This is view of Manhattan from the Brooklyn side (the Promenade). At night it’s an awesome view. I have yet to get a shot of this at night. In time.
PR
4/27/15
Daily Archives: April 27, 2015
X is for Xceron
Letter X
Today is the letter X in the A to Z Challenge
I am taking this opportunity in this challenge to learn more about art and the artist who make them today’ s artist is
JEAN XCERON
(I see Picasso looking back at me with this one)
CURVES
hiding behind curves
peering back from safe distance
diversion – bottoms up
PR
4/28/15
Jean Xceron (1890–1967) was an American abstract painter of Greek origin. He immigrated to the United States in 1904 and studied at the Corcoran School of Art. . For the next six years he lived and worked with relatives in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and New York City . He first encountered modernism when, in 1916, two fellow students arranged an exhibition of avant-garde paintings borrowed from Alfred Stieglitz. He exhibited in the New York Independents’ exhibitions in 1921 and 1922. In New York, Xceron studied Céanne and read as much as possible about new artistic movements abroad.
Xceron was finally able to travel to Paris in 1927. There he began writing reviews of the latest in art for the Boston Evening Transcript and the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune. His articles on Jean Hélion, Hans Arp, John Graham, Theo Van Doesburg, and other artists showed his increasingly sophisticated understanding of recent art. About the same time, his own painting underwent a dramatic transition.
As a writer, he was quickly accepted into the Parisian art world as one of the few critics sympathetic to modern art; but few realized that Xceron was an accomplished painter as well. Boy, was he living a double life. Soon word of his talent came out and a solo exhibition at the Galèrie de France in 1931.
His style was that of an artist who was working his way through Cubism, Still-life and,figural motifs over the years he moved away from his figural foundations, introducing at first gridlike structural patterns and, by the mid 1930s, planar arrangements of severe Constructivist purity. I have to say, I don’t know what any of that means. But some of you might so I left it in.
When Xceron returned to New York in 1935 for an exhibition at the Garland Gallery, he was among the inner circle of Abstraction-Création and other leading Parisian art groups. Moreover, he had achieved some reputation. He again visited New York in 1937 for a show at Nierendorf Gallery. Although planning only a visit, his move proved permanent. Xceron soon joined the American Abstract Artists, who welcomed him as a leading Parisian artist. Despite his reputation, however, he fared little better commercially than did his new colleagues. He was hired by the WPA Federal Art Project and executed an abstract mural for the chapel at Riker’s Island Penitentiary.
Clearly his art didn’t really provide a consistent means of support. He worked at the Guggenheim Museum as a security guard for 28 years from 1939 to his death. He is described as a “pioneer of non-objective painting” by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. His works are in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/a-to-z-challenge-sign-uplist-2015.html
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/?m=1
W is for Walden
Letter W
Today is the letter W in the A to Z Challenge
I am taking this opportunity in this challenge to learn more about art and the artist who make them today’ s artist is
LIONEL WALDEN
Light
by light of lantern
lost in rhythm of lapping waves
he sits in wait
PR
4/26/15
Lionel Walden was born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1861. He first became interested in art in Minnesota, where the family moved when his father became rector of an Episcopal Church there. As a young man, Walden moved to Paris where he studied painting with Carolus-Duran. In around 1893-97, Walden was in England, living in Falmouth. Paintings of Cardiff in Wales are in museums in Cardiff and Paris. Walden received medals from the Paris Salon and was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honor. He visited Hawaii in 1911 and several times thereafter. Walden died in Chantilly, France in 1933.
According to David H. Forbes, author of Encounters with Paradise: Views of Hawaii and its People, 1778-1941, Lionel Walden “was the finest seascape painter to work in Hawaii”. The Brooklyn Museum, the Henry Art Gallery (University of Washington, Seattle), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Isaacs Art Center (Waimea, Hawaii), the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper and the Musée d’Orsay are among the public collections holding works by Lionel Walden.
This one looks like the impressionists doesn’t it?
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/a-to-z-challenge-sign-uplist-2015.html
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/?m=1
Thunder Clap
THUNDER CLAP
thunderclap
the darkening sky splits
into liquid night
© Kala Ramesh
(Published in Haiku Presence, Britain’s leading independent haiku journal. Issue #37, Spring 2008)
The goal is to write an all new haiku inspired on the given haiku and trying to do that in the same tone, sense and spirit as the one given. Certainly not an easy task, but it’s challenging …. Here is my attempt:
HOST
hot summer day
battle between thunder and lightning
ah! cool summer rain
© Chèvrefeuille
MINE
a chunk of empty –
memories with sad imprint
thunder clap shifts mood
(missed it I think)
#2
romping under sun
screeched to a halt – thunder clap
with pelting rain drops
PR
4/26/15
http://chevrefeuillescarpediem.blogspot.com/2015/04/carpe-diem-special-144-kala-rameshs.html
thoughts and entanglements 
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