Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a prodigy. He drew incessantly as a child, filling the margins of his school books with sketches. His father, an art teacher, is said to have handed his son his own brushes and paints, saying, “here, you have surpassed me.” When Picasso was fourteen, his drawings looked like this.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), the son of a strict Calvinist minister, was interested in drawing as a child and as a young adult while he worked as an assistant art dealer, teacher and missionary. It wasn’t until his late twenties that he devoted himself to art full time. At the age of twenty seven, his drawing looked awkward and tortured.
I cringe when I look at this. But he persisted. He worked at it, for ten years, never achieving the grace of Picasso’s draftsmanship. Van Gogh is not admired for his drawings, but for the evocative power of his paintings. The passion we sense in his paintings relies on primary colors and, oddly enough, an unaffected calligraphy in the handling of the brush, course and immediate.
A graceful line can be so admirable as to challenge imitation. But not everybody can make a line dance. What to do? Must the line dance? What if, like Van Gogh’s ten years after the above drawing, it screams, groans, and pounds its fists in rage? What if the line you produce speaks a language you have never heard before?
The next few posts here will be devoted to my students’ recent work. Amazing things happen in that drawing class all the time. That’s because (I think) the students are beginning to respond to their own markmaking, their own line quality, their own dynamics. None of them are Picassos.
An article on Picasso’s early work: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/09/picassos_fascinating_early_works/
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It’s a small painting, only about 12” x 14”. As you look at it here, try to imagine it large, say 36” x 48”. We react differently to paintings, depending on their size. Small looks precious and controllable. A large painting envelopes us, becomes part of the atmosphere. Perhaps this work by Maria Palacios will inspire a larger incarnation of itself.
artamaze by Katherine Hilden 