Art & Perception

Haarlem is a major art center — in historical terms. When the genres of landscape and still life were revolutionary and new (in the 17th century), Haarlem artists were the key players. The Haarlem portrait painter Frans Hals is one of the most influential artists in history. Much of what is best about Manet‘s work he borrowed directly from Frans Hals. Van Gogh was hugely influenced by Frans Hals as well.

Haarlem also has one of the greatest Michelangelo drawing collections in the world. But this is a dead collection, in a sense: in a recent major exhibition in Haarlem, artists were not permitted to study Michelangelo’s work in the only way that makes sense, drawing within the exhibition itself, looking directly at the master’s work. Although there was a huge volume of visitors to the show, there was almost no serious critical analysis of the art or the exhibition (here are exceptions: 1, 2).

Thus, Haarlem is a cultural graveyard. Haarlem’s living inhabitants treat the past with silent, uncritical reverence. The tombstones of the old masters (native and foreign), cast a long shadow over contemporary artwork and creativity.

Artists in Haarlem today can be divided into two broad categories:

• those trying continue past traditions (especially in still life painting)
• those trying to be part of the great international art scene.

In the first category are some talented painters achieving commercial success with their neo-17th century still life paintings. But in this endeavor, they are little more than expert craftsmen. [Hanneke van Oosterhout is flirting with the idea becoming one of these, but I think she will pull out before it is too late].

In the second category are artists who are in denial about their place of residence. These artists would probably be better off if they moved to the real international art centers of today — New York, London, Berlin. How can one be a great international artist living in Haarlem, of all places?

Before we all pack up and move to New York, I’d like to point out that the action in the great living art centers of today is not all that impressive. I’ve spent a lot of time in New York and Berlin, with an eye to moving there for the sake of my art career. I was singularly unimpressed by what I saw in the living art culture. I might move to New York for its great museums, but not for its contemporary galleries.

More interesting to me than moving is to look at this cultural graveyard I live in, and see what are the weeds growing besides the tombstones. What is the new life here? Might it grow into something for the city to be proud of?

Where do you live and work? Could your city or town become an important art center? Or would you rather move to New York?

. . .

In a future post, I will profile what I consider to be the most exciting contemporary Haarlem artwork.

On the first day of class my freshman drawing teacher had us all go out and buy 9″ x 11″ hardbound sketchbooks. We were expected to carry them around with us over the course of the semester, and draw constantly. Now, thirty years later, I find that I have an encyclopedia set of these books filling a shelf in my studio. Keeping journals/sketchbooks has become an integral part of my art practice and my everyday life.  But the way I use them has changed.

               I think of a sketchbook as something you draw in, and a journal as something you write in. And though I’ve always used the same book for both, I see that mine have evolved over the years, from more sketchbook to more journal. In the early ones I did very involved drawings, sitting for hours doing studies from nature, or drawing people. These days the drawings in my journals tend to be notational, and if I do anything more finished it’s on single sheets of paper. 

              My journals function as sketchbooks, idea books, diaries and scrapbooks. I always have the current one with me, in the bookbag that I carry around, along with whatever I’m reading at the time. And over the years I’ve developed certain conventions for them. For example, I’ve gotten in the habit of starting each entry with the date, time and location, so it’s very easy for me now to look back through them and see when certain ideas initially occurred, or where I was when I was writing about something. I also, early on, started keeping a list on the back page of the journal of the books I read. I list the title, author, and the date I finished reading it, and if the book made a particularly strong impression on me I put a star next to it. So at this point I have a running list of pretty much every book I’ve read during my adult life, including re-reads, and a simple rating system that is useful when I want to go back and retrieve information, or recommend books to friends. When the journal is full I put a number on the spine and add it to the shelf, and I start a new one.

               These journals serve several functions for me. The most obvious is that they’re a place to store ideas so I don’t forget them. Putting them down on paper also forces me to clarify the ideas somewhat, at least enough to put them into words or a sketch, and it also relieves me of the burden of carrying them around in my head. Often seeing the idea on paper helps to spur variations. Sometimes these ideas are visual, sometimes verbal. Sometimes I’ll start with a quick drawing, spin out a verbal list of associations or connections, and then do more drawings. So the journal becomes a place to not only record ideas but also to develop them.

               The journals are not just for my art practice, but are part of my everyday life. I use them as diaries; to record my thoughts, concerns and activities. They are scrapbooks that contain newspaper clippings, postcards and concert tickets. I’ve been writing songs almost as long as I’ve been painting, and the journals contain endless lists of possible titles. It’s pretty obvious how a title can be a starting point for writing a song, but I’ve also had titles launch whole series of paintings. The old cliche about a picture being worth a thousand words also works in reverse –a word can evoke a thousand pictures. Sometimes the same title will result in both a song and a painting. I keep all of these possibilities pretty open-ended, and don’t try to figure them out right away.

               Keeping the journals has taught me a lot about my creative process. I see ideas appear, and then reappear months or even years later, but changed in some way. Like they’ve been percolating under the surface, accumulating resonance and layers of meaning without my awareness. I can read diary entries from years ago, see the things I was excited or worried about, and gain perspective on how they’ve played out in my life. And most of all, the journals are a library of ideas, some terrible and some pretty good, more ideas than I could ever execute in several lifetimes.  I’ve learned not to edit or judge the ideas when I get them, everything goes in, and later when I look back through I pick the ones that are most promising to pursue.

               When people visit my studio and see the journals lined up on my shelf, they say “Oh, you must be very disciplined. I’ve tried to keep journals before, but I always stop.” But the truth is that I’m not disciplined about it at all. Here’s the big secret, the way I’ve been able to keep these journals going all these years – I don’t write or draw in them every day. When you try to do something as a discipline, like a diet or a New Years resolution, it’s easy to start out very gung ho, then miss a day or two, and decide that you’ve failed and you might as well give up. In my case, sometimes I’m working in the journal several times a day, and other times weeks will go by without an entry. But I’ve always got it with me, so it’s there when I need it.

I’m sure many of you keep sketchbooks or journals of some kind. In what ways is your process similar to mine? How is yours different?

Stephen Dietz is a playwright I admire greatly, not only for his wonderful, beautifully crafted and deeply insightful plays, but also for his incredible attention to process and craft.  Once, after watching Stephen listening intently to an actor reciting lines that Stephen has just revised during a workshop of one of his plays, I asked him why it was so important to him to hear the words read aloud.  He told me he had learned, long ago, that when he was confronted with a choice in his writing between meaning and sound, to go with sound every time.

A few years ago, I had the extraordinary good fortune to hear one of Stephen’s lectures, in which Stephen proposed what he called “The Four Seductions” – pitfalls that ensnare us and seduce us away from the real business of creating art and instead lead us down blind alleys and stymie our growth as artists. 

Stephen’s list of the Four Seductions is:

• Distrust of Beauty 
• Disparagement of Craft 
• Criticism 
• Blaming the Audience 

Distrust of Beauty – In the current art world, it’s fashionable to advance our work by making it ‘edgy’.  There’s a sort of consensus that ‘beauty’ has been done to death, and that if a work is beautiful, then it  must be passé.   There’s a sense that since beauty is a quality that’s awfully hard to pin down, that it  must therefore be unimportant, and that striving for beauty is a fool’s errand.  It’s a whole heck of a lot easier to provoke an emotional response by doing art that’s gratuitously offensive than it is to make art that arouses a passionate response by making something beautiful.  Because of these pressures, it’s often the case that we’re not attentive enough the place of beauty in our art.  And, before we get caught up in the “I don’t want to just make pretty things”, I’d like to quote Eolake Stobblehouse, who wrote that “Note that beautiful does not necessarily mean pretty. Pretty is Beautiful’s popular sister.”

Disparagement of Craft – Likewise, there’s a sense that craft is not what art is about, and therefore it’s unimportant.  Thus we get plays that are poorly structured, with poorly written dialogue and hopeless plotting, offered up with the excuse that because the subject matter of the play is socially relevant and ‘edgy’ (note the implicit disparagement of beauty) we should excuse the poor craft.  Stephen told an anecdote about going to Europe with his family and some friends, and seeing all the glorious sculptures done by Michangelo, Donatello, et al.  He asked his friend (a sculptor, apparently) why no one did representational sculpture any more.  His friend replied “Because, Stephen, it’s Very Hard to Do.”  Craft is sometimes hard, and the temptation to slip one past can be overwhelming. 

Criticism – It’s far easier to criticize than to create.  There are lots of artists in the world who look at work and say “Hey, I could do that, and do it better”.  But somehow, they never seem to get around to doing the work – they’ve been distracted by the flush they get when they elevate themselves above the productive artist by picking apart work that’s actually been done.  Stephen suggested that when you catch yourself engaging in some criticism, that you should look at what you’re thinking/saying.  Are you trying to figure out what went wrong, and what might be done to put it right?  Or are you looking at the work and trying to find ways to run it down so that you feel superior to the artist? 

Blaming the Audience – Finally, when one of our works of art fails, the temptation is to blame the audience.  They aren’t perceptive enough, they aren’t smart enough, they don’t have the right education, or perhaps they simply aren’t sensitive enough to respond correctly to your work (which you feel is absolutely superlative in every respect).  If only we had the RIGHT audience, we assure ourselves, our work would get the recognition and acclaim it (and we) deserves. 

I’m sure I’ve done an inadequate job of trying to capture Stephen’s ideas accurately – for one thing, he advanced all of this in a far more articulate way than I ever could.  But I heard the lecture a couple of years ago, now, and I find that I’m still turning all these ideas over in my head. If you can look past my meager presentation and try to get to Stephen’s ideas, I think there’s a lot there for consideration. 

This landscape painting by Tracy Helgeson caught my eye. This work is something of a new departure in Tracy’s work, I think. She often works on the border between abstraction and reality, but in this painting there is a cross-over, albeit a subtle one. The result is almost unsettling, but I like it. A question for her is, does she want to go further with this? There is also a psychological element to this landscape painting, as I see it, which captures my attention.

Tracy’s blog raises interesting questions about what it means to be an artist today. In the past, artists liked to cloak themselves and their work in mystery. Tracy is open about her work (good, bad, unfinished) and her difficulties in the process of creating and selling. There is a refreshing and direct quality to her writing style that makes mysterious 20th century artists seem a bit comic in comparison. Is Tracy a good example of what 21th century artists will be doing, or should she hide her unfinished work and cultivate a more refined public image?

The is art school worthless? question brought in some amazing comments. Here are two that make it even harder for me to make up my mind on the issue:

Art dealer Dan Fox said “nearly every fine artist of any repute either went to art school or studied with a master for years, or both.”

Artist Rex Crockett replied, “I know a lot of artists who make good livings at art. About half of them went to art school, and half of those, like me, dropped out in disgust. (I lasted one day.)”

Now, how do we reconcile these views?

. . .

When I am feeling adventurous, I cross-post my blog entries on the unmoderated news group rec.arts.fine. If a blog is cosy like a living room (to paraphrase Arthur), rec.arts.fine is like a New York city street at night. You never know who might attack you, but they are bound to be someone interesting. [I add emphasis to quotes below]

Dan Fox asked if I went to art school, and when I replied in the negative, he wrote:

The foundation courses you get in art school, drawing in particular, are crucial to becoming a competent artist. This means regular classes, lots of drawing, lots of teaching, over a period of time. Learning to draw is like learning to play the piano. Books and workshops contribute very little.This is the reason nearly every fine artist of any repute either went to art school or studied with a master for years, or both. The exception is the genius like Francis Bacon, but these people are rare.

Before I could reply, Rex Crockett dropped this bombshell:

Nonsense. What is rare are people who are willing to repudiate a failed education.Good repute? With whom? Galleries, museums, the press, and the buying public do not care at all, not at all, whether you have a degree in art. It simply does not matter. It never did. It never will. I know a lot of artists who make good livings at art. About half of them went to art school, and half of those, like me, dropped out in disgust. (I lasted one day.) This idea that “It is really hard to survive as an artist” is one of the biggest lies ever told. The reason it is so hard for so many is because their work is crap.

Rex doesn’t have much sympathy for artists who don’t sell, does he?

I think that Dan Fox is making a strong statement without providing any evidence. Rex brings in the weight of personal experience, but I think he misses a key point: some artists find it difficult to make money because they continually push themselves to do things that are extremely challenging. It doesn’t mean their work is crap, but it might mean they are not being practical.

There is more to this debate to be read on the complete rec.arts.fine thread.

Thanks to Courtney, Bob, Tracy, David, and Angela for your insightful comments on the original post at my [our] blog.

One lack of comment I found interesting is that no one disputed my statement: “In art, professors and students do not generally collaborate in the process of creation and discovery in the same meaningful sense as they do in science.”

One lesson we can draw from the 20th C. is that total freedom for the artist is not the path to happiness. Never have there been fewer constraints on what an artist can do, and never has the life of the artist (relative to other professions at least) been so wretched.

. . .

The drawbacks of total freedom should not surprise a physicist or an athlete. Certain mathematical problems are difficult or impossible to solve without a sufficient number of constraints. Without the constraints of rules, sports would be chaos.

We can see evidence for the longing for constraints in the most important painting movement of our time: the Painting a Day phenomenon. What is the explicit purpose of this movement? It is a pure statement of constraint. There must be one painting per day. This constraint severely limits what an artist can produce on a canvas. The enthusiasm with which artists are joining this movement demonstrates the hunger for constraints, for simplicity, for order. After all, you can’t rebel against nothing, can you?

But you don’t need to become a Painting a Day painter to have constraints. All you need to do is think about your own situation as an artist and examine what constraints you already have. And then, of course, to appreciate them and make the most of them.

One year I had no studio for a few months. I needed to work at home, so I drew in my sketchbook each day instead of painting. The work that I designed then I later painted and sold for a lot of money. The constraint of having no studio, temporarily, in fact helped me a great deal.

In order to make the most of your constraints, you need to be aware of what they are. Everyone has limitations of time, space, and talent. The particular mix that you have will influence what you do — much as will the mix of your painting medium or selection of your palette. The practical acceptance of constraints is the key to using the constraints in a positive way. It helps to remember that more opportunity and freedom would not necessarily help you.

So, let’s get to work . . .

Here is a statement attributed to Michelangelo in Vasari‘s Lives of the Artists that I keep thinking about:

I’ve always had only too harassing a wife in this demanding art of mine, and the works I leave behind will be my sons. Even if they are nothing, they will live for a while. It would have been a disaster for Lorenzo Ghiberti if he hadn’t made the doors of San Giovanni, seeing that they are still standing whereas his children and grandchildren sold and squandered all he left.