going for your bait!  

 

I have to agree about the webby bass, not because the snobby guy in me rejects it, but because it feels like Shelob the spider would sink her fangs into me if  dared walk through that corridor. And because I feel there's not a positive reciprocity between how much labor went into the making of the string element of the piece and how much art is coming out of it. Of course in person those things change, site specific works need to be seen on site to be fair. Ezra Pound, as nutty ( to keep the peanut theme) as he was talked about an efficient use of method into message. He had a name for it which is an "ism", they liked makign up isms in those days, Cubism, for example, but Pounds ism was called Vorticism. It never really got famous or really went anywhere that kept going, but it did have that one element Pound spoke of, using the intrinsic qualities of a material of method as part of how the piece operates or how you choose subject matter. An easy exampl would be to make photographs that are about 'light' be cause light is what generates photographs. 

 

I have a difficult time getting away from the idea that works that use a gratuitous amount of any material, filter through my brain as inefficient and I have trouble getting past that. In a nutshell,  that could be due to an art perception injury or brain fart due to having been attacked by modernism as a young child. It must have beaten me and stolen my innocence. 

 

Life is not fair. I grew up looking at Braque's and Picasso's stunning reductive guitar and violin forms in the cubie pictures and took them as works I figured every other 4 or 6 year old was looking at. They are brilliant and always seemed that way to my modernist defective brain. In fact I had to backwards engineer my relationship to Cubies when I saw Cezzane's pictures later in person. Rather than graduating to Cubies after seeing Cezanne and making the connections, it was the other way around for me. I had seen P & B's landscapes they made of tile rooftops and white washed houses in village of San Juan de Horta first, and then looked at Cezanne's views of his mountain and funny planar and angular rocks and trees. Cezzane looked so busy, so it gave me the tip off he suffered of horror vaccui. Well quickly after seeing the Barbizon School and the Impressionables I disabused myself of that notion and reasoned that Cezzane had no other choice than to get geometricated and geometrical. Who could stand being around those nebulous daubers? Perhaps the Italians Il Macchiaioli were more disciplined and less messy than the Monets and Pissarros, but still, what tyranny for an organized mind to have to wade through al that misty paint, it's like being gagged and bound by JMW Turner himself. Of course one Turner picture is worth a thousand Haystacks. 

 

But I seemed to have lost focus. Where was I? 

 

Ok I had to go from Cubism to understand Cezzane, not Cezzane to see Cubism. So when I see people using the guitar sculpture as an intellectual or aesthetic target it literally breaks my heart, I mean that in the most sincere way. Honestly there was thread on guitar website not long ago where someone posted the photo of the Braque guitar and then defamed it by saying it was the ultimate example of a badly conceived guitar and horrible art. Why are people so intellectually barbaric and sensually, literally blind? 

 

OK now I feel like a drunk in bar crying on your shoulder about the evils of the world......my God.   

 

If I did stand up comedy I would be a dismal failure because it would be really specialized. I could make jokes about the sandwiches with Macchi'aioli' dressing and how Pixar should remake it dumb animation The Expendebles into a cartoon about painters called "The Impressionables". It would never go anywhere,but it would not be as hurtful as the basterds who rout my childhood love of Picasso.  

 

Or 'Picarsehole' as John Fowles called him. 

 

Or what I think people who work at that foul cartoon factory should be labeled:  "Pixarseholes".

[Stephen Faulk]

I need to chill out and pull my self together. So I will include this Richard Deacon sculpture as my visual mantra for self calming. 

[Stephen Faulk]

Stephen,

 

Here is the inside of the violin I posted in #50. Help! We need Hans Pluhar for the graduation map!

 

Bruce

 

01 del Senno interno.jpg 02 del Senno interno.jpg 03 del Senno interno.jpg

  

Wow, that is fascinating on so many levels. As a violin and as a way into someone's imagination. What was he thinking about? It makes me wonder. 

[romberg flat]

We have pretty big mess here, don’t we?

First, let’s fix those poor massacred pianos. Shigeo Fukuda is a right man to do that:

 

 

Next, let’s tie this exploded thread to the topic. To do that, we have to transform piano into the violin. Shigeo Fukuda’s magic illusion can help, again:      

 

 

It’s not quite a truth that Ben “installation” of pattern set isn’t work of art, just opposite. Despite no intention to create it, this is a sort of artistic "time machine" that Arnold Newman took photo as far back as 1941 and named it: Violin Shop: patterns on table, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

And what other old violins are than a sort of time machines?

 

 

Why to destroy violins only literary like Picasso, Braque or Arman did. Why don’t smash it for real like Nam June Paik did 1962 in his performance “One for Violin Solo”?

Interesting guy this Nam June Paik was. Worth of taking closer examination…

 

 

And finally, to connect painted violins to art installations with violins, there is no better way than Li Chevalier does (check her, there is a lot more):

 

 

[Rue]

I really like a lot of these examples.  I really really like the instruments 'lost' in the threads.

 

I also think the wind violins are awesome!  I have no desire for target practice with that installation (unlike others I've seen over the years)...

[Peter Lynch]

State of Being Cello is fantastic......... 

[Craig Tucker]

  I have no desire for target practice with that installation (unlike others I've seen over the years)...

 

Yeah, but then...

 

How do you expect to hone in on your aiming skills?

(...no better place to hone in on, than attempts at "art")

Then, a compromise could be arrived at, in order to satisfy everyone here!

Perhaps if you just used a BB gun, instead of a shotgun, for the target practice, you could then say that you're improving the "design charastics" of the particular piece of work...?

 

Really though, a lot of this modern work, either works for me immediately, or not. When it works (for me) the piece communicates something immediate and satisfying. When a piece does not work (and, it could or could not, or might or might not work - depending on what pieces are also there, present along with it {the piece that does work for me} at that time - depending - art is 'funny' that way.)

[Craig Tucker]

State of Being Cello is fantastic......... 

;-)

[Rue]

I'm a big fan of paper targets and tin cans! 

 

The best class I ever took was my introductory Art History...I learned more about 'us' in that class than in any other I've taken.  It opened my eyes to actually looking at works of art beyond the immediate visual.  And you guys have all experienced this too -

 

I am getting quite inspired to try to start up a project again.  I've half-a$$ed started a few...and then they've just died...but I really should try to finish one.

 

If I win a lottery and can quit work...

[Craig Tucker]

 

I am getting quite inspired to try to start up a project again.  I've half-a$$ed started a few...and then they've just died...but I really should try to finish one.

 

Hah!

 

Welcome to the real world.

Anything you do that is "extraordinary", in any sense of the word, takes much energy, doesn't it?

I love it when anyone thinks that such things simply "flow" out of the hands of either craftsmen or artists. (or, anyone accomplishing anything worthwhile, for that matter...) hard work seems to be a benchmark of success in any field.

[Ben Hebbert]

I'm a big fan of paper targets and tin cans! 

 

 

Tin cans? Me too! (excuse the missing bridge!)

 

p.s. it sounds great!