Category Archives: Artists

Werner Herzog – Cave of Forgotten Dreams — he likes the lions, too. –

Cave of Forgotten Dreams — documentary film by Werner Herzog

30,000 year old cave painting from the Chauvet Cave

detail of bodypainting titled "Chauvet Lions Watching"

In an interview on Fresh Air yesterday, Terry Gross asked Werner Herzog which one painting he had the strongest reaction to as he filmed inside the Chauvet Cave. After saying that it was the overall effect of the cave that moved him the most, he singled out the painting of the lions. Paraphrasing his description, it is of five lions stalking something, intently looking at something but we don’t know what they are looking at — and depicted with such a complete naturalism that we could think we are looking at living lions today. Yet, it is among the single oldest paintings ever made. The earliest pictorial images in all of human art. As moving and complex as any art ever created since. I understand how he feels about the lions.

I’m trying to think of another time when I heard of a project and had such an immediate reaction to just how perfect it is. Werner Herzog, given the chance to bring to us this story of what may be the origin of art, the origin of our humanity. He’s one of the most fascinating artists in the world, and here he is making a movie about this cave that has always fascinated me, and been a continual inspiration for my work since it was first discovered in the 90s and I read about it in my Natural History Magazine.

Go to the article from NPR on the film, and listen to the Fresh Air interview there — in addition to talking about the film, Herzog talks about a lifetime of making films that “stare into the abyss” of humanity ( “Grizzly Man” and “Encounters at the End of the World” have both been on TV a bunch lately): http://www.npr.org/2011/04/20/135516812/herzog-enters-the-cave-of-forgotten-dreams

Clip of the movie:

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2827853081/

Werner Hertzog speaks of having always been drawn to prehistoric art, fascinated about the idea of paintings being made so long ago and yet we still can feel the connection between the people that made them and ourselves. I share that feeling. I began to explore our earliest art as I sought to find the origins of bodyart. And the connection between painting ourselves and painting cave walls is undeniable, with, for example, in Chauvet Cave — as in so many others —  painted hands being used as stamps to create designs on the cave walls. From the start, though, what caught me most was the constant examples of how these ancient artists expertly used the shape of the cave walls in their paintings, in a way that seems to me the very essence of bodypainting. Speaking only as an artist here, the transference of images on the body to images on the sculptured surface of a cave wall seems a very direct step.

The need to show how the paintings work on the form of the walls explains why Herzog filmed this in 3D: “When I saw photos, it looked almost like flat walls — maybe slightly undulating or so. Thank God, I went in there without any camera a month before shooting. What you see in there is limestone, and you have these wildly undulating walls — you have bulges and niches and pendants of rock, and there’s a real incredible drama of information. The artists utilized it for their paintings. … So it was clear it was imperative to do this in 3-D, in particular, because we were the only ones ever allowed to film.”

There are a lot of videos about Werner and his work, including these two interview segments about this film, particularly fun because he is speaking so off the cuff: 

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The Nuba Bird Dance at Bodies Alive! – Nao Dance Collective

The Nuba Bird Dance, performed by the Nao Dance Collective as part of our Bodies Alive! show at the Face and Body Art International Convention (FABAIC) in Orlando, 2008 — in black and white bodypaint designs based on the analytical sketches of James C. Faris in his book "Nuba Personal Art"

by Christopher Agostino

The underlying creative intention behind Bodies Alive! was to explore how movement and performance can bring bodyart to life, so we sought to create a modern dance piece inspired by bodypainting. In any previous opportunities I’d had to bodypaint dancers for performance my task was to create designs to support an existing theme and concept. For this dance the makeup design came first.

Nao Dance Collective  http://www.naodance.com/  is a structured improvisational company under the direction of Linda Eve Elchak — just the kind of group we were looking for to create a brand new piece for a single performance. We discussed the project and I sent the music, sketches for the bodypainting and some insight about the functional effect of this type of tribal bodyart: that the use of hard-edged  geometric designs is intended to break the human form and destroy recognizable individual identity, and thereby create a new unified tribal identity. I suggested the dancers could take advantage of this visual confusion by contrasting movement as a group with movement as individuals. From that, they created the piece. It was thrilling for me to see what these elements had led to in the rehearsal before the Orlando show. We didn’t paint them for the rehearsal, so they had some concerns about what performing in bodypaint would be like, particularly if they had to be careful not to smudge it by touching each other — and I reassured them that I wanted the paint to be alive, to change and to smear and to transfer from one dancer to another as it would in a tribal dance.

The dancers were painted by a group of experienced bodypainters following my designs (see their foto below, and the video of the bodypainting room). Bodies Alive! required the participation of dozens of models and performers, along with teams of designers, painters and assistants — a resource we might only have found at an event like the Face and Body Art International Convention (FABAIC) http://www.fabaic.com/ , celebrating it’s 10th anniversary this year, and I will be there again.

Putting the music together for this piece involved some serendipity. Although I wanted something tribal, I was taking these body designs so far out of their original context that I didn’t want anything directly connected to the Nuba or African culture. The chant is listed as “Kecak: The Ramayana Monkey Chant  from Bali” on a cd of Indonesia music from Nonesuch Records‘ Explorer Series  http://www.nonesuch.com/artists/explorer-series-indonesia Once you hear it, it stays with you. I had it stuck in my head for this, but didn’t think it was enough to build the dance around and was looking for alternatives when I heard “Surfer Bird” by The Trashman on Bob Dylan’s radio show. The pieces fit, the rhythm was right and there is that iconic Nuba face design of the ostrich over the eye to seal the deal.

See the previous post, and search “Nuba” on this site for more information.

Nuba Bird Dance Painters: Paola Paredes-Shenk, Leah Reddell, Kerry Ann Smith, Diane and Theresa Spadola, Pam Trent, Jeff Edney, Deidre MacDonald

Learn more at my Body Painting Page https://thestorybehindthefaces.com/body-painting/

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Rebirth revisited — Ukrainian Eggs and Ancient Eggs

In response to my post about the spring and how I choose to experience the season of rebirth, one of our company artists, Laura Metzinger, sent in this post:

From Laura:  I had long been interested in learning how to do the traditional Ukrainian (pysanky) wax-resist method of egg decorating and my library offered a workshop in 1990. I left with enough of the basics to continue to explore it on my own, and discovered that supplies could be found in NYC at Surma, a little Ukrainian shop, est. 1918, on East 7th St. They have a wide selection of books and tools and are always more than happy to offer suggestions and advice. SURMA – The Ukrainian Shop

The samples of my work here include some traditional and original designs, and all were created between 1990 and 2000. While pysanky eggs are associated with Easter, the practice of decorating eggs pre-dates Christianity, and hearkens back to the celebration of seasonal changes.

kistka (tool for applying the wax) and beeswax cake, with an egg showing an original design of Laura's

The tool for applying wax to the eggs is called a kistka. Although there are sleek, electric versions available, I like to use the more primitive, copper wire wrapped tool. It’s used by heating the copper cone at the end of the tool in a candle flame, and then pushing the point into a cake of beeswax. The heat draws up the wax into the cone, and then is used to draw designs on the egg. I use a darkened beeswax, as it’s easier to see when applied to the white egg and lighter colors. It’s especially nice to be doing this in a group, as the candles burning and the pleasant smell of beeswax create a very special atmosphere.

The process calls for working the design colors going from light to dark. Anything that you want to be white must be drawn with wax first. The wax prevents those sections from taking on any subsequent colors. Working from light to dark, wax is applied and the egg is dipped into progressively darker shades. After the design is completed, the egg is held closely alongside the candle flame. This is the best part; as the wax melts and is wiped off, the brilliant colors come into view.

Eggs with Trypillion designs

I love the symbolic meanings given to the imagery, which vary according to the source. And the use of eggs as a symbol of rebirth is timeless. All the colors have specific meanings, as do the designs. Most obvious is the use of plant and animal images. Earlier meanings were associated with the seasons, farming and harvest. Later on, many of the images were associated with Christianity. I have incorporated designs from other cultures, such as Native American symbols, which are very close to the Eastern European designs. I’ve also done a number of Trypillion designs on brown eggs. The predominantly black & red swirling designs come from artifacts discovered in the Ukraine, and are believed to symbolize the female, from whom new life comes. There are a number of ways of approaching the design elements. There are repeating border designs, end-cap designs and pictures. Traditionally, the repeating border designs are stylized plant elements. I like to incorporate Native American wave symbols in my borders and end-cap designs.

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Thank you, Laura. With my perspective I can’t help but make a connection between this tradition of decorating eggs to the discovery of etched ostrich eggs from 60,000 years ago — some of the oldest objects yet to show the use of symbolism by early humans. From the online article in Science News: “The unusually large sample of 270 engraved eggshell fragments, mostly excavated over the past several years at Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa, displays two standard design patterns…. Each pattern enjoyed its own heyday between approximately 65,000 and 55,000 years ago…. Researchers already knew that the Howiesons Poort culture, which engraved the eggshells, engaged in other symbolic practices, such as engraving designs into pieces of pigment, that were considered to have been crucial advances in human behavioral evolution. But the Diepkloof finds represent the first archaeological sample large enough to demonstrate that Stone Age people created design traditions, at least in their engravings.

See the article: http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/stone-age-eggshells.html?print=true and another  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8544332.stm