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Category: art history

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The Corn Harvest (alt. the Harvesters), 1565

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
The Corn Harvest (alt. the Harvesters), Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder, 1565
Bruegel’s great device is in putting important action of his painting into a seemingly unimportant corner—in this case, in the far distance, a group of villagers are cock throwing, a blood sport  in which a rooster was tied to a post and people took turns throwing coksteles (special weighted sticks) at the bird until it died.

This is one of a series of six paintings depicting the change of the seasons, the most famous of which is The Hunters in the Snow.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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The Meeting (Bonjour Monsieur Courbet), 1854

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
The Meeting (Bonjour Monsieur Courbet), Gustave Courbet, 1854
Courbet was one cocky artist, and he knew how to work at his own celebrity. In this painting, Courbet painted himself meeting his patron and supporter, Alfred Bruyas. The servant is—duh!—servile, but patron and artist are meeting on the same social plane.  Gone is any idea of the artist as a hired hand; here Courbet announces his own genius.
Courbet was controversial, charismatic and absolutely political. He was uncompromisingly realistic in both his landscape and figure painting (which were, in some cases, absolutely pornographic). I can’t aspire to his artistic genius, but I sure like his approach to life. On the other hand, he died of liver failure at age 58.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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On the Delaware River, 1861-1863

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
On the Delaware River, 1861-1863, George Inness
That’s the Delaware Water Gap in the background. US Interstate 80 runs through it now, making it difficult to know whether such a limpid pool ever existed in this spot. But there is no mistaking that peculiar mountain range.
My geology text says that a water gap is carved by water flowing across a mountain ridge, but I find that impossible to contemplate. Evidently, it indicates a river that is older than the current landscape, which is why they’re common in the old, old Appalachians. I associate them particularly with Pennsylvania.

We focus so much on the Hudson River School painters that we sometimes forget Inness and the other tonalists. 

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Harvest at La Crau with Montmajour in the Background, 1888

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
Harvest at La Crau with Montmajour in the Background, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888
It’s absurd to try to pick out a “best” or a most-representative Van Gogh, so I just chose one which emphasizes the things I like most about him: his color sense, his meticulous draftsmanship, his love of place (in this case, the rocky outcrop of Montmajour) and his passing allusions to religion (the Benedictine abbey at Montmajour is in the background). It is high summer in this painting, and it’s high summer here. However, all the color sense in the world wouldn’t have made this painting successful had Van Gogh not trained himself to draw perfectly.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Le pont de Narni, 1826

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
Le pont de Narni, 1826, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, oil on paper, the Louvre.
This oil sketch, done on site in Italy when Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was thirty, could have been done by a 20th century California realist, or in fact been done today. 
While the Impressionists are generally credited with inventing plein airpainting, Corot was doing it decades earlier. Unlike the Impressionists, he was mixing his colors, and he didn’t have access to the full gamut of pigments they did.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Beamsville, 1919

This week I’m on the road. I’ve left you with six landscape paintings that should be on everyone’s Top Ten list, but probably aren’t (for the simple reason that there are way too many great paintings out there).
Beamsville, 1919, Frank Johnston

Landscape painting and war art are closely tied. In 1919, Frank Johnston (later a Canadian Group of Seven painter) did this aerial view of a training exercise over Beamsville, Ontario, which is between St. Catharines and Hamilton.

Johnston spent five days painting at the School of Aerial Fighting at Beamsville. Having flown into Buffalo  many times, I know that the aerial view here is exactly what Johnston painted. How did he do that when flight was so rare, and cameras were so slow? I imagine he went up in the air in one of those Sopwith Camels and sketched, but I don’t really know for sure.
Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Must the visual arts be a pale imitation of pop culture?

A still life by Amy Digi, from her website, here.
While thinking of my many friends in the greater New York area who are accomplished painters—Brad Marshall, Amy Digi, Patti Mollica, Cindy Zaglin (to name just a very few)— I came across thisin the New York Times:
“For example, although I’ve lived in New York for close to five years, my only encounters with the work of Hanksy, a graffiti artist who largely makes his art in New York and whose signature pieces involve the clever mash-up of the actor Tom Hanks and the works of the British artist Banksy, have been through Tumblr and Instagram.
“‘MY popularity exists right now because of social media and the Internet,’ he said in a phone interview.
“Hanksy said that after he put up his first piece in New York, he snapped a photo and uploaded it to the Web. Not long after, he said, ‘Tom Hanks tweeted it and it snowballed and here I am, two and a half years later with three successful solo shows and a rabid following of fans online.’”
One of Hanksy’s ‘masterpieces,’ publicized in The Gothamist. In light of the content, is it OK to say it pisses me off?
A man who blatantly (and feebly) copies Banksy while trading off the name of a Hollywood actor gets three solo shows and an interview in the Old Grey Mare. Meanwhile, very fine painters labor in relative obscurity. I’m usually philosophical about this, but somehow this man’s sheer mediocrity annoys me.
Patti Mollica’s Into the Light, acrylic on canvas, from her website here.
“That’s not art; that’s a meme,” protested our own Sandy Quang (MA candidate in Art History).
The problem isn’t with the public, which devours anything that comes up in its search box. The problem lies with our so-called tastemakers, the gallery owners and columnists who perpetuate this mediocrity. Their training ought to give them the authority to make critical distinctions, but apparently they lust after notoriety as much as the Kardashians.
A Stream in the White Mountains, New Hampshire, by Brad Marshall, from his website, here.
My friend Jane recently sent me a link to this, which argues that art is not a meritocracy. That’s true, but does it have to be a pale imitation of pop culture instead?
August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information. 
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What painting means, indirectly

I can’t imagine why running here makes us think about aesthetics. Since I’ll never paint from a photo, you can enjoy the reflections and shadows now.
Mary and I are running on the canal bank, discussing opening and delayed adverbs and adjectives. (I think middle school teachers invented them to torture students.) She gives an example: “Gracefully, Carol runs along the canal.” (Heh.)
I stop and stare at her—any excuse for a break. “Why would anyone teach a kid to write in such an antiquated manner?”
Mary’s a writer, and she’s in love with words. “It might be useful,” she protests. “Chiaroscuro might be obsolete, but there must be times you use it.”
I shudder involuntarily. “Never. It would never work with direct painting.”
This is from Gamblin’s very fine explanation of indirect painting, which you can find here. The monochromatic phase of an indirect painting is basically a value study.
Mary knows that as long as I’m talking about painting I keep running, so she asks me the difference between direct and indirect painting, and how Rembrandt and other classical painters built up their work. Huffing only slightly, I tell her that the artist started with an imprimatura, an earth tone base, and built up successive layers of transparent warm glazes. These were allowed to show through as dark tones in the final work. Opacity was added on the top, as light tones which glowed against the darks.
In the second phase, the artist has added lights, which are also opaques.
The Impressionists essentially invented an entirely new system of painting—direct painting—where a painting is done in opaque layers rather than built up from transparency. This radical technological shift was possible because modern chemistry was developing so many new pigments.
The finished work allows the imprimatura to show through (although in this example, the artist has muddied the darks and let it show through in the midtones).
 I tell her a bit of my own story: I learned to paint indirectly and was doing it until I went to the Art Students League to study. There, Cornelia Foss told me, “If this were 1950, I’d say ‘brava,’ but it’s not.” Tough words, but the best painting advice I ever got.
“But why is that?” Mary asks. “What about direct painting made it right for the 20th century?”
I speculate: indirect painting is more conducive to well-reasoned, planned paintings of academic or religious themes; direct painting is conducive to emotion expression. This puts it in sync with the overstimulated, nervous, energetic pulse of modern life.
“It’s kind of like the difference between a home-cooked and a restaurant meal,” Mary says.
I stop and stare again. Really, at times Mary boggles my mind.
“A home-cooked meal takes a long time to prepare. It is often, literally, a love offering,” she explains. “A restaurant meal—even the best of them—is quicker, and is more an expression of what the chef can do.”
Somehow, that goes right to the heart of the matter. Until the end of the 18th century, painters were looking outward—as missionaries of faith and social justice, or as teachers of classical myth and history. We may think those subjects are dated, but they show that the artist was primarily concerned with his audience. After the rise of the Cult of Genius, the artist’s personal vision became paramount.

So I think Mary’s metaphor is apt: indirect painting was a love offering, and direct painting is all about me.
Every day I do one task to prepare for my June workshop in Rockland, ME. Today’s was cleaning the Prius. Meanwhile, what are you doing to get ready for it? August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information. 
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More on that winnowing thing

Everything I’ve sorted so far pales in comparison to the business of sorting paintings with a critical eye… there are works that aren’t mine, works I can’t assess the quality of, and works I hope to finish some day.

The Duchy is perched on the side of Rochester’s only hill. This makes it prone to short bursts of flooding. Given the monsoon-like rains of this week, Coach and I suspended our regular workout in favor of clearing storm drains with a hoe and a trowel.
Too much of a good thing leads inexorably to trouble.
New York is lush in late spring, and the Duchy tends to go for over-the-top horticultural displays. I confess I’ve contributed my share of them, having designed and planted St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church’s gardens as well as growing a profusion of roses, peonies and ornamental trees on my own small plot.
Blossoms, seed pods, soil, mulch, and clippings… all creating concrete in the storm drains.
Of course, a surfeit of good things can be as troublesome as any bad thing. The Duchy’s trees are lavishly shedding blossoms and seed pods. That has combined with soil, mulch and clippings washing down from gardens and along the gutters. Now, blossoms and seed pods and soil, mulch and clippings are all great things, but in excess they’ve packed the storm drains up like concrete.
Winnowing is an ugly job… but absolutely necessary.
This brings my thoughts inexorably back to my own studio. There are stacks and stacks of my field sketches, and paintings by my students, and unfinished canvases for which I still harbor some hope, not to mention art supplies that I may use someday. All are unabashedly good things, but taken as a whole, they’ve blocked my studio up as surely as those storm drains.
The hidden stashes don’t count if they’re in a dark closet, do they?

This, then, is the next big step in the winnowing process.
And if you haven’t signed up for my Rochester classes or Maine workshops, what on earth are you waiting for? August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.
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That fine line between art and erotica

Hermaphrodite, Mateo Bonarelli, 1652, Prado

“Son of Hermes and Aphrodite, Hermaphrodite was a singularly handsome youth. According to Ovid (Metamorphoses 4, 285 ff.) Salmacis, the nymph from a lake in Caria, was enthralled by his beauty and passionately embraced him while he was bathing. Their two bodies merged as one, with double gender.

“This sculpture, commissioned by Velasquez in Italy for the decoration of Madrid’s AlcĂĄzar Palace, is a copy of the classic marble from the Borghese Collection in Rome, now in the Louvre Museum. The high technical quality of this piece makes it a masterwork that surpasses the original.” (From the Prado website)

 I watched thisnews story about a kerfuffle about nude photographs in a gallery window in Belfast, ME last week. The culture snob in me would have liked to believe that it was a small-town issue, except that a proposal for a show of my nudes was summarily rejected at the same time by a local college gallery because they have a no-nudity policy.
Despite what the photographer says on the video, there is no clear line between art and pornography, because there have always been painters whose primary goal was to titillate, and because sexuality is part of our humanity. It cannot be simply excised from the model or the process.
Consider the dancing girls in this fragment from ancient Thebes (c. 1350 BC). One presumes that the serving girls and dancers are naked for Nabamun’s amusement in the afterlife, but it is not overtly sexual.
A feast for Nebamun, the top half of a scene from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun, Thebes, Egypt, Late 18th Dynasty, around 1350 BC, The British Museum
Compare that to the Ephebe of Marathon, which is a sculpture of a boy (perhaps the god Hermes). The school of Praxiteles was interested in presenting a new view of the gods: more accessible, naturalistic, humanistic. These sculptors were perhaps even more interested in the aesthetic issues of contrapposto, which basically means putting the model’s weight on one foot. (This is a convention we use to this day.) I can’t even figure out how to frame the question of whether the Ephebe was intended to be erotic; their social, religious, and cultural milieu didn’t make the same distinctions we do.
Ephebe of Marathon, School of Praxiteles, c. 325-300 BCE, National Archaeological Museum of Athens
Then there’s Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man (which in addition to being an exquisite drawing, has to be one of the most enduring bits of graphic design in the history of art). Here, I think the intention is quite clear: Da Vinci is attempting to write a canon of measurement for the human body.
Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1490, Gallerie dell’Accademia