tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post8623213601557095207..comments2024-03-18T11:06:05.506-04:00Comments on ILLUSTRATION ART: EXCITEMENT, VICTORIAN STYLEDavid Apatoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11293486149879229016noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-66528438376073211142017-01-22T23:42:33.502-05:002017-01-22T23:42:33.502-05:00I like to encourage people who, now and again, pre...I like to encourage people who, now and again, pretend to "encourage any sort of intellectual exchange" to either contribute something to said intellectual exchange, offer an alternate line of discussion, or keep silent. This being the internet, the exit is in every conceivable direction; so there's really no reason to hang around complaining in any particular forum. <br /><br />But if you truly cannot resist leaving a snide comment, please have a sense of humor. Otherwise you're just interrupting for no reason and wasting everybody's time.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-17849266669055285652017-01-22T12:17:22.083-05:002017-01-22T12:17:22.083-05:00I like to encourage any sort of intellectual excha...I like to encourage any sort of intellectual exchange—however this is more like a pot-luck. You might compare it to a choreographed saloon fight in a old John Wayne movie, hit somebody over the head with a chair for change of pace—or bust a whiskey bottle on the edge of the bar for a little excitement. As Cole Porter would say, "Why heaven knows, anything goes!"Paul Sullivanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07953800994005887026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-61978400482074345712017-01-21T16:50:41.045-05:002017-01-21T16:50:41.045-05:00Tom: "An artist like Hokusai certainly did no...Tom: "An artist like Hokusai certainly did not think flatly. Look at his studies for his prints and he clearly drew in the round"<br /><br />i think of those Japanese artists of the Edo period as drawing in 'relief' (or semi-relief) i.e. they composed their drawings for a completely artificial, semi-flattened space (for the viewer). if you 'moved the camera' the whole fiction would fall apart very quickly... which isn't a criticism at all. <br /><br />David: "A drawing works in the spotlight on a tightrope without a net" <br /><br />i understand entirely where David is coming from in his likening of drawing to chamber music. the drawn pencil / charcoal line or slash of brush laden with watercolour leaves a mark on the surface which can't be undone ('mistakes' and all) - like the stroke of a bow on a solo cello's strings. <br />it has an immediacy which can't be erased or worked over (as an oil painting can). <br /><br />i also think that the graphic clarity of Japanese drawings have an equivalent in chamber music with their use of sinuous line against empty space.Laurence Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11988700485839219253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-59674556248078053872017-01-21T10:58:41.981-05:002017-01-21T10:58:41.981-05:00Al McLuckie, I agree that the absence of drawing i...Al McLuckie, I agree that the absence of drawing in Fuchs leaves does gnaw away at one, but the poetry as it has been referred to is found in other devices, its edges, scale and graphic movement and also its relation to the subject. He was able to achieve considerable tenderness, despite the absence of drawing in his work and his overuse of the warm, agreeable, or nostalgic as subject matter. <br /><br />If tenderness is a deeply felt experience, then thoughtfulness is that thought either born of such, or brought to heel before the presence of tenderness. In the first image of next post, Raleigh uses form to serve abandonment. In the bottom image he brings thought before a deeply felt tenderness as conscience, the beautifully drawn helpless young woman and baby. <br /><br />Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-70931628840288130372017-01-21T02:11:33.691-05:002017-01-21T02:11:33.691-05:00If you took some Fuchs on a time-machine , and sho...If you took some Fuchs on a time-machine , and showed them to some artists of earlier periods prior to photo tracing as a base for painting , maybe the artists would be stunned , not understanding the process involved . "How does he get this precision in element placement without the searching lines and strokes ?" <br /><br />Like being thrilled by an illusion , then seeing the mechanics behind it , the magic can be lessened . When I began discovering Frazetta swipes , it affected my enjoyment of some pieces - nagging at the back of my mind . <br /><br />Still looking forward to the first of the forthcoming Fuchs volumes however .<br /><br />Al McLuckie<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-49317608404276495572017-01-20T10:16:52.379-05:002017-01-20T10:16:52.379-05:00Continued
The Maxfield Parrish on the other hand i...Continued<br />The Maxfield Parrish on the other hand is immediately recognize as a photo. The polka dots travel across the terrain of the cloth admirably but they don't have the life of a Watteau cloth or that wonderful red dress in the Henry Raleigh drawing in your next post, to my mind. Like Al McLuckie's comment early about Fuchs, the photo reference always nags at the back of one's mind. It reminds me of the Bridgeman's statement that you quoted in an earlier discussion, one does not feel that the artist has, "constructed his house, before painting it."<br /><br />As Sean wrote earlier a pattern can travel around and trough space, but it has to travel on something, and that something is a plane and a plane is only the surface of a volume. Clearly there is a hierarchy of order here, the volume precedes the smaller details or patterns that ride upon it, like a zebra's strips.<br /><br />Choosing one warm color like "fire engine'" red or orange or yellow with black is a wonderful color combination which I would say is a decorative choice. Wasn't it a pretty common color choice by illustrators at the time because of the limitations of the printing press? Or something like that? Harold Von Schmidt did some wonderful paintings in black and brunt sienna whose paintings seem so much more full of life because he constructed the forms his brush travelled over instead of tracing and already existing image. IMHO!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Tomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04641223414745777056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-67326038242662832072017-01-20T10:16:42.117-05:002017-01-20T10:16:42.117-05:00There are a number of great illustrators who featu...There are a number of great illustrators who featured patterns prominently and worked with 2D outlines but who clearly liked to demonstrate that they could think in 3D space."<br /><br /><br />Hi David<br />I don't know how Kev would respond to Hokusai's print of the wave. But like Kev wrote, I wasn't degrading pattern to some nether world. Pattern makes art possible and it's beautiful. My point was in regards to Dow's book. Copying and tracing outlines of things will never teach someone how to draw like Hokusai, let alone a boat like Hokusai, no matter how many times Dow breaks his pictures into line and different value patterns.<br /><br />The whole modern approach of tracing/drawing the contours or outside edge of objects never considers how near or far a line is in relation to the viewer of the picture. One only has to look at the examples you provided to see the difference between a modern contour drawing and someone who has learned to construct or better yet, to draw the forms he sees or imagines.<br /><br />The Cole Phillips paintings are like little stage sets, with a clear horizontal stage (ground plane) for his actors. The stage recedes perfectly into the background, into space, but he doesn't want your eye to travel to far back so he keeps the space shallow, like a room and puts up a vertical wall perpendicular to the stage and frames the actors.<br /><br />The woman in green, the foot is clearly forward of her body, and one realizes the far contour of her top right thigh is farther back in space then the outline edge of her lower left leg on the floor. Look at the white fringe of her skirt on the ground see how it lays horizontally on the horizontal ground it rests upon. And see how it turns the corner at her left knee and heads the fringe toward the back of the picture.<br /><br /><br />The other big thing he does, which is what a lot of early modern French painters did, which is beautiful , is he merges the edges of things by refusing to change his the value scale. Like Corot's Italian landscape paintings, he doesn't over model the interior of his forms, in fact unlike Corot he doesn't model the interior of his forms at all. <br /><br />That is what I meant by decorative. The artist chooses what he will emphasis in his work, what colors he will use and how many values he feels is sufficient for what he wants to describe or express. I am sure Cole Phillips could have modeled up his pictures if had wanted too.<br /><br />Look at how wonderful Hokusai handle the drawing of his fisherman who are at a 45 degree angle to the center line of their boat (whose flat top deck, is as clearly drawn as Cole Phillips stage) who seem to be bowing down to the immeasurable power of the great wave they are approaching. Like the Cole Phillips paintings one feels like you could fit the whole scene into a stage set.<br />Tomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04641223414745777056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-67589628032488339362017-01-20T09:31:18.295-05:002017-01-20T09:31:18.295-05:00By the way, I am not saying that Pollock and Rothk...By the way, I am not saying that Pollock and Rothko's works are NOT visual music. They are. But only because all visual arrangements can be thought of as visual music in a very broad sense. kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-3312205699503421132017-01-20T09:26:27.576-05:002017-01-20T09:26:27.576-05:00Yet there are all these people making these grandi...Yet there are all these people making these grandiose a-philosophical comparisons. Probably because that has been the popular teaching. This has been shoved down our throats. And if we are to consider ourselves well educated we have to believe all the correct things, no matter how blatantly incorrect; even when the beliefs are hype and lies written into our minds by political hacks, auctioneers drooling at the hordes of credulous swells looking to invest, and their scribes in the media. Meanwhile the artists who really understood the musicality of their form go entirely without credit because they drew and painted like angels, in a bad, bad era, and believed bad, bad things. And, by Jove, <i>that is not allowed!</i> <br /><br />You want to see real visual music, look at <a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/42/62/24/426224dfb475e330fc049bc1065ba638.jpg" rel="nofollow"> Kotarbinski’s Orgy, </a> look at <a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5c/49/40/5c4940b16aaa5b827e860f12f524a34b.jpg" rel="nofollow"> any painting or mural by Brangwyn,</a> or any <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k-IG3lQKTs0/TrCehMd_BlI/AAAAAAAABCM/4G4GUv3V_zA/s1600/Everett+flapper.jpg" rel="nofollow"> Everett he put time into.</a> If we have any appreciation for music at all, anybody on this thread, anybody in the world, the mapping of music to these kinds of works is <i>evident and obvious;</i> theme, rhythm, beat, melody, sonority, keys, counterpoint, narrative abstraction, passages, instrumentation... the whole lot of it. The entire suite of features associated with music is there. And simply by comparing these kinds of works to Pollock and Rothko's, even in the baldest, most surface way, the lack of equivalence is blindingly evident. But if anyone cared to push beyond the surface, to what is actually going on beneath, it would be evident that this obvious visual distinction has nothing to do with opinion. This is wholly a formal matter. The musicality is structural.<br /><br />See, I don't hate abstraction at all. My antipathy towards Rothko and Pollock has nothing to do with them or their work. What I hate is bluff, hype, uninformed opinion, blind obedience to authority, the arrogance of acceptable wisdom, and the snarling mob's interest in laying low the great; particularly, in this case, the many brilliant artists who sacrificed so much and slaved themselves to bring us the dream of beauty and meaning unified. To elevate fashionable mediocrity to the level of greatness is, de facto, to pull down greatness from its rightful perch. And I won't have it. No matter who I make enemies of. I don't care what names I'm called.<br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-91955763957949206892017-01-20T09:26:06.980-05:002017-01-20T09:26:06.980-05:00the issue that jumps out at me is that music for t...<b>the issue that jumps out at me is that music for the most part operates at a level of abstraction that you begrudge the visual arts. If you can accept the artistic rules governing Chopin or Stravinsky, why do you have such little regard for the artistic rules governing Rothko or Pollock?</b><br /><br />Jesus. This is just more profound misunderstanding, David. Am I really that abstruse? Because I swear I am trying to make myself as completely clear as possible. I'll say it one more time...<br /><br /><b>I have no problem with abstraction at all.</b> I am utterly fascinated with the principles of abstraction, in music and art. I've been a musician and artist all my life. And the amount of research I've done on how it applies to art, the amount written and the demos would choke a wood chipper. <br /><br />I really DO NOT have a "problem" per se with Rothko or Pollock. People can make and like any art they want. What's my business what people like or do? But there are a lot of claims about Rothko and Pollock which simply aren't true. Like for instance thinking that their works are composed with anything like the sophistication of Chopin, let alone Stravinsky! Such comparisons show NO sensitivity to what is going on in music, how orderly it is, just how it is abstract, how it is narrative, how mathematized its foundational elements, the tenets of compositional organization and expression, tone, harmony, and so, so much more. The comparison is absurd. So absurd I can't believe anybody would make it outside of a booby hatch.<br /><br />Rothko and Pollock register barely a blip on the radar of what great music has accomplished. They are feeble even at the level of abstraction, if that word still means what it is supposed to mean, which is not the same as vagueness functioning as a psychological projection test. They are designers, both of them. And good ones, in that they have accomplished new and popular decorative styles, respectively. And that is no mean feat, creatively. If you want to call it art, go ahead. But don't pretend its artful in the same way as Fechin or Antonio Mancini.<br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-16486576120624489822017-01-20T03:52:16.285-05:002017-01-20T03:52:16.285-05:00Kev Ferrara-- Sorry for misconstruing your take o...Kev Ferrara-- Sorry for misconstruing your take on the value of the individual elements of the "holy" troika. Perhaps it's my sense from previous discussions that you consider painting an inherently superior art form to drawing. Perhaps it was what I read into your characterization of draftsmanship as "ultra" sensitive or your use of the term "dematerialization," but in any event I'm glad we're on the same page. It makes sense. I never doubted that you were better than the Art Renewal crowd.<br /><br />As for the connection between music and visual arts, I agree that it is a rich area for consideration but the issue that jumps out at me is that music for the most part operates at a level of abstraction that you begrudge the visual arts. If you can accept the artistic rules governing Chopin or Stravinsky, why do you have such little regard for the artistic rules governing Rothko or Pollock?<br /><br />Sean Farrell-- Circling back to your comments about Briggs that helped launch this whole rabbit trail, I share your high regard for his work, and agree with your comments about Fawcett. Briggs wrote some of the more thoughtful passages about photography and drawing, and about art generally, but unlike some of the pontificators criticized above, he was a real artist who mastered traditional tools and, after several years of oil painting, turned to the "simpler" medium of expressive drawing.<br /> David Apatoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11293486149879229016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-39201971428673383642017-01-19T19:30:35.566-05:002017-01-19T19:30:35.566-05:00Kev, A little tone doesn't destroy the nature ...Kev, A little tone doesn't destroy the nature of the line. These variations were covered earlier and Briggs used tone in limited amounts. There's a middle ground where a build out from shadow isn't entirely finished. Tiepolo's drawings had tone in them without destroying the nature of the line and they were tied together in a bunch of ways besides light / shadow which was a unifying force. Master paintings and drawings do make multiple uses of elements and connect them in a multiple ways that are not all visible or easily read. And nobody is saying a painting doesn't have far more tools at its disposal to further weave connections. <br /><br />Fawcett also was a line artist but he relied heavily on a buildout from dark. Briggs did the same if called for, like a terrific night scene in the 1961 annual of some civil war soldiers lit by gaslight before a tent, but where Fawcett rarely ventured away from dark to light drawings, Briggs intentionally avoided such when he could and he used tone graphically. What makes Briggs interesting is that of so many people working in line, ink and washes during his era, he made a special effort to explore and understand drawing as line and those efforts were quite thoughtful and often intriguing. That can't be taken away from him. I can't pretend I always understood what he was up to.Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-41946632785015132842017-01-19T16:06:44.138-05:002017-01-19T16:06:44.138-05:00All great art is song-like. That's how the bra...All great art is song-like. That's how the brandywine artists taught and thought about their work as evidenced in their notes and their results. And Pyle said he began teaching to pass on what was already known and being lost with modernist thinking. So this was not an original thought with him. This idea of art as music is a huge adventure of the mind to examine and contemplate, and a bit of a danger as well because the metaphor is inexact in how musicality maps between the artforms.<br /><br />I don't dispute that a work wholly in line can be masterful, emotionally cathartic, transcendentally beautiful. But I ain't seen one. Almost invariably a little tone is thrown in there, which is a different instrument. Just as, invariably if you see a string quartet its not just a bunch of violins, but includes several sizes of the basic violin idea so people can play in different ranges and qualities of sound. A piano is about four instruments in one, maybe ten if playing chords, when you compare it to any single reed instrument which can only play a single note at once in a fairly limited note range.<br /><br />Well, what is the range of line? There is thin reedy pencil lines to thick bossy ink lines, smooth to wiggly to scratchy. But at a certain thickness a line becomes a stripe and we are on to a different graphic instrument because now the value of that line is reading as its own color and value distinct from the line itself. And if we cross hatch or stipple or create a tight pattern with line then we are creating a tone; again, a different instrument. This is assuming that by "line" you mean line alone. The major drawback with line is that it only has texture, timbre, and emphasis. It has no color per se.<br /><br />I would love to be proven wrong. Maybe the problem is that I haven't pursued pure line as a serious artform unto itself, so I don't really know its capacities. I have ventured into mostly line with a bit of tone thrown in many times, however. kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-58024920166842369832017-01-19T15:20:38.224-05:002017-01-19T15:20:38.224-05:00Throughout history, there are linear patterned art...<b>Throughout history, there are linear patterned art forms-- oriental rugs, Chinese bronzes, Islamic tiles and manuscripts-- surely you cannot think they are all categorically inferior to a fully painted solution? </b><br /><br />This conflates <i>Objects of Art</i> with Art. Both are wonderful, but they are different kinds of communication, fundamentally. Conflating them destroys the possibility of understanding the beauty of what distinguishes them. If one only wants to discuss all beautiful things as equivalent, there won't be much to talk about. <br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-72046105893387917322017-01-19T15:15:02.409-05:002017-01-19T15:15:02.409-05:00David,
If you think I was suggesting that the com...David,<br /><br />If you think I was suggesting that the combination of pattern, beautiful drawing and dematerialization was some kind of negative thing, an "unholy troika"... you have me totally totally totally wrong. I believe the complete opposite, that this was one of the absolute keys to how art got so damn good. The only other feature absent from that recipe is an expressive point, which is the very thing which guides the other three and provides them with a "central nervous system" as you so eloquently coined it.<br /><br />So, there is no need to explain to me the merits of pattern as if I were a upstanding member of the Art Renewal Society. That ain't me.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-55414809788402115232017-01-19T14:39:42.471-05:002017-01-19T14:39:42.471-05:00David, I don't know if an experience can be m...David, I don't know if an experience can be measured by the multiplicity of its connections because each experience has its own depth and simplicity can so deeply move a person. There's no doubt that even a popular song can continue to reveal connections over decades because for one reason or another we don't hear everything at any given time. And there's no doubt a tenderness in a certain interweaving of visual elements that produces its own experience in space and time. I think the trouble with the unfortunate divide between the two camps of graphic art with that of form built out from dark to light is that each group stops bothering to look at the other and much is missed and misunderstood.<br /><br />In art for contemplation there are people who feel a symbolic image is more truthful because it separates that which we can know from what we can't know. That idea alone is a mind boggling twist to presumptions. Yes, I agree with your comment about the tightrope and Bill Waterson's funny line too. Very good. Who can argue that simple orchestration can be powerful, like Part's Lamentations? I am deeply grateful for what Kev has been trying to say regarding the 19th century paintings, the multiplicity of connections, form, etc. So too with Tom and Chris and others. I am very grateful, but I couldn't let it stand that Briggs was but a tracer. Yes David, your first paragraph to Tom I also appreciate. I much appreciate your interests and latitude. That's an art in itself. Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-76869234627274977762017-01-19T12:33:15.853-05:002017-01-19T12:33:15.853-05:00Tom-- Like Hokusai, a lot of artists who found del...Tom-- Like Hokusai, a lot of artists who found delight working in flat patterns did not start out "thinking" flatly. Yet, I assume that Kev would say that Hokusai's masterpiece, "The Wave," was limited in its potential because of its flat, linear style. There are a number of great illustrators who featured patterns prominently and worked with 2D outlines but who clearly liked to demonstrate that they could think in 3D space. Coles Phillips practically made a career of doing that. ( http://www.americanartarchives.com/phillips_aymf_page7.jpg or http://www.americanartarchives.com/phillips_l20feb08.jpg ). Maxfield Parrish is another example. ( http://posterscene.com/images/items/full/colliers.jpg ). I don't think anyone would dispute that Parrish understood the "mass or volume" in that Collier's cover, although he clearly worked from a photograph, and I would not call those eye popping polka dots or that fire engine red background just a matter of "how the artist decorates" the 3D foundation of his picture. I think they are the very essence of his picture's character (just as Picasso's use of flat patterns and shapes was at the core of some of his work. <br /><br />Sean Farrell said, "Kev wrote a beautiful couple of sentences on the capacity of the individual instrument to make poetry and also to be part of the poetry of the whole orchestra. I was under the impression that such was a common understanding." <br /><br />Sean, that is my understanding as well, but as I think back to Kev's point, I believe we still disagree about whether a full symphonic piece is an art form superior to chamber music, or a piano sonata. I understand that coordinating numerous individual instruments to make the poetry of a whole orchestra requires great skill and experience, just as coordinating all the ingredients of a mature oil painting requires greater skill and experience than picking up a pencil. (Or, as you suggested, "Painting is also an old man's game because one only gets better at it over a lifetime. But not everyone views drawing this way.") I am not alone in my view that Beethoven's chamber music or Chopin's compositions for a sole piano can achieve artistic excellence just as high, or higher, than a full symphony. An orchestra, like an oil painting, can hide a multitude of sins within its layers and its ambiguities and its takeovers. A drawing works in the spotlight on a tightrope without a net. Or as Bill Watterson said, "You drop your pants with every line you draw." <br />David Apatoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11293486149879229016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-82125581207606992242017-01-19T11:52:42.569-05:002017-01-19T11:52:42.569-05:00I forgot to add that flat patterns also define spa...I forgot to add that flat patterns also define space when wrapped around things. They can go somewhere and they can come from somewhere. They can unite and divide and they can be hidden in plain sight as darks and lights on any number of objects. Pattern is one of the fundamental visual expressions in nature and art. Of course patterns are capable of great beauty and use. The only thing that seems to be linear is the hyper definition which one dimensionalizes the multiple properties of artistic elements. So yes David, I fully agree with you.Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-57930789390165809212017-01-19T11:46:23.928-05:002017-01-19T11:46:23.928-05:00An artist like Hokusai certainly did not think fla...An artist like Hokusai certainly did not think flatly. Look at his studies for his prints and he clearly drew in the round, that is he drew dimensionally. You can restrict the depth of space in a picture like Pierre Puvis de Chavannes but still draw solidly. The problem with a book like Dow's he never reveals the effort it took to get to the shapes. Tarcing the outline of something is not the same as drawing which considers 3 dimensional space. Once you have conceived a mass or volume how the artist decorates it is up to himTomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04641223414745777056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-81513814505491613932017-01-19T10:56:21.913-05:002017-01-19T10:56:21.913-05:00David, In the post on Godwin, Kev wrote a beautifu...David, In the post on Godwin, Kev wrote a beautiful couple of sentences on the capacity of the individual instrument to make poetry and also to be part of the poetry of the whole orchestra. I was under the impression that such was a common understanding. <br /><br />I wasn't putting Fuchs down, rather I thought his understandings of what he was doing regarding a particular composition and also passage, eluded that of his many imitators and even his peers who were influenced by him. It's a credit to him, but a side effect was a loss of drawing. At least, a side effect of the entire field moving in this direction brought for a time confusion and at least a minimizing of drawing. Though line drawing lingered on for some time, its most prolific use may have been in the 1961 SI annual edited by Robert Fawcett.<br /><br />Besides the beauty captured in the ancient flat art, there are also cultural priorities which are now considered linear or creations of the mind and not part of the visual hierarchy. The ancient preoccupation with death and the afterlife which animated so much art is now considered not a valid part of art, a non-art linear concern? This is where I have found myself most at odds here as I do believe the hierarchal ordering of a picture does follow such and that having lost touch with culture, art has been imprisoned in its own parts. The Soul of A Rose I think is a fair example of a cultural presence. <br /><br />That said, parts are not by their nature imprisoned to themselves or incapable of performing multiple duties in relation to other things. They are not linear in any way because even a line divides space as it moves through it and it does so with a particular tempo in time. The same holds true for pattern which does the same and encompasses areas in time. The multiplicity of uses of simple visual devises comes through in The Soul of A Rose. My position here is that Briggs and Fuchs, Potter and the French fashion artists mentioned where adding to our understandings to what line drawing was and wasn't. That an inherent conflict in specifically drawing in line needed to find and did find its own solutions in the work of these artists.<br /><br />I agree with you wholeheartedly, that when we dismiss simple movement, rhythms and identifications, we become like the imprisoned Alzheimer's patients who are shut in within themselves. In these simple things there is life. Movement however simplistic is beautiful and possesses a spirit with multiple characteristics and dismissing such as one dimensional is a mistake. If there is one analogy which captures the beauty of drawing, it is like a song.Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-13755488520345370852017-01-19T05:10:51.691-05:002017-01-19T05:10:51.691-05:00Sean Farrell and Kev Ferrara-- I want to revisit t...Sean Farrell and Kev Ferrara-- I want to revisit the issue that Sean introduced as "flatness" and that Kev reshaped as "pattern / dematerialization." (Kev combined flat pattern, ultra sensitive draftsmanship and dematerialization into an unholy troika, but I want to hold back on the draftsmanship point for the moment and focus on the "pattern/dematerialization." <br /><br />I agree with your insightful discussions of how flat patterns evolved through art from the 19th century into what Sean describes in a flattering light as as "new types of compositions [such as Peak, Potter, Parker, Whitmore, etc.] which were flatter and more graphic" and which Kev seems to view as a more inimical trend toward atomization into pleasant colors and shapes which lack a central nervous system. As no one else has done so yet, I wish to speak up for pattern and suggest that it is wider, older, and capable of playing a more important role than at least Kev suggests. <br /><br />Everyone understands the influence of Japonism (and the flat patterns of Hokusai, Eizan, Eisen, etc.) on Degas, Lautrec, Bonnard, Manet, van Gogh, Beardsley, Mucha, etc. stretching into the sacred spring crowd such as Klimt. I think they also had a demonstrable impact on Leyendecker, Maxfield Parrish, and yea even unto Mark English. And that's not counting its influence spilling over into architecture (Frank Lloyd Wright) glass and ceramics (Tiffany) etc. That trend was renewed with the Tut-mania that enveloped the world starting in 1922, when Egyptian patterns were at the heart of art deco and again affected taste (including artists such as Leyendecker again), architecture (the Chrysler building), movies, jewelry, etc. Without the equivalent of a DNA test, it's difficult to come up with a scientifically verifiable genealogical chart to track these influences but I feel pretty safe in saying that a number of artists that even Kev respects were charmed by, and made important aesthetic use of, flat patterns and designs.<br /><br />It's hard to do this without examples, so please forgive my referring to an old blog post about patterns, for a collection of images ( http://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2013/08/what-patterns-are-for.html ) As you'll see, flat patterns and designs were there 40,000 years ago at the birth of art and at the birth of conceptual thinking. As far as we can tell they reflected totemistic or religious thinking, easily as profound as the content of many of the more descriptive paintings that evolved millennia later. <br /><br />But content aside, I think that the the flat, linear art (or what Kev describes as " the set of design solutions that follow from linear thinking") may be just as powerful, beautiful, moving and sophisticated as Kev's most accomplished oil painters. The Degas paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are wonderful but when I go downstairs to the ancient Egyptian wing, I see artistic excellence that is easily at the same level, despite the fact that it does not employ the full symphony of artistic elements, the coordination of which Kev values so much. Apart from personal taste, I don't know why a more comprehensive art form should necessarily be superior, just as complexity is not necessarily superior to simplicity. Throughout history, there are linear patterned art forms-- oriental rugs, Chinese bronzes, Islamic tiles and manuscripts-- surely you cannot think they are all categorically inferior to a fully painted solution? <br /><br /><br /> David Apatoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11293486149879229016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-51428557589864999202017-01-18T20:53:47.683-05:002017-01-18T20:53:47.683-05:00“But an entire book can be written on just how thi...“But an entire book can be written on just how this one picture works to produce its feelings in the receptive viewer, and this is not really the place for that.”<br /><br />It doesn't matter how many words can be written on the painting. <br /><br />My point in going into the Waterhouse experience was to get past this notion of degrading simple but essential relations into bland and narrow definitions as dumb, just as Dow restrained broad concepts into a few relations. Transition can be practically all relations and yet he restrained it to one architectural movement. He makes such an error and so do you in your observation of Briggs.<br /><br />The interrelationship I was describing in the Waterhouse is an example of pattern, movement, pattern as movement, repetition, nuance, undulation, contrast, tenderness, time, tempo, passage and transition in the context of a simple cultural and human relationship in time created from the same extremely simple elements, not a single element of which can be called dumb or dumb mechanics. I never implied the painting wasn't more and I added that such depth of feeling can be experienced in simpler forms like line drawing. <br /><br />That's why I offered the video as an example of what happens to human beings in a world of pretension, where simple relations of , space, movement, time, and human identity are dismissed as dumb. Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-75590971549314390812017-01-18T16:31:45.713-05:002017-01-18T16:31:45.713-05:00Sean,
Waterhouse is one of the greatest masters o...Sean,<br /><br />Waterhouse is one of the greatest masters of composition, no doubt. His pictures have many ancient secrets and exquisite subtleties, and <i>Soul of the Rose</i> is no exception. There is nothing in it that is unconsidered or unfelt. I think you are feeling him quite deeply and so have fallen into the aesthetic spell of the piece. I too have felt this piece like that, so I know the shuddering feeling down in the soul of which you speak. Regarding the other points; Of course sequential time is considered in all great works of art, and so here we have a particular manifestation of that kind of force which is pitched to resonate with the feeling of this particular piece. But an entire book can be written on just how this one picture works to produce its feelings in the receptive viewer, and this is not really the place for that. I don't know if you are here looking to instruct about art, receive instruction about art or just commune about its various phases including that of appreciation... but if I were asked by someone how to get to the heart of this Waterhouse as a work of artistic engineering, I would suggest beginning with pictures of obvious violence first, and back engineering them to the point of being able to reproduce their effects. And then working back to the subtlety of Waterhouse after being sure of how dumber aesthetic mechanisms function. Just my two cents, fwiw. kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-28397302442422316182017-01-18T11:14:59.045-05:002017-01-18T11:14:59.045-05:00Tom and Kev, If Dow's book was good for anyth...Tom and Kev, If Dow's book was good for anything, it may be that it allowed you both to explain its shortcomings and for Kev to explain his own take on what he observes as a disuniting of things from their relationships and in the process, a disuniting of their relational purposes and meanings as well.<br /><br />After reading a suggestion that a reader compare a Sargent drawing to one of Waterhouse by Chris Bennet some time ago, I began a pencil copy, not ambitious but relaxed, of the painting “The Soul of the Rose” by Waterhouse. As I was drawing the image not so carefully but in a slow enough manner with the side of a pencil, it became apparent that there was a relationship between time and the interrelating patterns of the dark and light between the rose bushes rising and the wall as well as with the patterns on the woman's robe and her gesture to the rose. But something that particularly caught my attention was the torn sleeve of the woman's robe which enforced the feeling of love for a thing over time. As I was moved to a similar relation in time with the image an interior liquid like experience happened I will call hallucinogenic for lack of a better word. The more one looks at the painting, the tempo of the interweaving undulating configuration in the woman's hair and beads in her hair become more apparent and it is in the context of time that the movement acts and so should be viewed. In other words, if one sees the movement too quickly, they aren't seeing it in its proper time.<br />Time is an element in seeing.<br /><br />I would like to add that such has happened looking at line drawings as well where an interrelation of<br />parts has had an equally mesmerizing effect. I would like to suggest that such connectivity is in part movement and part time suggested in the art and in the viewer. One reason I bring this up is because I think there's been a misunderstanding when talking about individual elements which by their nature interact with other things. A pattern interacts with line as it interacts with movement and a pattern need not be an actual decorative element, though the modulating dark and light of the rose bush and wall cause a patterning. In the same way, the forces of the picture plane interacts with stuff in the picture and so on. In this case the painting gently rises in a vertical format. <br /><br />I've also brought this subject up because in a new documentary airing on Netflicks called Alive Inside, elderly people previously thought to be near catatonic Alzheimer's patients experience a remarkable awakening when hearing their favorite music and of course music is of movement. The reason I brought up the cultural disconnect earlier was because I think modern people have lost touch with distinct cultural connections to their most inner callings, the desire to love when there is no one to love, the desire to do some kind thing, like place a blanket over someone who has fallen asleep without waking them up, and yet there's no one to place a blanket over. The desire to make a cup of tea and listen to someone, etc. Such are things which have no convincing explanation, they are not in the fast lane but cultural sensibilities now very much lost not just in our hurried world, but by an antagonism towards anything contemplative or of a human pace. One of the elderly fellows in the documentary when asked what his favorite thing was said, riding a bicycle. The documentary questions some of our modern cultural presumptions. For what it's worth, the trailer.<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWn4JB2YLU<br />Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-72089857645559887452017-01-18T09:35:26.380-05:002017-01-18T09:35:26.380-05:00David, Thanks for your appraisal of the discussion...David, Thanks for your appraisal of the discussion, I much appreciate it. Also, thank you for bringing to rest the mystery of the surface of the Briggs drawing. In that drawing Briggs does some curious things. One is he moves the line designated to separate the abdominal muscles over to the far side in order to further turn the standing figure. <br /><br />When I mentioned that Brigg's son was a scholar on Joyce, my wife responded a touch startled, How does that happen? But later insisted one still had to be from Dublin to understand Joyce. She also said regrettably that young Dubliners now speak in a American style of uptalk. That Ireland lost its language once and kept its culture was sort of amazing, but if they're going to do it again, perhaps these scholars will play an important part.<br /><br />I'm sitting with the 1961 Society of Illustrators annual printed in black and white and the use of line drawing seems to have survived the year 1960 alive and well. There's a drawing by Briggs for TV Guide, Peak's thicker line and a similarly strong line of a hand by Al Parker. The collection of images is overwhelmingly line drawings. Of all the entries in that edition, those by Fuchs, Bowler and Whitmore appear as the most loyal to the photograph. In them Fuchs is showing his interest in the picture that drops from the top. But in images by Fuchs from 1961 and after, there's a distinct change and the edges of shapes begin to soften, like the Gordie Howe Sports Illustrator cover you posted with the observation of a selective loyalty to the photo. I was unaware this change happened so suddenly. I have been referring to his signature style he held from the late 1970s into his gallery days in the 1990s.<br /><br />The drawing of the back of the heads by Fawcett went through my mind as an example where a kind of patterning was used to relieve the edges of the figures in what was a vigorous drawing. The famous one Fuchs commented on was one effort of ambitious drawing. Fawcett must have been a force of nature. Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.com