Moving In With Dementia: Zentangles: Meditative Art Practice for Dementia

Moving In With Dementia: Zentangles: Meditative Art Practice for Dementia: Today in our TimeSlips session, we added in another art form to experiment with. We made some Zentangles , which is a meditative art pract...

Studying Mandalas

Sam Reveles

Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas

Alison Hearst

Sam Reveles,Mandala for Juarez No. 3, 2009-2010; oil and acrylic on canvas; 79 x 89 inches; Courtesy Dunn and Brown Contemporary

Sam Reveles, Insurgentes, 2009; oil and acrylic on canvas; 67 x 89 inches; Courtesy Dunn and Brown Contemporary

Sam Reveles’ exhibition Juarez Paintings, on view at Dunn and Brown Contemporary, is equally violent and meditative. Ten recent oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and several gouaches on paper each present energetic abstractions that appear, at first blush, as garish and dizzying. However, while Reveles’ works include layers of agitated, vividly colored gestural markings, the overall installation feels calm and benign—due perhaps to the pristine gallery setting, Reveles’ rather jovial palette and the fact that four of the paintings approximate mandala forms. Then again, whatever tranquility pervades the series, the paintings’ subject could be no further from peace.

Reveles began his “Juarez paintings” after a recent move from New York City to his hometown of El Paso, Texas. Just across the border, Juarez, Mexico, El Paso’s sister city, has experienced an exponential increase in violence over the past three years due to warring drug trafficking gangs. Once a relatively safe place, Juarez is currently the world’s murder capital, counting over 5,000 homicides in the past two years alone. To say that the devastating and seemingly endless violence in Juarez has wholly affected life along the border is an understatement. Despair, anger, panic and despondency now perforate the region. It is unclear whether Reveles’ relocation to El Paso was a direct reaction to the unrest, but his paintings at Dunn and Brown Contemporary genuinely impart the situation in Juarez and the relating sentiments in a frenzied, visceral way. Striking, agitated marks consume most of the paintings and works on paper, primitively signifying the city’s turbulence, as well as the artist’s unease with the current state of affairs.

A notable exception is Catedral, a small canvas near the gallery’s entrance. Compared to the rest of the works, the painting is muted and somber, and also has a clear pictorial referent. On the canvas a mass of swirling, cool-toned brushstrokes accumulates above a slice of white gesso; drips from the agitated painterly marks slightly obscure the white area. Here, it is difficult not to think of another painting titled “cathedral,” this one by Jackson Pollock. Pollock’s Cathedral features a tight web of gray and black drips, which Frank O’Hara likened to the façade of a gothic cathedral. Reveles, by contrast, conveys architectural elements through loose gestures of subdued blues and purples. Reveles’ reference is likely the Catedral de Ciudad Juárez, centrally located in the historical area of Juarez and visible from many points throughout the city. Like Pollock’s works, Reveles’ cannot be divorced from the physical act of painting; his animated yet controlled process is especially manifest in the more sizable works.

Two of the largest paintings, Insurgentes and Mandala Paintingfor Juarez No. 3, face each other from opposing ends of the gallery. While christened with disparate titles—one noting rebellion and revolt and the other suggesting a sacred, spiritual space—the works are visually not so different from one another. Insurgentes primarily features an orb-shaped, networklike tangle of concise, brightly colored gestural marks. Underneath the multilayered whorl stretches a field of varicolored vertical stripes akin to those found in a Mexican serape. In Mandala Painting for Juarez No. 3, a similar mandala shape of expressive marks covers a larger area of colored bands. Although remarkably similar to Insurgentes, Mandala Painting for Juarez No. 3 is more meditative and focused; the marks are tighter, less colorful and seemingly more calculated.

The exhibition includes three other Mandala paintings, and while mandalas are intended as peace-inducing, sacred spaces protected from the world’s impurities, the violent urgency of Reveles’ mark-making keeps the works from projecting utter tranquility. Using the bright, cheerful colors known to Mexico—colors seen in the once-bustling markets and streets of Juarez—the Mandala paintings pay homage to the city, albeit in an unsettling way. Sadly, these disquieting portrayals bear palpable, regrettable truths. Reveles’ abstract reflections are energetic, steadfast, violent, mournful, sometimes cheerful and always visceral, like their namesake city.

Fascinating Paper Artists

Golden Ratio

Aesthetics

 History of aesthetics (pre-20th-century)

De Divina Proportione, a three-volume work by Luca Pacioli, was published in 1509. Pacioli, a Franciscan friar, was known mostly as a mathematician, but he was also trained and keenly interested in art. De Divina Proportione explored the mathematics of the golden ratio. Though it is often said that Pacioli advocated the golden ratio's application to yield pleasing, harmonious proportions, Livio points out that the interpretation has been traced to an error in 1799, and that Pacioli actually advocated the Vitruvian system of rational proportions.Pacioli also saw Catholic religious significance in the ratio, which led to his work's title. De Divina Proportione contains illustrations of regular solids by Leonardo da Vinci, Pacioli's longtime friend and collaborator.

Architecture

Many of the proportions of the Parthenon are alleged to exhibit the golden ratio.

The Parthenon's façade as well as elements of its façade and elsewhere are said by some to be circumscribed by golden rectangles.Other scholars deny that the Greeks had any aesthetic association with golden ratio. For example, Midhat J. Gazalé says, "It was not until Euclid, however, that the golden ratio's mathematical properties were studied. In the Elements (308 BC) the Greek mathematician merely regarded that number as an interesting irrational number, in connection with the middle and extreme ratios. Its occurrence in regular pentagons and decagons was duly observed, as well as in the dodecahedron (a regular polyhedron whose twelve faces are regular pentagons). It is indeed exemplary that the great Euclid, contrary to generations of mystics who followed, would soberly treat that number for what it is, without attaching to it other than its factual properties."^[23] And Keith Devlin says, "Certainly, the oft repeated assertion that the Parthenon in Athens is based on the golden ratio is not supported by actual measurements. In fact, the entire story about the Greeks and golden ratio seems to be without foundation. The one thing we know for sure is that Euclid, in his famous textbook Elements, written around 300 BC, showed how to calculate its value."^[24] Near-contemporary sources like Vitruvius exclusively discuss proportions that can be expressed in whole numbers, i.e. commensurate as opposed to irrational proportions.

A 2004 geometrical analysis of earlier research into the Great Mosque of Kairouan reveals a consistent application of the golden ratio throughout the design, according to Boussora and Mazouz.They found ratios close to the golden ratio in the overall proportion of the plan and in the dimensioning of the prayer space, the court, and the minaret. The authors note, however, that the areas where ratios close to the golden ratio were found are not part of the original construction, and theorize that these elements were added in a reconstruction.

The Swiss architect Le Corbusier, famous for his contributions to the modern international style, centered his design philosophy on systems of harmony and proportion. Le Corbusier's faith in the mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to the golden ratio and the Fibonacci series, which he described as "rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of human activities. They resound in man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages and the learned."

Le Corbusier explicitly used the golden ratio in his Modulor system for the scale of architectural proportion. He saw this system as a continuation of the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man", the work of Leon Battista Alberti, and others who used the proportions of the human body to improve the appearance and function of architecture. In addition to the golden ratio, Le Corbusier based the system on human measurements, Fibonacci numbers, and the double unit. He took suggestion of the golden ratio in human proportions to an extreme: he sectioned his model human body's height at the navel with the two sections in golden ratio, then subdivided those sections in golden ratio at the knees and throat; he used these golden ratio proportions in the Modulor system. Le Corbusier's 1927 Villa Stein in Garches exemplified the Modulor system's application. The villa's rectangular ground plan, elevation, and inner structure closely approximate golden rectangles.

Another Swiss architect, Mario Botta, bases many of his designs on geometric figures. Several private houses he designed in Switzerland are composed of squares and circles, cubes and cylinders. In a house he designed in Origlio, the golden ratio is the proportion between the central section and the side sections of the house.

In a recent book, author Jason Elliot speculated that the golden ratio was used by the designers of the Naqsh-e Jahan Square and the adjacent Lotfollah mosque.

Painting

The drawing of a man's body in a pentagram suggests relationships to the golden ratio.

The 16th-century philosopher Heinrich Agrippa drew a man over a pentagram inside a circle, implying a relationship to the golden ratio.

Leonardo da Vinci's illustrations of polyhedra in De divina proportione (On the Divine Proportion) and his views that some bodily proportions exhibit the golden ratio have led some scholars to speculate that he incorporated the golden ratio in his paintings. But the suggestion that his Mona Lisa, for example, employs golden ratio proportions, is not supported by anything in Leonardo's own writings. Similarly, although the Vitruvian Man is often shown in connection with the golden ratio, the proportions of the figure do not actually match it, and the text only mentions whole number ratios.

Salvador Dalí, influenced by the works of Matila Ghyka,^[35] explicitly used the golden ratio in his masterpiece, The Sacrament of the Last Supper. The dimensions of the canvas are a golden rectangle. A huge dodecahedron, in perspective so that edges appear in golden ratio to one another, is suspended above and behind Jesus and dominates the composition.

Mondrian has been said to have used the golden section extensively in his geometrical paintings, though other experts (including critic Yve-Alain Bois) have disputed this claim.

A statistical study on 565 works of art of different great painters, performed in 1999, found that these artists had not used the golden ratio in the size of their canvases. The study concluded that the average ratio of the two sides of the paintings studied is 1.34, with averages for individual artists ranging from 1.04 (Goya) to 1.46 (Bellini).On the other hand, Pablo Tosto listed over 350 works by well-known artists, including more than 100 which have canvasses with golden rectangle and root-5 proportions, and others with proportions like root-2, 3, 4, and 6.

Book design

Depiction of the proportions in a medieval manuscript. According to Jan Tschichold: "Page proportion 2:3. Margin proportions 1:1:2:3. Text area proportioned in the Golden Section."

Main article: Canons of page construction

According to Jan Tschichold,

There was a time when deviations from the truly beautiful page proportions 2:3, 1:√3, and the Golden Section were rare. Many books produced between 1550 and 1770 show these proportions exactly, to within half a millimeter.

Industrial design

Some sources claim that the golden ratio is commonly used in everyday design, for example in the shapes of postcards, playing cards, posters, wide-screen televisions, photographs, and light switch plates.

Music

Ernő Lendvaï analyzes Béla Bartók's works as being based on two opposing systems, that of the golden ratio and the acoustic scale though other music scholars reject that analysis. In Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta the xylophone progression occurs at the intervals 1:2:3:5:8:5:3:2:1.French composer Erik Satie used the golden ratio in several of his pieces, including Sonneries de la Rose+Croix. The golden ratio is also apparent in the organization of the sections in the music of Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau (Reflections in Water), from Images (1st series, 1905), in which "the sequence of keys is marked out by the intervals 34, 21, 13 and 8, and the main climax sits at the phi position."

The musicologist Roy Howat has observed that the formal boundaries of La Mer correspond exactly to the golden section.Trezise finds the intrinsic evidence "remarkable," but cautions that no written or reported evidence suggests that Debussy consciously sought such proportions.

Pearl Drums positions the air vents on its Masters Premium models based on the golden ratio. The company claims that this arrangement improves bass response and has applied for a patent on this innovation.

Though Heinz Bohlen proposed the non-octave-repeating 833 cents scale based on combination tones, the tuning features relations based on the golden ratio. As a musical interval the ratio 1.618... is 833.090... cents ( Play (help·info)).

 Nature

A detail of an Aeonium tabuliforme in Trädgårdsföreningen, Göteborg

Adolf Zeising, whose main interests were mathematics and philosophy, found the golden ratio expressed in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants and of veins in leaves. He extended his research to the skeletons of animals and the branchings of their veins and nerves, to the proportions of chemical compounds and the geometry of crystals, even to the use of proportion in artistic endeavors. In these phenomena he saw the golden ratio operating as a universal law. In connection with his scheme for golden-ratio-based human body proportions, Zeising wrote in 1854 of a universal law "in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form."

In 2010, the journal Science reported that the golden ratio is present at the atomic scale in the magnetic resonance of spins in cobalt niobate crystals.

Several researchers have proposed connections between the golden ratio and human genome DNA.

However, some have argued that many of the apparent manifestations of the golden mean in nature, especially in regard to animal dimensions, are in fact fictitious.

 Optimization

The golden ratio is key to the golden section search.

Perceptual studies

Studies by psychologists, starting with Fechner, have been devised to test the idea that the golden ratio plays a role in human perception of beauty. While Fechner found a preference for rectangle ratios centered on the golden ratio, later attempts to carefully test such a hypothesis have been, at best, inconclusive.

I enjoy Bharti Kher's work, she brings me closer to my work.

Bharti Kher’s work got attention after she moved to India, New Delhi in 1993 from England, where she was born in 1969 and raised. She studied at the Middlesex polytechnic, Cat hill, London, 1987- 1988.She did her BA Honors, Fine Art, Painting at the Foundation Course in Art & Design Newcastle Polytechnic, Newcastle, England 1988 – 1991 now Lives and works in New Delhi, India.

 Her initials works after moving back to India have brought a great impact on her artistic practice through which she examined subtle conflicts and oppositions grown deeply and apparent in her later works. She is a painter, photographer, sculptor and installation artist.

 

It is obvious by her works that she does not get unrest while working with bindis, which she loves to use untiringly, repeatedly over and over again making whatever she desires by the prominent use of different type and colors of all sized bindis of every kind she found in stores and have been artistically increasing her attention to develop her relation with this beautiful yet decorative element of feminine daily practice which Indian women proudly wears ritually, traditionally and in form of their belief, but due to its commonality somewhat it was underestimated or may be for granted, this would be true to say that the way Kher have employed herself with bindi in her art making seems like as if she have owned the medium truly which she herself mentions in her interview to CNN :

"The bindis now for me have become a material," she said. "I took the material; I repeated it again and again and again. I made it mine. I can use them like an alchemist would use or to create something that I don't really know what's going to happen with."

Kher estimated rightly, in a unique style, the beauty and the significance as well as the power of bindis through her work, while observing her fascination to work with bindis one can easily hear by experiencing the works that there is an ongoing inquiry about the identity of a women and whispering conflicts in an austere manner.

It was raining last night (Karachi)




 

Photographs taken by Hassan on 2nd April 2013, between 9 28
pm - 9 45 pm