Saul Steinberg

 

Saul Steinberg, Breakfast Still Life, 1974

 

 

This Saul Steinberg post card fell out of a book today.  What a pleasure to see it again with  its breakfast paraphernalia laid out like a landscape.  Everything has a shadow, and most of the objects don't touch one another.   It looks like a composition achievable for my current skill level. I do see that as he drew he looked down at his piece of toast then raised his eyes as he looked at the horizon in the  far distance, past the police car and out to the cruet.   It seems suited to the diminutive size of a post card, but the actual drawing is 23 1/2 and 14 1/2 inches.  I think most of the objects are presented as life size. 

 

 

Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940)

 

All that follows is what I learned from reading John Russell's introduction to E Vuillard: Drawings,1885-19.  Vuillard did not  exhibit his drawings: for one,he was a very private man;  also he "rarely made what are called "exhibition-drawings": fully- worked-up compositions on big sheets of fine paper."  Russell quotes Jacques Salomon,  who tells us " Vuillard hardly ever painted from nature. His paintings almost always came out of a preliminary pencil sketch."  And Vuillard drew almost continually wherever he was.  When he returned home, he transferred the drawings to a sheet of cardboard, a piece of canvas or  another sheet of paper. They were pieces quickly done.  Russell says they were a specific kind of  kind of  Parisian drawing, then goes on to tell of how Delacroix told a young painter that it was not enough to be able to draw slowly and concentratedly as if all eternity were before him.  "What you must be able to do is to see a man jump from a fourth-floor window and get a good likeness of him before he hits the ground.  (I love reading John Russell.)

 

I like the searching line of these drawings.  I see the change in value of the lines. I like the way part of the page is given to a small drawing of  a detail  in the larger sketch.  I like the details that are left out, but indicated.  And the domestic scenes  and the architecture.  Did he start out with a lighter pencil and go in later to emphasize some lines or did he just change pressure?

 

 

Rackstraw Downes to Sally Heaphy

Consider this, Sally.  Nobody came to your door to recruit you to learn to draw.  This was your very own bright idea. You can stop any time, and you'll be the only one who cares. Well, maybe not the only one, but the larger world is not going to be affected.  It's not going to be "fun."  Why should it be?  It should be interesting, and it has been. Expect to be dissatisfied. If the rest of us slave away, in my case in wind and rain, why should you expect to glide through and achieve even minimal competency quickly?  In fact, I know you don't have any such expectations.  I see that you find the whole process engaging,  that once you sit down at your work space or stand at your easel something happens.  You feel alert, filled with a sense of possibility despite all the erasures you make. I know that you are pleased with many of the things that you have done so far.

The possibility of doing better will always be with you.  I feel that  I always flunk sky painting.  Well, that sense of a need to do better will be what enables you to actually do better.  It's conceivable that I will be satisfied with a sky I paint. 

The pleasure of looking closely will carry you through.  The pleasure of looking at other people's work will sustain and inspire you.

Get on with it.

Mid-term Self-Assessment

My drawings are boring.  I've chosen to try to learn a difficult task, that of expressing spatial relationships, and while I can't help but think that every effort I've made so far in that regard constitutes a major triumph, I also can't help but see that my drawings are also boring.  I need to think more about mark making and value, and some color wouldn't hurt either.  Plus I just haven't been putting enough time in.  I don't know why exactly. My husband's operation and stay in the hospital was why I didn't work last week, but it doesn't account for previous weeks.  I think maybe it's because I have to take two steps backward in order to go forward. The drawings I made when I was looking at vases and bottles set up in Morandi-like compositions are much more accomplished that what I have made so far this Fall.  They are modest accomplishments, but  better.  I look at collections of contemporary drawings and see the wide range of possibilities for mark making.  I see the drawing that I started by rubbing over a collograph plate.  They seem much more interesting to pursue than the task I have chosen for myself.  But I'm not ready to give up.  

Throughout this floundering, reading Rackstraw Downes has been a comfort.  After finishing his series of razor wire paintings he wrote, "Why do I always flunk sky painting?"  Then he went  on to name contemporaries who are skillful at the task.  Downes wrote the introduction to Art in Its Own Terms, a collection of Fairfield Porter's art criticism.  Here is Downes on Porter's early struggles:
   "Porter had to work hard for his eventual accomplishments. Rudy Burckhardt recalls seeing in his studio a painting with an awkwardly cropped composition; when he pointed this out, Porter replied that first he had to learn just to paint: composition he would worry about later.  But he was certainly not bothered by self-delusions on this issue: he once wrote to a friend, "It is interesting about your reaction to my early paintings. It was not so different from my own: I, too, thought them atrocious."    

On the other hand, I've really enjoyed the reading about and by artists and the looking at art on the internet. In A Printmaker's Document, Jim Dine tells how he made a series of self portraits not by using a mirror, but, instead, nailing copper plates  to a wall and using the reflection of his face in the shiny copper surface to guide his had as he drew.  If I were more interested in my face, if I had a beard or interesting tufts of nasal hair, I'd be interested in doing that myself.

What I'd Like to Make

I'd like to make a series of autobiographical artist books in small editions of only eight or ten.  I made one in Ursula Minivini's Artist Book class.  It was a series of maps of places I went to when I was a child living in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  I'd make ones titled Jobs I've Held,  Places I've Ice Skated, Places I've Lived, Favorite Forms of Procrastination, Brief Biographies of the Family Cats.  Nothing profound and revealing: the books would be for my grandchildren. 

My work in another medium

If my work were in another medium, it would be an installation like those of Red Grooms, except it wouldn't quite work:  the bridge wouldn't quite span the river and doors would remain ajar, but not functional.

Or it would be an elaborate device like a Rube Goldberg construction which would take the marbles it was supposed to convey and allow them to escape prematurely.

That's my present work.  I have high hopes for my future work.

Rackstraw Downes and Me

Here's some of what I've been reading lately: Rackstraw Downes'  "Turning the Head in Empirical Space" an essay in Rackstraw Downes, Sanford Sanchez, et al.  and  Under the Gowanus and Razor-wire Journal, the journal Downes kept while making these paintings.  Part of the pleasure of reading the journal comes from the fact that the paintings he made under the Gowanus expressway are of an intersection that I passed through on my way to and from work for fourteen years.  The major part of the pleasure is of learning of the hours and hours he put into the making of these paintings during some of the hottest days of the year in a place so packed with traffic that on some days he wore a mask to limit the amount of fumes he was inhaling.  He would often feel discouraged, uncertain whether he was persisting in a task that might end up not satisfying him at all.

Why would that please me?  Well, I feel the same way with a lot less at stake.  The simple drawings I make seem to me neither accomplished or even particularly interesting, and yet they also represent a triumph and I feel that if I persist, I will do better.  And some parts may even possibly  become easier.  Although when I think about it,  it's hard work right from the beginning of every painting for Downes. 

Other pleasures of this reading come from looking at works he mentions in passing:  Turner's Lord Egremont Greeting His Dogs, and Hobbema's  Middleharnis, among others. 
And from learning that Yvonne Jacquette said of  recognizing converging vertical lines, "I see it but I refuse to do it."

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Lucien Freud

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These drawings have nothing to do with expression of the  perspective of a space that their subjects occupy. Or nothing I can perceive that way. I include them because I'm so impressed with the concentrated effort it took to make them, every line so carefully considered and placed. All those little stippled marks, all the effort of the wickerwork.   They are a reminder to me  that if I want to improve, I must put in time and effort.  Not every work of art needs to look labored over, but it takes time and effort to look as casual as Dufy.

Raoul Dufy 1877-1953

john singer sargent 1856-1925

 
 
 
 

John Singer Sargent was staggeringly productive.  Here's a fine example of setting the laundry out into a comprehensible space.  It looks like a fine spring day with forsythias in bloom. 

I think there's a subgenre of laundry images--a lot of Degas women scrubbing, but I'm thinking of laundry drying on a line- and if I'm in trouble trying to draw windows and doors --and I am-- I could get into even deeper trouble devoting myself to images of sunlight cast on laundry drying outside on a sunny day.

Remarks on Raoul Dufy--Images are in another post also labelled Raoul Dufy

     I don't know why I am unable to comment on Raoul Dufy's images on the same post with the images nor do I understand why my post on Turner has appeared underneath the one on Rackstraw Downes. I mean not before or after, but literally underneath. Earlier the Turner post appeared underneath the post on Gary Breeze and Ben Shahn.  I thought I could fix the problem by deleting the post on Gary Breeze and Ben Shahn, but no.

What can one say about artists one admires?  After a while it all sounds like gushing gibberish.  Nevertheless one perseveres.

I love the way the street scene recedes casually but decidedly into the distance where there's turret on a distant architectural something or other.  Who cares exactly what and Dufy doesn't seem to care either but specificity isn't really the point.   A sense of crowded festivity is the issue. Specificity is the point of the castle façade. I love the curve of the bay and the colors.  I love looking down into the orchestral pit.  But my favorite is the sea scene with the different boats and sizes and types of waves and the big bird and the  boats.

Gwen John 1876-1939

Gwen John seems to have spent most of her efforts on painting three quarter length portraits of young women  in uncomplicated interiors.  They are beautiful images of women who sit or stand in  self absorbed, calm and thoughtful poses, seemingly unaware or unconcerned with the presence of someone painting them. 
   I admire the expression of space, the slant of the dormer window interior, the angle of the wicker chair both in the painting where no one is present and in the painting with the young woman holding a red book.  I like the upturned slant and elliptical  shapes of the table tops--except, of course, where the table top is rectangular.
    It was a pleasure to look at these images. 

Edwin Dickinson

 

 

 

 

Despite the fact that Edwin Dickinson (1891-1978) had a long and distinguished and productive career as an artist and a teacher,  what interests me now that I have a very narrow focus is this image of a window opening out onto Bryant Park.  And what interests me particularly are the mix of charcoal and pencil and the minimal and implied depiction of the window frame, especially the narrow vertical pencil line indicating the left edge of the window frame, and the way the lines at the bottom of the frame do not all extend to the edges of the vertical lines indicating the sides of the window frame.  Also the economy of detail used in indicating the mechanism for adjusting the window opening.

J.M.W.Turner 1775-1851

   When I first saw Turner's name on the list of artists to research, I thought of his swirls of mist and weather and wondered how much he would have to offer me in the way of drawings indicating perspective.  Not a problem.
    What goes before and what lies behind seems very clear in most of the images I looked at.  (There must be some somewhere that  are muddled, but he sure started out early with very clearly defined scenes.)  I like the range in scale of these images from the vastness in Lord Egrement greeting his dogs to the intimate scale and long enfilade of the Petworth interior.  I like the simple outlines of the battlements, the precision of the village street,  the  trees in the foreground that lead one's eyes to the village, the brief screen of trees and deer in another foreground that demonstrate that the other trees are far away.
    I suppose the interior of Petworth doesn't quite add up the way the village street scene does, but I don't care. 
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What I hope for from this class experience: an overdue announcement

I'm at a point  in my life where I do some travelling.  I'd like to sit in a plaza or piazza or cathedral or park or even an airport and draw what I see.  I like that experience of looking closely at my surroundings.  The souvenir I come home with would be the memory of drawing as much as it would be the drawing itself.

I loved looking at Amanda Burden's sketch in the faculty exhibition of the Charles Bridge in Prague.

I don't think I'll get anywhere near where I would like to in the time we have, but I should get closer and I like the activity.

It seems to me that there are a lot of artists who do just fine and more so without expressing much in the way of depth in their images.  Jim Dine comes to mind.  Chuck Close also.  But I'd like to put one building in front of another and then do it again and again.   

"Inspiration is for amateurs."

I find Chuck Close's remark encouraging.  It means to me that that one must work every day regularly  and that in the activity of working one can develop skills and  in the developing of those skills one can gain insight of the kind that we think of as inspiration.

I've been reading "Turning the Head in Empirical Space" an essay by Rackstraw Downes in Rackstraw Downes.  He begins by telling that  he first came to think about perspective when he attempted to paint a landscape in upstate New York. He doesn't quite put it this way, but he was surprised that in painting as closely as he could what appeared to his eyes, he produced an image where what was at the periphery of his vision did not fall into a straight horizontal line.  This was a discovery that came to him through working, through immersing himself in a task that led him to an unexpected destination.  I find that encouraging.

I also find encouraging that he said he completed the painting in a couple of four-hour sessions.  That means at least eight hours, maybe more.  I'm not quite sure why that's encouraging, but it is.  At the very least it means that time put in has the strong possibility of producing something.

I've also been looking at the work of Lucien Freud in Lucien Freud on Paper.  All those meticulously observed drawings, all the stippling, the separate lines to indicate fabric or wickerwork or hair.  He was quite the example of a hard worker himself.



 

Another Artist Whose Skills I Want

I'd like to skip the effort of learning to draw with a persuasive perspective and just have the ability of Rackstraw Downes who has put at least fifty years into mastering this skill.

Artists whose Skills I would like to Steal

Charles Ritchie.  I want his skill with watercolor washes, with reflections of light, and with tonal gradations.

James McNeill Whistler.  I admire his choice of what to leave out.  It doesn't seem formulaic or predictable.

Andrew Wyeth.  I want his ability to draw realistically.  I admire that skill in Whistler and Ritchie also.  Wyeth's father required him to spend time drawing basic geometric shapes: cones and spheres and cubes, a task he did not enjoy but that he was later grateful for.

Naoko Matsubara.  I love the boldness of her lines and compositions.

William Fain whose drawings I admire in his sketchbook ITALIAN CITIES AND LANDSCAPES. I  envy his ability to depict cityscapes and landscapes.  It's not high art or finished art, but it's considered observation. 

Theodore Rousseau.  I want his varied skills in depicting foliage.

Windows: Lois Dodd, Andrew Wyeth, Charles Ritchie

Lois Dodd, View Through Elliott's Shack Looking South

My look at Lois Dodd's window paintings has been cursory so I suspect that I may not be doing her justice, but it seems to me that her images do not carry the metaphorical, symbolic weight that the window images of Ritchie and Wyeth do.  Nor are they as compositionally complex.

The work above with its reflections and then its view through is the most complex exploitation of  a window's possibilities that I saw while looking at her work on the internet.  But it doesn't seem freighted with meaning of the kind that I see in the mysterious and slightly ominous darkness and compositional complexity  of Charles Ritchie's drawings  nor with the possibilities of hope that I see in the windows of Andrew Wyeth.

Not that I could do what any of the three of them has done.

Art That Has Impressed Me

Whistler,  The Doorway



These images of Whistler's etchings of Venice were taken from www.SpaightwoodGalleries.com.

   I have been thinking often of Whistler's etchings of Venice which I first saw in an exhibition several years ago at the time of  the centennial of his death.  Lots of special exhibitions of his work at that time, whatever date they honored.

I remember in particular an exhibition that included works of some of his contemporaries who had also worked in Venice at the same time.  What struck me about Whistler's work was how relatively economical he was compared to them.  He didn't include everything, not every brick not right up to the edge of the paper, not every wave or detail.  His work seemed more powerful as a result.

I think also of the images of Charles Ritchie's work that I posted.  In "Pegasus," he left off the bottom floor of the house and kept very simplified  foliage.  In the other image he cut off  the bottom of the door and  the top of the door and the top of the window frame.


  A

All of the work I've done in the past two weeks seems preliminary, as if it belongs in a sketchbook.  I don't think any of it looks finished.  I began by deciding to spend the next months drawing a window in a spare bedroom.  I took a look at the window and saw it offered a lot:  the shapes of the window itself, the grid formed by mullions that divided the view and offered a way of managing scale, the view itself of mixed foliage and houses and chimney and balcony and the panes which offered the possibilities of reflection.

I began by trying to record what I saw: all the stuff out there.  I used a fat 8B pencil.  I draw a slightly quavery line. I wanted something sharper. I tried drawing just a corner of the window using a straight edge.  I liked that better, but thought that if I wanted to learn how to draw freehand,  I should draw freehand. I tried charcoal. I used some graphite.  I got interested in the patterns of light made by the venetian blinds.  I liked the blackness of the panes at night when only the interior was illuminated.   Looking at Charles Ritchie's work made me think about size.  I went a little smaller.

A persistent cough has had me sleeping in that room  and gave me the opportunity to admire the smudgy patterns of light that appeared in the early morning.  I tried to capture that.  Then I lay in bed and put my glasses on and the smudgy venetian blinds got sharply defined. I tried that.  Then I tried to include some of the interior and some of the exterior.

It hasn't been an unsatisfactory experience.  I see it as a beginning, but nothing I've done so far seem to have a finished quality.



Two catalogs of Charles Richie exhibitions came in the mail this week:  Suburban Journals: the Sketchbooks, Drawings, and Prints of Charles Ritchie, and Charles Ritchie, The Interior Landscape.
 Above is "Pegasus", a mezzotint, one of Ritchie's least complex images. Below is one of his most complex, a drawing, "Kitchen Window with Reflections." Both were taken from www.charlesritchie.com. 

I love the melting darks and the sharp surprise of the whites,  the darks which sometimes seem to have a blue or purple cast.  When I look at his work, I think about what constitutes a picture, of where the image ends.  Both of these seem to end abruptly, but not unsatisfactorily.

Theodore Rousseau's Foliage

All the images above were taken from   THE  UNTAMED LANDSCAPE: THEODORE ROUSSEAU AND THE PATH TO BARBIZON, New York: Morgan Library and Museum, 2014

How do I depict the foliage outside my window?  (This is much more legible, but how did I get to this typeface?)  It's a problem so I looked at how Theodore Rousseau did it. He offers me a lot of options from washes to a series or bunches of single lines (not cross hatchings), dots, contour lines that enclose the outline of the bush or tree, to color.