All-right brain…

Last week I had a strong feeling in the right part of my head, nothing scientific about that, but it gave me the idea to write something about the brains.

The brain’s right side controls the left side of the body and uses intuition and imagination to handle creative tasks, such as art and music. The brain’s left side controls the right side of the body and uses logic; for mathematics and learning languages. Improving the functioning of the right side of your brain requires doing more creative tasks, such as drawing, music, reading fantasy fiction and cultivating your imagination and feelings.

Maybe you want to find out which part of your brain is more dominant, either they can be quite in balance…below my result after a test I did + link to do the test yourselves:

Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz The higher of these two numbers below indicates which side of your brain has dominance in your life. Realizing your right brain/left brain tendency will help you interact with and to understand others. Left Brain Dominance: (4) Right Brain Dominance: (15) Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz

If you are interested to stimulate your right brain ideeenmaker a dutch blog gives some nice ideas about how to get more and better ideas and has some exercises to stimulate your  right brain…for example; use both your hands in daily routine. Also, if you are right handed brush your teeth; left handed, use your mouse; left handed!

Buuurns

Being in museum M in Leuven I also had the chance to see a nice overview of the drawings from the American graphic novelist and illustrator Charles Burns. I have seen some of his comic books before which I borrowed from the library. Not always that appealing; horror without any doubt, but having a closer look to his drawings in a bigger context – even covering a wall of about 8 meters long – I do find his work quite impressive. It’s the way he draws hatches as texture in facial expressions, hair and other small details. It’s obvious he has a lot of experience, it takes a lot of practice to come to such an evolved style.

Charles Burns, Black Hole

I do recognize his early influence by MAD magazine and the cartoons from R. Crumb, of which I read some myself. What I most         appreciate is the black & white drawings as in these you do clearly see the structure and hatches. It was also shown in this exposition how Burns did evolve his drawings and it did take him quite some sketches to get to the eventual result… Maybe too polished after all?

Another cartoonist for this kind of hatched cartoons is of course Frank Miller, which most of us do know as a film director, but maybe I drift of too polished and commercial? Although I did read and really like most of his cartoons! As an opposite to this I can highlight the more rough and spontaneous: Raymond Pettibon. What might define spontaneous and rough art is that you know the artist makes an instant well drawn or painted piece of art or composition. Not perfectly polished, but very personal, a true personal style. Is this ability – which does require quite some practice or talent – more valuable than working for a long time on a certain painting or drawing to come to a ‘perfect’ result? Just for your comparison to think about this issue:

Raymond Pettibon (untitled)

Video burp

Maybe some video art is not much more than a burp that you pass by and do not recall the next day, but of course there are many exceptions. The first video that quite impressed me was Home 1 and Home 2 from the Swiss artist Olaf Breuning. I saw his two movies in beginning 2009 in Hessenhuis, Antwerp. Exhibition: ‘A meeting between the tragic and the funny’ In which one of my favorite Belgian artists Dennis Tyfus was joining as well.

Image from Mika Rottenbergs movie Squeeze

Today another video artist managed to impress me! Mika Rottenberg an Argentinian born artist (raised in Israel living currently in NY city) is showing seven of her video works in museum M in Leuven.

What she does in her movie  ‘Squeeze’ is according to me quite innovative…She manages to bring people from different parts of the world, from different traditions together in one composition. She brings the materials the people are working with together, it is the way the people communicate through shared tasks, not words. The images brought together create a new world, a new, absurd maybe even dadaist reality in your head. It comes really close, through the quite beautiful way the structure and sounds from the materials they use are brought into picture…in an abstracted way, clear without loosing it’s essence; knowledge.                         

Anyway you should try and experience it as well..

First buuurp!

Great, now I certainly Burped-up today something Biutiful ! The name of the new shop from my friends sister that I visited today. They offer a very nice concept; art, design and fashion in one shop all from international artists.

The most impressed I was by the Belgradian artist Miljan Vukicevic. His work does not allow you to post directly below a certain style, which I think makes it interesting … Although the colors he uses in his work do remind me of Paul Klee. His compositions are very good, would you like to take a look at his daily work, just check at his blogger blog.

Miljan Vukicevic