I've been absent for a while from the desire to write about art. Mostly because I want to write about an idea that excites me. And mostly, I have been busy drawing and painting and fishing out problems that I then try to solve with pencil and brush. I have thought about writing about some of the things that bug me - and I think, after some careful consideration and a weekend painting mountains in Rocky Mountain National Forest, I can combine many ills into one post, thus cleansing my palate and admitting my sins.
I am not a good landscape painter. I'm really really bad in fact. Mostly, I am really really bad because I have never spent any time or energy doing it - I have never had the desire, truthfully.
This weekend, I had the opportunity to join my best friend, Ned Aldrich (www.edwardaldrich.com) for a jaunt to Rocky Mountain National to try my hand at landscape painting. I felt that I would probably do okay, considering I am a passable painter, familiar with the tools, and really, how hard or how different could it be than from painting pigeons?
First problem: The palette used. Ned supplied the paint, based on his own palette. I realized immediately that I use very little yellow in my work. I also only use veridian green for skies. In his case, he uses veridian for every green in the painting, mixing in other colors to suit his need. I found this initially confusing.
Second problem: The brushes supplied, while familiar to me (hogs hair filberts, and sable flats) were not the brushes I would use to make the marks I wanted to make.
Third problem: It was fricking cold.
On the first day, we started painting just after mid-day. I set up my french easel, chose a spot and went at it. I forgave myself for the mess I made of the first attempt - dialing in the materials and getting my eye used to my surroundings. I watched Ned for a while, just to steal some techniques. For the second painting, I attempted to ape his brush work and his palette, only to make another mess. This one looking like majestic ice cream.
The weather was cold, and it was windy, despite the sun. Ned and I split a pair of gloves, since he is right handed and I am left. Each taking a glove for our less dominant hand. My left hand still went numb. Ned continued to paint while I sat in the truck trying to get warm. He was on a roll. I chalked his desire to stay in the cold to his ability to actually paint in the cold. If I were having successes with the brush, I reasoned, I too would most likely be standing, shivering, and applying paint to canvas.
The next day was more of the same. Up at 6 am, painting first light by 6:30. I got in some decent colors mostly by virtue of my experience in painting clouds. I still wasn't putting anything down that was worth saving. I scrubbed off the paint on at least one painting, and ended up satisfying myself by just watching Ned paint.
It wasn't a failure of a trip. I did learn several things that were very craftsmanly. I learned a lot of concepts that I am still mulling over, and I learned a very important lesson.
The reason I don't paint landscapes is that there is nothing about them that speaks to me. There is nothing I want to capture. I do not see the landscape as a challenge that I wish to record. It all looks very very green to me. The problems inherent in landscape painting are not problems that interest me. When we went back to Ned's place after our two days in the mountains, I looked at books on the subject, and found that there was nothing exciting me about what I was looking at. It all just looked like paint being applied in a very craftsmanly way. Which is to say, it didn't look bad, but it didn't look like anything to me. It looked like a skill set that I would bore myself to tear to try to acquire. Which is interesting. I'm a painter, right? I should want to paint well, right? Why shouldn't I aspire to paint like these guys Ned was showing me?
Because their work is devoid of the kinds of content I find compelling. Being able to paint well is not enough to make me hold my breath. It's not about what the painter is wanting me to see - I need to see what else the painter wants me to see. Velazquez and his human details. Sargent and his worn shoes and scandelous makeup. The subtext that exists in the narrative is what interests me. The commentary on the human condition - the poetry of the work.
Just like virtuoso guitar playing makes me yawn when it has no soul, virtuoso painting solely for the effort makes my eyes glaze over. The technique is part of a language, I want the work to be more than a recital of the alphabet.
I hate Thomas Kincaide. He is a bad painter. His technical skills are lacking and he has made his stock and trade the palette he acquired while working for Walt Disney. The rich purple sitting next to the orange. The drama of dark and light values paired against one another. There is no investigation in his work. Only the effort to portray an America that Norman Rockwell would find to saccharine.
Mostly I hate him because of his poor brush skills. The precious hacking and slashing - the lack of brovura paint handling. The expedient and oblivious application of paint as he races to excrete another painting he can dedicate to a bland and indifferent god. it says a lot about organized religion that he is a multi-millionaire.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with G-O-D. I just have a problem with a god who can be marketed in the crassest of ways.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
On Ingres. An Ingress?
For me, painting becomes a modern act through the works of Cezanne and Duchamp. Duchamp seems to lift some of his thoughts on art directly from Cezanne, but the two - for me - go hand-in-hand in shaping the way art is thought about now. We are still digesting Duchamp's ideas of what constitutes art - is art an idea or is art an object? Is an object presented as art, Art? Duchamp very much took art from a strictly ocular activity into an intellectual one - from strictly 'seeing' the work of art to thinking about the work of art. His work was all about the joke, the pun - the idea. While the history of art is all about presentation and allegory and story - Duchamp's work is all about the why of it. About how much idea can be packed into a piece - and how those ideas are unpacked. His work becomes referential. His work becomes not about the object, but about what the object points to. It is detached, it is the birth of semiotics.
While the language surrounding art surrounding Duchamp was all very high-minded - Vasari, Ruskin, etc, - Duchamp sought to reduce the debate on art to its lowest and dirtiest, at the same time elevating the idea of art to an entirely new and relevant conversation. When he drew the mustache on the Mona Lisa, he was not merely defacing a masterpiece in effigy, he was making a statement about the history of Western Art. By adding the initials LHOOQ to the postcard, he was not only saying 'Look' - look at this painting. Really look at it. Not your memory or your idea of it. The Mona Lisa got lost a long time ago in the very portent of what it is and what it represents. It is the one painting on which the history of western art hangs. When we see it in the gallery we do not look at it. He is not only exhorting us to actually look at the painting - not as Leonardo, not to accompany all the stories which surround, but to judge it for what it is - a painting. Further, there is that pun L-H-O-O-Q - Elle est chauld au coul. She has a hot ass. A vulgar joke that still points to the truth of the painting. For all of our staring - we do not know what this model looks like from behind. It is, after all, only a painting.
So why Ingres? Why after all those words spilt on Duchamp did I mention Ingres in the title?
Because I believe that, through a strange combination of instinct and aesthetic decision the seeds of modern art begin with Ingres.
Ingres, an artist laden down with the history of painting. Every major painting a portent calling back into the history of painting. Critics called his work too Gothic, for the strange length of torsoes, for his colors. I would call his choices more Mannerist than Gothic, but then, Mannerism had not been identified as a school until much later.
A student of Jacques Louis David, Ingres work was beholden to his teachers ideal of 'historic' painting. All of those leaden and posed and staged canvases depicting some important event in history. I have never been a fan of David's. His work to my eyes, while always technically accomplished, just bores the crap out of me. There is no tension. There is no real drama. They are staged plays. The faces show nothing more than the boredom of the models standing still, wearing a tunic or a piece of armor.
Make no mistake, many of Ingres major works contain the same lack of drama. Stiff exercises in formalism. But there is something Ingres had that his teacher never did; an aesthetic sense that drove him slightly mad. That, for all of his strict adherence to the history of painting and to history itself, he made some strikingly modern choices in composition - and I believe that those choices were based solely on the fact that Ingres could not leave certain things well enough alone. He had to make his compositions work. And we see that most in the work he cared about the least - the work that he did to keep bread on the table - hos portraits.
I think, simply because he did not care so much about these works, he allowed himself a little more freedom - he was not beholden to his teachers and to all of that heavy heavy history - instead he was an incredibly talented painter, painting. And - what we see in all of that luminescent paint - in all of that richly rendered cloth and skin, are bodies that could not walk - bodies that could not move for lack of symmetry.
We are always taught in Art History 101 this lesson about Ingres. With no explanation as to why he did it. I believe he did it solely to resolve the composition - to bring everything together visually. To allow the eye to wander relaxedly around the canvas. His portraits offer a resolution his historical canvases do not. And it is this personal choice - this abstraction that plants the seeds. This most academic of painters was a revolutionary only because of aesthetic itch.
Following artists fought different battles. As the Academy changed, and as art became more secular - became modern - a line can be traced from the way Ingres broke the figure to the way Cezanne tried to paint what he saw - not through the camera lens - not through the creation of the diorama - but what his eyes actually told him - the permission for Cezanne to do this is granted in the strange shoulders and long necks of Ingres subjects.
While the language surrounding art surrounding Duchamp was all very high-minded - Vasari, Ruskin, etc, - Duchamp sought to reduce the debate on art to its lowest and dirtiest, at the same time elevating the idea of art to an entirely new and relevant conversation. When he drew the mustache on the Mona Lisa, he was not merely defacing a masterpiece in effigy, he was making a statement about the history of Western Art. By adding the initials LHOOQ to the postcard, he was not only saying 'Look' - look at this painting. Really look at it. Not your memory or your idea of it. The Mona Lisa got lost a long time ago in the very portent of what it is and what it represents. It is the one painting on which the history of western art hangs. When we see it in the gallery we do not look at it. He is not only exhorting us to actually look at the painting - not as Leonardo, not to accompany all the stories which surround, but to judge it for what it is - a painting. Further, there is that pun L-H-O-O-Q - Elle est chauld au coul. She has a hot ass. A vulgar joke that still points to the truth of the painting. For all of our staring - we do not know what this model looks like from behind. It is, after all, only a painting.
So why Ingres? Why after all those words spilt on Duchamp did I mention Ingres in the title?
Because I believe that, through a strange combination of instinct and aesthetic decision the seeds of modern art begin with Ingres.
Ingres, an artist laden down with the history of painting. Every major painting a portent calling back into the history of painting. Critics called his work too Gothic, for the strange length of torsoes, for his colors. I would call his choices more Mannerist than Gothic, but then, Mannerism had not been identified as a school until much later.
A student of Jacques Louis David, Ingres work was beholden to his teachers ideal of 'historic' painting. All of those leaden and posed and staged canvases depicting some important event in history. I have never been a fan of David's. His work to my eyes, while always technically accomplished, just bores the crap out of me. There is no tension. There is no real drama. They are staged plays. The faces show nothing more than the boredom of the models standing still, wearing a tunic or a piece of armor.
Make no mistake, many of Ingres major works contain the same lack of drama. Stiff exercises in formalism. But there is something Ingres had that his teacher never did; an aesthetic sense that drove him slightly mad. That, for all of his strict adherence to the history of painting and to history itself, he made some strikingly modern choices in composition - and I believe that those choices were based solely on the fact that Ingres could not leave certain things well enough alone. He had to make his compositions work. And we see that most in the work he cared about the least - the work that he did to keep bread on the table - hos portraits.
I think, simply because he did not care so much about these works, he allowed himself a little more freedom - he was not beholden to his teachers and to all of that heavy heavy history - instead he was an incredibly talented painter, painting. And - what we see in all of that luminescent paint - in all of that richly rendered cloth and skin, are bodies that could not walk - bodies that could not move for lack of symmetry.
We are always taught in Art History 101 this lesson about Ingres. With no explanation as to why he did it. I believe he did it solely to resolve the composition - to bring everything together visually. To allow the eye to wander relaxedly around the canvas. His portraits offer a resolution his historical canvases do not. And it is this personal choice - this abstraction that plants the seeds. This most academic of painters was a revolutionary only because of aesthetic itch.
Following artists fought different battles. As the Academy changed, and as art became more secular - became modern - a line can be traced from the way Ingres broke the figure to the way Cezanne tried to paint what he saw - not through the camera lens - not through the creation of the diorama - but what his eyes actually told him - the permission for Cezanne to do this is granted in the strange shoulders and long necks of Ingres subjects.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Thoughts on the Diorama
Okay - before discussing any artist in detail or any artistic statement specifically, I want to dispense with some ideas about pictoral space.
Without diving into any cultural/historical/psychological overview of the subject, I just want to acknowledge that the pictorial frame pre-Cezanne is essentially a diorama.
In other words, at its zenith - when the image is done as we see as faithful - 'stuff looks like stuff' - the image itself is a box containing everything it needs to tell a story. Everything is in superb focus and the eye can find many attractive things between the main subject and the simplest element. The way a painting works - and this is still a pre-Cezanne-ish idea - is that it is a self-contained unit - it is a collection of things. In essence all painting is still life.
There are a lot of profound ideas contained within the frame - line, shape and form. Energy, rhythm and order. Multi-point perspective. The use of color, hot or cool, to push and pull the eye, to create a certain drama. There is a craft - a language in this kind of painting that in itself tells a story - a story I don't really want to tell here, right now. I just want to say that pre-Cezanne, all painting is a diorama - which is to say - it is a collection of things.
It does not work the way the eye works. It works the way memory works. It is about creating a narrative - a point a to point z scenario. Something self contained, containing its own life.
The way the eye works, and I want to get into this a lot more - is that seeing is not just a sensory act, it is also a cognitive act. When we 'see' we not only apprehend the object, but that object must fit into a context, both personal and situational.
Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a bit of pot-smokerish gibberish - one atom in one fingernail could be the center of a whole other universe - yeah yeah yeah. But. There is no escaping that fact that sight as much as any other sense, if not maybe more so, because we are such a sight intensive culture at the moment, is ALL about context. But I don't want to get too deep into this - I just want to say that all painting, pre-Cezanne, is about creating a diorama.
See: At its best, it might look pretty, but in the end, it has little to do with anything actual. It is simply craft of surface and illusion.
This is, I guess, a scattershot way of getting to a simple timeline - one that I am obsessed with, and one that, frankly? Bothers me.
Pre-Cezanne painting is about constructing the pictoral space along architectural lines - everything you need to know is contained within the boundaries of the frame. Masacchio, and De Vinci pretty much defined the space, and a whole bunch of other amazing people refined that space. They were all excellent and painting and drawing things that we could recognize as things.
Post-Cezanne (and why is it that the water is so damned murky around Cezanne? I can tie Courbet and Ingres to Cezanne, dammit) Painting is a much more modern psychological game - it is not only about the way the eye sees, but about questioning what the eye sees.
Painting goes from surface to interior. It goes from solely an ocular activity to a more philosophical activity.
This is all jibber-jabber, but this is my jibber-jabber. I just want a space to write down all the crap I think about while I paint and draw and look.
Without diving into any cultural/historical/psychological overview of the subject, I just want to acknowledge that the pictorial frame pre-Cezanne is essentially a diorama.
In other words, at its zenith - when the image is done as we see as faithful - 'stuff looks like stuff' - the image itself is a box containing everything it needs to tell a story. Everything is in superb focus and the eye can find many attractive things between the main subject and the simplest element. The way a painting works - and this is still a pre-Cezanne-ish idea - is that it is a self-contained unit - it is a collection of things. In essence all painting is still life.
There are a lot of profound ideas contained within the frame - line, shape and form. Energy, rhythm and order. Multi-point perspective. The use of color, hot or cool, to push and pull the eye, to create a certain drama. There is a craft - a language in this kind of painting that in itself tells a story - a story I don't really want to tell here, right now. I just want to say that pre-Cezanne, all painting is a diorama - which is to say - it is a collection of things.
It does not work the way the eye works. It works the way memory works. It is about creating a narrative - a point a to point z scenario. Something self contained, containing its own life.
The way the eye works, and I want to get into this a lot more - is that seeing is not just a sensory act, it is also a cognitive act. When we 'see' we not only apprehend the object, but that object must fit into a context, both personal and situational.
Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a bit of pot-smokerish gibberish - one atom in one fingernail could be the center of a whole other universe - yeah yeah yeah. But. There is no escaping that fact that sight as much as any other sense, if not maybe more so, because we are such a sight intensive culture at the moment, is ALL about context. But I don't want to get too deep into this - I just want to say that all painting, pre-Cezanne, is about creating a diorama.
See: At its best, it might look pretty, but in the end, it has little to do with anything actual. It is simply craft of surface and illusion.
This is, I guess, a scattershot way of getting to a simple timeline - one that I am obsessed with, and one that, frankly? Bothers me.
Pre-Cezanne painting is about constructing the pictoral space along architectural lines - everything you need to know is contained within the boundaries of the frame. Masacchio, and De Vinci pretty much defined the space, and a whole bunch of other amazing people refined that space. They were all excellent and painting and drawing things that we could recognize as things.
Post-Cezanne (and why is it that the water is so damned murky around Cezanne? I can tie Courbet and Ingres to Cezanne, dammit) Painting is a much more modern psychological game - it is not only about the way the eye sees, but about questioning what the eye sees.
Painting goes from surface to interior. It goes from solely an ocular activity to a more philosophical activity.
This is all jibber-jabber, but this is my jibber-jabber. I just want a space to write down all the crap I think about while I paint and draw and look.
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