Praeterita

One of the first things to catch my eye at the Musee Picasso in Paris was this: the actual copper plate for his etching Weeping Woman, derived from the great painting of the same name. They also had proof prints taken from the plate: It's rare to see the actual copper plates (often because they are supposed to be scored with a big 'X' at the end of en edition, and destroyed). so this was a treat for a printmaker such as what I am. My first thought as to why the plate is so dark: the final layer of ink or resist was left on the plate in the 1940s, and it's hardened over the years. But maybe it was steel-faced, a process that prolongs the life of a copper etching (because copper is a soft metal and wears down much more quickly than steel.) What's great about seeing the plate is how close you get to the process of creation, as you can see every etched line, and engraved line, and ragged fuzzy drypoint line: You also get a real sense of the force of Picas...

Actually, a recreation of the famous bedroom from the Yellow House in Arles, which Van Gogh rented in 1888. The Art Institute of Chicago created an exact replica of the second 'bedroom' painting in a condo in Chicago, as a publicity stunt for their exhibition Van Gogh's Bedrooms -- and I was invited to be the second person to stay in the room overnight. I'm writing an article about it for Hyperallergic. (UPDATE: Here is the link to the published article: Inside Van Gogh's Bedroom .) Meanwhile, this happened: Our writer @hartiganartist is spending the night at the van Gogh room at the @artinstitutechi (📷 Philip Hartigan) A photo posted by Hyperallergic (@hyperallergic) on Feb 16, 2016 at 4:09pm PST

The last two times that I've taught in Paris, I've been very fortunate in renting an apartment just a few minutes south of the Cimitiere du Montparnasse. It isn't as spectacular as Pere Lachaise, but for a relatively small rectangle of land it contains the graves of dozens of interesting artists, politicians, historians, actors and actresses, and more. Some will be more well known to French people than foreigners, but in the course of quite a few walks across the cemetery during my recent trip, I either sought out or stumbled upon the following graves. Piero Crommelynck Piero Crommelynck, along with his brother Aldo, ran a printmaking atelier in Montparnasse for more than half a century. Clients included Braque, Picasso, Arp, Hockney, Salle, Dine. As I've mentioned several times on this blog, my etching teacher worked in their studio for a time in the 1980s. So only a small number of people in the world (the tiny world of the history of printmaking) might feel ...

Hello Norwegian Friend(s)! Looking at the stats for who has been visiting this blog, which country they come from, most popular posts, etc, I noticed that for the last month I've been getting a relatively high number of hits from someone or some people in Norway. This pleases me. I always knew that Norwegians were highly educated, intelligent, and curious, and this just proves it. It got me thinking about any Norwegian moments I could tell from my own life. My only visit: when I was about 12 years old, I crossed the North Sea with my mother and brother on a weekend trip to Bergen. Sadly, it was in winter, and the crossing was incredibly rough, and when we got there, it just rained torrentially for two days and nights (talking about the sort of rain that makes the awnings on cafe terraces collapse from the cascading water). BUT! I am currently watching a Norwegian series on Netflix called "Occupied", and it's completely excellent. It's a political...

Speaking of Paris, and speaking of films, I remember that it was in Paris that I saw Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange for the first time (the title of this post is one of the central character's catch-phrases). This was 1986, and even though the film was more than ten years old by that point, Kubrick had refused to allow it to be seen in Britain after the furor cretaed by its initial release. So it was that I was strolling along the Rue de la Huchette on the left bank (I think it was there), and crammed in amid the bars, creperies, and porn shops was a small cinema showing A Clockwork Orange. It was one of those places that mainly showed the same two or three films every day, a few times a day -- there were a few like that in Paris back then -- just like the porn places that surrounded it. After I bought my ticket at the tiny guichet and entered the cinema, it continued to feel like I was entering a place that I should feel guilty about. It was a narrow room with ...

On the afternoon of January 6th, 2016, I led 20 Columbia College students and two colleagues on an art walk through Montmartre in Paris. We started at the Caulaincourt metro stop on the northern side of the hill, because it's a less steep climb from there, and spent about two hours walking up the hill and around Montmartre, visiting sites that are associated with visual artists. Some of these are very well known, like the Basilica of Sacre Coeur or the Moulin Rouge, but others are much less well known, such as the residences and studios of Van Gogh, Picasso, and Suzanne Valadon. At every stop, I handed round print-outs of paintings by the artists I was talking about so that everyone could make stronger visual associations of the place with the artists and their art. I have rounded up some of my notes and images of those paintings and linked them all together in this Google Map, which traces the exact route of the walk. Click on any of the red place markers to display the associat...