Politics, the Cosmos, Easter and Art

I first posted this to one "LeeFromVA," on the Huffington Post article What Barack Obama Could Not (and Should Not) Say, by Sam Harris. I repost it here:


Don't know whether you'll see this, but here goes anyway. "God impregnates some man's virgin wife so that the child can be viciously killed and therefore allow people into heaven?" etc. Yes, it's an amazingly difficult story to accept. "Even if it were true." "You'd think an all powerful God could find an easier way." Well, there is another narrative: that the universe began in a singularity, going from "nothing" to something in the blink of an eye. Fast forward, after the creation of other elements out of the combustion of hydrogen and helium, one finds planets spinning around stars in elegant elliptical orbits. "Life" (whatever that is) appears. Soon (a bunch of millions of years later) these earlier life forms have changed and changed until "primates" appear, some of whom develop so far as to be able to communicate with each other on Huff Po! One might call that "God's" (god in quotes) plan for whatever.
I find this alternate view to be a bit of a stretch too. But there it is. Primates with typewriters!
The problem of whether God exists or not, and whether a God who exists loves us or not, is an exceedingly complex question -- not the least when it concerns one personally. Does God care what happens to me?
The Bible -- in its historical accounts, its poetry, its metaphors, symbolism, parables, riddles, and other narrative devices -- asserts that God does exist and that God does "care." But do not suppose that it's a simplistic message. To the credit of the many Biblical authors, whoever they were, they deal head on with the apparent injustice of God. Why do innocent people suffer? Book of Job. Psalms. Proverbs.
I think the problem is when people try to turn complex ideas into something that fits a bumper sticker. Added to this problem is their tendency (you know who you are!) to irritate and annoy their fellows by endlessly repeating their simplistic notions.
God does work in mysterious ways (and I'll include modern physics as being among the mysteries) but I do sense (in my own life) God's presence and love. "We're not supposed to understand...."
I don't think we can understand is the point. Kind of like I cannot understand calculus but I'm willing to accept that it's probably true. Are we not supposed to question? Well, plenty of stories in the Bible are about people questioning. Genesis story of Abraham. God doesn't seem to mind the questions at all.
My question: does other peoples' misinterpretation of the Bible pose an obstacle to my faith? I don't think it should. I'm going to keep trying to understand the life I see around me. I think that such curiosity is a wonderful thing. I think it makes life an adventure. I hope I've convinced you of something similar. God is not giving us a school room test. No. Life is the real deal. And here it is.
A wonderful and mysterious thing. Best wishes to you.
We live in such amazing times. Where are the artists to paint the Cosmos now? When it has become so rich, complex and evocative? Where are the artists who might combine modern physics with spiritual understanding?

[illustrations: Giovanni di Paulo, Creation of the Earth and Expulsion from Paradise; Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights (exterior panels)]

Suzanne Koch

This is an artist that I know people are unaware of -- a wonderful still life painter, Suzanne Koch. I own some of her earlier works. Here's one that I don't own.
Suzanne's painterly way of seeing and painting is closer to the way I've tended to approach things, but she captures the light falling over these objects here, in this painting, in such a summary and ephemeral way. It is as though the light just falls on them and she sees and records it instantly before it's passing.
It's an amazing picture. Hope that its loveliness is evident in this reproduction.

Diane Tessler

I like to compare paintings and put kindred spirits together. A friend of mine who's a curator told me recently that I should assemble my own exhibits. I'll let this be my notice to the world that I'm available to organize exhibits. MOMA, are you listening?
Anyway, here's another realist still life painter. Do not know if she and these other realist painter are aware of each other. Tessler is a Washington, DC, painter. I've known about her painting for years, but this foray into complex still life is new to me (though perhaps not to her -- I had lost track of her for quite a while).
So, this can be another in my imaginary exhibit of contemporary painting. I cannot find a link to Tessler's paintings, but to learn more one can search at the Virginia Art Leaague School.

Donna Phipps Stout

Found an artist whose still life paintings I really like: Donna Phipps Stout who is represented by the Jerald Melberg Gallery in Charlotte, NC.
I'm not trying to pit one painting style against another, I do think that Stout's arrangements of flowers and objects demonstrate a much broader and freer approach to drawing and form than does Dana Levin's. Saying that, I'll be the first to champion the beauty of Levin's painting. But Stout bites off more to chew than does Levin (or classical realists generally). She throws herself headlong into a confusion of light and dark, texture and color, and finds a wonderful unity within it. And she portrays the objects with a philosophic sense of beauty, stillness and time.
There's a larger vision available to the artist who is not locked into a formula for seeing and knowing a thing.
That said (I'm feeling guilty here) if Ms. Levin is wearing a straight-jacket, let's give her credit for its being a very beautiful one.
[Pictured above Spring Mementos, 60 x 48, 1997]

Weird Scrupples

Strange things bother me. I learned about this artist on the net, Dana Levin, who describes herself as a "classical realist." I've encountered a bunch of similar artists over the years and I always have a problem with them. The painting illustrated here is lovely. There's no denying.
What bothers me is the insistence on reestablishing a very narrow 19th century form of art pedagogy and pretending that it's the center of the universe. What motivates these artists? While the flowers pictured here is lovely,not all her paintings are as strong as these flowers, though most are quite good. But she has eliminated innumerable areas of visual experience through her narrow approach. (You have to read about her procedures to understand the point.)
What is so magical about French 19th century academicism? My goodness, it directs one away from any consideration of Pierre Bonnard, the Rohan Master, Jean Fouquet, Joan Mitchell, or Edgas Degas (just to name a few). What gives?
It strikes me as a deep insecurity. Ms. Levin's form of instruction is so fastidious, as though just drawing a stray line would be the end of the world! But in fact one gets a better, more firm, more flexible sense of draughtsmanship by using other means.
Look at something, put the line where you think it should go. A very simple manner of looking and drawing is much preferable to the machinations that she teaches her students to use.
Don't know why this bothers me (it's a free country), it's just that you cannot paint some of the most amazing things using these means. Botticelli, I guarantee you, did nothing remotedly like this when he painted Primavera.

For more on decoration as a form of invention in art, click here.

Searching for Claude Parsons

I was copying a picture by Claude Parsons from his book How to Draw and Paint Flowers. I'm not sure who Claude Parsons is. I was given this book years ago when I quit my job to paint full time. My employer was concerned that I know how to paint. Actually, I was already pretty well acquainted with the brushes and the easel!
But on a lark, I decided to copy Claude's very conventional still life, one that is supposedly designed to teach one how to paint. I was doing this in the spirit of seeing how much of my knowledge and personality would creep into my "copy."
Van Gogh made copies after Bargue, as well as after more important artists like Delacroix and Millet. He transformed his copies into "Van Goghs." Can I copy this conventional painting and make it into something that's "mine"?
Will post a photo of it when it's done.
Why did I start copying this Claude Parsons? A walk back down memory lane. When I was a kid, I had done things like this, and I think young artists often get their first idea about painting from these humble and unsophisticated sources. I knew a wonderful, self-taught artist who got his start watching Bob Ross!

Gerardo Pita, another instance

Find out more about him here.

Patton Wilson et al

I just learned about this guy 30 seconds ago. Amazing thing, the internet. Obviously, I was not looking for him or I would have been acquainted with his paintings prior to 30 -- oops -- now 40 seconds ago.
Actually, I was looking up "Claude Parsons," the author of How to Draw and Paint Flowers. Don't know what Mr. Wilson's connection to Claude Parsons is though. More on that later.
Anyway, seeing this painting in reproduction, I'd have to say it looks quite lovely. Sometimes paintings that look great in a photograph are disappointing when one encounters the actual object. But I'm guessing this looks very fine when seen face to face.
What strikes me as odd is that there's a whole school of people who paint like this -- who not only do modern trompe l'oeil, but who do it in this way, straight down to the very staged, variegated coloristic, whimsical arrangement of things. Yet you never see them.
I have yet to see an exhibit of works of this type. Somebody somewhere must be mounting exhibits of them, but they are far and few. Art of this type is larged boycotted by the "art world." And it's unfortunate. I don't paint in this manner myself so I'm not advocating for it. It's just unfortunate (and silly too) that "art" is defined so narrowly nowadays.
You can see more of Patton Wilson here.

Open letter to the editor of Art Lies

Jennifer Bartlett, Democrat

moderationsmuse, Republican

Jean duc de Berry, affiliation unknown


Dear Art Lies editor:

"I don't think the following statement will come as too much of a shock to the ARTLIES readership: most artists are not Republicans," wrote Kelly Klassmeyer in Issue 44. I only just now learned about your publication when I "Googled" that question myself. Who are the Republican artists? Well, I write so that you need no longer be in the dark about artists and political affiliation. Please report to Kelly Klassmeyer, that indeed some artists are Republicans. I am. I voted for Bush. Have never regretted it. Indeed, whenever I see Al Gore making another self-aggrandising, grand self-serving gesture to "save the planet," (where was he when the dinosaurs needed him?) I am more than ever glad at the decision I made. I did not vote so much for Bush as against Gore, and later Kerry, but the very fact that the Democrats selected these very problematic candidates points toward a deep dis-function on the Dem side.
Anyway, why doesn't one hear more about Republican artists? I'll tell you why. Intimidation. The self-selected "hip" people have declared, just as your publication does, that artists are not Republicans. To announce the contrary causes a person more trouble than it's worth. And thus, artists like me who find themselves nearer the Republican side of the equation than to the Democrat are content to take our views to the voting booth. (The only place where it really matters, after all.)

I am constantly surprised at how readily various artists jump at the chance to be "progressive." But, stereotypes aside, many artists are really quite timid people who find not just their political views but their artistic ones from the "in" crowd. The genuine artist, the one dedicated to creating an image somehow connected to truth, one who is interested in exploring the visual world, searching for real ideas and not cliches, such a person is really quite rare. A thoughtful person might be a Democrat or a Republican, but genuine people makes these choices based upon authentic conviction and not based upon what the hip crowd dictates.

My own views are ones I'd characterize as moderate, hence my pseudonym. I lean toward the Republican party in its support for life (I will never understand the cruelty of the abortion lobby). I am a proponent of individual liberty, of local government, of limited government, of self-reliance and self-esteem. Above all things, I'm in favor of freedom, something that I see Republicans defending more than Democrats.

The Democratic party has become a retro-coalition of competing and mutually hostile interest groups, of self-hypnotized "victims." Klassmeyer appeals to the stereotype of the "rich" Republican, but actually a recent survey showed what simple observation also reveals -- that actually above average income groups tend to vote Democratic. The two "coasts" tend to vote Democratic, and they are also the most expensive regions in which to live. "Rich" is also a label that is conveniently never applied to people like actor George Clooney, Senator Ted Kennedy or Speaker Pelosi -- all of whom are of course millionaires.

Well, anyway, I just thought someone real ought to write to let you know that Republican artists exist, though I'm probably not as much a Republican as your stereotypical artist is a Democrat, because I am not particularly ideological, being a firm believer that the truth is a nuanced thing that ideologues are not likely to find.

I think your article is intimidating so don't expect to hear many other Republican artists chiming in. However, you might benefit from asking yourselves some soul searching questions such as "why has "art" become this elitist thing that is unrelated to the lives of ordinary people?" Indeed, why isn't "life" of interest to "artists" anymore? Why is everything so exaggerated, so mean-spirited, so "hip," so trendy? Isn't it the "environmentally sensitive" Democratic party that defines and defends the "art" of putting a dead shark into a tank of formaldehye? The really great artists of the past were singularities. In all honesty, who is a "great" artist today?

Do we know or care what were the political views of Vermeer, or Titian, or Winslow Homer, or Jean Fouquet, or Adam Elsheimer or Matisse? Their politics are not relevant to the enduring and humane art they created, and this is still true of artists today. The really great artists of the present (whoever they are) are making images that speak to people in genuine ways. It used to be believed that politics diminished this higher view of life. It's a viewpoint that needs a comeback. Maybe then we'll have real artists making real art again, and we won't ask or care how they voted.

Best wishes,

moderationsmuse (pseudonym of an artist living on the East Coast)

The art lies article I referenced can be found here.

For more information about Jennifer Bartlett, a Democrat (the artist did a smallish, personal fundraiser for Al Gore in the 2000 race), click here.

Longing for Picasso?

[Detail of Picasso's drawing of Ruth Dangler, NGA, Washington DC]

WilliePilgrim makes me feel guilty. (It's of course not your fault Willie.) I seem to be always the party pooper here. But I read your column regularly now because you're a nice young girl and because I'm an artist too.

I have seen so many clones of these artist that I am rather biased against them at this juncture in my life. I will admit that the water in "Off the Gaspe" has some interesting qualities. But on balance I find all these photo imitating artists a bit pointless. There's so little understanding of what drawing is, for instance, how it is utterly different from what a photograph does.

A drawing is more like a notation that evokes or describes a visual "thought." And thoughts are such funny things. A thought can be very elaborate, very specific or "filled out." Or it can be most vague and ineluctable. A great artist can make a drawing that is like a sigh ("ahh...") or a shrug or like a bright glance or a keen message. This artist strikes me as being unaware of all that. He is so achingly "modern" wearing it like a Boy Scout merit badge. But he's hardly alone. Ninety percent of "artists" are just like this.

Sigh. One can think that Picasso was a brat. But then modern art makes one almost long for Picasso, a true draughtsman!

Theses comments are in reference to Kimberly Brooks review of the photographic drawings of Ethan Murrow found here at the Huffington Post.

And one of my favorite contemporary "table top" still lifes

The painting is by Ignacio Iturria.

My favorite of my own still lifes

And this guy's art and his story is really neat

You can see his paintings here. The artist is too modest. Looking over his site, I had trouble finding his name (it must be there somewhere). His first name is Paul.

And another

by Malaysian artist Latif Maulan, whose work can be seen here.

Here's another

The artist Meredith Ramsbotham's other paintings can be seen here.

Contemporary Still life

I found this image of tea cups painted by Lisa Hirst, a Canadian painter living in France, and compare it with a painting of a honey jar that I've been working on lately. Ms. Hirst's paintings can be seen here.
It's fun to make a comparison like this, something that would have been impossible before the internet. Needless to say, lots of artists who are unaware of each other's paintings, are interested in traditional genres and in careful, thoughtful observation of ordinary life.

Recapturing the sensibility of painting

Back sometime in 1965 painter Andrew Wyeth was interviewed by Richard Meryman, an interview that was first published in Life magazine (May 14, 1965) and later reprinted in an exhibition catalog [The Art of Andrew Wyeth, ed. Wanda M. Corn]. In that interview, Wyeth is quoted making this prescient remark: "I came at the right moment in American art. I was alone. Now there are a lot of realists coming along -- I think partly because they've seen my success, to be perfectly honest -- but I think today the abstractionists are the conservatives and I'm the modernist." He elaborates upon the conservatism of modern art this way: "Everything is screaming with exaggeration today. I think artists today are caricaturing the truth, and life to me is more serious than that .... The abstractionists obliterate the object because it's a way of escaping perfunctory picturesquesness."
His remarks are prescient in their recognition of the growing exaggeration characteristic of big-ticket, acclaimed, art-world art and its effect upon its audience -- of the ways that its cognicenti gradually lose their sensitivity to nuance, order and texture of more comtemplative forms of art like realism. Realism did get a boost from Wyeth's success also, as he noted, though this phenomenon is less obvious to the casual gallery goer. Certain the museums have stuck close to the conservatism of abstraction and the isms that followed it. You do not see realist paintings in contemporary museums unless they come with the other requisites of modern art, such as violence, banality, shock value, politics or various other forms of "exaggeration." But many kinds of realist painting have been practiced during the decades since World War II, and various kinds of non-realist, painterly representational painting (such as Richard Diebenkorn's) also.
Why would anybody want to escape from "perfunctory picturesquesness"? Because to really explore the visual world in a serious way hasn't got anything to do with the obvertly "pretty." Nontheless, painting a picture that is both "pretty" and real -- well, perhaps that's the biggest challenge of all. Wyeth wasn't against the picturesque, he just wanted something more than that as have innumerable artists before him. But it is just this fact that painting "real life" is very difficult, to escape from convention and to just paint, takes skill and insight. Some artists took the easy way by eliminating subject matter from the mix, but then it's the "abstraction" itself that becomes picturesque and pretty.
Real painting is difficult, but it's worth pursuing anyway. Even failing at the real thing has its benefits for it really is nobel to aim at a nobel goal.
[top: Andrew Wyeth's "Pageboy" republished from http://www.gbcnv.edu/~techdesk/AngelaConrad/Helga.html]

Modern Painting

There's a magazine by that name. The first time I saw it on a magazine rack, I had this brief "wow" moment. Well, it was a very brief "wow" moment. Perhaps a nanosecond in duration. Maybe not that long. For I opened the magazine and quickly surmised that "painting" was of little interest to the publishers. Why they call the mag Modern Painting is anybody's guess, unless they mean to be ironic.
So, lately it occurs to me that I called this blog "about art," and granted it does foray into a wide range of things even in just these few posts so far. But I suppose it will become quickly evident that even when I'm not talking about painting, I don't stray from the subject for very long. For me painting is art. Even drawing, for me, ultimately serves the ends of painting.
I don't think there's many publications or critics (or perhaps even painters) who think of art as narrowly as I do in this respect. Since the advent of "painting is dead" artists are reluctant to be identified with the alledgedly moribund form even when they are painters themselves. They are a little apologetic. I'm not.
I'm declaring that painting is "IT." Sure, there've been great sculptors -- Michelangelo, Bernini, Rodin, to name a few -- but real art has long found its home with the great, painted flat image. I'm proudly proclaiming that painting is still alive and well. Imaginations have sometimes died or nearly died or have sat there comatose. But I don't put anybody's failure of imagination at Painting's doorstep. It's a very difficult thing to become a great painter.
Take the 17th century, for instance. Who is really big? Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velasquez. Some want to include Van Dyck, but one always does so with a bit of hesitance. Even Degas stuttered a little when the question of Van Dyke's status came up ....
But, my God, Van Dyck! Who can even paint Van Dyck's toenails today?
So, you see my point? Painting is not dead. It's artists that we lack. But painting is just fine, and merely awaits the arrival of somebody with worthy ideas, someone who knows how to see.

Not the only Muse out there

I found this Muse while looking for the original of Degas's Woman Brushing her Hair. If you want to see life from the model's point of view, check it out.

Degas himself

Degas

When I first realized I wanted to be an artist, it was Degas's drawings that particularly attracted me. I have been looking back at Degas's work lately, rediscovering my love for the dynamism of his images -- noticing things in them I'd not noticed before even after very long acquaintance! It has spurred me to draw a lot. I also find myself wanting to deal with the figure, portraying people in ordinary settings as Degas did and searching out the formal beauties of that.
Years ago I did this copy after Degas of the Woman brushing her hair. Now I am looking at his work again and finding new energy for my own. One thing Degas teaches you is the vitality that comes of freedom. Whatever your eyes notice is fair game.

Kimberly Brooks's painting "Portrait of Liz"

I just found this wonderful portrait by Kimberly Brooks at the artist's website. Several or possible all of the images are based upon photography: as the artist explains, "During my last show, "Mom's Friends," about my mother and her friends in the 70s, I foraged through old family albums and found page after delicious page of distorted photos that to me signified nothing less than the new born freedom of a generation redefining itself."
I feel some connection to this topic myself, which Brooks addresses in an interview with photographer Stefanie Schneider. Like these artists, I've also based several of my paintings on old photographs, turning them into reveries of a different sort. The photos I used go back a little farther than Brooks. Some are from the 1940s and one noteable photograph goes back to 1957.


Meanwhile, Brooks's Portrait of Liz has a wonderful angularity about it that is intriguing both formally and psychologically. The tilt of the sitter's head seems to engage us with energy and pique.

the work and ideas behind a painting

I wrote on an earlier blog about the way I had studied Cezanne's Vase de fleurs as a prelude to making my own painting. I also wrote about the creative process. I did a lot of drawing as background for the flower paintings that I make. I am not sure how many such drawings I've made. Some were copies of Paul Cezanne's painting; some, studies from still life set ups.
Even in making copies of an old master painting, one finds myriad occasions for invention as can be seen here. I was drawing the same image over and over, yet look how different the various iterations are.

Daring to be traditional (what ever that is)

I love to draw. Look at the works of artists past, and you find a whole world of things that somebody decided to draw. Some of the subjects fit into categories, by which I mean, that one observes a kind of hierarchy about what things artists were expected to draw (by others), or needed to draw (in order to meet the requirements of their paintings, regardless whether the requirements came from within or without), and things that they drew because other artists had drawn them earlier on and made them iconic.
Among that list of categories, one doesn't have to look long before discovering "drapery." Well, of course you draw drapery so that you can cloth the world. The people in your pictures will be wearing something, and in earlier times the chances were quite good that the something would be rather flowing and formally interesting and complex.
Mme Moitessier, in Ingres's famous portrait, wears the most amazing dress, both in regard to its exquisite floral design as well as for its wonderful folds and forms. The Nike of Samothrace, in turn, showed how in antiquity the figure could be mostly revealed, practically nude, and still require the assistance on innumerable, lyrical and dreamy rippling folds. In mediebal art, even a woman's head dress could provide the occasion for mountainous folds. And for the 19th century still life painter, Paul Cezanne the folds become an end in themselves and will later rematerialize in a new guise as Mont Ste Victoire.
So I draw drapery sometimes. Just because. [drapery study by moderationsmuse]

Being an artist

I've been thinking about some of the cliches associated with art, and contrasting them with lesser known realities. I was just reading Kimberly Brooks blog about the creative process. (Ms. Brooks writes occasional pieces for the Huffington Post.) In this particular blog she talks about having a large canvas sit blank in her studio for several weeks while she tried to summon the bravery to work on it. Finally, to overcome her fears, she randomly applies some bright colors to it. And this much, her "painter's block" and her emotional resolution of it are what many people today would identify as the essential character of creative endeavor. It is one of the cliches.
Cliches such as this one gain force by their repetition and by a generally lax approach to art education -- lax, I mean, on the part of artists. A little research independently done into the process behind truly great works of art reveals a very different sort of process.
To cite one example, the great British landscape painter Joseph Mallord William Turner drew incessantly from childhood onwards. Once he seriously chose to become an artist, he as quickly began angling for ways to sell his works, inspired by his humble circumstances which made earning his keep an urgent necessity. And his marketing efforts found early success, not the least because even his early works showed a remarkable fluency with visual forms. In short, he practiced his art assiduously and became exceedingly skillful at it.
He also apparently felt a reluctance to tackle a large canvas, but for reasons quite different from those typical of today's artists, as Ms. Brook's piece relates. Canvas was expensive and Turner was loath to waste money on material resources. So his early works tend, for the most part, to be small drawings and watercolors. And it was only after Turner had become an accomplished creator of images that he even turned his attention to large painting, and did so for the money, the prestige, and probably also to demonstrate that his skills were as large as those of various famous masters (such as Aelbert Cuyp). When Turner began his first large painting (and it was really large), he did not indulge a case of blocked creativity. Quite the contrary, he worked out the essential elements of the composition in drawings and other small images and then transferred the idea to the larger tableau. The creativity of the project did not reside in staring at a void and trying to imagine something, anything, with which to fill it. The creativity arose from having a motif, a subject, a particular landscape he wished to depict, and then blocking in the large forms of that image onto this new larger format.
His creativity certainly did not end there, as anyone familiar with the painter's works knows. Turner would eventually become renowned for his experimental uses of paint, imagery, and scale. Certainly in his first large scale works he would repeat ideas that had been first developed on a smaller scale. But the artist's sensitivity to the potentialities of scale would readily become a feature of monumental works. In short, he just painted.
The artists that we now call the old masters suffered fewer qualms about making images than do today's artists. They were not unwilling to just paint something. They were aware that, through making images, they were gaining not only sharpened skill, but were gaining experience, sensibility, and new ideas, ideas which they might store away for future things. They did not need to just fill the blank void with anything in the hopes of getting an idea. They had specific aims in mind that they pursued. It's a good lesson for anyone trying to make art today, a lesson in humility as well as daring.

tradition verses life

I used to paint little still lifes of flowers. In recent years, however, my paintings have tended toward hard to categorize images like the "tree" above. I wish I could explain to people why "tradition" is not only important but essential. I also wish I could explain why most times people easily mistake what "tradition" actually is. The idea of the past is so misunderstood that one is hard pressed to know where to begin setting people right about it. Conservative "traditional" artists don't understand the past, and avant garde "edgy" artists don't understand it either (neither do they understand the tyranny of the present).
But necessity is the mother of invention, and I find it nearly impossible to market my "innovative" paintings like the Tree picture. It is not weird enough to suit the hipster crowd, nor familiar enough to be readily understood by a large public. So it, and I with it, fall between the cracks.
Consequently I've been thinking of turning more of my attention to "traditional" subjects -- like vases of flowers again. I can hide as much modernity in them as I like, and still appeal to an audience that wants subject matter to be transparently meaningful.
Sometimes I've wondered if this decision represents a retreat. But I am just beginning to understand the ways in which it's an advance. It's a way into a more modern painting than what I was doing. It is a way of shaking off the last vestiges of "modern art" and just making an art about life (in this case about my life).
And nothing really is more removed from tradition, convention, fashion and so forth than plain ol' life.
"Study life" has always been the credo of the old masters and for good reason. It is the most misunderstood and most profound, most deep and most difficult bit of advice to do!

Details

I made studies related to my painting of the flowers. And so, of course, did Cezanne. Above is a detail of a Cezanne watercolor and a pastel detail of a study I did for the painting in the previous post.
Each time you revisit a subject in this way, you see it somewhat differently. All the small spaces have changed. Your attention has changed. Your tools are different and lend themselves to other uses. To redraw the same subject numerous times is itself a form of innovation. {To see some related drawings, click here.)

art of the museums

[Above, vase of flowers by moderationsmuse, vase of flowers by Paul Cezanne]

I visited the museum today to draw. Actually it was my daughter's idea. She drew too. Haven't been there in a while, so it was interesting to reconnect with this once very extremely familiar place. I wasn't there long before visiting a favorite painting of mine by Paul Cezanne.

Some years back I made my own painting that is, in ways, indebted to it. Today I was drawing a small version of Cezanne's great painting, using Derwent drawing pencils (which are actually a form of dense pastel). When you copy a great master's image, you come close to his thoughts. It's rather like having a conversation with him. What you are copying is what he noticed and considered important. He is saying, "notice this, notice that." And a little contemplation of what has been eliminated from the picture, tells you also what he decided to ignore or subordinate. One finds out these lacunae by studying the same motif from life.

While we were there, we saw some copyists at work. One was taking pain-staking long spans of time and concentration to make the most cursory, initial lines of drawing after a Monet landscape of Camille outdoors holding a parasol. Monet had 85% of the painting finished in the time this woman spent carefully trying to sort out the drawing in a very pale ochre wash. If you're going to study old masters, you need to find out something of how they worked. If one isn't confident with drawing, it's better to just have at it anyway, make some mistakes and correct them later in the copy or in other pictures.

However, I don't wish to parody this copyist. She was doing the "traditional" thing. It was heartening to see. In the "art world" she would not be considered an artist at all, would be totally written off as an amateur and daubber. And perhaps she is. Her hesitance before the canvas was not encouraging. But it was delightful seeing her there trying out these gestures of painting.

"Serious" artists have been so frightened off these days by the shame that purportedly attaches to making museum copies, yet it was long the practice of artists -- great artists -- to copy. Rubens made copies of other artists works when in his 50s. Delacroix, Degas, Van Gogh, Matisse and Cezanne were all copyists. What experience have so many artists forsaken in abandoning this unique silent conversation with the past?

It's a timid artist, quite frankly, who is unwilling to go shoulder to shoulder with the great artists of the past. It's an avenue for learning, yes. But it's also a challenge. "Beat this," they say. Or try to equal it. Or come close. Or at least contend as well as you're able.

I really admired the pluck of the reluctant copyist I saw today. No, she is not a real artist most likely. But all that should bother the objective viewer is the fact that no "serious" artists were there to join her.

Well, take that back. One was. I was there with my notebook!

New artists

I have been thinking a lot about the new artist, the one who perhaps hasn't been born yet. I am, like Durer, wondering about the art of the future. I am quite certain it is nothing like the stuff being palmed off as "art" today. This real artist who might be a teenager now, or might be a newborn, who is a genuine artist, is not someone who will even be tempted by today's trends (or tomorrow's either), yet the trends will be there to make his or her life difficult.
This artist of the future is more interested in the life before his eyes, has ideas about things that he wants to make tangible.
This artist that I have in mind doesn't really need an education in art since everything worth knowing is plainly visible in the works of great masters -- all their ideas being visual ideas, they are right there to see. However, with a profusion of junk always around, such an artist probably most likely needs encouragement, needs to hear that what he is doing, does matter.
I realize now that this is the person I want to address.

Rethinking what art is

Well, this is all very nice for Rachel Mason. I don't wish to sound mean-spirited, but Mason is another instance of the pompier art that one sees everywhere. That she is light-hearted about it is to her credit. Given the better angels of her nature (the fact that she counts Velasquez, Rodin, Picasso, Daumier among her heros), perhaps she will make real art someday when the Yale School thing has worked its way out of her system.
Tout ca change, tout c'est la meme chose. The chic art lauded by the official "art world" rarely has much in common with real art or real life. So, for instance, Mason ought not be surprised at the offer to show her sketches. However, she should have turned the offer down. The sketches are neither exceptionally bad, nor particularly good. The only reason they were included, one supposes, is -- well, why not include them? How are they substantively different from the photos/videos of her miming a candiate posture?
What I personally would look for "as art" within them is definitely not there. I cannot really see anything in them that speaks to life, that would stand as uniquely Ms. Mason's idea. I see lots of conventional ideas about image making as well as about sociology. Mind, this has nothing to do with their being "representational." It's just that the graphic means of describing things is all secured in advance of her actually looking at her subject. I see them as potential demonstrations for a "how to draw cartoon figures" book. Similarly, the figurine of Hussain is not something I would have recognized as such without its caption. Whatever idea it holds relies completely on its presumed subject. And ANY "light" depiction of Saddam would have been equal to the task.
Ooh, la, la -- contrast to this the dynamic power a little Degas bather. We don't ask the identity of the figure. It isn't even relevant that the figure is a "bather" -- so much is just pretext. All that really matters is the figure is of a woman, and a Degas figure is filled with FORM. Today people doing "sculpture" are hard-pressed to understand what form IS. They might suppose that simply making something that is three dimensional means that perforce it has "form." And what a mistake!
People need to relearn the very notion of art -- the people who most need to learn this are "artists." Well, perhaps. Actually a real artist isn't taught. Once you realize that a particular artist needs to be taught ideas which ought to be obvious, then you are not dealing with a true artist. Real art is not the thing that can be taught. It just happens because it's a natural product of the self.
It may sound elitist to talk about in terms that can evoke "great art." But people need great art. Even Ms. Mason acknowledges that her heros include Velasquez, Rodin, Picasso, Daumier. My advice (though it would be bad advice as regards her "career") would be study your heros. This is not the "conservative" advice that it might seem. Oh, but that's another topic.
[Picture: by moderationsmuse]

Definitions

There's a big difference between artists and the idea of "being an artist." An artist is someone who "creates upon a flat surface, any visible object whatsoever." Whereas the "artist," can be someone of real ability (like Picasso) or it may be a trendy poseur (Damien Hirst) who is without ability and who will eventually go by the wayside.

The "art world" is hardly something that even exists. There are all manner of businesses, some large, some small that sell "art." But one would be hard-pressed to find one characterization that fits them all.Anyone who wants to paint would be wise to learn fundamental skills, study the history of art, have an open mind, and follow one's heart.

It's rather like learning a musical instrument. A violinist doesn't expect to master the instrument without playing some scales. Music develops through a process of both serious and inspired work. And so does real painting. But many people are actually enamoured of "being an artist" and have no interest at all in making pictures of things.

As to innovation, nothing could be more challenging than to take ideas that have captured the attention of generation after generation of human beings and to make those ideas come to life again. The greatest and most "revolutionary" art is really the most traditional -- when ideas that participate in a perpetual present tense have real life in them.

How delightful this reply of yours. You haven't persuaded me! But you make some wonderful points. Let me see if I can be persuasive. I agree that we depend on society -- so, okay, in that sense politics pervades everything. But that isn't a helpful definition of politics -- not if we want to understand distinctions between political parties, or what motivates voters, or even broader questions like different kinds of political order (democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, tyranny, etc.)

Art benefits similarly by some narrowing of definitions. True that formal questions of how things are ordered visually, line, form, color, etc. are part of every kind of design from old master paintings to business cards. But there is a huge difference between your work as a graphic designer, trying to put visual information into the format dictated by your boss or your customer and you making a drawing for no other purpose than to satisfy your curiosity.

"Fine" artists have customers too, of course. Michelangelo had to answer to the Pope. But certainly there is no way that Michelangelo's customer could have dictated anything of the essense of what Michelangelo was doing. On a very high order of skill like that, he's thinking in formal ways that kind of defy rules. The Pope might have said "add more angels" or something, but none of a tampering with subject matter really touches what is happening formally -- and the formal structure underlying the subject matter conveys more of its meaning than people typically realize.

Well, we're not Michelangelos so maybe that doesn't apply to us .... But no. If you just begin looking at something and draw it. After a while you lose yourself in it. Your attention is captured in various ways by what you see and want. You may not know yourself why various features of the world capture your notice and others don't. This is what "art" is really about. Politics has no relevance to it.

The "political" realm of people interacting with each other is separate from this. Granted your being an artist (as I agreed) has political elements, but not the art.Art comes from within the mind, from aspects of the self, from your visual cortex, from degress of skill (or lack of skill) with which you are born -- over which you have practically zero control. Think of Paul Cezanne, French 19th c Impressionist painter. Cezanne's hero was Peter Paul Rubens. Cezanne would spend hours in the Louvre making drawings after Rubens. Rubens is one of the greatest draughtsman the West has ever produced. Cezanne -- not the greatest draughtsman. But Cezanne's not being able to draw like Rubens did not prevent Cezanne from becoming a great artist also. One of art's wonderful mysteries, this sort of thing.

People have private lives. Artists are perhaps more aware of this than others in our politically saturated world. What transpires when you hold a pencil and draw whatever common object catches your notice has nothing to do with society. The pencil, various conventional ideas about art, perhaps the object might all have various tenuous connections with the political -- but not the drawing. The drawing is more like a dialog between you some "reality" "out there."It's an amazing thing.

Shouldn't say this to someone who is tired from working all day in a graphic design studio, but I'll say it anyway. Draw. Pick something of no significance whatever except that its visually appealing for you. Then draw.Nothing could be further from politics. There are no rules for the order in which your senses notice the features of visual reality.

Politics: the antithesis of art

You are not really talking about colors in a visual way. You are talking in color words. Poor vilified Phthalo blue, for instance, is not one unitary color at all. How could it be? But as with any pigment it appears in slightly subtle forms depending upon the colors surrounding it, the character of the light source and the perceptiveness of the viewer. Color is nothing more than the photons that reach your eye, there to be interpreted by your optic nerve and your mind. Photons, my friends.I paint with Phthalo blue and with the Phthalo greens rather a lot and find them to be amazingly true and durable pigments.

Depending upon the formulation they come either cool or warm from the tube (there is a Phthalo blue "red" shade that's closer to Ultramarine except for being darker). Mixed with other dark colors, Phthalo can be blended into rich darks that can contrast with either Mars or Ivory black.

I think it's unfortunate that even the art blog has to bow to politics. It demonstrates how unimportant art has become to the hipster class. Lots of people blogging over there. Hardly anyone blogging over here.

One has to discover what in art really speaks to people in genuine ways. I think in our time there's a kind of unacknowledeged hunger for real art, for that which is true to life, personal, that reveals life to us. It is contemplative and serious yet filled with delight. It's not a brand, any more than a rose is a brand, or a jonquil.

I have loved the paintings of Pierre Bonnard for a long time. It's surprising to look at them with attention to the dates. He painted things when France was split in half by World War II. Yet the paintings are filled with a timeless, enduring life. They are not "about" the war. They are not "about" anything so transient as political change. Instead they are about food, the bath, an open window, the outdoors coming indoors. They are about a dachshund lying in a chair or on a mat, the artist's faithful companion.