Odilon Redon

This is a painting by the French artist Odilon Redon. 1840 ~ 1916. It's titled " Silence"
He seems to have been quite a productive sort of man and appears to generally have been content to stick to his own artistic concerns with almost no reference to developments in the greater art world.

I'm feeling a bit lazy this morning so rather than try and sum his work up here's an excerpt from "Symbolism" , by Michael Gibson.

"Standing outside trends and movements, Odilon Redon, a native of Bordeaux, produced a rich and enigmatic corpus: 'Like music', he declared, 'my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeterminate.' In contrast with Goya's monsters and Kubin's nightmare visions, his work is imbued with a melancholy passivity. While origins of this disposition must be sought in the artist's experience, the overall effect is entirely consistent with the moods of Symbolism ... : nocturnal, autumnal, and lunar rather than solar. During the early part of Redon's career, the nocturnal did indeed predominate. Only later did he admit the light of day. His mature production began around 1875 when Redon entered the shadowy world of charcoal and the lithographer's stone. This period yielded sequences such as [Guardian Spirit of the Waters (1878)] and [Cactus Man (1881)]. Redon made it clear that they had been inspired by his dreams, and they inspire in the spectator a conviction like that of dreams.

"It was only in the 1890s that he began to use the luminous, musical tones of pastel and oils. These became the dominant media of the last fifteen years of his life. Redon's art was always commanded by his dreams, but the thematic content of his work over his last twenty years is more densely mythical, brimming with new-found hope and light which rose quite unexpectedly out of the depths of the artist's personality. This is particularly apparent in the various canvasses depicting the chariot of Apollo, the god of the sun."

I've also been drawn to many of the ideas he writes about in his diaries to himself. This one is a current favourite.

"Materials have their own secrets to reveal, they have their own genius. It is through them that the oracle speaks"

take a moment and listen...

...I dig it, dig it , dig it...

this

and Pascal Obispo...this track from the first album I bought of his...; here you go

and one of my favourite contemporary Chanson singers Patricia Kaas

...but as a final standard setter; Marie Carmen singing the same song...

and she does it so sexily...

while we're listening to all this French music I might as well slip in one of my favourite bits of opera. It's, uncharacteristically, not in Italian, or German!....but in French. This is the famous male duet from Bizet's "the Pearl Fishers"

It expresses the devotion of 2 friends, a younger man and his older mentor, to one another. In the song we learn that they are both in love with the same woman but to preserve their friendship they both pledge to abandon the lady. Needless to say, the younger man cannot resist the urging of his heart and the story evolves toward it's inevitable end. Here, however, ideals and emotion are pure.

The actual story of this particular recording, the gold standard in terms of this song, is very interesting too.

I suppose I ought to get back up to date now, so here's something that makes me feel very proud to be English, the way this man was seen purely for what he expressed....not what he looked like. Absolutely brilliant; here's the link.

Enjoy, and Namaste.

Lots more words ...and some more pictures too.

I've just posted an essay, which provides a bit of an overview of Traditional Japanese metalwork, over on the Iron Brush forum. Here's the link.

...and in case you missed it, I also posted a gallery of most of the tsuba I've made over the last 20 or more years. Here's the link to that collection.

Namaste, Ford

Can tsuba really be art?

I’m posting this response to a little discussion that’s been rumbling on, on the iron brush forum. I’m putting it here because I don’t want my opinion to be seen as “official policy” there just because I started the thing. I must admit I really do find that sort of discussion, about functionality , to be very much out of place on that forum. The Bladesmiths forum, Sword Forum International and E-budo are all far more appropriate places for such ponderings.

The only aspect of functionality that is relevant to art is what it brings to our interaction with it. I say interaction because it is a process of exploration. Of the work, and of oneself. This is where the fun lies, this process of being changed by what we study, and then, again, seeing what we're learned in a different light...and so the cycle repeats.

Some art is capable of keeping this process of re-evaluation going far longer than others...the greatest art...perhaps, never stops, as long as we don't.

To return to my babies, tsuba, there are in fact a number of practical considerations I am always working from. The plates ability to withstand a sword strike is absolutely not one of them however. I seriously doubt it ever was.

A very common guard at the time when warfare was rife in old Japan, was merely lacquered leather. Hardly bullet proof! ;)
There was also a fashion for guard-less swords. When we do see guards on older, utilitarian, swords they are often very thin, 3 or even 2mm thick. Clearly not too much concern with anything more than the bare minimum.

For me, the "practical" considerations have to do with the feel of the guard against my hand when on the hilt. I don't want a cheese grater rubbing away at my flesh The size and shape is very relevant too, I don't want it impeding my grasp of the hilt when I draw the sword.

The most easily recognised, visual, consideration is the decoration and it's placement in relation to how the sword is worn. This "display" is probably the most significant aspect of a tsuba's function. It signals the taste and sensibilities of the wearer, whether hardened warrior, officious bureaucrat or ostentatious merchant. Once these aspects are fully understood, and become unconscious, the real work of trying to sculpt your art begins.

This sort of work is not quite sculpture and not yet painting, we have far too many restrictions in that regard, but, we can have the best of both worlds...if we learn the medium well. This is what I'm engaged in, it's what excites me.

I won't argue that there are not a lot of "show off", and" parade" type tsuba in existence but just because there are millions of "chocolate box " style painters out there too doesn't mean that a painter can't still achieve something meaningful using that particular art form. So too, there have been many, truly great, artists in the miniature art form of tsuba. The language they developed is still not well known, beyond a few, very refined, connoisseurs.

As for defending myself, what is there to defend? Despite appearances, I am not trying single-handedly to preserve a tradition , I merely offer my experience and what little I do know, that works. I have tried to present my rationale in these matters too. There is not much more I can do. Traditions only survive, in a vital way, if the ground out of which they have grown is well assimilated. Only then can we say that we are working as part of a particular continuum. Anything less is just clip-art.

And by "we", I mean anyone who actually wants to try and make that journey into Classical Japanese metalwork. Not every one is that bothered to, they may have equally valid artistic concerns that lead them elsewhere.


I must confess to a little discomfort though, at the superficial borrowing of the obvious, and most easily applied, aspects of the tradition I value so much. It is a very sophisticated language that the master metal artists of the past have left us, a language I am trying to interpret , as accurately as I am able, so that I can gain something more than merely fashionable gimmicks.

To paraphrase the 18th century Chinese writer, Shen Tsung-ch'ien ( The Art of Painting, 1781 )

Do not slavishly copy the masters of the past, seek instead that which they sought.

Namaste, and keep tappin’

What matters...

I just watched this on youtube, it started my day off pretty well....perhaps it'll do the same for you.

Here's the link

p.s, it's not naughty at all ;-)

oops!...wrong link...that one is actually a bit naughty ( in a funny way )....but I know you'll definitely want to watch it now ;-) so I'll leave it there.

The one I meant to link to is this
It's possibly more wholesome. This was the winning entry to a competition organised by the Vancouver Film School. You can see the other 2 winners by following the links from their home page.

Enjoy.

Some light entertainment...

Well I suppose if you're still here with me you deserve a treat. Here's a sequence of images, in reverse order because I'm too tired to redo them now, of some trials I made to work out the effect I was after with my dragonfly wings. The image above shows the final version but this is not one of the wings I'll actually be setting in the stone. Those ones are under way now and will hopefully be a little more delicate, and tidy. Practice, practice, practice. Oh...my son, Kyle, wants to apologise for his bitten nail, those are his fingers,he's quite embarrassed about it but his are so much more youthful looking than mine ;-)

The effect you see here is what I was after and this will be what the wings on the finished piece will look like. It's perched on a section of the iron patina I'm toying with at this point also, not sure yet......and don't bother asking me how I went about this, because I'm not telling...go figure out your own madness.

This is a brooch I made to see if my idea of cutting metal away behind the mother of pearl wing would have any effect. I think it does, it really glows when light gets behind the piece. With the gods on my side the effect on the stone will be what I imagine. I've even been thinking about having some fibre optics in the back of the stone to give the wings an " inner glow".

The silver wing is rendered in nunome-zogan and was just another little test of an idea. I think it has interesting possibilities. The body of the brooch is iron, of course.

This was the first version, and is awful, I think. I engraved the pattern into the mother of pearl, using a hand pushed scorper, then filled the lines with black urushi and polished level. It seemed a logical approach to trying to capture the feeling of the wings.

The end result looks far too hard, and harsh. The actual engraving was a shambles too, which didn't help. The effect of the lacquer was to make it look like a cheap printed design. I had to also figure out an effective way of transferring the pattern onto the shell. The solution was actually obvious, and was used a great deal in the Renaissance. Well....you didn't expect me to give that secret away too... did you? ;-)

p.s, you did get it...didn't you? My clever play on the use of the word light in the title...

a little clarification...

I wrote the following post late last night and it wasn't really a "well thought out" statement at all. This morning, re-reading it, I've made a few minor word changes but it remains a reasonable expression of part of what I feel.

I should say at this point, that the opinion I hold here relates only to the tradition I personally have experience of. The other thing to keep in mind that this notion of "tradition" is not at all a static thing. A tradition is a living thing, it continues to evolve, and be enlivened by those who work from within it's influence. One of the points I try to make in the post that follows is the need to first absorb that influence and to understand the guiding spirit of the tradition, only then is it really possible to do your work and for it to be seen as adding to that continuum.

It might seem that this, rather strict, approach denies the student the opportunity to express their own creative urges and may even crush their emerging sense of originality. I think this is an illusion, if that urge is so easily snuffed out then I wonder how fiercely it burned in the first place. I believe the modern tendency to treat the student like some delicate and precious "new born" is far too self indulgent. It invariably results in work that is utterly self-referential and shallow. How could it possibly be any other way?

The masters of the past, who have been my inspiration and guide, didn't treat this work as fun, it wasn't a hobby. Of course, people today, particularly in the wealthier parts of the world, are able to dabble with whatever they like, and to their hearts content. And that is not a bad thing, nor would I deny them their fun. But let's not deceive ourselves, a 1000 years of tradition has a lot more value than merely being the source of some part-time amusement. That incredibly rich vein is available to anyone who is prepared to truly become part of it, and that takes a lifetimes commitment.

some thoughts on being a good student

It has been a while now...since I last had the urge to get all philosophical late at night. In fact it's been a while since I last had anything really heartfelt to say at all.

I'm learning that this type of intimate journal entry, sort of dialogue, and what would be the point if it weren't intimate and honest, is not quite as easy in the, apparently, impersonal atmosphere of the internet compared to my preferred format...having a decent meal followed by a good drink together.

In those convivial circumstances I have no difficulties opening my heart and revealing all my frailties, I know...you can't imagine I have any...but I do... I'm all too human, or expounding on my "grand theories". The written word is so final, there is almost no going back, it seems so absolute. I'm a particularly opinionated sort of chap, in the most reasonable sort of way...in person, honestly! And there's the rub. We're not getting getting it together, "in person". I actually really enjoy provoking an original response from those I'm engaging with...as much as I would love the same to be stimulated in me.

Naturally enough, this isn't always the preferred form of engagement on the net. If the use of the word "engagement" sounds a bit combative I make no apologies...nothing will get hurt other than ego's...so what's the big deal. Why do we take ourselves so seriously? and surely, we can separate who we are, from a bunch of vaguely constructed opinions.

I happen to be quite good at defending my opinions, but I suspect that this says more about my abilities to "box clever", than the truth of them. Similarly, I find that many opinions I encounter, and challenge, are in fact very poorly conceived. Never-the-less, we seem to be prepared to go to war for our opinions!

Recently, I was prompted by a rather unfortunately expressed thought, on my forum, to respond in a deliberately provocative way. I hope the author of that post will forgive me drawing attention to this brief exchange but he in fact did me a great service.

I don't need to elaborate on the stimulus but my response was summed up thus; "the master serves the tradition...most useful students are merely a means to that end".

I hadn't previously thought of it in this way before, my response was an almost instinctual reaction. I won't go into a messy analysis of how it is I feel this way, or even if I am "right" in this assumption. No-one told me this, as some universal, traditional truth...so where did it come from? The answer to that is obviously bound up with who I am...and that will take a long night to begin to reveal.

What immediately caught my attention with this statement, and it is sort of cheeky to quote oneself, was the ambiguity contained therein.

At first glance it seems incredibly arrogant and unfeeling. Particularly in a world where the student, who is inevitably paying for their instruction, feels that the instructor owes them something. That's the first mistake the teacher makes...he ( or she ) hands control to the student. How absurd is that? I've never charged anyone for anything I've been able to impart, perhaps I'm a fool to give away so freely what has cost me so much. Perhaps this is also why I often get the impression what I have to offer is taken so lightly. That aside, as I've not taken the kings coin...I need not bow to his whims. ( here I'm rather obscurely referring to the consumer idea that the customer is king ).

In my view, if someone seeks your teaching then they must empty their cup and be prepared to learn. There is no discussion involved. This is not a two way sort of deal...the opinions and feelings of the student are irrelevant. In time...on the odd occasion, the student may actually, eventually have something original or significant to say. But, it is a profound arrogance and display of self indulgence, for a student to think, at the very start of their journey, that they may have anything of real consequence to express, in the face of hundreds of years of the accumulated understanding of previous masters.

It's very fashionable to pay lip service to traditions of late, and we hear people humbly expressing their respect for past masters and their respective traditions. I really don't see much more that words though, it's as though it's all about association, to make us feel a sense of importance...or significance, and that demeans the past.

We really aren't that important, if we amount to anything at all in our all to brief lives it is due to so much of what has gone before us. The contemporary tendency to place the highest value, in fact the only thing worth anything, on the individual, loses sight of our tiny place in the continuity of humankind.

I am well aware that my, rather idiosyncratic, view is something of an anachronism in this age, but the way I see it, that's all the more reason to stand by it.

So,..to return to my provocative quote ( of myself...what a sneaky trick? ).

There is always a master somewhere up ahead...you'll recognise them when you aren't able to understand where he ( or she ) is coming from. That is as it should be, if you understood it all then you'd be at least as masterful. There are people out there who are pursuing excellence, they are rarely the most lovely people you'll meet, but if you recognise some small spark that draws you to them, then you must approach like a child in the face of a new and wondrous world...and maybe, just maybe...if you're very lucky, you'll get invited on a unique journey. A journey not without cost...or peril. One where you will learn all about the things you set out to explore, but most importantly...you'll learn about yourself... and it's a bloody good ride.

While on that ride you'll discover at some point that in fact the person you thought was the master is also a student, and that your objectives are not so far apart as you may have once imagined. The true reverence is when this is understood and you understand your part in the continuum.


Good night and Namaste

The Making of the Kagamibuta, "Basho". a photo-essay

I’ve just uploaded 55 images, into an online photo album, that illustrate the making of a Kagamibuta I created last year.

The piece is titled “ Basho” after the famous Japanese haiku poet, Matsuo Basho. He took the name “Basho”, which means banana tree, in honour of a tree in his little garden which he loved. I conceived my little tribute to the poet as a “Metal Haiku”. I hoped to evoke the same sort of feeling a good haiku poem does and to craft my Kagamibuta with the same sort of delicate and careful arrangement . In fact I coined the term “Metal Haiku” as the name of a group of 12 Kagamibuta I made in 2006/7.

I’ve not offered any explanations as to the processes and techniques because I think the images are actually self explanatory. In traditional training situations there is little opportunity for the student to ask questions of his teacher so he must learn very quickly to “steal with his eyes”. By looking carefully at the images you will be able to find everything you may need to know to understand what I did.

In fact, the extreme enlargement of these images would of course not be seen my any pupil in the past…you’re seeing this as it’s really never been seen before.

I’ve included a number of different images of the completed piece because it is so difficult to capture the real feel of the object in one shot. You’ll also notice the constantly changing lighting of the images, this is to a certain extent unavoidable in a workshop situation as it would be far too time consuming to replicate the exact light each time I took an image.

The basic material of the disc is mild steel and the inlaid leaves are in 2 different alloys of a brass/bronze type called sentoku. You’ll see the selection of colours and metal I was considering using and the larger disc of metal which is actually the base of a badly damaged Meiji period vase I restored years ago. My attempt at recycling ;-). The bowl is boxwood and has been stained with potassium permanganate and tea.

Here’s the link; The Making of the Kagamibuta, "Basho".

You can view the individual images or select the slide show option. If you select a single image you’ll also be able to view a very close up shot by using the zoom feature located at the top, right ,of the area around the picture.

I hope you find this photo-essay interesting.

On-line photo album

I've just been playing with a handy photograph album bit of software called "Picasa". It's offered as a free download from Google. Here's a link to some images of Japan.

I'll eventually get all of my images up there but it will take a while....this software does make the job so much easier, and quicker though.

I've also been suffering from a severe case of internetlessness for the last 2 weeks as my server ( ironically named 24-7online! ) has been playing silly buggers switching over to an apparently faster service. I'm not holding my breath...but it would be handy to be able to upload stuff without having to wait ages...and keep losing my connection.

As soon as normal service resumes I'll get some more stuff on the blog.

Namaste, Ford