Art Alphabet: A - Esther

When I’m writing the blog each week, I’m sometimes stuck for what to write about. Not because I have no ideas, but because there are seemingly never-ending options. I have a lengthening list of them. My biggest problem is picking one thing & so I have to be hard on myself & say, “Right: THIS,” & stick to it. Then it’s fine. Some weeks are really busy with work or life however & I don’t have the time to just decide. So an enormous list is a really handy thing to have ready when times are hard or demanding. 

I’m starting this idea while I’ve got time on my hands to think it through. One letter & a list of ways art could relate to this letter. Artist name, for instance. Landscape. Narrative. You get the idea. I’m not going to stick to the same one each time, so I’ve made yet another list of suggestions I could pick from week to week & we’ll see how it goes. As always, I’m hoping to learn about some new artists & works as I go along. I have to have lots of ideas for this because if I stick to the same subjects for twenty-six weeks, I’m going to thoroughly hate myself (& possibly art) by the time I get to Q or X…

Thanking you in advance for your patience.

A

1. An Artist (Auld): Eric Auld (Scotland, 1931-2013)

This seems like a good place to start. Northern Lights Over Aberdeen also covers Aberdeen as a place. Eric Auld is ubiquitous in & synonymous with Aberdeen. As a working, earning artist, he got it right in terms of marketing, print production, commissions & subject matter but also poured love & discipline into his work. For those of us with the same loves, there will always be a fondness for Eric.

2. An Artwork (A): A Windy Day by Oleh Shupliak (Ukraine, 1967-)

Shupliak creates optical illusions in his art, using hidden visual pictures in what looks like a straightforward overall whole. He often uses portraits of artists that parody their own works too. Here he has taken Claude Monet’s famous painting & tied it into a portrait of Monet himself.  There are better examples of Shupliak’s work to be honest, but not beginning with A…

3. A Portrait (arrangement): Arrangement in Grey & Black, No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle by J.A.M. Whistler (USA, 1834-1903)

Not to be confused with the Arrangement of his mother, this is a stunning portrait of Scottish philosopher, historian & writer Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). According to Whistler, this painting came about when Carlyle himself had admired Whistler’s Mother painting & requested a similar pose & composition.

4. An Abstract Work (Albert): Albert Einstein by Gheorghe Virtosu (Republic of Moldova, 1968-)

Here Virtosu is attempting to abstract the mind of Albert Einstein in paint, creating an image of energy & dynamism rather than clear & figurative form. Highly motivated by events & suffering he sees in the world, he uses colour in his abstract portraits to “replay their intensity.”

5. An Animal (animals): The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Art, Jan Brueghel the Elder (Belgium [Flemish], 1568-1625)

Why stick to one animal? Let’s have them all! Inventor of the “paradise landscape,” Brueghel fused accomplished landscape art with depictions of animals to create scenes from the book of Genesis. Most of his animals would have been painted from life & there are hidden categorisations of different species in his work.

6. An Object (aqueduct): Evening: Landscape With an Aqueduct by Théodore Gericault (France, 1791-1824)

The aqueduct is clearly not the main theme of this work, but our eye is immediately drawn there through Gericault’s expert composition. Here his purpose is to portray the fading light of the evening & how this affects everything it touches. On closer inspection we see figures in the foreground, but the beauty of the scene, the muted colours, reflections & the architecture nestled in the landscape retains our focus. 

7. A Historical Figure (Alexander): Alexander the Great in a lion hunt (from Pella, ancient Macedonia, 4th Century)

As a child, I had a fascination for the stories of Alexander. In later life, I learned that many depictions of the great warrior show him tilting his head slightly because he – like myself – was deaf in one ear. Whether or not this is true is irrelevant; I had already decided I liked him. I also like that this mosaic shows the men as equals & the king is only identifiable by his kausia (a type of Macedonian hat).

8. An Emotion (anger): Angry, bust by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Netherlands, 1606-1669)

The master of all human expressions & emotions, Rembrandt can’t help but lend an absurdist air to his self-portrait in anger. We all know it’ll be over in five minutes. The futility of anger is as fruitless as all the other emotions & it is merely the vanity of man that encourages us to see it any other way. 

9. Materials (alabaster): Beheading of John the Baptist (Netherlands, c. 1550-75)

God, I was a weird child – as I think I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I was fascinated by John the Baptist too. This lurid (well, what else could we reasonably expect?) depiction of his beheading by an unknown artist is carved in alabaster relief & is housed in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. Also there is an alabaster sculpture of the Baptist’s head, but we’ll leave that one for now. Alabaster is a soft mineral that is easily carved but also easily damaged or dissolved.

10. A Photograph (Aspens): Aspens, Northern New Mexico by Ansel Adams (USA, 1902-1984)

Not only does the photograph begin with A but the photographer himself provides us with a double. & not only was Adams a world-renowned photographer but an avid conservationist, a stance which informed his art practice. This dedication led to commissions from the US Department of the Interior to photograph national parks. His style is so distinctive due to its clarity, vivid tonal range & the photographic techniques Adams pioneered.