MY CANDIDATE FOR THE NEXT X-MAN

If Professor X ever goes looking for a super powered mutant with control over color, I recommend he make a beeline for Nathan Fowkes.

For years I've admired Fowkes' astonishing facility with color.

 This recent painting of a rainy London street knocked my socks off:

That jagged lightning bolt of color may look spontaneous, but it has at least ten kinds of smart in it:  

Contrast the color of the reflected light on the sidewalk with the warm light from the traffic headlights behind it, and then the bright light from the clearing skies behind that.  Note how the soft peaked roof of the purple building in the distance is halfway between an urban silhouette and a cloud; it supports, but doesn't compete with, the focal stripe of the painting.  Notice how the pedestrian in the foreground, while high contrast, is reduced to an abstract design which again supports the total painting.  Fowkes doesn't waste our time painting shoe laces (or even feet). 

Each individual pedestrian in the crowd scene is a separate creative invention-- understated, but still worth an appreciative look:

the shadows, too...

 And the glue that holds all the elements together: a great sense of design.

How does Fowkes go about orchestrating a painting like this?  He was kind enough to share his process photos: 

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

 That's the kind of painting that should get you magna cum laude at Professor X's school.

 Josef Albers (1888-1976) worked at Yale University rather than the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning.  At Yale he reigned as a leading 20th century authority on color.  His treatise, The Interaction of Color (1963) is internationally famous, as are the hundreds of paintings and prints in his color series, Homage to the Square. 

  

 

These pictures, some of which have sold for millions of dollars, were carefully designed by Albers to explore what he called "chromatic interactions."

In my view, Albers' tedious explorations under laboratory conditions can't begin to compete with the crackling electricity of Fowkes' paintings.  Albers listens in while his color swatches do all the work. Fowkes, on the other hand, employs color with a spirited, nimble brush.  For Fowkes, color is a means to an end, integrated into real life rather than a laboratory test.  

Fowkes also seems to have a superior appreciation for the role of value.  Look at what he has accomplished with value alone in this marvelous sketch of a tree:

A big, wet, sloppy brush wielded with exquisite control

The "homage to a square" spares Albers from some of the the hardest tests of color--  tests of prioritization, tests of contrast, tests of motion.

 

Rather than paint 27,489 palm fronds, Fowkes selects a few fronds he wants to prioritize, highlighting them against a high contrast background and alters their color accordingly. 

Mighty fine work.

THE THINGS THAT NUDITY REVEALS (part 5)

At the beginning of this series on nudes, I suggested that mapping the human body was similar to uranography, the astronomical science of mapping the cosmos.

One reader inquired: "What the hell are you talking about?"

True, our fragile little bodies are not as big as the universe, but our complexity and variety and capacity are just as vast.

Some planets are immense and fertile:

Gaston Lachaise's view of  his wife as an earth mother

The planet Mercury, closest to the sun, is burning hot on one side and freezing cold on the other:

Stephen Early

The universe was governed by the Newtonian laws of physics until Max Planck came along with quantum theory and said, "Oh yeah?"

Matisse views the human form in new ways

Earth is known as the "water planet."  Here David Hockney liquefies the human form (note the shape of those hands and head) and takes liberties with  the color of human flesh.

Remote planets in the pitch black void are revealed to us only by slivers of light along their perimeter.

Adrian Gottlieb

A celestial cloud of nudes:

Renaissance drawing

 Most of what we infer about the universe comes from glimpses of incomplete fragments.  As with art, we complete the picture by using our imaginations: 

Arkady Roytman

This post is mostly an excuse to share a bunch of additional nudes that I think deserve a wider audience.

 But the variety of approaches above should be a reminder that when viewed through the arts, our bodies offer a vast universe to be explored.

THE THINGS THAT NUDITY REVEALS (part 4)

April Greiman gained fame as a "pioneer of digital graphic design." In 1986 she was commissioned to produce an issue of Design Quarterly magazine. She converted the entire issue into a  nude self-portrait, a large (2' x 6') poster littered with graphic symbols.
 

 

The image became legendary, reproduced in textbooks and taught in art classes.  Critics explained its importance this way:

A profoundly influential design piece.... Had it only shown the capabilities of Macintosh design circa 1986, [this poster] would have been memorable. By also exploring the philosophical and personal ramifications of digital design, this piece reached greatness. Since then, Ms. Greiman has remained on the forefront of digital design and its inherent possibilities.

Another critic gushed about the importance of Ms. Grieman's groundbreaking image, concluding: "by 1990 the color-capable Macintosh II computer and improved software had spurred a technological and creative revolution in graphic design as radical as the 15th century shift from hand-lettered manuscript books to Gutenberg's movable type."

I won't dispute the influence of Ms. Greiman or the importance of digital art, but when it comes to the real litmus test-- assessing the quality of a single work of art-- this picture strikes me as little more than a shopping cart. The new digital technology enabled Greiman to scoop up images that struck her fancy and toss them effortlessly into her cart.  It required none of the hard won observations, talent, skill, distortions, consciousness or heartbreak that created the glue for the more interesting nudes we've been viewing.

This is not creation and it hardly even qualifies as curation.

Which brings us to another "thing that nudity reveals."  There's nothing like a nude picture to strip away gimmick and artifice, exposing the naked truth of the image.

THE THINGS THAT NUDITY REVEALS (part 3)

Celebrity artist John Currin proclaimed, "Culture is for old people. When you're young you have your body and that's all you need."  This philosophy might help explain why Currin remains a jejeune confectioner of synthetic nudes:

Currin

Currin is a darling of the Manhattan art market but despite his "fine art" pretensions, his superficial treatments of the human figure aren't much different from the empty work of artists such as Vargas or Olivia, or the fanboys who clutter the internet with drawings of nude Princess Leia or nude Wonder Woman.  These images reveal nothing; they simply reaffirm, in an obvious way, what is already way too obvious about you (yes, you).

For a deeper dive, check out the drawings of Claes Oldenburg, an artist whose nudes reveal a more interesting nervous system:

Claes Oldenberg (1954).

Oldenberg knows how to draw weight on these nude dancers, yet he removes the consequences of their weight so they can fling their ballast around in defiance of gravity, like the dancing hippos from Fantasia.

I love the figures above; they have the primal feeling of the Venus of Lespugue and a humanity and sexuality that makes Currin's candy coated figures look sick.

THE THINGS THAT NUDITY REVEALS (part 2)

Artist Gaston Lachaise spent a lifetime drawing and sculpting nude images of his wife and muse, Isabel.  She weighed a mere 110 pounds when they met, yet he always envisioned her as an immense, rotund goddess.

Isabel viewed through the lens of a camera and through the eyes of her husband.

 

 
No matter how short she appeared standing next to her husband in clothing, when her clothing was removed she seemed to tower over him.

Illustrator Robert McGinnis spent a career painting women so tall and thin, the poor creatures look as if they'd been elongated in a tractor pull.

McGinnis claims his inspiration for his females was a beautiful supermodel from his youth, Dorian Leigh.  But Leigh was a mere 5 feet, five inches tall.  She wouldn't have reached the navel of one of McGinnis' stalky giants.

Model Dorian Leigh

And on and on it goes.  Pin up artist George Petty loved women's legs out of all proportion:

George Petty

These are each skillful artists, so the consistently odd proportions of the women they painted can't be attributed to technical incompetence.  These distortions are born of genuine perceptions and expressive needs.  

In the words of Dr. Oliver Sacks: "The world isn't given to us-- we make it with our nervous systems."  

Clothed subjects give our nervous systems a wide variety of things to react to-- folds, patterns, textures, artificially designed lines-- but when working with the bare human form, our reduced choices often seem more revelatory, and closer to the core.

THE THINGS THAT NUDITY REVEALS (part 1)

Sigmund Lipinsky (1912) 

Some nude drawings are psychological documents; others are engineering diagrams.

Some celebrate the triumph of the flesh while others mourn its mortality.

Some drawings groan of manual labor while others float effortlessly.

Lipinsky's mechanical reference marks contrast with his sensitive drawing to heighten 
the organic feel of the figure(including the abstract shape in the woman's hand) and 
block out the negative space in the larger composition.

Figure drawings can provide a flickering candle for illuminating vistas too delicate to withstand daylight.  They can also unleash resentments and rages. 

 
George Bellows,  Boy on a dock  (1907). 

 Despite the violence of this drawing, there's great sophistication in Bellows' treatment of tendons, bones and muscles.

Ever since our ancestors lost their fur, millions of artists have created hundreds of millions of interpretations of the human form, yet nobody seems to be getting tired of the subject.  It remains Topic A: always interesting.

Darren Kingsley (circa 2010).  Delicate shadings grouped in a self-assured composition.

Mapping the human form is indeed the uranography of art. Yet, the vast majority of nude drawings turn out to be little more than scented bilge. (Producing pictures of nude women has consistently provided employment for artists with even the most slender talent.)

As a public service, over the next few days I'm going to share some lesser known examples of figure drawings I believe are admirable.

As a public nuisance, some of those drawings will be accompanied by my own observations.

Alfred Crimi (circa 1950)

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, PART 58

Tom Fluharty named his new kickstarter project after a pencil. 

Fluharty discovered the Prismacolor 901 indigo bleu pencil, and was so inspired by its qualities that he used it to draw a rich symphony of drawings.

There's plenty to love in this collection:

Note how the hands are fully as expressive as the face

Fluharty found that with the indigo bleu, he could create highlights by scratching his drawing with an Xacto blade.  There is no Photoshop or white paint touches in these drawings.

Detail

But today's "one lovely drawing" is not one of Fluhartys "finished" drawings, instead it's a quick sketch from his series:

I love the way Fluharty maps out the knuckles on this hand:

It's a cinch George Bridgman never taught anyone to draw hands that way.  They display Fluharty's trademark speed and strength.

This sketch also reveals the first tentative swirls and whorls that Fluharty later develops into shading in his fully embellished drawings.

These swirls aren't an accurate representation of the subject matter, they seem to be Fluharty's way of feeling out the designs in the terrain.  Fluharty says, "The paper is very unforgiving and allows for no erasing so everything is exactly like it comes out of my hand."  By beginning with a light hand and bearing down for emphasis as he progresses, he avoids erasures or miscalculations on finished works:

Detail

The end result is nice, but I have a special fondness for the beginnings of the process, where Fluharty's eye first begins to establish priorities.  That's why I've chosen his rapid sketch for today's "lovely drawing."

ART THAT DOESN'T QUITE MAKE SENSE

Here are three hilarious drawings.  Each one employs simple lines to force us to reconsider the rules of the game:

Lynda Barry

Many years ago, Louis Magila snuck a little Theater of the Absurd into an unappreciative magazine for men

Basil Wolverton

When we look at these pictures, we start out processing them in our customary, linear way but quickly find our assumptions derailed.  They take us outside the realm of habit and into a realm of higher plasticity.  That's where creativity dwells.

 Oscar Wilde wrote that art that is "too intelligible" fails.  No matter how skillful, no matter how impressive the technique or great the virtuosity or precise the image, art that is fully intelligible will always be a closed box.  These drawings are not especially skillful, but each one opens that box.

They prod the viewer out of our universe of logic and experience, telling us "Your reflexive responses will do you no good here; get to work."  The incongruous juxtaposition of previously incompatible worlds-- even with a few simple lines-- is at the heart of creative originality and is probably a better investment of your time than the most detailed photo-realistic painting.

'Tis a fine thing to illustrate literature, but a mistake to do it literally.

SOCIALIST REALISM, 2018 STYLE

Compare these two illustrations of a swamp:

John Cuneo's Donald Trump golfing in the swamp

Jon McNaughton's Donald Trump and his cabinet "Crossing the Swamp." 

One is a simplistic cartoon for infantile minds.  The other is a cover for the New Yorker.

How do we evaluate which of these pictures is more "realistic"?  There are several different varieties of realism in art.  In the words of painter Burt Silverman, "realism has a long history and has, at various times in the past, been used to describe very specific kinds of art."

For example, a loose, distorted drawing by a caricaturist can still display more knowledge of physical reality than a painstaking, so-called "realistic" painting by a lesser talent:

Alligators by Cuneo (above) and McNaughton (below).

More importantly, if representational art is going to remain relevant in a post-modern world, it can't be content with repeating (however meticulously) what we already know (or assume we know) about the way things look.  It should contribute to our perceptions and alter our awareness of experience.  Contrast Cuneo's treatment of swamp water (below) with McNaughton's undifferentiated soup.

Even in a humorous caricature, Cuneo demonstrates better understanding of foreshortening, depth and color than McNaughton's "realistic" painting.

McNaughton's website suggests that he would like his brand of realism to be associated with Norman Rockwell's:

 Just as Rockwell painted inspiration into his scenes giving meaning and hope to Americans during the Great Depression, World War Two years and after, Jon McNaughton offers the same hope and inspiration for Americans facing moral, cultural, and political crisis today.

In defense of Rockwell, I would like to comment that these are the words of a moron.

No, Mr. McNaughton's version of realism is much closer to what is known as "socialist" or "heroic" realism, a 20th century enhancement of the timeless use of images to buttress a cult of personality.

Under Lenin, the "People's Commissariat for Enlightenment" sponsored sentimentalist painters who possessed the proper kiss-the-whip mentality for unquestioning worship of powerful bosses.  This school of art, later named socialist realism in Stalin's era, was further refined by Mao and other autocrats as a method of shaping culture.  It required artists with the technical skill for extreme realism and the commercial instinct for salesmanship to produce work free from any creative nuances or complexities that might make the art challenging for the lumpenproletariat to grasp.

                                    *               *                *                 *

All visual realism is something of a lie because it creates an illusion of three dimensional space on a two dimensional surface.  And from the very beginning, pictures have always put a subjective spin on editorial content.  Nevertheless, the 20th century witnessed a great leap forward in the use of "realistic" images against reality.

Realism as an art form was devalued during the 20th century, largely due to the incursion of modern art.  But I suspect realism played a role in hastening its own disrepute as it became increasingly glib using the tools of realism to manipulate mass audiences on behalf of authoritarian regimes, or to have no normative content at all.   These led audiences to reconsider the meaning of "accuracy" in art.  Sometimes "unrealistic" images turned out to be the more truthful.

Silverman wrote that for realism to be redeemed as an ongoing method of making art, "the form and the subject matter of the painting [must be] fused in an emotional matrix....  My difficulty with the current upsurge of "realism" is that much of the art lacks psychological toughness or great insight.... [This type of] rendering of the external world clearly seems superficial."