Dov Zeller's Blog - Posts Tagged "art"

art with violins

This is my first GR blog post! Hope you enjoy and look forward to hearing your thoughts.

In my first published novel The Right Thing to Do at the Time , I write about a violinist who is inspired by niggunim --Jewish melodies that are hummed, often during times of prayer, and to which verses of psalms or other liturgical poems are often sung.

I love niggunim as well as the violin and I love the way violin music that comes out of Jewish traditions sometimes takes themes from niggunim (sometimes upbeat, sometimes melancholy, rich, and soulful, sometimes all of the above) and converse with them and explore and expand on their themes.

For a little while, in my early thirties, I tried to play the violin. (For my thirtieth birthday I gave up riding motorcycles and bought myself a violin.) I even had a lesson with one of my favorite klezmer violinists! It was not the best lesson, but fun to meet someone whose music I appreciate so much.

Well, lately I've been enjoying exploring the paintings of Soutine and when I found his violin portrait (still life? if anything by Soutine can be considered 'still'
) I found I kept going back to it and looking at it again, trying to understand the strange mood of it and the violin's placement between a baguette and a fish. Perhaps music is sustenance. And the fact of an instrument not being played a kind of sadness? I wonder if this was painted at a time when Soutine was impoverished and scrounging for meals and material for still life paintings--and painting what he would eat before he ate it.Not that I am saying he ate the violin...(It almost looks like it's made of taffy, or that it's under water and the water is rippling as Soutine paints it.)

In any case, I decided to go in a search of other paintings with violins. I found some really intriguing images and wanted to share them. If there are images you'd like to share please post them in comments!

Thanks and best and hope you are all managing as well as possible.

Soutine

Chagall

Suzanne Valadon

Matisse

Renee Druet

Béla Czóbel

Braque

Oscar Penalber

Pavel Kotlarevsky

Raoul Dufy

Art at top of page by Gary Bodnar

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Published on December 21, 2017 10:08 • Tags: art, music, soutine

Voldy and Pom and other updates

Where to begin...?

It's almost spring. But still pretty chilly out there. (Sixteen degrees Fahrenheit when I woke up this morning.) And maybe another nor'easter this week? It's up in the air of course, as weather tends to be. (Well, and also down on the ground, and everywhere else.)

Soon the crocuses and daffodils will stubborn their way up out of the ground to show off their tenacity and frills. Flowers are tough and pragmatic. Sometimes they're charming assassins. They're social beings, and brilliant tactical artists. To be honest, I find them a bit terrifying, but I adore them, too and look forward to all the greenery that will soon be struggling up through the thawing ground.

Meanwhile, I'll keep taking photos of sunrises, sunsets, snow, and house sparrows.

DSC_6501_house_sparrow

What else?

I've been reading some wonderful books and articles lately and I'm really grateful.

My roommate lent me a novel, The Original Face, written by a friend of his, Guillaume Morissette, and it was a wonderfully funny though bleak exploration of relationships and work in contemporary times. And, the narrator is an artist (and talks a lot about glitch art). Before reading this I'd not heard of glitch art, which I am now really intrigued by. (See images at bottom of post!)

And, because of a quote from the book:

“The entire plot of Harry Potter would have been prevented by getting Voldemort a Pomeranian."

Well, it inspired. me to make some images of Voldemort with a Pomeranian. (My next project is to turn it--or something--into glitch art...)

voldy_pom_rrr_smile1

Meanwhile, several exciting books are out recently by transmasculine writers. Genderbound by Calvin Payne-Taylor, Avi Cantor Has Six Months to Live by Sacha Lamb, Paul Takes the form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor.

Here is an article about some more transmasculine writers. https://www.pride.com/transgender/201...

And there are lots of comics coming out by trans/queer/non-binary folks. Here is a Buzzfeed article that profiles some artists. https://www.buzzfeed.com/willvarner/2...

My book The Right Thing to Do at the Time was officially released this week and a Jewcy review came out the same day. http://jewcy.com/category/jewish-arts...

And Eunoia Review published a piece I wrote about illness, spoonie communities, and Jen Brea's documentary "Unrest". https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/20...

So, lots happening.

Thanks for checking out my post! I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Below is a sampling of glitch art, but there is lots more out there!

Best & bwap (be as well as possible),
Dov