Art & Perception

I have been drawing from life for years, but I only recently tried modeling in clay from life. For one project I made a portrait of my three-year-old daughter (now four years old). Three-year-old girls never pose, of course. This makes drawing them difficult.

Sculpting in clay is a different matter. I made a clay head about one-third life-size, not attached to a base so I could hold and turn it in my hands. Every time she moved, I turned the sculpture and modeled whatever view I had for that moment. It took time and persistence, but after a few sessions I made a good likeness. I was surprised at how easy it was, given how little experience I had in this medium. But there is a logic behind it.

The challenge in drawing is to transform three dimensions into two dimensions. Without a consistent viewpoint, the process is somewhat hopeless. With sculpture, this transformation in dimensions is not an issue, and every viewpoint holds useful information. By going to the third dimension, the most difficult drawing problems become doable as sculpture.

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.

“I walked into my new studio and this was the view, these water towers – which are typically New York. I thought, ‘yeah I should do that.'”

In early 2005 Dan Bodner changed the focus of his artwork from the human figure (painted from life or imagination) to cityscape. At the same time he began to use digital photography to study his subjects and his own work.

Bodner often makes photographs under conditions that would be difficult to paint from life, like the night scene above, or snow storms. He is in particular interested in the effects of city lights on the sky. From a large number of photos he selects a sample which he studies by making pencil drawings.

The drawings are not direct copies, but interpretations that combine elements from more than one photo. After he finds the composition, Bodner makes small oil sketches to study color. Then he makes a large painting based on all of these elements. In the end, some paintings are similar to the original photographs, others diverge substantially from the source images.

Photographs are not only Bodner’s subjects, but a way to study his own work. He has found that by making a photograph of a painting, he can see it as though looking for the first time. As Bodner explains, “By making the photographs daily, I can get a distance from the work as I’m painting it.”

Photography is associated with all aspects of Dan Bodner’s cityscape artwork, a connection which he finds appropriate. Bodner explains:

I want to use photography as a source for my work because we cannot separate how we see from the way photography has informed our vision. I think photography allows painting to be what it is today.

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first part of this interview

To paint from a photograph is inherently different than painting from life. Some artists avoid photos, others use them, perhaps covertly, for practical reasons. But to American artist Dan Bodner, painting from photos is not merely a technique, but a way to focus on his role as an artist. I interviewed Bodner recently at his studio in Amsterdam.

Question: When you work from photographs, do you ever ask yourself, what is the point of making the painting, when the image already exists in the photo?

Bodner: No. A photo is a record of a moment that has passed, a dead moment. I don’t feel that I own the image as a photograph until I paint it as a painting. The photo itself always refers to the past. But a painting of the photo is a creation, which goes on living. The painting defines its own continuing moment in time.

Question: Does painting go beyond the goal of simply making an image?

Bodner: What painting is for me is part of human desire. Every kid smears his food, or shit, and that is really connected to what painting is. A kid makes a mark and has the satisfaction of knowing “I made this and it will stay there.” For an adult I think it is connected to fear of death, which is innate. And it is connected to the desire to procreate. As you get older it gets existential, of course. To take things out of you and put them into the world, there is an absolute satisfaction in that. To do this from a photo emphasizes the act of creation, bringing life to something dead.

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In the next post, more about how Dan Bodner uses photos, his subjects and his methods

1. Tube Trouble?
2. The Greatest Invention Since the Paint Tube

1. Turpentine Trouble?
2. Storing Brushes
3. Cleaning Brushes
4. Shaping Brushes
5. Transporting Brushes

Things to Ponder

1. What is Art?
2. How to Make Art Last?
3. Is Art School Worthless?
4. Why is it Difficult to be an Artist?

1. To Frame or not to Frame?
2. Internet as Frame
3. In real life, the frame matters

1. From Life by Zipser
2. From Photos by Bodner
3. From Life by Bartman

1. How to Write the Perfect Blog Post?
2. “Bloggers have to Earn the Right to be Read”
3. How Should Artists Blog?
4. Can You Create in Public?