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Juliette Aristedes

In Classical Painting Atelier the assertion is made that “Classical” painting is based on Knowledge, Logic and Order. Consider the alternative. Art based on ignorance, irrationality and chaos. And that is exactly what has occurred. This is not to imply that art based on either proposition is superior to the other,it is just that the two worldviews may be incompatible.

The human form graced the historical,religious, political narratives that dominated art from the Greeks to the C19.. Landscape,still life were “lesser’art forms. Aristedes suggests this derives from the religious assertion that God created man in His image.Kenneth Clark says the Greeks turned Gods into men, and we turn men into gods.
The destruction of the human form represents a loss of faith ,and the dissembling of the old order was paralleled by the demise of the Atelier.
Robert Newton in “The Visual Language of Painting” notes Aristedes’ revivalist tone, and suggests that a return to traditional realist art can never return in the forms it has taken in the past.
Now I want to draw attention to the fact that we have two issues that are constantly getting tangled.
The first issue is the “revival or survival or archival” of realist art. Here we are faced with the art market, its dealers ,critics,curators,investors and vested interests.
The second issue is related, but not the same.This is the debate over the curriculum of the “art factories” and there I include Fine Arts faculties and departments in tertiary institutions; and the private Ateliers that have mushroomed.
If the Ateliers produce highly skilled technical art devoid of contemporary relevance and alienated from modern values and experience, and if Fine Arts faculties produce pieces reeking of contemporary relevance and displaying a conspicuous lack of skill, then surely it is time to dialogue.
What would the curiculum of a 3 year full time degree look like if we tried for the best of both worlds? Lets rethink the whole thing.
Brian E Deagon
Monday August 26th, 2013 12:03 am

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Spit and Polish

 I have mused about the cultures that tend to Realism before. The Dutch invented the stock market and still life and exported both to Boston and New York. Academic Realism that Americans preserve from C19 English Empire and C19 French Academies, has the same love of detailed “finish”. . The passion for  accurate detail gave Florence double entry bookkeeping and Botticelli, and America its utilitarianism and Andrew Wyeth. They bring the same aesthetic to the nude as they do to chrome automobiles.

This realisation about the limits of realism came to me in Boston, where gallery after gallery displayed the same, beautifully painted bowl of strawberries on a white plate. The problem was, they were all by different artists. The aesthetics and ethics of mass production! Polished highlights on surfaces everywhere, and the artist has become an interchangeable part.

A similar problem bothers me with the academy drawing. So long  as it is understood from the first mark, that this drawing is a learning experience, not a work of “Art”. The question “What does a nude do?” is followed by ” When is a nude finished?”

Its gratifying to be agreed with. This comment from Brian Froud says he “gets”it. “I’m always amazed when I look at American fantasy art. Its over-rendered. Every surface is shiny so your eye skids off the art. So do your emotions”

Brian E Deagon
Wednesday March 6th, 2013 11:57 am

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Kant and Heidegger

Imagine God behind a screen and us in front of it. Kant says we have invented the screen upon which we project the world. God is unknowable behind it.  Heidegger says God made the screen, but in an odd twist he says the screen projects or creates us.God is equally hidden behind the screen.

These are the antecedents of contemporary philosophy, and its introspection and irrelevant God. I am  still struggling with its impact on the visual arts, but starting with Foucault.

Critique of Foucault is like attacking a fog. Armed and alarmed, I wield simile and metaphor extended, spinning and kicking,  hoping a knife will pierce the heart of the fog.

Brian E Deagon
Tuesday January 8th, 2013 10:56 pm

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Essays

ATELIER DRAWING LESSON

AN ATELIER DRAWING LESSON

Ryan Daffurn’s teaching is not what I expected. And that’s a good thing. We began a long drawing (say 10 hrs) with the admonition to get something down about the design or rhythm of the long lines of the pose in about 2 minutes.

This really surprised. I expected plumb lines to the weight bearing foot, “envelopes” within which details could be developed, and “measure, measure and measure again, after determining the eye level and viewpoint.” Apparently he wants me to work by a succession of approximations, refining and correcting as I go. Gradually I began to understand that accurate construction of design and anatomy can only begin with the whole. The same applied to light, which is constructed by mathematical logic as much as ” accidents of nature.” For example the skin tone differences between sun exposed neck and pale sun deprived chest might be noted or ignored, depending upon the conception. One things for certain, it’s not “look and put” realism. He begins with the overall conception, and is quite happy to idealise( or,if you will,”distort”) for the sake of clarity, gracefulness, dynamism or emotion in the pose.

We really need to say more about what I see as Daffurn’s idealism. It’s not the kind where everyone has a “Greek” nose and all female breasts defy gravity in their perfect cones. It goes much deeper philosophically in a Kantian or Heideggerian sense. It comes from a reverence for the constructed body, and a profound understanding of its structure in three dimensions, and the fourth dimension being potential movement in time, and all within a space of light and colour, revealing and concealing the body at the same moment.

Nothing really needs to be invented, just deeply understood. It’s a proud stance, underpinned by humility. Incidentally, the controlled art studio lighting is not mandatory, it’s just a help to the student. This is all based on a reverence for nature and the body we inhabit. More than that, it presupposes a profound belief in the intelligence of artist and audience, and the visual language they use. We intend to edify our viewer, not shock them This might not be fashionable, but it’s not “dead” as some post-structuralists might claim. To invoke beauty,hope,intelligence,diligence,persistence,structure, design etc may be idealistic and even naïve, but its not wrong..

Drawing of this kind is much more than a skill set or an arcane knowledge. It implies a moral relationship between artist and model I keep using the word “profound”. Because it is

Post script.17/5/13 Studying still life with Ryan is a revelation. I should have expected him to have the same attitude to colour and light as to form. And he does. Once again he is insistent upon the overall conception of light and colour interaction with our perceptual biology. I keep “seeing” what he expects me to ignore. I cannot paint without responding to the incident, the “flash”, the particulars.

Fighting the habits of a lifetime is starting to yield some suprises though, but the actual mechanics of eye movement and focus and the time element when shifting focus I am really struggling with. Its easy to say, “we see with the mind, not the eye  ‘. All problems are solvable provided approached systematically.  For example, it takes longer to mix my colours than it does to paint the picture, another dimension of the academic method no doubt!

Post script 26/8/13The advice to see and construct the perfect, or idealized sphere as a first step is critical. Only then is it possible to show the shadow shapes, the terminator between light and dark, the form shadow, the cast shadow and all the detail of representation. It is an intellectual activity to construct this ideal world, and an artist should be able to do this without “reality” in front of them. THEN the perceptual takes over, noting the “accidents of nature” nuances of colour, texture and shape.Even here, an algorythm can be developed, like in fractals, to complete the texture of the orange without copying a particular. As I work with Ryan, I am beginning to see how idealism (mind) and realism (perception) work together. Brian E Deagon 29/12/12

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Essays

When is a painting finished?

When is a painting finished?

In an Atelier,the first block-in is called an ebauche..Usually executed quickly, it is frequently left in varying degrees of completion, not for aesthetic reasons, but because students simply dont have time to finish it, or because the particular problem the artist was concerned with has been solved, and they move on to the final version.

 

In the C19, students began to leave more and more of the ebauche unfinished.Following the example of Constable , Turner, Rembrandt , Hals, Rubens, Velasquez, and Titian, they were puzzled by the vivacity and spontaneity of “unfinished” work. To their professors, “finish” was an aesthetic and moral issue..

 

This debate stemmed from the “Poussinistes V Rubenistes” and the followers of Ingres and Delacroix who were really continuing a debate that started in C16 Italy between the Florentines and Venetians.

 

“Is drawing more important than colour? Should the designo be worked out first, or can the artist make changes in the working? Is the intellect and reason the basis of art or emotion and intuition? “ Do you want a 10 minute debate or pistols at dawn ?

 

By the C19, the debate had begun to focus on “finish” What that had come to mean was the softening of tonal transitions in order to heighten the illusion of reality, and reality didn’t have brushstrokes! The problem was, you could “finish” a painting to death, and lose other values such as spontaneity.Its good to note the debate was not clear cut. Alma-Tadema was criticised by his peers for relentlessly “finishing” everything in his paintings to the same degree, thus ignoring “the natural order of things”

 

The master artists above( particularly Velasquez)were such “painterly” artists they were able to make the brush mark an intrinsic part of the illusion. At a particular viewing distance it all “fell into place” Closer up, it all “fell apart”, leaving an experience a bit like sitting in the orchestra instead of the audience.

 

So French artists , as French artists do, began to insult each other. The young accused their professors as guilty of “licking their paintings clean”.(ie,removing brushmarks) Unpeturbed the older suggested that the young “ would finish their paintings if they finished their education”(ie showed some respect for hard work,craftsmanship and the buyer)

 

The Impressionists were influenced by photographic representation of movement and light, but we were not told till recently that Bougereau and Alma-Tadema also used photography. It is clear to me that Bougereau was imitating the brushless surface of photographed nudes, and beautiful it can be.In Young Girl and Love ,he has not only idealised the proportion, but the surface of the models skin.Finished to perfection! But surely, Monets broken rainbow haystacks are finished in the sense of being completely resolved, and clearly in the studio! That leaves us with at least two meanings for the idea of “finish”

 

In all the debate over Modernism , we have forgotten what the dilemnas were .In the current revival of the Atelier and of its teachings we have also inevitably revived its problems. “Finish” is still a technical, aesthetic and to some, a moral issue. Another issue probably more important is the issue of what to paint. The Impressionists rejected Godesses in favour of middle class nymphets in fashionable dress.Can we adopt C19 approaches to picture making without also reviving its debates and its flaws? Is a tattoo and a nose piercing enough contemporary relevance?

 

.To eliminate the brushmark with the sole purpose of heightening illusion is to seriously miss the point. “Take a photo!” is then, good advice.Painting to imitate the brushless surface of photography is a folly if that’s all it is.(.Incidentally, this has nothing to do with the old “painting from photographs” argument.I can think of no reason not to.)

But to leave the brushmark which becomes integral to  the illusion requires much,much more.I am not precluding the blended stroke either. The hue,value ,chroma , shape, density ,etc etc of every brushmark must be “right”

If the “what to paint” had a political and class dimension so did the brushmark. The mark is a signature. Its personal and all the way to Jackson Pollock being promoted by the USA in the Cold War as a symbol of democratic individualism, its interpretation is deadly serious. It also is in danger of being tamed by the Atelier ethos. You may view this as a good thing. Too much narcissism today anyway. Or a bad thing, impinging upon your unfettered right to creative markmaking. But if you are threatened by it, you are in the wrong school.

 

We would not tolerate a violin concerto in which MOST of the notes are correct. In fact, the academy method was to develop the painting till almost finished then add those “finishing touches” of heartstopping bravura. Sargent was famous for it.

 

I am suggesting an extraordinary level of mastery here, an aspiration for atelier students,and in an important way, it doesn’t matter if it’s a painted pumpkin ,a rose or a nose. To those who don’t understand “viewing distance”, the capsicum might seem “unfinished” if we mistake “polish” or “detail”for “finish”. On the other hand , when is a painting “unfinished, not resolved, incomplete”? Whats the difference between a “painterly” pumpkin and a badly painted one? I am still working on it.

 

To really succeed, the Atelier movement ( and it seems to be global) needs to have high expectations, but equally an ability to articulate them. For its students, the conversation over lunch is as important as it was in Paris a century and a half ago, and its not finished.

Brian E Deagon

7/12/12

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Rarrk

Documentary on Marwundjul. He states that he “saw” rarrk in the flashes of light on the water. I know what that is, but wont paint it. I have always been and feel balanda. But I have seen ,”me myself” rarrk in the criss-cross of palm fronds. Here, completely at home in the tetrachrome palette  I can see a way to abstraction that is mine, and not needing ceremonial validity.

I should mention here, that I had the privilege of being taught by Marwundjul on a visit to Maningrida.He said, that as an artist I was “a bit rusty rough one”

Brian E Deagon
Wednesday August 15th, 2012 10:32 pm

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Ryan’s Tips

Hold your painting up so that visually it is adjacent to what you are painting. Make sure the light on the painting and the subject are consistent. Now you can mix a colour , place a little patch on the edge of your canvas, and directly compare it with the colour in the scene you are trying to match.

Hold your thumb over a patch of colour so its shadow falls on your patch. The tone and colour is exactly what is reqiured for the next tone down in painting your object.

Colour Matching. Choose the closest colour youve got and mix it to the correct tone. Select the colour immediately beside on the colour wheel on the side you want to shift. Mix this to the correct tone.  Now mix the  colour. Some adjustment for chroma  may be required.

Brian E Deagon
Sunday August 12th, 2012 3:40 pm

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The Tetrachrome Palette

After a trip to Cairns I began painting rainforest as well as swamp. The relentless green was a problem, and after painting “Swamp” in muted earths I could see a way forward.

Pavey’s book on Humanism and Colour tied together a whole knowledge of colour I had built up. And the light went on! The tetra chrome palette is RED ochre YELLOW ochre BLUE BLACK and WHITE.  This is Aboriginal art, it is Ancient Greek pottery, it is Byzantine icons, it is the Academic palette.   And its subtle when used colouristically,, it is strong when used structurally, and is deeply symbolically charged across a number of cultures. When used as a tonal scale, the strength of the colour, especially the red, can be disturbing, but it works. But as in other palettes, tints with white, or shades with black, allow ANY colour to “slot in” anywhere reqiured from light to dark. Arbitrary colour results, and there is poetry in that.
Most importantly to me, I have found a subject (forest) that has so many potential variations of tonal key, chroma key, use of scumble and glaze, scale and brushwork…….And into which I can integrate my little nudes. Finally “30 of these” seems a pleasant prospect.
As if this isnt challenge enough, I know now I must pursue Pat Moran’s delicious brushwork, working tonally and looser, creating focus with” lost and found” edges. And I suspect the confidence to tackle this has come from being involved in the Salisbury Atelier .
Brian E Deagon
Wednesday May 16th, 2012 9:33 am

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Hi Deevya

We have several issues here.   Malevitch first. You have to understand that a lot of C20 art was painted as illustrations to a philosophical argument. Those arguments often used a reductionist logic as science did at the time. Scientists and mathematicians were looking for a single simple equation that would explain the universe. They are still looking.

In art , the question became “ how little can you have and still have an art work?” A black square? A white one?  No paint at all- just bare canvas? How about an empty frame?

Now this is a fun game to play, and you don’t need a traditional skill set to play it. My problem with it is that it doesn’t make very interesting pictures.

 

So how about we go the other way and try to make fun paintings. No matter what you do, to be visible you need line,colour,tone,texture, shape and etcetera. I THINK that’s what you mean by “form”. Instead of the elements above some just talk about “form” and “space”. Now, a beautiful rock or shell or seedpod is visible form in space. We just enjoy them. Humans always have. But something funny happens when an artist makes a beautiful form in space. Instead of “That’s nice, I will hang it around my neck or put it on the table to look at” we start asking stupid questions like “What does it mean?” “ Whats it supposed to be?” “ Where has it come from?”” Why am I attracted to it?” “How is it made?”

 

Frequently these dumb questions get really out of hand, and result in coffee table books of art criticism.  I learned my lesson from John Marwundjul. I asked him” How do you know where to put things?”  I suppose I was expecting deep insights into his culture.I got one!His reply said it all. With a big wide smile at my ignorance he said “Look nice” I never felt so stupid in all my life. That’s it?  “Look nice?” Yep. Look nice!

Brian E Deagon
Friday March 16th, 2012 11:16 am

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