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.

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!