I enjoyed the assignment. The 30 STUDIES assignment provided, at minimum, three valuable tools, and there may be more, as realizations sink in later. One was the use of primed paper to prepare quick oil sketches, the second was to "just relax and paint quickly using a large brush", the third was to prove that it is indeed possible to complete that number of sketches in a relatively short time. In conclusion, doing the 30 studies broke that certain impasse that marks the beginning of each and every semester.
My goal is to paint self-portraits this semester: an intimidating prospect. For one, there is an ingrained cultural prohibition toward human depictions, some cultures outright forbid the practice altogether, notably the Muslim religion. Then, there is the artistic matter that, portraits need to be accurate to be convincing, even more so with a self-portrait where errors in execution cannot be simply written off with "the subject had a crooked nose". Finally, and unlike with simply painting someone else, the psychological content that is essential in portraiture, is rather intimidating when it involves the "self". No one wants to reveal too much about himself, but without that certain je-ne-sais-quoi, the painting suffers.
(2) No questions in terms of the 30 STUDIES assignment. With 3 or 4 exceptions that explored other artistic ideas, the sketches were self-portraits reduced to areas of light and dark, using a large brush. Techniques that are already proving to be useful in executing the "deliverables".
(3) The contemporary artists suggested were Jenny Dubnan, Kurt Kauper, Jenny Saville, Tasha Amini, Lucy McKenzie, Bin Dahn, Eric Fischl, Serena Cole, and Andrew Wyeth. With the exception of Jenny Saville and Andrew Wyett, I was unfamilar with their works.
A disclosure is in order. My definition of "art" is anything I am willing to hang on my living room wall. A narrow definition, perhaps, but one that three upper divison art history classes dealing with 20th century art were unable to shake. In my assessement, much of contemporary art is a fraud perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. Thus, 'conceptual art' consisting of mounds of rusty nails or sharks preserved in formaldehyde are excluded from my definition of art, but a painting by Jenny Saville would be certainly most welcome to grace my living room walls.
In fact, I have long admired those fabulous, fleshy nudes lovingly foreshortened and boldly executed with a painterly flick of the wrist by Jenny Saville. For that matter, if I may briefly digress here for a moment, I have always preferred fleshy models to those athletic ones ever so politically incorrectly described as "eye candy". Painting a human body in all its glorious imperfections is infinitely preferable to anything else.
That said, a solitary human figure, no matter how expertly rendered on canvas, is always in danger of falling into that deadly category of being called "just a study". For the very reason, the narratives of Eric Fischl are very, very interesting and a source of great inspiration.
Those two artists constitute standouts in my artistic frame of reference. The other seven suggested artists all have some relevance to my painterly aspirations. Chief amongst them are the monochromatic works of Tasha Amini and realistic paintings of Bin Dahn. Artistic elements that I need to better understand and learn to master.
(1)
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the assignment. The 30 STUDIES assignment provided, at minimum, three valuable tools, and there may be more, as realizations sink in later. One was the use of primed paper to prepare quick oil sketches, the second was to "just relax and paint quickly using a large brush", the third was to prove that it is indeed possible to complete that number of sketches in a relatively short time. In conclusion, doing the 30 studies broke that certain impasse that marks the beginning of each and every semester.
My goal is to paint self-portraits this semester: an intimidating prospect. For one, there is an ingrained cultural prohibition toward human depictions, some cultures outright forbid the practice altogether, notably the Muslim religion. Then, there is the artistic matter that, portraits need to be accurate to be convincing, even more so with a self-portrait where errors in execution cannot be simply written off with "the subject had a crooked nose". Finally, and unlike with simply painting someone else, the psychological content that is essential in portraiture, is rather intimidating when it involves the "self". No one wants to reveal too much about himself, but without that certain je-ne-sais-quoi, the painting suffers.
(2) No questions in terms of the 30 STUDIES assignment. With 3 or 4 exceptions that explored other artistic ideas, the sketches were self-portraits reduced to areas of light and dark, using a large brush. Techniques that are already proving to be useful in executing the "deliverables".
(3) The contemporary artists suggested were Jenny Dubnan, Kurt Kauper, Jenny Saville, Tasha Amini, Lucy McKenzie, Bin Dahn, Eric Fischl, Serena Cole, and Andrew Wyeth. With the exception of Jenny Saville and Andrew Wyett, I was unfamilar with their works.
A disclosure is in order. My definition of "art" is anything I am willing to hang on my living room wall. A narrow definition, perhaps, but one that three upper divison art history classes dealing with 20th century art were unable to shake. In my assessement, much of contemporary art is a fraud perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. Thus, 'conceptual art' consisting of mounds of rusty nails or sharks preserved in formaldehyde are excluded from my definition of art, but a painting by Jenny Saville would be certainly most welcome to grace my living room walls.
In fact, I have long admired those fabulous, fleshy nudes lovingly foreshortened and boldly executed with a painterly flick of the wrist by Jenny Saville. For that matter, if I may briefly digress here for a moment, I have always preferred fleshy models to those athletic ones ever so politically incorrectly described as "eye candy". Painting a human body in all its glorious imperfections is infinitely preferable to anything else.
That said, a solitary human figure, no matter how expertly rendered on canvas, is always in danger of falling into that deadly category of being called "just a study". For the very reason, the narratives of Eric Fischl are very, very interesting and a source of great inspiration.
Those two artists constitute standouts in my artistic frame of reference. The other seven suggested artists all have some relevance to my painterly aspirations. Chief amongst them are the monochromatic works of Tasha Amini and realistic paintings of Bin Dahn. Artistic elements that I need to better understand and learn to master.