Poussin's Humour

picture it

[C-K note-book 1983]

   

    Even the clouds seem almost devoid of life.

    Part of a windmill and a tall tree on the
extreme left stop the eye from sliding out of
the picture.

   

with long cattle prod

acrylic & ball-point pen on recycled paper - text: 'with long cattle prod' a phrase used a few times by Hunter S Thompson

Theo Schoon & Chris Kraus interviews with Martin Rumsby

Martin Rumsby's blog includes tape-recorded interview with Theo Schoon - about 70 pp transcribed - this will be of particular interest for New Zealand readers  

http://rumsby.net/martin/interviews/theo+schoon 

for photos of some of Schoon's works see

http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/search.aspx?advanced=colProProductionMakers%3a%22Schoon%2c+Theo%22+colCollectionGroup%3aCH

See also interview with Chris Kraus on the same blog

& photos of Rumsby with Schoon, Tony Fomison, Chris Barrett & Richard Lomas 

http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=1008249218391#/photo.php?pid=199932&id=1307349248&ref=mf

Andrew Drummond was not responsible for the Chch 'pile of coal'

I shd have known. On the TV1 Breakfast 

yesterday there was an item on a $20,000

 sculpture on the site of an old demolished 

gasworks that had been dirtying & air-

polluting the district for years. Memorial 

for this is a 4' high [?] black conical 

thing - a concrete [?] casting of a neat 

conical pile of coal spray-painted black 

with a neat concrete edging. 

Tall thin man working doing the spraying 

was the one visual - cdnt see who it was 

properly. And they never said a name. 

I thought that has to be Andrew -- who 

else works with coal? - he's been doing 

that for a decade [or much more?]. Remember 

the giant wheel in a Shortland st foyer, 

amazing visible from the street. & all 

those wonderful steaming machines with 

coal I saw at Vavasour Godkin Gallery &

in Dunedin City Art Gallery a few years 

back. I thought one of the tilting machines 

in the Vavasour Godkin show would suit 

Sheryl Millener's house.

I liked the casting part of it: like 

casting in bronze a statue of a local 

worthy. But then I had doubts about the 

spraying it black, that kind of simulation 

of materials instead of the actuality is 

really not what I'd have expected from 

Andrew. 

Anyhow, I thought it was a good thing 

he'd been asked to do anything at all for 

Christchurch, & remarkable that he'd accepted

considering his excellent design for a bridge 

over the Avon has succumbed to Chch brainless 

conservatism wanting to preserve the Avon as 

an old-time pretence it was the Cambridge 

[UK] backs with willows & expensive Englished 

gardens & villas as stand ins for the colleges. 

That whole scheme had ended as a financial 

disaster for him. 

I don't know what to make of the fact that 

this representation of a pile of coal, in some 

way piggy-backing on Andrew's work with coal, 

was approved by a Community Board four years 

ago, hard on the heels of the bridge fiasco. 

The most amusing part of it was that Paul 

Henry tried to run the old populist TV bullshit

'is it art?', but the other presenters shushed 

him, and former broadcaster & now mayor of 

Chch Bob Parker defended it competently.   

 

Here is a photo [courtesy of the artist] 

of one of the real deal Andrew 

Drummond machines from 2001, refurbished 

for a show scheduled for the Chch Art 

Gallery in 2010. Title: Room for Observation.

"It uses coal and takes suspended samples 

rushing around in the flasks, all driven by 

compressed air. The title suggest there must be 

room for observing". Andrew Drummond. 

17th December, 2008.

  

  

    

Guy von Sturmer - new paintings

This painting, one of two new ones, is 11" x 14" Old Holland 

oils over acrylic. Months of work in preparation for them.

"Only five different tubes of colour are used in one of 

those wet paintings and tiny amounts go a long way,

the pigment is so dense and pure. They scumble 

if you want them to but need a light touch. Stroked 

they smooth out sweetly as". Guy von Sturmer

Bruce Barber showing at Te Tuhi

There was a free bus-trip from Artspace to Te Tuhi at 

1.30 Saturday & back again at 3.30 advertised on the 

Te Tuhi web-site, but there were only four of us + 

Cam McCracken, the Director of Te Tuhi, waiting for 

the bus on the hot pavement outside Artspace at the 

appointed hour. 

Important show: Bruce Barber's New Zealand work - 1973-1976

- was decisively linked to performance & installation - & tho

installation is widely practised in NZ, younger practitioners are

blankly unaware of Bruce & other early practitioners. 

Information is 

usefully to be discovered in the small edition

book edited by Jim Allen & Wystan Curnow "The New Sculpture" is so

long out of print that it rarely appears on the 2nd hand book market.

Recently Philip Dadson beaming with delight showed off a copy he'd 

found. My 2 copies were both stolen from my university office long ago &

I only found a copy, 5th July 2007, de-accessioned [to my disgust] from

North Shore Libraries. 

This must be the first proper showing of that work of Bruce's in NZ. Old friends 

& associates & slightly younger artists turned out for the opening. Blair French 

came over from Sydney with beautiful prints of Bruce's early photos. Anne Elias

came into conversation with both Blair French and Julian Dashper. I hear she 

saw the Sydney version of the show: "His retrospective

is opening on Thursday so I will go along - the first time I saw a

performance of his was 1973. I think he had a bucket on his head!"

There were videos of performances - notably 'Bucket Action' 1973, with 

still-photos too. The video was so degraded from the original open-reel [?] 

that it had an eerily distant look, like bad transmission from the moon, 

visually enticing, veiled mystery.

I'd never seen W O R K E R R U L E - originally shown in Toronto - a red letter on each full-size door in a wood partition stretching right across the gallery, which on 

 the reverse side has that sweet phrase: W O R K T O R U L E -

  playing off the ambiguity of 'to' - in conformity with/in order to. 

Bruce Barber wrote about the piece in 

Splash 2 December 1984. He explained that it all the fittings and doors 

were standard - that unemployed painters were employed under specific

terms of employment. They were given the choice of a fixed hourly rate 

or quoting for the job. 

There has been some effort to get the 70s things better known: Tina Barton works at it. Robert Leonard was involved and so is Wystan  Curnow. 

There was the great gathering of the old hands 'Interventions' in Chch; the 'Action Replay" exhibitions. 

& Robert Leonard when at the Auckland Art Gallery had them buy a partially remade Jim Allen's  O-AR #1. One of the strange things about that was the AAG didn't show the work, and didn't seem to know very much about it or why they had got it. That honour went to Leonhard Emmerling at the St Paul St Gallery of AUT. 

Leonhard also put on a show of Philip Dadson's work. Unlike most of the local NZ critics and curators he took intense interest in the early 70s, spending lots of time interviewing & so on. 

At the time it was shown & during the whole of the 70s when this kind of activity was still going on, it was dissed or ignored or given low-ranking compared to painting & even sculpture by many who were writing about art. It has even been given some very peculiar coverage in what passes for the literature, by people who at the time sniggered & made derogatory comments about the people involved & who saw next to nothing of the work themselves. 

In fact, it got shoved into the far distance, which is par for the course in NZ, making it more difficult for younger artists working along similar lines to get any credibility. 

The best ruse for the artists concerned could be to feign awful terminal states of health. Then there'll be a rush to claim eternal friendship for the work from its former detractors. It'll be great fodder for thesis writers in another 25 years. 

This is just a brief note to say how pleased I am that these works have 

been made visible again. 

The bus was supposed to go back at 3.30. Waiting for it to go I sat and 

talked with the driver for about quarter of an hour. And eventually thought

I should round up the other passengers. 

My [indifferent] photos of the opening are on http://www.flickr.com/photos/fflap

  

bloggo or blotto

Question 1 [the big question]: 

when is a blog-review more useful to an artist's self-understanding than to the bloggers' reputations as critics?

Question 2 [the technique-al question] : 

when an artist presents something that is unfamiliar to bloggers, [which may frequently be the case with a new exhibition or new project or variation on older projects] ] should the bloggers 

a] peremptorily declare it unacceptable to the bloggers' taste [aka prejudices], 

&

invent possible bad intentions &/or bad faith on the part of the artist?

or

b] exercise their skills to inform themselves of circumstances of the unfamiliar, 

& exercise their critical skills to take thought about the processes & workings that bring such things about? 

   

Bambury/Wittgenstein' - a 2nd preliminary note

The key work for Bambury/Wittgenstein is

Remarks on Colour: Bemerkungen Die Farben. L.Wittgensten, G. E. M. Anscombe. trans. Linda L McAlister. University of California Press, 1978.

This was read by colour-field painters in New York -  & by Bambury in the early 80s.

A recent re-reading prompted the title of his current show.  

http://philosophy.hku.hk/courses/old/laurencegoldstein/phil2060l16.html

useful discussion of Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour.

Stephen Bambury's 'Considering Wittgenstein' - preliminary note

Interested in the relevance of the work of 

the philosopher 

to that of the painter, 

and vice-versa, I have collected 

just a few examples of writing on Wittgenstein & the arts 

to be found on the internet & in libraries. 

I note that, for any painter the relevance 

of painting as a form of demonstration or

 a rhetoric 

of explanation, addressed 

to those who look at paintings 

with care is always of interest. And it has been 

for as long 

as painting and knowledge have been 

intertwined - that is to say, 

in the 'West', for maybe two and a half 

thousand years. 

[This will be obvious to Poussinistes].  

PRELIMINARY NOTE  RE- STEPHEN BAMBURY’S EXHIBITION:

 

‘CONSIDERING WITTGENSTEIN’ 2008, Jensen Gallery, Auckland

 

Section xi of ‘Philosophical Investigations’ pp193e-231e is interesting reading in this context.

 

A few items found in an hour’s search on the internet are suggestive of the extent of contemporary interest in Wittgenstein’s thought in the arts. 

 

1.  http://www.fordhampress.com/detail.html?cat=28&id=9780823228805

 

The book advances the radical proposition that the field in which architecture and philosophy operate includes linguistic and spatial practices. It develops innovative forms of interdisciplinary analyses to demonstrate that the philosophical positions put forth by Wittgenstein’s two main works are literally unthinkable outside of their respective conceptions of space: the view from above in the early work and the view from within constructed by the late work.

 

2. http://sammelpunkt.philo.at:8080/536/1/Wittgenstein_Art__Craft.pdf

 

If we try to summarize the results of Hertz’s achievement for philosophy, we

end up with a view of philosophy startlingly like Wittgenstein’s: Philosophy is an

activity, not a theory. Philosophical problems are not solved but dissolved on the

basis of an alternative representation of the problematic matter. Philosophy does not

stipulate how language must be used but shows us on the basis of a perspicuous

contrast how our conceptual confusions are attached to particular ways of

representing things.

These confusions are linked to different rhetorical aims in developing our

representations of physical reality. Philosophy is a matter of inventing new and

illuminating ways of representing matters that have hitherto confused us. Skill and

imagination are thus absolutely essential to it.

 

see particularly 4. The Palais Stonborough: An example of the relationship between art and

craftsmanship in Wittgenstein

 

 

Wittgenstein considered that his philosophizing stood a definite relationship to

art but was, nevertheless, to be distinguished from art. In 1930 the one-time follower

of Schopenhauer would write:

 

“Now it seems to me that there is another way of capturing the world sub specie aeterni apart

from the work of the artist. It is – I think – the way of thought, which can fly over the world as it

were and the leaves it as it is – observing it from above in flight.” (C & V, 5).

 

The difference between the two is that philosophy is “unpoetic” and therefore

is not art. It is more like religion inasmuch as it simply unveils things as they are with

a certain passion or sense of wonder (in this sense he could speak of his way of

looking at things as religious, while denying being a religious man). In order to

present such a Hertzian clear view of things Wittgenstein strove in the manner of a

craftsman to develop a set of spiritual techniques for reminding us of all those

incredibly important things, whose simplicity and familiarity prevent us from seeing

them.

These techniques amounted to a curious way of writing fiction with a view to

reminding us of striking facts that the surface grammar of language tempts us to

pass over – e.g., the plurality of activities that correspond to the many modes of

“thinking”. This is why he would insist that philosophy must be analytic without its

being what is conventionally understood under the rubric analytical philosophy. This

too was for him a matter of practicing a craft, one which, indeed, produced objects of

great beauty which could only be grasped in the basis of great intellectual effort.

 

Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: see writings of

Garry L. Hagberg  http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_L._Hagberg    

“author, professor, philosopher, and jazz musician. He currently holds a chair in philosophy at the University of East Anglia.

Hagberg became a professor of philosophy at Bard College in 1990, and subsequently the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics. The chair was endowed during his time at Bard. He has been the recipient of many fellowships and grants from Dartmouth College; Cambridge University Library; Institute for the Theory and Criticism of the Visual Arts; British Library, London; St. John’s College, and Cambridge University.

He received his B.A., M.A. and Ph. D. at the University of Oregon and conducted his postdoctoral research at Cambridge University.

Hagberg is the author of Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory and Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James and Literary Knowledge. He has contributed to such publications as Historical Reflections, Henry James Review, Philosophy, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Mind, New Novel Review, Philosophical Quarterly, Ethics, Perspectives of New Music, Encyclopedia of the Essay, and Encyclopedia of Aesthetics.

Hagberg is an accomplished jazz guitar player. He is a member of the Atlantic Jazz Trio, which tours in Europe and the United States”.

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen Bambury's 'Considering Wittgenstein' - preliminary note

Interested in the relevance of the work of 

the philosopher 

to that of the painter, 

and vice-versa, I have collected 

just a few examples of writing on Wittgenstein & the arts 

to be found on the internet & in libraries. 

I note that, for any painter the relevance 

of painting as a form of demonstration or

 a rhetoric 

of explanation, addressed 

to those who look at paintings 

with care is always of interest. And it has been 

for as long 

as painting and knowledge have been 

intertwined - that is to say, 

in the 'West', for maybe two and a half 

thousand years. 

[This will be obvious to Poussinistes].  

PRELIMINARY NOTE  RE- STEPHEN BAMBURY’S EXHIBITION:

 

‘CONSIDERING WITTGENSTEIN’ 2008, Jensen Gallery, Auckland

 

Section xi of ‘Philosophical Investigations’ pp193e-231e is interesting reading in this context.

 

A few items found in an hour’s search on the internet are suggestive of the extent of contemporary interest in Wittgenstein’s thought in the arts. 

 

1.  http://www.fordhampress.com/detail.html?cat=28&id=9780823228805

 

The book advances the radical proposition that the field in which architecture and philosophy operate includes linguistic and spatial practices. It develops innovative forms of interdisciplinary analyses to demonstrate that the philosophical positions put forth by Wittgenstein’s two main works are literally unthinkable outside of their respective conceptions of space: the view from above in the early work and the view from within constructed by the late work.

 

2. http://sammelpunkt.philo.at:8080/536/1/Wittgenstein_Art__Craft.pdf

 

If we try to summarize the results of Hertz’s achievement for philosophy, we

end up with a view of philosophy startlingly like Wittgenstein’s: Philosophy is an

activity, not a theory. Philosophical problems are not solved but dissolved on the

basis of an alternative representation of the problematic matter. Philosophy does not

stipulate how language must be used but shows us on the basis of a perspicuous

contrast how our conceptual confusions are attached to particular ways of

representing things.

These confusions are linked to different rhetorical aims in developing our

representations of physical reality. Philosophy is a matter of inventing new and

illuminating ways of representing matters that have hitherto confused us. Skill and

imagination are thus absolutely essential to it.

 

see particularly 4. The Palais Stonborough: An example of the relationship between art and

craftsmanship in Wittgenstein

 

 

Wittgenstein considered that his philosophizing stood a definite relationship to

art but was, nevertheless, to be distinguished from art. In 1930 the one-time follower

of Schopenhauer would write:

 

“Now it seems to me that there is another way of capturing the world sub specie aeterni apart

from the work of the artist. It is – I think – the way of thought, which can fly over the world as it

were and the leaves it as it is – observing it from above in flight.” (C & V, 5).

 

The difference between the two is that philosophy is “unpoetic” and therefore

is not art. It is more like religion inasmuch as it simply unveils things as they are with

a certain passion or sense of wonder (in this sense he could speak of his way of

looking at things as religious, while denying being a religious man). In order to

present such a Hertzian clear view of things Wittgenstein strove in the manner of a

craftsman to develop a set of spiritual techniques for reminding us of all those

incredibly important things, whose simplicity and familiarity prevent us from seeing

them.

These techniques amounted to a curious way of writing fiction with a view to

reminding us of striking facts that the surface grammar of language tempts us to

pass over – e.g., the plurality of activities that correspond to the many modes of

“thinking”. This is why he would insist that philosophy must be analytic without its

being what is conventionally understood under the rubric analytical philosophy. This

too was for him a matter of practicing a craft, one which, indeed, produced objects of

great beauty which could only be grasped in the basis of great intellectual effort.

 

Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: see writings of

Garry L. Hagberg  http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_L._Hagberg    

“author, professor, philosopher, and jazz musician. He currently holds a chair in philosophy at the University of East Anglia.

Hagberg became a professor of philosophy at Bard College in 1990, and subsequently the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics. The chair was endowed during his time at Bard. He has been the recipient of many fellowships and grants from Dartmouth College; Cambridge University Library; Institute for the Theory and Criticism of the Visual Arts; British Library, London; St. John’s College, and Cambridge University.

He received his B.A., M.A. and Ph. D. at the University of Oregon and conducted his postdoctoral research at Cambridge University.

Hagberg is the author of Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory and Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James and Literary Knowledge. He has contributed to such publications as Historical Reflections, Henry James Review, Philosophy, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Mind, New Novel Review, Philosophical Quarterly, Ethics, Perspectives of New Music, Encyclopedia of the Essay, and Encyclopedia of Aesthetics.

Hagberg is an accomplished jazz guitar player. He is a member of the Atlantic Jazz Trio, which tours in Europe and the United States”.

 

 

 

 

 

Studio 101 sonnet

personally I find the show too low key convoluted

framing and narrative contextualising only distract

codes of representation also get mixed in an unresolved

manner getting repetitive and needs to tinker with new

emotional fields one can overdose on the work’s

wholesomeness they lack finesse and end up looking

 

awkward a goody-two shoes didacticism the pompous

vague title that he has made no effort to justify lacks fizz

the silky smoothness of the dark surrounding space

upsets me it’s a clever idea but it runs out of steam

these works irk me he is not really pushing art itself

and comes across as a bit dull slightly sterile ideas

 

tend to be too over worked I usually don’t relate to

anything that smacks of diaristic and petty gossip

 

 

SNOW BALL BLIND TIME - Peter Robinson - Govett Brewster Art Gallery

John Hurrell wrote about formal concerns & their development over the past few years----- --  units, shapes, resulting forms --   in Robinson's recent work In the midst of a white-out in Art News [NZ] Spring 2008. See also Hurrell's review November 19,2008, on his http://www.eyecontactartforum.blogspot.com 

Let me state the obvious - the whole of the Govett-brewster Gallery is filled - on all of 

its many levels and in its many spaces - by a massive tangle of chains made of

expanded polystyrene foam - six different chains made of different size

links, from what look like chains made of 3m high links to chains made 

of 

3cm.[?] links - draped and tangled over one another - see photos on

http://eyecontactartforum.blogspot.com -------------------------------------

It stinks: there's a stench of plastic stuff through the space - like acrylic paint - nasty & v likely toxic. What did it do to the curators through the process of 3 months making chains & 3 weeks installing the show? 

The endless chained molecules of the stuff [98% air] are shaped as literal chains - bindings, unbroken through the 7 [?] spaces of the gallery. 

with careful calculation for each size, of optimum degree of lift & its own

angle of horizontal swivel -- information from Len Lye collection curator Tyler Cann.

It looms over head bulges out over the staircase - gallery 4 is filled with great blocks of the stuff - 

it's fragmented like snow - it's got trampled about even into the street & the cafe  - 

The image it presents is of massive overpowering [sublime] scale & terrifying possibility of this colourless purity of white stuff overwhelming every space available - oceans & land alike: unbreakable bonds heaped up on white blocks - like icebergs. 

The kids think it's fun: all this 'dry' 'creaky' light' 'snow' & 'ice'. Adults say it's 'awesome'. I say this smack in the eye of a show is a chilling eschatological vision. 

I was listening in to the end of a discussion & one woman remarked how relevant the show was to New Plymouth -- where local manufacture of Ivan Watkins Dow chemicals -- Agent Orange -- are widely believed to have seriously damaged the health of many local people.

I wanted to know how this large quantity of the stuff was to be disposed of -- recycled I'm told. Normally, this stuff is not much recycled, too expensive. Hence, non-biodegradable landfill.       

 

Peter Robinson: SNOW BALL BLIND TIME - Govett Brewster Art Gallery

Preliminary comment on the material used in the show: expanded polystyrene foam  -------- plastic = polymer chains

The internet is rich in copy advertising its 

manufacture  supply  &  uses 

no surprise : the internet is now a site primarily for commercial activities

but the internet is poor in information on its possible toxic effects - on human and animals - and on its environmental effects. 

Here are some links and a few sentences.

Download Peter Robinson SNOW BALL 

Camouflage

what to do with street furniture -- http://www.prettycoolthings.com/2008/11/15/urban-camouflage-art/ 

10,000

It took a long time, but finally this blog arrived at it's 10,000th hit - 0's are strangely important in statistics-world. Someone in Nottingham [UK] clicked & changed all the 9's. Sorry, no prizes. 

Poussin's Humour - the book

just to say that the ms of 'Poussin's Humour' [the book] 

has been edited corrected & is on its way as I write on a CD to UK for 

print & publication asap - & never mind the recession

Reservoir De-tags

tagging painted out on the Pupuke Road reservoir, Northcote. North Shore City 

Northcote riches 2

Rita Angus - 2 - renewed

I discovered that most of the text I posted called 'Rita Angus 2' has disappeared.

So here it is slightly modified:

 

Betty Curnow, in 1979, was responsible for the view that of the modern American painting Angus knew - how? - she was most impressed by Wood's American Gothic. By 1979 that was so well-known a painting, that it surely would come to mind - in a way that Charles Demuth's and Charles Sheeler's paintings wdnt. That shd not be the end of the American art story for writing about Rita. Her painting is similar to the mildest, least 'cubist' end of Precisonist painting in America, less Demuth, possibly Sheeler's flower paintings & still-lives. Demuth and Sheeler were both born 1883, 25 years before Angus. But who would, off the cuff, think of the less well-known Stefan Hirsch? only someone familiar with the range of painting of the 20s. Respectable career 1899 - 1965, ended as respected teacher at Bard College. That does not explain Angus, but the regular muddled encounter of writers with her 'cubism' would be greatly clarified by Milton Brown's [American Painting: from the Armory show to the Depression] careful assessment of the diminished effect of 'cubism' for most Precisionists, except perhaps Demuth.

 

 Precisionism is also called Cubist-Realism - almost a contradiction in terms. The fatal factor for the 'cubist' factor, is the persistent American 'realism', which is to say 19th century tradition of figuration as signifying. Things as signifiers, as in Angus's painting. With caution, because there is much more to it than things as signifiers, shd I repeat William Carlos Williams' "No ideas but in things"? 'Cubism' dissolves or fragments or otherwise undermines the consistent structures on which that 19th century tradition of representation depended. Of course, it's in the buildings that Angus is closest to a painter like Hirsch: her colour & handling & landscape interests are something else. 

 

Melvin Day I notice had the interesting insight that there is some relation of Angus to Hodler's painting, that is to say late nineteenth century Symbolist practice. In English terms [later Burne-Jones[ that's  a derivative of  Pre-Raphaelitism. And I could guess that Aubrey Beardsley is more apt a comparison with 

Angus's symbolic drawings than the later symbolic stream of 1920s/1930s Surrealism. 

 

Look at Stefan Hirsch's paintings & drawings:

 

http://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/artwork/Hirsch-NewYork_Lower.htmhttp://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/artwork/Hirsch-Mill_Town.htm

http://www.askart.com/askart/h/stefan_a_hirsch/stefan_a_hirsch.aspx

http://www.askart.com/AskART/artists/search/Search_Repeat.aspx?searchtype=IMAGES&artist=19150

 

http://www.annexgalleries.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?Stefan-Hirsch++ERRE108

& as for Rita's portraits look at William Roberts in England e.g.

c 1935 http://www.users.waitrose.com/~wrs/headscarf.html  

self-portrait [1982]

Tony Green: self-portrait in the Pitti Palace [1982]