Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The power of uncertainty
I guess the most constant thing about pursuing art is the uncertainty of the whole affair.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Less about the Mark, More about the Tool
Two of my favorite things happen to coincide - those things would be tai chi, and painting. What? you say? How could an avant garde gent posessing a thoroughly modern savoire faire have such a traditional - indeed, a SCHOLARLY - take on the arts? After all, weren't the scholarly painters of China and Japan all about their wu-shu and their swords and cultivating and stuff through the brush? How can you claim such a - such an - OLD FASHIONED take on art making? Haven't you been reading art forum? CRAFT IS OBSOLETE! WE ARE ALL USING CAPITAL LETTERS NOW!
...
Thank you art strawman for your opinion. Now that you have stated it so emphatically, let me destroy your logic with a well reasoned and personable rebuttal.
Wow, I got lost for a second.
In the previous post, I wrote at length about mark making in painting - expressing a taste for Velazquez - to summarize - earlier painters used detail to describe an object, as painting developed, painters allowed a mark to describe that same detail. Knowing, not scientifically certainly, that the eye loves to organize things into patterns and will fill in the detail. Hence a daub of burnt umber mixed with ultramarine blue placed just so can become the popes nostril.
Let me back this up and rearrange my thoughts for a second.
Drawing and painting are about arranging a series of marks on a surface to suggest something either representational or entirely abstract. They are about creating an order that the eyes arrange to suggest something - a story , an idea - you get the picture, right?
What is the difference between an art student's figure drawing and a figure drawing done by, oh, John singer Sargent?
The components of the two are the same - a pencil and paper. Both have the same tools at their disposal - the rules of figure drawing - measure, proportion, perspective - all are apparent in both images. What's makes the difference then between the students work (which is nice, btw, I'm not dissing it - just using it to draw a comparison) and the master's? I hate the word 'Talent' or 'Genius' - both words are so dismissive of work. Sargent started somewhere, and while he might have possessed a natural aptitude for the work, he did not start where the posted image starts - he had to work to get there. Get my point?
Experience is a fine word, but its really just a bucket for all the earned discrimination that goes into this kind of drawing.
I will say (since this is my pedastal, I get to!) that the difference between the two is the editorial quality that goes into each of the tools used.
We are tool using mammals, that's what National Geographic tells us. We like to break things with rocks and stab things with sticks. We have thumbs. Indeed, before we even pick up something external to us we need to consider our innate tools - hands and eyes.
It is through our eyes that we let the brain create context for the visual world. It is through our eyes first that we learn to discriminate line and color and drama.
Our hands, even devoid of pencil make gestures. Our hands, an extension of spineshoulderbicepforearm allow us to direct those gestures with finesse, outward. And I have to mention the connection to spine because an artist like Chuck Close does not have the articulated use of his hands, yet he paints. That mark has to be directed from somewhere. Okay - observation now out in the weeds, pulling it back...
We direct a gesture through our body onto an external surface - that gesture can be a light caress or a punch. That gesture can be made with a tool - a pencil, for instance onto a piece of paper for dramatic effect.
The difference between the student work and the master work is the ability to see and finesse that gesture for added resonance.
The students work is capable, but everything is done with the same weight on the stylus, and with the same vigor.
Look instead at the Sargent: the lines are simple and lyrical, tracing the contours of the body and allowing the weight of the line suggest body weight and shadow. the shadows themselves are applied with a minimum of editorial interference - there is not a lot of feeling out the shape before applying the final mark - instead the graphite is caressed onto the paper.
In short, the difference between the two is the ability to control a greater degree of mark making to get to the end product. It is at once an act of repetition, editiorial precision and artistic integrity. To put it blusterously. (the blogspot auto dictionary believes 'blusterously' is not a word. It's not. I just made it up!)
The art of drawing is about knowing how to use your body to control the tool for the greatest arrange of effects - which brings me back to taichi as a wonderful connecting tool.
In Zheng tai chi, the effort of practice is to use to the practice to get the body to relax deeply. The more relaxed the body, the greater the effect of the practice. Whether its integral to the practice or a side effect, you learn to connect your hands to your spine - to channel the movement of your hands first through your pelvic floor, up your spine, out your arms and through your fingertips. in a sense, you are learning by stroking the air how to apply different kinds of pressure - you're building sensitivity. This same sensitivity is applied through a tool external to your body, pencil, brush, sword, garden hoe, etc etc.
It's all context, I guess.
...
Thank you art strawman for your opinion. Now that you have stated it so emphatically, let me destroy your logic with a well reasoned and personable rebuttal.
Wow, I got lost for a second.
In the previous post, I wrote at length about mark making in painting - expressing a taste for Velazquez - to summarize - earlier painters used detail to describe an object, as painting developed, painters allowed a mark to describe that same detail. Knowing, not scientifically certainly, that the eye loves to organize things into patterns and will fill in the detail. Hence a daub of burnt umber mixed with ultramarine blue placed just so can become the popes nostril.
Let me back this up and rearrange my thoughts for a second.
Drawing and painting are about arranging a series of marks on a surface to suggest something either representational or entirely abstract. They are about creating an order that the eyes arrange to suggest something - a story , an idea - you get the picture, right?
What is the difference between an art student's figure drawing and a figure drawing done by, oh, John singer Sargent?
The components of the two are the same - a pencil and paper. Both have the same tools at their disposal - the rules of figure drawing - measure, proportion, perspective - all are apparent in both images. What's makes the difference then between the students work (which is nice, btw, I'm not dissing it - just using it to draw a comparison) and the master's? I hate the word 'Talent' or 'Genius' - both words are so dismissive of work. Sargent started somewhere, and while he might have possessed a natural aptitude for the work, he did not start where the posted image starts - he had to work to get there. Get my point?
Experience is a fine word, but its really just a bucket for all the earned discrimination that goes into this kind of drawing.
I will say (since this is my pedastal, I get to!) that the difference between the two is the editorial quality that goes into each of the tools used.
We are tool using mammals, that's what National Geographic tells us. We like to break things with rocks and stab things with sticks. We have thumbs. Indeed, before we even pick up something external to us we need to consider our innate tools - hands and eyes.
It is through our eyes that we let the brain create context for the visual world. It is through our eyes first that we learn to discriminate line and color and drama.
Our hands, even devoid of pencil make gestures. Our hands, an extension of spineshoulderbicepforearm allow us to direct those gestures with finesse, outward. And I have to mention the connection to spine because an artist like Chuck Close does not have the articulated use of his hands, yet he paints. That mark has to be directed from somewhere. Okay - observation now out in the weeds, pulling it back...
We direct a gesture through our body onto an external surface - that gesture can be a light caress or a punch. That gesture can be made with a tool - a pencil, for instance onto a piece of paper for dramatic effect.
The difference between the student work and the master work is the ability to see and finesse that gesture for added resonance.
The students work is capable, but everything is done with the same weight on the stylus, and with the same vigor.
Look instead at the Sargent: the lines are simple and lyrical, tracing the contours of the body and allowing the weight of the line suggest body weight and shadow. the shadows themselves are applied with a minimum of editorial interference - there is not a lot of feeling out the shape before applying the final mark - instead the graphite is caressed onto the paper.
In short, the difference between the two is the ability to control a greater degree of mark making to get to the end product. It is at once an act of repetition, editiorial precision and artistic integrity. To put it blusterously. (the blogspot auto dictionary believes 'blusterously' is not a word. It's not. I just made it up!)
The art of drawing is about knowing how to use your body to control the tool for the greatest arrange of effects - which brings me back to taichi as a wonderful connecting tool.
In Zheng tai chi, the effort of practice is to use to the practice to get the body to relax deeply. The more relaxed the body, the greater the effect of the practice. Whether its integral to the practice or a side effect, you learn to connect your hands to your spine - to channel the movement of your hands first through your pelvic floor, up your spine, out your arms and through your fingertips. in a sense, you are learning by stroking the air how to apply different kinds of pressure - you're building sensitivity. This same sensitivity is applied through a tool external to your body, pencil, brush, sword, garden hoe, etc etc.
It's all context, I guess.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Skidmarks
Hi! Long time listener, 5th time caller. Just wanted to say that I really dig your show, man. I just wanted to say that those lousy Pelosicrats in Washington DC are giving his Magesty, Barry Soetero all the power he needs to turn us into a Socialist Terrorist Nation...
Oh man. I'm kidding. I have to stop reading the political blogs. The only thing new I've learned about politics in the last year is the word 'WHARGLEBARGLE" which refers directly to the contents of the first paragraph. WHARGLEBARGLE: Crazy-ass, unsupported by the facts, gibberish...
How does that relate to painting, my fine friends? AH. That is where the genuis of my brain comes into play; the mark. Art-making is about the mark. The translation of intention through a tool, made physical. The mark.
Because I started with a political theme, I am going to roughly keep to that theme for at least the next paragraph; I am going to make a contrarian statement. DiVinci was a great artist. A genius in every modern definition of geniosity, but he wasn't a great painter. And I don't think its because he lacked the intellectual or aesthetic tools. I think its because he lacked the vocabulary. The vocabulary of painting had not been developed yet for him to take advantage of.
This is not said in any way to diminish his works or his impact. I just don't think painting had developed to the level it would become in the following 100 years.
About 11-12 years ago (Oh man I'm old) I went to Paris for the first time. For 3 days running, I showed up at the Louvre first thing in the morning, ran straight to the Mona Lisa and studied it before all the yapes and gawkers came into the gallery. You can't see from pictures, and I think this is a key point, - you can't see from pictures, but there are passages in that painting that Leopnardo struggled with. The brushwork in the hands is - and here I am being all contrarian - awkward. Not that the shape of the hand is wrong - the scaffolding - the draping of the object is exact. These things indeed are the tools that DiVinci really brought to painting, but the brushwork - the way those ideas were applied doesn't stand up. I can list 100 other painters who would have done it better, in fewer strokes, than DiVinci ever could. See. It's the mark.
Fast forward 100 years. By the time we get to painters like el Greco, we really get a sense of the mark of the brush. In looking at el Greco, there is really that sense of intention - that each mark means something. The choices of composition, color and light are all laid out with the brush. So much so, that I believe the facility el Greco had with making marks with the brush allowed him to pursue his more visionary works. As his figures and landscapes and objects became less 'real' in terms of dimension, they were held together by the structure and intention of the application of paint.
Where this idea reaches a Zenith, for me, is the work of Velazquez. I think one could make the tenuous argument bridging the technical gap between Caravaggio and Velazquez, but Velazquez, to me, is the first major painter to really have that absolute facility of editing on the go, with paint.
Stick with me. Really, prior to Velazquez, paint was applied less discretely, in other words, the paint was most of the time mixed together on the canvas to achieve light and shadow. You even see it in the early work of Velazquez - where paint that is applied in one bold stroke, without blending, is usually done as a highlight. As Velazquez grew as a painter, we can start to see that he simply makes an edit to the canvas with his brush to imply light or shadow. The paint becomes less about blending and more about the calligraphic mark. Take for example: Pope Innocent. Look at the forehead on that guy. The highlights are all done with swift un-edited strokes of the brush. The painter is making choices before he applies the paint, then executes those choices with accuracy. There is no hesitation. The link between hand, mind and tool are absolutely in congress with one another. It really is astonishing.
I will stop here for now. The mark - how the mark is made - the intention of that application - has a long career in the arts. There is a lot to think about...
Oh man. I'm kidding. I have to stop reading the political blogs. The only thing new I've learned about politics in the last year is the word 'WHARGLEBARGLE" which refers directly to the contents of the first paragraph. WHARGLEBARGLE: Crazy-ass, unsupported by the facts, gibberish...
How does that relate to painting, my fine friends? AH. That is where the genuis of my brain comes into play; the mark. Art-making is about the mark. The translation of intention through a tool, made physical. The mark.
Because I started with a political theme, I am going to roughly keep to that theme for at least the next paragraph; I am going to make a contrarian statement. DiVinci was a great artist. A genius in every modern definition of geniosity, but he wasn't a great painter. And I don't think its because he lacked the intellectual or aesthetic tools. I think its because he lacked the vocabulary. The vocabulary of painting had not been developed yet for him to take advantage of.
This is not said in any way to diminish his works or his impact. I just don't think painting had developed to the level it would become in the following 100 years.
About 11-12 years ago (Oh man I'm old) I went to Paris for the first time. For 3 days running, I showed up at the Louvre first thing in the morning, ran straight to the Mona Lisa and studied it before all the yapes and gawkers came into the gallery. You can't see from pictures, and I think this is a key point, - you can't see from pictures, but there are passages in that painting that Leopnardo struggled with. The brushwork in the hands is - and here I am being all contrarian - awkward. Not that the shape of the hand is wrong - the scaffolding - the draping of the object is exact. These things indeed are the tools that DiVinci really brought to painting, but the brushwork - the way those ideas were applied doesn't stand up. I can list 100 other painters who would have done it better, in fewer strokes, than DiVinci ever could. See. It's the mark.
Fast forward 100 years. By the time we get to painters like el Greco, we really get a sense of the mark of the brush. In looking at el Greco, there is really that sense of intention - that each mark means something. The choices of composition, color and light are all laid out with the brush. So much so, that I believe the facility el Greco had with making marks with the brush allowed him to pursue his more visionary works. As his figures and landscapes and objects became less 'real' in terms of dimension, they were held together by the structure and intention of the application of paint.
Where this idea reaches a Zenith, for me, is the work of Velazquez. I think one could make the tenuous argument bridging the technical gap between Caravaggio and Velazquez, but Velazquez, to me, is the first major painter to really have that absolute facility of editing on the go, with paint.
Stick with me. Really, prior to Velazquez, paint was applied less discretely, in other words, the paint was most of the time mixed together on the canvas to achieve light and shadow. You even see it in the early work of Velazquez - where paint that is applied in one bold stroke, without blending, is usually done as a highlight. As Velazquez grew as a painter, we can start to see that he simply makes an edit to the canvas with his brush to imply light or shadow. The paint becomes less about blending and more about the calligraphic mark. Take for example: Pope Innocent. Look at the forehead on that guy. The highlights are all done with swift un-edited strokes of the brush. The painter is making choices before he applies the paint, then executes those choices with accuracy. There is no hesitation. The link between hand, mind and tool are absolutely in congress with one another. It really is astonishing.
I will stop here for now. The mark - how the mark is made - the intention of that application - has a long career in the arts. There is a lot to think about...
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