BOOKS on my bedside table |
Church In The Dark Ages |
| TUNES on itunes |
Songs of Greg Brown |
| Blogs of note |
| WHAT'S UP |
|
| Who am I? |
James (Jim) Janknegt 52 year old, husband of Lissa, father of Emma (almost 11), visual artist, christian (former episcopalian becoming Catholic), operations manager at UT Performing Arts Center, native Austinte, current elginite, and chainsawweilder. everything on this web site copyrighted by
|
Archives |
January
2003
|
/FileMaker%20Pro%204.0%20Folder/Web/blogg/images/smallline.jpg){kind=small}
April 2006
I'm almost finished with the latest painting I have been working on. It is to be used as an inset into Kathy Kanewske's latest CD project "Heavenwards". She is writing music for the lyrics taken from the prayer book Father Kentenich wrote during his imprisonment in Dachau. As soon as I am done I'll post an image of it.
|
I've been building a new chicken coop on the north side of my studio. The goats and chickens have been staying in the same pen and it is no bueno. So I'm tearing down a couple of old sheds and re-using the lumber and tin to build my chicken coop. The other night while I was working the smell of old lumber gave me one of those smell flashbacks. When I was a kid we had an old, wooden, one car garage free-standing in my back yard. It had a dirt floor and a work bench and a very small storage room. Our neighborhood gang of boys would, from time to time, come together with any old scraps of wood or lumber we could find and append a club house to the garage. Chicken coop: same principle, same smell. Except there is no one to get made at me and take his portion of the scavenged wood home thus disassembling our clubhouse and club.
|
The Blanton Museum of Art hosted a reception for faculty and staff of UT yesterday after work. This is the first time I've seen the new building and it is a handsome facility. Native limestone, polished granite, red tile roofs grace a loggia of arches. There is a beautiful mall of grass with rows of native cedar elm trees that frame a view of the State Capitol. Inside is spacious and airy with well thought out natural lighting. The floors are dark stained chocolaty beech wood with simple white walls in most of the museum. All in all it is a fine facility for showcasing art. I wish I could get as enthusiastic about the art as I am about the building. Most of the work is just plain mediocre. I found my self getting sadder and sadder as I was under whelmed with painting after painting. There are a few exceptions: Ben Shahn, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley and Stuart Davis all share a little gallery and I found brief nourishment there. Perhaps it is because as a rule late Renaissance and Brogue painting have never been my cup of tea. And the preponderance of modern art only reinforces my feelings of how impoverished our culture has become. The clearest effects of scientific materialism on western culture are felt in the world of visual art. When narrative no longer is seen as a valid mode of transmitting truth all we are left with are the formal elements: shape, color, tonality, texture, scale. Sure I get a thrill from conemplating my paint rag or the random splatters on my studio floor. There is some real beauty in those random splatters and splashes. But form without content is merely decorative and doesn't really nourish the human soul. We need stories to tell us who we are and what life means and visual art use to do that. Since pictures stared moving I don't know if painting is really even viable any more? But I'll go back just to see the Ben Shahn painting. It is from the Lucky Dragon series. Based on a the experiences of a Japanese boat crew exposed to atomic fallout from a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific, these vivid paintings, in beautiful and painfully bright hues, portray the events allegorically, incorporating traditional Japanese symbology. My hope is now that the University has such a great museum it will be able to attract some first class donations.
|
My wife and I were all set to celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary yesterday. We were going to the Divine Mercy Mass at St. Mary's then going to eat at Chez Nous, one of my favorite Austin restaurants. My daughter, who was going to cook us breakfast, woke up with a temperature of 101 which steadily climbed to nearly 105 through the day. Needless to say we chucked our plans and stayed home. I did go get takeout BBQ from Crosstown BBQ in Elgin and we watched the final episode of "God or the Girl" . I guessed that Joe wasn't going for the priesthood and that Steve was but missed on Dan. Although technically he went into wait mode rather than make a decision. I wouldn't be surprised if he eventually became a priest after he is done with youth ministry. I thought A&E did a really good job, respectfully dealing with the faith of these guys and their family's. My daughter says they should do a sequel call "God or the Guy" and look and women trying to decide if they should go into the religious life. Not a bad idea. My daughter's temp finally came down by the way.
|
I am enjoying the world of podcasting which is pretty new to me. So far I have been subscribing to the Rosary Army, The Journey Home, Deep in Scripture and the Catholic Exchange with Mark Shea all which are excellent. I just recently found a fairly new one The Saintcast that is outstanding. They recently featured St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Bernadette Soubirous. The lives of the saints are so inspiring. This is not something new for me. I bought the Golden Legend over 12 years ago and go back to it all the time. It is so much better that the bowdlerized Butler's Lives of the Saints. Why did the reformers do away with the communion of saints? Is that the reason that pop culture is inundated with celebrities and pop stars. Give me the saints any day.
|
Some more thoughts about Bellini and the art of devotion. One of the points made in the essay is that the effectivness of devotional images is linked to artistic modesty; that is qualities of simplisity, lack of ostentatious usage of foreshortening and elaborate posing of figures such as later Renaisannce artist employed. That is a confirmation of something I have always personally felt and responded to in other artists, artist like Duccio, Fran Angelico & Piero de la Francesca all have that artistic modesty that allows a painting to inspire devotion. Where as later artists like Leonardo, Raphael, Botticelli, as a rule, lack that modesty and draw attention to themsleves as genius artists rather than inspire devotion through the image. I think that is also the reason I am attracted to the santos, folk art of New Mexico. Is it possible for an artist today to have that kind of humility? It doesn't seem very likely does it.
|
Whenever I go to the art library I always check out the new acquisitions and I found a winner: Giovanni Bellini and the Art of Devotion.
Besides having lots of great reproductions it has several excellent essays about religious devotion in early Renaissance Italy, particularly Vienna, and the use of images as an aid to devotion. I assume it is my protestant upbringing but even with my being an artist I have never really developed an ongoing use of images to increase or enhance my devotions. I have studied the theology of icons, read St John Damascene, etc and am a whole hearted supporter of using images in worship. I wonder if even Catholics use images much in private devotion. Apparently in Renaissance Vienna there was practically a Madonna painting in every room with the bedchamber/sitting room being the usual place for a home oratory which included a painting and quite a few of them were from the Bellini workshop. Perhaps if there was teaching and encouragement to use art in devotion artist would get more work and be able to paint devotional paintings. I just finished a painting that was in fact a devotional painting and it was a wonderful experience particularly since the theme coincided with Lent.
|
The Lord is Risen. He is risen Indeed.
I made it through the entire Triduum perhaps for the first time in my life: Holy Thursdy, Good Friday and Easter vigil all at St. Mary's Cathedral.
Bishop Aymond
Bishop Aymond has my highest regard and respect. He gave the homily at every service. I can't tell you how happy it makes me not to have to worry in the slightest that something heretical, new age or just plan wierd will come from the pulpit. It is almost a year since we left St. Davids' and Lissa and I couldn't be happier, well at least until my annulment is decided and we actually get to join the church. We are so happy for our friend Kathy
Kathy and Schoenstatt Girls singers
who was received at vigil. We partied into the morning at the Schoenstatt Sisters house. Getting to bed at 2:30 Am does not make the Easter bunny bright eyed and bushy tailed so instead of hunting Easter eggs we smashed cascarones on each other.
Beware the cascarone!!
We were invited to the Haskins for a crawfish boil, mounds and mounds of crawfish, potatos, corn and sausage. I think I hurst myself.
myself, Jason and Rebecca
Sunday afternoon we drove to San Antonio to have dinner with my Aunt Virginia and her family. They were all in town for my second cousin, Aliya's wedding. We didn't make the wedding because of Easter vigil but we got to have a great visit and catch up with everyone.
Aliya and Ayesha
We also celebrated my Aunts' birthday. She was in a horrible traffic accident almost two years ago and became a paraplegic but she has amazed us all by battling back, undergoing tremndous physical therapy and continuing to relish living and now she is being an example and encouragement to others in similar situations. She is more alive now that ever!!
Aunt Virginia
Wishing everyone a Good Friday and blessed Easter.
Woman, behold your son.
by James B. Janknegt
"And this is the love upon which we stake our lives, our loves, our hopes. We come to Good Friday like beggars to a banquet, starved of love and suddenly finding more than we can cope with. And if it is true that that love must transform our whole lives, our public life, our grasp on truth on the one hand, our dealings with Caesar on the other, this can only be if we are first grasped and transformed by that same love at the very deepest level of our own personalities. We are invited to stand with Mary and John at the foot of the cross, at the point where heaven and earth meet, so that the love from heaven can embrace us, creatures of earth that we are; so that the light of heaven can heal the darkness within us and within the world; so that, by the power of the creator God and in accordance with the scriptures, we can ourselves become part of that new creation which for the moment, for the still, sad sabbath rest, lies waiting, buried, within the womb of the old"
from " The Scriptures, the Cross and the Power of God" by N.T. Wright
Today is April the 12 and I am posting my 12of12 pictures. This is something I learned about from the Rosary Army website. On the 12th day of the month you take 12 photos that show what your day was like. It was fun. Next month give it a try.
|
Barbara Niocolsi has some great stuff about the responiblity of the artist in the concluding part of her Wichita interview:
"We’ve been telling artists that the only sin is to not be honest to what is inside of them. No. There are a few other sins for artists. One of them is, not being honest about whether they really have the gifts of nature to be supported by the community as a prophet. If you’re not good enough, don’t waste our time. Your art is probably just for your own therapy.
Another sin is sloth. Many artists have natural ability, but they can not motivate themselves to do the hours and hours of scales that it will take them to develope technique. The craft takes dedication. So don’t get me to try to buy your painting, watch your movie or read your story if you’re not good, if you haven’t put the time in.
On another level, artists need to be led to see that sometimes some of the things inside of them are poisonous. They could be sick - someone who really has ideas that are disordered. Just because you’re an artist you get to disease me with your ideas? If you had a sense of responsibility, you’d be able to discern, “In my creative time, I have all of this stuff. This is kind of sick. This is kind of dark. This is actually something that is wonderful.” It is this fundamentally different view of the arts. The secular side is saying the arts are about the artistic expression of the artist. The church is saying that the arts are about service to the People of God, and to the global community.
Artists need help discerning the difference in the stuff they make that is catharthis just for them, and the stuff that is prophetic for the rest of us. I absolutely do not think the decision needs to be made by anyone outside. That’s when you talk about censorship. It’s not about that."
Check out her website for the whole interview. It's very thought provoking.
|
Several interesting blog connections. My evangelical, arts pastor friend, David Taylor, is recommending the saints as a source of inspiration for all the artist he pastors. I agree, I would even go further and ask the saints to pray for us as well. It got me to thinking about the saint whose name I plan on taking when I am received into the Catholic Church, Blessed Fran Angelico. I found this about him with some very curious ecstatic vision inspired words about Fra Angelico.
Then I was checking out Jeffrey Overstreet's blog and he has a great article about art and mystery that continues to talk about the artist way.
|
Anybody ready for a full moon guinea hen round up? Darn!! You missed it. Last night our fellow Elginite's the Owens came over and by the light of the full moon we snuck up on roosting guinea hens, threw a net over them and stuffed them in a cage. Last year we bought a batch of baby guinea hens and were going to give half of them to the Owens but their evil neighbor dog started eating them. So we took them back until Philip could finish a pen. The pen is finished, so the guinea roundup. The reason for having guinea's in the first place you may ask? If you want to garden in this part of the world you will loose everything to grasshoppers which seem to arrive yearly in biblical proportions unless you have guinea hens which are grasshopper eating machines.
|
Speaking of my birthday (see earlier post on Cezanne) that auspicious day also happens to be the day the earth was created on 4004 BC according to James Ussher, 17th century Anglican Archbishop of Armagh. Apparently some creationist still hold to this date. As flattered as I am to be born on the day the world began I must admit that I am not a young earth creationist. I have read several book on Intelligent Design and I find them rather convincing. I've felt for a while that Darwin's theory is very much like the Ptolemaic theory of planetary motion in the time of Copernicus. So much conflicting evidence accumulated that the theory just got more and more convoluted. Someday, someone will come up with a good theory to replace Darwin's theory of evolution but until then most folks will believe it and the theory will just become more absurd.
|
"Allegory" by Ben Shahn
"The Shape of Content" is at the top of my book list for aspiring artists. Based on a series of lectures given by Ben Shahn at Harvard University in the 1950's, the book talks about creativity and what it really takes to be educated as an artist. Having personally gone through 8 years of undergraduate and graduate school I would recommend reading Shahn's book before embarking on that journey. My daughter is eleven and no where near going to college but I've told her if she wants to become an artist instead of going to college I'll borrow the same amount of money it would take to go to college and our family will fly to Europe and we'll travel around with a backpack full of good books, going to museums, cathedrals, churches, castles drawing and painting until the money runs out. I bet she would have a better education as an artist than if she went to four years of college and, I'll bet, Ben Shahn would agree.
|
It's Holy Week and for my daily devotion I am using N. T. Wright's new book "The Scriptures the Cross and the Power of God". And it just happens to have one of my paintings on the cover. The U.K. version that is. The U.S. version has a really lame cover.It is an honor to have my work on the cover of the Bishop of Durham's book. I highly respect Tom Wright as a bright light in the Anglican communion.
Time Out has always been one of my favorite jazz albums. I didn't realize that Dave Brubek has written over 45 pieces of religious music or that he was a Catholic. I checked out "Hope! a Celebration" from the UT art library (one of the best perks about my job is I am just a 3 minute walk from my desk to the art library). This was apparently one of his first religious pieces and actually figured in his becoming Catholic. Here is the story. He just recently won an award "to a Catholic who's advanced arts and sciences, while illustrating ideals of the Catholic Church."
|
Paul Cezanne died on my birthday, October 23, not 1953 but 1906. His funeral was in Saint Sauveur Cathedral in Aix. Cezanne regularly attended church there according to his friend and painter Emille Bernard-
"On Sundays we used to go to church. He would dress in his best clothes. He would sit on the reserved bench and listen carefully to the service. As soon as he got to the little cloister before the Cathedral, he would be assaulted by beggars; ...he would prepare his money before leaving his room, and would dish it out in handfuls whilst walking past them. I'm having my share of the Middle-Ages, he would whisper to me next to the holy water font.In the past I had seen Cézanne here, under the big painting of the Burning Bush, in which Moses resembled him so uncannily."
Was the father of modern art a practicing Catholic? It's hard to find out because none of the scholars I have ever read talk about the relationship between Cezanne's faith and art. I only discovered he was a Catholic several years ago from the footnote in the back of a catalogue that said he stopped going to church because he didn't like the way the organ was being played.
Cezanne is one of my favorite painters. In his reaction against Impressionism he desired to integrate the visual perception of the impressionists and their painting technique with the solidity of the classical painters. He had a sacramental understanding of the universe: that objects do no exist merely in our retinas as the impressionist supposed. But that the forms of things really exist independent of our perception of them and that they reveal something about the mind of the creator that made them.
When I look at a Cezanne still life I get such a satisfying sense of the "realness" of the things I am looking at, not in a photographic sense but in a deep philosophical sense: that the thing existed in the mind of God before it became a physical reality. Cezanne did not paint "religious" pictures but there is a deeply spiritual and profoundly moving aspect to his painting. When you look at an apple or vase painted by Cezanne the appleness of all apples or vaseness of all vases is revealed. I find this deeply satisfying.
|
Stanley Spencer has had a huge influence on me as an artist. He was British, spent his whole live in Cookham and painted about his life there around the time of WWI. To make a living he made what he called "potboilers" which are in fact incredibly beautiful landscape paintings. I have only seen one of these paintings. I think it was at the Metropolitan in New York. While his "potboilers" are beautiful what really inspired me about Stanley Spencer was his religious paintings which in his lifetime did not sell that well meaning he painted them for himself to satisfy his own internal vision. These religious paintings are also set in his Cookham. So you have Jesus carrying the cross down a Cookham street, the resurrection happening in a Cookham cemetery. You get the idea. When most of us look at religious picture we are looking at old paintings as people stopped painting religious pictures by in large a century ago. So we think of them as all being placed in the past when mostly the artist populated their paintings with biblical figures in contemporary dress in contemporary settings. It just doesn't register because 16th century Amsterdam is just about as foreign to us as 1st century Holy Land. But Stanley Spencer made me realize that to continue to paint in the great succession of biblical painters I would need to transplant the biblical stories to my city. Which I have tried to do.
I was pointed to Peter Kreeft's website where he has made quite a few of his lectures available in mp3 format. I listened to one comparing Walker Percy's "Lost in the Cosmos" to C.S. Lewis's "Abolition of Man". I knew Kreeft was a huge Lewis fan but didn't know he was equally a Percy fan. He says in the lecture that if he was God and could make modern people read two books it would be "Lost in the Cosmos" and "Abolition of Man". "Lost in the Cosmos" is one of my favorite books as Percy is one of my favorite authors. Check out Kreeft's lecture. It is excellent!
|
Sister Christ Marie the Navigator reads to the Schoenstatt Collegium
Tuesday was a Schoenstatt Collegium field trip day. Sister Christa Marie lead us down Barton creek out into town lake on a canoe trip. Along the way we stopped and she read excerpts from the life of St. Brendan the Navigator and his voyage to the new world. On one stop we ate scones with devonshire cream. A wonderful time was had by all.
|
The Giovanni Bellini, Head of Christ is one of my favorite paintings in the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth. Here is another Bellini: Madonna of the Trees.
Isn't this a beautiful painting of Mary and Jesus! Mary is so pensive. Looking sideways out of her eyes at Jesus but really seeing the things stored up in her heart, perhaps even wondering about the impending sword prophesied to pierce it. Jesus seems strong, relaxed in her tender hands, his tiny hand holding hers and both of their hands over her heart which is the exact center of the painting. His feet are posed as in many crucifixion paintings. The deep blue of Mary's mantle and red orange of her dress are complimented by the delicate yellow green backdrop bordered in the same red orange as her dress. As in many paintings of the Virgin the composition is a strong triangle shape. The swirl of the mantle on her right arm contrasts nicely with the line running through Mary's slightly cocked head, through Jesus torso to his crucified feet. As in most paintings of the Madonna and child we are meant to reflect on the incarnation, that Jesus is truly human, flesh and blood, born of a woman. The fact of his incarnation is emphasized by his total nudity.
|
On of the Janknegt family traditions is to play April Fools pranks on each other. I got up before dawn and filled up Emma's bathroom with eighty ballons.
One idea I had about resuming blogging was to talk about paintings that inspire me as an artist. It just so happens that the New York Times ran an article about an exhibit in Paris of one of my favorite artists: Pierre Bonnard.
Bonnard was French and painted after the Impressionist. Some consider him an Impressionist but I don't. He was initially aligned with a group self titled the Nabis which means prophet in Hebrew. He did not stay associated with this group though and went on to paint beautiful paintings about the simplicity of life: still lifes, interiors, landscapes and nudes always of his wife Marthe. To me Bonnard is the anti-bohemian living a quite life with one wife and painting beautiful things. How unpicasso!!
What initially hits me is his use of color. It is not naturalistic but still speaks of nature. It is like nature beatified, lifted up, freed from the fall. His colors are bold yet subtle in the sense that he avoids your basic primaries. There are lilacs, melon oranges, mauves, yellow-oranges, peacock blues and on and on...and all in one painting. He uses the notion of shifting complimentary colors so they don't exactly line up across the colorwheel from each other. The orange and the blue and the violet and the yellow don't allow your brain to sense the completeness in a pair of complements which invigorates the color giving it it's vibrancy.
This extraordinary use of color combined with the mundane subject matter helps me see my ordinary life in a new way. To see the beauty in the relationships of whatever happens to be sitting on my dining room table. To experience the simple drama inherent in what is outside my window compared to what is in my room. And there is usually a surprise! -like the figure that slowly emerges out of the pumpkin orange on the right side of the interior. I don't see her at first but there she is.
I first saw Bonnard in Minneapolis when I made a trip to the Walker to see a retrospective of his work. I was bowled over. I got to see a bunch of his work again at the Phillips Collection when I visited NY. Too bad I am not planning a trip to Paris.
|
It's been a long time since I made a blog entry but my wife says I should start blogging again. So here goes.
I suppose the biggest news since I stopped blogging is that we are becoming Roman Catholic. We are attending RCIA classes at St. Mary's Cathedral. There is an irony here. We moved to Elgin seven years ago and continued to be involved in St. David's Episcopal church in downtown Austin. When we decided to go to Rome we just moved a couple of blocks down the street to St. Mary's, into the arms of the Blessed Mother. St. Mary's is at 10th and Brazos and for those of you who don't speak spanish brazos is arms in spanish.
The Catholic church is so rich, so deep. We are very happy to be in this part of our spiritual journey. Besides St. Mary's we have become a part of the Schoenstatt movement. It is even farther away from us geographically (Westlake Hills) but so close to us spiritually. Our daughter is going to school there and they have formation for parents as well as numerous celebrations of feast days such as St Nicholas and mardi gras which are fun family, community events.
I've been reading a lot of church history books as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church . The best history I've read is a series by Henri Daniel-Rops recommended by my old friend Bob Sweeney who also by the way goes to St. Mary's and is a Schoenstatt member. I'm also reading a book by Jarislov Peikan: Mary Through the Centuries which is really good.
My wife had both of her knees replaced on ash wednesday, she gave up her knees for lent. ha ha!! I took of two weeks of work so I could take care of her and both my daughter and I came down with the worst case of flu I've ever had. Just this last weekend I finally felt back to 100% normal. She is making real good progress going to physical therapy three times a week.
|