Robert Francis James

The British art critic David Sylvester asked AbEx painter Willem de Kooning in 1960 whether painted forms should be recognizable. De Kooning replied that painted forms “ought to have an emotion of a concrete experience.” Today we’d more likely say that painted forms should convey how they feel in the moment. If that seems solipsistic, it’s not; it’s realistic . If you crave something outside realism, look to advertising photography, not painting. “I am very happy to see that grass is green,” de Kooning went on to tell Sylvester. “At one time, it was very daring to make a figure red or blue. I think now it is just as daring to make it flesh-colored.” What de Kooning meant was that the world enjoys a primacy. Rightly or wrongly, we take it as the case . The world is a vast public domain, filled to the brim with identifiable content that we share. “I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it,” philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty said. “But this ...

Little souls who thirst for fight, these men were born to drill and die. — Stephen Crane Like 190 thousand other Irishmen, Mike Folliard, my cousin six times removed, fled County Roscommon in the 1850s to escape starvation. He wound up living on a farm outside leafy Franklin, New Jersey. Mike was 18 in late July 1861, when Congress authorized formation of an army of 500 thousand volunteers—a call to arms that was immediately met by men like Mike, who enlisted for the thrill of marching into battle and the steady paycheck promised (Mike mailed all his army pay to Ireland, as boat fare for a widowed sister). On August 27, Mike was mustered into the 1st New Jersey Cavalry (the “Jersey Cavaliers”) at Trenton. At some point the next month, while stationed in Washington, DC, he visited a photography studio—likely that of Matthew Brady—to have his portrait taken in his handsome, new uniform. That was the last time he’d do anything so civilized. Just a few weeks later, he found himsel...

Meet me Saturday in downtown Lewes at the Delaware By Hand Outdoor Artisan Market . I have lots of fresh, new paintings and will be offering special show-only prices. Sponsored by the Biggs Museum of American Art, Delaware by Hand will feature artists from around the state. You’ll find paintings; sculpture; jewelry; ceramics; glass; baskets; prints; photos; and wood, metal, and fiber art objects. The show opens at 10 am. The address is Zwaanendael Park, 102 Kings Highway, Lewes, DE 19958. The post Delaware by Hand appeared first on Original still life oil paintings for sale l Robert Francis James .

The sentimental person thinks things will last; the romantic person has a desperate confidence they won’t. — F. Scott Fitzgerald “High culture is paranoid about sentiment,” the late painter Thomas Kinkade once said. The undisputed “ king of kitsch ,” he often compared his art to Walt Disney’s. “My paintings beckon you into a world that provides an alternative to your nightly news broadcast,” he told the New York Times . “ People are reminded that it’s not all ugliness in the world.” While loathe to compare myself to Kinkade, I share his view about our need to get away : we all need, from time to time, to escape to a place outside current events, because that’s where serenity lies . But I understand, as well, that paintings shouldn’t only center on hearth and home. Painters need to shout fire sometimes, to “ break the silence of indifference .” That means abandoning pretty subjects and painting things that are ugly and shocking: grotesque images of sorrows, pov...

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. — Ecclesiastes A fellow artist expressed to me yesterday her disappointment that realist painters—even of the caliber of Monet and Van Gogh—never add anything original to our culture. Photographers have a word for that wistful feeling:  vemödalen . Vemödalen —the feeling everything has already been done—was coined by the Swiss blogger John Koening, whose  Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows defines “emotions we feel, but don’t have words to express.” According to Koening, v emödalen  is “the frustration of photographing something amazing, when thousands of identical photos already exist.” Those thousands of precedent photos turn mine into “something hollow, pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself.” By this definition, vemödalen  (a word doubtless derived from the Swedish  vemod , meaning “melancholy”) ...

Informally, I call many of my paintings depictions of “nostalgic food.” Viewers who react to these paintings usually respond with cheer, and will immediately mention memories of childhood. Among other things, I’ve painted sandwiches, donuts, Twinkies, Peeps, and bottles of soda pop. Right now, I’m trying to capture a Moon Pie, next to the Choo Choo , Chattanooga’s greatest  claim to fame . The word nostalgia comes from the Greek words nostos , meaning homecoming, and algos , meaning ache. The term was coined in 1688 by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer . He wanted to name a psychosis prevalent among soldiers and handmaids that was similar to paranoia, except that sufferers were manic with longing, instead of persecution. The psychosis was nothing new. Throughout the Thirty Years War, which had ended in 40 years earlier, nostalgia had so afflicted Switzerland’s soldiers that anyone who played an old-time song in camp at night would be put before a firing squad. While no fan...

The pump don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handle. — Bob Dylan Just in time for the 60th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s “ Subterranean Homesick Blues “—which enshrined a vandalized pump within America’s literary canon— an unknown artist in Denmark has vandalized a famous painting by one of nation’s most revered 20th-century painters. Ibi-Pippi Hedegaard was arrested last Friday for vandalizing a painting by Asger Jorn that hangs in the Museum Jorn in Silkeborg, Denmark. Hedegaard claims he only wished to spark a debate about “authorship.” The 1959 painting, The Disquieting Duckling, comprises an appropriated image of a countryside home overpainted with a garish duck. Jorn belonged to a left-leaning school of painters who had hoped to challenge the traditional divide between “good” and “bad” art. Hedegaard, who signed his name to the painting in permanent marker and pasted a photo of himself to it, says he was advancing the school’s ideas. But Hedgaard has no inter...