Back 2 Bach

As an update to this post, I thought I would post a photo that Linda Crank sent of the my work in this lovely space.

I am going to be showing a few new paintings at the College Hill Presbyterian Church. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend the concert because my silly brother decided to get married that night. Too bad, as I am a fan of Bach, though he hasn't done anything new in years.
If you are interested, and you should be, the information is posted below.
College Hill Presbyterian Church
5742 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45224
(513) 541-5676, Fax 541-1575 Directions

Part II of the Back 2 Bach concert series will be presented on June 7, 7 p.m. The first concert received an enthusiastic standing ovation. Four gifted pianists from CCM will perform Bach’s Concerto No. 6 in F Major, No. 7 in G Minor, No. 5 in F Minor and No. 2 in E Major. The concert will be preceded by a performance from young, talented pianists at 6:30 p.m. This evening of classical music will be complemented with an exhibition of classical art by two area oil painters, Richard Luschek and Linda Crank.

Mr. Richard J. Luschek II, SM

I recently applied for super special Signature membership of the Cincinnati Art Club. I had to drop off 5 paintings for a super secret Selection Committee. They accepted me in as a Signature Member and I am honored.
Still trying to figure out how to actually add this honor to my signature. If you were a member of the Royal Academy, you got an RA behind your name, so I suppose a 'SM' works. Should it be SMCAC (Signature Member Cincinnati Art Club)? I am sure I will find out in the next meeting.

The interesting thing about being a Signature member is that the Associate members have to carry my books and art supplies for me when I come to the club, open doors and just generally worship me as a Signature member.

I think there are secret meetings with Signature members, not unlike the Skull and Bones organization or the Masons. I am hoping to be involved in some sort of deep, dark Signature Member art conspiracies that we will discuss at length in meetings peppered with evil laughter in a cigar smoke filled room while we swirl the snifter of 20 year single malt scotch- yeah, technically a snifter is for Brandy, but that is just the kind of crazy stuff us Signature members do. Most of the crazy stuff of course I can't discuss with any of you non-Signature Members.

I probably should smoke a pipe more now. Just seems like something a Signature member should do.

I Got Called Out

I was mentioned on Sara Pearce's Blog this weekend. She has a nice blog on the Cincinnati art scene.
I had no idea she was so riveted to my Blog. But honestly, she was just fishing for Art Museum news and found my rant in the search. She did not agree with my post below discussing the terrible lighting in the Rembrandt show. The title of her post was "Rembrandt: too little light for the master?". While it is true I thought there was too little light, I was kind of embarrassed that Sara called me a master. I mean come on, I could see Master used for Rembrandt, but I am just getting started as a painter.

What?

Huh? She was talking about Rembrandt, not me?

Oh.

Anyway, I know the museum went to great lengths to get the work, and surprisingly there were probably a bunch of meetings on the topic of how to display these masterpieces. A lot of work and thought went into how to display these paintings. I suppose I should be thankful for that at least. Still, I would like to have been able to actually see the paintings, in the truest sense, not in forced mood lighting.

In her post Sara says: "Meanwhile, I challenge Luschek's assertion that not "a single artist in history" would be happier with artificial light. C'mon. I know painters now who paint in studios lit by artificial light and who think their work looks best in artificial light. I can't begin to read the mind of the dead but I bet Andy Warhol would be an artificial light proponent."

Really, who cares what Warhol would have thought?
I swear anytime someone wants to argue about great painters and then whips out the Andy Warhol card *, I am done. You might as well bring up Bob Ross or Kinkade the Painter of Light.
Andy Warhol was a clown, and as I said before, work should be shown in the light it was painted in, I suppose then Warhol should be shown through marijuana smoke lit by a lava lamp.

Though, as was insinuated in a comment by Anonymous on Sara's blog, I am just a "nostalgic" fool bogged down in 1000's of years of tradition, too silly to jump on the series of uneducated ideas that have come and gone with "vitality" in the last 60 years.

I am done talking about this, as I am right on this subject. While the red walls and incandescent bulbs may be enough for those that just want to see a Rembrandt dog and pony show put on by the museum, serious students of painting must have daylight on paintings to study the color- yes I know that the sun goes down and occasionally we have to turn the lights on. I enjoy that technological advance as much as anyone, but one can never see a painting truthfully in artificial light.

Ives Gammell discussed this much better than I ever could in his article:
A Clarion Call for Daylight in Picture Galleries. Check it out. I am planning to print this out and stick it in the comment box at the museum.

Off to paint in my north lit studio. I will resist the urge to turn on the lights.

*note: This link is to David Hockney's idiotic book on the secrets of the masters. In it he uses the brilliant logic that the similar style of drawn lines by Warhol and Ingres prove that since Warhol couldn't draw and traced photos, Ingres must have not been able to draw either and must have used some sort of lens as an aid. Can't wait to read Hockney's book disproving Einstein's theories.

Rembrandt: Three Faces in a Closet

I went to a show at the Cincinnati Art Museum today to see the Rembrandt paintings. It was like going to see paintings by one of the top painters in history and then finding them hanging in a closet. The only thing that would have been worse would have been if they had just turned the lights off. Had to be the worst lit show I have ever been to. I suppose someone decided, "The paintings are dark, maybe the room should be too." I have seen drawings and works on paper (work that is actually sensitive to light) in better lighting than this show.
The amazing thing is that there are skylights in the room they were shown in, but they had blocked them, to then spot light the paintings with incandescent bulbs. I am not sure who made this decision, but it was a poor and ill informed one. Only explanation that I would accept is that this was a condition of them being lent from the other museums. I can't see why, as sunlight is good for oil paintings, and while I can't speak for our museum or the one in Indy, but I would think at least that the Louvre knows better.
I can't think of a single 'great' artist in history that would suggest that his work would look better in artificial light. Rembrandt would be horrified to see his work shown so poorly. It would have been nice to really study the work, but it was hard to see them and study them fairly. I bet with natural light on them they would have glowed and the colors would have sparkled. Rembrandt is not known for his color, but the full spectrum of daylight would have done this show wonders.

When you have really 'Made It'

OK, now I have had favorable reviews of my work show up online and in newspapers, had work juried into national shows, won a few awards, have had my illustrations published and distributed in other countries, and have a painting in a museum, but this is when you really know you have made it:
When kids think your work is cool and copy it themselves.

My brother works with someone that has two talented young artist sons. They are around 9 or 10 I think. My brother, works as an structural engineer type person for some fancy company place where he does things and gets paid for it (I should pay more attention to what he says) Anyway, while at work he saw that one of his co-workers had some of his kids drawings in his office. He mentioned that I pretend to be an artist and showed him my website. Before you know it, his kids had printed and copied some of my work. My brother sent me some photos.
I am posting some examples here:

This is an illustration I did for a game called Harn a few years ago. The original is on my website. These are creatures that supposedly attack you and eat your eyes. Cool huh?
Here is what they came up with.




This one was a Crazy Viking dude I did for someone in Sweden. He has a huge dent in his head from an old injury. My original is on the left. The other two are both by Asher (I think I spelled that right).


This one I did for the founder and publisher of the local neighborhood newspaper- the Clifton Chronicle. He likes rhinos. So I did this as a gift. Here is the original.
Below is the copy.


It is pretty fun to see kids interpret your work, even though they will be getting a nasty letter from my lawyer!

Cold Painting

Today was the second day of my Spring Landscape Painting class.
It was cold!
I told everyone to dress warm, but I don't think most people were really ready for just how cold it gets standing in the wind painting. At least it didn't rain.
This is a great group of people and I think it will be a fun class. Hopefully, it will be better weather next week.

Confronted by BS

I love Half Price Books. I spend a lot of time there looking for the next book or books to add to my collection of book shelves. Well, this week they had a big sale and I again added to my growing collection. I found a few interesting art books including a nice one on Whistler.

There is one book I thought I would focus on, as it was a special find. It is a book published by the Columbus Museum of Art on a painter named Joseph Marioni. I had never heard of him, and I probably would not have bought the book if it had not been $2.50. It was worth every penny.

Now, on to this wonderful book. I will just start by showing you a picture on page 9 of one of this "artist's" paintings hanging on the wall. Click on it to see it bigger if you must.


Red Painting acrylic and linen on stretcher 22" x 20" 1994 no. 21

OK, first I would like to point out that this is number 21 of god knows how many other red paintings he has done.
Now, the best part of this book, is that is has 'details' of the paintings. This way you can really get in there to see what is going on.
Here is the detail on the next page. Click on this to really get a handle on it.


Red Painting (detail) acrylic and linen on stretcher 22" x 20" 1994 no. 21

So, if you didn't get what was going on seeing the whole painting, this book zooms in for a closer look. Did you notice? It's red.
The book has 9 more paintings, but it only shows the details of these. I won't show them all, but I will list them. There is Blue Painting # 12, Green Painting # 21, Green Painting #5, Red Painting # 14, Black Painting # 4, Blue Painting # 26, Green Painting # 18, Yellow Painting # 1, White Painting # 1, and Yellow Painting # 6.

There are also 6 pages written about these paintings. I am not sure who is more talented, the man painting these paintings or the person that could come up with 6 pages discussing them. The text is available in English and German, and I found both equally enjoyable. In this well crafted text, Marioni is quoted as saying, "that the very essence of the painting experience is a state of consciousness that is unlanguaged."
Interesting stuff. For him it also seems to be a bunch of other words that have un- in front of them as well, like: trained, inspired, talented, skilled, or interesting. Just to name a few that came to mind. The writer goes on to mention that he feels somehow "confronted" by color.
No kidding?
What else exactly is there to be confronted with?
When I read this, I felt confronted with B.S.
There is even mention of his technique. Guess what? He uses a paint roller, and occasionally will use a brush. He uses these tools to somehow give the impression that these paintings have "somehow simply 'happened'."

I had an exciting moment where I thought my wife and I actually owned a series by this artist. After a search I found it in our archives and I was very disappointed to discover I was wrong. Turns out the series is a collaborative piece. The artists seem to be named Perry and Derrick.

They are a bit more clever with the names of their images than Mr. Marioni, and are way less sloppy with the paint. Interestingly I have something in common with these artists, as I think I painted my bathroom Sunflower 4524D which is in this series of tiny paintings. Turns out, I used a very similar technique to that of Joseph Marioni, by rolling the paint on to the walls.

I know you are going to think I am being over dramatic, but I was so moved by Marioni's work, that I spent a few hours writing a poem about the Red Painting # 21, which I liked better than the detail of Red Painting # 14 on page 40. The poem is below, and I call it G. Let me know what you think.



I really am inspired here, so I went even further and wrote some music. Now, I can't read music or play an instrument, but here it is. And as lack of ability to properly use the tools or media available didn't stop Marioni, why should it stop me. Enjoy.