JM's DoW: The Art Oracles

[Joan Marie]

Nemia had a go with this one and now I am going to try it. It's a fun and strange little deck. 50 Cards I think.
Each day you get a little note on Life, on Work and on Inspiration.

Let's see where this starts:

Buckminster Fuller! I haven't heard that name in a while. When I was in California in the early 80s he was still a big influence on a lot of people's thinking about the environment and how we live in it. The California landscape is full of the ruins of his geodesic dome homes. I think there were kits you could buy. People also built their own from scratch. It looked so easy!!

It seems at the end of the day, people didn't really want to live in glass domes after all. But his heart was in the right place. I really think that. He wanted to use his gifts for invention and innovation to make the world better.

At least he was trying!

(Funny how this sort of dovetails into my Today's Card. That happens a lot to me with Deck of the Week.)

So the messages are:
LIFE: Live to serve, serve to solve
WORK: Invent words by which to live your life
INSPIRATION: Great heights are best seen from your lowest point.

All lovely concepts. Worth considering. It's the philosophy of a worker bee, a doer, a spirit not concerned with fame or even success, but with simply continuing, trying, and having a good humour all the while.

Not a bad start for a Monday!

[Joan Marie]

Andy Warhol!
I saw a really huge exhibit of his work once (did i say I miss museums!!)

There was one part where they displayed his flower paintings. I found this image so you can see just how big they are.

See a photo of them, or just seeing one by itself, does not give you the impression of walking between two walls created from them. After a few minutes, I felt like I was in some strange and wonderful garden. It really moved me, made such an impression. it just pulled me into it, the feeling of it, the spirit of it was inescapable.

Sometimes to really appreciate something you have to experience it in the right light, the right setting or configuration. I think of all the times I've dismissed something out of hand just because of my mood at the time, or the way I was taking it in (or not). I really learned that on that day.

So here are the three messages:
LIFE: Eat desert before dinner
WORK: Give your 15 minutes some time
INSPIRATION: Wanting can be netter than having

Warhol, however you feel about him, tried everything. He was a real artist in that sense, unafraid to explore new mediums and techniques. He did not feel any limits.

There are a couple of movies in which he is portrayed but my favourite portrayal of him is in the movie "Basquiat" where he is played by his friend David Bowie. He's extraordinary as Warhol. here's a short clip (with Dennis Hopper too!)






EDIT: HA! I just went to return the Warhol card to the deck and where I cut the deck to place it, was the Basquiat card!! This deck may be more magical than I originally thought. Like those flower paintings.

[Joan Marie]

Sonia DeLaunay is an artist who before I just now drew this card, I had never heard of.
So I googled her and now I am in a Sonia DeLaunay rabbit-hole-of-wonder.

I highly recommend it.

Sonia Delaunay as Cleopatra

She was born wealthy but left her native St. Petersburg to pursue a life in the arts. After a lot of great times and founding an art movement (Orphism- which I had also never heard of) she ended up having to support herself by designing textiles and costumes (see above!) and other things. I have a personal fondness for the applied arts. There is just as much spirit and talent (or can be) in the design of a kitchen appliance or a fabric or contact shelf paper (do they still make that stuff?) as any great painting or sculpture.

Sometimes artists have to eat too and we all benefit when they are able to apply their skills and visions and inspirations into the things we use everyday.

Today's 3 messages from Sonia DeLaunay:
LIFE: Don't live to 94 without founding an art movement. (note - we can't all do that, can we? Can we?)
WORK: The practical should also be art.
INSPIRATION: Does your geometry lack poetry?

I do like that last one a lot. Everything we do can be imbued with poetry if we are conscious of it.

[Joan Marie]

The dear Frida Kahlo.

I'm sitting here with not a thing to say! So much has been said about her and her work. She been a bit over-exposed in a way, which often leads to less understanding rather than more.

I have always admired how intensely she pursued her art despite all her sufferings. How she made art from it. So many artists sit around complaining of not having the "muse" or whatever. Take any little excuse to not work. She worked through everything and I don't know how she did it.

But even if you aren't an artist, you can learn to use your pain, the unfairness of life, as a catalyst. But this is not something you can tell someone, not even yourself. It comes across as a platitude. Everyone has to learn this for themselves. Internalise it their own way.

I understand Frida was also a wonderful cook. Imagine having dinner at her home. That must have been wonderful. I'm sure it ended with tequilla shots.

The 3 messages:
LIFE: Convalescence lasts a lifetime, You don't spell painting without pain.
WORK: Art is your most loyal companion.
INSPIRATION: Externalise your internal world.

All is easier said than done. That's why it's better sometimes not to say it at all. Just know it.

[Pen]

I really like this oracle, but maybe that's because it's so personally relevant and also that most of the artists featured are known to me, although of course it's easy enough to google. I like the clever text on the cards and how they relate to the lives of the artists too. Concerning the decisions around the upcoming CoT oracle, it might be revealing to know whether those with less interest in art and artists would enjoy using this one and find it helpful.

I guess creating an oracle with wide appeal and usefulness depends on the presence or absence of keywords and how strong or general a theme is decided upon (if there is a theme), or alternatively choosing to create deliberately ambiguous art rather than specific/literal artistic depiction of keywords (whether these are absent or present).

[Joan Marie]

Yayoi Kusama

Another artist I am unfamiliar with and am ready to go down the rabbit-hole to learn more about.

In the booklet it says that she lives, voluntarily, in a mental institution. And that she sees polka-dots as representing the basic structure of life.

I have a lot of things going through my heart and mind today, all kinds of things. i honestly don't know what to do with them all. So this sort of "facing the madness" attitude is really speaking to me today.

here are the 3 messages:
LIFE: Your soul is composed of the same dots as the universe.
Work: Distinguish yourself from your mirror image. (okay, this is pretty heavy if you think about it)
INSPIRATION: Show them your hallucinations. (I like this... a lot)

Lots to think about. This deck has so much more for me than seemed apparent at first.

I'm going to think about this "mirror image" concept for a while.

Happy saturday everyone.

[Nemia]

It's a great oracle, and I love what you did with it. The Delaunays belong to my favorite modern artists, I love everything I ever saw of them. Orphism influenced the well-known Blue Rider movement in Germany, iirc they exhibited together. Sonia Delaunay was one of the many amazingly talented Russian women - Alexandra Exter, Natalia Gontcharova and Lyubov Popova, I love them all. They have been a bit ignored by the traditional art historians, obviously!, and have been re-discovered lately. I fell in love with them when I saw an exhibition of the amazing Merzbacher collection. The Merzbachers simply collected everything that was colourful.

It really warms my heart that the Art Oracles include artists of all genders without making a point of it. That's how it should be.

It's very clever, and for me, one card or two per week is enough. I feel that in each playful, witty sentence, there's much more to be discovered than just one day. Additionally, if we follow your example and get to know each of the artists we can learn even more.

I love this whole concept. It's one of the best decks I bought lately and for me, the ideal oracle. It really leaves you with a lot of work to do.

[Joan Marie]

It really warms my heart that the Art Oracles include artists of all genders without making a point of it. That's how it should be.

I feel the same way. Where I live we are lucky enough to have a lot of really interesting exhibitions and many of them feature women artists but they always make a big point of that. I know it's marketing, but it feels like pandering. It's as if they dont have confidence people will be interested unless they make some kind of statement or controversy about the fact the artists are women.

Sometimes I guess you could argue there is a reason to, but really most of the time it is totally irrelevant and unnecessary.

I find it tiresome and very old fashioned.

[Joan Marie]

The final day with this deck for now:

Apropos of recent comments, I find it nice how this deck includes Ray Eames with her much more famous husband Charles. They were a team and she was as formidable a talent as he.

Many years ago I went to an exhibit about airlines at a design museum in Basel Switzerland. It was brilliant, all about the design of planes, and airports, and crew uniforms and advertising and even the little compartmented food tray designs. Everything to do with air travel and the design through its history. Air travel used to be really cool and stylish.

In this complex of museums was one devoted entirely to chairs. Everyone said we should go. It was right there. We were right there. But my boyfriend and i just looked at each other and at the same time we shook our heads and drove on. We couldn't put our finger on it in the moment, but later we realised we both found the thought of looking at a museum full of nothing but chairs sounded depressing. Maybe that was after the pure joy we had just experienced at the airline exhibit, but in any case, we missed it. I still don't regret it, but it was nothing personal. I like chairs, and design of course, but still the idea of looking at so many at once just creeps me out a little bit. I do not know why. (also, I find i am unable to visit more than one museum in a day. I get too impressed and am unable to just jump to the next thing without some time to absorb what I've already seen)

So we missed seeing the full collection of Eames chairs. There is a tremendous emphasis on the wonderful chairs they made, but it would be a pity to limit them to only that form of expression.

But the Eames' made all kinds of stuff and were a wonderful couple to whom everyone in the art community at the time flocked to at their astonishing home in California. I've seen photos of it. It was an artist's paradise reflecting the wildly varied talents and interests of its occupants.

The 3 messages:
LIFE: Design your days - Don't plan them
WORK: Aspire to profound practicality
INSPIRATION: be unbending in your flexibility

Well, I can see now I would have likely been very comfortable around these two. That life advice really speaks to me. I do much better with design than with plans. And to do that well it helps to be unbending in one's flexibility.

Funny enough, my next activity after I submit this post is my daily yoga practice.

Happy Sunday All!