Art & Perception

There is a mode of painting that I’ve experienced, where paint becomes something beyond paint.

I make paintings based on drawings, some combination of life studies and imaginary composition. Because the various drawings contain a lot of information, the first job in painting is to translate, in oil paint, this information onto the chalk ground of the panel. Until I have gotten the painting up to the level of the drawing, the drawing remains the source and I do not look beyond that.

The interesting part comes when the painting begins to reach a certain level of realism that it takes on a life of its own. The drawing is no longer the source. The source is in the mind of the artist. At this point I can look at the painting and begin to make judgments about what the faces or figures should look like based on memory of the real person, memories that I could not normally visualize so easily. The painting in a sense allows new access to the mind or memory.

The key here is that when the painting reaches a certain level, I no longer have to look at it as a paint. Instead, I can look through it to a new reality (an inner reality I suppose, but externalized on the panel.) This is a mode of working that gives a strange feeling of being transported to a different place. Working in this mode gives unique results I think. It takes a lot of effort to get into this mode, however. Usually I need to paint for most of the day to get there.

I’m sure that other artists have this experience also, where they no longer feel as though they are painting, but doing something different where paint brush is almost forgotten. I’m curious if there is a name for it. It is not “flow”, which is simply an intense focus on the work at hand. Does anyone know a name, or have a suggestion for one?

I asked Arthur Whitman about his secret for blogging success. He denied he has had much success, but his advice was interesting nonetheless:

I would just say write well, in your own voice, about things you know and care about.

I’ve been consumed with my artwork lately and all but stopped blogging. I realize though that this might be the perfect time to write on what I “know and care about.” I’m going to try picking up the blog again, with a focus on what I am doing from day to day with my painting and sculpture.

Drawing or painting from photographs is inherently different from working from life, because when working from a photograph, the subject of the work is a static image. Studying images has always played an important role in art, although the images in the past were of course not photographs, but works by other artists. As Cennino Cennini recommended in the 14th century:

take pains and pleasure in constantly copying the best things which you can find done by the hand of great masters. And if you are in a place where many good masters have been, so much the better for you. But I give you this advice: take care to select the best one every time, and the one who has the greatest reputation. And, as you go on from day to day, it will be against nature if you do not get some grasp of his style and of his spirit.

The style and spirit of the artist to be copied is as important as the subject of the artwork itself. Cennino emphasizes this point by directing the student to study one master at a time:

For if you undertake to copy after one master today and after another one tomorrow, you will not acquire the style of one or the other, and you will inevitably, through enthusiasm, become capricious, because each style will be distracting your mind. You will try to work in this man’s way today, and in the other’s tomorrow, and so you will not get either of them right.

This idea of copying another artist’s work to study style is perhaps alien to our contemporary ideas of how an artist should develop. But the goal, development of a personal style, is something that all artists share:

If you follow the course of one man through constant practice, your intelligence would have to be crude indeed for you not to get some nourishment from it. Then you will find, if nature has granted your any imagination at all, that you will eventually acquire a style individual to yourself, and it cannot help being good; because your hand and your mind, being always accustomed to gather flowers, would ill know how to pluck thorns.

How can we relate this approach of copying other artists to the practice of working from photographs? Dan Bodner said recently, “We cannot separate how we see from the way photography has informed our vision.” This seems consistent with Cennino’s writing. An artist who works continually from the photograph will, intentionally or not, acquire the “style and spirit” of the photograph. The camera thus becomes the artist’s master. Dan Bodner seems to have escaped this because he already developed a personal style before turning to photography as a source.

The conventional wisdom is that the rise in selling art on the internet will swamp the market with mediocre work. The implication is that a more restricted art world, with dealers and curators as guardians, would protect us from this fate.

In fact, a marketplace swamped with mediocre work is exactly what we should hope to see. If there is a large quantity of artwork produced, the average quality indeed may be low. But the average is not the important metric. What matters is the variance, the overall distribution. If there is a broad distribution, there may be a small fraction, say the top 1%, that is remarkable artwork.

In speaking to many artists, I have heard about the hopeless feeling of never being able to break into the art world, the world of dealers, curators and collectors. This sentiment discourages artists and discourages artistic production. Fewer artworks mean fewer great artworks — probabilistically speaking.

If the internet becomes the dominant art market, then no one need worry about breaking in. The focus can be on the more important question, “How to make the best art possible?” The more that artists feel empowered to produce, the larger the number of paintings that will be in the top 1%.

Of course, the discerning buyer will have to search for that top 1%. But since when did shopping become unpopular?

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Related:
Fall of the Art World

Why is it so difficult to be an artist? CB responded:

How can any one living in the developed world, with enough money & free time to waste it dicking around with a website and on [an art discussion group], in anyway consider their life or even their work “hard”? Living in Iraq would be hard, farming in Sudan would be hard, having a degenerative painful disease would be hard. But for artists to pretend to be in the same boat is just self-involved nonsense. Certainly it was true prior to the 1900’s ( when no sales amounted to starvation), or for those who had to face down a Stalin or a Hitler or a Mao, but now? just suck it up and quit yer whining….

Here is what CB makes me ask myself:

• Do I wake up before sunrise to put my best into my art while most people are still sleeping?
• Do I paint as though my very existence depended on it?
• And if not, why not?

CB does not aim at popularity with his writing style. But I think his advice — “just suck it up and quit yer whining” — is valuable. The reason is that I think “the art world”, as we know it, is about to fall apart. There are going to be tremendous opportunities for artists in the near future, but it will take some guts to make the most of them.

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Related: Why is it so difficult to be an artist?

To be an artist today is to confront continual uncertainty. There is economic uncertainty, and also uncertainty of purpose. Modern society seems to value art — art is preserved in museums, and purchased for large sums by “collectors.” And yet the normal artist is strangely disconnected from the top levels of success. Compare this with other professions. A competent pilot, trained at a good flight school, is more or less assured of a successful career. He or she might not get the opportunity to fly the biggest and newest commercial planes, or fancy jet fighters; but a stable career is a reasonable expectation, certainly compared to what an artist can hope for.

The profession of art has not always been so uncertain. For example, Cennino Cennini discusses the motivations of those entering the profession in the 14th c. “There are those who pursue it” he writes, “because of poverty and domestic need.” In 17th c. Holland, parents would encourage a talented son to pursue art as a profitable and respectable occupation. Nowadays, “poverty and domestic need” would better describe the results of becoming an artist, rather than causes for becoming one.

There is far more wealth in the world today to purchase art than in any time past. The difficult position of artist today is therefore something of a mystery.

If there is a general appreciation of art, and money to buy art, then why is it so difficult to fulfill the role of artist?

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Related:
Is art school worthless?
Fall of the Art World

The title may seem to say the obvious, but in fact, it is not so simple. The problem comes because of the way we think about art and education today.

In the Renaissance, an artist received training from a master by working on the master’s projects. The master had a strong incentive to teach, because good assistants were essential for making a major artwork. Teaching was thus not separate from the master’s work. Instead, it was critical to the productive success of the studio.

A similar method is used for teaching at the highest levels of education today. For example, a graduate student in biology will do research in a specific laboratory, under guidance of a recognized scientist. Only a small part of the student’s education comes through “classroom teaching”. The scientist has a strong incentive to teach his or her students how to do real research, because a group effort is necessary for major research projects.

But art education today is a completely different story. Artists get paid to do “classroom” teaching. But teaching in this mode does not contribute directly to the artist’s own work. Instead, it becomes an impediment.

Why should the wonderful (and profitable) job of teaching be an impediment for artists? I think it comes from the way we think of art as a solitary endeavor. An artist can teach others, but is expected to work alone. This prevents the artist and his or her students from working together. It separates art from art education. A functional connection between art and education would benefit both.

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Related:

• On being an artist, “secret” #1
• Why is it so difficult to be an artist?