Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I thought I’d collect some turkeys for you. Most, at the moment of rendering, are inedible, but likely so is yours at this point. Be thankful you do not have to pluck, and enjoy the day.
Doris Lee, Thanksgiving, 1935
From https://www.artic.edu/artworks/21727/thanksgiving :
“Doris Lee’s bustling scene of women preparing a Thanksgiving feast became the object of national headlines when it was first exhibited at the Art Institute in 1935 and won the prestigious Logan Purchase Prize. The themes of Thanksgiving, rural customs, and family life, which Lee painted in a deliberately folksy manner, would have had great appeal to a country still in the midst of the Depression. Yet Josephine Logan, the donor of the prize, condemned the work’s broad, exaggerated style, founding the conservative “Sanity in Art” movement in response. This controversy only brought Lee fame, and Thanksgiving has been recognized as one of the most popular nostalgic views of this American ritual since that time.”
Chaim Soutine Hanging Turke, 1925
Soutine was a bridge from traditional painting into abstract expressionism. Relevant turkey.
George Luks’s Woman and Turkey, 1924
Now that’s a woman.
John Currin, Thanksgiving, 2003
From the Tate:
“Currin has claimed that Thanksgiving, completed in New York where he has lived and worked since the late 1980s, was ‘a failed painting that sat around in my studio’ until he decided to return to it when his wife, the artist Rachel Feinstein, became pregnant. Currin explained,
The funny thing is that the painting took me exactly nine months to finish, and the painting turned into an allegory of Rachel’s pregnancy. Certain kinds of paintings were on my mind at the time – Dutch genre paintings, Velázquez’s bodegones – but as soon as I began, it became more about Rachel, and she posed for the figures a lot. – Currin, quoted in Weg and Dergan 2006, p.326.”
I hope your Thanksgiving is at least three measures more cheerful than this one.
Richard Tuttle, Turkey (in 2 parts) 1970
I really have no idea how this is a Turkey (in 2 parts) but I enjoy it. Richard Tuttle’s minimalist of minimal drawings always give me a little giggle at the humor, and delight me with the (very) subtle textures and carefully considered open spaces.
Morris Graves, Turkey Hen 1950s. Charcoal on newsprint, 24 x 18
Artwork by Morris Graves always seems so sensitively rendered, so quiet, it slows me down. Maybe it’s because I’m also a child of the Pacific Northwest , and also with ties to Japan, but artwork by Graves always feels as familiar as my own whisper.
From Wiki:
“[Graves]…used the muted tones of the Northwest environment, Asian aesthetics and philosophy, and a personal iconography of birds, flowers, chalices, and other images to explore the nature of consciousness.”
Last Saturday was our Draw like Diebenkorn class. Since Diebenkorn himself was unable to join us (technical issues with zoom), I stepped in to facilitate with slide shows and observations about how Diebenkorn uses form and line to lead us around the composition. I set up still lives that were Diebenkorn inspired, and we had …
I’ve been asked to participate in CoCA’s 24 hour marathon. I laugh at this a little, because the premise of the marathon is to put art-making into an unusual and exciting time constriction, but given my method of working, 24 hour marathons have been the only way I make any art at all. I used …
I’d like to tell you about the most unusual art class I’ve ever been a part of, a class called “Figure in Interior.” “Figure in Interior” sounds normal enough, but this class was anything but normal. I specially designed this Thursday series of Intermediate Studio to shift the artist’s focus away from illustrating the scene …
Research how to improve your memory, and you’ll likely find articles touting drawing as the miracle cure for focus, memory and even dementia. Great! Guess what we’re going to do today? My memory is like swiss cheese, but I love to figure out how things work. I tried this creative challenge with Lendy and I …
12 Turkey Pics
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I thought I’d collect some turkeys for you. Most, at the moment of rendering, are inedible, but likely so is yours at this point. Be thankful you do not have to pluck, and enjoy the day.
Doris Lee, Thanksgiving, 1935
From https://www.artic.edu/artworks/21727/thanksgiving :
“Doris Lee’s bustling scene of women preparing a Thanksgiving feast became the object of national headlines when it was first exhibited at the Art Institute in 1935 and won the prestigious Logan Purchase Prize. The themes of Thanksgiving, rural customs, and family life, which Lee painted in a deliberately folksy manner, would have had great appeal to a country still in the midst of the Depression. Yet Josephine Logan, the donor of the prize, condemned the work’s broad, exaggerated style, founding the conservative “Sanity in Art” movement in response. This controversy only brought Lee fame, and Thanksgiving has been recognized as one of the most popular nostalgic views of this American ritual since that time.”
Chaim Soutine Hanging Turke, 1925
Soutine was a bridge from traditional painting into abstract expressionism. Relevant turkey.
George Luks’s Woman and Turkey, 1924
Now that’s a woman.
John Currin, Thanksgiving, 2003
From the Tate:
“Currin has claimed that Thanksgiving, completed in New York where he has lived and worked since the late 1980s, was ‘a failed painting that sat around in my studio’ until he decided to return to it when his wife, the artist Rachel Feinstein, became pregnant. Currin explained,
I hope your Thanksgiving is at least three measures more cheerful than this one.
Richard Tuttle, Turkey (in 2 parts) 1970
I really have no idea how this is a Turkey (in 2 parts) but I enjoy it. Richard Tuttle’s minimalist of minimal drawings always give me a little giggle at the humor, and delight me with the (very) subtle textures and carefully considered open spaces.
Morris Graves, Turkey Hen 1950s. Charcoal on newsprint, 24 x 18
Artwork by Morris Graves always seems so sensitively rendered, so quiet, it slows me down. Maybe it’s because I’m also a child of the Pacific Northwest , and also with ties to Japan, but artwork by Graves always feels as familiar as my own whisper.
From Wiki:
“[Graves]…used the muted tones of the Northwest environment, Asian aesthetics and philosophy, and a personal iconography of birds, flowers, chalices, and other images to explore the nature of consciousness.”
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