Like The Rolling Stones

Many Americans go to Europe to study and are influenced in their work by the highly developed art they see there.  Most often the influence is subtle and becomes absorbed into the student's own ideas, techniques and approaches to work.

But others seem to have been so deeply affected that they continue to emulate their heroes in an obvious way into middle age and beyond.  I have picked on five artists who fit that category.

This first one is not by Manet, but by Gari Melchers, done when he was 40.

 



Degas?  Nay, Maurice Sterne, at age 46.

 



This "Renoir" was painted by William Glackens when he was about 55.

 

 

 



Not Gauguin in Detroit, John Wicker at age 64.

 

 

Dwight Tryon, still doing Monet at 72.

 

 

The most recent of these pictures was made around 1925, before the easy and widespread availability of color reproductions.  I suspect that many of these men sought to introduce the admirable, if sometimes undigested innovations from Paris into America, much like the Rolling Stones wanted to bring their beloved Chicago blues music to the UK.

 

 

 







Hard Edges

Yet another of the options an artist has to choose from is the hard edge.  A painting with all or almost all hard edges between forms implies an unequivocal approach.  It signifies certitude and decisiveness.

Examples abound throughout history.  This section of a tomb painting from Egypt is about 3500 years old. 



This detail of a mural by Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel is 530 years old:



Here is a Japanese woodcut from maybe 150 years ago.  Note the use of contrapposto in this and the example above. http://williambuffett.blogspot.com/2012/07/contrapposto.html

The Stuart Davis is about 60 years old:



This painting by Leigh-Anne Eagerton is from this year: