​I went in expecting to learn little more than what the reviewers had said. I found that there is a great deal more to say about Mr. Munch and still more to learn.

"For as long as I can remember I  have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to  express in my art."
Edvard Munch

The exhibition consisted of 44 painting, 17 of which are considered self-portraits and he seems to appear in other paintings as well.  The scale is larger than I thought..ranging from a few smallish but most were 4x6 feet up to 6x8 feet. Oddly, many were 5 ft. squares, a shape frame usually avoided by artists. 2/3 of the paintings were done after 1900 and most done during the Nazi occupation of Norway. This is considered his studio work after his sojourns to Germany and France. Both his mother and sister died tragically when he was young and a lasting impression was  made and so set the gloomy tone of his work. However, nothing is self-indulgent here. 

"It suites my pictures to hang together; they lose something displayed with others."
Edvard Munch

There is a consistency of value and color that unites all his canvases. The effect is like songs in a concept album. they work together and the story they tell runs through the pictures. The first impression is that the lights are very low. Like a Poe novel, a dark somber mood is set by turning the lights way down. The originals are much darker than the reproductions and the palette is orange, black, muted reds and blues and disagreeable shades of green. With bits of raw linen canvas visible, it appears that he used no ground. the paint is laid on in oil washes on raw canvas with drips and all. This also lowers the value level as the canvas is tan colored. The surface is flat matte and the de-saturated colors play a supporting role in setting the moods. stylistically he is more akin to Matisse than the German Expressionists. No hint of any preliminary drawings. Of course, Matisse used a much lighter palette and color played a much bigger role.

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye..It also includes the inner pictures of the soul."
Edvard Munch

Munch had one foot in the 19th century and the other in the 20th. Clearly modern in his sensibilities, he still never broke the surface of the picture plane like the Expressionists. His drawing skills come through though his figures are not recognized as any particular individual except in a few of his self-portraits where his figure emerges from the gloom fully formed. Other figures occupy the canvases, but most look down or away from the viewer. Those that do look have no eyes or on close inspection completely distorted facial features. All the positive forms use contour lines that are either bent or broken or both. The effect is the figure dissolves into the background. Some figures dissolve into each other. The swirling application of paint supports the composition and adds to the dreamy effect. For what these works really are are paintings of dreams. Dreams with a heavy sense of melancholy. The use of paint varies in his work. Some are completely still and the muted color forms into smooth pools. In other, the line becomes agitated and squiggly. In two paintings of the sick child, both methods are applied. His picture space is created with the subtle use of perspective. He counters this by employing patterns, like Matisse, to flatten space. This push and pull of space and the swirling paint lines create a dynamic effect that cannot be seen at all in reproductions. Importantly, he never breaks the picture plane. This is really what separates his work from some of the Expressionists. I went down to the permanent collection after the show to see two Max Beckmann paintings on display. Here all the paint is on the surface and space is completely negated. 

"I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw."
Edvard Munch

I noticed that there is a subtext of sexual tension in his work. The bedroom scene with male and female figures are full of agitated paint strokes. Some area are hints of Cezanne with staccato brush work that vibrates the canvas. There is a large female nude attacked a slashed with the brush..scary as anything done by de Kooning. Other paintings ar almost serene and populated with Chagall like figures. All in all, other than being a Modernist, I would be hard pressed to put Munch into any category.


"Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in a heightened movements. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness. "  
Edvard Munch


Gary Rath

Ai Weiwei is the best know Chinese artist on the world stage. His often controversial art projects has earned him fame abroad and censorship and repression from the Communist government at home.

J Paul Getty made his money in the oil business and upon his death he left his enormous fortune to construct at a cost of $1.3 billion what is now simply known as "The Getty". This 600 acre campus sits on a hill top in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles with a stunning view of the city and the Santa Monica Mountains. The center designed by the famed architect Richard Meier is a complex of buildings housing  The Getty Museum, Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation and the Getty Trust. It opened to the public in 1997 and has an endowment of between $6-7 billion dollars. Although Getty came late to  art collection, each work be it in painting or sculpture is a stunner. When works do come up for sale, they can pretty much out bid everyone. The Getty institute works to preserve and protect and study art treasures from around the world.  

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The Getty Villa is home to the Roman and Greek collection of the Getty Museum. It is located near the beach in Pacific Palisades California and is an exact replica of a Roman Villa of a wealthy Roman from about 2000 years ago. The stunning setting offers views of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

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I graduated from college in May, 1968 and was drafted into the US Army in June. My daughter was just 5 weeks old when I began my training first at Fort Leonard Wood Mo. and then Fort Ord California, and later, Fort Benning Georgia. I arrived In Cam Ranh Bay Vietnam via Fort Lewis Washington, Alaska, and Japan. My first assignment was with Bravo Company, 2ed of the 2ed, First Infantry Division. Our area of operation ranged north of the Saigon River from the suburbs of Saigon to the Cambodian border. However, we mostly worked in and around the Michelin Rubber Plantation and our Basecamp was outside the town of Dau Taing. The town contained a small French settlement that tried to keep the plantation running. Our principal duty was to provide security for the Army Engineers Rome plow units. (These massive armored bulldozers were designed to knock down jungle to expose enemy tunnels and weapons bunkers) and to interdict any large scale movements of enemy troops toward Saigon (either by road or river.) We were usually attacked after dark on our NDP (night defense position) with first mortar rounds, a barrage of RPG (rocket propelled grenades) and small arms fire. Our casualty rate was relatively low but steady. The Army Engineers did not fare as well, with one out of three being wounded or killed by mostly bobby traps and accidents. 

After Nixon withdrew the First Division at the end of 1969, I was assigned to a ground infantry unit (Grunts) with the Americal Division with a Basecamp at Chu-Lai on the central coast. Here the weather was cooler and the terrain more mountainous. Whereas the locals were generally friendly in the south, here they were hostile and usually disappeared as we advanced. There are few photos from this period because everything had to be carried our backs and a camera was not essential. These last three months were hell as our company suffered 50% casualties from mostly booby traps and hit and run ambush attacks. This area of the country had suffered greatly with whole towns destroyed and deserted. Starvation was common in the countryside. 

A portion of these photos were first shown in San Francisco by a local veterans group and later a selection of black and white enlargements were shown in London in 1984. This is the first time I have published the  entire collection in both color and in B&W.

On a blistering hot day in August 1983 I found myself heading north on a rickety open sided train from Marseilles to Aix  in the South of France on a pilgrimage to the home of the greatest of modern painters, Paul Cezanne. Arriving midday and finding the ancient town deserted as is usual for any French town at that time of day, I walked through the empty cobblestoned streets filled with timeless heavy ocher colored buildings laden with sculpture and thick wooden doors and shuttered windows hearing only the sound of my footsteps and the many ornate bubbling fountains. By instinct, I headed out of town past the army barracks down a dirt road lined with pine forests and after a short time, breaking the crest of a hill, there it was, the massive rock of Mount St. Victoire raising like a monolith out of a bleached forest valley. Cezanne had painted this mountain many times and one can see why since it so dominates the landscape demanding attention but ever changing as the warm light of Provence passes over its hot white face. I stopped at a beautiful old farm house overlooking my intended venue and asked the old woman at the door if I could sit on her low wall by the house and draw. She smiled and kindly allowed me to proceed with my drawing only with the stipulation, "non-fumeurs si vous s'il vous plait". I slept a deep satisfying sleep that night in cow pasture under a star filled sky and dreamed the dream of being an artist too.