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A “Hopscotch” between Literature, Art and Jazz
Argentine writer Julio Cortazar was born on a day like this, exactly 100 years ago. All over the world literary buffs and fans are celebrating this new anniversary of his birth with articles and mentions.
A prolific writer and a brilliant story teller, he left his mark in the minds and souls of the many millions who enjoyed his brilliance.
Stories like “Hopscotch” (published in 1963 and probably his most important novel), where the story can change according to the order in which the chapters of the book are read (hence the name), Cronopios and Famas, The final round, The Browl outside, and many more are highlights of his very entertaining, deeply complex, and fascinating works.
Even if you have never read him, you may have enjoyed some of his stories which have been made into movies.
The best known is, clearly, “Blow-up” (1966), a very successful adaptation of Cortazar´s short story “The Devil´s drool” (1959), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, and starring David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, and Sarah Miles. While Cortázar’s story “La autopista del sur” (“The Southern Thruway”) influenced another film of the 1960s, Jean-Luc Godard’s Week End (1967).
Cortazar´s love of boxing and Jazz is legendary. While I do not share his love of boxing, I do share his love for Jazz. One of the highlights of “Blow-up”, at least for Cortazar, was the fact that the music was written and performed by such a jazz genius as Herbie Hancock. While “The Pursuer” (1959), a short story that gives its name to a book, is losely based on the life of bebop saxofonist Charly Parker. And his constant musical references, particularly to Jazz, and in lesser extent to “Classical” music (a term that in fact he really detested), do mark his literary production.
Some years ago, a very brave journalist from the Clarin Newspaper in Argentina put me in a bind, when he compared my paintings and my passion for infusing them with the rhythm and musical cadences of Jazz, with what another Argentine, writer Julio Cortazar, had done with the literary presence of this beautiful and free form musical style in all of his writings.
I always felt almost “embarrassed” at this comparison. But on a day like this, I take it as an honor and an important legacy which in my own way, I wish to continue.
Cortazar passed away too early. It was 1984. He was buried in Paris (Montparnasse) where he lived. It was from illness, but many say that the man who always looked 20 years younger than his real age, had suddenly become old and frail from the emptiness that he felt after the passing of Carol Dunlop, from Leukemia, in 1982. She was his second wife and the love of his life.
Like many greatly creative people, all the toughness everyone saw on the outside, was just a shell which protected a highly sensitive and frail soul.
As a homage to this great mind, I would like to share with you this short video prepared by the Juan March Foundation in Spain, in which Cortazar himself talks about the relationship, almost the love affair, he had with Jazz and how it is brought forward in his works.
ABOUT IGNACIO
Ignacio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, grew up in Australia and lived in several countries around the globe until his return to his country of origin 15 years ago.
At a very young age and with the help of his mother, a talented artist herself, and his father, an engineer internationally renowned for his creativity and innovation, he took his first steps in the world of art. Surrounded by drawing tables, technical pens and architectural influences he began to create his own path.
His early influences were very eclectic and mature for his age. They included great masters like Rembrandt, Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso, as well as modern masters like Kandinsky, Pollock, de Kooning and Rauschenberg. Drawing, painting, and a great deal of reading took an important place in his life.
During his early 20s he develops a love affair with jazz, becoming an avid follower of the local Australian jazz scene and as a result, his painting begins to show signs of this inspiration. Complex rhythms, intertwining melodies, and a great deal of improvisational skills are developed in his art.
That slow and jazzy pace also helped him mature his own approaches and techniques while freeing himself from classical ties, finding stimulus in unusual places and developing a unique and sensitive voice.
Added to that, his artistically applied synesthesia –condition which he shares with Kandinsky-, adds to his work an unusual share of musicality and innovation. The artist admits the complexity of combining his artistic imprint with the possibilities this "gift" generates while always underlining that it is a constant exploration, full of achievements as well as challenges.
The result is a fusion that explores the limits of colors and shapes within a marked abstraction. An expressive path without reservations strongly anchored on his individuality and unique experience.
This exploration has not only been applied to his painting. He has also pursued his vision into other forms of artistic expression, including smaller architectural and design projects, and graphic design assignments applied to advertising and marketing.
VISUAL JAZZ
IGNACIO ALPERÍN BRUVERA
The works presented in his Blog are a fraction of the main series developed by the artist and which has been travelling around different cities around the world since 2010. The artist’s "Visual Jazz Tour" encompasses works aided by his synesthesia and based on a visual interpretation of melodies, mainly from traditional and avant-garde jazz, soul, Motown and the American songbook, expressed in shapes and colors.
Fascinated by this musical genre, Alperín has created his own visual language through the same methods of inventiveness and spontaneity as musicians. We find in his paintings spectacular spiral lines and longitudinal strokes which glide through the canvas, outlined by an energetic use of the primary palette, extracting from these colors unthought-of shades and gradations that have become a signature and a characteristic of his bold and powerful style.
In this way he has built its own movement filled language to communicate and engage in a dialogue with the public; mostly divorced from figurative representation, he constructs a visceral abstraction that stimulates the imagination and turn on the viewers’ inner sensations.
Ñ magazine (South America´s largest selling arts and culture magazine), in its issue of September 11, 2010, under the title "IGNACIO ALPERIN in NEW YORK – an Argentine visual Jazz show" went further than that, drawing a parallel between the love of jazz from the great Argentine writer Julio Cortazar and his incorporation of this musical form into literature, with the work of Alperín and his intention to assimilate this same musical form, this time in the realm of visual art.
Many subsequent articles in La Nación and Clarin newspapers (Argentina´s best- selling newspapers), as well as specialized magazines such as the above mentioned Ñ, ADN and Maleva Mag –just to mention a few - have also constantly highlighted his originality and constant growth.
The artist has conceptualized his art in a term that expresses the musicality of his work together with the movement that he seeks to impose on it.
The viewers are thus encouraged to become emotionally involved, transcending everyday reality in a process without space, age or time, towards a more universal, melodic and harmonious view of everything that surrounds them.
The work of Alperín has movement, rhythm, coolness and a degree of visual improvisation that is meant to hide a very well studied score. The result is constant dynamism and exceptional use of color in a never ending search for beats and counterpoints.
This synthesis of Art and music, or "Visual Jazz" as an American journalist baptized it a few years ago, it is almost a trademark of Alperin´s work with a strong track record and exhibitions in New York, Miami, London, Melbourne, Zurich, Lisbon and in Argentina.
Currently, the artist discloses the development of his work and research, and how it applies to corporate and professionally applied creativity in academia, as professor of Creativity and Innovation at the Universidad Católica Argentina (The Argentine National Catholic University in Buenos Aires), and gives seminars on the subject in the context of workshops and events for individuals, companies and artists both in Spanish and English. View all posts by Ignacio Alperin Bruvera