There is always an on going conversation with representational artist about the use of tools, like mirrors, photos, projectors, grids etc. and the question of whether or not the use of these tools constitutes cheating. As if there is some unfair advantage in using these tools and conversely sainthood when you don’t use them. But the use of any tool as well as not using one does not make a drawing or painting better, especially representation works. When we have completed a painting of someone, what we have is not that person, regardless of the tools we used. What we have is our interpretation of that person on canvas or paper and it is the interpretation that is the most important part. I’ve heard this story about Gertrude Stein and Picasso many times and can guess that it is true. Supposedly on seeing this portrait of herself she said to Picasso “It doesn’t look anything like me” and he responded “that in time it will”. I and many other people that I know have seen photos of Ms. Stein and they don’t look anything like her. It’s the Picasso interpretation that I remember best.
I believe everything we create is about us, what we feel, what’s important to us and what we want to say about it. Being skillful is helpful, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ve got something to say. (As a kid, I was very skillful playing the piano scales, that is as far as it got). Creativity can be seen as a interpretation of what we believe is physically real. This small painting is a wp interpretation. 
Interpretation and Creativity
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…an on going conversation with representational artists about the use of tools, like mirrors, photos, projectors, grids etc. and the question of whether or not the use of these tools constitutes cheating.
Bob, I sometimes still come across this type of discussion, but it’s hard for me to take it seriously. It just seems like a non-issue to me. The best artists of any era will generally make use of whatever technology is available to them to achieve their goals. Not that the use of technology itself makes the work more valid – certainly very exciting things can be achieved with minimal means – but the choice of what tools to use seems to me to be a practical and conceptual one, not an ethical one.
…she said to Picasso “It doesn’t look anything like me” and he responded “that in time it will”.
I’ve always been very amused by Picasso’s reply, because it can be interpreted in two ways. The first of course is that she herself will age to resemble the painting. But the second, and the one you respond to (It’s the Picasso interpretation that I remember best), is that long after Ms. Stein herself is long gone, the painting will be the way she’s remembered.
David,
And I like to combine the two meanings of the Picasso/Stein anecdote: she will come to resemble the painting because that’s how even she will see herself.
Which brings up the point regarding one’s own art that discussing it with others exposes one to different interpretations, which can in turn influence future art work. Some people prefer to avoid this, but I’m very interested in it not only from the perspective of improving my work in my own eyes, but for the conversation that constitutes a social and intellectual pleasure in itself.
Bob,
I love the colors in your still life, they make me feel like I’m in a beach house on an island in the Caribbean.
Bob,
Picasso made Gertrude Stein look like a hunched-forward, troubled person wrapped in voluminous Rembrandt or Flemish garb. On the photograph that you show and the one in Wikipedia, she has much greater composure and forthrightness.Picasso made fun of her.
She appears to share my fondness for practical vests.
I love your bottles, vases and dish – from Arizona?
I am pretty sure that this is somewhat true:
Stein sat for this portrait many times (40+) and Picasso struggled until he claimed in frustration: “I cannot see you anymore!” He finished the portrait from memory.
For me, painting is about painting.
I am living proof that Picasso was right — I instantly recognized the painting, but was slow to realize that the photograph was also Stein.
But Birgit, I like the painting a lot, and don’t see the figure as a hunched over troubled person. Odd, since you and I generally see things the same way.
As for the tools — well, in my latest painting class, the instructor told me to throw away my photographs (of traffic calmers in Portland, which I am painting a total of 11 times!) His reasoning is not that the paintings will be worsened by the photographs but that my reliance on them is like someone using a crutch so long that the muscles atrophy. The flattening produced by the photograph will become, he said, not an aid, but a crutch, and my ability to decide for myself, from sketches and pleine aire, what shapes and forms I need to imitate to say what I want to say could get lost.
He may be right, which is only to say what David said so elequently: “the choice of what tools to use seems to me to be a practical and conceptual one, not an ethical one.”
I wonder if Stein got pleasure from the “conversation that constitutes a social and intellectual pleasure;” I certainly do. Lively conversation piece, Bob, thank you.
D.
Your information offers a novel interpretation of Picasso’s painting. In his frustration of not being able to capture Stein who sat for her portrait many times (40+), Picasso finished the portrait from memory, painting himself as someone groping hard but not succeeding to get Gertrude’s ‘essence’. A new interpretation of this painting for the world of Art History. Someone ought to enter it into Wikipedia.
Did we just foil Picasso in his arrogance?
.
Thank you, Bob, for bringing this issue to our attention.
Bob:
I also applaud your use of color. I cannot speak for Caribbean beach houses, but if your painting describes the environment, then its time for me to book a trip.
Birgit:
Didn’t Gertrude say, concerning this painting, “For me it is I”? Are we to denigrate Picasso for his supposed arrogance when Ms. Stein agreed with him in a fine aphorism? Seems to me that this battle of the quotes constitutes a Pre-U Tube moment, as examples of what was most likely banter between the two have become cemented into the art historical wall, thereupon to be variously kissed and hissed at by each according to his or her wont. Maybe Picasso was trying to get under her skin – something that they seemed to enjoy doing to each other.
Jay,
Who was it that Ms. Stein would invite to dinner and then seat across from his rival’s paintings (on her dining room wall)? Or were the famous seated across from their own paintings?
I hate it when I have a speck of info that floats, dubiously and inchoately, about my brain. But I’m sure that Picasso was one of the diners and I can’t remember the other.
The question is, can I google with words that will give me the answer?
The other artist was undoubtedly Matisse. And the closest I could come to info was from the “Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.” Matisse painted Stein’s portrait around 1905; she hung it in her dining room. Picasso’s portrait of Stein apparently was painted after that and then hung above Matisse’s. So someone (Matisse or Picasso) was probably seated in a position to crow or eat crow.
Also found the following here:
More stories here.
What fun to think that they were needling one another.
Birgit:
Sharp people have a tendency to do that.
June and Steve:
I have heard the story told, but cannot vouch for the characters nor for their shenanigans.
Hi All, I’ve just return home from a trip to Sin City and it has been wonderful to see all of your comments. Thank you.
I totally agree that the conversation about tools is a non-issue, but I am amazed as to how often the term cheating is expressed.
The Stories about Picasso, Stein, Matisse and others have become legend and occasionally we forget that they were real people, who enjoyed one another as well as on a bad day despised each other. They didn’t have hit “enter” before making their feelings known. Sincerity, with good and poor outcomes, I am sure.
My little still life is of things that don’t exist, so I got to place them on a table, against a wall that also doesn’t exist. Such fun. Caribbean colors I think are part of DNA and sometimes I think I over do it. (But It Makes me Happy)
creativity should make a person having the quality of something created rather than imatated