The Colors of Spain, Salvador Dali, Great Art etc. /  by Mirena Rhee

https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/william-kloss

Been listening to a great course in art while I was painting, I felt truly connected to the long history of creators, to the long history of artists that came before me.

I also accidentally saw something on YouTube and was amazed at all the ghastly paintings brimming with greens and oranges and all the most atrocious things I'm not going to call it art.

My course in art history actually was preceded by a course in Egyptian art and Egyptian history which was also marvelous. People that love the subjects that they teach shine that love onto the people that listen.

Again I'm going to emphasize the fact that I found on YouTube the most absolutely atrocious examples of Mark making I can possibly imagine so I'm trying to shake that ugliness out of my mind. I'm guaranteed not to go on YouTube anytime soon, I just wanted to find out how fast certain glazes dry and boy I ran into these absurd grotesque courses. I really don't understand. And all of a sudden it hit me of course Google has no taste, they're not Steve Jobs. Apple has taste on account of Steve Jobs so that culture kind of lingered behind him but Google will show anything for money.

Although I can't forgive Apple that their iPhones take yellow pictures. Okay sorry I couldn't help it. I'm ready to give advice to any head of state on any matter.

My advice in learning about art is stick to your old Masters, study their paintings stroke by stroke copy them look at them and then make something of your own, something original that no one has ever seen before.

Anyway I terribly digress.

I've been to Spain before to study the great masters of painting in person in the great museums of Madrid, the three museums that host seminal paintings in the history of Art, by the way the Spanish Kings were great patrons and had great taste. And before that I was in Spain to see Gaudi, but I didn't know that I had to go to the Spanish countryside rather than the museums to study the pictorial tradition of Spain.

As I walked on the Camino de Santiago all I could see around me were the paintings of Salvador Dali. Blue skies and then the browns, ochres and golds, wait until I got to Costa Brava, the Mediterranean towns of Cadaques and Port Ligat. After I finished my Camino de Santiago I headed for the land, for the hometown and home actual house of Salvador Dali on the other end of Spain.

This was one of the most dramatic experiences of my life as I had seen a lot of Art, I had seen all the great art of the world in person from The Vatican, to the Uffizi to the Louvre, to the national Gallery, to the worlds and paintings of Rembrandt and Vermeer in Amsterdam, Van Gogh, the impressionists and so forth. I see and I've seen a lot of Art in New York, constantly.

But nothing had prepared me for the art, the massive museum, the house and the world of Salvador Dali. Every single square inch of this man's art was marvelous original beautiful and made with superb taste for shape and color.

People want to look at paintings because they want to look at something and oftentimes people rely on textures and thick paint to give people something to look at but this is only because of a failure at the disegno stage

Salvador Dali is superb both in the shapes and the colors, he referred to himself as colorist.

When I got to Cadaques and Port Ligat I discovered that all these landscapes were in all of the Salvador Dali paintings, all the way down to the cactuses on the side of the road and down to the crab legs in the cracks of the rocks.

I took a swim in the cool Waters of Cala Jugadora which was purportedly Salvador Dali's favorite spot. It didn't disappoint.

Below I captured the truth that Spain is absolutely beautiful and has produced some of the greatest artists the world has ever seen.

Just updated Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques with new high resolution images /  by Mirena Rhee

Updated the high resolution images of Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques, also had to re-photograph it because every time the shutter closed I got a different shade of blue, which is the purpose of painting, to shimmer. It is never the same. Had to re-photograph Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques in artificial light.

I developed Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques using glazing and cobalt blue pigments. It is based on this Folded Hand drawing.

Folded Hand, 11 x 15.5 inches, pen and ink of tinted french paper, 2019Click on the image to see high resolution.I used this drawing to develop Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques.

Folded Hand, 11 x 15.5 inches, pen and ink of tinted french paper, 2019

Click on the image to see high resolution.

I used this drawing to develop Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques.

Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques, 5 x 7 feet, acrylic on canvas, 2021 /  by Mirena Rhee

The Artist with Winter /  by Mirena Rhee

Mirena Rhee, The Artist, with Winter and a “Blank” wearable photographed in the studio - 2011. Winter, a primed canvas wearable is painted with a frame from Winter Diagrams: December - Animated pen and ink drawings digital video, Edition of 12, dimensions variable, 2012. Music by marcus fischer / mapmap.ch

https://www.mirenarhee.com/winter-diagrams-december

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Winter Diagrams: December, still
Winter Diagrams: December, still

Winter Diagrams: December - Animated pen and ink drawings digital video, Edition of 12, dimensions variable, 2012. Music by marcus fischer / mapmap.ch

These series of animations are the digital equivalent of my Red diary. It is a non-linear diary - I sometimes write notes on past entries and cross-reference ideas. Usually written in both English and Bulgarian, sometimes a sentence starts in English and ends in Bulgarian, sometimes I write English words in Cyrillic; sometimes I write Bulgarian words using the English alphabet.

In these animations I use my latest drawings and paintings and they, instead of Bulgarian and English, become a new procedural language. I use a single drawing to create a visual Morse code and a procedural script to animate and draw each frame. The Brooklyn machine series carry the mood and the sense of place and space I currently occupy - Brooklyn, New York.

No digital manipulations for the drawings have been used - I scan them into the computer and procedurally animate them. The hands are pen and ink drawings on hot pressed board, a very smooth velvety surface produced by an American paper company. The red background is a Crimson Red Intaglio ink monotype on Fabriano papers
( an Italian paper praised since the Renaissance ).

For these compositions I was inspired by Marcus Fischer's amazing album mip~map/for friends this winter.. and my friends as well.

Painted and animated by Mirena Rhee. Music by marcus fischer / mapmap.ch

Winter Diagrams: December, animated pen and ink drawings

You need to travel far and wide to find the truth that's for sure. /  by Mirena Rhee

“If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
― Dogen

There's a snow storm here in New York City and it's a big one. Mainly wind really, and I think tons of snow. I wonder how did the first settlers manage these Winters man?

It is helpful to me though because I can find an excuse to read \ uninterrupted.

I was reading a saying by the Zen master Dogen.

I'm like let's see what his biography was like! And it turned out the man didn't find the truth where he was in Japan but he traveled to China and found it there, and went back to Japan to teach it.

The key lesson here is get your lessons from people that are already dead, that's one, and the second is always double check the context. Because essentially what he said didn't mean what we think he meant.

You have to travel far and wide to find the truth that's for sure.


Truth in Photography and Art, it really is the most important message the Artist or Photographer can send /  by Mirena Rhee

Recently I have been going through some books I own and which I had decided to sell because they no longer move me, and their physical weight and space take space that I want to devote to what I truly believe in.

on the other hand there are many people who could genuinely benefit from these books, they will want them care for them and will be glad of the experience.

I see this as a win-win situation.

One of those books I own is Richard Avedon's fashion. When I first started out as an artist I was obsessed with photography and with Richard Avedon. I loved both fashion and beauty so his work was a natural fit to what my eyes craved.

One day I went to the San Francisco museum of modern Art to see an exhibition of large portraits by Avedon. Avedon's work was on the top floor. On the third floor there was another exhibition of photography by Robert Frank. Richard Avedon's portraits were enormous or at least they seemed to me so, larger than the height of a human being. Robert Frank's photographs on the other hand were tiny, or what it seemed to me the palm of a human hand. So what happened is that I descended from the top floor of the enormous portraits down to the tiny photographs of Robert Frank and I was profoundly moved by there genuinity. Where Richard Avedon's photographs were produced, Robert Frank's photographs were snapped casually and with keen eye on the streets, they were made with love and immediacy and they carried a personal truth.

I think what Robert Frank exemplified in his work was the profound sympathy for the human condition. While Avedon tried to cover it up, mask it and serve it on a plate.

“Ugly humans do not belong on the beautiful page, in fact most humans aren’t beautiful enough to grace here these pages so I come in to fix what’s wrong with the prowess of my photo improving skills, with the might of my lights and the fake filters on my lens” I could hear Avedon say.

I immediately fell out of love with Richard Avedon. See truth really matters in art, this is one of the reasons that Van Gogh is more prized than Bouguereau.

I have many painter friends who do not like Van Gogh and that is okay because he's not really painters painter, he's the truth of the human condition. His work speaks to everyone, just like his letters.

I frequently have arguments with people over values, and specifically the role of money in interactions. So I always tell this story.

Imagine a friend gives you a present, it is a beautiful present and you're so grateful to get it. You thank your friend profusely and you feel great. You turn around to stash your prize away but then your friends taps you in the shoulder and says, sorry it's going to be 200 bucks, how would you feel?

When art is produced this is exactly what it feels like. And this is the type of art that Richard Avedon makes and which turned me off to whatever he made. I could see the price tag of his work before I see the work, and the human being/s behind it.

Just like in the story with the gift and my friend, where within 5 minutes of interaction you decide whether this is a work from the heart or the work of a merchant, in art it really takes some time before you could decide whether to connect with the work or to put it in the merchandise box. It is fine to be bought and sold, bread is also bought and sold. But while bread has to be consumed fresh, art must live and outlive the human condition it was produced with, it must transcend the individual and its production value and speak to our higher brain, and not the consumer reptile brain. Art must speak truth.

Back to the Future - in 2011 I went to Zuccotti Park to photograph the Art of Occupy Wall Street. /  by Mirena Rhee

I also wrote an essay titled “What is it to have?”

What is it to have? To hold? How is it that we are having it when we are not holding it? How do we have the things that we supposedly have like our limbs. We posses temporary control over a collection of molecules that responds to electrical stimuli? Is that the having? But we do own supposedly things that we neither hold nor electrically stimulate. How are we sure. It is a fascinating subject.

The Future /  by Mirena Rhee

One of the best things that happened to me in the silicon valley is that I was able to make a lot of money and to learn how to dream and execute projects, and also I was able to grow as a person.

So while I was working in the valley I used my money to travel and see the most beautiful things in the world. And what I mean by that is I mean the greatest and best museums in the world that hold the most precious works of art.

Here is the essential list:

Louvre and Versailles , Musée d'Orsay in Paris

Prado, Reina Sofia and Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid

Rijksmuseum, and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum in The Hague.

Vatican, Vatican Museums, Galleria Borghese, the city of Rome and its ruins

Florence and everything in it

Gaudi in Barcelona

MOMA in New York

Metropolitan museum of Art in New York

National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and the British Museum in London, as well as the Tate

Later I visited the World of Salvador Dali and the beautiful countryside of Spain, especially the Costa Brava coast.

What I learned is that Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian is a terrible painting that has aged really badly, and that after visiting the Museum and Theater of Salvador Dali in Figueres I can no longer look at any gallery show with the same eyes - Dali surpasses them all by a mile. All art now to me looks ugly and badly made. Dali had the most superb taste among all modern artists and is of course only surpassed by Leonardo and Michelangelo.

I am working on giant hand paintings, I am sure no one I know does it so I must do it /  by Mirena Rhee

A sketch, laying down the disegno and the space where these hands operate. Using blue acrylic paint that i have a lot of, to sketch, acrylic paint is terrible but excellent for sketching. It dries fast and doesn’t smell.

I have been interested in the surface of the hands but now I look inside and discover all kinds of things behind the skin.

It’s like the hands are being turned inside out - as if the hands - with the skin gone - become a door to unknown destination.

I feel like a detective, what is beyond the (skin of ) the hand?

Peeling hands, folded hands, hands landscape, hand tectonics. Peeling the hand is like peeling an orange towards unknown destination. It's going to be called the disintegration of the hands, the peeling of the hands.

The third dimension or the dimensions are spilling on the one side of the painting.

The Peeling of the Hands, discovery of the space of the hands, rejecting elements that don.t work. Beacuse this is not a flying hands painting.

Peeling of the Hands painting

For my Memory Replacement Election Day 2020 Installation and Performance I built tiny canvas cozies for the hand sanitizer bottles, and they had tiny hands cut into them. /  by Mirena Rhee

By the Way I was supposed to move to Spain in 2020 /  by Mirena Rhee

You know when you make plans and exactly the opposite happens? My plan was to make some quick money in the States and move to Spain, Costa Brava, the land of Salvador Dali.

After my journey on the Camino de Santiago in 2019, I went on the opposite side of Spain to see Salvador Dali, and fell in love with Cadaques on my trip to see Salvador Dali's museum and house.

Cadaques is in all of Salvador Dali's paintings.

So my plan was to just take care of some things in the States and move to Spain by the summer of 2020.

Instead I stayed in New York City and made art.

I made some pretty awesome art so I guess it wasn't just silver lining it was just a pot of gold as far as I'm concerned. Yeah I got Covid too and it was unpleasant, but I also got a City free of foot traffic..

As a Thank You and in honor of my friends who answered my call for support in December I am planning Remember Summer series of installations in Central Park in February /  by Mirena Rhee

As the title of my post says I'm planning on installations in honor and to celebrate my friends who answered my call for support in December.

A few days ago I went to Central Park and it was so incredibly beautiful during the magic hour which I photographed rocks and places with my crappy phone, but I'm planning to return to photograph with my regular camera.

I have this incredible fascination with Central Park, rocks and trees, that almost borders on infatuation.. and I am gonna act on it.

The colors are so fantastic and so different from the summer and fall, beautiful blues and Grays and earthen colors. I'm totally infatuated with Central Park at this point. And before that goes away I'm going to set up a series of installations which will celebrate the muted colors of the park in the bright colors of paint.

Remember Summer possible locations below and tiny Installation sketch.

I am not gonna pretend, I work in the tradition of Christo Javacheff but my work is quick, fast to deploy, without permission, cheaper to make and easy to handle by just one person. It lasts mostly a day and then its gone. That’s the spirit of the 21 century. The speed of light :)

Remember Summer tiny Installation sketch. I am planning a series of installations in Central Park in February, some may not be hands :)

Tree Cozies Installation Sketch for Trees in Central park

From my favorite teacher, philosopher and thinker Joseph Campbell. Sometimes I do fee like the proverbial hero from the Power of Myth /  by Mirena Rhee

MOYERS: But aren't many visionaries and even leaders and heroes close

to the edge of neuroticism?

CAMPBELL: Yes, they are.

MOYERS: How do you explain that?

CAMPBELL: They've moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you've got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can't. You don't have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience that is the hero's deed.