On my last day in Ventura I visited my friends Richard and Patricia. As I was leaving I saw a large blue and white Chinese jar with a lid, a little beautiful piece of china that looked like Sevres, a lovely pale yellow pot from Ojai, and one of my favorite paintings by Patricia of Richard sitting reading a book. They all gave off a feeling of magic—a special memory of a very nice visit.
WILLIAM NICHOLSON
My friend Bente invited me to Ventura last week. Peter and Bente introduced me to the BBC’s Fake or Fortune and we watched the program on William Nicholson’s still life Glass Jug with Pears. That same day I had bought an art book and inside I found side by side a Ben Nicholson still life August 1956 (Val d’Orcia) and his father’s still life The Lustre Bowl with Green Peas. Both Nicholsons were wonderful painters—different but wonderful. Ben Nicholson’s still life is in the Tate Britain, London, and William Nicholson’s still life is in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.
KURT WALLANDER
Here I am again near John Pawson’s Baron House at Loderup, Skane, Sweden. This time reading the Wallander mysteries by Henning Mankell—Wallander lives in Ystad near Loderup. So here is another overlapping. My art school colleague, Sheena Walsh who lives in Point Vernon, Australia is reading the Wallander mysteries so I have followed her recommendation.
BALENCIAGA at the thyssen
Hamish Bowles wrote in Vogue on June 21, 2019 on the Balenciaga exhibit at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid that for Coco Chanel, “Balenciaga alone is a couturier in the truest sense of the word … the others are simply fashion designers.” Elsa Schiaparelli would pay him the ultimate compliment when she said that, “Balenciaga was the only couturier to dare to do what he loved.” The exhibit runs through September 2019.
TIME TO BE IN EARNEST
I have begun to read P.D. James's books. She called her autobiography Time To Be In Earnest after reading that Johnson said when reaching the age of 77 it was time to be in earnest. Isn't that the truth so I should be in earnest re drawing and painting as I will be 77 in December of this year!
A JOHN PAWSON HOUSE
I would love to have a much smaller version of John Pawson’s Baron House, Skane, Sweden. It has retaining gabion walls, “white rendered walls, corrugated roof pitches and frameless glazing in full-height openings with corresponding sliding timber shutters.” I would have one room consisting of living/dining room, kitchen, work room with a narrow bedroom, bathroom and utility room beside it—all under one pitched roof.
John Pawson’s Baron House, Skane, Sweden
BRUCE CHATWIN AGAIN
I took John Pawson: Plain Space by Alison Morris out of the library and read, “One of John’s first clients was the writer Bruce Chatwin, for whom he laid out this simple apartment of 45 square meters (485 square feet) in 1982, referred to in the essay, ‘A Place to Hang your Hat’.” In the photograph you can see the tubular chair, the Chateau de Versailles sofa from Christie’s, and the Alvar Aalto birchwood stool.
Bruce Chatwin in his Eaton Place apartment by Pawson
JOHN PAWSON QUOTE
The Los Angeles designer Kathleen M. Ireland said that John Pawson once told her that anything minimalist had to be of the highest quality.
KLUGE-RUHE COLLECTION, UVA
John W. Kluge and Professor Edward L. Ruhe of Lawrence, Kansas collected Aboriginal art, Kluge combining both collections under the auspices of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1997. Sheena Walsh, an artist who lives in Point Vernon in Australia sent me information on this museum—we were at Glasgow School of Art together. I visited this collection this month on a visit to the east coast. Here are two pieces from the collection.
Kluge-Ruhe, UVA
Kluge-Ruhe Collection, UVA Detail
FRANK GEHRY
In the May Wall Street Journal Magazine, Frank Gehry said, “The only reason you keep going is if you know there’s something more to discover. … You start repeating yourself, you gotta get rid of that. You gotta get clean somehow. You gotta get into your new space. Getting there makes you insecure: You’re not sure you’re going to get there. A lot of my artist friends are the same. There is a kind of trepidation about going into the unknown.”
“I love that feeling, “ he said. “I love it. You can live on it, because it spurs you on. Otherwise you would do the same old thing.”
I find that my drawing is changing, it is becoming very tight. With both my drawing and painting I never know how my work is going to turn out—I love the surprise.
KESHIKI
Keshiki are the landscapes on Japanese ceramics and KESHIKI The Landscape Within: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Brodfuehrer Collection is the exhibit at Japan House, Hollywood and Highland, 6801 Hollywood Boulevard till June 20. It is a spectacular exhibit with beautiful pieces chosen by Gordon Brodfuehrer. Last night there was a panel discussion with Hollis Goodall of LACMA who curated the exhibit, Yukiya Izumita one of the ceramists who flew in from Japan, Shoko Aono who works at her mother’s Ippodo Gallery in New York, and Gordon Brodfuehrer the collector from San Diego.
Izumita had a wonderful translator. His first words were how Los Angeles was so dry—he came from Iwate, Tohoku in North East Japan where it is cold and damp. He explained how he creates his pieces from paper. Goodall explained that he used paper made from the mulberry bush, that it was stronger than rice paper. And he explained how he glazed his pieces—wiping color into the cracks, putting more clay on top, his colors are browns and brown with lots of white. He did not come from a family of potters but he sensed that it was in his blood.
Goodall’s father was a professor in Asian Studies at the University of Texas where she graduated, completing her studies at Kansas University as they have a strong Asian department. The President of Japan House recommends flying to Japan with ANA (All Nippon Airlines) or JAL (Japan Airlines). A lady who asked a question goes to Japan frequently and she buys one item of clothing each visit from Issey Miyake. Shoko Aono was wearing the most stylish peach pink coat that she bought in New York. The translator was American and he lived in Japan until he was 15. He is making a documentary on his father who plays a Japanese instrument and who still lives in Japan. And I met Linda who was in my UCLA drawing class—she was taught by Wayne Thibaud at UC Davis, and Hollis Goodall introduced her to Japan House.
A ceramic pot at KESHIKI The Landscape Within
de waal at the frick
Edmund de Waal is at the Frick Collection in New York from May 30. Henry Frick was a steel magnate and low and behold de Waal has included little sheets of steel leaning on his black pots in a set of black vitrines entitled Sub Silentio. De Waal is so erudite both visually and verbally—his exhibits help viewers see an ornate 18th century table—“one of the greatest pieces of gilded sculpture in the world,” a Chinese porcelain pot or a clock that might have been bypassed without the nearness of a de Waal pot. His work Elective Affinities appears to be hidden in the library—he hopes that it stays hidden till the exhibition ends on November 17.
Edmund de Waal Sub Silentio
JOHN PAWSON
John Pawson was a young architect when he created Bruce Chatwin’s room in Eaton Place, London. Today I read in The Wall Street Journal, Mansion that he is creating two villas for a big project in Ibiza. He is one of 18 architects and each architect is creating two villas. One of Pawson’s villas is costing $13.8 million and the other $14.6 million. No doubt he will create two beautiful villas just as he created a beautiful room in London so long ago!
John Pawson with model villa
ODYSSEY
I love how life just flows. I had just finished reading Mary Norris’s Greek to Me. She tells of her Greek odyssey learning ancient and modern Greek, acting in the chorus in Euripides’ Electra and as Hecuba in Euripides’ The Trojan Women, visiting Greece itself, and finishing with her visit to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s house and beach. She even mentions Bruce Chatwin!
Then Deborah Cohen took her drawing class to The Box in downtown Los Angeles to meet with Barbara T. Smith and to see her exhibit The 21st Century Odyssey. Smith took us on her odyssey from India to Nepal, from Thailand to Australia, the United Kingdom to Germany, and finally to Norway—her roots! She was so interesting, insightful and honest—it was a joy to listen to her.
When she described the smell of a funeral pyre, I thought of Wes Anderson’s movie The Darjeerling Limited but of course the audience couldn’t smell the pyre! And seeing the flags from Nepal, reminded me of the little cult movie Hector and the Search for Happiness with Simon Pegg. And Smith’s Australian odyssey reminded me of Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines—his factual and fictional travels in Australia. Smith’s aboriginal drawing reminded me of Dianne Blake who lives in Whaletail House on King Island in Australia. I wrote to her in the summer of 2018 after seeing Grand Designs: Australia. Blake’s work is influenced by aboriginal art and she has a printing press, a modern Econo 20. Smith rented a Xerox machine many years ago—very avant garde.
Barbara T. Smith’s Aboriginal drawing
Dianne Blake Details of her work
Smith at 88 is inspirational. I think that what she did with her exhibit and her talk was very special—much more than she perhaps realizes. And I loved that she loves good art regardless of who created it! So uplifting, an odyssey to the Gods!
THE BROAD
This week with Deborah Cohen’s UCLA Osher drawing class we visited The Broad. People were leaving with the store’s bag—white with The Broad in red letters! Inside I spent my time going through all the rooms and I found a lovely Edward Ruscha collage, Espana, Paris 1961.
Edward Ruscha Espana Paris 1961
I also liked Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Horn Players 1983 portraying Charlie Parker with his alto saxophone and Dizzy Gillespie with his trumpet.
Jean-Michel Basquiat Horn Players 1983
I bought a postcard of his Beef Ribs Longhorn 1982—it was not hanging in the gallery.
Jean-Michel Basquait Beef Ribs Longhorn 1982
THE GETTY
I went to the Getty with Deborah Cohen’s UCLA Osher drawing class and we drew in one of the rooms with the Renaissance drawing exhibits. I drew Michelangelo’s Study of a Mourning Woman and Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier—this is a painting and I drew the head with a graphite pencil.
Pontormo Portrait of a Halberdier c 1529-30
DORIS LESSING II
Doris Lessing’s Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949-1962 is set in London. I found myself going to my bookcase to find Toni Sussman and The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson. Toni Sussman was Doris Lessing’s Jungian analyst who left Germany with her husband in 1938—in the front of the book I had written Fiona Cantell, Landseer’s Studio, 1977. Landseer’s Studio is in Maida Vale and the lady who helped edit Toni Sussman lived there—she also was a Jungian analyst. My former husband and I met E.P. Thompson at a kelim rug sale in Worcester, England in the early 70s. At the time we lived in Britannia Square and we were invited to tea by an American whose husband was a post graduate student of E.P. Thompson’s wife. The American couple lived in an apartment in the Thompsons’ house—no ordinary house but the most beautiful Georgian country house with a ha ha overlooking lovely parkland with cows! Doris Lessing writes about her friendship with E.P. Thompson in Walking in the Shade.
DORIS LESSING I
I found Doris Lessing’s Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 in the Little Free Library just along the road from where I live. In this Little Free Library I find all sorts of books that I would never have found, that I would never have read. It is very exciting. When I finished the book I watched Doris Lessing being interviewed and she said that she loved when she got an idea for a book. That must have been very exciting. I love when I get an idea for a painting. I love seeing how it materializes—it has a life of its own. It is never how I expected it to be and that too is very exciting.
PETER WEIR
Peter Weir made a documentary Heart Head and Hand (1979) on the Australian potter Peter Rushforth. During Weir’s David Lean Lecture, he told the audience that the Japanese potter Shigeo Shiga said that once in a while the gods will touch your hands and that will be a work of art! Shiga was a modest man.
HOWARD HODGKIN
Howard Hodgkin was a British painter and a friend of Bruce Chatwin. Both were collectors. Hodgkin collected Indian miniatures, visiting India many times in his life. Indian colors are in his paintings.
Indian Miniature Howard Hodgkin Collection
He painted two lovely paintings of the Bay of Naples. My daughter and I ended up having breakfast sitting on the balcony of a hotel overlooking the Bay of Naples—it was a breathtakingly beautiful expanse of glimmering sea. His paintings are of colors that touch the soul; and of space that takes one on a journey. He could spend years on a painting. His titles are poetic.
Here are three of Hodgkin’s paintings, paintings that extend over their frames:
Howard Hodgkin
Howard Hodgkin Goodbye to the Bay of Naples 1980-82
Howard Hodgkin Pink Collage 2004-08