Art & Perception

Maurice Ploem found the “official gallery circuit” to be empty and sterile, so he started his own gallery in his home in Haarlem’s Proveniershof.

Maurice’s gallery, called De Provenier, is to the left of center in the photo above. Maurice wanted to provide exhibition opportunities to good artists who had not yet become “famous.” I had my first show here in the year 2000. I have another exhibition starting next week.

Maurice works in a broad range of media — bronze, oil on canvas, painted wood. He says of his gallery: “Here one can see how work looks in a home environment.”

Above is an example of one of Maurice’s painted wood objects. He was inspired to make pieces like this when he was sitting by the fireplace on a cold December evening. He picked up an old piece of wood to throw on the fire. Looking at the object in his hands, he said to himself, “No, I’m not going to burn this.”

. . .
Does it make sense for an artist to show work in a gallery like Maurice’s, or is it better to stick with traditional galleries?

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night

It’s not much of an observation to say that a lot of artists are crazy, but it’s interesting to observe that few successful ones are.

That is contrary to commonly held myths about artists. That’s what makes it interesting.

It was my recent experience on Whidbey Island that prompts me to say this. I met a lot of successful artists there. They were successful on every count. They were doing exactly the art they wanted, and they were making decent money.

By “decent money” I mean over fifty thousand a year. Of course, that’s not a lot of money in terms of what it takes to own a home and raise a family in many parts of the US, but if you’re able to live where the real estate is not too expensive and you’re reasonably thrifty on top of that, it can be done. Many people manage on less. Most of the pro artists I met on Whidbey were doing much better than that.

But what struck me about that Washington group is something I’ve noticed again and again in other places with other publicly successful artists. They were not just calm and friendly people, they were genuine social adepts. These people were all highly tuned to their audiences; indeed, what was singularly remarkable was not their ferocious independence but their sense of community with the human race.

I don’t know if we can thank Freud for the notion that neurosis is helpful to an artist, but that notion does not accord with my own experiences with artists.

I look at the crazy ones with their messes and incomplete projects compared to the order of the power studios; I look at the nervous smiles of poor sellers compared completely natural engagement of the big sellers, and I know.

I’m on to something.

So to complete the list of why artists don’t make it we have:

1. The art is technically inferior.

2. The message is either boring or disagreeable.

3. The artist does not even try to sell.

4. The artist does not produce enough.

5. The artist wants too much money.

6. The artist is crazy.

The last undercuts them all.

Freud was wrong. Success in the arts is directly proportional to sanity.

The best and most successful artists are some of the sanest people you will ever meet.

Of course, one might ask, how is it, exactly, that craziness reduces one’s chance for success?

I can think of a recent example from my own life in which I tried to help an excellent artist but was rebuffed by insane suspicions about my intentions and unprovoked attacks on my character.

A guy can only take so much.

But that’s something crazy people do. They live life like it’s a script for suicide, and so they always make wrong choices at critical junctures — like ruining friendships by failing to understand social boundaries.

How does one handle such people? I genuinely want to learn because it’s obvious to me that a lot of artists are troubled beings, and if they could just get it together socially, they’d have so many more chances to win.

Unholy Ghost (Interior View Grouch) 2004 Oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches

I thought for my first post I’d just get reactions to this painting.  It is one of the first in an ongoing series of paintings that seem to be teetering between representation and abstraction. 

I was thinking along the lines of a thread from a little while ago when we were talking about the meaning behind Colin’s photo of the hands.  I mentioned “visual clues,” and David thought that a discussion of that idea could be a post by itself.  Are there clues in this piece that help you make sense of it?  Or make you look more?  I will be working most of the day tomorrow, but will respond when I can… 

One of the more valuable (to me) artworks in my studio is a linoleum print made by Dan Cautrell, a artist I admire a lot and know just a bit. The print reads

Statement of Purpose

I do the work because I want to.
I do the work because I like to.
I do the work because I know how.
I do the work to explore myself.
I do the work to engage others with thought, word, and deed.
I do the work because I have something to say.
I do the work because I have seen something beautiful.
I do the work because I have seen something ugly.
I do the work to be the kind of person I want to be.
I do the work to earn money.
I do the work to stay when I must go.

=cautrell

The print hangs right by the studio door, so I can see it and be reminded by it every time I enter or leave the studio.  One of the reasons this is a favorite of mine is that it so neatly captures how our reasons for making art can be different at different times.  You don’t always have to be working on something for the same reason.  I’ll bet I’ve done work for every single one of the reasons Dan has listed; lots of times, I’ve done work for several of these all at once.

I know that, for me, the act of writing things down seems to make them more real.  I’ve often wondered what effect making these prints (mine is numbered 73 of 200) has had on Dan.  It’s an interesting reminder that making art has concrete effects in both the lives of the art-makers and lives of the people who end up living with the art day to day.

This is my first post on A&P so hopefully I don’t make too many mistakes. Below is a post that I made earlier this year at Art News Blog. It’s an issue that all painters have to have an opinion on sooner or later, so I thought I would see what people here thought about using photographs.

Here’s the post..

The ARTnews magazine has asked a question that has been around for a while now.. “Why should a painting based on a photograph be considered a less legitimate work of art than one painted from observation or one that is simply abstract?”
Everyone from Edgar Degas through to David Hockney does it, so why do artists sometimes hide the fact that they paint from photographs?

I think it’s because of the romantic idea of an artist sitting in the landscape or in front of the model, trying to capture the life of the subject before them.

It’s like replacing wine corks with screw caps. Easily twisting a new cap off a wine bottle is just not as romantic as using a corkscrew to to get the old cork out of the bottle of fine wine. Even though the new screw caps prevent the wine from ever going bad, they’re just not as cool as a cork.

That analogy probably isn’t the best one, but the fact is that photographs are a great tool for artists. I know I don’t advertise the fact that I use photographs to paint, but I also don’t hide it. It just makes sense. Especially if you work in oils and build your paintings up over several weeks or months. It’s not going to be very practical to plonk your giant canvas on the sidewalk in a big city everyday for two months if you paint cityscapes.

The thing that I can’t understand is artists using projectors to trace a photograph onto the canvas. Not because the finished work would look like a photograph, but because it takes all the fun out of creating the work in the first place. I can’t see why someone would waste their time on such an activity.

Slides and Prejudice
Over the last few years, artists have made increasing use of Photoshop. Eric Fischl, for example, who is best known for his voyeuristic, psychologically charged paintings of amorous couples, employs it to collage together different images until they register as something he wants to paint. “I am part of a generation that was schooled in the belief that discovery and execution should occur simultaneously on the canvas,” he says. “For nearly 25 years I had held on to that belief, feeling that were I to know what I wanted to paint before I discovered it, the painting would lose its vitality. When I began working in Photoshop, essentially separating the discovery process from the execution, I feared it would kill the painting. What I discovered instead was that it freed me to explore painting itself.” ARTnews

The conversation at artnewsblog started here and continued on here.

Most photos don’t turn out as well as hoped for, and a rare few turn out better than expected. Some (like Colin’s hands and rock last Tuesday) can be turned to a new purpose. But the accompanying image seems to have turned on me altogether.

It was made in a mining ghost town last September, where I spent about 12 hours over two visits (once under hot sun, two weeks later in light snow). I was busy but unhurried, and the experience was entirely peaceful. I loved the light reaching into the rooms and hallways of the abandoned buildings, and I was thinking about that more than anything. It’s sometimes said that light is the only subject of photography, and it felt true then.

Developing the images later on my computer, I realized that beyond a feeling of nostalgia or mystery, many had something faintly (or not so faintly) sinister about them. I hadn’t been aiming for this effect, it just seemed to appear as I looked at the images ready for a first print. The image here, taken inside a shack built into a hill, elicited the term “violent” from a photographer friend, and I had to agree.

I’m really not sure how this came about. Am I inventing things that others don’t see? Is there inevitably a dark side to pictures about light? Was I so entranced by the light I just didn’t notice what was happening in the dark? Is it just poor preparation, led astray by my appreciation of darker tones — though the image shown is actually a bit lighter than my first version? Perhaps — an idea I rather relish — I have unsuspected psychological depths that are making themselves manifest…

I am interested in any thoughts you have on the image or the idea of light/dark in art or mind. Know of any similar pictures? If you’d like to consider a larger context, a dozen other photos from the same location are on my website. And if you want to adjust your monitor to show detail in both highlights and shadows, make sure all steps of gray are distinguishable on this test image.

I’m also wondering how often it happens to painters or other artists that one is surprised, looking back on a work, to discover something quite unintended. As a painting or quilt or whatever takes more time in the making than a typical photograph, and may entail more active decisions regarding content, is the chance of later surprise any less?

I will be checking comments intermittently, and will respond to remarks directed to me (or not!) when I can. I do work a day job…

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