Constanza

When we visited Florence a couple weeks ago we made a special point to visit the Bargello Museum to see Bernini's bust of Costanza. For that matter, we made a special point to visit as many Bernini sculptures as we could in our time there. The history of this piece is quite dramatic. Quoting Ingrid Rowland:

Bernini was not a nice man; he paid a thug to slash the face of his mistress Costanza after catching her in bed with his brother Luigi. [He also broke two of Luigi’s ribs with an iron rod] Before that incident, however, he had carved a portrait of Costanza, plump and tousled, looking as if she has just risen from bed; it is perfectly clear what both Bernini boys saw in her.

Our own desire to see Costanza was also thwarted - as the gallery she stood in was being restored. On our quest to see as many Bernini's as we could in Rome, this wasn't the only time we had a door shut. One morning after walking a long way across Rome to see a Bernini sculpture in a small church, the gate shut right in front of us for the afternoon hours. Another time (the Ufizzi) -the Bernini was in a room reserved only for special tours. For more information on Costanza and Bernini, you may refer to this new book:

 

Bernini's Beloved, by Sarah McPhee

Manicured Lives

painting by Keltie Ferris

Here's an interesting article by Jonah Lehrer - Author of Proust was a Neuroscientist.

“And this is why we should all follow strangers on Twitter. We naturally lead manicured lives, so that our favorite blogs and writers and friends all look and think and sound a lot like us.”

Read the whole article - it's really fascinating. In a way I think art can act as the "stranger" on twitter - introducing ideas/images/emotions into our otherwise predicable days and as he says, "expand our creative potential."

Twilight - not the movie

I just picked up this book of photography and I'm really enjoying it. The book features work from Gregory Crewdson, Robert Adams, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and five other exceptional photographers. The book could function as the the photography equivalent of Like Breath on Glass. Recommended!

New Alexander Binder Book

There's a new Alexander Binder book available at Blurb. I've got a copy at home right now and it is a really beautiful, well-composed book (preview below). If you are in Denver, you can see some of his photography in person at Rule gallery through March 20th.

Traum by Alexander Binder

More catching up

photo from the collection of Nathan Abels

After a show is up a lot of artists get what they refer to as the "post-show depression". I've experienced the post-show blues from time to time but in general I feel pretty free - free to do whatever projects or processes I've been delaying because of the emphasis on whether or not it will go with the show. One of the things I've been wanting to do is make a blurb book of my personal collection of photographer's shadows (see above). I'm in the process of that right now and it will be a short, affordable soft-cover open-edition book in the near future.

The Lifted Brow available for Pre-Order

The Lifted Brow No. 6, is a book and two CDs, is now available for pre-order. The theme is that of an atlas of the world, newly observed by a huge list of artists and musicians. I have two ink-wash paintings in the book based on the so-called "battleship island" off the coast of Japan.

"Even in the End" by Peter Sutherland

A slim edition of black and white images printed by hand from photo engraved copperplates. Available October 1st (Thursday) - pre-order here.

Letterpress printed.
Engravings by A&G, Los Angeles.
Black ink on 80lb. Finch Opaque Vellum paper.
6 x 9 inches.
24 pages.
Hand sewn binding.
Edition of 500 plus A.P.
Signed and numbered.

In Search of A Lost Icon

I'm currently reading "American Buffalo; In Search of a Lost Icon" by Steven Rinella and it is fascinating. I don't want to give too much away about the book but I would definitely recommend it - it can be enjoyed for the adventurous aspects of the writers life and travels as well as the historical background of the animal and its relationship to man.

While doing some supplemental research on the history of these animals I came across this article at Cryptomundo - "The Wood Bison Discovery Story" -

"The largest land animal in Canada, the wood bison [shown above], had been disappearing from all over North America for centuries when the last animals were officially declared extinct in 1940. Then in 1957, a wonderful discovery occurred. During a regular air patrol, federal wildlife officers flying over a remote part of the Wood Buffalo National Park, Alberta, spotted a small, isolated herd of two hundred wood bison. They had gone completely unnoticed for decades – and had kept physically and genetically separate from their cousins, the plains bison, so familiar to Americans as the buffalo. The wood bison were found about one hundred miles from a new road being built from Alberta to the arctic circle and within fifty miles of a mission station that had existed for a hundred years. Inspection of these animals showed that they were indeed the last remaining pure wood bison (Bison athabascae), an enormous Ice Age species not known to exist in a pure strain anywhere else in the world."

Writer Loren Coleman goes on to say,

"This animal tale is one the late Ivan T. Sanderson and I have both used to demonstrate the simple fact that large animals can remain hidden in North America, quite near humans, relatively speaking." In a way, this goes back to my post called "Some Mystery Left" - written about the mysterious appearance of a mountain lion in the Chicago area.

woods bison
Beautiful photo originally uploaded by rootrider

Airless: Wallace Stegner on The American West as Living Space

photo by Nathan Abels

I'm reading Wallace Stegner's The American West as Living Space from 1988 -taken from a series of lectures made in 1986. It is a really informative book. I've been writing down a lot of quotes or experts from it and I wanted to share this one in particular:

"...the rootlessness that expresses energy and a thirst for the new and an aspiration toward freedom and personal fulfillment has just as often been a curse. Migrants deprive themselves of the physical and spiritual bonds that develop within a place and a society. Our migratoriness has hindered us from becoming a people of communities and traditions, especially in the West. It has robbed us of the gods who make places holy. It has cut off individuals and families and communities from memory and the continuum of time. It has left at least some of us with a kind of spiritual pellagra, a deficiency disease, a hungering for the ties of a rich and stable order. Not only is the American home a launching pad, as Margaret Mead said; the American community, especially in the West, is an overnight camp. American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging. Freedom, when found, can turn out to be airless and unsustaining. Especially in the West, what we have instead of place is space. Place is more than half memory, shared memory. Rarely do Westerners stay long enough at one stop to share much of anything."

Songs of the Rockies

I found an illustration from Songs of the Rockies, by Charles Edwin Hewes, 1915-1921 in the visitors center in Estes Park yesterday and sought out the book online. I was happy to find that you can read the book on Google books here. There are many beautiful drawings (block prints) by Dean Babcock are found throughout the book. I had trouble limiting myself, so I've posted a lot of the drawings:

I love this drawing of ptarmigans. I posted about these beautiful mountain birds in September.

Like Breath on Glass

Like Breath on Glass accompanies an exhibition of the same name at The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. I just got the book in the mail yesterday and it is absolutely gorgeous. The work of the Tonalists in the late 1800s is really exquisite. It makes me look at my own paintings like I made them while wearing oven mits and a blindfold.

Eduard Steichen
Cooper's Bluff—Moonlight Strollers
1905
Oil on canvas

Simulacra

I was just at the library flipping through a book called "A Sense of Place; The Artist and the American Land" when I found this painting from 1870:

Sanford Robinson Gifford, "Night on the Hudson River", 1870

The resemblance of this painting to my own painting done this summer is uncanny, but the most bizarre part is that I had never seen the Gifford painting before today. Guess there really is nothing new under the sun...

Nathan Abels, "Pursuit", Acrylic and Oil on Panel, 24x36" 2008

James Howard Kunstler

I've noticed that lately I've been posting more about audio than painting or visual art. I suppose that is because I'm trying to finish up preparing for my show and I'm doing a lot more listening than looking right now. On last week's road trip I listened to a podcast from Humanist Network News that spoke with James Howard Kunstler about the "human habitat". He's very entertaining and informative in the interview, and I'd highly recommend listening to it:


I was especially interested in the emphasis that Kunstler made in the interview to criticize a lot of the hypocrisies or fallacies in modern environmentalist thought. In particular he notes that the current push to find new liquid fuel sources like ethanol shows the reluctance if not refusal to let go of the automobile and embrace other modes of transportation and urban planning. The description to one of his own podcasts sums this up well saying, "The problem in America is not that we're driving the wrong kind of cars, per se.The trouble in the United States is we're driving incessantly. We're driving every kind of car there is, incessantly. And we've got to find a way out of the incessant motoring and a way to live without it, and a happy way to live without it—not a punishment way to live without it, but a way to be happy and do it. And it means, really, a completely different paradigm for everyday life."

His book, The Geography of Nowhere is also highly recommended:


He's recently started his own weekly podcast called the Kunstlerkast - which you can find here.

Found

Here's the enthusiastically scribbled inside cover of a vintage grammar school book I found years ago. I think Cy Twombly would be a fan of the "Arf Arf Boys."

Cy Twombly
Apollo, 1975
Oil stick and graphite on paper
59 1/16 x 53 15/16 in (150 x 134 cm)
Photo from the Gagosian Gallery

Trevor Appleson

Trevor Appleson: Los Loss
images from Hales Gallery

Death at sunset (pig)
2007
C-type print
126 x 158cm
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Crack (eggs)
2007
C-type print
106 x 84cm,
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Fallen in the morning
2007
C-type print
126 x 158 cm
Edition of 3 +1AP

In last weeks Westword, Mark Dragotta wrote, "What is it about Trevor Appleson's new exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver that reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's prose? Is it the intense quiet, the obsessive detail or the undercurrent of violence? Honestly, it's probably a little bit of each. Edging out all background distraction with a large black screen, the images highlight the still-life poverty, dirt and death in his otherwise commonplace subjects."

I couldn't have said it better, comparing these images to Cormac McCarthy's writing seems very appropriate. Looks like I'll need to get over to the Denver MCA to see this.

Douglas Roesch's Photography Inspired by "The Road"

Douglas Roesch, from the series titled "The Road"

I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" right now and while doing so I remembered a photo set I saw awhile ago that was inspired by the book. Douglas Roesch's photos capture the aura of the book well. You can find the whole set here. And you can read an exerpt from the book here. It's an appropriate choice for what I'm told is typically our snowiest month here in Denver.

Another NEW BOOK!!!

I just finished up the final details on "Periphery; Paintings and Drawings by Nathan Abels" which is now available online. These two books have been months in the making, and I'm proud of the finished product. This book is a collection of artwork executed from 2003-2007. Its a great representation of my work from the last several years. The book is very cohesive and well organized - just like you'd expect from my work.

If you're thinking about ordering one of my books for the holidays - the cut off for non-rush delivery is the 9th (as in this Sunday). Sorry for the late notice on that - this was intended to be done much sooner. If you would like a signed copy I would be happy to work that out with you. Thanks everyone,

Nathan

Found Art

I picked up this "Madame X" book a couple of weeks ago because of its state of disrepair.

BIG NEWS - Aerial Photo Book by Nathan Abels now available

Aerial Photogr...

By Nathan Abels

Book Preview

BIG NEWS! I now have a book of my aerial photographs available for purchase online! Follow the link above. It is an 80 page book with full color/full bleed photos on every page. I'm really excited about this book. These photos are well suited for a larger scale (8x10") with interesting juxtapositions from page to page - there are even a few images that I have not put on flickr. I'm proud to make this book available and I appreciate any support.