artamaze by Katherine Hilden

Le Peau de L’Ours

Posted in Galleries, tagged Ambroise Vollard, Andre Level, avant guard art, Bernheim Gallery, Le Peau de L'Ours, Making Modernism, Matisse, Michael C. FitzGerald, Picasso, Simone Weil on March 3, 2014| 4 Comments »

This large painting (84”x90”) was first exhibited publicly on March 2, 1914.

Picasso, at age twenty-four, painted it in 1905. André Level , a young shipping magnate, bought it from the artist in 1908. That doesn’t sound extraordinary until you look at Level’s motivation.

Level was so successful in his business that he could take the afternoon off to study art and the happenings in the Parisian galleries of Weil, Vollard and Bernheim, who showed this strange new art that didn’t look pleasant and was called “avant-guard.” To us now, Picasso’s “The Family of Saltimbanques” looks mild, even pretty. We can tell what’s what and that’s not what later art gave us. But to the starched-collared folk of the early 1900’s this painting looked crude, impolite and threatening to civilization as they knew it. Why did Level buy the Picasso?

Level started buying the new art on speculation in 1904. With twelve other investors, he formed a consortium that put him in charge of making the aesthetic decision. They gave him the money, he went around buying up art from galleries and directly from artists like Picasso and Matisse. Speculating that this art was the next big thing, he stored it in a warehouse for ten years. Then on March 2, 1914, Level held an auction at a Paris hotel in which he presented 145 lots. Level’s investment paid off handsomely. The auction sales brought in four times the money originally invested. Among the paintings were ten Matisses and a dozen Picassos. The Saltimbanques, the highest priced work on the block that day, fetched twelve times what Level had paid Picasso for it in 1908.

We’re now observing the 100^th anniversary of the auction that focused attention on the relationship of commercial and aesthetic judgments. The auction was called “Le Peau de L’Ours,” the skin of the bear. The name comes from La Fontaine’s fable, “The Bear and the Two Companions,” in which two friends in need of money sell the skin of a bear to a furrier before they have gone to the trouble of trapping the animal. The “future contract” goes unfulfilled because the bear not only proves indomitable but even subdues one of the hunters so that he can whisper in his ear, “don’t sell the bear’s skin before you’ve sacked him.” By analogy, the paintings bought on speculation are like the skin of the bear.

After the spectacular profit made at the Le Peau de L’Ours sale, avant- guard art appeared to be as good as gold.

To learn more about the creation of the market for twentieth-century art, see “Making Modernism” by Michael C. FitzGerald. 1995, 268 p. The author holds a PhD in Art History and a MBA and he writes well.

www.katherinehilden.com

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/drawing-faces-and-hands/

Matisse and Those Hands

Posted in Achievement, Composition, Illustration, literalness, Technique and Demo, tagged composition, drawing hands, Maggy Shell, Matisse, The Yellow Dress on February 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Matisse could draw, make no mistake about that. He knew anatomy, he knew faces and hands. But in his paintings—go look at his paintings to verify this—he was not interested in showing off how convincingly he could render this or that. He wasn’t illustrating. He was interested in the painting as a whole, how your eye moves through it without pinning you down at any one part. Details pin the viewer down. Details put you into a fussy frame of mind, as in, did the artist get this RIGHT?! Details reduce your viewing experience into a check list: face, check; hair, check; hands, check, and so on. Pedantic, boring.You can see in Matisse’s “Yellow Dress,” 1930, that there’s something wrong with the hands. Specifically, her right wrist. It’s disconnected from the hand. He saw this. Why the disconnect? Because he wanted to get the hands over the row of ribbons down the front of the skirt. In fact, he draws the hands as if they were part of that pattern. They blend in and do not attract attention to themselves. That’s why we accept his departure from anatomical correctness. In Maggy Shell’s delicate drawing we see a similar concern for the overall composition and how the eye moves through the whole. The hands, notice, are not detailed. If they were, we would read the drawing with different expectations—narrow, academic ones. Instead, we get to enjoy a drawing that creates a mood, rather than conveys specific details. The masses of solid shapes (hat, skirt) are not delineated by contour lines. Other forms (sleeve, hands) are suggested through lines only. That creates a visual conversation and the viewer goes back and forth, drawn into the subtleties.

In this context, the drawing I did of the same motif is too specific about the hands. You can tell that I love drawing hands and that I’m showing off how well I can draw them. Uh-uhh. Not so good for the overall reading of the drawing.

Maggy Shell worked in charcoal and created smudging with her fingers for subtle, don’t-pin-me-down effects. This is not to say, you shouldn’t practice drawing hands. You should. But when you practice drawing hands, you’re not putting them into a context in which they have to function as part of a composition. See, https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/drawing-hands/

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/frederic-bazilles-sleeve/

www.katherinehilden.com

Matisse at the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Posted in Color, Composition, Master drawings, Technique and Demo, tagged Baltimore Museum, Brenda Richardson, Cohn Sisters, Dr Claribel and Miss Etta, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Large Reclining Nude, Matisse on December 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »

“There were two of them, they were sisters, they were large women, they were rich, they were very different one from the other one…”—Gertrude Stein

The Cohn sisters, Claribel Cone (1864–1929) and Etta Cone (1870–1949), lived in Baltimore, traveled extravagantly and amassed an extensive art collection. Claribel called her apartment in the Marlborough in Baltimore “the museum.” They knew not only Gertrude Stein but also Picasso and Matisse. Matisse became a friend and visited them in Baltimore in the 1930’s.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art has put together a Matisse show gleaned from the Cone collection that is well worth the drive.

If you can’t make it to Indy before the show closes on January 12, you can pick up a copy of Brenda Richardson’s “Dr. Claribel and Miss Etta,” 1985, which has excellent reproductions of Matisse drawings and paintings in the collection. I own a copy and have studied the paintings in reproduction there, but seeing the originals…Oh!

The book has all twenty-one stages of “Large Reclining Nude” that are buried under the final version, the twenty-second layer of paint. Matisse worked on the painting from May to October 1935 and took photographs at twenty-one stages of its development. This is fascinating enough. You think! But seeing the original, now in Indy for the exhibit, reveals yet another aspect of how hard he worked on this painting. He struggled with color. To get the color dynamic right, he pinned swatches of color paper or cloth onto the canvas. You can see the pin holes!

This is a smart show. It stresses the work process. Matisse looks fast and loose, doesn’t he?! Makes you feel light and freed from conventions. Go to Indy and see how hard he worked to make you feel that way.

http://www.katherinehilden.com

Ancestors: No Sugar Coating, Please.

Posted in Achievement, Composition, faces, Imagination, literalness, tagged 1920's, alienation, ancestors, bride and groom, Cynthia, glamorize, irony, Matisse, old photo, Picasso, sentimentalize on March 16, 2013| 2 Comments »

The model for this charcoal drawing was an old photo, probably taken in the 1920’s. Cynthia worked from the well-preserved, 7” high oval original.

The emotions that inevitably accompany family photos can serve either a) as fuel to keep you working at the drawing or b) they can get in the way and overwhelm you. The class was divided along that line about half and half.

One of the people whose work was fueled by the emotions emanating from these oldies was Cynthia, who produced this strong drawing. The couple is handsome, but the artist did not glamorize them. It’s their wedding photo, but she did not sentimentalize them.

There are three elements in this drawing, as in the photo: man, woman and bouquet. Notice that the flowers are worked out in greater detail than the people. The outer half of the man’s face is not attended to at all. The woman’s face is asymmetrical, problematic and suggestive of

complexity.There’s a dark objectivity here, alienation even, reminiscent of the faces by Matisse and Picasso. This is good. Staying away from the pretty and the flattering and allowing yourself to drift into irony and alienation is good because it makes you think. Cynthia’s drawing comes out of a modern sensibility: it roughs you up a bit, because it avoids the clichés about weddings, happiness and destiny.

The drawing as a whole, showing the bride, groom and the flowers, sets up all sorts of tensions. The drawing is so strong that each of the three elements (man, women, bouquet) can also stand on its own. I’m showing these individually because each deserves close study. After looking closely, go back to look at the whole drawing, shown at the very top.

Gertrude Stein and the Salon Style

Posted in Galleries, Seeing, tagged Beaux Arts, experience, Gallery, Gertrude Stein, Matisse, Paris, Picasso, Salon, Wilmette Library on November 27, 2012| 2 Comments »

The Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, founded in the early 17^th century, became the training ground and the standard for fine art in Europe. Starting in the 18^th century its graduates showed their work in an official exhibit, called the Salon. The Salon was a celebrated, standard-setting event and it was huge. The paintings covered the walls from floor to ceiling.

When you hang works one above the other, that’s called the Salon style. That sounds elegant, but the effect is what we would now call cluttered. Clutter was not a problem for the Victorians and certainly not for the 18^th and 17^th century. For our venerable ancestors, it was all about more is better. Restraint and understatement come with Modernism. That’s because the modern sensibility wants an experience. Well, you might ask, what else would anyone want? We take it for granted that art is about experience. But ‘twas not ever thus, apparently.

People used to go to public events because it was the thing to do—a social and civic exercise–not because they expected a transforming experience. We moderns go in search of an experience. Therefore, we want to see one painting at a time, at eye level, thank you, so that we can have a one-on-one. We want to look up close at the brush strokes, step back for a different take, immerse ourselves, introspect, observe our reaction, register surprise or delight, grab a little aesthetic experience. One at a time is called the Gallery Style.

The Wilmette Library Show is hung Salon Style. When you go to see it you’re not wearing a top hat or a bustle, because you’re a Modern and so the show looks cluttered. The experience you go in search of does not happen.

Gertrude Stein hoarded works by Picasso and Matisse in the early decades of the 20^th century and she hung her collection Salon Style. She was a quintessential Modern, but she was also a hoarder who lived in a Parisian apartment with limited closet space. What to do? Can’t stop collecting. Go Salon Style.

Matisse and Ivan

Posted in abstraction, Color, Composition, Imagination, inspiration, Landscape, literalness, tagged abstract, composition, horizontal, inspiration, Ivan, Matisse, vertical on March 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

How did this painting come about? How did the artist start? What was the inspiration? What was the goal?

Ivan Tshilds started with a small photo of a mountain ridge and a red sunset. This was actually a fragment he had isolated from a larger photo. His canvas was about 24” x 20.”

He rendered the photo literally, but without any detailing or fine brush strokes. This first stage went very fast and the result was boring: we read a photo differently than a painting or drawing, with different expectations and different associations.

To take it out of the literal, he clarified the horizontality of the composition. In this second stage, the painting consisted of horizontal stripes; from top to bottom: purple, blue, orange and green. This was the decisive step, because once he freed himself of the intention to produce a sunset painting, he was able to work with the painting itself, reacting to colors and shapes as such. In this mode, the search for meaning continues, but is not tied to pre-ordained, outside references. The task turns into an adventure.

He tuned the colors in relation to one another and their widths. In the next class I brought in a large reproduction of Matisse’s “Port-Fenêtre à Collioure,” 1914, a large painting, which consists of vertical stripes plus a drab charcoal colored horizontal element at the bottom. Ivan’s painting seemed to need a counter-stripe to pull everything together. At first he experimented with such an element, but the effort failed—only in the direct sense. Instead, seeing his painting with this possibility, he experimented with and found other, more subtle ways to link the stripes. Notice how, in his painting, the small “intrusions” relate to one another and cause the eye to move through the whole surface. This way of thinking also lead to faint lines, a kind of “marbling,” that ignores the color boundaries and also serves to unify the composition. Doesn’t that sound like an adventure!? The painting took over and came alive.

But wait, there’s more. Remember, he’s been working on this painting with the stripes horizontal. When he thought he had it finished, he felt he needed yet another fresh look at the thing and so he turned it sideways. Seeing a painting in a different orientation helps you catch patterns and biases that you had gotten used to and therefore stopped noticing. Now comes the surprise: his painting works better with the stripes vertical. Agree?

Why is that?

(The book I brought in for the Matisse is “The Shock of the New,” 1980, by Robert Hughes. Superb writing, highly recommended.)

The Joy of Drawing

Posted in Life drawing, Technique and Demo, Watercolor, tagged calme, luxe, materials, Matisse, Stabilo, volupte on April 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I did this small drawing (6×10) yesterday from fast poses, about one to three minutes. Now, a day later, it reminds me of Matisse’s painting, “Luxe, Calme et Volupté,” 1905. Not in technique, but in the sense of pleasure that it conveys. In the Matisse painting, as in my drawing, the nudes are at ease and are loosely sketched, without much fuss about anatomy.

But there’s another connection and that has to do with the pleasure of doing the work. I can’t speak for Matisse, though he must have enjoyed the freedom of those wild colors in his Fauve years. (“Fauve” means wild beast.)

I’ll speak for myself and the materials I used. This drawing is done on mat board, specifically 4-ply museum grade mat board. Now, mat board is not intended to be drawn on; it lacks fiber and sizing. I think of it as compressed lint. But, oh, it is luxurious to draw on, if you give it a thin coat of clear acrylic gel. This seals the natural ragediness of the mat board, making it friendlier to the friction of the pencil. The pencil I used here is the Stabilo-Aquarellable (see post 4.19.11) which loves the mat boards cushy surface. It sinks in at the slightest pressure, produces a rich velvety line and deposits lots of black stuff for later washes.

When I’m preaching the importance of pleasure in drawing I’m perhaps a bit reactionary, in the sense that our contemporary art tends to the conceptual, the constructed, the engineered, the ironic, the alienated. That’s fine, I love having my brain tickled. But the artist’s rapport with the materials themselves has been suppressed, possibly even lost. You can be sure that the original modernists, like Picasso and Matisse, loved their paints and their charcoal, their brushes and papers, their glops of paint and their drips. They loved the mess and the physicality.

So, here’s the moral of the story: Draw on any surface that feels good. I don’t mean your neighbor’s garage door, but neither do I mean to say that the paper or canvas has to come from a sanctified art supply store. Experiment with supports! Ditto pencil, pens, markers, brushes, sticks. Take time to muck about with the materials and find something that—to you– feels like “luxe, calme et volupté.”

http://www.marciawoodgallery.com/luxe_calme/essay.html