Art
Las abejas omnipresentes de Mark Ryden
No os dejéis despistar por su aspecto convencional.
A pesar de una apariencia engañosamente corriente, por las venas de Mark Ryden circula la fuerza de un artista de primera categoría, que no deja a nadie indiferente.
Las abejas también forman parte de su universo.
Un poco sobre la biografía de Mark Ryden
Mark Ryden nació en Oregon (USA) en 1963.
Se crio en California y está claro que el mundo artístico le atrajo desde muy joven, pues se graduó en el Art Center College of Design de Pasadena a los 23 años.
Los primeros años de su carrera los dedicó a diseñar portadas de libros o de discos, entre otros, el famoso “Dangerous” de Michael Jackson, para ganarse la vida.
Fue entonces cuando el pintor americano Robert Williams, que se movía en los círculos del arte surrealista pop (conocido como arte Lowbrow) dio visibilidad al trabajo de Ryden a través de su revista.
El Lowbrow es un tipo de arte de la corriente underground que aplica a sus contenidos sentido del humor y, en ocasiones, incluso picardía o sarcasmo.
Este tipo de surrealismo se alimenta del mundo del comic, de la subcultura gótica, del mundo esotérico, del rock, el heavy y el punk e incluso del grafiti.
Las abejas como elemento simbólico
En su primera exposición «The Meat Show» en 1998, Mark Ryden recurrió a la carne, como objeto inspirador.
De hecho, es bastante conocida la anécdota de que la cantante Lady Gaga se inspiró en estas obras para su famoso vestido sólo apto para carnívoros.
Pero son muchos otros los elementos que Ryden incluye con carácter simbólico en sus cuadros y esculturas de forma recurrente: las abejas, los conejitos, las niñas-adultas de enormes ojos, Lincoln, Jesucristo, el ojo, el oso, el dodecaedro, el árbol y el feto, entre otros.
Algunos son clichés culturales, otros no tanto.
Mark Ryden y su abeja reina
Su obra más representativa en el universo apícola es indudablemente “Queen bee” (Abeja reina), donde no sólo la pintura tiene referencias evidentes a las colmenas y a las abejas, sino que el propio marco del cuadro recoge también estos dos elementos.
Ryden diseña minuciosamente los bellos marcos de sus cuadros en madera y los convierte en parte imprescindible de la obra final. Marco y cuadro se funden en un conjunto inseparable.
A diferencia de otras pinturas de Ryden ésta es una obra sencilla, pero a pesar de su aparente simplicidad también nos invita a la reflexión.
La abeja en la cabeza de la niña parece hacerse su propio nido en solitario, lo cual es un tanto chocante hablando de un insecto cuyo hábitat más conocido es una colonia. ¿Qué nos querrá transmitir el autor?
La obra fue vendida por la famosa casa de subastas Christie’s por 714.000 $ y Ryden donó el importe al World Wildlife Fund (Fondo Mundial para la Naturaleza), el cual lucha por mantener la biodiversidad, el uso sostenible de los recursos y la reducción de la contaminación y el consumo desmedido.
La elección de la obra para este fin altruista parece también muy simbólica.
Relación de las abejas con Mark Ryden
Para Ryden las abejas son una parte clave de la Creación, son una representación del alma.
Son aquellas criaturas a las que, a pesar de su relevancia para la sostenibilidad del ecosistema, no les prestamos ni la debida atención, ni el debido respeto.
Tan importantes son para él que las incluyó en su obra “Autoretrato como un dodecaedro”, una escultura en bronce que elaboró para convertirla probablemente en su propia tumba.
En 2001 y 2002 Ryden expuso un conjunto de obras bajo el nombre de “Bunnies and bees” (“Conejitos y abejas”) en Santa Ana (California) y en Nueva York.
Se le da a la abeja suficiente relevancia como para formar parte incluso del título de algunas de las muestras del artista, algo que no ha ocurrido con todos los símbolos que utiliza, al menos hasta la fecha.
Comentarios sobre la obra de Ryden
Más de uno verá reflejadas en su mundo imaginario a la actriz Christina Ricci y a la cantante Jessicka Addams-Fodera, que son dos de sus musas.
Ryden se inspira de hecho en todo lo que le rodea, en lo cotidiano y en lo excepcional, incluidas muchas obras clásicas, como las de El Bosco.
Algunos críticos consideran las obras de Ryden como carnavalescas o extravagantes, pero lo cierto es que se mueven a veces entre la inocencia o nostalgia que evocan ciertas imágenes y la incomodidad provocada por otras.
Es una mezcla de realismo y simbolismo, con colores brillantes, detalles extremadamente minuciosos, todo ello dibujado con un tipo de pincelada muy clásica.
El resultado es en ocasiones inevitablemente perturbador, pero visualmente muy hermoso.
En palabras del propio autor: “Creo en dejar que la imaginación prospere en mi arte. No le temo a la nostalgia ni al sentimiento. Valoro el tomarse tiempo para hacer que una pintura sea “bonita”. Quiero darles vida”
Nosotros hemos descubierto a Mark Ryden en la exposición “La cámara de las maravillas” del CAC (Centro de Arte Contemporáneo) de Málaga, su primera retrospectiva en Europa, que durará hasta el 5 de marzo de 2017.
Si tienes ocasión, acércate y simplemente disfruta. Y si no puedes, y quieres maravillarte con su trabajo, Obra de Mark Ryden.
Bees inspire dance
Dance is a way of expressing and transmitting thoughts, feelings, ideas, desires, emotions to others … Both bees and humans use dance to tell a story.
Much is known about the dance of the bees, since the austrian Karl von Frisch in 1944 confirmed that honey bees, returning to the hive, communicated their partners the pollen and nectar-rich flowers locations they had found, using a consistent body language in a curious dance, who performed outside or inside the hive, horizontally in the entrance or vertically in the honey combs. The dance was circular if the source of nectar was for less than 50 meters distance and they dance like an 8 for longer distances. If the bee dances an 8 figure, also indicates the direction and not only the distance. With the honey they regurgitate to their partners, they will detail the kind of flower aroma, to avoid missing the proper flower.
Humans have incorporate bee´s behaviour to art. And have been contemporary dance and modern dance which have created a myriad of works inspired by the world of bees. The following are a only a selection.
– Life of the Bee, choreographed by Doris Humphrey (1895-1958). After a career as a dancer and choreographer, she worked in the company Humpfrey- Weidmann and then with José Limón, where he worked as artistic director. Influenced by the book by Maurice Maeterlinck (1929), this work represents the activity of a beehive and the selection of a new queen, giving a dramatic approach to dance with the struggle to overcome between new and old queens. Doris was seduced by the social organization of bees, believes that the perfect cooperation is in the interest of group survival. «Life of the Bee» featured dancers glided across the stage, knees and elbows akimbo; worker bees, buzzing with anxiety about Queen unborn, heat the wax with their wings to facilitate cell output, ending the piece with the murder of a «Queen Bee» by another young rival in a duel to death.
– The kiss of the bee. Dance-theater production created by a very large team, combining contemporary, flamenco and dances of the Amazon region of Brazil and Colombia. The result is a work where with interacting dancers they mimic bees.
– BEEHAVE (2014). More dance theater. Choreographed by Antonia Katrandjieva and Valentina Priolo. It is promoted as a contemporary ritual to honor the bees by the interdisciplinary work and explores the behavior of honey bees. Overground Physical Theatre Company with this iconic dance, confirms that with swarm intelligence and the ability to work synergistically, people can make decisions aligned with our inner purpose and collective needs of our planet. A history of analogies between humans and bees, which illuminate to 4 urban human brains who are to be born and take their role in life.
The impossible bees of Maurits Cornelis Escher
Besides unbelievably steep stairs constructions that seem to lead nowhere, in the work of Maurits Cornelis Escher we can find an imaginary world with bees and hives, appearing in some of its 400 lithographs and woodcuts and almost 2000 drawings .
M.C. Escher (1898-1972), was a gifted draftsman and skilled engraver. He mixed architecture, perspective and impossible spaces. Besides graphic artist, was an illustrator of books, designer of postage stamps and murals. He created visual games from the observation and study of the forms of reality, and transferred to paper to explore the limits of the flat surface. We were not told much of the meaning of his work and the reason of the images that appealed to him, including honey bees.
Part of the work of the Dutch artist, difficult to classify, we can visit the museum Palais Lange Vorrhout since 2012, in the city of The Hague, in a building, where until recently, worked the kings of Holland.
Flowers, insects and people are the simplest reasons with which Escher started his research in printmaking techniques. It was brought to his drawing in the decade of the 40s of XX century. Simplicity of compositions in which the artist’s interest is to understand the smallest details that make reality.
– Metamorphosis (space-time). The transformation process is concentrated in one of the most emblematic works of Escher, Metamorphosis, where bees become birds, parts checkerboard build buildings and towers enter the chessboard. Escher investigates the mutant cycle of things and geometric division of space, trying to find the invisible bond that holds reality. Inspired by the decorative elements of the Alhambra he will fit fish, frogs, birds, lizards, ants and imaginary beings in the continuity of the paper.
Metamorphosis II. It is a mural painted in 1939 and 1940. The title refers to the gradual transformation from one form into another. A chessboard becomes insects, birds, fish, and finally in the village of Atrani. The original is a woodcut in green, brown and black measuring 4 meters long and 20 centimeters high
A mosaic of black and white squares change into a carpet of flowers and leaves, where two bees have settled and seem to be putting forward their eggs and larvae. The hexagons are those of the honeycomb cells and there´s bee larvae inside.Later bees fly out of their hexagonal cells, initiating the flight and becoming birds.
Metamorphosis III. These bees on flowers are part of a woodcut that Escher added to this work. There are transitions from simple square tiles, which evolve at irregular pentagonal flowers. These flowers attract bees, insects that Escher used as one of the most accurate representations of life.
In 1951 Escher designed a painted -ceiling for company Philips in Eindhoven (Netherlands). Bees appear next to butterflies. Regular and geometric bodies fascinated Escher during his life. He played with polyhedral shapes, contrasting the order and chaos generated when they are around everyday objects or when they are away in the vastness of the universe. With spirals, spheres and other geometric shapes investigated on the projection of three-dimensional space on a flat surface.
Emblemata 1931. His work incribes the hive in his learning of homes in social insects such as ants and bees. The work of Escher during this stage is considered as an approximation and self learning problems symmetry.
We would have liked to ask M.C.Escher by bees, but since it is no longer possible, we will enjoy his work.
To learn more, I M. C. exhibition catalog Escher. The art of the impossible. Canal de Isabel II (2006)
Bear shaped container for honey, one famous icon
Perhaps you have seen them in an american movie or series, made of any plastic material or glass, with some bear-contours more or less successful. It is the honey bear shaped container. In a study conducted in the late twentieth century, it was stated that 15% of US honey was sold in this format.
According to some sources, the idea of the first honey dispenser shaped as a bear emerged in 1957, during a dinner held by Ralph and Luella Gamber, of Dutch Gold Honey company in Pensylvania, with friends beekeepers from California. Looking for new formats for honey packaging, bear shaped container was one of them, and matched. For sure it was influenced by Yogi Bear, teddy bears or Winnie the Pooh and his fondness for honey seems. If a bear likes honey, why not a honey bear ?, Ralph Gamber said. 50 years after this occurrence, they did a contest to put a name to this honeybear. They chose the name Nugget.
The first plastic honey bears were manufactured by the Californian company Admiral Plastics. As technology plastic injection was not fully developed,and it was quite common for packaging honey some honey drip in ears and nose. These early designs required another fun manual operation: paint the eyes and nose in the honey bear by hand, and sometimes even red lips
Other relevant facts about the honey bear container :
– Honey bear pand its patent in 1952. Edward Rachins registered his patent for this package before the idea came to Dutch Gold Honey company. Another case of concepts which comes in different ways and not copied?
– In 2010 a campaign was launched by the National Association of US Honey called «Save the endangered honey bear» with the aim of raising awareness to american society about substitutes like syrups with a small percentage of honey They could not be sold as honey and you should check this information on the label.
– The honey bear, inspiration for artists. From its humble beginnings as a container for honey, art has led to unexpected areas: soap dispensers, porcelain, printed in trays, necklaces, in wax candles, in openers or corkscrew devices…
– Honey bear collectors. All human activity is subject to collecting. Why not honey bears?
Today we recognize the honey bear container has become an icon of American culture and honey. We’ll always have the doubt, why the honey bee shaped packaging did not success?