A Conceptual Artist (No Pictures)

I saw an item in a newspaper column entitled "News Of The Weird."  It read, in part: ...at the annual spring auction at Christie's in New York City, Massachusetts artist Tom Friedman managed to sell a piece consisting of an ink squiggle on a 12-by-18-inch piece of white paper (described in the Christie's catalog as "starting an old dry pen on a piece of paper").  It was sold for $26,000...

Not many artists get that kind of money; I looked up Tom Friedman.  He's not yet 50 and he has an impressive resume, including an MFA from the University of Illinois and exhibitions of his work in Chicago, New York, London, Rome, Stockholm, Geneva, Milan, Tokyo and many other cities.  Museums, too.

He transforms such ordinary materials as toothpicks, sugar cubes, plastic cups and bubble gum into intricate manifestations of his complex thoughts.

Sometimes the concept itself is the work of art.  Once he set up a pedestal and hired a witch doctor to put a curse on a spherical area of space above the pedestal.  The pedestal then became part of a sculpture exhibit, presumably with an accompanying printed explanation about the curse and all.


The paper with the pen squiggle surely came with some kind of affidavit, because if it couldn't be proven that it was done by a famous and accredited artist, it would have no importance beyond, say, a surface for 4 grocery lists.  It must have been bought as a more or less risky investment; it seems unlikely to enrich the decor of a room, or become an aesthetic marvel in an album of master drawings.  Its value would depend entirely on factors outside of itself.

Conceptual art is intended, above all, to make you think.  The wag who wrote this bumper sticker knew it:  IF YOU LIKE CONCEPTUAL ART THINK ABOUT HONKING



Conceptual Art (No Pictures)

There is a droll quality hovering around conceptual art which I can't resist or dismiss.  I detect a tongue-in-cheek approach by the artists who practice it and I suspect they are proud of the fact that while the lay person regards it as a joke, the authorities treat it seriously - promote it, sponsor it, write about it, and buy it.  Conceptual art at its best is audaciously entertaining.

Here are a few examples of conceptual art:

One artist took a pencil drawing by another artist and erased it.  The result, a piece of white paper, was exhibited as a work of art, most likely with an explanatory caption, by the one who did the erasing.

An artist put up a barricade of oil drums, blocking a narrow street in Paris.  He declared that the resulting traffic jam was the work of art, not the oil drum barricade.

Another artist taped a piece of paper to his studio wall and claimed to have contemplated it and concentrated on it for a total of 1,000 hours over a period of years.  Then it was exhibited, with its explanation, as a work of art.

A Dutch artist, whose work was concerned with movement and measurements and walking, announced that his one man show consisted of all the shoe stores in Amsterdam.

A major British museum bought and showed a sculptor's work which was 120 paving bricks arranged in a rectangle on the floor.

These works of conceptual art and hundreds more like them have some things in common.  First, they were all created by brilliant, college-educated individuals who achieved wealth and solemn recognition from critics, dealers, other artists, museum curators, writers and art collectors worldwide.  Second, none of the pieces has to necessarily be seen to be appreciated; a written description is enough.  We know what a traffic jam, a shoe store,10 dozen bricks and a blank piece of paper look like.  A third thing they share is that they are all clever and original ideas which were written down, acted out or otherwise made concrete.  There are people and institutions willing to pay well for these original concepts; there is always a demand for the new and offbeat.

It seems easy - try it.  The best of conceptual art is very much like a stunt, meant to amuse, provoke, or otherwise entertain in order to promote the artist, the gallery or museum, and modern art in general.  Great skill and judgment is required to create an effective stunt.

A parallel exists in the advertising business.  The creative people who write, for instance, such simple phrases as these are well paid and much respected:

"Tide's in; dirt's out."  "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there."  "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer."  "Ban won't wear off - as the day wears on."

Many scoff at the slickness and gullibility of the highbrows who create or promote or pay for conceptual art.  I suggest looking at the phenomenon in a broader way.

This is one of my favorite original, creative ideas: I don't know who wrote it, but he stated that the answer to a particular challenge was "Kareem Abdul Jabbar."  The challenge was "Describe the sound of a fat lady taking off her girdle."

Another Approach to Color Harmony

The only article I have published dealing with color harmony is "Don't Overlook Looney Tunes."  http://williambuffett.blogspot.com/2011/01/dont-overlook-looney-tunes.html  It suggests swiping color schemes from other artists.

 Another approach to color satisfaction is to put down experimental patches of color all around the surface and grope your way towards harmony.  It is best done with an opaque paint such as acrylics so you can cover sour notes.  For illustration, here is a picture I'm working on.  I have only a vague idea of the overall scheme, so am using the trial-and-error method.

Without being coaxed, I'll publish the finished painting when it has achieved Beautiful.



Another Trick

When painting a light source, the brightest light an artist has is pure white pigment.  But an even brighter light can be implied. 

 An example from Rembrandt shows how.  In this painting, a detail of a picture illustrating a bible story, the woman is holding a candle - the main light source illuminating the painting - but it is hidden behind her hand.  Touches of pure white paint are applied near the source of light, thus implying that the candle flame is even brighter.

I applied this lesson to a painting I am currently working on.  The reflection of the sun on the water is pure white paint, implying that the sun, beyond the edge of the picture, is brighter than its reflection.

Try it sometime.

White-Itis

Another pitfall for an artist to be wary of is "white-itis."  It is caused by adding white to a local color to represent the lit portion of a painted object.  It imparts an unpleasant chalky look to the picture.

One example of how not to model a colored object will be enough. The radishes in this detail of a still life are convincingly painted; the strongest color is where it should be, that is, where the light is strongest.  The highlight is white, indicating a glossy texture.



This, however, is a case of "white-itis:"

Travel

This was not a "Sketching Trip."  I brought a little blank book along, for taking down notes and observations, and occasionally made a drawing.
In railroad stations there is a lot of this:

In the streets, there are plenty of these:

In the joints you see this:

Out your window you get something like these:

There are lots of roons:

Plenty of frugal meals:

I drew Big Joe Williams from Crawford, Mississippi in the same hall where Beethoven premiered many of his works.

This is my favorite from this trip.  An artistic type in a cafe:

This was not a "Sketching Trip."  I came to study the nuts and bolts of art at the Rijksmuseum, Louvre, Jue de Paume, National Gallery, British Museum, Tate, Courtauld, Prado, Ufizzi, Academia, Pitti, Duomo, Barghello, Casa Buonarroti, Vatican, Capitoline, Brera, Kunsthistorisches, Pinakothek and others.

Clutter

I wanted to chronicle the appearance of this funky neighborhood bar, and it seemed more appropriate to record its mass of detail using only black lines on white paper than to render it in colors and tones.

Here, because of the mirrors in the barber shop, the coat hanger and whisk broom appear four times, all with the same weight of line.  The result is an open pattern spread upon the paper which gives a completely different appearance from what a tonal drawing or a photograph would give.

 Even a totally smashed Buick makes an attractive pattern on the paper:

Here is a sort of catalog of the contents of a long-ago studio of mine, featuring, by contrast, a fresh, white, as yet untouched canvas.

 

                                                                                                                              

Vanessa Stafford

I am always watchful for that quality of variety, in combination with balance, which characterizes the most satisfying and enduring art.  Complexity, diversity, ingenuity and originality abound, and so does symmetry and equilibrium.  But both in the same work of art is an elusive ideal.

I consider these paintings by California artist Vanessa Stafford to be outstanding examples of this ideal.

     http://www.buffettstudios.com/

A Lesson from Cezanne

One of Paul Cezanne's strong points was to subordinate the picturesque in favor of the structural.

Recognizing that as well as creating a window into which the viewer could see a landscape, for instance, he was also offering up a rectangle designed and decorated to please the intellect, regardless of the subject depicted.

Part of his method was to seek out and lay stress on the horizontal and upright elements of the motif.  That has the effect of making manifest the underlying structure, the girders and stanchions which make the design solid and firm and strong.

A comparison of two paintings will illustrate the point:  This landscape by Armand Guillamin appears to have been painted directly from nature.

This canvas by Cezanne, almost the same size and shape, was probably copied from the Guillamin.

They look very much alike, but Cezanne has firmed up the structural elements and suppressed the feathery foliage.  The road in the foreground has had its curve ironed out and emphasis put on the horizontal edges of it.  The leaves at the top are cleared back to make more room for a firmer horizon.  The buildings in the distance are made less nebulous in the copy, more solid.  Similarly, some of the straight edges of the patches of crops are made clearer.

The idea of gratifying the intellect, by playing down the transitory and incidental and revealing an underlying framework to lend wholeness to the composition, has developed and evolved into many forms of modern art.

 

Pyramids

The pyramid is a stable structure, and a group of figures arranged in a pyramid shape on a plane surface usually results in a stable composition.  Even when the forms are busy and involved, the overall impression is of rightness, solidity and permanence.  These examples are chosen from work done in several periods from the Renaissance to the present.

Rossi 1528:

El Greco 1575:

Van der Burch 1650:

Fragonard 1780:

Delacroix 1862:

Botero 1973:

Buffett* 2006:

* "Pauline Street Breakdown"

More Pegge Hopper

When I posted the article "Painting Sunshine,"  http://williambuffett.blogspot.com/2011/01/painting-sunshine.html  I had not seen Pegge Hopper's canvas of her two daughters on the beach.  It is a good example of the painting of sunshine.  The figures are modelled, but only in a few close values, shallowly.  The sensation of bright sunlight is achieved by the extreme interval between the lit and shaded portions of the sand on the beach.

Apart from the impression of midday sun, the composition of the picture is a marvel.  Though the main figure is in repose, the picture is dynamic because there isn't a horizontal line in it; all are diagonals.

The painting is compelling to the viewer because it is full of novelty and the unexpected, yet in perfect equilibrium.  Variety, ( in this case cropped extremities, hidden faces, foreshortened torsos, feet at the top) is an achievable quality, and so is equilibrium, if you employ symmetry.  But to get both balance and variety into the same composition is something for an artist to strive for.  Pegge Hopper has done it here.

Pegge Hopper

Here is a painting by Pegge Hopper, featuring a Polynesian woman seated in profile on the floor.  She wears a modest garment which covers all but her head, hands, and part of a foot.  The artist's  knowledge of the figure, and her ability to draw it convincingly, enable her to make us aware of the body underneath and all of its articulations, using nothing more than a simple, flat, colored shape.

Pegge Hopper's expertise at drawing is also responsible for the capture of the fleeting motions made by the arms and hands.  The woman reaches back to separate her hair from her neck and fans some air in to cool herself.  It is a familiar, everyday gesture, feminine and graceful.

The colors, however, do not result from fine draftsmanship.  They come from somewhere that, unfortunately for me, I have never been..  The Isles of the Blessed, Intuition, Paradise, the Albert King color system, I don't know where it is, but Pegge Hopper does.
http://peggehopper.com/index.html

Pitfall

When undertaking a complicated composition, an artist often divides the attention of the viewer by creating two (or more) centers of interest.  When that is done, the picture's integrity suffers.  I exposed one of my own mistakes in a previous article.  http://williambuffett.blogspot.com/2011/11/using-photographs.html

The two houses, in this sketch, were threatening to divide, like microbes, into two cells.

Paul Gaugin painted fine and original and complex pictures which are treasured everywhere they hang.  Only a very few, painted early in his career, exhibit this flaw.

Giovanni Bellini:

I could find only one somewhat borderline example from the work of Andrew Wyeth:

Gabriele Munter:

Artists, be aware of this pitfall.

 

Dancers

From stages, streets, clubs and movies, here are some dancers from my files: