Pietro Roccasalva

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/through_the_looking_glass/

Artist statements

Are they necessary?

Painting titles

Are they necessary? Here is an example of the kind often seen today:
"I'm leaving now, never to return again, I'll miss the stars, the birds and the way you smiled at me"

At MoMA yesterday

Favorite things: Gabriele Orozco, particularly the large table containing various odds and ends.
Jacob Lawrence paintings
Joan Jonas video installation

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A wonderful recording

A quote for today

"Paintings have a long life span, which turns them into very abstract elements. Paintings were the first transmitters. No matter how long they are hung in a museum, three years or 400 years, they still give you something." Luc Tuymans

A Cezanne

http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=45986&image=8534&c=gg80

Some trends in contemporary painting

1) Animals (particularly deer, rabbits, and bears)
2) Chandeliers
3) Bands of young women doing various things with strings and hair in a white or undefined environment.
4) Urban landscapes which seem to have exploded.

Texture painting

One in a series combining craft paint with fine art
canvas.

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About the title

My own variation on a line in Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SISMyPbU3s

Blanche speaks of art, music, and poetry as that which defines human sensitivity and feeling. She implores her sister Stella (and the rest of us as well) not to "hang back with the brutes".