Art Writing Bold Drawing

My latest painting

2008-03-16T19:36:00.002-04:00

30 x 40, oil on canvas, SOLD

How does one begin?

2008-02-08T19:35:00.002-05:00

I have been thinking about teaching lately -- thinking about what should be taught. One finds plenty of books in the stores. They typically show a series of steps, a series of ideas represented in different stages of a picture. The books are okay, as far as they go, in giving someone who has never thought about drawing a way of starting. However, they have the great disadvantage of starting one in the path of convention, of teaching people to see a subject in terms of predetermined ideas. In sharp contrast to that, a real picture deals with ideas in some kind of hidden order of attention and meaning. Your eye goes to this place or that for sometimes mysterious reasons.
In real life, pictures can also sometimes stop abruptly. One has lost the idea, or become temporarily derailed. It is not a matter of not knowing how to draw, but of not knowing what to draw. Sometimes the unfinish of the image is more evocative than adding to it would be. Sometimes a painting has to ripen slowly, or to age like a wine. You set it aside and let it stand as an object of meditation. It's like a dream that has been interrupted.
An image can go through stages that have nothing to do with convention. There is no proper way to draw a thing because there is no proper way to think about it or experience it. The life in the image has to be lived in the mind of the artist first if it is ever to live in the mind and heart of the spectator.

Intuition

2008-02-08T18:52:00.000-05:00

I've learned over the years to trust my artistic instincts, and I find that sometimes I'm "composing" things when I least expect it -- as when I rearrange pictures in the studio as part of an effort to "clean up" or to organize work or because I'm looking for something. I often find that the pictures I place next to each other, however casually and with no evident purpose, often times reveals formal relationships between images that I had failed to notice.
In the picture above I put some canvases that I meant to work on out where I could see them. The still life of flowers was already leaning against the wall. It was with a little double-take that I noticed that the features of the landscape are very similar to the forms of the cloth in the still life and to its out of focus design. The comparison is perhaps more interesting for the fact that the landscape is based on a drawing of Van Gogh's which I decided to make into a painting.
Sometimes it seems as if I am just painting one picture, it appears in many forms, but it's the same picture underneath the various manifestations.
Well, something like that probably is happening. The "picture" I'm painting is the structure of my own thoughts.
Delacroix said so wisely that the artist paints the self. It is not narcissism to do so, but necessity.

Especially when it's your kid

2008-02-03T17:49:00.000-05:00

It's always wonderful discovering a new instance of bold drawing. It's especially wonderful when the example comes from my kid. The drawing illustrated here arose from a process that I've observed before in my daughter: she sees a subject that is "too hard," "too complicated." In her simplication of the "hard" subject, she discovers a beautiful and elegant economy of means.
It's a wonderful lesson. Learn to think like a child. See the world anew.

Asparagus and Carrots

2008-02-03T17:47:00.000-05:00

Here's a novel way to measure your ingredients!

Il faut refaire la meme chose dix fois, cents fois

2008-01-27T20:41:00.002-05:00

["You must redraw the same thing, ten times, a hundred times." -- Edgar Degas]

It's not so much that one makes a bad drawing. The problem is that one fails to make hundreds of bad drawings -- in order to understand the thing and to find the good drawing.

Wandering the Museum

2008-01-27T19:52:00.002-05:00

I spent a hour or so wandering the National Gallery of Art. Wanted to reconnect with some pictures I hadn't seen in a while. I've written about the plague of hipness and its detrimental effect on modern art at some length already in previous posts. So it was with some irony that I noticed a book on the new books table of NGA's bookstore called The Birth of the Cool. Yes, well, I suppose that proves my point.
But if hipness is the illness, what then is the cure?
I looked at many things, a very odd assortment -- Dutch 17th century paintings generally, including a new acquisition by Salomon Van Ruisdael, and "Mary Queen of Heaven" by the Master of the Saint Lucy Altarpiece, some French 19th century landscapes by academic painters, and a whole mish mash generally.
But I stopped among the Degas sculptures and drew horses briefly, using the only thing I had, a ball point pen. As I was drawing, I was struggling a little with being able to see (my contacts were not good drawing eye wear), but I focused on what I was seeing in the sculptures by asking myself this question: "What was Degas looking at or remembering when he made these sculptures of horses?" So I let myself get lost in the forms and just doodled the ideas that I had, my ideas, as I looked. I was, in other words, trying to "draw from life" while drawing from his sculpture of, his idea of, a horse. The drawing at the top of the post is one of Degas's off-hand horse drawings, and below it is one of the drawings I made today while looking at his sculpture.
I was thinking with the pen in my hand

Refreshment

2008-01-25T19:40:00.001-05:00

This is a sketch for a painting I'm thinking about. Cannot begin to explain what it is about it that fills me so with joy. And even the sketch -- I cannot expect it to affect others as it affects me -- but it's spare lines set my thoughts into the most happy direction.
Real art grows out of someone's actual life. Why? Because life is wonderful.

What's in a name?

2008-01-25T19:19:00.000-05:00

In the previous post, I lampoon and lament the National Gallery of Art's recent acquisition of a "Donald Judd." Since, as I posit, Judd's box is not art, why even care?
Unfortunately, as an artist I have to care. The canonization of junk has hurt artists enormously. Real artists -- at least people of genuine talent who might become real artists -- are discouraged by trends like this. It's hard to do the hard work of learning when your whole enterprise is trashed by the very people that one would have hoped to have champion it. Many artists I know whose own art-making could not be further in spirit from the inane, hipsterism that surrounds curators like NGA's Jeffrey Weiss, will nevertheless pay lip service to "contemporary art." They seem to feel that they must go along with the trends since to do otherwise is to earn the deepest cut of all, the charge of being "traditional."
Oh how things have changed since Rubens was in charge.
But Van Gogh (who had done a stint as an art dealer long before having made art himself) correctly identified the false pattern of making artists into "names." And what was just the 19th century's version of branding has become full blown insanity today -- because in the case of things like Donald Judd's boxes, the objects really don't matter at all. It is all about "names." Why Judd instead of somebody else? Why not? When there is no purpose, it hardly matters where the magic wand lands.
However, real art does still exist. It has gone underground in the sense that you do not find it in the well appointed and expensive modern museums (with some rare exceptions). Where is it then? Who knows? In somebody's house. In a private collection gathered by someone of taste who lives quietly enjoying his or her objects.
It is somewhere but we don't quite know where. But one knows that it is there because art has always been there. The impulse to make images is a deep and true component of the human spirit, and the images that comprise the best art are made by people of genuine talent (this should come as no surprise) and the imagery will speak to the real minds and hearts of ordinary human beings. Why? Because the real spectator like the real artist is an intelligent, thoughtful and emotionally responsive human being.
The hipster elitism of the official art world exists to satisfy the vanity of its participants (who evidently wouldn't recognize real art if it came up and bit them). But the officialdom will pass away. This has happened before too.
Remember Govaert Flinck? You don't? He was the guy who beat out Rembrandt in the Amsterdam City Hall art contest. Flinck was a damn sight more interesting than Judd, though!
This too will pass.
Contemporary art should mean that which is made in the present time. That it refers to a very narrow style of art for the consumption of the foppish class ought to tell us something. That the great number of people buying Winsor Newton colors are out there doing something. It will be for our descendants to find out.
Alas!
[At the top of the post: Govaert Flinck]

Much Ado About Nothing

2008-01-25T18:18:00.000-05:00

The National Gallery finally got a "Donald Judd" for their collection, an event that someone at NGA thinks is newsworthy. The truly newsworthy part is something that NGA will never willingly reveal: how much the object cost.
The problem with Donald Judd is so convoluted that it cannot really be explained in a short essay. Well, it could be explained, but not without putting a reader into deep, near comatose sleep.
The problem is that, well, quite obviously, the object in question is not really a work of art. The reason why a plain wooden platform, painted red, sitting in the middle of a room should be mistaken by anyone for art is the thing that would require the thousand word somnabulistic history, and it would conclude with a moral that no normal person needs.
However, I'll attempt the brief Cliff Notes version and try to make it as painless as possible.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, someone noticed that art changes in big waves: the Middle Ages gives way to the Renaissance, which passes away before the Baroque, and each wave after wave reveals a society transformed. Or at least that's what art historians created in their narratives, a picture of change, organized as the historian understands it. Over time, bookish people, began to suppose that life actually transpired in the clean categories which the historian created to shape his story and at that point the distinction between "history" and "reality" got a little bit fuzzy (for the bookish).
They pretend and seem really to believe that "movements" took place where by one premier artist influenced all the artists around him until soon everybody began painting in a brand new way. Sometimes, of course, something like this does actually happen. But all along, while various people are imitating the grand Poobah, a very much larger number of other artists blissfully go on doing whatever they damn well please. And it has been ever thus.
But since art historians started writing art history and organizing it into neat little packages, the idea struck their colleagues in the "contemporary" art department that they could not only characterize what was happening in the exciting world of great art, they could make it up themselves -- they could coronate the various artists and pronounce which ones are "important" and "matter" and which ones piss them off and hence don't matter.
Fast forward. Somebody somewhere decided that Donald Judd, who designed boxes which were assembled by anonymous others, was the new golden boy. His "style" was minimalism, a "movement" that pushed art to the limits of meaning by making just about nothing into art. First one simplifies and afterwards one stupifies. Poof! "Minimalism" is born.
Quite recently, after Mr. Judd's rather convenient death, minimalism has vaulted into the prime place of 21st century movements.
What? You haven't heard? Well, if you don't know about this, consider it evidence that you probably have a life.
What you wouldn't want to know about this, though, even from the perspective of the delights of having a life, is how much it costs. All the money that the National Gallery wasted on this triangular red box might have been spent on real art.
You know what real art is, don't you? The kind that doesn't need the seven paragraphs of explanation.
Still, aren't you glad to know that plexiglass became Judd's "signature" medium? Kind of the way that, for some people, beer is their signature food. One could wish that the Trustees were about three sheets to the wind when they signed off on this one.

Reverie

2008-01-23T17:45:00.000-05:00

I have been in a reverie these past several days, one made richer by drawing. It provokes all these feelings, seeing the beautiful blue and pearl of the Chinese vase, the exquisite character of the lines that curve round its edges. I understand better some aspect of Degas whose pictures often seize upon evocative fragments. You find these fragments through drawing because drawing is simple and intense and uncluttered by problems and distractions of technique. It's more just pure looking, watching with a pencil. I can see how a composite approach to a still life can become essential, though drawing the complex arrangement of things is desirable too.
However you can get at something first by just doing the effect of light curling round a single object and its unitary surface. As complex as exploring another planet is seeing these intense and particular effects of vision.
Just the space between one edge of the rim and another ought to matter -- in a real still life -- and the space in between them.

My still life

2008-01-23T17:26:00.000-05:00

What does it mean? What do I want?
A table to eat at. Quiet, gentler schedules, less worry, fewer people around ranting their rant (thinking here particularly of the political realm). Also marmelade with a lovely picture on the pearlescent jar, good nuitrition, exercise, places to walk later on. Patterns on the table cloth, distortions seen through the glass surfaces, interesting shadows cast by objects, and no one telling me that real art is "edgy" unless they're talking about the edges of the picture, or the table's edges, the one in the picture, that is.

Still Life

2008-01-23T17:11:00.001-05:00

My own life has stilled somewhat in a magical way. I have been drawing still life objects, taking them one by one, getting ready to revive an idea that I first began many, many years ago. And it strikes me that still life is a good metaphor for art, is also a form of pure painting, for one chooses and arranges things, solely for their appearances and their meanings. One doesn't necessarily grasp at first what the meanings of the things are -- meaning sneaks in unrecognized, hidden inside appearance. Sometimes after long years one begins to understand why the objects were chosen.
Then too the organization of the objects in the still life matters. It also adds much to what the things mean, and this "organization" is similarly encrypted.
From these things comes beauties, fragments, spaces between spaces (filled with mysteries), distortions, pure shapes, colors that are like deep, concise thougths. Perchance the painting will seem to capture light and air, will have stilled time, caused a mood to arise, memories to gather -- not the artists' memories only, but those of so many unknown and unknowable others. And if these things succeed the painting will have connected one to oneself and made us feel alive.

Wonderful Drawing Website

2008-01-23T16:51:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered a wonderful website on drawing, "Draw Anyway." It's author is currently on sabbatical, but there's plenty of old posts to browse through. She offers lots of advice about confidence and finding ideas. And she puts art to all kinds of uses, such as designing a birthday cake.
The drawing of tins comes from her site, from this page.
The various cans are a little clumsy and askew in an essential way. Imagine how it would look if all the cans were drawn in accurate perspective. I'm quite sure, that all things being equal, it would still be lovely. But these cans as they are have personalities. They are more than just cans. They are more like a company of cans, or a coterie of cans -- conversing.

Advice on Buying Art

2007-12-30T18:36:00.000-05:00

Alan Bamberger writes an article on art collecting that offers a very reasoned and lucid set of questions that prospective collectors should ask themselves when buying art. Bamberger is a San Francisco based art consultant whose website offers lots of good counsel and common sense for both artists and collectors.

Having said that, I would point out that using Bamberger's advice a collector of the 1890s would have been wise to ignore Vincent Van Gogh, who was an unknown artist, working in an idiosyncratic style, had been largely self-taught and who was recommended by almost no one. And similarly, we would judge based on Bamberger's advice that Damiem Hirst is "it," being the highest paid, living artist in the history of mankind. But Hirst is not it. He is the art version of a junk bond.

Bamberger is giving first rate advice in his piece. But the missing element is taste, intelligence, sensibility, having good hunches, having a great eye ... is all tied up with some kind of je ne sais quoi logic that combines various felicitous abilities. Buying really fine quality art involves one in an intellectual quest for which no amount of advice from the status quo can help. It's a little like getting married. Your relatives can all weigh in with their two cents, but it's your heart.

Knowing how to see the kind of powerful visual idea that will be tomorrow's acclaimed masterpiece means being in the right place at the right time (for buying a Van Gogh in 1890 it would have meant being in France and being friendly with Theo Van Gogh) and having a strong inner sense of what constitutes both beauty and meaning.

However, this is not a bad outcome. We were meant to wonder about these things and to search for them.

Otherwise, I'd say heed Bamberger's advice. Buy things you love. Make certain of their pedigree with as much information as you can get. But if you want to buy truly great art, the kind that is "boldly going where no one has gone before," you have to step outside the comfort zone of the status quo and go with your gut. And your luck!

[The painting that illustrates this post is by Ignacio Iturria, contemporary Uraguayan painter.]

Opportunity

2007-12-29T20:23:00.000-05:00

I am a captured moment of time.
I stand on a ball constatly turning
I have wings on my feet
and a razor in my hand.
You may grasp me
by the lock of hair on my forehead
but the back of my head is shaved
so that once I take my leave,
I cannot be held.

From this site.

If you have an idea: Draw it

2007-12-23T20:13:00.000-05:00

Let your thoughts be visual thoughts. The appearances of things are so marvellous, and meaning will get dragged in whether you wish it or not.

So draw!

How to draw

2007-12-23T17:46:00.001-05:00

Begin with something you like. Take a pencil. Draw the lines that you believe describe this thing in the most direct way you know. Put lines down like you mean them. Draw boldly. This drawing of a shell was made by a child of nine.

To draw with directness of this kind makes a great beginning. It connects you to things. Objects will not be just appearances that you name: they will become shapes and forms and gestures.

Drawing

2007-12-23T16:19:00.000-05:00

For a long time I remembered a passage I'd read somewhere about Degas, that his was the art of the "ensemble." A group of dancers, a group of horses, the audience of a concert, or the loitering people at the ballet rehearsal, all these collections of things have the sense of being united in very natural and unself-conscious ways. Ever since reading that -- and of course noting it in Degas's pictures -- I have had some curiosity about how to capture a similar sense of things in my paintings.

This drawing of horses is made from my daughter's toys. I arranged them to overlap, to seem as though they were moving in a line together, perhaps out of a corral. Drawing them, one thinks about real horses and wants them to seem life-like. Yet, I also think about them as toys. They have many happy associations as my daughter's toys, all the loveliness of watching her learn and grow.

The green that surrounds the horses is added without reference to anything. It's amazing how just the addition of the color creates the beginnings of landscape and weather and temperature.

The spiral coil of the notebook, the fact that the drawing spilled over into the facing page, prevents this drawing from being framed for sale. But artists of course have drawings that are made strictly for personal reasons, and they should always make many such drawings. Some of the best drawings in history were privately made for the appreciative audience of one.

The art of writing about art

2007-12-22T17:25:00.000-05:00

I have been practicing writing about my paintings. Some people are visually sensitive by nature. Others need a little help understanding visual things. So, writing about the paintings is meant to help the less visual person acquire a more nuanced understanding of the purely visual aspect of a painting. The difficulty that some people have with paintings arises from a certain reluctance to give themselves over to the pure enjoyment of a visual spectacle. As a species, we tend to trust words over and above images.

Any number of things are beautiful. (I will leave it a tacit argument for the present that most great art is in some manner fundamentally beautiful, whatever else it might be.) Almost anybody will tell you that a sunset is beautiful, though how many people will go out of their way to observe the sunset? How many people would schedule their hours so that they could be outdoors when sunset occurs? Or finding themselves in front of a beautiful sunset, how many people will stand and gaze at the changing colors, the effects of light and dark that tinges the entire landscape? How many will watch the light until it departs and revell in the glory of the spectacle? And a sunset is after all reality.

A painting is a simulacrum. Oddly people will sometimes spend more time gazing at and studying a painting than they would spend studying the reality. (This, of course, is not something that an artist complains about.) When people study paintings in that scrutinizing way, they are sometimes trying to figure out how it is done -- how it is possible that the image looks so "real"? This response equates painting almost with magic. (Again, the artist profits by such interest so we won't complain.)

But the element of the painting that most deserves our continued attention is not the mechanics of it, but its beauty -- the grace, the rightness of colors, the fineness of effects, the harmony of the whole. All these things will bring along with them meanings, thoughts, memories, insights, feelings. All these things are fine qualities to linger over also.

A really great painting helps reveals parts of ourselves to us. It enlarges our world.

It's things like this that I try to write about with regard to my own painting. I do so in part to help the audience see the picture better. But I also do it to help me see my own picture better. Sometimes I learn things that help me continue deeper into the picture. It's then that writing becomes a form of visual invention.

Thinking about the Imagination

2007-12-21T17:23:00.001-05:00

I recently found an enthusiastic buyer for an image that has found many admirers. It has reminded me that when you make images that relate to life, people will be attracted to them. The crazy art world appeals to ideas that people have about what art is "supposed" to be, but art that explores life (in contrast) takes its meaning from several places, all of which are authentic.

First it takes some of its meaning from life. If you observe the world, you discover the meanings that inhere in real things. So a still life of food has the meanings that food has -- nurture, pleasure, providence, sensuality (it depends upon the character of the image, does it not, what kind of feeling-tone will affix itself to the image). The second place where meaning enters is in the visual character of the thing, whether it is light or dark, richly colored or muted, crisply delineated or adumbrated, large or small, busy or simple, and so on. All the myriad qualities that can characterize something each bring forth different sensibilities. And the third place where meaning enters is from the spectator's personal associations with the image, the ways that it connects to an individual life -- perhaps quite arbitrarily -- whether it is the artist's life or somebody else's.

Art that does connect in this way really begins to have a life of its own. If in addition to all these things, the image is crafted with mastery -- well, maybe it becomes a great work of art.

We're recently experiencing a crisis in the real estate industry that has begun to spill over into related businesses. It's causing some uncertainly in the markets. I suppose that means that real art is a particularly good investment now. Of course, great art is always a good investment. People have trouble trying to sort out what "great art" is. (Hint: it's not the stuff you see in the trendy museums, the stuff you stand in front of, scratching your head wondering what it is).

If an image draws you in, if it is somehow incredibly beautiful, if it has meaning that deepens the more you think about it, if it is skillful and not ordinary, and yet can speak to ordinary life -- the chances are quite good that it's "the real deal," real art, maybe great art.

I'm certainly trying to make my pictures ones that collectors will profit by owning. When my work appreciates in value, it will benefit the collector and me together. But the first profit I wish to see from it is an increase in its meaningfulness.

Art ought to really matter. Real art does really matter. And that's what makes it real.

Curator Incubators

2007-09-07T19:05:00.001-04:00

They are the latest fad. The appearance of these platforms to teach emerging curators "how to" mount an exhibit ought to draw more attention than they do. It's a natural enough development flowing out of the whole "installation" rage. And it's a sad and revealing trend that these curator gigs spring up without commentary, that most artists don't appear to find anything troubling about them, for they are the latest in a long series of steps leading to diminishing stature for the artist.

Most of us "grew up" with the stereotype of Picasso as "the artist." Picasso represented what a real artist is supposed to be -- a free spirit, someone who lives by his own set of rules, an Ur-creator who will steadfastly do as he sees fit and brave poverty before surrendering one iota of command over his own vision. And, as far as it goes, much of that stereotype was true for Picasso. He did brave much for the sake of what he wanted to do, and he successfully persuaded the world to accept his strikingly bizarre images and became unimaginably wealthy in doing so as well.

The flaw in the stereotype was in supposing that it was defining. While it might have suited Picasso's life, Picasso's art, it is not a model that necessarily flows over into anybody else's authenticity. Nevertheless, the Picasso idea of a great master was one that rightly put the horse before the cart, rather than the other way around. That ideal of the artist recognized that it is the artist who creates things out of the exigencies of his or her own life. And it is the art world that discovers and learns to understand these products.

Unfortunately once "anything" became art, the artist's role declined in what should have been a thoroughly predictable way! The Dadaist gesture of a urinal in a museum might have seemed liberating to some desperately gauche persons decades ago, but it definitely did nothing for those who were searching in art for something high, something difficult, something inspiring or beautiful or meaningful or deep or natural or wonderful or self-revealing.

Well, all that is ancient history now. That all kinds of easy and bizarre objects are heralded with the "art" label is nothing new. To suggest that things should be otherwise is to risk getting hammered with the dreaded "T" word -- or the "C" word (traditional, conservative). These labels are blinders that make the avoidance of thought an easy task. Certainly to really spend time looking at images and trying to engage their meanings can be a bit more diligent work than some people can bare. What, for instance, would be the harm in appreciating a painting that really was traditional? What would be the harm in discovering meaning in a place where lots of people have even stopped looking for it?

To flaunt the whole, facile dichotomy of modern/traditional is something that goes beyond the accepted notion of art appreciation. We are supposed to engage with objects that challenge us -- and it's better if the challenge is out-there obvious. It should come clothed in socially accepted standards of "edginess." But real art that breathes like real life is always going to come from somewhere else. It won't be the Hip Kids who find it. It will linger in some quiet corner of life -- somewhere like the small French towns where Van Gogh worked in obscurity.

And the truth is today, pretty much as it always has been (here tradition gets it right), that the best and most serious art takes time to know and understand. It is intellectually challenging. It might seem "traditional" upon first examination and really be very daring -- but its daring will all have been of a very deep kind that easily slips by the crowd. It might seem like the ultimate in contemporary -- but it's authentic inner meaning will elude the notice of the Culture Vultures.

Anything is art (I have over-shot my topic a little) and consequently the artist is much less significant. If it's trends and edginess that count, well these things are in constant flux. The artists engaged in making these things must be constantly looking over their shoulders to assure themselves that they're still doing the hip thing. And then these "important" artists will come and go.

It certainly opens up a place for the Curator to shape and direct what art IS now. And that's exactly what has happened. We'll still need these monkeys wielding paint brushes, but the Theme will be directed from someone with nice credentials.

We still have a Salon. And most artists are not fighting it, rather they vie to get in. "Pick me!" is the cry. The more they reinvent themselves in the latest fad, the more irrelevant they become.

And no one seems even to have noticed. Or to care.

New Whateverism in Art

2007-09-02T19:53:00.000-04:00

Click here.

Official-dom

2007-08-24T14:24:00.000-04:00

Officialdom verses how an artist really lives? Our whole edifice of contemporary art, all the rationalization that keeps the modern museums humming, the outlandish prices, the culture of hipness, the elitism, the mystique, all these things are founded upon a mistaken notion concerning 19th century French art.

As the myth goes, all the really important artists of the late 19th century (Monet, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, et al) were misunderstood and unappreciated because they were ahead of their times. The official art of the era belonged to the Salon with its academic entrenched habits of thought and sight. And so far as that goes, it has its kernel of truth. From this premise arose the idea of the artist as the bête noire, and Picasso in the 20th century was to have epitomized the type: the artist genius who lives by his own rules. Fast forward a bit, through various mutations, and one arrives at the present dogma of the church of high art where it has become the stock notion that if art is "accessible" it cannot be very important. Hence, the viewer must be scratching his head wondering what the object is if it is to be genuine, "edgy," avant garde, etc.

The only problem with this notion is that it's wrong. Otherwise, it's grand. It just happens that the audience for the French Impressionists (as the first group of "bête noires" were called) was probably there all along. The paintings they made are ravishingly beautiful and full of touchstones to the art of predecesors. But the Salon had a political lock on the art market of the 19th century (though that was beginning to change even then as private dealers gained prominence).

The problem is that the intelligent, ordinary person whose experience of life and whose taste was being sought in these very humane pictures was not an audience that was easily captured. There was enormous variety in the kinds of art being produced, but there was only one official and lucrative outlet for making a career. And the niche market had not arrived in its full splendor, and the means of communicating to potential audiences was limited also.

But look at who loves French Impressionism now, and you get a glimpse of the natural audience for art. Just as ordinary people love the tenderness, the loveliness, the elegance of French painting, today's real life-affirming art appeals directly to people. Such an appeal has nothing to do with fashion. Indeed, art that deals in the real sensations of living goes contrary to the foppishness that characerizes elites today and in eras past. Real art appeals to the senses, to beauty, to memory, to intelligence, to curiosity -- all things that a person of sensibility possesses and uses to make judgments.

In Byzantium, during the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in China and elsewhere, art has appealed to intellect, to the senses, to the sense of divinity, to the narrative of mythologies or the Bible or other cosmologies. All these sources address a deep, living awareness in us. Real art always makes appeal to life. And ordinary people are more in touch with life than are people who move through their days as poseurs. Why should it be otherwise now?

Still, dogmas die hard. And money talks. And money and morality do not always go hand in hand. For the entirety of the 20th century the "isms" have had the day. Of course real artists made real art (one need only consider Matisse, Bonnard, and yes even Picasso, Edward Hopper, Richard Diebenkorn, Andrew Wyeth, numerous others).

A real artist living today has to be true to oneself. You have to make the things that your own life presses you to make and not cave into meaningless and ephermal trends. The Spanish Guitar Player at the top of the page was a drawing after a ceramic figure that I bought impulsively for my daughter when she was very little. It never became hers, it's always been mine. But somehow a certain magicalness of a ceramic guitar player with a few nicks here and there (I found it in a thrift store) enchanted me as something to transform in drawing. It was something I wanted my daughter to see. I don't know why. Just to see how someone made a ceramic image of a romantic idea, which I later turned into a different idea through drawing.

She is a real woman in the drawing, not a statue. And she is also lines, a figure composed of lines.

Nostalgia

2007-08-22T17:55:00.001-04:00

The Art Writer has been doing something that I hope everyone takes time to do once in a while: rereading old letters. Of course it goes without saying that to reread them, you probably had to write some -- to which these that you reread are replies.

When the Art Writer was young and first struggling with learning to paint, these letters exchanged with a friend were a source of shared feeling of camaraderie and purpose. I never realized when these letters were new how much they lifted my spirits. I enjoyed them immensely then. But reading them now has an effect that is really hard to describe. The correspondent, and I have lost touch over the years. But the topics of the letters takes on renewed meaning.

Over time, you can begin to question the worth of what you do. Artists really struggle with this worry when they are earnest and idealistic -- as we were. Over the years -- even though you have various triumphs (I've come a long way with my painting from where I began) -- it's still tough not to doubt, especially when the current of the "art world" rushes past in a different direction.

Reading these old letters from my friend reminds me of the ways we held ourselves to high standards -- to how we were quite firm in our decision to do painting the way we wanted -- as realists (of a sort) when realism wasn't at all trendy. (Goodness, it's so less trendy now!)

I admire our spirits of determination back then. We were so young. But we had guts. We did so much work from life. We wanted to have the immediacy of the subject before us. We looked at things really deeply. We wanted to understand nature and life.

I am also struck by our qualms. My friend particularly asked again and again: is this the right way to be an artist? Gosh, I wish we got some of the well deserved credit for earnestness that truly characterized our seriousness of purpose.

How many others ask themselves in spells of recurrent soul-searching -- does what I do matter? Do congressmen in their endless finger pointing ask this? Do all those companies that put you on hold when you call them ask this? Do bureaucrats who put you through endless mazes ever ask themselves? Artists, real artists, don't get near enough credit for their very laudable sense of purpose and their high standards.

Does what I do matter?

And so often, in the cases where the answer is resolutely "yes" -- yes, what you did really did matter -- in those cases, so often the answer doesn't even come until decades, perhaps even centuries later!

That's dedication!

The Good Life

2007-08-17T18:45:00.000-04:00

This is how the Art Writer spends time (when not art writing, of course).

a Mid-range Refrigerator

2007-08-15T20:11:00.001-04:00

This refrigerator object is a bargain. Unlike other refrigerator art objects featured on this blog, this one is yours for only $50,000. Folks that's a lot less expensive than 19 million. Please send your inquiries to the Art Writer, but better hurry before somebody snaps this up.

For a larger, contextual view click here.

To see other refrigerators, click here and here.

The Salon

2007-08-15T19:59:00.000-04:00

Art exhibits once consisted of busy looking installations like this. The many narratives jostling for attention is mind-boggling. The widely differently scaled pictures collaged together like wall paper is madding. But it also looks like a very big mess from which one might get innumerable ideas for making things. Artists hated it, but had they been able to envision today's antiseptic installation orthodoxy, they might have been less hasty to complain.

The Nude

2007-08-15T19:46:00.000-04:00

Having posted a Degas nude in comparison with a contemporary academic artist's figure drawing, I just have to post an elegant concise nude by one of my hero artists. Richard Diebenkorn.

The Fine Art of Art Collecting

2007-08-15T18:20:00.000-04:00

The first wise rule of collecting is to start with beauty. Try to find it, try to understand it. It leads you into interesting discoveries about yourself, as you find out what kind of beauty speaks to you. It also leads you into an education in what has been beautiful in the history of man, during different times, in different cultures.

The first stop in one's education about beauty needs to be a museum. However, for many people there isn't a world class museum next door. The alternate place to learn is a library that has strong holdings in art history books. Barring that, the internet.

Many artists begin their own education with reproductions of masterworks. They assemble works they love on the studio wall, sometimes in reproductions the size of a postcard. Collectors might be wise to begin their own search in a similar manner. Before you buy real art, start collecting reproductions (including ones printed off the internet) to use in adorning your wall with images that have meaning for you. It's the first step in connoisseurship that ultimately leads to buying real works.

That said, consider this: the Degas at the top of this post is already in a museum and would be beyond the financial resources of most collectors even if it were on the market. But the nude drawn with sanguine conte by Don Srull that I saw recently in a regional art venue was priced at $300. It's a beautiful work. Whether Srull will make future works as valuable as Degas is uncertain, perhaps unlikely. But he has already assimilated certain characteristics of figure drawing, learned ideas from predecessors like Degas which he translates with wonderful and sensitive mastery.

If I wanted an elegant, classic image for my living room, I would invest $300 in a work like this.

I am not arguing that buying a beautiful drawing like this one is the end product of collecting. Quite the contrary, this might be the wise first step.

To see some paintings in my own collection, click here.

The Art of Collecting Art

2007-08-15T17:09:00.000-04:00

Art collecting need not be as perilous as this [Pieter Bruegel, Blind leading the blind. 1568. Galleria Nazionale, Naples ] Though it could be. Depends upon what your goals are.

I recently saw an article on the subject in a recent Charlotte Observer. Also the internet is ripe with advice sites, here's one. I offer my own advice which is better advice than what you'll get from the others.

Buy what you like. And be careful what you like. If you like Ellsworth Kelly, try liking something else instead. Click to see why. Kelly's works sell for astronomical amounts and are bad investments, unless you are very rich and need a short-term alternative to currency for use in moving money around.

But if you love art, you should in general avoid Kelly and similar artists who do things you can easily do yourself. You can make your own Ellsworth Kelly; so if you like solid colors, you're wise to make your own Kelly. Then you can make it in any color and any size you please. You don't even have to call it a "Kelly." You can take all the credit for it yourself.

A corollary of this rule goes thusly, and we'll call it a first rule for collectors: "Don't believe everything people tell you." If the art work looks stupid, it probably is stupid.

If you are not sure how to recognize something stupid, ask an ordinary person. Do not ask anyone with a Ph.D in contemporary art history, especially if they spent a lot of money for their education. They have too much face to save and too much invested in defending the status quo.

More advice, next post.

Terry deBardelaben

2007-08-14T19:29:00.000-04:00

This is stream of consciousness -- the sculpture current. While I'm posting sculptors, I don't want to forget this wonderful artist who is not as well known as she ought to be: Terry deBardelaben. You can read some of her own commentary on her work here.

Ousmane Sow

2007-08-14T19:18:00.001-04:00

Don't know about your local art critic, one of Art Writer's local art critics likes to rave about Donald Judd. Donald Judd manufactured boxes. Ousmane Sow makes sculptures of human beings. I almost never hear Sow's name mentioned in art discourse. I have never seen one of his actual works knowing him only from books, the internet and from Rick Steves's travel show (Ousmane Sow sculptures were once in the background of a segment on Paris). If Sow suddenly becomes the thing (which would be wonderful), please remember you heard about him here first. And then you, like me, will have loved him before he became hip. Always that.

Ah Xian

2007-08-14T18:53:00.000-04:00

A contemporary who would be interesting to see in exhibit with Elizabeth King (previous post) would be Ah Xian.

Speaking of the Hirshhorn

2007-08-14T18:43:00.001-04:00

I have never seen this sculpture of Elizabeth King's at the Hirshhorn. I know it from an exhibit at the Nancy Drysdale Gallery years ago. At least the Hirshhorn now includes a photo of the work on their web site. To really see this piece to its best advantage, they would need to place it in a context of compatible works. Something we can almost count on the Hirshhorn never doing. A good start in arranging the comparisons appears on the next post.

Diebenkorn, Fra Filippo Lippi

2007-08-14T18:32:00.001-04:00

Man and Woman in a Large Room, 1957. Oil on canvas 71 1/8 x 62 1/2 in. (180.7 x 158.8 cm) Richard Diebenkorn. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Saint Benedict Orders Saint Maurus to the Rescue of Saint Placidus; c. 1445/1450; tempera on panel, 40 x 69.5 cm (15 3/4 x 27 3/8 in.) Fra Filippo Lippi, National Gallery of Art in Washington.

This is the kind of "academicism" that I like. I think Diebenkorn has either looked at Italian primitives and incorporated certain ideas that he assimilated from them into his imagery. Or he independently arrived at a similar feeling. Or he gets there via Matisse (who loved the Italian primitives). Or all three of the above.

These two works make for a wonderful comparison. But if you want to do it from life, you're going to have to do some serious walking. Wear comfortable shoes. (And don't expect the Hirshhorn to have Diebenkorn always on view, sadly.)

academic drawing

2007-08-14T18:00:00.001-04:00

This striking drawing was made by Neil Harvey, a UK artist whose work I stumbled upon while looking for something else. I cannot say I enjoy the painting he puts it into, but the drawing itself is certainly interesting, well-drawn and entertaining in a partly unintentional way.

It may come to pass that readers of Art Writing will suppose that the author is traditional or conservative or some other label more aptly applied to religion or politics.

Actually, the Art Writer is traditional and contemporary (if we must have labels) which is to say that Art Writer has sought to gain skills and ideas from the history of art to use in the making of modern images. The Art Writer would be the first to praise the study of art history, and the last to argue that the "old ways" need a revival.

Really important ideas never really need PR, since the audiences to which they matter can grasp the idea without being taught. There's a certain kind of intelligent idea that can defend itself, which knows when to speak and when to be silent. It may not speak to everybody, but when it does speak, it speaks clearly enough.

Or then it might just make itself visible.

Amazing, the difference

2007-08-14T17:23:00.000-04:00

These are two photos of the same set of pencils. The difference between the black and white shot and the color is rather dramatic. The effect of tonality in art is super important. You can tell whether an artist is thinking about tone by seeing the image photographed in black and white. A great many impressionist effects rely completely upon color, the idea of black and white not playing much of a role in the idea. Certain Renoir paintings, in particular, bear this out. Cezanne, in contrast, was seriously concerned about both color and tone, and again black and white photography reveals it. Rewald's catalog of the artist's work is mostly black and white, but the solidity of the images still comes through. Even in reproduction, even in small plates.

The pencils above were arranged in their orderly pattern by the resident child, the Art Writer's "art child."

Great ideas are bound to be Rediscovered

2007-08-13T20:31:00.000-04:00

Picasso's Saltimbanques and Veneziano's St. John in the Desert have much in common given the spare settings of both, the classical sources both artists turn to for their idea of man, and the narrative about being an outsider that threads through both. Picasso's painting is very large. Veneziano's is very small. However, when we equalize them by reproducing them the same size, we can see how similar they are pictorially. Comparing the arrangement of each composition shows them using the space formally in similar ways, the colors are similar, even allowing for differences in size, the paint handling is similar. And they are very nearly the same format.

The spaces are different. We are much farther away from St. John than we are from the circus people. But if you focus your attention on forms, you'll note that various other things stand in compositionally for the places occupied by figures in Picasso. For instance, where the woman sits on the right hand side, we find a big rock in Veneziano. Where the tallest man is standing in Picasso, we have the largest of the mountains ascending in Veneziano. One for one are the boy in Picasso and the saint in Veneziano. Of course, one is a child and the other a man. But they are approximately the same height with respect to their settings.

Great minds run alike. Of course, Picasso stole from everybody. But he couldn't have known this painting. Hence, he even sometimes stole from works he didn't even know. And that just demonstrates his pictorial-scholarly acumen -- which was immense.

I learn the old fashioned way

2007-08-13T19:56:00.001-04:00

I copy things. Or I try out ideas of artists whose work matters to me. I think that sometimes the only way you understand another artist's ideas is to walk a mile in his shoes.

Above a painting by Richard Diebenkorn; below a drawing of mine in a similar manner, measuring 52 x 60 inches.

Ignacio Iturria

2007-08-13T19:50:00.001-04:00

Ignacio Iturria was here

2007-08-13T19:39:00.001-04:00

Bonnard was here

2007-08-13T19:34:00.000-04:00

This bathtub could go on the market. I'll keep you posted.
Click to see "before."

Cabinet of Curiosities

2007-08-13T19:32:00.000-04:00

Sorry, this refrigerator is sold

2007-08-13T19:28:00.000-04:00

To see an installation view, click here.

The Problem with Trends

2007-08-13T17:57:00.002-04:00

The problem with trends is so obvious one wonders that it isn't constantly upon the lips of artists. The fact that it is not really tells you a lot about the "art world."

One would think that artists would be constantly chafing against fads. The official line is that artists are free-spirits, always bucking the rules. Why then does a quick survey of almost any gallery produce a reliable crop of the "usual suspects"? Evidently, the whole claim about artistic peculiarity is not completely accurate as regards the sociology.

Au contraire, artists follow trends assiduously. A lot of artists read ArtNews religiously, or pop in at a Gallery-near-you to see what's on the wall. Conformity to these results follows quickly along afterwards.

But why? Why do people even want to be artists, in this sense? (More on that some other time.)

A trend is the MOST limiting thing. It means that "everybody" is doing such-and-such, and if you are not doing something similar that you are outré. Being an artist in these circumstances means that you cannot even predict what you will be doing, making, showing, etc., because unless you've got a crystal ball, you just can't be sure what to make.

The opposite of this quandary is what real art is about. In making real art, you are following some line of inquiry (in the visual world) that has meaning for you. You have some question, interest, love, impulse, which for you is over-riding. Call it curiosity. So you learn what you need to learn to follow your heart.

You are not busy looking over other people's shoulders. What does their art have to do with your heart? Yes, sometimes you find something you love that another artist is doing, and you discover that it holds something you need. This discovery is quite different from cruising the trends because it still comes authentically from inside your own life.

Real art is almost scientific in its quest for something authentic. And what difference could it possibly make if your heart is not in sync with the trends? Is life, is reality, something you just drop like a hot rock in favor of the hippest, latest thing?

The difficulty with real art -- of course it has its own bumps in the road -- is that real art is harder to make, takes longer to figure out, often leads one down wonderfully meadering paths, occasionally down a blind alley. But real art has the final merit: it is real.

For Sale

2007-08-11T19:00:00.000-04:00

Freezer door: Refrigerator Art. Price: 19 million US dollars.
contact: the art writer (serious inquiries only, please)

To see a detail, click here. (anyone can click)

Please also CLICK on the photo to see it beautifully enlarged.
Note that this is a multicultural piece.

Sometimes artists follow "trends" without knowing

2007-08-10T16:57:00.000-04:00

Some ideas come from -- one knows not where. Whether Evan Wilson and Mark Dassoulas know each other is not something I can say. I'm guessing they don't. I'm guessing that the idea of this subject arose for each in very different ways. Certainly upon deepening inspection we find different ideas about the uses of the drape in each of these bedroom pictures.

when will we understand simplicity again?

2007-08-10T16:55:00.000-04:00

Does Kilimnik's hip-ness mean that

2007-08-10T16:51:00.000-04:00

Fairfield Porter will finally have his day in court?

Karen Kilimnik and contemporaries

2007-08-10T16:08:00.001-04:00

Just found this stunningly direct portrait by Karen Kilimnik on roberta's (of Artblog's roberta and libby) flickr photos. I'm not familiar with Kilimnik's work (though she and the art writer are contemporaries, both born in 1955). Well, another site has her born in 1957. But whatever. More works by the artist can be found on artnet.

She has her hip side as evidenced here or here or here. And I must attest that I don't get the irony-coated element in some of what she does. The art writer is not necessarily anti-hip. The art writer just doesn't like its being endlessly the boring requirement.

Kilimnik's portrait is, I think, really amazing. It's nice to see that she can really paint. However, being able to paint like this, certainly it was important that she have some other, ironic hipster side -- if she wanted to survive, one supposes.

It reminds me of Richter's 1977 Betty. Neither image is just a portrait. In both the artist realized that a face, simply a face, is the radical thing. A face is the radical thing.

It needs some repeating.

[Above in order: The Art Writer's drawing, Richter's Betty, and Karen Kilimnik's Portrait of a girl.]

More Hero Worship

2007-08-10T11:44:00.001-04:00

The other thing I marvel at about Rhapsody is its audacity. It is so big. I suppose she really had no guarantee of its being accepted when she was making it. She could not view the whole of it in her studio at one time due to its size. The outlay of materials was daunting. A couple hundred steel plates, each 12 x 12 inches, each silk screened with a grey grid. That was a large and unusual expense to incur at the outset of an iffy project.

I have a series of paintings I have been planning. Some of the images already exist in one format. Others are in the works. For the moment I have painted them in acrylic paint because its easier to use for large scale works than oil is. But I know that my idea would be better in oil paint. Oil paint has a certain "je ne sais quoi" that is unrivalled yet by other techniques.

But I've hesitated to do my ideas in large oil paintings because I wonder what the heck I'll do with them if I cannot sell them right away. Large oil paintings are more fragile than acrylic and do not store so easily.

I am admonished by Bartlett's Rhapsody, though. It might seem now, in retrospect, as though the path to stardom was always all carved out for her. But it wasn't. Yes, it's true she had tested the waters previously with similar smaller works. But they do not take anything away from the pluck of her endeavor.

Her work makes me want to paint. It restores my hope in painting generally. It encourages me to think that you have to take that leap, have to believe in your idea. If the idea is good .... And I think most artists (and artist-pretenders) know the difference. If you examine your idea closely and if you are honest with yourself. Yes.

Having done that, if the spark is truly there, go for it.

That's what I get from Bartlett's Rhapsody. And, finally, again it is delightful. Why should art not be delightful? Critics of decoration and delight should click here.

Why I like my hero

2007-08-10T11:27:00.000-04:00

Jennifer Bartlett's paintings always affect me in a needling way. I find myself returning to them again and again. However, I always ask myself "what is her relationship to great art?" Is Rhapsody a great painting? Okay, but if she is not Giotto, maybe she is just Duccio. Well, Duccio isn't bad either.

I guess my asking the question might be rather beside the point. So often in regard to contemporary art, artists' works are invoked with such seriousness. A lot of that is pretense. Maybe that's part of what I find attractive about Bartlett's images: the fact that they are beautiful without apology. They prove that something can be delightfully beautiful without hammering you with obvious meaning. They have depths to them, but they're also quite content to play at the decorative level.

So much criticism has been leveled at Bartlett for the decorativeness of her painting. Most that criticism comes from critics rather than artists. Few artists can create decoration on a parr with Bartlett's. The mistaken notion lies in supposing that her kind of decoration is easy.

Well, it's easy for her.

I guess the thing that brings me back again to this painting that I've never seen in person is its sheer delight. It makes me want to paint. Like the old masters, Bartlett is not afraid to make a bad painting. She cranks images out. The old masters didn't think it a waste of their time to be always painting. If something came out that was not up to ideal, they had at least garnered what was there to be learned by the continual act of drawing. Bartlett is like that. And she lacks pretension in just the living way that makes art exploratory and vibrant.

The artists who were truly innovative were never reluctant to keep pressing forward, and understandably they produced varying results. Some of Rembrandt's firmly attributed works have awkward elements (the Julius Civilis fragment is one prominent example). Bonnard is a very uneven painter and takes a constant whooping from critics for it. But his best paintings are awe-inspiring. No one has figured out Marthe in the Bath yet. So many people aren't even aware of it as something to be figured out. It is still very ahead of its time. So much that we haven't caught up with it yet.

I love Bartlett's paintings because they fill me with a desire to work. How I wish Rhapsody was on permanent exhibit.

[Top, Rhapsody installed at the Addison Gallery of American Art, next is Bartlett's Sea Wall 1985, last image is ArtRighter's painting in a simulated exhibit.]

Drapery as Life

2007-08-08T21:33:00.000-04:00

An earlier post introduced the problem of educating the artist, especially today.

There is so much to say about the education in the past! The past is such a big place, after all. Artists need to be bold about taking ideas from the past, particularly when the current goes against the practice. Certainly for ideas to be of use, you must thoroughly assimilate them -- to the point where they feel completely like your own ideas. When you can no longer see the seam that separates you from the past, then you own the idea.

One of the topics of past art pedagogy was the "drapery study." It's had a long life, had a very powerful modern life (think of the big two: Picasso, Matisse). Think of their common ancestor, Cezanne.

The drapery study may not be for everyone, but for some it is such a pure and rich form. Look again at Mme Moitessier and consider how much the forms of her dress, its dimensionality, adds to the force and dignity of the picture. Drawing draperies is a study in how abstract shapes can communicate ideas.

Now we come to the amazing example at the top of the blog, Fra Angelico's Tranfiguration. So much of Jesus's transcendence and peace is communicated through the folds of his cloak. If, in a book, you look at a detail of the painting -- if all you knew of the image were the folds of the garment, you would already understand and receive so much of the feeling that the artist intends. This is a quality that Matisse tried to explain to people when he said that a painting communicates its meaning from a distance, from the forms of the whole, from the view in a glance, before you are quite sure what you're actually looking at. The first meaning is hidden in the very structures of things. And the structures of Angelico's draperies are wise and pure.

r&b -- Rhythm & Blacks

2007-08-08T15:57:00.001-04:00

Isolate the bottom portion of The Black Clock and presto! Modern art. But note that a careful look at the actual surface of the Cezanne painting will yield something more subtle and interesting than one typically finds in galleries today.

All art is abstract. (But more on that in some other post.)

Telling Time

2007-08-08T15:18:00.000-04:00

Having just commented upon the planned obsolescence of modern art, it's important to remind readers about the ways that time is thematic in art. In former, more innocent times, artists certainly didn't suppose that their work was so trivial that it would be passed over by their descendents. But then, following ambitions very unlike the current art ethos, artists formerly used to use art as a vehicle of exploration. Art has been connected to life in the past. In truth, it still is. Every era has its genuine and its fake, its best and also rans. The ideas that really matter stick around. Hence the motto: ars longa vita brevis.

A lot of artists of the past were quite aware of creating objects that would live longer that they would. Perhaps the short life expectancy of earlier eras was formative. Whatever the case, time itself has continually turned up as a topos in art, as here with Cezanne's clock.

There's something really liberating about studying the past. For one thing, all the bombast drifts away and in its place one finds the ideas that have sustained the intense scrutiny of generations. I love a painting that is so filled with visual incident that it can hold your attention for a long time, an image that is really almost more interesting than real life. Of course, I am not talking merely about detail. Detail and business of a pictorial sort -- nothing could be easier to make. But a visual representation of things, that is so carefully felt and thought through, that your eyes linger over every element and find not only visual beauty, but visual complexity and evocative and conceptual meaning. Pictures that mean things, but whose meaning is silently imparted, put into the forms -- these are the things I love!

That kind of searching art just isn't possible when trends rule.

Consider: what are the odds that a particular artist's most ardent concerns will be compatible with the fad of the moment? Do the math. What if your idea of a searching art is all concise lines and the prevailing fad is for gobs of paint? What if you make small, intimate images and the "serious" artists are cranking out acres of canvas? What if you have a natural understanding of paint as a material, and the common wisdom is that "painting is dead." (More likely: some peoples' imaginations are in a coma.)

In the moment, contemporary art is so about "time," is so about being Now, that it's difficult to see how an artist will ever be granted "permission" to make something that takes years to think through. What possible guarantee could he have that the trend some years down the road would support whatever he was making slowly and thoughtfully, searchingly and uncertainly now and through intervening years?

Ingres spent eight years working out the totality of the London painting of Mme Moitessier.
An artist of today who cared about his painting, her painting, as much as Ingres cared about Mme Moitessier would not hesitate to spend however much time it takes to understand and realize the image he wanted.

Nothing in the art culture tells you to do this. It comes from inside.

Education

2007-08-08T13:44:00.000-04:00

I find myself often wondering how an artist ought to be educated. The old masters had workshops. You wanted to learn how to paint -- you go hang out with the local guy who paints. If the local guy isn't teaching you as much as you want, you find another artist to study with, someone who has a reputation for being the "it" guy. Thus Rembrandt found his way into Lastman's studio.

Well, for a while. Someone like Rembrandt doesn't really need a teacher in the ordinary sense -- or rather, let's just observe that he needs a really, really good teacher. The teacher he needs might not be alive, as indeed was the case. Rembrandt studied with da Vinci, Raphael and Rubens, and others.

Today artists go to university. That has certain obvious advantages. You learn to become technologically savvy. You make the acquaintance of professors who expect you to read a lot of books (these are usually professors in other departments). And if you stay on the straight and narrow, they give you official recognition in the form of a degree (something the old masters never had).

Whether the university art department has something valuable to offer: that's another question and varies greatly from place to place. We could call it the Rembrandt factor.

Today art is supposed to be about what's hip and happening now. Press this idea a little and you see that many artists fully embrace the concept of planned obsolescence. Let's face it, if the old masters have as their over-riding fault the fact that they are old, then certainly one's own art (regardless how hip it was in its moment) will someday (perhaps in a week or so) be old too. What's the point?

Or, art is supposed to be about doing something no one has ever done before (to accept this notion it does help to have been born yesterday, quite literally). We'll call this the Guinness Book of World Records approach. Guy who has eaten the most worms. (Yuk) First artist to make a picture out of styrofoam. First artist to paint with ketchup, and so on through many heady firsts!

The problem with the Guinness artist is that it's hard to see exactly why the young art student's parents should be paying all that hefty tuition just so that junior can do what cannot be taught. If, after all, you are boldly going where no one has ever gone before -- how is someone to teach you? Isn't the thing that can be taught, by definition, academic? And isn't the academic approach the icky route to be assiduously avoided?

What the young artist needs clearly, and this is especially true for the hipster crowd, is a garret. But garrets are lonely places and if you're making stuff out of old car parts the last thing you want is solitude. It helps to have a few fellow enthusiasts around to cheer you on -- especially with the obsolescence thing biting at your heels.

Another Tavoletta -- Right in Front of Me - Duh

2007-08-08T13:40:00.000-04:00

Of course the computer paint program is another form of tavoletta. How ever did I forget to mention that one?

Jean Fouquet, Rohan Master

2007-08-08T10:26:00.001-04:00

I just want the world to know:
I liked them BEFORE they were hip.

Talk about being under-rated.

2007-08-08T10:15:00.000-04:00

I ask you, friends, who was it who anticipated all the squares we find in art today, all the tiling, all the gridding? Was it much vaunted Ur-creator Picasso? No. Was it hipster Warhol? No. Was it even my hero that I discovered reluctantly, Jennifer Bartlett? No. Was it Sol LeWitt? Please. Matisse? Close. I'd say it was Pierre Bonnard.

Look at Bonnard and you find the little squares all over the place. Not only in the tiles of the now famous bathroom, but in the French table clothes, even in the trees. Bonnard is the man.

Before that you have to look at medieval manuscripts for anything similarly modern.

Jennifer Bartlett

2007-08-08T09:22:00.001-04:00

I have been reading about Jennifer Bartlett, having found this article about Rhapsody written by Jerry Saltz in February 1999 for the Village Voice. Saltz is dismissive of Bartlett's early tour de force. I used to feel something similar. Sort of.

Unlike Saltz, I did not come by my interest in Bartlett because I was in hot pursuit of modern art. On the contrary, I avoided modern art with a vengence in my youth. It is only after many years of studying "art" (without a caveat) that I became interested in the peculiarly "modern." By chance though, I encountered Bartlett's work in a book in the library at the University of Maryland. Though Rhapsody had travelled to Baltimore during its early tour, launched from Paula Cooper's gallery, I was unware of the painting during that early Baltimore visit. So I missed seeing it back when it happened to be exhibited rather close to where I lived.

Still there was this library book. I don't know how I came upon it initially. But seeing it, I hated Bartlett's work. For me it represented everything stupid about modern art. It was facile, simplistic, it didn't attempt anything deep. It was all about big for big's sake. It was purposely confusing and obscure. What was an uninitiated viewer supposed to think about it? For me it represented all the icky things about art world hip. And it went against everything I loved, which was comprised by "art history," things as diverse as the Rohan Master to Edgar Degas.

I still hate art world hipness. But I have grown fond of Bartlett's Rhapsody over the years and of her work generally. And I do not see Rhapsody being in opposition to the old masters. I see it being in delicious harmony with the "minor masters" of various ages. And I see it now as a celebration of the "amateur status" using Roberta Smith's insight. My conversion from hater to afficionado actually makes for a quaint little story, for year after year I would return to that loathsome library book. I never knew why I was perusing it again unless it were to get back in touch with what I hated. Then something happened.

One copy of the library's holdings on Bartlett disappeared. Some library patrons have no shame. By the time the book had disappeared, the internet had arrived and with it Amazon.com. I decided to search for Bartlett's In the Garden and found a copy I could afford. So I bought it. And one thing led to another. And I bought Rhapsody too. And 24 Hours Air. And a couple other books besides. Evidently, when I realized that I might not be able any longer to visit my hated book at the library, I decided I had better get a copy of my own. I also came to realize that if I keep returning to this book, it must be for some reason.

I have hated lots of modern art. For most of it my hate is secure. I don't find myself obsessively returning to the source to have my hate renewed. The case with Bartlett lies with my having recognized something in her imagery that I needed for my own art, and while I didn't consciously recognize what this was, I was true enough to my instincts to keep going back and trying to figure it out.

Hate did not exactly turn full compass to love. I have mixed feelings about her work. The best of it (which is not identical to what the critics most prize) has something marvellously lively and innovative and gutsy in it. I still find her lacking depth somehow. She definitely lives in a different universe than the "old masters" that I love. For her, the idea has triumphed over perception. But there is still .... still a something .... the indefinable "je ne sais quoi." And that makes her really convincingly extraordinary.

For what it's worth, too, she was extremely influential. Many artists who imitate her work have never even heard of her. But imitation is still the sincerest form of flattery, is it not?

[For another review of Bartlett's painting, click here.]

[The image at the top is an installation view of Rhapsody at the Addison Gallery of American Art, fall 2006, posted on Artnet. Find it here]

[To see an artist influenced by Bartlett, click here.]

Path through the mountains

2007-08-08T07:57:00.000-04:00

Beginning from the top: Jennifer Bartlett (from Rhapsody, detail), Leta Peer, Jennifer Bartlett, Anne Douglas Savage, ArtRighter, and Frederick Grant Banting.

Contemporaries

2007-08-07T21:14:00.000-04:00

We are not supposed to think about them this way, but Andrew Wyeth (above, "First Drawing" of Helga) and Picasso (below, early drawing of Fernande Olivier, 1906) are contemporaries. Period. And it is intriguing to compare them. Granted Wyeth was born in 1917 (in fact he recently had a birthday, July 12, belated happy birthday Mr. Wyeth), so Picasso was drawing this eleven years before Wyeth was born. (And Wyeth, amazing child prodigy that he was, wasn't born with a pencil in his hand.)

But Picasso lived until 1973 (born 25 Oct 1881; died 8 April 1973) so they shared much of the 20th century together. And each one dominated parts of the 20th century.

I can remember when Wyeth really was the most famous living artist (except Picasso) and yet his name was NEVER spoken in art school.

I used to like to mention him just to vex my teachers!

This internet version of the drawing does not come near the experience of seeing it. It is truly an amazing picture. I saw the actual drawing when Wyeth's Helga pictures were exhibited at the National Gallery of Art. In 1987? The drawing is stunning for its surety and delicacy and sense of breathing life. She is "doll size" but you feel as though she could stand up and walk away.

Getting Good Advice

2007-08-07T20:45:00.000-04:00

When you know your craft well, when you've learned how to imitate nature thoroughly, the utmost goal for the painter is to envision the entire picture in one's head, having it "at a glance," as it were, so that he or she can begin to produce the image with warmth and as though the entire thing were unfolding at once and as one piece, as if all the parts had come together simultaneously. Then, I believe, the whole of the picture will be sensed as a unity. Herein lies the distinquishing feature of a master, and it's something that can only be acquired by constant reflection day and night, when once you have arrived at the point of creation. The great number of old, ancient works produced by a single person demonstrates that a certain moment truly arises when the artist of genius senses that he is being swept along by the force of his ideas -- each day -- as he does things that he never thought possible for him to do. Or her.

I feel like I'm that artist now. I make advances each day. Work has never come so readily and naturally to me before. Yet my paintings are by no means tossed off. Quite the contrary. I finish more than ever before, and do so more rapidly and effortlessly. My personality is such that I cannot imagine working in anything but a sincere way. To dash something off just for the money is impossible for me.

To hang tough despite all, never to work without the idea of pleasing yourself first -- and afterwards a few discerning friends -- this is what an artist MUST do. For art isn't a profession like other professions -- it's more like a calling, perhaps a divine calling. All the effort made in the spirit of courage has its fruit -- sooner or later. I'm going to have mine. After long days of quiet obscurity, a dawn will appear.

Ingres and his admirers (like me)

2007-08-07T20:20:00.000-04:00

Lots of books are available in the stores for people who want to learn to draw. I was once a person who wanted to learn to draw. I still want to learn. But I also know rather a lot about drawing these days. When I look among the didactic books, I am always amazed though at how many have titles like "Drawing Made Easy," "Learn to draw in X number steps," "Drawing for Dummies," (of course there's everything for dummies), and so on.

I have never seen a book on "Drawing Made Hard." That's the book I want. In the beginning drawing seemed very hard to me. I counted myself among those who couldn't draw. Having a deep desire to become an artist, though, I had to learn to draw. I took that as given. Contemporary art students, especially ones who go into university programs, might not think of drawing as in any sense a "requirement."

But I became an artist because I loved the old masters. I was a sixteen-year old kid when I first loved the old masters. And they didn't seem "old" to me. And they still don't.

The great artists were the contemporaries I sought for my teachers, but what they did was heart-breakingly "hard."

After many years of drawing, I do not find drawing "hard" anymore. And I wish it were. There is something so marvelous about the aching wish. This is not to say that I can draw like Raphael. But I'll skip the false modesty and acknowledge that sometimes I draw very well.

But I want it to be hard and now I'm engaged in a different kind of search than the one that got me started as a sixteen-year old kid. I want to recreate in myself the same naivete -- but one that rises to a different level. I want to be innocent and wise together. I want to find subjects that are very dificult.

And there are no text books to help me. So, I've taken Ingres for a teacher.

But what is hard for me wasn't hard for him. So the question is, had Ingres sought a "book" on drawing made hard (and I think he sought that very thing) what would it have been like?

What was hard -- for Ingres?!

Tavoletta

2007-08-07T19:41:00.000-04:00

I don't usually do product endorsements, but when it comes to art toys I can't help singing the praises of things I like. Have you seen the Mystic Art "zen board"? It's an old fashioned tavoletta (look that up in Ernst van de Wettering's Rembrandt: Painter at Work). I saw one at the North Carolina Museum of Art's bookstore and it's so beautiful. I didn't buy it (but I might yet). However, using it in the store was captivating.

This kind of thing might not appeal to everyone, but I think there's something fascinating about all the many kinds of erasable tablets -- from the Magic Doodle, to a patch of sand, the classroom chalkboard, or those little flip books with the plastic stylus that we played with as kids.

But the Mystic Art tablet is to these others what a Jaguar is to a Volkswagon.

Looking Ahead

2007-08-07T19:23:00.001-04:00

I was shopping for art supplies once with my eight-year old daughter in tow. She saw a "explorer" set: a plastic, see-through back pack with a pair of binoculars inside, a compass, a little notebook and a little "how to be an explorer" booklet. The whole thing costs about 16 bucks, and at the time I thought it was too expensive -- especially as I didn't expect the binoculars to work at all, and figured I would just be trading good money for cheap plastic. (And I'm a poor artist!)

She didn't take the news well. Indeed, she was heart-broken and decided to let most of my fellow shoppers share her grief. For a while we walked around the store; I tried to quiet her; I sought to have her understand something of the value of money, and so forth. It didn't work.

After I purchased my art supplies, we left. On the sidewalk, she was still despondent (loudly so). I really hated to see her so upset, especially since I began to see how the explorer kit seemed to really capture her imagination. So, I caved. And we went back into the store. I tried to bait and switch, to persuade her to choose what I considered a more worthy item. And she was almost willing to accept something else just to avoid leaving empty handed. But it was clear that the backpack was all-in-all.

I'm happy to report that I'm not a cruel parent. I finally caved completely and bought her the backpack.

A year later, I'm happy to report that the backpack and its plastic binoculars have been tools she frequently uses. They have accompanied us on many a nature walk around our favorite park. And one day, musing on the circumstances of their purchase, my daughter admonished me to note how much fun we both have had with this toy. And being fair-minded, I was willing to own my mistake.

But she really startled me with the observation she made next, for she told me that when we first set eyes on the binoculars, she "could see into the future and see the good that they (the binoculars) would do."

If any discouraged artists are reading this, take note. Out of the mouth of babes comes a whole bunch of wisdom sometimes! These plastic binoculars don't see as far out as a real pair, but my daughter had managed to look through them and see into a good future.

Art is like that too. The work you do today might not achieve the full acknowledgement you desire. It might not even meet your own standards if the standards are high. But the things you work at now teach and prepare you for the future. And the great art that artists quietly make today will find an authentic audience in the future.

Van Gogh suffered miserably for his art (more miserablly than the average, believe me!) but today is his day. About Van Gogh, one can truly apply what is usually a cliche -- he was ahead of his time.

Compare that with the wild success of today's hipster greats. Damien Hirst is not a keeper. I'm sorry all you investors out there. But Van Gogh was a true far-seeing, humane artist for the future. And his future is our now.

You have to study life in a genuine way if you hope to make an art that lasts. Gimmicks won't do it. But a genuine art sometimes has to wait a long time to find its natural audience, the one that really understands without having to be taught.

For the authentic artist, art is like a pair of kid's plastic binoculars through which you see into the future and see the good that they will do.

2007-08-07T19:19:00.000-04:00

Why I Write

2007-08-07T18:57:00.000-04:00

I wanted to start a blog that talks about art from a different perspective from what one usually finds. For starters, I want to acknowledge the big chasm that exists between the conversations of art insiders and of everybody else.

For instance, while a host of names are familiar to art insiders -- names like Warhol, Hirst, de Kooning, a search of internet trends finds that Andrew Wyeth (whose existence art insiders have barely acknowleged) is still the best known American artist. Young art students just coming out of art school may still be completely unacquainted with him, but a trip to the art section of the book store is all that is needed to bring them up to date. Andrew Wyeth, though I think he is a great artist, is widely known because he depicted a world that people of an earlier generation found both beautiful and accessible -- and he did so in a realistic style -- something whose magic still appeals to most art outsiders.

But do some comparisons and you find surprising results. Andrew Wyeth, while very well-known, seems to compare very well with both Jackson Pollack, the art world's sweetheart of the 50s, and with Robert Bateman, a well-known wildlife artist from Canada. In Canada, Bateman is much more widely known than Wyeth even though none of the art insider types (this writer included) considers Bateman a "fine artist." How either artist compares with the widely watched tv artist Bob Ross, I don't know. But for many people who have never visited a museum or opened an art book, Ross is their picture of a "real" artist -- perhaps the only professional artist whose work they know at all.

All that said, Van Gogh is the big artist of the day. Van Gogh beats out almost every other artist with which I compared him (using Google's "hot trends" search). I must admit, however, that I did not compare him with Picasso. Van Gogh's paintings are probably known to many of the people who know his name, too -- at least in some sketchy way.

That raises another interesting point. While lots of artists names are familiar to people, they don't always know the images associated with the names. And indeed Van Gogh may be more famous for the thing about the ear more than for his painting. But visit any of the Van Gogh block buster exhibits and you find ordinary people transfixed before his works -- looking, discussing, enjoying, studying -- and all without the benefit of the ever present docent! -- though the electronic docent in the form of headphones might be buzzing in the background. But even still, deeply intranced ordinary folks can be observed in significant numbers just figuring things out for themselves!

Anyway, this blog is different. Because Wyeth shares space with Richard Diebenkorn and even with Bob Ross and Robert Bateman (though we will probably hear less about the two latter artists as things get going).