Enough But Not Too Much

A spare, clean drawing, composed of a few lines put down with conviction, can sometimes suggest a world.  I have chosen the work of 4 artists for the first 4 illustrations and taken the last 4 from my own files.

Andy Warhol sketches Truman Capote and gives us a glimpse into the play of their rapport.

Diego Rivera made this drawing of flower vendors and their customers, and the composition is made complete and wonderful by the inclusion of horsemen gliding along behind them, one of whom turns his face to look at the activity.

Milton Avery has taken up a brush and set down, almost offhandedly, a mother in the midst of her day of care giving.

Henri Matisse hired a pretty model to pose.  The textures of foliage, hair and fabric combine with her person to form a consummate decorative pattern.

Who can fail to understand something of how this man feels?

Here one is made to feel the terrific misplaced energy which sprung the frame, wrinkled the sheet steel, flattened the tires and punched out the glass of this former automobile.

Admit that these animals, made of a few hasty strokes of a pen, nevertheless look very heavy.

Am I the only one who sees the poignancy of this tableau drawn at a state fair?

Effective Distortion - Emotions

To illustrate effective distortion, done for the purpose of conveying emotions, I have selected 4 works of art.  None of them is pretty, but they are effective - even haunting.

This self portrait drawn in pencil by Wyndham Lewis aims at a sort of sullen, steely scorn expressed in a clean, economical style which resembles cut and folded paper..

Georges Rouault takes the prize for agony.  His head of Jesus features large eyes looking upward, begging for surcease, while the jaw is clenched in pain and black smears and lines shred the face into sections.

The emotion expressed by this nude from Auguste Rodin is harder to pinpoint, but it clearly has nothing to do with any kind of happiness.  The powerful, fit, athletic man is apparently unharmed on the outside, but he is so extremely and painfully distorted that he must be undergoing an inner agony.

Picasso's head of a grief-stricken woman almost shrieks and sobs aloud.  Broken and made ugly by her emotion, she, too, is disturbing to look at.



Effective Distortion - Streamlining

Though they contain complex systems with irregular shapes, vehicles from rockets to autos are designed with simplified outlines to improve efficiency and performance.  Similarly, the artist Michelangelo furnished Jehovah and an elaborate cluster of youthful figures with a simple enclosing outline which conveys the quality of fleetness and freedom from gravity.

Albert Ryder combined a rocky eminence, a wooden rowboat and the shadows they cast into one simple shape which seems eerie and mysterious, yet is rational.

Diego Rivera encloses an involved pose of a woman and child in a simple outline which produces a compact, snug effect of protection and devotion.

The Belgian artist Constant Permeke has streamlined the outline of this tough character.  The distortion causes him to appear self-contained, unapproachable and stubborn.



Effective Distortion - Elongation

This sensitively wrought portrait of the Egyptian king Akhenaten benefits from elongation.  The trimming away of the mass of his face subtly forces more attention on his features.  He is known for bucking the religious establishment of his time and focusing devotion to one god: the sun.  Nefertiti was his wife.

This portrayal of a Roman General is fashioned to resemble the very epithet which was perhaps  commonly, maybe even universally pronounced among the Legions he commanded.  Use your imagination.  I think he looks like a cruel martinet and an all-around jerk.

The habitual practice, by Amadeo Modigliani, of distortion by elongation is at its best in this painting of his young girl friend.

Finally, the most familiar and systematic stretching of the figure, apart from the elegant work of Sandro Botticelli, is fashion illustration.

Effective Distortion

A rooster is spiky and aggressive, witless and LOUD.  Pablo Picasso stressed those qualities exclusively when he made this drawing:

Some of the streets in San Francisco are so steep, you feel you may tip over backwards driving a truck up one of them.  This street painted by Wayne Thiebaud is as precipitous as a waterfall; you would tip over backwards if you tried to go up it.



My entry here is a picture of a wave which, if you were close to it, might send a thrill of fear through you as it rose to unnatural height.

It isn't easy to get it right.  Failed attempts abound, but I prefer to seek out successes; so far in my own work I can only identify this one.

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