Art would exist so differently now if we didn’t have women to inspire it. Even sensitive undertones within the harshest paintings calm the piece as a whole. Soft skin, wide eyes, and flowing hair make for an aesthetic image, so portraits of beautiful women done well will always be beautiful. Women and art went hand in hand for the longest time because both largely existed just to look at.
But in a society where the intellectually evolved recognize a woman’s worth, these paintings from the past take on more meaning than a simple pretty picture or pretty person. What about her life is lost to history when just the image of what she looked like survives? If these women were around today, what would they be able to contribute now? How much knowledge did the world miss out on because it took so long for so many groups of people to prove their equality?
Goya. “Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel,” 1805. Image via Jaded Mandarin.
Pierre Auguste Renoir. “Julie Manet” also known as “Child with cat,” 1887 Oil on canvas. Image via Mata Mua.
Sir Joshua Reynolds. “Mrs. Susanna Hoare and Child,” 1763. Image via Jaded Mandarin.
Alexandra Rozenman is an artist now living and working in New England after coming to America as a political refugee from Moscow at the end of the 80s. Her paintings reveal simple scenes of beauty and most often peace – a utopia so perfect that it could only exist within four walls of canvas. Her new show, “Transplanted” continues her exploration of scenic storytelling, using color and shape to serve as a narrative for each viewer to interpret on their own.
“Moving in with de Chirico”l art
What was the first thing you can remember painting?
I started painting when I was 5 taking classes at the Fine Art Museum in Moscow. There is a photograph taken at the dacha that my parents rented in 1977 for the summer. I am sitting at the easel looking very serious. Painting on an easel tells a story the same way my work does now: there is a house in the woods and a fairytale character: Petrushka ! ( Petrushka is a stock character of Russian folk puppetry, known at least since 17th century). I would not be surprised if I found out about him from a Stravinsky ballet that has the same name, because may be there was not always paper, but the theater was affordable, wonderful and available. This painting has two big eyes in the sky – one of the images in my work for the last 20 years.
Do you have any routines required for the creation of your work?
In ideal world I prefer to work in the morning after 2-3 cups of strong black tea. Afterwards I eat good lunch and have a nap! Then work for 2-3 hours more. I like to feel alienated when I work. I like listening to a very loud music (something nobody will guess I do). With the schedule I have right now ( I started my own private art school www.artschool99.com) and am teaching almost every day for 5 hours or so). I am trying to cut out pieces of time for myself and just make it work. A tight schedule became one of my art materials:)
“Moving in with Leonardo”
How do you find the right color scheme for each scene?
I don’t think I find the right color. I allow colors to find me. Paint floats and has its own mind based on subject matter, technique, materials, time, space. It is alive for me and my goal is to allow it to grow up (like a plant) and only later – some time in the middle of the painting process – start changing it, based on my instinct, ideas and goals. Each painting is different.
Where do you hope to take the viewer with your paintings, and why?
I tell my viewer a story, allow them to enter into the world of magic and hope that they will get curious and will spend some time thinking and looking around. My work expresses longing for understanding and being understood, for non-belonging and finding a place to be. Playfulness in my work points to instability of life – visually, culturally and literally. I am working playing on the conflicts between identity and assimilation, tradition and modernity, so each viewer can take my messages and interpret them any way they want and discover for themselves. I want the viewer to start wondering after looking at my paintings, if maybe things are a bit different sometimes, maybe something can still be both beautiful and interesting at the same time.
“Moving in with Winslow Homer”
How would you describe your style of painting?
In todays world “style” is usually a combination of many different styles, isms and personal history or/and an artists place in the world. Inside my work liquid layers and thick abstractly painted surfaces meet familiar landscapes, and create a place where I explore the world through the mixture of autobiography, symbolism and philosophy. I am a mix of Moscow alternative cultural scene of the 1980’s ( my visual vocabulary, environments, approach to a hidden metaphor are all coming from their ), Painting for paintings sake, Abstract Expressionism, New image painting, Fauvism , 16th-17th century Romanticism and Symbolism can all be found in my work.
My favorite artists are: Bruegel, Vermeer, Turner, Matisse, Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Snyder and Frida Kahlo. For many many years my work has been compared to Marc Chagall. I like his early work and am even really related to his first wife (Bella Rosenfeld) – my Great Grand father is her younger brother, but I don’t think that he is my main influence. However, if there is a group of artists called “Jewish Artists” I am sure I am a part of it.
How does “Transplanted” expand upon the styles and themes your work has already been exploring?
For me “Transplanted” has a seed of placing myself in the world of art. Thoughts and practice on what it is to be a painter in the 21st century. Saying that replanted artists, immigrants from the disintegrated homeland, like myself, survive against all odds
And, kind of a random one: what’s your favorite color?
I don’t think I have one favorite color. I love color. It depends on what it is for. There is one color that I strongly dislike: pink. I agree with Matisse who said that:”The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond choice.”
“Re-thinking Malevich in Moscow” From Alexandra: “Re-thinking series was 15 years ago and is sort of a mother of ‘moving in.'”
When you’re a kid, a treehouse is the one place where grownups aren’t in charge. If you’re a girl it’s no boys allowed and vice versa. Only those deemed trustworthy are allowed up to the sacred space so that everyone can feel safe enough to discuss their hopes for the future – even if that only includes trying to get out of going to school tomorrow.
But treehouses become more than that when Kobayahsi Takashi makes them – a professional treehouse architect, he’s traveled around Japan and the world creating miniature spaces high up in the branches, brought to life by the fact that the very thing supporting them is alive. He writes, “…everywhere I’ve been, I’ve seen reflected in these largest and oldest of living beings the same nameless light that I’ve struggled to maintain within myself for so many years, the one that no one could tarnish and that never seemed to disappear. That comfort, that sense of calm, is something I’d like to share with as many people as possible. And it is with that in mind that I will continue with the one-of-a-kind rush that is treehouse creation, all the while carrying out my own personal dialogue with their hosts.”
Takashi is a member of the Tree People, both a company and organization that stands with trees and builds off them. Their website reads, “We who build these structures are not architects; our aim rather, through art and free expression, is to break down the feeling of separation that exists between humans and nature.”
Kobayahsi Takashi
I especially love this glass treehouse nestled in an Okinawa forest – just a little dome that transforms people into birds, letting them soar up high in the branches; plenty of windows for fresh air and with opening at the top towards the sky. This photograph was taken at just the right angle too – its obvious why they selected this tree as each side of its arms open wide, embracing and balancing the little glass dome held within.
“Throne For The Greatest Rapper Of All Time,” 2005 Found Wood Furniture, 96”h 69”w 48”d
Marc Andre Robinson creates sculptures, drawings and videos from his studio in Brooklyn, all of his work concerned with family and what it takes to belong in one.
His works with chairs show a playful relationship between art and artifact, using found furniture that has probably held the generations of many families within them, giving each piece a stronger sense of realness – art repurposed instead of just created for its own sake.
“Throne For The Greatest Rapper of All Time” looks like either a very elaborate 19th century sex toy, or a complete dining room set come to life, becoming a more powerful Transformer-version of chairs and pieces of table. But the work is very sit-able, and looking closely you’ll see all the stacked chairs come from different sets and different tables. Wooden antennae stretch up symmetrically creating a very impressive silhouette, the backs of the chairs exaggerated and elongated, like a father figure overcompensating.
“By Themselves And Of Themselves” accomplishes a feat against gravity, a huge circle of interlocking chairs standing upright. All the chairs face out, some are plastic but most are wooden, and again each chair comes from a different set – a mismatched bunch somehow made whole.
Regina Spektor’s music sounds happy, but there is always a profound underlying idea beneath the lyrics. There’s a duality to it that wouldn’t be noticed if you didn’t listen closely, a paradox of cheerful melody versus intense philosophical discourse. Regina keeps her words specific enough to mean something and ambiguous enough to be left open to interpretation, so that each of us can decide how serious we’d like her songs to seem that day.
Her song “Don’t Leave Me (Ne me quitte pas)” comes from her most recent album What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, which addresses everything from corruption in politics to hoarding masterpieces in museums. And even though “Don’t Leave Me” sounds like the merriest tune on the track, it’s also one of the most heartbreaking, as each verse leads you to another person desperate not to be left alone. The French part of the song “Ne me quitte pas, mon chere” literally translated means, “Do not forsake me, my dear.”
The song plays with bubbles as the beat, they dance past one another like a funkified merry-go-round. The peppy beat works to comfort the sad people in the song – all of them placed in different parts of New York City, the one place in the world where you can have people crushing you on all sides and still be alone.
The first character on Bowery is cast as a raggedy bum, stumbling down the street and asking for a light. The second character comes as an aging woman uptown, the kind that puts all her effort and money into slowing down time’s effect on her body. Children sledding in the Bronx make the third verse adorable, who invites the listener to “play along and catch a cold.” The first two adults ask for deities and ghosts – something to believe in and make them sure of one thing at least. But as always the children show us how its done, because at the very least we can at least be sure of each other. Even if they let us down, it’s more important to connect with the people around us than search for things we can never be sure of.
More than anything though, the song is a cheerful justification for why we’re not meant to be alone. Rome wasn’t built by one person anymore than it was built in a day.
Down on Bowery they lose their
ball-eyes and their lip-mouths in the night,
and stumbling through the streets they say,
“Sir, do you have a light?”
And if you do then you’re my friend,
And if you don’t then you’re my foe,
And if you are a deity of any sort
then please don’t go.
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
And down on Lexington they’re wearing
new shoes stuck to aging feet,
And close you’re eyes and open,
And you’ll recognize the aging street,
And thing about how things were right
When they were young and veins were tight
And if you are the ghost of Christmas Past
then wont you stay the night?
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Down in Bronxy-Bronx the kids go
sledding down snow-covered slopes
And frozen noses, frozen toes
and frozen city starts to glow
And yes, they know that it’ll melt
And yes, the know New York will thaw
But if you are a friend of any sort
then play along and catch a cold!
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
Ne Me Quitte Pas, Mon Chere
Ne Me Quitte Pas
I love Paris in the rain.
I love, I love, in the rain…
