Defining a "Chef d'Oeuvre" by Jeannine Cook

What is defined generally as an artistic chef d'oeuvre or masterpiece, why and when?

Recently I was listening to a radio interview in France with the actress, Catherine Deneuve, just before the launch of her new film, "Sage Femme/the Midwife".  The interviewer asked her if she though this film was a chef d'oeuvre.  Her reply interested me because it does not just apply to the "Seventh Art" of films.

 

 

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Silk by Jeannine Cook

Silk has always been my favourite material, sensuous to wear yet so practical and comfortable in all weathers. It is always beautiful, whether patterned, plain, embroidered or subtly woven with textures in it.  Even its names - shantung, habutai, tussore, chiffon, taffeta, dupioni, tussah - sound exotic and alluring. One of my earliest connections with silk was the realisation that mulberry leaves, from a tree that I loved and knew well at my home in East Africa, were what feed the silk worms for 35 days, before they are ready to spin a cocoon with their continuous fine silken thread that eventually measures over a mile when it is carefully unwound, prior to being woven into cloth.

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Reacting to Life Experiences as an Artist by Jeannine Cook

I recently had an exchange of e-mails with a fellow artist friend, whose wife had suddenly become very ill.  Both of us commented on the fact that there is such a change of optic when one is struck by serious family illness or some other type of trauma.  Everything important comes back into sharp focus and the “small stuff” falls away.

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Cicadas, Chinese and Others by Jeannine Cook

The wonderful Ming exhibition I wrote about led me to thinking about cicadas. I have always loved their songs, Mediterranean, coastal Georgian and many other versions; to me, their heady, penetrating calls have always symbolised summer days of happiness and peace. There are about 2,500 cicada species in the world, not all identified, and their name derives from the Latin, cicada, or tree cricket. Some cicadas sing at night, others by day. Some live in trees, nestled amid the bark.

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Creativity in Small Packages by Jeannine Cook

Seeing an exhibition from the Nanjing Museum about the Ming period in China is guaranteed to be fascinating ahead of time.  Indeed, the Caixa Foundation exhibition, "Ming: the Golden Empire", now in Palma de Mallorca after visiting Holland, Germany, Edinburgh, and Barcelona, offers a wide range of objects to tell one of the splendours of the Ming period.

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Turning the Tables: Artists using Artists for Art by Jeannine Cook

It was a strange feeling. Suddenly, I was asked to become the subject of someone else's art-making. And not just to sit for a portrait in the usual sense of the word. Portraits are usually fairly straightforward affairs, either commissions or records of friends and colleagues. Artists tend to use their fellow artists as subjects because they esteem them, share creative time together (such as Edouard Manet painting Monet working in his studio-boat) or even, sometimes, because they need an inexpensive model. But my request to be the subject was a little different, I learned.

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Copying Nature by Jeannine Cook

Whilst I sit drawing in the vineyards around beautiful, historic Evora in Portugal's Alentejo region, I am constantly aware of the myriad birds flitting from one perch to another, down the ground, up into the cork oaks edging the vineyard and off somewhere else.  What impresses me is their wonderful camouflage, especially during the winter season. Unless they move, they are virtually invisible. Perhaps I have been paying their aspect closer attention than usual because I have just been reading about Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola, a French artist and soldier fighting the Germans during the First World War.

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Election Time and Art by Jeannine Cook

Listening to the vitriol of the American Presidential campaign from overseas, it sounded pretty extraordinary. Now that I am back in the United States, I am saddened to hear the tones of stress and angst in many peoples' voices as they talk during these last days of the campaign. My reaction is to wonder how and if people can take refuge in the beauties of nature, of art, of music, dance and other forms of art. Some form of balance is always necessary, even when the stakes are so high for the future of this country and, indeed, the world.

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Artists and the Short End of the Stick by Jeannine Cook

Every time one listens to the news these days, in no matter what country, it seems that someone is trying to damage or destroy someone else, or else trying to take advantage of someone else or another group.  It really is a time when one can count oneself very privileged simply to be able, in peace, to listen to bird song, see a lightning storm dance across the sea, see the flutter of leaves in a poplar tree. Even in the art world, alas, increasingly, artists seem to be getting very much the short end of the stick.  Of course, there are exceptions. Nonetheless, I have found, over the years, that many museums and art galleries have scant regard for contracts signed, agreements made or arrangements undertaken with artists. Expediency and politics rule. For the benefit of the administrative side of the art world, of course.

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An Artist's Musing on Hurricane Matthew by Jeannine Cook

From Europe, following the progress of Hurricane Matthew up the United States East Coast was all-consuming in time this week. For quite a while, it looked as if our home was going to be full, fair and square in the centre of the hurricane's track. Ouch! Thanks to wonderful friends, the house was shuttered and after that, I decided that the only course of action was fatalism. Nonetheless, I had time to muse on some of the implications of being severely hit and have the house badly damaged.

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