You Decide

I recently got into a rather heated debate with someone about talent and skill within the various genres of art. I'm not even sure how we went from a rather pleasant conversation about art in general to an ugly little verbal boxing match about how much skill is required to execute a particular piece of work, but spar we did.

I am of the belief that it required less technical skill for, say, Hoffman to create a modernist piece than for Monet to have painted a classical portrait. To paint an abstract work is not the same thing as painting a realistic human portrait or landscape and does, I believe, require far less skill. This is not to say that one can paint that abstract work without artistic talent. One can always find at least a handful of people standing before an abstract work in a gallery or museum loudly announcing that their five year old could do that same thing and no one is paying their child millions of dollars for their identical scribbly, splotchy mess. Those artistically ignorant people aside, I stand firm in my belief that it requires more skill to paint something from life as opposed to something comprised entirely of abstract shapes and blocks of color. And while it isn't necessarily true that anyone could paint an abstract work of art, be they artistically inclined or not, but if given a set of paints and a brush and told to make either an abstract piece or a classical portrait, most people would be far more successful at executing the abstract piece than they would the Mona Lisa.

The person with whom I was having this discussion, when he shouted that Picasso's Guernica is considered the greatest work of modern art ever created, was clearly and entirely missing my point. Working on a piece that requires less technical skill in no way means that an artist has no talent, nor does working on a technically simpler piece mean that one is a lesser artist. I would be insane to even think that Picasso was a talentless hack based on his cubist and modernist works. Picasso was a genius and his early classical drawings and paintings reflect a level of technical skill that his later works don't, in my humble opinion, always reflect. But I also will never be swayed in my personal belief that, regardless of how difficult it may be to create an abstract work of art, to execute one will never require the level of technical skill that a classical work requires. Yell at me if you will, on this I firmly stand my ground.

Claude Monet, Woman in the Green Dress (Camille), 1866

Hans Hoffman, The Gate, 1959-1960

Horses

I love horses, but then what girl doesn't love a beautiful horse? On my birthday a couple of weeks back we went for a walk past the horse farm up the road from our house and luckily the horses were all in one of the fields that allows easy access for those of us who are on the outside of the fence to get up close and personal with those residents living inside the fence. Without large brambles and masses of poison ivy we were able to get down and dirty with them, and boy did we. We fed them, we petted them and we took loads of smashing photos of dozens of horses doing all sorts of those horsey things that they do all day long. I wished I had had the time to sit and sketch them live that afternoon, but as that would have been a total downer for my companions to hang around and wait while I did it, I have instead made do with using a few of the many photos to sketch some lovely horses. Some of the drawings have been completed, some are still merely rough sketches.

Horse Head Study, graphite on paper, 2010

Sketch of Grazing Horse, graphite on paper, 2010

Chair Study

Another very small study of an arts & crafts period chair.

Stickley Dining Room Chair With Sideboard, graphite on paper, 6 x 8 inches, 2010

Self Portrait

A fairly small and hastily executed self portrait, graphite on paper, 2010.

Van Gogh's The Sower

So I went to the MFA to fall on my knees before this painting and worship it as any true disciple of Vincent would and I have to say I was just as thrilled with it as I had hoped I would be, and may have even been a bit more excited than I had anticipated (if that's even possible). I took my time heading into the Impressionist gallery, stopping in the hallway just outside it to snap a few photos of a Constable I thought I might like to try my hand at emulating. I wanted to take my time: to savor the moment of that first fleeting view; of seeing a Vincent that I had never seen before. When I got into the room and saw The Sower in the distance, my heart skipped a beat. Several, in fact. There it was in the far corner, hung with Millet's sower that Vincent loved so much. And I was instantly startled by two things: its size and its palette.

The work was much smaller than I had anticipated. I'm not sure why I thought it was bigger than it is, but there you have it. It was small. Intimately and accessibly small. And while I have seen endless photo reproductions of the many versions Vincent painted of The Sower, especially many photos of this particular piece, I now know that not one of them even remotely captured the true life colors Vincent used in creating this tiny masterpiece. Holy cow! A lime green sky, pink clouds, cornflower blue fields, little slashes of vivid cerulean and of course Vincent's beloved yellow. I couldn't tear myself away from it. I tried, but I couldn't. I moved aside every few minutes to let others get a look, only to step back before it the moment they walked away. I committed every brushstroke and every nuance to memory. I took endless photos of it from various angles (and wished I was at least a foot taller to see it eye to eye on the gallery wall). And then when David had asked me to move on for the umpteenth time, I did so grudgingly, but only briefly, as only a few short minutes later I found myself back in front of The Sower once again.

And then it was time to go. I had given much thought to seeing this work, to experiencing this work as completely as I could. I had thought about the time I would spend with it and how I wanted to be sure I stayed calm so as to remember every last detail of the piece and the precious time I spent with it. What I didn't think about at all was the act of walking away from it. Of leaving it once and for all, knowing that in all likelihood I would never, ever see this painting again in my lifetime and knowing that it would be on its return trip to Europe just hours after I walked out of that gallery. It was incredibly difficult to do and I was utterly surprised by how much trouble I had saying goodbye to it, though given my absolute adoration of Vincent, how this could have been a surprise is beyond me.

But leave I finally did. I was joyful at having had the opportunity to experience a Vincent painting I had never before seen, yet sad that this experience was over. I was left with both a sense of the surreal at having been in its presence and a bit melancholy too at how quickly it was over. I think Vincent would more than understand.

Photo of The Sower was taken by me in the Impressionist Gallery at the MFA Boston. While the angle is odd due to the height it was hung at and my rather short staure, I think it is a bit more accurate a representation of the brushwork and pigments used by Vincent than most generic photo reproductions of this piece found online or in books.

Historical Palettes Part I

I'm currently reading a book on painting alla prima and it has, in one chapter, a rather extensive list of the palettes used by some of history's greatest artists. I find it endlessly fascinating to see what pigments these masters used: some very few and some (with the advent of so many new and exciting colors at certain points in time, as well as the convenience of pre-mixed tubes) a great many.

Titian (Italian, c. 1488-1576)

lead white

ultramarine blue

red madder

burnt sienna

malachite green

red ochre

yellow ochre

orpiment (a yellow)

ivory black

Paul Cezanne (French, 1839-1906)

white

brilliant yellow

naples yellow

chrome yellow

yellow ochre

raw sienna

vermilion

burnt sienna

red madder

crimson lake

burnt lake

veronese green

emerald green

verona earth

cobalt blue

ultramarine blue

prussian blue

peach black

John Constable (English, 1776-1837)

lead white

yellow ochre

umber

red earth

emerald green

ultramarine blue

prussian blue

black

John Constable, Seascape Study with Rain Cloud, 1824 (which, by the way, I find endlessly mesmerizing as one seldom sees his studies and is instead fed a steady diet of his finished works, complete with the most amazing skies).