Art & I & Art

Or, why do I always have this internal struggle?

This year’s ARCO logo. 2014.

AOG, Madrid

This past weekend Madrid held its international art fair: ARCO. This art fair has been an annual event for me ever since I moved to Spain.

I have gone every year since then to every single one, and every year I walk away thinking to myself, ‘Why the Hell don’t I start doing that?’.

By “that” I am referring to art, in whichever way you wish to define it.

And art and I have had a very tormented relationship from the very start. And it goes on today.

There are many reasons why I don’t live and work as an artist.

And I dislike every single one of them, yet, that has always been, to use a well-worn euphemism, the story of my life.

The cruel beginnings…

When I was a young kid I asked my mother to let me take drawing classes.

I remember going to my first-ever drawing lesson.

I remember the anticipation, the nerves I felt then. The joy inside of me as I anticipated what was to happen.

As a kid, nothing made happier than drawing. I loved it.

I remember that I read somewhere that there was an art academy near where we lived. Maybe it was just a poster, or an ad in a magazine. And I remember pestering my mother to let me go to drawing classes.

After my mother tired of hearing me, she allowed for this to happen. And I was over the moon.

It was a complete fiasco.

We went to the academy in question and I saw several tables with children pouring over their work. I was very excited because I’d soon be learning what they were learning, and I’d be working alongside them. It was going to be my first extracurricular activity ever.

Madame Mère (as I like to call her theses days) and I were shown around the academy, the director explaining to her what the children were doing at that particular moment.

And what were the children drawing?

They, all of them, were drawing a picture of a mountain top and the moon.

Circle and triangle. Basic.

And it seems like that is all they had been drawing and all that they were going to draw for a long time.

My mother asked about this, and she was told, again, that until the children learned how to do that well, that was all they were going to do.

“Only that picture?”

“Yes, only that picture.”

My mother thanked the director for her time and said she would think about it.

She didn’t drop me off at the academy that day, as I had been expecting to happen; she didn’t say she’d be picking me up later. 

She didn’t do any of the things I thought were going to happen.

instagram: @tony4sure

Once outside, or in the car, or the elevator, or wherever it was that we were at when we were alone, I asked her about what had just happened. 

Why wasn’t I being dropped off? What was happening?

I don’t remember her exact words but it was something along the lines of ‘I don’t think they have a very good idea about how to teach drawing to a child’.

She really didn’t like the thought of me doing just one painting over and over.

I, on the other hand, would have killed at the chance to do just that. But it was not to be. She had seen a problem with the academy and dismissed it. And for some reason, she never bothered to find another one.

Now it would be unfair to say she didn’t encourage my sister and I to express our creative side.

Although I never went to art class, Madame Mère did spend hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, paying for art supplies throughout our entire childhood.

Instagram: @tony4sure

She paid for ballet school, piano lessons, acting lessons.

Only as an adult, when I went to live in London, did I take a photography lesson.

And ever since then, photography has been with me as a sort of surrogate for drawing.

But I still draw. Badly. Awkwardly. Furtively. But passionately.

With time, my drawings became more about designing things.

When we first came to Europe in 1988, for some strange reason, I decided I would start drawing buildings.

Ever the frustrated architect, I was content to draw skyscrapers, cut out the shapes, as though they were paper dolls, and ‘assemble’ them.

I had already started designing cars a couple of years before. And shoes. And clothes. And furniture. But I never trusted my drawing skills. And I never took it seriously. So I never did anything with it. I just drew. I just draw.

But I take art seriously. I take my photography seriously. And my writing. And my acting. And I recently joined a choir, and I take that seriously too. Just as I took music seriously when I had a magnificent keyboard I never learned how to play well. I am also a frustrated composer.

But I am a great reader. And all of those years I read about art. And then I did a BA in Art History (and History with a philosophy minor). 

And I combined that degree with photography, and my love of all the arts. And you can see the results online. Follow me on instagram for the more immediate images: @tony4sure.

Being an artist.

For years, as one does, I never thought of myself as an artist. I was just doing what everyone else did -so I believed.

I used to think that since I liked art, so did everyone else.

Since I could draw, so could everyone else.

Since I could dance, and sing, and act, and all the rest, so could everyone else.

Realizing that was just not the case took me years.

Not so much a rude awakening as a realization: not everyone is an artist.

But was I an artist? Or was I just artistic?

I was an actor, a singer, a writer, even a half-assed musical composer when sitting at the keyboard, but an artist?

It took a while before the dots connected.

The proper thank you.

I have to thank London for telling me what I was. For opening my eyes. For slapping me in the face with what was there.

You see, London, like any major metropolitan area, attracts its fair share of talented people.

And talented people are excellent at recognizing talent in others, and extremely adept at letting you know when it is not there. Cruel in fact.

And it was a group of those people who told me what I had never been able to see myself: that I was an Artist. 

That I had always been one.

But it took a while before I accepted this about myself.

Weird, right?

Instagram: @tony4sure

 I was informed that I didn’t take photographs just because I pointed the camera and pressed the shutter. I had compositions. Angles. I was producing images, not just photographs.

I could act, and embody a character. I could express feelings through movement as a dancer. I could write poetry, and prose. I was a producer of art, not just a consumer.

And I should have gone to Art School. RADA, or Central St Martin’s, or the Royal Academy of Art. But I didn’t.

Why?

Because I was not an artist in my head. Art was something everyone did. Hence, I undervalued it greatly.

But I wanted, still want, to learn. And to produce art.

As a designer, I wanted to learn about CAD. Not programming, just using this wonderful program to make my car designs look real. Or professional. Or just better.

But couldn’t. And didn’t.

So these days, I channel my impulses as best I can.

Instagram: @tony4sure

And most of the time I am happy with the exercise (if not necessarily the actual output).

But now and again, I go to an art gallery, or a museum, or some exhibition somewhere, and I kick myself for not being an artist.

For not working as one.

Or, perhaps, what I am kicking myself about is really for not having been clever enough to convince a gallerist to buy my photographs, for not being a writer in print (though I am in print as a journalist).

For not getting that recognition which, as an actor, I do get when I perform with my improv colleagues.

For lacking that confidence and living with that internal struggle.

But, you know what? Perhaps it is the struggle which keeps me writing, and acting, and reading, and taking photographs, and all the rest.

Because being an artist is so many things…

 

Why I Love Pinterest

Dammit…I’m hooked again.

AOG, Madrid

I am weak. I admit it. I wish I weren’t but I am. I caved in. Like Oscar Wilde before me, I too can resist anything, except temptation.

Ever since I wrote a post about it (see here), I have been thinking about going back.

About just sucking it in, ignore their awful customer service, their threatening past behavior, their bullying and short-sightedness, and just, for the love of all that is good and pretty, open a new Pinterest account.

So yesterday, in a moment of weakness, and under a different email address, I did it. 

I typed www.pinterest.com, and created a new account.

The feelings which went with it were similar to those you used to get as a kid when you got away with something you were not supposed to be doing.

At first anyway.

But soon enough they gave way to feelings related to the hoarder in me, the collector in me. 

The curator. 

The aesthete and the lover of art.

I could, again, enjoy ‘playing’ Pinterest.

My first board? Fashion.

The second one? Men.

The third? Automobiles.

Then Ar(t)chitecture, then boards related to Mexico, Spain, Japan, Russia, France, Great Britain. Soon after, I decided to separate one old board into two: iLLUSTRATION and aRT became: Illustration, and a separate board for Art.

I’m taking it easy about the other boards. 

I’ve created some which I have yet to pin anything unto, and some which I’m thinking about, but…

Like, should I have a separate board for the fashions of different decades?

How about 1950s cars?

Should movie posters just be under Illustration, or should I have a board for them? 

How about fashion illustration?

How about men’s shoes?

On their own or just under Men’s fashion (baptised as ‘Suits you, Sir’). 

Perhaps it is early days yet, but I’m glad I’m back –though it doesn’t take the resentment away.

I’m glad I can enjoy the idea that is Pinterest, even if I think its owner/manager, is a prude.

Life…always so contrary…n’est ce pas?

 

Odd year

AOG, Madrid

This has been an odd year thus far. I have not wanted to update this blog, though I have no idea why eaxctly. It just hasn't happened.

Since we got back from Japan last year, I have found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on much, though I think that what I have been suffering from most is just good old fashioned apathy and little else.

Work has been stressful since about mid-February when 80% of my department at the paper left. 

The workload increased and I was surprised to experience that my colleagues were not really forthcoming in the help department. 

Yes, I know economics is a difficult thing to deal with. However, I also noticed that they were not really helping each other much either.

I am not in the mood to do a 7 month recap, but I will say that somehow I've managed to survive Spain winning the World Cup in South Africa, the Madrid Pride celebrations, and that I've made a couple of new friends and those are always in short supply.

And speaking of friends, through the magic of Facebook, I found the two High School buddies I've been after since we graduated. One, funnily enough, lives in London! The other one just moved back to Texas. We've spoken on the phone a couple of times, which is good. We are still were we left off. A good feeling.

August is just around the corner, and my only plan is to take it easy. 

We'll see.

 PS: I've just realized that the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics just passed me by completely. I'm so not a jock...but I do like one when I see one! LOL

London's Russian vogue

AOG, London

I have been here for a couple of days only. In these few days I have noticed that Russia is very much at the forefront of the British imagination. Not quite the fever pitch all things Russian acquired in Paris in the aftermath of WWI, but certainly something worth noticing.

The Royal Academy of Arts has just closed its "From Russia" exhibition. Itself caught in the middle of the on-going diplomatic row between the UK and Russia regarding the death of an ex KGB agent in the UK by the, supposedly, Russian secret service, something Moscow strongly denies and which the exhibition has gone a long way in defusing- at least according to some. However, the hangover still is being felt. Here and there I saw posters of the exhibition still in place.

Perhaps it didn't last too long?

However, the vogue for Russia, in my experience, has gone a bit beyond that in London town. It is common knowledge that, for a few years now, Russia's nouveau riche have set up shop in London.

Something about the city's ambiance marries quite well with the Russian spirit. Perhaps it is that in Russia, as in Spain, it is commonly believed that, if it is the most expensive you can have, it is also the best one you can have. It does not matter if we are talking about books, homes, cars, clothes, horses or what have you.

Expense equals quality. And nowhere in Europe is as needlessly expensive as London. Perhaps that is the interest of the Russia's newfound Anglophilia.

And the Brits return the favor by favoring a certain a la russe state of affairs. My most tangible example was walking into Waterstones and finding a whole section dedicated to Russian literature.

Leo Tolstoy and his "Resurrection"

Dostoyevsky's "The brothers Karamazov"

Olga Grushin's "The dreamlife of Sukhanov"

Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We"

Andreï Makine's "A life's music"

Viktor Pelevin's "The life of insects"

Nabokov's 'Collected Stories'

Andrei Kurkov's "Death and the penguin" (a copy of which I purchased one day later at a second-hand book shop in Victoria)

Nikolai Leskov's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk"

A collection of "Russian short stories from Pushkin to Buida" and a couple of Gogol titles.

In short, Russia is almost everywhere in London these days.

For some reason, we decided to celebrate my sister's birthday in BALTIC, London's top notch Russian and Eastern European restaurant.

I didn't choose it because of the Russophilia. Instead, I think a slight zeitgeist was at play here.

I for one am quite happy London is so Russia-friendly. I hope it lasts, for everyone's sakes.

Sunday afternoon

AOG, Madrid

(Igor Mitoraj sculpture)

The nice thing about living in a major world capital is that it has a lot of cultural events going on most of the time. I don't think of Madrid as a major world capital, though I do think of it as a major cultural city- perhaps more so than Barcelona, but not quite London or New York yet.

Nevertheless, Madrid these days is really into its art and it takes itself very seriously. Wherever you read in the Spanish media, the fact that Madrid has three major museums within walking distance of each other is a source of pride. Art is big business in general. That goes double for Spain, for many a bargain when compared to other capitals such as Paris or New York.

The Prado (Spain's Louvre), the Thyssen, and the Queen Sofia Museum of Contemporary Art- alias the "Reina Sofía"- are all on the same street- the Prado boulevard.

Now, within the same street, Caixa Forum Madrid, a cultural, not for profit, organisation funded by La Caixa, one of Spain's largest savings banks, has opened its doors.

Sporting Madrid's, probably Spain's, first vertical garden, its modern headquarters building in Madrid is less imposing that the other three. As in Barcelona, it has taken a pre-existing building, and remodeled it into something new. I have not been inside of it yet but from the outside it is not a very impressive building, except for its vertical garden which you can see on the photograph at left behind the winged sculpture.

However, what it lacks on the outside, it makes up for in its first public exhibition: the work of Igor Mitoraj.

The Prado boulevard has been peppered beautifully with Igor Mitoraj's sculptures. Neoclassical, postmodern, certainly sensual and at the same time, cold, given their metallic nature.

I discovered it today when I went to visit the "Cuesta de Moyano" (link is in Spanish), an uphill (cuesta) street linking the boulevard with Madrid's Retiro Park and located at the back of the Agriculture Ministry, Madrid's most beautiful ministry building (below).











On the slope you find about 15 covered stands which have been selling second-hand books, as well as new books, since 1925. All sort of literary treasures are found there. My find yesterday was the January 1977 issue of National Geographic. I bought it for the articles on Stockholm and Haiti.

Whilst there, I met up with an improv-class classmate and one of the tutors. We spoke about life in general and how best to get into improv. The sucking of a particular body part was part of the way into improv. Ha ha ha, how we all laughed.

On my way home, I marveled at the sculptures which I had seen in Barcelona a few months ago, at Barcelona's Caixa Forum. And then some.

One of the small pleasures of living in a European capital.