out above the battered gold
The little man with the vague beard and guise
Pulled at the wicket. "Come inside!" he said,
"I'll show you all we've got now—it was size
You wanted?—oh, dry colors! Well"—he led
To a dim alley lined with musty bins,
And pulled one fiercely. Violent and bold
A sudden tempest of mad, shrieking sins
Scarlet screamed out above the battered gold
Of tins and picture-frames. I held my breath.
He tugged another hard—and sapphire skies
Spread in vast quietude, serene as death,
O'er waves like crackled turquoise—and my eyes
Burnt with the blinding brilliance of calm sea!
"We're selling that lot there out cheap!" said he.
—Stephen Vincent Benét, “Colors”
***
Greetings on this post-Independence Day Sunday! We’ve been working for a while now, intermittently, on a little audio project . . . more to come on that front. See at bottom for the bare announcement, and may your day be blessed with clarity, —JSL.
New Release
From Colour to Form
A Glimpse into Gerard Wagner's Approach
to Rudolf Steiner's Indications for Painting
Caroline Chanter
This book offers insight into how Gerard Wagner developed his work on the basis of Rudolf Steiner’s indications for painting. Fundamental color experiments illustrate his methodical approach, while examples of his late work show the living, etheric quality he achieved in his watercolor painting.
In appreciation of Rudolf Steiner’s contribution toward the evolution of painting, Wagner wrote the following:
“Whoever attempts to tread this path can come to the conviction that the indications of Rudolf Steiner, if they are sufficiently penetrated and experienced, can lead one to grasp the creative formative forces of color and to create within this life element without harming it. By giving us such pictures of life shaped by color, Rudolf Steiner has set goals for a far future of painting.”
All of Rudolf Steiner’s training sketches for painters (pastel drawings and watercolors) are included in the book, as well as the first English translation of the summaries by Albert Steffen of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on color.
All of Rudolf Steiner’s training sketches for painters (pastel drawings and watercolors) are included in the book, as well as the first English translation of the summaries by Albert Steffen of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on color.
Also by Caroline Chanter
A Life with Colour
Gerard Wagner
This volume offers the first complete survey of Gerard Wagner’s biography and his artistic intentions, featuring dozens of illustrations and more than 200 color plates. From the start, Gerard Wagner immersed himself in the various artistic impulses that Rudolf Steiner had instigated. This, along with his intensive study of Anthroposophy, formed the basis on which he was able to forge his approach to painting. Many years spent in color experimentation led Wagner to discover objective principles in the language of color and form that continue to inspire many today.
Caroline Chanter was born in 1950 in Singapore and was educated in England. After schooling at Michael Hall, Sussex, she studied art at Exeter Art College in Devon and afterwards at Leeds Polytechnic in Yorkshire. Later, she graduated from the Margarethe Hauschka School for Artistic Therapy in Germany and, in 1983, joined the Anthroposophical Medical Practice in Forest Row, concurrently teaching at Tobias School of Art in East Grinstead, Sussex. Between 1993 and 1999 she was one of Gerard Wagner’s pupils at the Goetheanum Painting School. She now teaches at the Rudolf Steiner Painting School in Dornach, Switzerland, and at Swaasthyakala Niketan, a painting therapy school in Bangalore, India.
Explore the works of Gerard Wagner
From the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner
Art and Theory of Art
Foundations of a New Aesthetics
An Author’s Summary, 1888
Four Essays Written between 1890 and 1898
Eight Lectures between 1909 and 1921 (CW 271)
READ MORE | CONTENTS
Anyone who seeks a mimetic copy of the outer world in a work of art is confessing from the beginning—these things need to be ex- pressed radically—that he desires not a work of art but an illusion. . . . And that is the secret of nature—that it is so endless in its detail that each detail withstands being killed through something superior. But if we have a sense for this, we can awaken, out of its own being, what has been killed. . . . When, in nature, something that is colored presents itself to us, we can be sure that the object’s color has been killed through something else. If I take just the color itself, then I can awaken something out of the color that has nothing to do with what the color is in the object. I create a life out of the color; a life that only lies enchanted in the color when the color appears on the surface of a natural object. In this way, it is possible to break the spell of en- chanted life in everything that appears to us in nature. It is possible to release what exists in nature and its intense infinitude, to release it everywhere out of this nature and never to create imitations of na- ture but to break the spell of what has been killed in nature through something higher.
—Rudolf Steiner, lecture of February 17, 1918, in Art and Theory of Art (CW 271)
Coming Soon!
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