Sakharov Prize: Europe's answer to the Nobel honours artists and dissidents from Tehran to Moscow

You may not have noticed, but the EU has it’s own equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is given to those who strive, through dissent, to give expression to the battle against oppression. The first recipient was Nelson Mandela, the latest, honoured this year, are two Iranians, Jafar Panahi and Nasrin Sotoudeh.

Panahi, a film director, has portrayed the lives of the marginalized and oppressed in contemporary Iran – women, children, the poor – with commitment and lack of sentimentality.  Iranian authorities have construed this social criticism as a threat and have detained Panahi since March 2010.
Principled

He is now serving a six-year prison sentence, banned from film-making or giving interviews for the next twenty years. Sotoudeh is a lawyer who has represented abused women and children as well as intellectuals and activists who have fallen foul of the Iranian regime. She too is now in prison, serving an eleven-year sentence and banned from leaving the country for twenty years. This artist and this lawyer are paying the price for their principled opposition to authority.

The alliance of law and the arts in resisting state violence is familiar to observers of Central and Eastern Europe, and will be discussed in London on Thursday in a debate hosted by the EU Parliament and the University College, London.  It’s one year on since the death of Václav Havel, above, and its his spirit of dissent that the Sakharov Prize honours more than most. Back in 1977 in Czechoslovakia, a small group of intellectuals and ordinary citizens, of artists, philosophers, lawyers, economists, priests and workers, of enviromentalists, liberals and Marxists, united to express their opposition to the actions of their government.

This government had held its people in a repressive stranglehold since the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. Charter 77, as the group called itself, was formed specifically in response to two events.  First, in 1975 the Czechoslovak government had signed the Helsinki Declaration on Human Rights. Charter 77 sought to hold the government to the standards that it had subscribed to and yet was flouting with its continued imprisonment of its citizens on political grounds.

This was, then, a statement about legal norms. Second, Charter 77 responded to the arrest, trial, and banning from performance of the underground rock group, The Plastic People of the Universe. Charter 77 was equally about the right to challenge norms and to experiment socially and aesthetically.

Dissent in Czechoslovakia was born from these twin impulses: law and the arts, norm and experiment.  From these impulses came a movement that, in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, played a central role in the overthrow of the European political order.

In the writings of Charter 77’s spokesman, Václav Havel, who later became the leader of that revolution and then his country’s president, dissent was defined as the ‘art of the impossible’: the art of not accepting the status quo as the only state of affairs possible, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary. Through his own years of imprisonment, Havel practiced this art and kept his faith in radical political change, a faith that, arguably, demanded the creative vision of a playwright more than the realism of a lawyer.

Dissent in Central and Eastern Europe was not just about overthrowing a debased form of Communism. It was fundamentally about emancipatory modes of thought and action. This legacy has lost none of its relevance at a time when, as Slavoj Žižek has claimed, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Alternatives

Today we see dissent throughout the world: in Iran, but also in Putin’s Russia and in Charter 08, the Chinese movement that explicitly models itself on its Czechoslovak forerunner, in the upheavals of the Arab Spring, in pro-democracy movements in Belarus, Burma and Bahrain.

Here the arts often play a vital role, perhaps in Pussy Riot’s punk prayer, but certainly in Ai Wei Wei’s ludic yet politically trenchant artistic practice. We see dissent closer to home in Europe and the West too: in the Occupy movement, in anti-austerity movements in Greece and Spain, and in the growing conviction that — given the collapse of our economic system and the bankruptcy of our political system — there must be other ways of doing things.

The European Union does not only give out prizes to honour the courage of dissidents like Panahi and Sotoudeh.  It now also receives prizes.  We can all take some pride in, and even some credit for, the award of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the EU. Yet the EU seems more comfortable with dissent when it happens beyond its own borders.  Our task as ordinary Europeans is to resist this by drawing on the legacy of Havel: to demand justice as well as experiment, to dare to think and do the impossible.

Tim Beasley-Murray is a  Senior Lecturer in European Thought and Culture and Peter Zusi is a  Lecturer in Czech and Slovak Literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, both at the University College London

Sebastian Mikael: An Artist On The Verge

Sebastian Mikael didn't write his first song until he was 18, but the now-24-year-old singer/songwriter is emerging as a versatile artist of siginificant talent and promise.

"I still feel like I'm always learning, always developing," says Mikael, whose debut album is slated for release on Slip-N-Slide/Vested in Culture/Epic Records in the coming year. Early impressions in the way of such songs as "Speechless" and "Beautiful Life" suggest the album will offer a diverse range of styles and influences from old-school and neo-soul to contemporary jazz to pop.

Mikael emigrated from his native Sweden to the United States in 2008, enrolling at California's Musicians Institute and, two years later, transferring to Berklee College of Music in Boston where he remains an undergraduate. Having learned to play guitar and piano by his own hand, Mikael says, "It was vocally that I went, for more classical training; also with writing music-like the harmony and theory of music."

Of course having all the talent and ambition in the world doesn't ensure success, and the diligence it can take to achieve that success can be daunting. To that end Mikael acknowledges how R&B artist/producer Ryan Leslie, who was a featured speaker at the 4th Annual Business of Hip-Hop/Urban Music Symposium at Berklee in 2010, ultimately gave him the nudge he needed to shoot for the big time. "He was talking about showcasing your talent online and not hesitating on putting it out there," Mikael recalls of Leslie's message. "Even if you feel like you're not completely developed, don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Let yourself develop while you're already out there. Really, just be bold with your talent and be creative."

The insight continues to serve Mikael well as he nears completion on his as-yet-untitled debut, which for him is clearly a labor of love. "Right now it's like I don't want to stop," he insists. "I want to keep going because I want to make this as good as I can."

Eugène Atget (1857–1927)

Although he studied drama in Paris in the mid-1870s and was an itinerant actor for some years thereafter, Eugène Atget's theatrical sensibility found its best outlet in a more deliberate, contemplative, and purely visual art form. In the late 1880s, he began photographing whatever artists needed as models for their work, and by 1898 he had established a practice in Paris. He became obsessed with making what he modestly called "documents" of the city and its environs, and compiling a visual compendium of the architecture, landscape, and artifacts that distinguish French culture and its history. Except for a brief attempt to capture life in the streets early in his career, Atget rarely photographed people, preferring the streets themselves as well as the gardens, courtyards, and other areas that constituted the cultural stage.

By the end of his life, Atget had amassed an archive of over 8,000 negatives, which he organized into such categories as Parisian Interiors, Vehicles in Paris, and Petits Métiers (trades and professions). While his principle clientele would change, Atget continued to frequent artists' ateliers and cafés until the end of his life, selling his pictures to those most able to see their intrinsic worth.

In the 1920s, Atget was heralded by Man Ray and the Surrealists for his photographs of window displays that melded reflections of the street with artifacts for sale, and for his pictures of places that seemed like so many theatrical stages pregnant with imminent action. His keen observations of the moments when today's traffic intersects society's immemorial concerns demonstrated far beyond Surrealist circles how photography could succinctly and evocatively describe cultural values as pervasive and almost as invisible as air.

Carleton Watkins (1829–1916) and the West: 1860s–1870s

If the Civil War was the greatest test of the young American republic's commitment to its founding precepts, it was also the watershed in its history. The feudal agrarian life gave way to the dominance of the industrialized North, which now turned its well-oiled centralized organization and genius for engineering toward the West, launching across the continent wave upon wave of migration and exploration, consolidation and appropriation. The camera went along for the ride, often in the hands of one of Mathew B. Brady's and Alexander Gardner's well-trained field photographers such as Timothy O'Sullivan (1840–1882) (1986.1054.19).

By the close of the Civil War, twenty-five-year-old O'Sullivan had had seven years' experience in wet plate photography, five of them working from a van on or near the battlefield. His technical proficiency under adverse conditions and his strong constitution recommended him as a photographer for the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, the first of several exploratory surveys of the American West. Clarence King, an enterprising geologist from Yale, had convinced the government to implement a study of the geological structure and natural resources of the region west of the Great Plains and east of California, the so-called Great American Desert. From 1867 to 1872, King and his corps of young scientists and photographers mapped and described a band 100 miles wide by 300 miles long lying roughly along the route of the railroad that would link the east and west coasts in 1869.

The consummate photographer of the American West, Carleton Watkins (1829–1916), however, had absolutely no field training during the Civil War. In 1851, when he was twenty-one, Watkins left Oneonta, New York, for California, following the example of Collis P. Huntington, another Oneonta native who had moved to California to make his fortune. After a stint in Huntington's store in Sacramento, Watkins moved to San Francisco, where he chanced into an apprenticeship with the daguerreotypist Robert Vance. By 1858, Watkins had established an independent practice, photographing mining operations and land claims for financiers who were building their careers in the lap of the new state.

a In 1861, Watkins traveled with one of his patrons, Trenor Park, entrepreneur of the Mariposa gold mine, on a family excursion to Yosemite (1989.1084.1-.3), an extraordinarily beautiful valley surrounded by cliffs 3,000 feet in height. Unknown to white settlers until 1849, the valley was twenty hours by stage and mule from San Francisco. But word spread fast at the Mariposa mine, and by 1858 there were land claims, a better road, and tourists enough to support a hotel. In 1859, C. L. Weed photographed the valley, and by 1861 Easterners had come to know of the awe-inspiring site from articles in the Boston Evening Transcript, written by the Unitarian minister Thomas Starr King.

The 30 mammoth-plate (22 x 18 inches) and 100 stereo views that Watkins took in Yosemite in 1861 were among the first photographs of the valley sent back east. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ralph Waldo Emerson received copies through Starr King, and in 1862 the photographs excited further interest when they were exhibited at Goupil's New York gallery. It was partly on their evidence that President Lincoln signed a bill in 1864 declaring the valley inviolate and leading the way to the National Parks system.

A natural adept, Watkins soon established his own business photographing for mining interests and land-dispute cases and, by 1862, had become famous on both coasts for his dazzling views of Yosemite. Embracing both human enterprise and the natural wonders of California, Watkins created crystalline views of the West that balanced the works of man and nature in an ideal harmony we can only envy today.

Watkins combined a virtuoso mastery of the difficult wet-plate negative process with a rigorous sense of pictorial structure. For large-format landscape work such as he produced along the Columbia River in Oregon (1979.622; 2005.100.108), the physical demands of this process were great. Since there was as yet no practical means of enlarging, Watkins' glass negatives had to be as large as he wished the prints to be, and his camera large enough to accommodate them. Furthermore, the glass negatives had to be coated, exposed, and developed while the collodion remained tacky, requiring the photographer to transport a traveling darkroom as he explored the rugged, virgin terrain of the American West. The remarkable clarity of Watkins' "mammoth" prints was unmatched by any of his contemporaries, and by few artists today.

Nine Polaroid Portraits of a Mirror, 1967

Anastasi's conceptual exercise—the gradual covering and replacement of a mirror by pictures of itself—allegorizes the transformation in the status of the photographic image in the 1960s. Only possible with the invention of the instant print camera, the artist's process involves photographing the mirror, attaching the print to the surface, and photographing the mirror again until the surface is covered. Anastasi's gesture problematizes what was once a direct, unmediated perception of the real with an endless labyrinth of recycled images. Like Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes and Jasper Johns' flags and targets, the perceptual gap in these works between the thing itself and what is literally depicted has been all but erased. The exponentially multiplying self-referentiality of Nine Polaroid Portraits of a Mirror constitutes one of the ways in which artists of the 1960s parodied the interiority and introspection of their immediate predecessors, the Abstract Expressionists.

Childe Hassam (1859–1935)

Childe Hassam (1859–1935), a pioneer of American Impressionism and perhaps its most devoted, prolific, and successful practitioner, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts (now part of Boston), into a family descended from settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Equally adept at capturing the excitement of modern cities and the charms of country retreats, Hassam (properly pronounced HASS-am) became the foremost chronicler of New York City at the turn of the century. In our day, he is perhaps best known for his depictions of flag-draped Fifth Avenue during World War I (67.187.127). His finest works manifest his brilliant handling of color and light and reflect his credo (stated in 1892) that "the man who will go down to posterity is the man who paints his own time and the scenes of every-day life around him."

After establishing his reputation in Boston between 1882 and 1886, Hassam studied from 1886 to 1889 in Paris. There he was unusual among his American contemporaries in his attraction to French Impressionism, which was just beginning to find favor with American collectors. Hassam returned to the United States late in 1889 and took up lifelong residence in New York. His signature images include views of Boston, Paris, and New York, three urban centers whose places and pleasures he captured with affection and originality. Examples include Winter in Union Square (43.116.2) and Spring Morning in the Heart of the City (43.116.1), both of which record lively sections of New York during the first decade of Hassam's activity there.

While Hassam was unusual among the American Impressionists for his frequent depictions of burgeoning cities, he spent long periods in the countryside. There he found respite from urban pressures and inspiration for numerous important works of art. Hassam's many portrayals of the old-fashioned gardens, rocky coast, and radiant sunlight of the Isles of Shoals, Maine, are among his most cherished works. Among them is the 1901 view Coast Scene, Isles of Shoals (09.72.6), the first canvas by the artist to enter the collection of the Metropolitan Museum. Hassam's images of Newport, Portsmouth, Old Lyme, Gloucester, and other New England locales also exemplify the late nineteenth-century appreciation of the picturesque region redolent of early American settlement and colonial growth. In 1919, Hassam and his wife purchased a colonial-period house in East Hampton, on the south fork of Long Island, New York, and made it their summer headquarters.

Hassam created more than 2,000 oils, watercolors, pastels, and illustrations, and—after 1912—more than 400 etchings and other prints. With these works he achieved critical acclaim and commercial success, riding the great wave of enthusiasm for American Impressionism to fame and fortune.

See Boone County's most creative at Artist Showcase

Looking for a one-of-a-kind gift for that special someone this holiday season?

Head to the 10th annual Artist Showcase where your creative neighbors from the Boone County Visual Arts Association (BCVAA), and other talented local artists, will display and sell their art.

From oil painting and watercolor to photography and porcelain art, 30 artists will be showcasing their original works for you to peruse. As always, all purchases will help support a local artist, the BCVAA, and Boone County Public Library.

The weekend kicks off with an opening reception at 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7, at the Main Library, 1786 Burlington Pike, in Burlington.

Get the first look at the artwork while enjoying refreshments provided by the BCVAA and listening to the smooth sounds of the WGP Jazz Trio. Artists from the BCVAA will be set up all weekend, near the second floor rotunda, to demonstrate in-person how they create their unique pieces. You can watch them work and ask questions.

IRISH ART, IRISH ARTISTS, IRISH PAINTINGS

Irish artists have a strong and deserved tradition for creating fine contemporary art with enduring and long lasting appeal. The quality and history of Irish art make it very desirable both in Ireland and Internationally especially for paintings by Irish artists. And, interest in Irish art and particularly present day contemporary Irish artists remains strong but the current economic situation now offers some superb buying opportunities. As a result some art collectors are choosing to invest in Irish art, however for most enthusiasts of Irish Art the main interest is choosing art works which will give years of enjoyment.

Red Rag is a perfect place in which to view and buy contemporary Irish art. And, Irish art collectors are increasingly choosing the gallery to buy paintings. One reason is that Red Rag are not simply art dealers buying and selling Irish art. Every art piece from Red Rag Gallery is sourced from the art studio of each Irish artist guaranteeing origin and value for money on all Contemporary art. At Red Rag Gallery we aim to help, whether you are buying Irish art, selling Irish Art or simply browsing. Red Rag promotes Irish contemporary paintings and art from established and young artists. There is always an interesting selection of contemporary Irish Contemporary Art in the gallery, so whether it is Art for the Office or your home you will find it in the Red Rag art portfolio from today's Irish Artists

The gallery promotes many genres of paintings from Irish artists including: Architectural paintings, Landscape paintings, Marine paintings, Still Life paintings, Portrait paintings and paintings of Figures.

Each year the gallery features Contemporary art from many leading artists such as Val Byrne, Colin Carruthers, George Callaghan, Paul Christopher Flynn, Fran McCann, John Morris, Mary Pickering, Cormac O扡eary, Radek Rola , Brian Smyth, and Lawrie Williamson plus paintings by young Irish artists.

Lee's 'Life of Pi' is inspiring 3-D art

"Life of Pi" is one of those lyrical, internalized novels that should have no business working on the screen. Quite possibly, it wouldn't have worked if anyone but Ang Lee had adapted it.

The filmmaker who turned martial arts into a poetic blockbuster for Western audiences with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and made gay cowboys mainstream fare with "Brokeback Mountain" has crafted one of the finest entries in his eclectic resume in "Life of Pi," a gorgeous, ruminative film that is soulfully, provocatively entertaining.

Lee combines a lifetime of storytelling finesse with arguably the most artful use of digital 3-D technology yet seen to bring to life Yann Martel's saga of an Indian youth lost at sea with a ravenous Bengal tiger aboard his small lifeboat. It's a delicate narrative with visceral impact, told with an innovative style that's beguiling to watch and a philosophical voice that compassionately explores how and why we tell stories.

Our playful, not-always-reliable narrator here is Pi Patel, played by newcomer Suraj Sharma as a teen and as a grown man reflecting back on his adventure by Irrfan Khan. As a youth, Pi, his parents and brother set out from India, where the family runs a zoo in a botanical garden, to Canada. Pi's father brings along some of his menagerie on their voyage, including a tiger named Richard Parker with which Pi had a terrifying encounter as a boy.

Their ship sinks in a storm, with Pi the only human survivor aboard a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg and Richard Parker. Survival of the fittest thins their numbers into a life-and-death duel, and eventually an uneasy truce of companionship, between Richard Parker and Pi.

This could be a one-note story — please Mister Tiger, don't eat me. Yet Lee and screenwriter David Magee find rich and clever ways to translate even Pi's stillest moments, the film unfolding through intricate flashbacks, whimsical voice-overs, harrowing sea hazards and exquisite flashes of fantasy and hallucination.

Lee used real tigers for a handful of scenes, but Richard Parker mostly is a digital creation, a remarkably realistic piece of computer animation seamlessly blended into the live action. The digital detail may be responsible for most of Richard Parker's fearful presence, though no small part of the tiger's impact is due to the nimble engagement of Sharma with a predator that wasn't actually there during production, a task hard enough for experienced performers, let alone a youth with no acting experience.

Digital 3-D usually is an unnecessary distraction not worth the extra admission price. In "Life of Pi," like Martin Scorsese's "Hugo," the 3-D images are tantalizing and immersive, pulling viewers deeper into Pi's world so that the illusion of depth becomes essential to the story.

Not all of the images live up to Lee's digital tiger or 3-D wizardry. Water is notoriously hard to simulate through computer animation, and the waves crashing down around the sinking ship or tossing Pi's lifeboat about have an unfinished, cartoony look. Still, Lee more than compensates with a world of visual wonders, from the simple image of a swimmer framed from below as though he's stroking his way across the sky to a mysterious island populated by a seemingly infinite number of meerkats.

The rest of the cast is mostly inconsequential, including Gerard Depardieu in a fleeting role as a cruel ship's cook. The other people in Pi's life are filtered through this unusual youth's eyes, each of them catalysts in the development of his deep spirituality, which blends Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and other contradictory influences into a weirdly cohesive form of humanism.

Like Martel's novel, the film disdains our inclination to anthropomorphize wild animals by ascribing human traits to them, and then turns around and subtly does just that. Friendship cannot possibly exist between a hungry tiger and a scrawny kid alone on the open water, yet for that boy, if not the cat, the need for togetherness, some commune of spirits, is almost as strong as the need for food and water. The ways in which Lee examines the strange bond between Pi and Richard Parker are wondrous, hilarious, unnerving, sometimes joyous, often melancholy.

Pi's story may not, as one character states, make you believe in God. But you may leave the theater more open to the possibilities of higher things in the life of Pi, and in your own.

"Life of Pi," a 20th Century Fox release, is rated PG for emotional thematic content throughout, and some scary action sequences and peril. Running time: 126 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

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Motion Picture Association of America rating definitions for PG: Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

Copyright (2012) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Artist's life affirms Mission

Four months ago, artist Ray Daub started living on his own again.

He’d spent three years at the Sunday Breakfast Mission in Wilmington, conquering addiction and rediscovering his craft. He’d recently taken on two new art projects. He also had hopes of raising money to create a sculpture outside the mission that would speak to the second chance it gives men like him.

Daub, who died at age 61 on Saturday, never reached that goal, but people close to him said the challenges he faced spoke more to the purpose of the Breakfast Mission than any statue ever could.

“I wish someone had supplied those funds,” said the Rev. Tom Laymon, president and CEO of the Breakfast Mission. “But folks, even if he created that sculpture, would that have served as a greater testament to him than what his life was? No.”

Family and friends gathered Thursday in the sanctuary of the Breakfast Mission – which provides food, shelter, counseling and training to homeless people – to mourn and celebrate Daub and remember his often difficult journey through life.

Years before he arrived at the Breakfast Mission, Daub was a successful artist with the help of his then-wife and fellow sculptor, Mary Wimberly.

With a studio in Newport, Daub and Wimberly worked as a team from 1985-2000. Their talents complemented each other – Wimberly excelled at creating a sculpture’s basic structure and form. Daub enjoyed adding texture and detail.

Daub’s most successful projects included a statue of baseball star Mickey Vernon in Marcus Hook, Pa., a depiction of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in a window of the Macy’s in Philadelphia and an exhibit at the National Christmas Center in Lancaster County, Pa.

In addition to his artistic talent, friends and family described Daub as a likeable, “mischievous prankster” who brought joy to people around him.

But all of that masked a sadness that Daub couldn’t shake.

“It was a battleground underneath in his heart,” Wimberly said. “I don’t think he knew how much people loved him. He didn’t always know how to accept love.”

In Santa Cruz, balloon artist goes for smiles

The long and narrow balloons, appearing in every color of the rainbow, squeak as they are twisted, stretched and tied into the shape of a turtle, bear or swan.

Suspense hangs in the air as students in the Cabrillo Stroke and Disability Learning Center watch Addi Somekh, an artist in residence at UC Santa Cruz's Cowell College, and seven of his quick-learning pupils create a room full of flowers, animals and fanciful hats made of air and latex. Will the final product look like the audience requested, or will the balloons pop before they fulfill their destiny?

"We see so few things made in front of us," Somekh said Wednesday of his 21-year love affair with balloon art. "And if all is done well, it's transformative."

At first, Somekh's philosophy sounds as silly as balloon-making itself: "I've always just known the most important thing to do is to make sad people happy," he said.

But the simple power of that notion becomes clear watching the UCSC students smile as they pull limp pieces of latex from their aprons and create an orange dog, pink monkey or multicolored ring. Their joy is matched only by the recipients'.

"They did a fantastic job," said Janalee Middleton, a four-year student of the stroke center, who coveted her green, pink and gold flower. "I thought, 'A balloon is not going to make me happy,' but it puts a smile on your face. They make you want to pass it on."

Somekh, who graduated from UCSC in 1994 and now lives in Los Angeles,

entertains and performs team-building exercises for companies. Last year, he was featured in a six-episode reality TV show called "The Unpoppables" on TLC.

But since the fall quarter started at UCSC in September, the 40-year-old artist has been teaching students the skill and ethos of balloon-making as part of an activity not eligible for class credit. Somekh was invited by Cowell College Provost Faye Crosby, whom he thanked for taking a risk on hiring a balloon maker.

Somekh, once a hopeful jazz musician, was just 19 when a carpenter friend showed him how to make balloon art. He never intended to make a career of it, but found comfort in how it relieved anxiety and enabled procrastination.

"This was easy for me," he said. "Everything else was really hard."

After college, Somekh traveled for four years to 34 countries with photographer Charles Eckert making balloon hats to build cultural bridges. The two produced a book from their journeys called "The Inflatable Crown."

"They are like food and music," Somekh said of balloons. "They transcend language barriers."

His two-month training of the UCSC students culminated this week in visits to the Boys and Girls Club, Stroke and Disability Learning Center and, on Saturday, a nursing home.

Victoria Martinez, 21, a Cowell College senior majoring in language studies and education, said she was impressed with Somekh's passion and skill. She admits getting a "an adrenaline rush" when she makes balloon objects to order.

"What I could do in 30 seconds made them so happy, and they'll take it home and talk about it," she said Wednesday, adding that the balloons don't make her nervous. "I'm not afraid to squeeze them and show them who's boss. I got over the fear of these popping quickly."

Kaitlyn Anderson, 21, a programs assistant at Cowell College, said recruiting fellow students to join the balloon brigade wasn't easy.

"I think a lot of people are intrigued by it," she said. "It's hard to get them to come for the first time, but then they stay."

Debora Bone, director of the Cabrillo center, said her students — who are learning through classes, counseling and fitness how to live with disabilities — benefit from interacting with the UCSC crew and watching balloons come to life.

"Having something entertaining is great," Bone said. "Anytime people use language skills and hand skills, they really regain a sense of community and belonging."

Intro: Kay Hartmann, graphic designer, teacher and social activist

Seven years ago at age 53, graphic artist Kay Hartmann battled breast cancer and won—but her research about the disease has left her with troubling questions. Now the associate professor in art and design at Chicago’s Columbia College has poured her frustration into a collection of graphic designs that are a call to action.

The collection, titled What’s Wrong with this Picture? was recently on exhibit at the Blink Contemporary Art Gallery in Michigan City, Indiana.

Last summer Blink Gallery owners and artists Suzanne Cohan-Lange and Richard Lange invited Hartmann to create an exhibit expressing her concerns about the focus and future of breast cancer fundraising. Hartmann created large digital prints of a portion of a woman’s body with superimposed printed information, quotes and questions, each intended to provoke thinking about fighting breast cancer in a different way.

One of the quotes: “What has more than 60 years of study, and more than $50 billion spent on breast cancer research in the U.S. alone accomplished? The survival rate is now about 75 percent.” —from “Beating the Odds,” U.S. News and World Report, June 15, 2005

Hartmann wants to know what is causing the number of women in the U.S. diagnosed and treated with breast cancer to go from one in thirty to forty women in the 1940s, to one in eight women today. “A lot of money has been spent on breast cancer, yet little is known about what causes it,” she says.

Hartmann says much more attention, time and money have been spent on treatment options than on looking at possible environmental causes, like toxins in air, water and food. “Having gone through this disease, my conclusion is that we need to illuminate what the priorities are in funding and research, and how we can change those priorities.

“That’s what I hope people take away from this exhibit.”

Hartmann, who lives in New Buffalo, says she hopes her artwork will become a traveling exhibit.

Ghanian artist who transforms bottle tops into masterpieces

It was a shimmering metal wall hanging fashioned from thousands of bottle tops that won El Anatsui international acclaim.

During the Venice Biennale in 2007 the Ghanaian sculptor transformed the facade of a museum by draping one of his exquisite metal tapestries over the top of it, causing a sensation in the art world.

Today, he is hot property, collected by the world's major museums and selling his rippling metal installations that nod to indigenous art for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

His latest work goes on display this week at New York's High Line, an elevated park built on an old freight rail line in Manhattan.

"Broken Bridge II" will be his largest installation yet -- a 37-foot-high sculpture made of recycled pressed tin and mirrors woven together with copper wire.

"The idea of the mirrors is to bring in the landmarks of New York ... to celebrate the achievements of where the work is," he said. The Empire State Building is one building reflected in the sculpture.

Read related: America's black cowboys fight for their place in history

El Anatsui is known for his interest in indigenous art and use of materials that he finds locally -- like the whiskey bottle caps that he uses for his tapestries -- and he puts it down to his upbringing which was cut off from traditional Ghanian culture.

He was born in the small town of Anyako in the Volta region of Ghana during British rule. The youngest of 32 children (on his father's side), his mother died when he was a baby and he was brought up in a Presbyterian Mission House by his uncle, a Presbyterian Minister.

"When you're living in a Mission House, you have everything there, you don't need to go out and therefore you don't know too much about indigenous society ... I was kind of isolated from it," he said.

Even as a boy, he knew he wanted to be an artist: "I had a kind of calling." He went on to study Fine Arts at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, then an "unimaginable" thing to do.

At that time, only a few years after Ghana achieved independence from the UK in 1957, the post-colonial hangover meant El Anatsui studied a British-style curriculum, only covering European art.

Read related: Chinese sculptor Xiang Jing's painful search for truth

He felt strongly that he wanted to know something about his own indigenous culture.

"Having been estranged from it and exposed to art being produced in Europe and Asia, I was wondering why we didn't have art as well," he said.

He remembers coming across a national cultural center in Kumasi and there began to discover Ghana's "very interesting art forms." They included "adrinka," a series of ideograms or graphic symbols that represent aphorisms.

It reminded El Anatsui of the European quest in science during the Renaissance to use symbols to represent abstract concepts.

The similarity gave him "quite a shock," and was the catalyst for his exploration of his native culture -- and his attempts to, as he puts it, "indigenize my consciousness."

He started using materials from his local environment, recyclables like the bottle caps. "A lot of people call them waste, but to me they are not waste ...There are people who collect these things, smash them and make them into utensils like big cooking pots," he said.

Read related: South African rugby legend: Sport can unify a nation

The bottle tops in his flowing, shimmering installations also have a deeper meaning.

He says they are meant to act as a reminder that African slaves were exchanged for European liquor during the transatlantic slave trade. While the fluidity of the sculptures are meant to reflect the unsteady relationship between Europe, Africa and America.

Despite the deep affinity El Anatsui has for homegrown African culture, he resists being called an African artist.

"I don't know any (artist) who wants to be geographically categorized only. Artists want to be known only as artists," he says.

He says that when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York first acquired his art, it was for their African Galleries and only later for their Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries.

This "raises so many questions as to what precisely I am -- am I an African artist or an artist?" he asks, adding it is high time museums "revisited their categorizations." He adds: "An artist in India is the same as an artist in Africa, Ghana, Japan or America."

Another thing he doesn't want to be prescriptive about is how his work is hung in galleries.

He sends his work out with no instructions leaving it up to the curators to decide how to install it. At first they are confused but eventually they discover "they themselves are also artists," he says.

"It's a versatile form. I think an art form should be a replica of life itself -- life is not something which is cut and fixed -- it is constantly changing."

Jerry Earl Johnston: 'Designer faith' trend here to stay

The trappings of American individualism can be seen everywhere. At restaurants, diners show up wearing everything from tennis shorts to tuxedos. Thanks to technology, nobody listens to a lick of music they don't choose to hear. We live in our own little worlds.

And in religion, more and more young people are opting for "designer faith" — a personalized, individual approach to believing.

In fact, a corps of authors has sprung up that this new crop of freethinkers embraces. The name Marianne Williamson comes to mind. So does Annie Dillard.

But the writer most cherished by these free-seekers may be Anne Lamott, a 58-year-old San Franciscan who recently became a grandmother.

Lamott's most influential book is probably "Traveling Mercies," a self-effacing, brutally honest memoir that tells of the author's quest for spiritual meaning in a turbulent world. It is a pilgrim's journal written for fellow pilgrims.

Other books soon followed — including "Plan B," and "Grace (Eventually)."

Now comes Lamott's handbook of prayer, which she has titled "Help, Thanks, Wow." It's a slim book that can be read in one sitting. I picked up a copy last week and did just that.

A feel for what Lamott is up to can be found in this swath from her introduction:

You may in fact be wondering what I even mean when I use the word "prayer."… It is communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding. Let's say it is communication from one's heart to God … what the Greeks called the Really Real, what lies within us, beyond the scrim of our values, positions, convictions, and wounds. Or let's say it is a cry from deep within to Life or Love, with capital L's.

Welcome to the world of Anne Lamott. I've heard traditional believers describe her type of writing as "wind chime religion." It has a floating, unanchored feel. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there seems to be "no there, there."

But to a budding generation of Americans who've grown suspicious of organized religion — kids who see no way to separate religious history from folklore or drain theology of superstition, the Anne Lamotts of the world are a safe harbor. They offer a way to keep the baby (i.e. faith and spirituality) while chucking the bath water (stodgy institutions).

Of course, these new "wind chime" believers are easy to dismiss and even ridicule, but I think that would be a mistake. Each new poll shows their numbers are growing. Personally, I wonder if they aren't New Transcendentalists — that spiritual movement put in motion 200 years ago by another band of American religious renegades. They weren't named Lamott or Dillard, however. They were named Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa Mae Alcott and Margaret Fuller. And they changed the face of American faith.

Musician hears the stories of his audience

As songwriter and musician, Joseph Vogels has toured and played music all over the world, and he has encouraged people in the audience to talk about their lives.

“We tell people, ‘We are here to listen to your story,’” the Mooresville-based musician said in a recent interview. “‘And we don’t care if it takes until three o’clock in the morning. We get people crying their eyes out.

“We find many Christians who are devastated for all sorts of reasons.”

Vogels said that he and his wife, Victoria, have heard stories from people who are angry, shut down and disappointed about something that has happened in their lives. They encourage people to “go and fulfill this gift inside you.”

Their message is encapsulated in the song “Ring the Bell” on Vogels’ new album, “Cymbal Minded.” The album is Vogels’ fourth; he wrote his first 15 years ago, and his song “The Victory Chant” is one of the most recorded worship songs in the last 25 years.

Vogels said that “Ring the Bell,” a gentle rock song, has had a “stunning impact” on listeners. He tells stories about meeting middle-aged artists who have started pursuing their talents for the first time and others who have found personal freedom by talking about their lives and stories for the first time.

Born and raised in New Zealand, Vogels began writing songs when he was in college and recorded solo albums in the late 1990s. He lived in Australia for 12 years and founded a company called The Australian Songwriters Kompany to help others develop their musical talents.

Vogels moved to North Carolina in 2004 to work with producer Elijah Mosely, now of Threshingfloor Audio in Lincolnton. Within months, he had met and married his wife Victoria.

They settled in Mooresville and were long involved with RiverLife Fellowship. Vogels will play a concert there featuring songs from his new album in the coming months.

“Cymbal Minded” is produced by independent record label Tate Music Group. It contains 13 tracks, which range from an African chant to Celtic-inspired music.

Vogels has been working on songs for the album for several years. He co-wrote “I Believe” with a friend from his church who wrote several verses in response to doctors recommending that his wife abort their first child because she had a heart condition and could die in pregnancy.

“She said, ‘No way,’” Vogels said. “She was on bed rest for four months. Their son is 7 and healthy.”

Her husband wrote the song after getting up early to pray and asking that his wife and child wouldn’t die, Vogels said. Vogels added the chorus, which repeats variations of, “I believe.”

He also worked with an African-American choir in Maryland on “Hallelujah Chant,” “There’s Only You,” “My Father Loves Me” and “Amazing Always.”

“They practiced for two months,” Vogels said. “When they sang, it was stunning.”

Vogels may promote his album with a tour in Australia and New Zealand in 2013, and he also plans to continue working with musicians to help them produce outstanding albums.

He has written songs for almost 40 years, and Vogels uses his experience to help songwriters craft strong lyrics and songs.

He said that people still tell him they listen to his first album all of the time.

“We just love it,” Vogels said. “It’s selling as well as my new albums, (even though) you’d think it would be out of date.

“I want to hand whatever I have learned to other Christian musicians.”
Marty Minchin is a freelance writer who covers faith and ministry for The Observer. Email her with story ideas at martyminchin@gmail.com.

Tagore’s paintings on an all India tour; starts with Delhi

Rabindranath Tagore entered the world of visual imagery, drifting from words to images, only when he turned 64.

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 went on to become one of the earliest master painters in India, with his drawings of human figures and nature. The last Harvest:
Sesquicentennial Exhibition of Paintings by Tagore, a collection of nearly 100 paintings that has already travelled the world as part of the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of the sage (his birthday was on May 8, 1861), has now dropped anchor in the Capital at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA).

The ongoing exhibition, which will continue for a month in Delhi, will also tour other cities in the country such as Mumbai and Bangalore. Rajeev Lochan, director, NGMA, says, “The paintings had already travelled to nine museums in three continents.” The exhibition was curated in chronological order, under four categories in keeping with the progression of Tagore as a painter of curious natural creatures and creator of layered landscapes, mysterious figures, self-portraits, narratives and head portraits, inspired by Cubism.

Curated by R. Sivakumar, the art works have been acquired from prestigious collections at the Rabindra Bhavan, Kala Bhavan, Shantiniketan and from the National Gallery of Modern Art.

Christa Martin: Local artists envision the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary

One of my favorite people in the local arts scene is painter, behind-the-scenes mover and shaker and the fashionably inclined

CRYSTAL BIRNS. So when I heard that Birns and several fellow artists, including the exceptional illustrator/marine mammal rescuer

DOUG ROSS, were behind a new project to create a poster that would tell the tale of local migrating ocean species, I was intrigued.

Birns explains that there used to be a poster on the Municipal Wharf detailing such migrations, but that poster has since disappeared. As someone with a soft spot for marine animals and for the arts, Birns had an idea to fill that void.

"I heard someone say that there's an underwater safari we don't get to see, and I thought as a visual person I'd love to see an image that conveys that. Artists can take scientific ideas and make them more visible," says Birns. "I walk or bike by the ocean almost every day and wanted to have an interpretive guide that can help me remember who's migrating when."

Birns and several fellow Santa Cruzans including Ross set about on a Kickstarter campaign called "Seasons in the Sanctuary" to raise the funds necessary to create such a poster. Monies were recently raised and will allow for the posters to be created and also distributed to 400 classrooms in two years all over California, as well as being sold at Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Proceeds will benefit O'Neill Sea Odyssey, which provides free hands-on science education to thousands of school children every year. Also in the works is a similar project but in a compact pocket guide presentation.

"My hope is that people, especially kids, will fall in love with the images and be curious about the subject matter and want to learn more," Birns says.

Learn more about the illustrator at dougross.com, and watch for a show of Birns's work at Stripe Men in February in downtown Santa Cruz. Look for the posters to emerge locally in December.

"The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is kind of a big deal," says Ross. "It's like Yellowstone or Yosemite -- in the water. Once people realize they're living on the edge of it, this poster might help people become amateur tour guides to friends and visitors. It's not a nuisance to have sea lions on the wharf. It's cool. They're kind of a miracle."

The Garbage Man

There's that old saying that one man's junk is another man's treasure. I usually think that junk is just plain junk. Admittedly, I can never find treasure in a heap of junk. But local artist

ED MARTINEZ sure can. His reality TV project, "Junk Art Scramble," (junkartscramble.com), received quite a bit of buzz when it was aired at the Museum of Art & History in September.

"I am pushing 'junk art' into some places that seem to approach the finer arts," Martinez says. "I am learning to work with lighter metals and combine them in ways that more traditional metal artists have been reluctant to really devote to. I am also refining my techniques with hammers and learning more about the chemistry and physics of working with weird scrap metal -- some of which can be quite dangerous to work with. The whole idea remains to work with materials we throw away as a way to show people how much crap this society generates -- and that some of that crap is really beautiful if you scratch it up some and whump it with hammers. Actually it's not crap at all."

For Martinez, he's been a life-long artist, but he didn't really have a chance to fully pursue his passions until the economy collapsed and he lost his job. "After 17 years of working professionally and to a degree forcing my inner artist to live in pedestrian roles, I decided that perhaps it was time for a mid-life reinvention," he says.

His foray started in 2007 with using assemblage to teach people about the California Grey Bears e-waste recycling program and from there he has created a series of thoughtful pieces including "Forage Species I, II, III," which taps into his concern about the migration of bait fish in the ocean. "This is a potentially big issue and one that we really need to be talking about as part of the climate change dialogue."

Look for his "Forage III" sculpture work (co-created with local home school children) on display through the holidays at the Rittenhouse Building.

Beautiful meditation on art, life, hope and salt

It's been some time since I've thrown out a think piece that allows a moment to pause and reflect. And they say there's no time like the present to take action, so let's all take a breath and watch the video above that is a meditation on art, life, hope and... salt. Yeah, salt.

Who would have thought that such meaning could be found in those tiny grains? The Vimeo video highlights artist Motoi Yamamoto and was posted by The Avant/Garde Diaries who write:

    A Japanese artist travels to the salt flats of western Utah to discuss life, death, rebirth, and making art from salt.

The mixture of sadness, beauty, self-discovery, hope and art taking place with the barren salt flats of Wendover, Utah as a backdrop come together so well in this insightful piece that is perfect for some calm and self-reflection in the hectic scramble of life.  A wonderful piece of work on a truly fascinating artist. If you'd like to check out more work by Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto be sure to click here and for more videos from The Avant/Garde Diaries click here to go to their website.

UPDATE: And if you're in the Los Angeles-area and interested in seeing Motoi's work, make sure to read the very helpful Comment below from "labandartgallery".

Artist Mindy Lighthipe and others display work at Local Artist Trunk Show

Art came to life on Sunday for visitors at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art who had the opportunity to meet the local artists whose pieces are sold at the Harn Museum Store.

Mindy Lighthipe, a botanical artist and natural science illustrator, and several other artists attended the Local Artist Trunk Show and Demonstration.

Lighthipe, a New Jersey native, moved to Gainesville a year ago. She previously worked at the New York Botanical Garden for 15 years, where she also taught classes in botanical art.

“Having my work at the Harn Museum Store has been an amazing way to meet people,” Lighthipe said. “It also serves as a great opportunity to expose them to my work.”

Life in Gainesville is a little slower paced, but Lighthipe is enjoying it. According to her website, she has spent time in Belize, Costa Rica, France and Italy.

Lighthipe said she uses a variety of different materials to create her paintings, including colored pencils and graphite. She also uses gouache paint, which allows more light to transmit through than a typical watercolor paint would allow.

The orchid is one subject Lighthipe enjoys bringing to life through her art. She was attracted to the unusual shape and bright color.

Lea Hale, a local jeweler, demonstrated how she makes her imprinted brass jewelry. Hale said her Cuttlebug Machine, which uses the pressure from the turning handle to make the impression on the brass, was a recent gift from her husband.

“It really is that easy,” Hale declared as she showed the completed brass to museum visitors.  “I’ve sort of been ignoring my other work as I become acquainted with this new equipment.”

Although Lighthipe is new to the North Central Florida art scene, she had a solo exhibit at the Museum of Natural History from October 2010 to March 2011. Thirty-two of her paintings were featured.

“Through my art, I try to educate people about the fragile relationship between plants and animals,” Lighthipe said. “Many forget that it is a symbiotic and close association.”

Knight at the Movies: Skyfall; Lincoln

Two of Hollywood's most enduring franchises—James Bond and Steven Spielberg—return to theaters this week with stellar examples of their particular brands.

Bond—the super-cool, super-sexy British spy known as 007—is celebrating 50 years of turning on movie audiences with Skyfall, the long-overdue latest edition to the series. As for Spielberg, the crowd-pleasing, most financially successful filmmaker of all time and the accidental inventor of the summer blockbuster is returning with the epic Lincoln. Skyfall offers the unadulterated diversions of a great spy thriller while Lincoln makes history entertaining on a grand scale. This is a rare case of a win-win for audiences who will be rewarded by taking in both films—commerce and art both triumphing for once.

Like a child, I can't wait to get to the guilty pleasures inherent in Skyfall, which include the often shirtless, hunky Daniel Craig (hands down, the sexiest Bond); Judi Dench as his peppery boss, M, who has more screen time here than in previous outings; the usual assortment of eye-popping locations for the complicated and thrilling set pieces; and a swarthy new villain embodied by sloe-eyed Javier Bardem—not to mention a heavy whiff of bisexuality present in our dazzling hero and his nemesis (more on that later). After the traditional kick-ass opening sequence that finds Bond in pursuit of the usual baddie, skittering across the rooftops of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and atop a speeding train in the surrounding countryside, we get another memorable title song (by Adele) over the title credits.

The stripped-down-to-the-marrow story (by openly gay writer John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade) has an undercurrent that will resonate with longtime fans of the series: Bond and M are aging, relics of a time when spying included sports cars with ejector seats (the silver Aston Martin makes a nice cameo) and other out-of-date stealth gadgetry. Both have fumbled the ball when a zip drive containing the true identities of covert British intelligence agents embedded in terrorist organizations worldwide is stolen from M and slips out of Bond's fingers. Is it time for M to retire? Does Bond have the fortitude to keep up with the insanely tough demands of the job (not to mention the stamina to continue bedding the usual array of gorgeous beauties)?

The script pursues these questions as Bonds zeroes in on the thief—an elegant cyberterrorist with blonde highlights named Silva (Bardem) who wants revenge against M for past transgressions. When Silva first snares Bond in his web he flagrantly banters with him sexually … and Sir James teases right back, suggesting that he is no stranger to man-on-man encounters. But that tantalizing idea is set aside as the revenge plot kicks back in, leading to the climactic section taking place at Bond's boyhood country estate.

Director Sam Mendes, newly invigorating the series after the less-than-satisfying Quantum of Silence, keeps the action hopping, greatly aided by the sumptuous cinematography of Roger Deakins (the exotic locales glisten through his lens), Stuart and Katie Baird's razor-sharp editing and Thomas Newman's elegant, John Barry-inspired score.

Best, of course are the performances. In addition to the assured acting of Craig, who brings an emotional intensity to his succulent physicality and sophisticated demeanor, there's the delightful crack timing of Dench ("Don't cock it up!" she warns Bond) and M's moody introspection as well as some welcome new characters: Ben Whishaw as the fey (and I use the term affectionately) little tech geek Q, Ralph Fiennes as Dench's boss and, of course Bardem, having a hammy good time as Silva. Given all this, it's not surprising that Skyfall's 143-minute running time doesn't seem a bit extended. Rather, one sits there taking in this 23rd Bond adventure, wishing to be shaken and stirred indefinitely.

In a way, the same holds true for Spielberg's Lincoln. Based on an exceedingly literate script by gay writer Tony Kushner (who first collaborated with the director on 2005's Munich), this is hardly the dry history lesson or by-the-numbers biopic that one might expect. It expertly draws its audience in from the first iconic shot of Daniel Day-Lewis, in yet another jaw-dropping performance, as our 16th president. However, that is to be expected with Spielberg—the man who made the Holocaust riveting in Schindler's List, rewrote the book on glamorizing war in the savage first section of Saving Private Ryan and directed several other immersive historical dramas (Amistad, etc.)—at the helm.

Kushner's script, winnowed down from 500 pages (!), ends up focusing on the last four months of Lincoln's life—most specifically, the president's determination to pass the Thirteenth Amendment (the abolition of slavery) before the end of the bloody Civil War. A master tactician, Lincoln sets his staff to work on getting Congress to pass the amendment—something his cabinet warns him is nigh on impossible. Kushner's screenplay, which Doris Kearns Goodwin's best-selling Team of Rivals inspired, has tremendous theatrical flair (no surprise there from the playwright who brought us Angels in America) and the Congressional battles are tremendously engaging—it's big fun to watch the characters squabble, fuss and really go at it.

The movie is essentially a large-scale drawing-room drama with lots of backroom political dealings and, for the first little while, we are trapped inside cramped interiors with clusters of characters vying for Lincoln's attention. But Lincoln, who is given to launching into meandering stories and who seems serenely confident and bemused by the constant tussles and flutterings around him, isn't about to be distracted from his goal and we see the determination underneath the easy manner—the master politician at work on getting what he wants.

Day-Lewis (whose physical proximity to Lincoln is uncanny) gifts the tall, awkward man with the oddly high-pitched voice and slow drawl whom historians have described, as well as the profound sadness. His subtlety helps humanizes this nearly mythic figure, once again approaching the unparalleled acting glory he achieved in There Will Be Blood. Tommy Lee Jones, as irascible Lincoln supporter Thaddeus Stevens, and Sally Field, as the long-suffering Mary Todd Lincoln, are exceptional standouts in a dream cast—the film is like a master class in film acting where even the actors in the tiniest parts shine. (These are the kinds of roles that actors dream of.)

The movie itself—thanks to Spielberg's experienced hand and the aid of his usual production team—is lyrical, graceful and feels a bit like one is aboard an elegant cruise ship gliding through a calm, glassy sea. One luxuriates amidst so much good acting, serene with the thought that a master technician is at the controls, with every detail thought out and presented just so.

Perhaps one of the most surprising things about Lincoln and Skyfall is that both pictures go beyond their expected boundaries. The Bond movie has much more depth than the usual 007 outing while Spielberg's biopic is sensationally entertaining as it delivers a truly involving history lesson. Both movies also trumpet a reinvigorated renewal of their brands—Spielberg is back, firing on all thrusters after the predictable though entertaining War Horse and Adventures of Tin Tin, while the Bond franchise looks to add another 50 years to its luster.

Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitymediagroup.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter website.

Sir Alfred Munnings: An Artist's Life, Richard Green, W1

If Alfred James Munnings, KCVO and for the six years 1944-49 president of the Royal Academy, is remembered by the current art world of Arts Councillors, White Cubes, Serota’s proliferate Tates and satrapies, and, indeed the present instruments of tyranny in the Academy itself, it is not for his paintings but for a speech made at the dinner celebrating the Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition in 1949. In this he swiped at contemporary sculptors in general and Henry Moore in particular, at his fellow painters in the Academy whom he accused of “affected juggling” and “shilly-shallying ... in this so-called modern art,” at compliant critics, singling out Anthony Blunt, and at Matisse and all the School of Paris, reserving for Picasso the honour of having his arse kicked by Munnings himself and that notorious amateur, Winston Churchill, who was first to suggest the jape. With these sentiments he was at once transformed from worthy but irrelevant painter of horse portraiture in which mount and rider could at once be recognised into silly old fool and fascist reactionary.

He was neither, and should be remembered as an honest painter rooted in the ancestral skills and traditions of European painting, Stubbs his mentor, though he never matched that old master’s mastery of complex mathematics in interval and line. In his practice, when young, he was as modern as his older contemporaries Sargent, Brangwyn, La Thangue, Pryde, Laura Knight and all the Newlyn School, and when old, distinct from them and every other painter of his generation, his facture a synthesis distilled from 20 years of looking and learning, and 40 more of work. He was, in essence, self-taught. Born on the Suffolk-Norfolk border in 1878, the son of a prosperous and congenial miller of literary bent, at eight he took drawing lessons from the local vicar’s daughter, and at 14 was apprenticed for six years to a lithographer in Norwich involved in advertising and design. Eventually that company’s leading artist, travelling to trade fairs as far afield as Germany, he made time to visit museums and galleries — those of Munich left an indelible impression to which he made reference late in the notorious speech of 1949. There was also the influence of the Norwich School of Art at which he attended evening classes. By 1897, at 21, his litho-graphy apprenticeship completed, his draughtsmanship astonishingly swift, polished, stylish and accurate, he had become a lowly travelling painter at horse fairs and race meetings, living on what he could sell, and the owner of his first independent studio.

In 1902 he went to Paris for some months, painted the uncomely nude from life at the Académie Julian, a commercially run art school where teaching methods were undogmatic, paid attention to Degas and Fantin-Latour, and to his Spanish near contemporary, Sorolla — the Spanish Sargent — who had been hugely successful at the Paris International Exhibition the year before. There he painted a masterpiece without a horse — the interior of the studio in which he worked, the great north window curtained in green, through which light filters with the subtlety and brilliance of Menzel; I saw it in 1958 but have not seen it since — not altogether surprising, for there has been no retrospective exhibition of Munnings’ work since one at the Academy in 1956.

At this stage he was as retentatively absorbent as a sponge and yet remained absolutely English — as English as any member of the New English Art Club (founded in 1886 and no longer new), or of the Newlyn School, or even (dare I say it?) of the Glasgow School, his subjects the rural life of East Anglia, gypsies, farm labourers, the market place, the horse fair, the pet pony and the comfortable middle classes at their leisure. All these he could paint in full sunlight, skies blue, clouds kindly, but his bravest paintings — in that they courted financial failure in their gloom — were those in which daylight is giving way to darkness and figures and horses are illuminated by the last glimmerings of sunset and the little light reflected in a rippling stream. These were a response to the lively, even urgent, compositions and fluid brushwork of Heinrich von Zügel, a now forgotten animal painter long established in Munich, where Munnings was again in 1909; it should not be forgotten that Munich was then still one of the great European schools of painting, particularly of academic realism.

Munnings’ early travels in a gypsy caravan adapted as a studio were, with success, abandoned for more conventional circumstances, but he remained an open-air painter all his life, though it was an open air encounter with a thorn bush that deprived his right eye of its sight when he was only 20, the year in which he first exhibited at the Royal Academy. With only one functioning eye he was refused active service in the Great War but in 1917, aged 37, volunteered to play some part in the care of army horses; this led, the following year, to his attachment to the Canadian Cavalry as one of several painters working on a grandiose project (never completed) to record its part in the war. Of this a by-product was an equestrian portrait of General Seeley that sparked a demand for more, and with the burden of what were essentially society commissions here and in the USA, where he spent six months in 1924, came one from Queen Mary in 1925 to record The Ascot Procession in Windsor Park. With this there could be no doubt that he had found his form, his eventual presidency of the Academy inevitable.

As president he was among old friends — Brangwyn, Stanhope Forbes, Laura and Harold Knight — and at his ease in an institution that was already an anachronism in the world of 20th-century painting. More than a year had to pass before the war in Europe came to an end; then in October 1946 the Academy mounted its Winter Exhibition of the King’s Pictures with a young Anthony Blunt and other art historians throwing their weight about — a sore point brought up in that notorious speech, recalling that Blunt had told “some people that Reynolds was not as good as Picasso”. His loathing for Picasso had matured only months before in the winter when the British Council mounted at the V&A an exhibition of his work under Nazi occupation, in mood dark, extreme and melancholy, and still not easily understood — but as Munnings’ heart and mind were rooted in East Anglia, not the sophistications of London, in open landscape and high skies, in the beauty, elegance and movement of the horse, how else could such a romantic react to the painter of the anguished broken horse of Guernica?

Painting horses and their riders for so many years, Munnings had slipped easily from the social status of the miller’s son and become a country gentleman of the hunting and riding kind, and his knighthood as president of the Royal Academy he wore more easily than his presidency — his 1949 speech was also one of angry resignation, “... I shall not be here next, year, thank God!” In his retirement he continued to work in the open air — “the old irrepressible,” as one of his friends put it, “despite gout ... the rain and wind ... and despite the discouragement of the modern critic.” The Academy gave him a retrospective exhibition in 1956. At 80, in 1959, he died and his amiably dotty widow established their home in Dedham as the Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum; it is a substantial loan from this that, for a month, forms the core of an exhibition at Richard Green’s Gallery, 147 New Bond Street.

Only the art dealers and sale rooms of London have sustained Munnings’ reputation in public. Though the original Tate Gallery owns three of his paintings, they were acquired not by purchase but by donation through the Chantrey Bequest in 1920, 1930 and 1937, and I cannot recall ever seeing them hung; I dare say that were one to utter his name in the presence of the present Tate panjandrums, they would shudder with distaste. Munnings was, of course, omitted from the Royal Academy’s survey of 20th century British art in 1987, and his current successor as president (himself a wretched painter of horses) and his many minions there must, in any recollection of so honest a painter, twitch their noses in disdain.

Munnings, however, exemplifies a genre of painting that was for centuries the backbone of British art, yet he was never old-fashioned; in the manner of his painting he was, in his day, thoroughly modern, his handling of impastose paint bold and certain, the strokes of the loaded brush always assured, whether long or flickering, and often a match for Sargent’s swaggering confidence. Munnings did what he did bravely and with great affection for his subjects, subtly acknowledging the influence of his peers as well as the past, but without intellectual theory to justify his work it proved too comprehensible and was swept aside by the obscurities of Cubism, Abstraction and their overwhelming consequences.

That he deserves better than this is proved by this exhibition. It demonstrates his abilities as a fluent draughtsman sketching with the brush, and as a painter, disciplining that fluency in such a formal set piece as The Presentation of Standards to the Household Cavalry, of 1927, but retaining its essential character. Between this formality and the impetuous sketch lies Tagg’s Island, in which, on a sunlit summer evening, he captured perfectly the post-war gaiety of 1920. Until the outbreak of the Second World War he was always a painter of his time, recognisably Edwardian, reflecting the mood of the class into which he graduated in the Twenties and Thirties, but this war he virtually ignored, though his Exmoor Snow of post-1940 suggests a suitably sombre mood. Dare I say that he was a truer painter of landscapes than Hockney, a truer painter of the horse than Freud?