ArtCorner

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

-Frank Lloyd Wright

It is possibly the most ancient design movement known and yet has made itself an avant-garde design craze. Although, over three thousand years old, the idea of Feng Shui has received much attention in modern day. Surf the net or the local bookstores and you will find numerous resources on the subject. It has taken the Interior Design industry by storm and has found a way into university classrooms all over the world. It has been revered as an art. It has been shunned as superstition. It is controversial, which means it is interesting. So let’s take a brief look, shall we?

Feng Shui (“wind-water”) is an ancient Chinese practice dealing with the arrangement of a space and its elements to bring balance to the environment and those who dwell within, more basically, living in harmony with your surroundings.

This ancient philosophy says that being in tune with the elements and energy around you will bring you the most balance in life. These elements are Earth, Fire, Water, Metal, and Wood. The energy is Ch’i (pronounced ‘chee’).

Ch’i is the life force, and it is present all around us, all of the time. The purpose of incorporating Feng Shui into our homes is to attract Ch’i and to raise positive energy levels. The Chinese have utilized this in the construction of large buildings and homes, aligning the corners of the structures with the corresponding directions of the four cardinal directions–north, south, east, and west. The ancient Chinese tended to build their homes according to the directions and meaning of each.

Astrology is incorporated as well. Depending on the individual’s year of birth, each direction has different meaning. Those dealt with include positive directions (prime, health, longevity, prosperity, etc.) and negative directions (death, disaster, the six shar, and the five ghosts). According to Chinese life principle, there is no getting around the negative directions. Though, it is believed that utilizing Feng Shui in your home can keep the Ch’i in balance, and the positive and negative in harmony.

In this day and age, not many of us have the option of choosing our land so freely, as we have settled down already or dwell in apartment buildings. Unfortunately, we can’t very well pick up and turn our homes to suit our individual Ch’i. This is where Feng Shui designers have found their calling. Placement of furniture, certain deco, as well as color use are considered imperative factors in the Feng Shui culture. Here are a few interesting and random examples.

Furniture Placement:

- Move the bed to face your health and longevity direction.

- Always have a bed against one wall, as this gives the individual stability.

- The oven and the sink should have space between them, as they represent opposing elements; water and fire.

- The living room is the central gathering room and where most families spend their time. Try to put the main area of focus (television, sound system) in the corner that represents health. This way, when the family lounges together, they are facing a positive direction.

- The Chinese believed that no matter how big the family, there should always be at least eight chairs at the dining table. If more or less, the number must always be even.

- Face the desk that you work at towards your creative direction.

Decorations and Accessories:

- If one of your positive directions lie in the South, and there is a Southern wall with no window in your home, add a mirror. This gives Ch’i room to flow with no ending point.

- The bathroom of your home is the place for Ch’i to pool–and in its most negative environment. Bathrooms are typically small, and are associated with destruction. Mirrors, and house plants should be abundant in this area.

- The living room or bedroom are good places for oil paintings and art, as these are objects of prosperity.

- The study, or the area where you do so, should be filled with objects of creativity. Fill the area with artwork, pottery, and house plants. If there is no window above your desk, guess? Add a mirror!

- Round objects represent money. So, in the living room, and study, try round rugs, tables, and coasters.

- Wind chimes, wind chimes, wind chimes! Anything associated with wind will help Ch’i flow freely.

Color:

The central colors of importance to Feng Shui include green, red, yellow, white, and black. Although the meaning and directional significance of each differs depending on your source, each color represents one of the five elements (Earth, Fire, Water, Metal, Wood).

- It is important that the color of your bedroom correlate with your element. Mine is water, which seems to be associated with white or blue.

- The kitchen is the one place in the house most susceptible to hazard. Green is the safest color to use here.

- The study is an important area for free air, and open mindedness. Yellow or white will keep the area amicable.

For more information on color use, check out the Quick Guide to Color Effects and Meanings blog.

Whether or not you take the ancient art of Feng Shui on board, it is quite an impressive subject as well as vastly immense–I have only just touched the bare minimum here. Aside from the apparent mysticism, its principles touch upon the chic mannerism of modern design as well. More and more designers and clients are designing with meaning and with spirituality. In my opinion, this is wonderful!

Every type of art has spiritual root and meaning–it’s the artist that makes it distinct. As always, my best design advice is to understand what touches you and manifest it into your space. Peace be with you and may your Ch’i flow free!

Paul Gauguin, who painted in oils, producing such marvels as Ta Matete (We Shall not Go to Market Today,) Night Café at Arles, and Vision After the Sermon, did not start out a painter. His first career was a French merchant sailor. This occupation lasted six years. Paul Gauguin the merchant sailor then became Paul Gauguin the banker, and then Paul Gauguin the Parisian stock broker. It was not until 1871 that Gauguin started painting, and then just as a hobby.

What moved Gauguin to start painting was an Impressionist exhibition, although he remained a stockbroker while he dabbled in Impressionism. He married Mette Gad, a Copenhagen native, in 1873. They had five children.

Unlike some of his other struggling artist friends, Gauguin had plenty of money. He purchased works of Manet, Monet and Renoir, painting his own masterpieces such as Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Madeleine Bernard and Two Breton Women on the Road, during his weekend hours. In later years he started evening painting classes at the Colarossi Academy, where his learning was helped immensely by Pissarro and Paul Cezanne. At the age of 28 one of his much-lauded landscape paintings was selected to be hung in the renowned Salon D’Automne.

Paul Gauguin left behind his wealth, his “day job” and his family in 1883, moving to Rouen France. His employer was in financial distress, which may have influenced his decision. His wife and children move to Denmark to live with her parents. Gauguin then concentrated on a much less financially secure life as full time printmaker and painter.

Paul Gauguin died in 1903 in poor health and extreme poverty.

Norwegian born Edvard Munch was the son of a doctor and a sick mother who died when he was five years old. His family was redolent with death and illness. One sister died of tuberculosis at 15 years old, and another sister was mentally ill. The only sibling that every married died less than a year after her wedding.

So, while Edvard Munch’s home provided cultural stimulation it also was dark, dreary and morbid. Death, grief and illness pervaded his art, as a result. This is evidenced by such paintings as The Day After, Death in the Sick Chamber, the Sick Child (the portrait of his sister Sophie), and the mourning-clothed Sister Inger.

Edvard Munch attended technical school for one year, where he learned from the old masters. He attended the Royal School of Drawing as well, learning to paint nudes. Norway’s best known and revered painter, Christian Krohg, taught Munch. He was heavily influenced by the Realism movement of France. It wasn’t long before Munch’s outstanding talent for oil paintings came to the forefront of the art world.

His main works from subsequent years, such as Evening on Karl Johan, and Self Portrait: Between Clock and Bed are not nearly as provocative as earlier work.
His 1889 Inger on the Beach, for example, shows a more romantic bent than in previous years.

Edvard Munch’s dark painting, The Scream, has often been spoken of as his first expressionist painting. The entire scene is distorted grotesquely and drawn in unrealistic colors. This painting displayed his apocalyptic feelings of anxiety.

Edvard Munch died in 1944, willing his massive painting and biographical note collection to the City of Oslo. This collection is held at the Munch Museum in Oslo.

Edgar Degas, son of a wealthy bank official, was born in Paris, later studying art at his home city’s famous Ecole Des Beaux-Arts. In Italy he later spent five years learning from the work of masters that went before him. His paintings during this period included Russian Dancers, The Rehearsal, The Dance Class and Two Dancers on a Stage.

Upon his return to France in 1859, Edgar Degas exhibited these works. He soon joined the ranks of Impressionist painters.

The entertainment world especially intrigued Degas and shows up often in his works throughout his life. Some of his most famous paintings, The Rehearsal, and Two Dancers on Stage, show of his fascination with the beauty and sophistication of ballet.

Edgar Degas preferred painting in an art studio, which was unusual for the Impressionists of that time. He would sketch his subjects where he found them and then later return to his studio to capture them on oil and canvas.
Degas spent a lot of his life studying and admiring Japanese prints and the Japanese tendency toward daring composition and large spots of flat coloring show up in several of his works.

In later years of his life Degas turned from oil painting to clay and wax sculpturing and printmaking. The paintings he did produce at this time were pastel. In the 1890’s as he concentrated on printmaking he worked almost solely with female nudes. After serving in the war with Germany for one year in 1870 Edgar Degas began losing his eyesight and his sculpturing came of his inability to decipher paintings and colors enough to create them any longer.

American born Georgia O’Keeffe was a painter whose fame was in the
purity of such noted still lifes as White Flower on Red, Red Cannas, Red
Canna, and Two Pears.

Born in Sun Prairie Wisconsin, Georgia O’Keeffe attended both the Art
Institute of Chicago and New York City’s Art Students League. Alfred
Stieglitz, later to become her husband, displayed her paintings in his New
York City gallery in 1916. Gorgeous O’Keefe works were displayed there
until Stieglitz’s death in 1946.

In 1949 her move to New Mexico influenced Georgia O’Keeffe to produce
some of her best known works – larger than life still lifes of desert
scenery and flowers. Her subjects are realistic although painted in a
stark linear fashion, with clear and thin colors and bold abstract
patterns

Many Georgia O’Keeffe still life works have the contrast of realism
with some abstract effects. One in particular is her 1926 rendition of
Black Iris, which hands in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. She
took a very realistic look of the black iris, but enlarged it so
massively that its details actually become surprising, seeming to be
unfamiliar.

In the 1960’s Georgia O’Keefe became entranced with airplanes as her
mode of transportation. O’Keefe paintings with clouds and sky began to
emerge on a regular basis. One of her largest works is the 1965 Sky Above
Clouds, which has a massive width of 24 feet.

O’Keefe paintings, reproductions of which are available online, are
displayed all over the United States, both in public and private museums
as well as private home collections.