
Del 21 al 23 de de octubre se desarrollarán en la Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana las estimulantes Jornadas Académicas del Colegio de Arte y Cultura. El título de 2009 es Distorsiones: imagen y mirada. La entrada es libre.
La conferencia de Jacob Jiménez está prevista para el jueves 22 a las 10:15 h, una hora después de la conferencia inaugural de ese día. El tema será Miopía y astigmatismo: arte contemporáneo.
Están invitados a presentarse y participar los interesados en la pintura y el psicoanálisis. Por favor, reenvíe esta invitación a otros interesados en los mismos temas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99L7lLa0CeE
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En relación al arte contemporáneo.
por Jacob Jiménez Lechuga
“Los ataques a las Torres Gemelas del 11 de septiembre fueron la mayor obra de arte (confeccionada por el diablo) que se haya hecho jamás”
Karlheinz Stockhausen.
I.
“Sería bárbaro escribir Poesía luego de Auschwitz”, decía desencantado Theodor Adorno casi al mismo tiempo que le daba por divagar acerca de la persistencia y la pertinencia de la filosofía en el mismo contexto. Este gesto de desengaño muchas veces citado, retorcido y enriquecido en las discusiones de academia, hace de puente (hacia ninguna parte) entre la ausencia de directriz ideológica de hoy y aquella originada por Marx, Nietzsche y Freud, los filósofos de la sospecha, en el siglo XIX.
Así inauguran los museos y galerías el arte contemporáneo. Críticamente hablando, el término “contemporáneo” se utiliza a menudo para designar la eventual declinación del estilo en las artes luego de los eventos que dieron fin a la guerra mundial. Esa declinación del estilo no es otra cosa sino el derrocamiento de los grandes relatos, los que para Marx constituían la superestructura ideológica (Arte, Filosofía, Ciencia, Religión, Política…) y que, luego de la caída del socialismo real, incluyen entre los abatidos al mismo discurso marxista, marcando el fin de los manifiestos e imposibilitando así las duplas vanguardistas de arte y ciencia, arte y política o arte y sociedad.
“Arte contemporáneo” es, en esencia, un oxímoron. La fortuna del arte de hoy depende, en todo caso, de que sea “bien gustado”. Los artistas, los intermediarios de la obra y los espectadores buscan que el objeto o la imagen de su elección sean afables, agradables, simpáticos o, en el mejor de los casos, que les caigan en gracia.
Pero no necesariamente en sentido decorativo o corporativo. Incluso las artes que se expresan fuera de los círculos oficiales, como el grafiti o las artesanías, están sometidas a esta nueva regla de cordialidad.
Jasper Johns, Damien Hirst… Nunca antes en la historia del mundo había habido tanta prosperidad (mediática, económica…) para los artistas que sepan ajustarse al azar que nos sugiere el capitalismo salvaje –“el mundo es un casino”, decía Fidel Castro-, a la paciencia y al hado de la afabilidad en la abdicación al estilo…
Martes, 29 de septiembre de 2009

A girl from Greece asked me via Internet about my photo work so I decided to take out a pic from the vault and post it. I don't really care if the model gets embarrased about it.
This one's about a year old. She's an art student (or at least she was back in those days) who asked us if we could take her pictures just for fun. We agreed because this gave us a chance to try my custom made lamp kit.
It worked pretty well, don't you think so? Besides, she looks great.
Acrylic on wood. 50 x 40 cm. 2009. She's a pretty friend of mine who makes amazing stuff in belly dancing. Please, check out her website! (and don't forget to leave her a comment, ok?): http://www.adrytribaldancer.webs.com/Hope it's not a broken link by now...
And the caption says: "5 million inhabitants in Mexico State living in extreme poverty can't be wrong. EDOMEX - The not so worst in Post - Apocalypse".
This is an editorial cartoon I did for local EDOMEX CAMBIO magazine about the 3rd annual report of activities in Peña Nieto's government. It got banned (I ended up sending a doodle).
Acrylic on Illustration board. 2008.

OK. The materials I used for rendering this image were charcoal, acrylics, Illustration board, masking tape, a wooden surface and some fine brushes. The colors were Ivory black, Titanium white, Naples yellow, Venice yellow, Yellow ochre, Oxide yellow (in pigment), Indian red, Ultramarine blue and Burnt Sienna, and I used a matte colorless acrylic gel as a medium. It's important to know that water is not used to disolve the acrylic colors. For that, you'll have to use gel or any other liquid medium. Water is only used to clean your brushes.
First, I prepared the Illustration board with a mixture of Indian red and a liquid acrylic medium (a colorless acrylic primer, indeed). It dried and then I applied a diluted gray layer which is a mixture of Ivory black, Titanium white and Oxide yellow pigment.
I taped the cardboard to the wooden surface and finally I masked the edges just for a fine presentation purpose only. Your Illustration board should be ready for drawing on it...
Here are the references I used for rendering an accurate drawing. I used the face of the guy in the cover of Flex® magazine, the disguise of the Wolverine in the cover of this really old Comics Scene® magazine, the body of the gruesome dude in blue shorts and one hand of the less freaky, good looking buddy in the black and white photo...
There you can see the taped and masked Illustration board with the red ground layer, the second grey layer and a first charcoal sketch drawing. I work as far from the surface as I can. I tape the charcoal bar to a long stick so I can draw at long distance. The next thing to do is to establish a semi-definitive drawing, painting it black and having in mind that you will only depict the shadows in your figure.
Nature has no contours, no silhouettes, so your black masses should be delimitated by the lenght of the shadows to create the illusion of volume. If you're afraid of losing your first sketch, you can "glue" the charcoal dust lines to the surface by covering them with acrylic gel. This technique is useful not only for preserving the drawing, but also for starting to create those long, soft shadow masses I described previously.
There it is: the basis for your definitive paintwork. Black shadows and yellow lights. You may be able to change it or depict in it new elements later, but not too significant or too big. I use a goofy "yellow sauce" to create those lighting effects. It's goofy because, in a way, it's not really necessary. By regulating the viscosity of the Yellow ochre, adding acrylic gel and liquid acrylic mediums, and fusing it with your gray and black surface, you should be able to get a really neat volume effect but I really find it hard to perceive the most shining sections, so I "cheat" with the help of this secret sauce whose ingredientes are transcribed below:- In a shallow plate, drip some Venice Yellow. As far as I know, this is not a popular color. I found it in a French brand called Pebeo®. It's really poorly saturated and when using it direct from the tube to the surface, you will always be able to see the background through it. The reason I keep buying it is because I use it as a "yellow gel", really useful for creating ochre layers.
- Because its poor saturation, add Oxide Yellow pigment to it.
- Then add Yellow ochre or Naples yellow (or both of them) to the sauce, depending on how much bright light you want to achieve.
- Finally, regulate the viscosity of your sauce with the acrylic mediums (as if you were using water to make it more fluid), depending on how much of the dark background you want to cover. Be aware that this sauce doesn't include white in it. At this moment, only black and yellow should be used. You're still depicting your drawing! You'll see it's a long, hard road out of the drawing process...


I decided to sharpen the gesture and the expressive lines of the face by making them really dark, using a fine brush. Also, I decided it'll be the last time I re-draw my figure. The deep cavities of the body, like the interior of the mouth and the armpits, are the darkest. The shallow parts of the body, like the nose and the forehead, should be the most shiny.
Now the drawing is ready (about a day of work, about a total of 8 hours), colours should be applied. I really believe this layering technique was brilliantly designed by the Old Masters because of the little amount of material required. So, splash down a big spoon of liquid medium in a dish and create a flow, cellophane textured Indian red gravy.
I apply red colour right after yellow for one simple reason: it lingers out well with the most brownish parts of both ochre and black colours, as if they were cousins, born from the same family tree. Actually, if you look carefully, you can see there are some red "imaginary" hues in the intersections between the ochre layers and the black background, so painting with red is the logical next phase, but you can proceed with Ultramarine blue if you want to. I will use Ultramarine blue later and I will describe the reason why I used it as a final colour layer, right after this Indian red coating.


... Well, in fact, you'll have to start all over again. The yellow areas you worked so hard should be all messed up and blotted by now :( Repeat all the procedure and start making decisions again on which will be your most focused areas. And also start thinking where will be your darkest areas before you start painting again with black. Check the viscosity of it. Do you really need it to be that opaque? Do you really need to brush again those big shadows? And it's the same thing for the yellow areas. Please observe that ochre is far much more obscure that Naples Yellow. Use Naples yellow as if you were about to paint the white areas of your rendered model, pretty much like when you used Ultramarine blue instead of black before.

Here, I only added a thin layer of Burnt Sienna right into the flesh exposed around the mouth and over the gloves to differentiate the skin from the red areas of the costume.
Titanium white is really opaque and it has a very powerful capacity of covering what lingers below it, so use it carefully.
Maybe you would preffer to use Zinc white instead, because it's pretty much like a "white gel", but then again you won't be able to make your figure shine really bright.
Use white direct from the tube and also use it diluted with medium, just as if you were applying one very last colour layer.
And try not to cover too much of the Naples yellow parts because white painting can look really "cold", and that was the true reason why you worked with yellow at first: to keep your highlights warm.

That's it.
Take one last decision. Do you like those thick brushstrokes to be visible over the surface of your cardboard or would you like better to blur them a little?
I sprayed them with white using a toothbrush. Of course, you can use an airbrush.
Untape your provisional framing...
TA - DA! As you can see, I painted the edges black and shortly thereafter, I took one last sip of my coffee mug as I relaxed and leaned back to enjoy my silly Wolverine Pin-up.It really surprised me how fast and how little time it took from me to finish this particular paintwork.
It took me a day for rendering the drawing (8 hours), a whole day working over the colour layers (+8 hours) and maybe a couple of extra hours for picking up the details.
I'm used to work on a canvas for about a month! So this was pretty fun and relaxing to do.
Do you like it? Wolverine was one of my favorite characters as a child. Same as Ghost Rider and the Fantastic Four.
Maybe one day I will paint a Silver Surfer Pin-up too.
I'm working on a Black Cat Pin-up right now, so stay tuned for more Marvel Fan Art Masterpieces done by me, your friendly neighbor, Jacob Jimenez Lechuga, from Mexico City!
Viernes 21 de julio de 1944Querida Kitty: Hay cada vez más razones para confiar. Esto marcha. ¡Sí, verdaderamente, marcha muy bien! ¡Noticias increíbles! Tentativa de asesinato contra Hitler, no por judíos comunistas o por capitalistas ingleses...
(The title comes out from a current entry in Anne Frank's diary. This is written over the page besides Bush portrait and both items are painted over a graffiti tag line which is actually my own signature)
Acrylic on canvas
19.6 x 27.5 in.
2005






















































