so you think you know art

SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW

ART

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Visions from within the Creative Zone by Miles Jaye

So You Think You Know Art

by Miles Jaye Copyright 2014 by Miles Jaye Davis, Sr. All rights reserved.

Published by MJDP Publishing; Orlando, Florida; USA All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. Thank you!

Printed in the United States of America Cover photo by: Miles Jaye To order print copies or Creative Zone bookings please email: miles.jaye@gmail.com For the official Miles Jaye website visit: www.milesjaye.com ______________________________________________________ “Creativity requires courage.” - Henri Matisse “A picture is worth a thousand words.” - Unknown “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.” - Albert Einstein “No great artist ever sees things as they really are; if he did, he would cease to be an artist.” - Oscar Wilde DEDICATION: This book of Art is dedicated to my loving family. I hope you enjoy the images on the following pages and appreciate the spirit of challenge, adventure and individualism we all share.

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INTRODUCTION What is Art? “Art” is arguably one of the most misunderstood, overburdened terms in the English language. What “Art” is and what it is not may be the perfect unsolvable problem and unanswerable question. Many experts believe to know Art one must study painters and periods and while that may be true of Art History I believe Art stands alone.

My dictionary defines “Art” as: 1. the expression or application of human creative skills and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for the beauty or emotional power. 2. creative activity resulting in the production of paintings, drawings, or sculpture.

I define “Art” as: “the creative expression of an experience through a method that enables another to share that experience; the more creative, the more artistic.” Does that include the “Selfie?” Perhaps! Now that virtually everyone has a camera phone does that make everyone an artist? Perhaps! Would that be such a bad thing?

In the pages that follow you will see images that I’ve witnessed and moments that I’ve experienced that I chose to share through photography. I offer this challenge: rather than critique the “quality” or “technical proficiency” of the photography, free your mind and allow your imagination to visit the images at their source. Attempt to experience that “thing” or that “place.” To the extent that you are successful in doing so, you are observing “Art” and whatever you do, if you happen to see me or send comments by the Internet, please refrain from saying: “nice pictures.” ______________________________________________________ “Everything you can imagine is real.” - Pablo Picasso “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” - Ansel Adams “A work or art which did not begin in emotion is not Art.” - Paul Cezanne “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” - Edward Hopper “I put my heart and soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” - Vincent Van Gogh 3

FORWARD Why do I shoot?

I shoot because it intrigues me. I shoot what intrigues me. I shoot what haunts me. I shoot what excites me and captivates my imagination. I want you to see what I see. I paint what I imagine. I struggle passionately to transfer my feelings to canvas, never fearing simplicity or failure. I love the courage art requires. I have embraced the demands of visual art. It is intensely tedious and excruciatingly private, yet it requires countless eyes, your eyes.

Matisse is credited with the quote: “Creativity takes courage” but no one explains why? What is so frightening?

What frightened me most about submitting is the thought of being all consumed by a thing and the thought of losing everything and everyone in the process. Overcome those two fears and all is well.

Photography is a very different experience in that it allows me to capture a moment in time. The precise moment that I shoot is frozen in time. The moments capture in the images on the following pages are now timeless. That’s the magic of the process of photography and if I’m able to share the emotional reaction of that moment embedded in the image that is indeed magical. ______________________________________________________ “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.” - Salvador Dali “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” - Edgar Degas “The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.” - Jerry Kosinski “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” - Edgar Degas “If a voice inside your head says you cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

Aristotle

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The Violin The violin, what an unlikely instrument for a young Black Brooklyn kid. I was introduced to the instrument in the fifth grade at P.S. 161 under the tutelage of Mrs. Lenora George. The violin and I have been inseparable ever since.

I can’t say what it is about the connection but I loved the instrument as a young student and continue to love it after a rather extensive music career. Many years of travel and performance and the relationship is just as wonderful. To a great extent, the violin is as recognizable an element of my identity as Lucille is to B.B. King; or not.

The violin itself is a fascinating piece of artistry, engineering and acoustic design technology. The craftsmanship of the violin has made famous names such as Stradivarius and Guarneri. The instrument in the following photographs is a Guarneri copy from Cremona Italy dated 1733. It was a gift from my mother and her dear friend Mrs. Boyd, the Pastor’s wife.

When I received the gift I was still in high school. I still have it. I decided one day that I would attempt to capture and document what I see when I hold my violin. When I play it, tune it, clean it or change the strings. The more I turned it, the more I handled it, the more I appreciated it and its astonishing beauty.

The shots and angles I chose are intimate close-ups giving unique views of the violin typically reserved for players. ______________________________________________________ “A man paints with his brain, not with his hands.” - Michelangelo “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not Art.” - Paul Cezanne “An artist cannot fail. It is a success just to be one.” - Charles Horton Cooley “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” - Thomas Merton

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The Saxophone The saxophone is a fascinating instrument. It is regal, beautiful in timbre and technologically exquisite.

The saxophone is responsible for 100 years of stellar artistic expression and largely responsible for a uniquely American art form, Jazz.

The saxophone in the following photographs belonged to a rather unknown sax player, Arnold Davis, my father.

Arnold Davis’ greatest musical distinction may very well be his love of the art form and his appreciation of its progenitors. He studied tenor with the legendary John Coltrane and in his later years shared a few priceless stories of his friendship with the man many refer to simply as: “Trane.”

My connection with the instrument is as emotional as it is musical. I am, to a great extent, defined by the instrument in that both my father and brother played the instrument. I was a young violin student but I always felt like more of a Davis man when I snuck my brother’s alto out of the case, and began to learn the fundamentals. Well into our adulthood my brother gifted me with his alto, I still have it, and before his passing, my father gifted me with his tenor which is the subject of the images in The Saxophone. ______________________________________________________ “I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.” Vincent Van Gogh “The creative adult is the child who has survived.” - Ursula K. Le Guin “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” - Jonathan Swift “I don’t think about Art when I’m working, I thing about life.” - Jean-Claude Basqiat “People discuss my art and pretend to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.” - Claude Monet

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UrbanScapes Orlando is where I make my home. It’s where I think, vibe, dream and create. It’s where I work out the kinks and the details. It’s where I imagine what could be if only I were to begin. So I begin. Again, and again, I begin.

It’s no coincidence that I chose Orlando where many years ago, a man made an icon of the humblest of characters.

So humble that it only carries a first name, yet I can hardly think of anyone, anywhere that hasn’t heard of him.

Add Universal and Sea World and you get Orlando.

Orlando is Florida, with its palm trees, beaches and tropical climate. Florida is also rich in history from the Native Americans, the Spaniards and the runaway slaves to the earliest American settlements such as St. Augustine.

Unfortunately, Florida’s decades old racial divide continues to haunt us. At times it is a difficult region to find peace as racial tensions and violence are evident throughout the this lovely southern state. As in many American cities, there are two stories to be told. ______________________________________________________ “One eye sees, the other feels.” - Paul Klee “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” Plato “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” - Cesar Cruz “At a certain age some people’s minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat.” - Irish Blessing “The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us.” - Gloria Steinem “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of a thing, but their inward significance.” - Aristotle

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Dallas and Chicago, ironically, are two other American cities rich in historical importance and equally challenged with current racial malaise and violence in spite of their beauty. Cosmopolitan in most respects, and one of the nation’s wealthiest cities, Dallas is an enigma to a New Yorker like myself. It’s city and country simultaneously. Its wealth masks its rural, cowtown turned oil town history, its racial history. Interestingly, Dallas has one of the most vibrant, robust art communities in the nation with great museums and a generous assortment of galleries.

Interestingly; Texas has a long standing reputation as the home of the cowboy, but Kissimmee, Florida on the outskirts of Orlando, was once the cattle capitol of America. I first shot downtown Dallas then downtown Orlando.

I took the liberty of adding a taste of Chicago because it’s so full of character. I love all three cities. ______________________________________________________ “Art is literacy of the heart.” - Elliot Eisner “Do not fear mistakes, there are none.” - Miles Davis “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” - Ansel Adams “An artist is not paid for his labor, but for his vision.” - James Whistler “I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.” Vincent Van Gogh “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works. If I create from the head, almost nothing.” - Marc Chagall “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” - Georgia O’Keefe

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NatureScapes I hike, camp, scuba dive, walk beaches at night or on rainy mornings. I watch birds, clouds, stars and the full moon.

I love nature. I’ve always loved nature. That may sound funny coming from a native Brooklynite. Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens are natures gifts to Brooklyn. Central Park and Brighton Beach were major excursions from our apartment on Bedford and Sterling but they were distant horizons waiting to be discovered.

I love the sensual beauty of Monet’s “Water Lilies” but the stark blackness and slate grays of Ansel Adams’ “Tenaya Creek, Dogwood Rain” engage me in entirely different ways that are somehow closer to me; more like my music and closer to my soul.

I find beauty in the structural geometry of architecture and roads and bridges but the voluptuous twists, turns, forms and shapes of streams, branches, clouds and undulating endless fields leave me mesmerized and time stands still. Even dead wood comes to life in my mind’s eye, so I shoot so you can see what I see. When I hike through the sandy woods or camp out in the lush green forest, I shoot what I want you to see like a kid saying: “look what I found.” ______________________________________________________ “I will be an artist or nothing.” - Eugene O’Neil “Great art picks up where nature ends.” - Marc Chagall “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” - Francis Bacon “The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.” - Piet Mondrian “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” - Dorothea Lange “If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul.” - Paul Cezanne

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The Train The Train; its power, its drama, its history from the folklore of John Henry to the compelling story of the Pullman Porters, the pull of this interesting subject was too much to resist. Besides, all boys love trains.

I was tempted to place the train after the tenor saxophone, making the Trane reference; however, I thought the cliche might fall flat, off-beat and much too obvious.

I found this vintage out of service train in parked in downtown Orlando. I’m sure I passed it many times without taking notice or without it becoming any special point of interest. On one bright, warm, typical Florida Sunday morning while out shooting random sites I came across the train again and it instantly became my train. I spent the remainder of that Sunday morning with my train, on my train, under my train, admiring my new friend. My historical friend is no longer parked in that location, it’s been removed from the Orlando area to parts unknown to me, but thanks to my camera, that Sunday brunch date will never be forgotten. Introducing Train #3749! ______________________________________________________ “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” - Andy Warhol “Art doesn’t have to be pretty, it has to be meaningful.” - Duane Hanson “Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs.” - Ansel Adams “I am interested in art as a means of living a life, not as a means of making a living.” - Robert Henri “To produce any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, so do it.” - Kurt Vonnegut “The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.” W. Somerset Maugham

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Community Service I once had to perform court ordered community service to resolve a dispute between myself and an area business.

I promised myself that I would accomplish two things in the performance of my duty, which was to simply “police” the grounds of a local community. First, I would do such an outstanding job of maintaining the area that they would always remember me. I can recall a story from my childhood about being very best street sweeper if that’s what you were called to be. Second, I would turn what was intended to be punitive into a positive experience of which I could be proud. Something which might motivate others. The result was an early release from the community service requirement. Apparently, my attitude, enthusiasm and work ethic made a difference. I photographed some of the items I recovered in the process of “policing” the grounds. They are the final five images, which are the only color shots in the project. ______________________________________________________ “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Proverb “We do not judge great art, it judges us.” - Caroline Gordon “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible.” - Jonathan Swift “Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.” - Andre Gide “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” - Pablo Picasso “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make more Art.” - Andy Warhol

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After Thoughts I am humbled and delighted by the opportunity to share with you what I have witnessed and observed. Music has taught me not to delude myself with the illusory notions of “perfection” or “excellence” before attempting to produce. It’s the clumsy flaws and foibles of inexperience that are the foundations of growth and exploration.

It’s not the process but the content that matters. It’s substance over form. My humble efforts are not based on any misconception that my skills and knowledge of photography have earned my work recognition. I know very little about photography, but I learn more everyday and with each shoot. What I know is that my spirit is open to the subject, whatever it may be, and I trust that. I know what moves me.

My passion is the sharing through music, lyric, lens or brush stroke. The subject holds the power that matters most.

The subject was beautiful or grotesque or fascinating or delightful without the artist’s interaction and it will continue to be so long after the artist is done and gone.

Special thanks to: Jean-Claude Basquiat for inspiration, Miles Davis for giving a fellow musician “permission” to express himself visually and to my brother for all that I learned from him about the art of photography. ______________________________________________________ “As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight.” - James McNeil Whistler “In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson “Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.” - Khalil Gibran “What makes men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is not enough.” - Eugene Delacroix “In becoming an artist my two greatest fears were being consumed by it and losing everyone and everything in the process. Once consumed, I embraced the obsession and found myself alone with everything I need to be an artist.”

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Artists to Know Adams, Ansel Audobon, John Avedon, Richard Avery, Milton Baldessari, John Barnard, George Basquiat, Jean-Michel Bates, David Baziotes, William Bearden, Romare Beardsley, Limner Bellocq, E. J. Benton, Thomas H. Berman, Wallace Biederman, Charles Bingham, George C. Bischoff, Elmer Blume, Peter Bolotowsky, Ilya Bourke-White, Margaret Brook, Alexander Brooks, James Bruce, Patrick H. Cadmus, Paul Callahan, Harry Caravaggio Caponigro, Paul Carles, Arthur B.

Cezanne, Paul Chamberlain, John Chase, William M. Chicago, Judy Christenberry, William Conner, Bruce Crawford, Ralston Cunningham, Imogen Curry, John Steuart Curtis, Edward S. Dali, Salvadore Davis, Stuart Da Vinci, Leonardo Degas, Edgar De Kooning, Willem Delaney, Beauford De Maria, Walter Demuth, Charles Dewing, Thomas W. Diebenkorn, Richard Diller, Burgoyne Dine, Jim Disfarmer, Mike DiSuvero, Mark Doughty, Thomas Douglas, Aaron Dove, Arthur G. Doyle, Sam duBois, Guy Pene

Duncanson, Robert Durham, Jimmie Durer, Albrecht Estes, Richard Evans, Walker Evergood, Philip Feininger, Lyonel Finster, Howard Fischl, Eric Flavin, Dan Francis, Sam Frank, Robert Frankenthaler, Helen Friedlander, Lee Gardner, Alexander Gober, Robert Goings, Ralph Goldin, Nan Gonzalez-Torres, Felix Goodes, Edward Gorky, Arshile Gottlieb, Adolph Goya, Fransisco Gowin, Emmet Graham, Dan Graves, Morris Grooms, Red Groover, Jan Gropper, William 108

Guston, Philip Gwathmey, Robert Haberle, John Halley, Peter Hals, Frans Hammons, David Hansen, Al Hanson, Duane Haring, Keith Hartigan, Grace Hartley, Marsden Hayden, Palmer Heade, Martin J. Heizer, Michael Henri, Robert Hesse, Eva Hill, Thomas Hockney, David Hogue, Alexandre Holzer, Jenny Hopper, Edward Horn, Roni Indiana, Robert Inman, Henry Inness, George Irwin, Robert Jess Johnson, David Johnson, William H.

Jones, Lois M. Judd, Donald Katz, Alex Kelly, Ellsworth Kensett, John F. Kent, Rockwell Kern, Richard Kienholz, Edward Klein, William Kline, Franz Krasner, Lee Kuniyoshi, Yasuo Lachaise, Gaston Lange, Dorothea Lassaw, Ibram Lawrence, Jacob Lawson, Ernest Lee, Russell Leigh, William R. Lewitt, Sol Louis, Morris Lozowick, Louis Luks, George Macdonald-Wright, S. Manet, Edouard Mangold, Robert Man Ray Manship, Paul Marden, Brice

Marin, John Marshall, Kerry J. Martin, Agnes Maurer, Alfred H. Metcalf, Willard Michelangelo Mitchell, Joan Monet, Claude Morgan, Sister Gertrude Morris, Robert Moses, Grandma Motherwell, Robert Motley, Archibald Mount, William S. Murphy, Gerald Murray, Elizabeth Muybridge, Eadweard Nauman, Bruce Neel, Alice Nevelson, Louise Newman, Barnett Nixon, Nicholas Noguchi, Isamu Noland, Kenneth Nutt, Jim O’Keefe, Georgia O’Sullivan, Timothy Oldenburg, Claes Outerbridge, Paul 109

Park, David Parrish, Maxfield Peale, Raphaelle Peale, Rembrandt Pearlstein, Philip Peck, Sheldon Penn, Irving Peto, John F. Picasso, Pablo Pierce, Elijah Pippin, Horace Pollack, Jackson Porter, Eliot Prendergast, Maurice Puryear, Martin Ramirez, Martin Raphael Rauschenberg, Robert Ray, Charles Reid, Robert Reinhardt, Ad Renoir, Pierre-Auguste Rembrandt, H. van Rijn Remington, Frederic Rockwell, Norman Rosenquist, James Roszak, Theodore Rothenberg, Susan Rothko, Mark

Rubens, Peter Paul Ruscha, Ed Russell, A.J. Russell, Morgan Ryder, Albert P. Ryman, Robert Saar, Betye Salle, David Savage, Augusta Schamberg, Morton Schabel, Julian Segal, George Serra, Richard Serrano, Andres Shahn, Ben Shapiro, Joel Shaw, Charles Shinn, Everett Simpson, Lorna Siskind, Aaron Sloan, John Smith, David Smith, Tony Soyer, Raphael Spencer, Niles Spero, Nancy Steichen, Steinberg Steinberg, Saul Stella, Frank

Stella, Joseph Still, Clyfford Storrs, John Tanner, Henry O. Thompson, Bob Titian Tobey, Mark Ulman, Doris Van Der Zee, James Van Gogh, Vincent Velazquez, Diego Vermeer, Johannes Walker, Kara Warhol, Andy Watkins, Carlton E. Weber, Max Wegman, William Weston, Edward Whistler, James

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About the Author

Miles Jaye (Davis) is a native-New Yorker living in Central Florida.

Jaye, always one to draw and sketch as a youngster, studied freehand and mechanical drawing at Brooklyn Technical High School. His studied violin and theory at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music; Saratoga School of Orchestral Studies and the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.

After serving a five year enlistment with the U.S. Air Force Band, he toured extensively as a vocalist and multiinstrumentalist throughout Europe, Asia and South America with various Jazz and R&B artists as well as performing as lead the singing ‘Cop’ of the Village People.

Jaye’s recording career spans a period of more than 25 years, scoring Billboard Top Ten hits and critical acclaim as a premiere vocalist/songwriter/producer.

Upon relocating to Orlando, Florida, Jaye studied art privately until his instructor fell ill.

Miles Jaye is a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts; an author, journalist and a visual artist.

For more about the author visit: www.milesjaye.com “The artist lives with passion and a sense of purpose, which ultimately prepares him/her to die well.” - Miles Jaye

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