Aboriginal Batik from Central Australia

These photos are from a gorgeous book, Across the Desert: Aboriginal Batik from Central Australia by Judith Ryan, that I bought last year in Melbourne.  If you have any interest in batik or aboriginal art it would be a beautiful addition to your library.

Artist from Utopia applying wax to silk with a canting.

Peggy Napurrurla Poulson, Warlpiri, Yarla Jukurrpa (Bush yam Dreaming) 1986 Batik on cotton

 

Tjunkaya Tapaya, Pitjantjatjara, Raiki wara 1994 batik on silk

Yipati Kuyata, Pitjantjatjara, Raiki wara, 1989, batik on silk organza

Imiyari (Yilpi) Adamson, Pitjantjatjara, Raiki wara, c. 1988, batik on silk

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Anmatyerr, Kam (Pencil yam seed), 1988, batik on silk

 Ada Bird Petyarr, Anmatyerr, Arnkerrth then Ngangkar (Mountain devil lizard and traditional healer), 1991, batik on silk 
 

Lena Skinner Ngal, Anmetyerr, Untitled 2007, batik on silk

Tjunkaya Tapaya, Pitjantjatjara, Raiki wara, 2007, batik on silk.

A Raiki is a "long cloth"

Roadside Animals of Australia

Please stop here!

 Giant galah of Kimba

Rooey of Bordertown

Eucla's giant whale

Down Under......

Greetings from the land of roos, roadtrains, and roadkill. I’m writing this from Nundroo, a very very small town (roadhouse, caravan park, garage, gas station) on the eastern boundary of the Nullabor Plain, South Australia. Last Sunday an Airbus 380, the largest passenger airplane in the world carried us to Oz (aka Australia). We arrived Tuesday mid-day in Adelaide (Monday having mysteriously evaporated through the peculiarities of datelines). We is three geologists embarking on three weeks of field work trying to figure out how high sea level was (= how big the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets were) the last time the atmosphere had this much CO2 in it (about three million years ago).

approaching Melbourne...from the tail cam!

From the airport we picked up our beast of a 4WD, a Nissan Patrol, then headed to Adelaide Uni to pick up some gear that was shipped to us from various places. By 3pm we were headed north, seriously jet-lagged but happy to hit the road. It is now the evening of the next day and we’ve driven ~1000 km to the eastern edge of the Nullabor Plain. 

Next morning….don’t know when I’ll be able to get posts up---no cell phone or internet signal in last night’s town and we are heading into an even more remote area. But I’m getting great pics that I hope you enjoy as I eventually get them up.

Perfect example of the architectural vernacular of the outback.

And in case you are wondering what a road train is here is a “double” that had a bit of an accident.   I’m guessing the driver's dream of piloting a “triple rig” someday went out the window with his windshield!

Minerva at the Library of Congress

Elihu Vedder's marble mosaic of Minerva of Peace, her armor laid aside, standing guard before the Main Reading Room and holding in her hand a scroll that lists the various disciplines of learning, science, and art.

Ordered disorder, perfect imperfection....

I visited the Phillips Memorial Art Gallery in D.C. earlier this week.  Have you ever had the experience of coming across a work of art in a museum or gallery, maybe by somebody famous or maybe by someone you've never heard of, being incredibly moved by it, thinking how wonderful it would be to have it in your home, and then, in the next moment, thinking "heck, I could do that...I'll just do it myself and then I'll have it!"?  I had that experience with this piece by Linn Meyers called "at the time being".  It is a work painted directly on the museum walls---really, it is only squiggly lines....

But then you look closer....the lines are complicated, beautiful, a subtle blend of white and yellow.  You soon realize you are in the presence of something singular.  A museum essay describes this piece which is inspired by a Vincent Van Gogh painting in the museum's collection:

"Linn Meyers spent two weeks working steadily on this project.  She started by painting the walls a dark blue that evokes Van Gogh's Starry Night.  Then she laid out the circular shapes around intersecting horizontal and vertical lines that generate the overall composition, or what she calls, the matrix.  Thin lines followed, twisting and turning, connecting and disconnecting, looping around it and filling in the central blanks, resulting in a dazzling field of optical sensations."

"Meyer's circular forms are completely off-center.  Like lovers, they embrace and drift apart.  At once intense and loose, systematic and improvisational, controlled and impulsive, Meyer's drawing sucks us in, simultaneously inducing vertigo and offering solace."

mmmmm....you can see more of Meyer's work here.

Strangely, just to the right of this wall was another painting I had that "i-could-do-this" feeling:  Paul Klee's Arab Song (1932).  It is a painting in oil on rough burlap.  So muted, primitive, quirky and peaceful.....

Noon today, The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court Building was designed by architect Cass Gilbert and built between 1932 and 1935.

"Contemplation of Justice"

"Equal Justice Under Law"

One of two identical self-supporting elliptical spiral staircases designed by the architect Cass Gilbert.  Five stories, seven spirals, 136 steps each.  Pretty amazing.

You can see here how the limestone steps are cantilevered out from the wall.

Another beautiful staircase....I love the handrail carved into the limestone wall.

Remind you of anyplace?

The Pantheon in Rome....same eight Corinthian columns across the front under a pediment.   Maybe the Pantheon originally had the front steps as well....the building has been sinking for two millennia.

Whistler's Amazing Peacock Room, Freer Gallery

 

I had the opportunity to visit the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. this week.  This museum, on the National Mall, is named after Charles Lang Freer who donated his extensive collection of art, including much ancient Asian art, to the Smithsonian in the early 20th century.  In one room of the Freer Gallery is The Peacock Room, which was moved intact from Freer's home in Detroit after his death in 1919.

The story of the Peacock Room is an over-the-top cautionary tale of the perils of contracting with artists.  The dining room was originally constructed by architect Thomas Jeckyll for the shipping magnate (and Pre-Raphaelite patron) Frederick Leyland; it included an elaborate lattice of shelves to display the owner's porcelain and the walls were hung with gilded leather.  Leyland had also commissioned James McNeill Whistler to paint the portrait over the fireplace, "The Princess From the Land of Porcelain" (first pic).  The room was nearly done when Jeckyll asked Whistler for advice on the color of the shutters (see below).  From this point, and with Leyland's approval (who shortly after departed on business), a series a small color adjustments were made to the room by Whistler.

But then Whistler stayed on, becoming increasingly enamored of the alterations he was making to the room (and possibly also of Leyland's wife), including gilding the ceiling and shelving, painting the leather prussian blue, and painting dramatic gold peacocks on the shutters.   Whistler wrote to Leyland saying that the dining room was "really alive with beauty — brilliant and gorgeous while at the same time delicate and refined to the last degree," and that the changes he had made were past imagining. "I assure you," he said, "you can have no more idea of the ensemble in its perfection gathered from what you last saw on the walls than you could have of a complete opera judging from a third finger exercise!" 

When Leyland got the bill for the "expanded" project he did not authorize, he refused to pay and the two got involved in a bitter lawsuit (is there any other kind?).  Whistler's revenge was his final modification to the room, two large peacocks fighting over a pile of silver at the end of room (pic above).  He called the mural "Art and Money; or, The Story of the Room." 

Years later, after Leyland's death, Freer, a long-time patron of Whistler, purchased the room (in 1904) and installed it in an addition on his house in the U.S.   The room is considered by many to be Whistler's greatest creation. 

William de Morgan Tiles