Look With Your Eyes: Sam Szafran

I think about my Instagram scrolling like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, falling a long long way. But I don't feel bad and mindless, I feel good-lost in the beautiful and thoughtful (and sometimes properly mindless) things people create. I find so many artists to love on Instagram.

Months ago, a fashion magazine archivist I follow, Julien Baulu, was at a museum and took photos of some paintings by Sam Szafran. I took a screen shot (as you do), and later got off my phone to get on a computer so that I could keep falling down that particular rabbit burrow. Sam Szafran turns out to be fascinating and a bit difficult to find information about.

Those of you with Central Asia fibers in your beings will recognize right away the components that drew me in. And yet the facts, from what I can discover, are unrelated, in as much as anything on a rather small planet can be.

(2019)

There's a documentary about his life that is still in peer-review (I know because I tracked down the director on Instagram). Here's some information from the Kickstarter page for the documentary:

"Born in 1934 in Le Marais, the Jewish ghetto in Paris, his father, uncles and aunts all perished in nazi camps. He himself was among the few children to have miraculously survived the Vel d'Hiv Round-up, in which 13,000 French Jews were herded into a cycling stadium. Aged 10 he was arrested again and imprisoned briefly in an internment camp before American troops liberated it. After the war, living down and out on the Left Bank, he overcame a heroin addiction."

He was creating until his death in September of 2019, but he seems little known outside of Paris where his works have almost exclusively been shown. His work is primarily in chalk pastels (his pastel board from his studio appears many times in his work, it often looks like a quilt to me!). I'm also so interested in the limit of his subject matter, primarily his studio, hallways and stairwells, and his plants. Over and over again. And it doesn't get old to look at. I'm enamored with the composition of this blue one.

(2006)

(2012)

(2015)

I especially like looking at the treatment of the floor areas in these works. I have an idea of how he did it, but I don't know for sure. 

I admire artists who dwell on the same scenes endlessly. The work is no less beautiful, but I can not fathom the mental focus. I am not sure if the person in the ikat-looking robe in these pieces is the artist, his wife Lilette, or someone else. 

One of my favorites (above), titled "ATELIER DE RAYMOND MASON, 2004"

Here are some photos of his studio and the scale of his work at a gallery.

Photo by Manolo Mylonas

Photo from here. 

Here is a photograph of Szafran and his friend, the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (well worth his own blog post) taken by Martine Franck in 2003. I love it. Sam owned more than 200 prints of Henri's photos that Henri had given to him, the subjects of the exhibition of Henri's work that the photo below was also displayed at. Knowing about Sam Szafran and his work feels like owning a small and secret glowing treasure. 

Look With Your Eyes: Bjorn Wiinblad

Do you ever see something on the internet that sends you into a time-sucking (if glorious) rabbit hole of obsessed fascination? Well, I do. I love feeling that rush of discovery. Of course, this latest thing I stumbled upon came before my eyes at about 11pm (a bit past my bedtime) and I stayed up way later scouring Ebay to see if I could conceivably acquire any pieces by this artist.

Many of you may know the artist Gustav Klimt who painted "the Kiss". I am QUITE fond of all things Klimt and could write several posts about the ways in which he's influenced my aesthetic and lesser known inspiring parts of his world, but today, I'll only use him in reference to Bjorn Wiinblad. I'd never heard of Wiinblad before nor seen his work, but he seems to have been prolific (hooray!) and I couldn't help but think of him as a mod version of Klimt. Can you see the similarities? Wiinblad is more playful than serene, but they both convey so much with rainbow-hued geometrics.

Of course, I'm drawn to Wiinblad's blue and white ceramics too, since I collect [mostly Asian] blue and white ceramics. Really, his work touches on so many points near and dear to me - the Arabian nights, silhouette/block cuts, gold, mid-century, romantic scenes. It seems that many of his pieces were artwork for theater posters. Happily, I think I probably can and will eventually have some of his work as part of my personal collection. His work seems obscure enough that there aren't a bunch of high quality photos available, but here are some of my favorites that I saw.

Do you like it? What have you recently found that inspired and excited you? 

Look With Your Eyes: Makoto Fujimura

Things have been quiet on the blog lately, if you haven't noticed. I go through phases of feeling that there's a lot I want to say and share, and then phases where I have 113 post drafts, but don't feel inspired to finish any of them. More basically than that, I've been barely hanging on trying to manage my school-load on top of the rest of my life. I just finished my class though, so hopefully I can get back into the blogging saddle for a bit. I actually started this art series as easy filler posts between posts that take me longer to compose, and yet I still don't get these out very much. Anyway, here's one for you, and hopefully I get to share more often in November!

My friend Kevin saw an old painting of mine that I instagrammed recently and then suggested I ;ook up this artist, Makoto Fujimura. I like his style a lot (so much gold!) and he even has a series based around the greek word "charis", which is the root of my name! I'd love to get back to making abstract paintings.

His work reminds me of a painting I saw in a textbook once, but for the life of me, I can not track down the name of the painting or the artist! All I remember was that it was a large scale painting (my favorite) that was entirely blue. Sometimes I'm tempted to think, "I could paint that" of that type of work, but the thing I loved about this particular blue painting was the artist's explanation of its meaning. He said it was a representation of God's robes, His glory filling the temple, which was so profound to me. I got this image of incredible blue, flowing robes, and the "frame" of the painting (as in, the "frame" of a photo, not a wooden picture frame) was the robe billowing over your field of vision for a moment, so immense it filled everything. I'm so taken by those moments in which I can visualize an aspect of God that I've never imagined before.

It's funny to look back on the progression of my artistic taste. I had a Russian Ballet coloring book when I was 10 or so, and I insisted on coloring the costumes in no more than 2 colors on the entire page, and they had to be analogous colors. I also had no appreciation for abstract art or modern art. Nowadays, there's no such thing as too many colors on one canvas for me, and abstract art is my favorite, especially when it plays with texture as well.

How have your preferences in art changed since you were younger?
Have you ever seen an abstract painting that made you feel something powerful? 

Look With Your Eyes: Geoffroy Amelot

My favorite kind of Lego creation. I'm sure he's not the first to use Legos as color pixels in artwork, but this particular use makes me extra happy.

By the way, this series of artwork I'm posting in between more substantial posts got its name because "look with your eyes" is what my dad used to tell my siblings and me when we'd be at a museum or somewhere else with things to look at, but that we weren't supposed to touch.

Look With Your Eyes: Stasia Burrington

This incredible artist cuts out flowers from fabric to tattoo her drawings. I'm obsessed. Her "Blush" series is my very favorite, but a little too racy to post here. If you like this piece, you like sex, and you like flowers, I think you will not be disappointed. Can't get enough of the ink hair either. 

Look with Your Eyes: Laurence Amélie

I'm just gonna start posting art sometimes. First up, this painting by Laurence Amélie.