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!

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]

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.