The Art of Kenji Konishi

8/22/08

Images of “Seal of Solomon” went up on, I think it was Monday. It sold on Thursday! This is the first major sale through this new website and of course I am very pleased. Not to disappoint anyone, if you too liked it there is plenty more to come. I will be continuing to do renderings of the “Greatest Name” in both the more traditional form and in new calligraphic conceptions such as “Seal of Solomon.” For the general audience, you can gain some better perspective on what this is all about by going to the influences gallery and clicking on the first image in the upper left. For Baha’is I will offer some comments on this new rendering and the topic of the appropriateness of such new conceptions.

We are reminded by the House of Justice that the greatest possible respect should be paid when working with this subject. The sensibilities of friends of Persian descent is also an important consideration. This is indeed a holy subject to be working with in an artistic medium, and it is very much the same as rendering the Crucifixion, His Holiness the Buddha, the Tetragrammaton, or the praNava/aum.

I have the greatest possible respect for this kind of subject matter and I can assure all my friends that I take great care to be faithful to a long tradition of Arabic Calligraphy as rendered in both the Baha’i Faith and Islam. At the same time I am not one to be held back by fear or unnecessary inhibitions. Neither was Mishkin Qalam. If he can render the Greatest Name as a peacock and receive approval from Bah’u’llah Himself, then I feel, that as long as I work in the same awareness of respect, that I may proceed into new territory. Posterity will have the final say on what I have done.

“Seal of Solomon” is an attempt to unify the traditional renderings of the Greatest Name and the Ring Symbol as a single emblem. I have used a similar configuration before and sometimes traditional Baha’is express concerns, even about elements that are clearly rooted in Baha’i traditions, such as the embellishments of the ha. These embellishments are copied directly from Mishkin Qalam and there is no question as to their appropriateness. It is just that this element is the most dramatic in appearance.

With the two stars I have made the arms of the stars into the ba, then placed an alif above the star to read second, and also as symbolic of the shaft of light experienced by Bahá'u'lláh in the Síyáh-Chál (Black Pit). The heart of the star reads last, in one case a ha, and in the other a second ba, making one star readable as baha, and the other as bab.

The major changes are two. One is the use of the alif from the Greatest Name at the top level of the Ring Symbol, as the central stem uniting the three levels of the Ring Symbol, in substitution for the ba that is usually seen there. The second change is the addition of an Islamic "Allah" in the lower right, As I see it, all such representations of holy invocations of God are directly related and I see no problem in placing it there to graphically balance the ya in the lower left.

8/18/08

There are some new images around the site today. They are just my first attempts to get something up from my little digital camera. Sorry about the glare and blurrieness. I will get something better going very soon. "Solomon’s Seal" is probably done except for a final varnish but I am continuing to consider it as potentially "in progress" because revision is still possible and I think it is wisest to keep that option open for the time being.

"The Crimson Book" has a long way to go and the photos today show it with masking in place. I will put up something better soon,

There were no images of "Water Planet" on the site before today. Again, I will get something better up soon.

8/14/08 AM

Thanks everyone for the positive reinforcement. It was especially nice to hear from some of the writers. I have only been writing for a few years. I much prefer the story format to essays. Pirsig hooked me with that when I was just a kid. I also like the super short one page format. Anybody want to see “Zen and the Art of Civilization Maintenance?”

It is nice to know when the point comes through. I have been trying to get a bead on the “only one I am” thing for years. I have missed more than once. William Davis came to me at Bosch one time and said that one of my students from my painting class had told him that I was going around saying that, “I am God.” To which I replied, “Well -- I am God!” He looked startled and I then said, “Aren’t you?!” He got it then but he did feel the need to tell me to be more carful. I guess the concept is just to counterintuitive for the “me” mind set to grasp. It’s not that complicated folks. It has been in the Vedas for thousands of years.

I am doing some new scans today so there may be a small improvement here and there. While I have been painting for more than thirty years I am no computer expert. Neither do I have very good equipment or software, so getting any real quality going on the images here is a challenge. The things that came back from Digi Dog were not that great. They are just big. In most cases the colors are overexposed and the image is a bit out of focus. I don’t think it does much to have a multi-megabyte file of an out of focus image.

I mostly ganged up these big files behind the small thumbnails at the bottom of the gallery. I took them out of the other places where they were. They take some time do download and maybe you don’t want to run into these big files by accident. Digi Dog was probably too cheep. The expensive place was too expensive. I will find somebody in the middle. I know I could fix a lot of this up with Photoshop but I have not used it much. I will get it together somewhere down the line. For now the actual paintings are way more important.

I know the "links" page and the "influences" page need work. It was just a temporary stop gap to have the links page lead to the discussion list links. I have been ganging those links up for the last three years so that was the richest source to get started with. I do hope people will join that conversation. If you want to yak about philosophy, art, civilization or the human condition, lets do it there where lots of people can benefit and not just in private emails. I will see if I can’t get some more images on the influences page today.

I am also going to move "works in progress" to a new tab. Those works are not really available so they don’t belong on the "purchases page." Also the Fravels don’t want to see images of “The Crimson Book” in progress. They would prefer to have the impact of an unveiling. I think that’s right for them too so I will put the images where they can know not to look. However I do want to show works in progress here and that is the most interesting one right now. I’ll bet they can’t resist looking.

8/13/08 AM

It seems I am getting some interesting feedback through the contact page this morning. For the complements I thank you. As to questions about what it all means I will offer some comments here about interpretation.

At gallery shows people will often point to this or that part of a canvas and ask, “what is that?” My standard answer is, “paint.” Of course this frustrates people and reactions vary form increased curiosity, to annoyance, to – well there have been times when I feared violence might break out. Hay -- that is great! Why? For an artist indifference is failure. If you don’t care I have missed my target. Involvement is what is desired. If a viewer is so involved that he is willing to risk going to jail he has made my day!

I do indeed use a lot of symbology but I do not explain what it is that is symbolized. At exhibitions I have found that if I explain my thinking about specific uses of symbology people are then satisfied. Their interaction with what I have created often stops at that point and they walk away. If I refuse to offer an explanation they will keep looking. Sometimes they will look even more intently. To my mind that is much better. Also, it may be that there is really no truly correct interpretation. I may have a certain theme in mind that helps to unify the painting, but when I am done, if you see something that I never dreamed of and it moves you that is just fine. I will give an example.

“Involutions” began with the inspiration of a famous literary source (which I will not reveal). However it is so highly abstracted that probably no one will ever discover that source on their own. At one of the gallery shows one very involved viewer proclaimed it to be “The Queen of Cups” from the Tarot. This had nothing to do with my original source but I instantly understood her association and I thought it was just great.

If I reveal my original thinking in such cases people will think that my beginning source is the correct idea and their minds will be confined by this. It is far better for the work to be alive and capable of inspiring creative thinking in those who view it. Due to this woman’s creative thinking I am still considering the possibility of doing the other 77 cards! If I had told her my source, not only would her creativity have been dismissed, I would have missed a great idea.

So no, I won’t explain what “Somnambulism” is all about. The title is the only clue you get. I will explain generally about my use of symbology and how these interactions are intended to work, but I will not do your part of the work for you. I will not explain specific paintings. I will not do your part of the creative experience. Why should I take that away from you? I will not yield to a viewers wish to be satisfied. I much prefer to leave you unsatisfied. That way you are motivated to keep looking. I hope you keep looking for the rest of forever. Who knows what you may find?

8/12/08

The images came back from the digitizers today. They are not that exciting. The focus should be better. I am sure my slides are in focus and I know the paintings are not out of focus! Some of my home scans are better, for instance the detail shot of “Involutions” that I have on the purchases page. Those colors are fairly close. I put it on the left here also.

All the images that are up as of today are digitized versions of analog slides that I took long ago. There is nothing of the new paintings that I am working on today. I will take some digital photos of that soon enough. Until I do it is hard to know how well they will come out. In the meantime I guess what I have up now will have to do.

I am sure Carl would like to see images of “The Crimson Book” (in progress). He has not seen it. Now there is a true believer! He has commissioned it sight unseen. That is the kind of support I really appreciate too! Of course he has “Involutions” in his home now so he knows what the class of this work truly is. Also, I know what he likes. “The Crimson Book” is in my older more ornate style. “The Harvest” series is to be more refined, more like “Vessel of Spirit.” Too bad the image here of that painting is not so good. The detail photo is ok. It is here in Escondido so I can take some better photos pretty soon.

There are a few things that came from Digi-Dog that look a bit better than what I had up before, such as what is now on the copyrights page. I will load up most of the new images behind the small thumbnails at the bottom of the Gallery for now. At least they will be big. I will worry about trying to color correct them later on. There is one there of Somnambulism now. It is left for right reversed but that is ok for now. The contrast is too high, the value also is too high but the hues are about right.

I needed to get this site going but I want to get back to the real work now. I needed to have something up on the net for before the ABS Conference this Labor Day Weekend. There is a good start now and I can smooth out the rough edges later on. I was going to wait until next Monday to make announcements but I will go ahead now and send out a few messages with the link.

As of 8/9/06

Well, somehow the word has leaked out. People are writing me even though I have not yet told a soul about this site yet. I guess that is ok with me as long as you know to come back in a week or two to check out the better images that are coming. What is going up now is very preliminary. It is just off my home scanner. If you are reading this before August 18/08 I would prefer that you not pass on the link just yet. Much better images are coming from the lab next week. Everything now in the gallery will probably be taken down and replaced with the better stuff.

People who know me know how picky I am about color. The right colors are everything for this kind of work. Probably nothing on this site will ever be all the way right but I guess it will be close enough. “Somnambulism” is right here in the room where I do my computer work so I can compare directly the differences between what I see on my computer and what is on the painting. There is no comparison. If you like what you see on your computer you don’t know what you are missing!

I have been having a lot of fun with the power of the links. There is one serious education available through all these links. There is everything from the works of Albert Einstein to the beauty of Monet, to the keys to the future of human life on earth. There are some tricky little treasure map things. Can you find the link to the main deadhead page?

As of 8/5/08:

Putting up this web-site has been interesting. It has caused me to do more than a little thinking about how I got here. It has moved me to contact old friends. The photos of my work are at the color lab and they should go up in another week or so. I had hoped to show something at the ABS Conference as it is right here in San Diego this year but there just wasn’t time to make the arrangements and they had not planned to exhibit art as they sometimes have in the past.

I am more than a little excited about my new project: “The Harvest.” It is to be a series of major paintings all centered around an image that has been haunting me since my days at USF. One of my Professors there said thirty five years ago that this image could become the foundation of my life’s work. I knew he was right too, but there just hasn’t been the opportunity or perhaps the necessary refined acuity in me to do it justice until now. This project will take at least another year. I will put up some photos of the work in progress.

I have decided to work on "Somnambulism" yet again! Maybe it will never be done. As I get older I am finding that the painting work is becoming more elemental, simplified, whittled down to the root of what it is that I have to say. Yet “Somnambulism” keeps coming back. It represents the opposite trend, intricate complexity. I will just keep on showing it as a work in progress. Maybe somebody will offer me the big money to make me stop. Until then it seems that once every few years it will gain some new little appendage. Perhaps Mombi will come along with her magic powder and bring it to life.

If any of my old friends are out there please drop me a note. If you have any of my old paintings from the seventies it would be good to have photos of them. I only have a tiny smattering of photos from those years.

Robert Rauschenberg passed away recently. I though twice about including him on my list of acquainted artists. It is not like we were buddies. It was just that one or two weeks at USF when he was working in the Graphicstudio there, but we did meet. The students and staff helped out in the printing sessions wiping plates and grabbing colors off the shelf. Some of the colors from those sessions are actually our color selections. He just said “red,” or “blue.” There were a lot of reds and blues to choose from.

As far as I know none of the students or even the Professors who worked in those sessions ever got any credit. Julio certainly should have. I don’t know if he did. He was a seriously qualified master printer and probably had more to do with the quality of the outcome than Robert did. Robert just did the concepts. Go get this. Do something like that. I like it. I don’t like it. Etcetera. In between I tried to pick his brain about what it all meant. He didn’t say much. His product has had more influence on me than the man did.