New Project This Wednesday
Finished Chapter 2 Part Two The Nude
Where No One Has Gone Before by Michael Newberry
Transcending Traitors by Michael Newberry
Did Thutmose Sculpt the Mask of Tutankhamen?
Today in writing the sixth chapter of my book Evolution Through Art, the section on the great Egyptian sculptor Thutmose, circa 1350 BC, I was struck by the similarities of this sculpture of Tutankhamen’s grandfather, Amenhotep III and the famous Gold Mask of Tutankhamen. But I am wondering if the portrait study is not Amenhotep III but a life study of Tutankhamen?
Continue reading “Did Thutmose Sculpt the Mask of Tutankhamen?”Rebirth: Death and Life through Art
Years ago a grandchild of a friend and student of mine died. The little girl wasn’t born right and was not destined to live past childhood. At that time Mary wanted to do a special project based on the little girl’s passing. I recall the concept started with a soft cloth with lace embroidery, and quickly a flower, an iris, was added. Mary drew 20 or so thumbnail sketches, tweaking each composition until she found the one that pleased her most.
Continue reading “Rebirth: Death and Life through Art”Roger Scruton’s Why Beauty Matters; And Did I Have a Small Part in It?
Roger Scruton’s excellent presentation Why Beauty Matters, a BBC production, has seen a resurgence, over a million views on this embedded YouTube video. Several people have forwarded it to me and I remember seeing it ages ago. In re-watching it I was struck by the coincidence of the same four postmodern works in his presentation and in my article Pandora’s Box Part III. I was kind of horrified that I might have subconsciously lifted them from him without being aware of it. I didn’t.
I was relieved that my article Pandora’s Box Part III was published in the Free Radical (magazine and online) in 2002, while this Scruton publication was released almost 8 years later in November 2009. The four works are canned shit, Manzoni’s Merde d’artista; empty room, Creed’s The Lights Going On and Off; a urinal, Duchamp’s The Fountain; and bricks in a room at the Tate by Andre.
Scruton discusses them at 5:25 to 5:48 and he says: “It has been interrupted in another way by showing that anything can be art. Like a light going on and off, a can of excrement, or even a pile of bricks.”
In a section from my article which I discuss the postmodern works I write: “Kant’s concept of the formless nature of the sublime is the ideological birthplace of the postmodern aesthetic that art, visual art, doesn’t need to be expressed through the means of representational painting or sculpture. In practice, this aesthetic opened up the floodgates of a nihilistic revolution in the 20th Century in which postmodern artists deconstructed art and/or substituted any object but painting or sculpture for art, i.e. arranged rubbish, excrement, installations, etc.”
Bemusedly, I was wondering if my article was the source for “It has been interrupted…” I am just having a little fun figuratively flexing my muscles showing that I have been ahead of the curve. BTW, Pandora’s Box Part III is a wonderful article touching on a few of Kant’s concepts of the Sublime how they are connected to some horrible postmodern works, and I optimistically share some magnificent contemporary figurative works.
Michael Newberry, Idyllwild, 2/14/2020
Schipperheyn’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The nude in art is one of the greatest means of expressing individuality. It bypasses the status of clothes and symbols and drives the focus towards character through body and facial expression. The nude asks the viewer to share their deeper, more personal thoughts about how they feel about who they are, their dreams, and their deepest beliefs.
Looking at Peter Schipperheyn’s Zarathustra we see a larger-than-life-sized man, arching back, and his head thrown back at an intense angle – the chin raised above the forehead. The body’s tone is taut, yet there is relaxed fluidity from limb to limb. He has the body of a world-class athlete, such as the current tennis great, Roger Federer. The most prominent gesture is the back of the closed fist meeting the open, extended hand.
An abstract aspect of this sculpture is the arc of the entire body – from the heel to the tip of the head. It conjures up the form of a bow, or of a tree limb a limb pulled back. This, combined with the smack of the hand, creates the sense of a springing force. The raised heel is understated, yet very challenging for the artist – it would be much easier to sculpt the feet flat-footed. The raised heel shifts the lower body forward, balancing the backwards arc, and enhancing the athletic litheness. This curve gently pushes the crotch forward, giving the sense of unselfconscious ease.
Continue reading “Schipperheyn’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra”Future of Art by Rick Barker, featuring the work of Michael Newberry
This was lecture by Rick hosted through the ICC Speaker Series on the Future of Art as he saw it and featured the work of Artist Michael Newberry. This was taped at the beautiful Creekstone Inn in Idyllwild, California, January 14th, 2016
Video 90-min
My dear friend Rick Barker gave this talk one year from passing away due to complications with Parkinson’s Disease. The talk is about my art and its context but from Rick’s perspective, a life long interest in human evolution. He wrote Transcending Evolution: A Christian Guide to Understanding, Accepting, and Transcending Evolution available at Amazon. I met him in the Idyllwild dog park when I first moved there. It was rewarding to be surrounded by sights, sounds, and smells of playful dogs, pines, and mountains, earthy dirt, and talk with him of philosophy and aesthetics. I lent him one of my paintings, Arabesque Series: Female Couple. He was terribly ill in the hospital in his last week and wanted to die at home, the next day he died; he was found on the floor with his head uplifted towards my painting.
Update on my WIP Model in the Studio
Today’s update on Model in the Studio, wip, oil on linen, 42×56” It is very interesting that there is a war going on now in the humanities, arts, and in politics. Essentially it’s reason, perception, truth, science, human values, benevolence, resolution, sense, and evolution vs. misinterpretation, manipulation, lies, opinion, ignorance, snark, malevolence, arbitrary, senseless, and devolution. I could not be happier and I chose wisely. Everything in this painting is in the first group, the 2nd group is post modern crap. Hard work and flourishing or bitter rage? Apparently for many people it’s not an easy choice. #lifelessons #figurativeart #wip #contemporaryart #postmodernism #humanflourishing
