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01st Dec 2011

Learning to Speak Hebrew without a Paintbrush

For many years my hands have been eloquently “speaking” Hebrew, specifically in Torah font as the original letters of Bible texts are the strokes of my paintings and drawings.

However, although I could read Hebrew, as it is almost totally phonetic, there were only a few words that I could read, speak or hear and recognize their meaning. I  had no understanding of the grammar. Any grammar that does not follow the rules of English has previously befuddled me.

In school, my worst subject was always any other language that I would study, other than English where I had straight A’s and advanced courses. Without the special help of a very well known and beloved French teacher, Mrs. Henrietta Rattiner in the High School of Music and Art, I might not have graduated. Before this dear teacher took me under her wing the only subject I studied was French, and I studied it for hours a day, but I was failing and it was the only subject where I did not have an A or at least a B +.

Since my video, “Painting with the Big Bang of Genesis” won Ulpan Or’s first prize in their Facebook contest, I have been studying Hebrew with their system.

Today ends my third week of  study with Ulpan Or, and I am speaking and writing in Hebrew and even understanding short stories in the workbook. This is a huge accomplishment for me, which I have accomplished with less actual time spent studying than in my previous attempts to learn another language that did not go as nearly well.

Ulpan Or’s system includes a CD of sound recordings that are keyed to the workbook. First I listen, and listen, and listen (I listen more than the times recommended as I am a visual and then kinetic learner). But I can do a lot of my extra listening while doing fairly routine or mindless tasks, so this works out fine.

The workbook has written material that corresponds to the CDs. Ulpan Or sent me three well done workbooks, which are all Introductory Level, my general workbook, one on verbs and another for learning the Hebrew letters, including script letters.

The real power behind Ulpan Or’s system for me is Miri, my teacher in Jerusalem, who speaks with me over skype twice a week. She encourages me as I stumble along speaking my new Hebrew words and sentences. Having to speak and listen in Hebrew with Miri has made a huge difference for me!

As part of my last assignment, I had to make up and write 15 sentences using at least 15 new nouns in Hebrew. This is an amazing assignment as I have only been studying for three weeks, which has been wedged into my normal full time life’s activities.

Here are some of my sentences, with the English translation beneath them. And, since I am still learning an practicing Hebrew script, I use the block letters I am so familiar with as my strokes, but have added in the vowels.

Speaking Hebrew Miri tells me I am doing very well, and I understand her. Amazingly, I am also having fun, which after wresting with French and Latin for many years, amazes me.

I also understand more of the Hebrew texts that I use for my paintings. The photocopied sheets I hold in one hand while I hold a paint brush in the other have the translation in English, but now that I am catching on to the grammar I am beginning to figure out more of what the actual Hebrew words mean.

I wonder if and how this new knowledge and even success at what has always eluded me will change my work.

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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.
Check out the limited and open edition prints in the estore.
Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .
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23rd Nov 2011

Thanksgiving Inspiration – 2011

Last night, I kept awakening for now reason and then just comfortably cuddling beneath the covers as I was wide awake.

George Washington Print

It rarely happens that I cannot easily go to sleep whenever I wish. It is just some sort of a gift I have that I can easily go to sleep. I have never been kept awake by any worry or concerns. I even slept during the last stages of labor and they would wake me up and say “Push!”So, I have little experience with lying in bed awake unless it is by choice.

As I lay awake last night , I was very much in the moment. In the Now. So I decided just to experience lying in bed.  Just being.

And it just naturally followed, as being in the now, in the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand – the I AM moment – that I naturally welled up with appreciation for it. One cannot drag in resentments, anger, fear, upsets, and any of the past woes into the now and actually be in the Now. Being in that present time, which is a kind of being in the Truth, one enjoys the clarity of appreciating the gift of the moment.

There I was cozily appreciating and giving The Divine thanks for my being cozy, for the breathing I began to experience, for the dark, for the now…At that moment, everything was perfect.And then the alarm went off. It was morning. At some point I had just fallen fast asleep. Woman of Valor Rosebud print

Despite our daily concerns, worries and goals, we have so much to be grateful for that we did not really create for ourselves. Even a sick person has enough good health to be alive, and enjoy all if not most of their senses of sight, taste, smell, etc.

It’s not about seeing the glass as half full or half empty but experiencing the kind of miracle that there is a glass that can hold water and that there is water. For even glassblowers cannot make the silica and ingredients used to make a glass, and water is always a gift of life.

This Thanksgiving I look forward to giving more thanks quietly and personally. In appreciating small moments and acts of moments of chewing, sharing, laughing, seeing breathing and being in the now.

I hope this inspires you to join me in that appreciating and give thanks in the now, too.

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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.
Check out the limited and open edition prints in the estore.
Follow her on Twitter at -> @judyrey .

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16th Nov 2011

Post Conceptual Art Video Wins Award from Ulpan Or!

My video, “Painting with the Big Bang of Genesis” won the top prize from Ulpan Or’s Facebook contest. SEE:  http://www.ulpanor.com/2011/ulpan-or%E2%80%99s-free-online-hebrew-course-contest-%E2%80%93-the-awards/

The contest asked contestants to answer the question, “Why I love Hebrew”. Watch the winning video below to see the amazing correlations between Torah font Hebrew and elementary physics as depicted in the radical new Post Conceptual UnGraven Image Art.

My first lesson was two days ago, and I am already saying some phrases and answering simple conversational questions. The materials include Ulpan Or’s book, a CD to listen and review what I am learning, plus, a wonderful and patient teacher, Miri, who I will be working with over our Skype connection.

The most difficult subject for me to learn, even just pass has always been foreign languages, in both high school and college. I am so visually orientated that learning to speak and understand another language is difficult. After many years of French studies, I can read French fairly well, but understanding what is said to me is difficult, beyond elementary phrases.

However, I am applying myself diligently, and am finding that the approach of Ulpan Or, through the one-to-one teaching over the phone and the CD quickly gives me more listening experience and also engages my participation.

It is my hope that my mouth will speak Hebrew as well as my hands “speak” Hebrew’s Torah font in my art. To watch that happen, see the video below.

 

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19th Oct 2011

Inspiration Happens Only Now

A good work of art is original.

Not necessarily an original – since personally, I’d take a good reproduction of a van Gogh, Rembrandt, Monet, etc., over some of the “originals” I have seen recently in various galleries.

By original, I mean that the artist’s vision is unique and inspiring.

There is a great deal of good art, beautifully rendered work being done today. I know artists who have talent and training and they paint lovely paintings using oils and watercolors, especially. Just one problem, been there seen that. Who is painting what is really new and will change the way I see the world? I want to see that.

A good life is original. Each person has his or her own path. Attempting to follow another’s path only manages to take one off one’s own path.

It’s an interesting thing about paths. We can only take the next step. We cannot undo past steps, but we can correct our course if we have rambled off our path. But, a path is walked one step at a time. Try to run ahead and one goes off one’s path.

A step takes time, even though it may seem to go rather fast, such as during a brisk walk.

Imagine a step shown in slow motion. It happens second by second, bit by bit, movement by movement: the lifting up of the leg, leaning forward, the shifting of one’s weight… It’s an easy accomplishment for the average healthy person, but for a baby becoming a toddler or a person who has a foot or leg injury it takes more concentration. The time seems to stretch out. Taking a simple step demands focus and being present.

No one can walk with The Divine in the past. Nor is it possible to do so in the future. All we have is now.

The Divine is always present in the Now. It is our challenge to let go of our past baggage, worries, concerns, unresolved emotional difficulties with others, anger, and what ever else is running through our minds – and take the bold step of focusing on the immediate now.

Click here: Genesis Dalet

Take a deep breath. Concentrate on just breathing in then breathing out. Experience that breath. Look around. What do you see? Not what needs to be done – but what is actually where you are? What is now? (Please, give it a try — now.)

This blog was inspired by a Collector Family member who wrote me that she is having a problem staying in balance. She is very busy with a life that places many demands on her time.

Being out of balance means not being in the moment of now with the Lord. Even busy people only have now, although it may seem otherwise.

Jesus said, “I do nothing but what the Father does through me.” That’s about being in the now and focused on the Father.

Deuteronomy 6: 5-7 commands a daily ongoing relationship, in the Now, “5. And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. “

Echoing this, in the Christian Testament Paul said, “Pray without ceasing” — meaning be in communication as prayer is communication that goes both ways. Paul is taking about a constant relationship with The Divine that can only happen in the now.

Hillel said, “If not now, when?” Hillel is asking when can we actually do anything except in the now?

They are all pointing to the same reality. We cannot have a relationship with our Creator except in the now. And, if we are not having a relationship with the Lord in the moment, as we draw each breath, then we are indeed going to feel out of balance. Other words we apply to our lack of being present in the moment (and therefore in relationship with the Creator) are terms such as stressed, harried, out of sorts, upset, etc.

My life is very out of balance in the way of the world. Experts might disapprove of my path. That’s their problem. I am focusing on staying on my path.

I am working to stay, moment by moment, step by step on the path that the Lord has for me.  Sure, I fail on a daily basis. I stumble, trip and even take spiritual pratfalls. I get lost in my thoughts of the path and future. Then I pick myself up, brush myself off and get my focus back on The Divine and what is now. I ask, What do I do now, Lord? I ask this as often as I can remember to do so, many, many times a day and I have been at it for years. What do I do now? What do I say now? There is always an answer, just not necessarily the one I want. And it is always simple and immediate, dealing with the now.

Most of us ask for guidance during times of crisis. I have learned to ask on an ongoing basis, even when I think I can handle the situation myself. On a moment to moment basis and more of my moments are spent that way. You can do this too.

We can only relate to The Divine (or anyone) in the moment of NOW. We cannot do it in the future or past.

When I have my answer, and act on it, such as late and night, when I get the sense of inspirational feedback, like, Go brush your teeth … then when I break away from the painting or the PC screen, I have a sense of balance of peace of being on my right path. (The teeth brushing thing is generally followed with the move towards bed.)

When I am busy with the many tasks that I wish I could give to the staff I don’t have yet, I try to be present in that now, focus on The Divine. Moment by moment. Easy to say, not as easy to accomplish.

For instance, putting together my shipments of prints is a task that is routine but uniquely specific in detail for each package. It is work I could mostly and gladly hand over to a competent assistant. However, it is still my own task and I have learned that there is nothing so mundane or small that the Lord does not wish to be there with you and share it.

A great painting is created one stroke at a time. The inspiration (for me communication with The Divine) that the artist had when each stroke was made shows in a painting. A great symphony is written note by note and again, the inspiration is evident. A great piece of literature… well, you have the idea.

Great works of art out continue to inspire many generations and so seem immortal.

If we live our lives one moment at a time with the Lord, we will live great lives that will inspire others. That is what Jesus, Paul, Hillel and many other great teachers have tried to tell us. In Genesis , it says that Enoch walked perfectly with The Divine and then was no more – in other words, Enoch never died. I find that amazingly inspirational.

Inspirational enough to inspire me to create a whole new theory of art, Post Conceptual UnGraven Image, where the focus is on the stroke: tiny strokes – one stroke at a time in the ever expanding and inspirational now.

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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.

Check out the limited and open edition prints in the estore.
Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .]

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05th Oct 2011

When It Looks Like You Have Arrived at a Dead End

One of my favorite places in the world is a beach that begins at and surrounds a dead end. The painting, Dead End at National depicts a sunset I witnessed there. Several of the works in the Genesis: Sunset: Sunrise series are from sunsets I have observed and photos I’ve taken within yards or half a mile at most from this very spot.

Locally, we call this beach “National” since it borders the land of the famous National Golf Links. However, since all beaches are owned by the public here, there is access via the dead end. On one side one can fish or from the other side swim, when the weather permits. I have taken my dog(s) for walks throughout the year along this beach. Even the winding drive to the area is a treat during all four seasons in any weather safe enough to drive through.

Dead End

Dead End At National, 2007

Genesis: Sunset-Sunrise series
Texts used for strokes: Genesis 1-2:7, Deut. 6:4, Psalm 20 frame
24 x 30 inches, acrylic on canvas

I have swim here in the summers and collected shells since I was a girl. It is where I went fishing with my Dad and then many years later my then own young son.

I prefer to leave my vehicle and walk along the beach. That is a much different experience from cruising along in my Honda Passport. However, it is also a good experience. The experience of time and space is differs from driving along a beautiful winding road to walking along a quiet beach, with pebbles and shells crunching beneath one’s steps. Sometimes the way we experience life, its joys, sorrows and challenges seems to change the perception of time and space also.

For instance, we all share times in our lives that we remember exactly where we were when we learned specific news. Boomers know where they were when they learned that JFK had been shot – and likewise John Lennon, and for many MLK and RFK also. All of us know where we were when we learned of the horror of the jets flying into the Twin Towers . Our memories are not only of where we physically were visually, but most of us can recall the temperature of the place and even the scent, and perhaps, even the sound of the voice of the news. Time seems to expand and the moment becomes super real and forever etched in memory.

Moments when life changes, when we wonder how we will go on — what we can do—how life as we know it can go on, are challenging and changing. Yet often it seems as if life just continues on somehow, but the way we see life, our unique interior views, have forever changed. These are dead ends that are openings to transformation.

In the painting Dead End at National we are standing at a dead end yet overlooking a beautiful sunset. There is more, there is beauty and glory, even hope and promise beyond the dead end where the viewer is poised. The question is, will we decide to reach out and move beyond the seemingly solid dead end and embrace the promise and beauty beyond or will we turn back and scurry into the safety of the paved and familiar routine?

I have swam here in the summers and collected shells since I was a girl. It is where I went fishing with my Dad and then many years later my then own young son.

I have walked, bicycled and arrived by various vehicles to this dead end. There are many ways to reach a dead end. For me, this very real dead end means the achievement of a wonderful destination. The first time I was in Southampton again and back on my bicycle, after years of fighting and finally overcoming acute and chronic Lyme’s disease, I headed for the dead end at National. I wept tears of joy upon reaching that destination, when just five years prior I could barely stand or walk.

So, although the sign says, “Dead End”, it also signals beginnings and good times, which are blessings.
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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.
Check out the limited and open edition prints in the estore.
Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .]

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09th Sep 2011

Basic Sunflower Portrait

Basic Sunflower Portrait is another artwork in my continuing investigation of black )on white background) vs. color  strokes to create portraits of people, places, flora, fauna and things (like USA currency bills).

I have been told since I first entered the High School of Music and Art that color is one of my strong suits. Making images without color is like being on a severe diet or fast, it almost physically hurt when I began with the first Essence Portrait, which was of Andy Warhol several years ago.

Even when I have studied art or made sketches I always envision the color I will be adding eventually. Now with the Basic Essence Portraits and images (you can see this as a portrait of a sunflower, I am concentrating of creating works in black and white that can stand on their own, without color, but to which color can be added.

As a school girl, before I began any formal art education, I hung out a lot in the great museums and galleries of NYC, where I “discovered” van Gogh and Rouault, both who often outline their forms in a dark color. Later Warhol’s silk-screens, with their strong black images and colored paints added their influence.

My Essence Portrait works take a next step as while my black strokes are also used to physically define the form(s) of the image they are the very importance of it due to their symbols, which are always the original Torah font letters of a Bible text. For me, the strokes are always paramount. Strokes are the intrinsic and essential reality of any painting, and that emulates the reality that pre-particles or energy is the intrinsic and essential reality of our physical universe.

Watch for a new version — in color — of this image coming soon to this blog.

Basic Sunflower Portrait (Proverbs 31:10-31 – A Woman of Valor)

By Judy Rey Wasserman

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02nd Sep 2011

USA Money Flag I

USA Money Flag I, is created using strokes that are the original letters of Exodus 20, plus Leviticus 19 for the portrait of Alexander Hamilton and Proverbs 13 for the portrait of Benjamin Franklin. At the moment this is an original tradigital print combining artworks that were created by hand and scanned in on a professional scanner then combined and manipulated digitally.

This pigment ink painting features original artwork by Judy Rey Wasserman of all six USA currency bills currently issued by the U.S. Treasury in an American Flag, stars and stripes image.

USA Money Flag I visually explores and represents the current focus, problems and even dilemmas that face the USA as we continue to create a unique national identity during the ongoing recession and money problems that include the bailouts, unemployment, fraudulent practices by many of its major banks in relation to foreclosures and mortgage securities.

A version that combines acrylic paint with the hand drawn printed pigment ink currency bills is planned for canvas. This 16 x 24 inch original pigment ink painting on paper is a signed limited edition of 150. This is a study and version for the very much larger work, which will use life size currency. [For more information, including closes-ups of the work, dealers, collectors and press can contact the artist through her website at http://ungravenimage.com, follow and message her on Twitter: @judyrey or Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/judyreywasserman .]

USA Money Flag I, 2011 by Judy Rey Wasserman

Another original artwork from Judy Rey Wasserman’s the In God We Trust series, which features money, was shown in the Green Holly Greetings blog, depicting a variation on her basic one dollar bill, and again in the Vote 2010 blog. However, the Essence Portraits of Presidents (using the original letters of Exodus 20) of George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Grover Cleveland, plus the Essence Portraits of Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton have all been previously featured in blogs and most may ve seen in the You Tube video, “Essence Portraits, The Art of Seeing The Divine in Ourselves and Others” “Essence Portraits, The Art of Seeing The Divine in Ourselves and Others” . To see close ups and purchase an open edition print of the George Washington Essence portrait Click http://estore.artofseeingthedivine.com

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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke. Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .]

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24th Aug 2011

Leonardo Da Vinci Essence Portrait

The new basic Essence Portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci is created with strokes that are the original Torah font letters of the Bible’s Isaiah 48.

Isaiah 48 (Leonardo Da Vinci) by Judy Rey Wasserman

This portrait is based on the self portrait by Da Vinci. However, here Da Vinci is slightly turned to face and view the viewer.

Using a text, which can be understood as a code, to create a portrait of Da Vinci seems appropriate and a special salute to the master who not only wrote his journal in codes, but has been recently discovered to have hidden letters in the Mona Lisa. Note: SEE Did Leonardo Da Vinci Envision Post Conceptual Art?

This Essence Portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci joins pervious portraits by Judy Rey Wasserman featuring great artists who helped influence her work and her theory of Post Conceptual and UnGraven Image art. Other artists depicted thus far include Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Rembrandt van Rijn and Andy Warhol.

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Watch a short video (second video down from top) that shows you how Judy Rey Wasserman’s signature-logo-self portrait is created from her name in Hebrew HERE: http://ungravenimage.com/essencevideos.php
Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke. Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .

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16th Aug 2011

Essence and Time in Portraits

The best known painting in the world is a portrait.

For great portrait painters, the challenge is to create a portrait that shows the paradox of the eternal essence of a person in a fleeting but immediate moment on the edge of transforming into a new facet of the eternal self.

The portrait shows a unique moment of the present: the now – and some of the best portraits ever seem to catch their subjects mid action, or at least about to inhale or exhale. The best portraits also imply the past simultaneously with the future.

The implied future in every portrait leads to another paradox involving the duality of life and death. To fully paint a person in a moment of life, the shadows of age and death always encroach the work as before the portrait is complete, the subject has aged.

A great portrait is not necessarily a perfect likeness, nor one that can be used to promote an agenda of fostering a person’s position in life, as historically most portraits are.

Every president of the United States had his portrait painted.  These paintings are are on view at the White House and on its web site. We learn to recognize the earlier presidents, Washington, Jefferson, the Adams, etc., from their painted portraits. Since Abraham Lincoln, most people are more familiar with the photographic images (including movie and video images) than with their official portraits.

At the turn of the last century, having a black and white portrait taken by a photographer was a significant event. The portrait was cherished and passed down to family members.  In many families portraits continue to be passed down providing a rare record for current and future generations.

Photographic portraits, including videos and film of people, bombard us through print, TV, film, email, our phones, T-Shirts, mugs, billboards, etc. We see images of people we know, people we don’t know and people we think we somehow know (like celebrities) and people who are not even people, are fictional characters. We humans seem to never tire of seeing images of our selves and others, as the people who create magazine covers and advertising executives know well.

Yet, the traditional painted portrait or sculpted bust continues, partially as a status symbol as it has been a hallmark of the rich and powerful since antiquity. Since ancient times, this kind of portrait has been one that is usually somewhat idealized, showing the prominence and often might of the subject. Successful pharaohs, emperors, kings, queens, CEOs all learned how to use the power of their own selected image to present themselves to gain and keep authority.

Alexander the Great used imposing heroic statues of his image and placed his portraits on coins to control and foster his vast conquered empire. With the exception of the portrait of John F. Kennedy, all of the portraits present their subjects as leaders of a great country and are posed, showing a static moment where the subject is presented at his best.

Artists have painted themselves, their family and friends in more realistic or certainly less than heroic portraits since the Renaissance. They also painted images of people who were less than heroic in dramatic paintings that dealt with historic or mythical scenes. However, creating portraits that were less than flattering and unusual in their approach for any notable subject really begins with the emergence of photography.

Photography readily captures a physical likeness. The mechanical camera has a greater chance of accuracy as to proportions shadings and color relationships. Andy Warhol, who was trying to remove the artist and make his art somewhat as a machine, understood this.

The accuracy of photography encouraged artists to create portraits that revealed the personality and the reality of the person in the moment.

We are always in a state of being and becoming simultaneously, as one moment of being flows into the next. We are always transforming into who we are at the next moment.

One of the first and for me one of the best, portraits of is that new era is Monet’s Camille Monet on her Deathbed. Monet, a master of catching the fleeting light, paints a transcending moment of a woman transforming from one moment into another. Although she is dying, barely present and seen as if in a mist, Monet manages to suggest the recently vibrant and young woman his wife was.

Van Gogh, who knew Monet and quite possibly had seen this painting before he moved to the South of France, paints two pictures that revolutionize modern and contemporary portraiture. He paints Vincent’s Chair with His Pipe and Gauguin’s Armchair. There insightful portraits of the two men, their painting styles, colors and occupations show van Gogh’s perception of the differences between them, although he is kinder to Gauguin than himself. But, van Gogh never created a really flattering self-portrait.

Like Monet, van Gogh is capturing a moment in time, which definitely points both to the past and future of himself and Gauguin. On van Gogh’s empty chair his pipe is in the process of being filled, while Gauguin’s empty chair holds a lit candle and two books. Each man’s chair is askew, as if push back and aside during a hasty and unplanned exit. As such, they are slightly turned away from each other, not companionably side by side nor facing each other for discourse.

Psalm 113 (Vincent van Gogh)

By Judy Rey Wasserman

Vincent van Gogh’s pair of chair paintings can be understood as a precursor to conceptual art portraits. They have inspired many Modern and Contemporary portrait artists to create portraits where the image of the person may be unseen, but the person referenced is unmistakable. An excellent and relevant example of contemporary portraiture is Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, where the plates and dinnerware depict the essence of the renowned women while the chairs are not just empty, but missing!

Picasso abstracted the images of the people, often his mistresses and wives, in his portraits, revealing more sides of their physicality and personality. Even when the subject seems posed, she seems to be in motion, the subject’s past and future, which often seems to include sexual encounters, is implied.

Andy Warhol managed to obtain commissions for portraits that were not essentially flattering of their subjects. Many of his subjects were not then famous (but they were paying!) so he would take photographs and then turn his selected images into silk-screened images and paintings.

 

 

Warhol’s work challenged the school of portraiture where the wealthy and renowned pose for a static, flattering, possibly imposing portrait that promotes their power and authority and even wealth. Instead, Warhol abstracts and simplifies the features of his subjects into black planes that are “enhanced” by and placed with fields of bright, even garish color. He takes his simplified black image and stamps it in row upon row of a canvas, changing the colors, altering the look and hence the time behind the ever unchanging image, creating icons that are both of there time and without real time, eternal and fleeting.

Psalm 19 (Andy Warhol)

Double Un-Denied

By Judy Rey Wasserman

Warhol’s greatness as a portrait artist is proven by the fact that when we recall most recent presidents we think of moving and still photographic images. However, more of us know what Mao Zedong looked like from one of Warhol’s portraits than from the many photographs of him. Of course, by simplifying the images of Mao that were meant to inspire respect, recognition and even awe, Warhol made him very human and far less imposing and about as much a figure of perfect leadership as Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe.

Andy Warhol was well acquainted with the work of the painter who created the portrait that was the best known painting in the world then and remains so now. That work does not glorify its subject, although it probably was a commissioned work, but simply presents a human being. Warhol actually seems to have revered this artist since he appropriated from that artist’s work in some of his own later paintings.

It seems that when essential identity is revealed in a portrait, the fleeting eternal, which implies references to a fleeting past and future are inherently depicted, but when a subject is posed and the portrait flatters special qualities, the element of time becomes static, a mere advertisement for the image the patron and artist seek to present.

Those imposing, flattering portraits may be beautiful and skillfully present an excellent likeness of individuals and we may be impressed. Their splendor decorates museums, stately homes and board rooms. But, we do not love them. We do not travel to see them, put them on our mugs, shirts, posters and address books. They fail to communicate to us the way the portraits by artists such as Rembrandt, Monet, van Gogh, Picasso and da Vinci do.

The best known painting in the world is a portrait: the Mona Lisa. Da Vinci depicts a lady, looking at us but clearly thinking of something else, he captures the movement of her thought and in doing so we look and wait expecting her to breathe in or out or even blink. It is a painting of paradox of the eternal essence of a person in a fleeting but immediate moment at the edge of transforming into a new facet of her eternal self. Time and identity are brilliantly portrayed and we are intrigued and inspired.

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Watch a short video (second video down from top) that shows you how Judy Rey Wasserman’s signature-logo-self portrait is created from her name in Hebrew HERE: http://ungravenimage.com/essencevideos.php
Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke. Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .]

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15th Jul 2011

Happy Birthday Rembrandt!

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 1606 – October 4 1669) was one of the first artists who inspired me as a young girl as I often visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Granted, he was very well known and acknowledged so my Dad, who began taking me when I was still in my stroller, definitely must have introduced his work to me.

Rembrandt’s works continue to inspire and beguile me today. Whenever I have an opportunity I visit or revisit his work. If I am traveling and know that the city or area has a Rembrandt, J.M.W. Turner, or van Gogh, or late Warhol, I will go out of my way just to see the work. As an artist, I continue to learn from these masters.

Rembrandt was a master of light and dark, ahead of his time in painting light, which of course, inspired and informs the above mentioned artists.

Although Rembrandt met with early success, as his work matured and the very work showing great emotion, humanizing the common man and, of course his work with light developed, that then strange seeming and iconoclastic work cost him commissions and patronage bring his financial problems and some heartbreak.

What is truly new in art has always been met with initial resistance. This is in no small part due to the biological fact that we need visual memories to see, and actually have difficulty seeing art that is radically new.

Below is an Essence Portrait of Rembrandt created according to the tenets of radically new Twenty-first century Post Conceptual and Ungraven Image Art theory by me, Judy Rey Wasserman. If you are familiar with Rembrandt’s work (and also the above mentioned artists),  I bet you can see their influence, although my work is fully contemporary as it uses symbols for every single stroke.

Psalm 22 (Rembrandt) by Judy Rey Wasserman

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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.
Check out the limited and open edition prints in the estore.
Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .
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