When I first joined
artId.com, I was almost immediately challenged by another artist who seemed, by and large, much more experienced and knowledgeable about this whole thing called art than I will likely ever claim to be... He didn't seem to like my work and I really didn't like what he seemed to be trying to say to me about it. I evaded his remarks as best I could and I got rather defensive in return, to say the least. I didn't like what he was insinuating about my "art" because, at the time, it seemed like he was trying to tell me that all the elements of an innate ability are found within my work, but it seemed to me that he (more than anything else) thought my work lacked something…
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While self-deprecating friends and acquaintances would have me believe that they possess not a skerrick of drawing skills, there seems to be an almost universal recognition of the techniques of "name" artists. The term "loose" comes to mind immediately. This is a word beloved of gallery directors, art lovers and aspiring artists. Loose painting could refer to a continuum of styles, from abstract to realism, but to my mind it draws a line between impression and photographic detail.
The winner of the last two "People's Prizes" in the annual Australian Archibald Prize for portraiture has submitted stunning paintings of a photographic quality…
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In the contemporary art world, it seems passé to produce images that are simply beautiful. The successful modern artist, (generally speaking, of course), confronts, dares, shocks, and comments in order to be heard and seen. Is this the purest function of art? Are artists responsible for instigating discussion, for changing the world? Or is it OK to make images that are beautiful, images that simply celebrate the wonder that is also a part of our experience? What would you prefer to have in your home or office? What would you prefer to see at a museum or gallery?
I am making my annual sojourn to the mountains this week...no satellite signals, no power...just the earth in all her glory. I will be turning these questions over in my mind under a canopy of 200 year old trees…
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If there is any one thing that can bring your creativity to a halt, it's a negative attitude. If you think everything is bad, then it will be. The news media has the power of negative thinking and will only report the worst. It's catchy, all that doom and gloom and it's easy to get stuck in their quicksand. …
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Interestingly, while there are quite a few animal portraits featured on ArtId, portraits of people are quite uncommon. Why is this so?
Is it because a portrait is only of interest to the sitter and her immediate circle of friends? Cannot a well-executed portrait stand alone as a fine example of composition, brushwork, colour harmony and depth? A few weeks ago, I travelled to Australia's capital Canberra to view the Edgar Degas exhibition at the National Gallery. As the exhibits evolved in chronological order, one could see recognisable portraits of captains of industry in earlier days and more abstract portraits of washerwomen, laundresses and ironing women in later years…
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I'm going to go back 100 years or so to an artist I passed over: Goya. In the spectrum of artists from those of structure to those of feeling, Goya is definitely the latter. But what is remarkable is the way he anticipated the romantics and 20th century expressionists, working at the height of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightment thinkers of the 18th century believed in the ultimate and inevitable perfectability of man through reason. They largely ignored the existence and power of the bestial side of man, a fatal mistake. The Greeks were wiser: thouogh they elevated reason as man's great gift, they never forgat the other side of his nature. Their image was of the horse and rider - today the Id and Ego - and understood the need to respect and control the bestial side…
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Here are my thoughts about abstract art and this piece that I created with watercolor pencils.
When the eye sends light signals to the brain, those impulses goes through the Lateral Geniculate Nucleii to the visual cortex (the projection screen in the back of the head) which then routes the signals back to the LGN via the information processing channels of the "subconscious" including memory, associations, personality and all other so-called intentional states of mind like beliefs and desires which are extensions of the intellect and emotions, and which account for things like empathy and spirituality in art and religion.
Without this perceptual feedback, the owner of the brain cannot recognize the image before his eyes…
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It is almost as if Henri Cartier-Bresson could make himself invisible, judging by the way the people in his photographs seem unaffected by - if even aware of - the great French photographer's presence. His images are completely candid; no posers allowed. His photos are value-added portraits of reality. He could extract drama out of the commonplace, and always found the balance point between narration and abstraction. Cartier-Bresson, whose life touched every decade in the 20th century and beyond, was friends with another Henri - the artist Matisse. Maybe that's who influenced the strangely decorative aspect to Cartier-Bresson's photographs.
Henri Cartier-Bresson's images are gray-scale compositions with somewhat musical qualities…
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder whether you're looking at an Ingres' odalisque, a Grecian urn, a Gibson arch-top, or Gucci heels. For everything from Delacroix to dirty pictures, you need vision to enjoy art.
As I have my head examined by the experts here at The Peterson Institute of Arts and Sciences Research Laboratory and Gift Shop, my eyeball is a theme park. Let me walk you through it while the venerated Doctor D. L. Rayburn stands by on the outside. So don your wet-suits for a trip thru the vitreous humor, the fluid that fills the eyeball - but please, no flash photography. If hypodermic needles and quivering eyeballs make you squeamish then just relax and...
We're in. You can take off the rubber suits and put on these - whoa! Hang on, the orb is rotating…
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I went to the Louvre some time ago, that fancy art museum in Paris. The details are sketchy now but I remember my wife Elizabeth and I walked along Les Tuileries past a giant Ferris wheel and a gold statue of Joan of Arc. Not to be all touristy, we went past the big glass pyramid at the Louvre and in the side street entrance.
I was on a mission to see just one painting: Jacque Louis David's "Oath of the Horatii." I'd seen it in a picture book and even did a sketch, but aside from that painting I didn't care about anything else except avoiding crowds. I didn't need to see Venus or Victory or Liberty - and certainly not the Mona Lisa. No maps, no guides, no headphones. And no Mona. That would be typical. I'd hate to be typical. I don't run with the pack. I'm a contrarian…
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I'm coming back around to where I started, which was with Cezanne...and more generally with late 19th century European painting. I find more to excite me in that period than in any other.
As I think about the Impressionists, and the generations that followed, I definitely learn something about myself and what satisfies my artistic soul. I like structure. I am more excited by Degas and Manet, the two artists who had an "academic" training, than I am by most of Monet, and I like Monet better than Renoir. I can feel the lightness and joy of Renoir's work, its wonderful softness, but ultimately it leaves me wanting more.
In Degas' work, the feeling of carelessness in framing belies the artfulness behind it…
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Art is aesthetic like humor is funny. It's the precarious balance of details that we appreciate. Both art and humor are illusions that often require a suspension of one's beliefs, but sometimes our expectations don't jive with reality. Art happens when things go right and humor happens when things go wrong.
There two types of humor: poetic and practical. Practical humor is when there's a glitch in the medium, as in the semantics of a joke like the one about the skunk that went to church and sat in his own "pew." (Think "pee-yew!")
Linguist Noam Chomsky devised the following sentence:
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
It shows that good grammar and syntax do not necessarily make good sense. In abstract art, such empty symbols are called "significant forms…
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A Checklist for Viewing Art
Here's a list of questions and simple visual perceptions that I like to consider in a work of art. I'm not talking about complex aesthetic judgments, but just the visual cues that provide entry points into the actual content of the work.
1.) Is it representational...? The work depicts people, places, or recognizable things whether realistic or stylized.
2.) ...or abstract? A work composed of purely geometric, gestural, or diffusive elements.
3.) Figure / Ground: The main separation of forms from the background. Figure and the ground can swap light and dark values in different parts of the picture. I like it when that happens.
4.) Composition: How the secondary forms and details are organized to support the main figure.
5…
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I have been picking out artists who are my favorites, and who also deserve to be called great because of the nature of their enterprise. Many of my favorite artists are not "great" in this sense; they are modest and unassuming in their scope and intentions. A good example is the artist with whom I feel the greatest natural affinity: John Constable. But before turning to Constalbe, I thought I should give homage to his truly great English contemporary, William Turner.
It is hard to like Turner as a human being; is was rather a nasty man, secretive, suspicious, paranoid…
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The decision to include Leonardo is not based on the impact of the work on me viscerally and emotionally; in fact, on one level you could say he is not a "favorite" artist at all. It is more that I stand in awe of what he accomplished as an artist, while so much of his energies and imagination were focussed on other things. And of course, after a piece on Michelangelo, it is only proper to give Leonardo equal time.
Michelangelo and Leonardo were the towering figures of the Renaissance until the younger Raphael rose to join them, great rivals, driving each other to greater heights…
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When things go wrong and Palette knife painting.
I took me a long time to start dealing with anything that was artistic after my children were born. There was always something else to do. I seemed to have lost the ability to concentrate on anything but my family for a while. Even reading was impossible, as I could never relax enough to grab a book for at least 15 minutes. When my kids both started going to school (relief!) I investigated the local Community Arts Center, and discovered that they were offering a colored pencil drawing class. As when I was in Art school, attention to details was de rigueur, I decided that colored pencils were going to be for me. And indeed, for several years, they were. I relished in the meditation that the most tedious details drive you to…
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In each of the previous posts I have asked the question "What challenge did this artist set himself that sets his work beyond good to great?". Not all my favorite artists have such an ambitious enterprise, but I will show one more; Michelangelo. For me, the remarkable thing about his work is how often he rose above crippling external limitations and turned them into glorious oportunities.
The "David" is an excellent example, especially if we accept the story about its creation. According to contemporary sources, a truley magnificent block of Carrara marble, intended for another sculptor, was tragically damaged in transit, with a chunk broken off in the middle almost to the center of the block…
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The Art World is Elliptical
www.garypetersonart.com/wiselink.html for full diagram.
An artist interprets objects for the viewer but something always gets lost, added, or changed in translation. Art seldom takes the direct route from object to subject. Distortion increases as the path deviates. Call it "artistic expression."
Three-way relationships are algebraic, so I've based a schematic of visual perception on the ellipse with the object and subject being at either focus. To give the artist equal weight in the equation, an equilateral triangle dictates the height. Note that the term "object" also means "referent," but becomes "concept" in the case of abstract art.
This elliptical boundary separates the aesthetic from prosthetic: fine art from eye candy…
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This is the second in my new series of my favorite artists, and what it is in their artistic enterprise that sets them above the merely very good. After having started with a self-portrait by Cezanne in my last post, I can't resist starting this post off with another self-portrait, one of many by Rembrandt.
How different they are! The Cezanne self-portrait, though it can captivate you as a work of art for hours, in the end shows you almost nothing about the man beyond his physical exterior. Cezanne clearly was not trying to explore his inner self at all. The Rembrandt, on the other hand, shows you infintely more than a thousand words could tell you about his soul, his humanity, and most importantly our humanity. Just look into his eyes, and get lost in them…
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The other day I was in for treatment at my chiropractor, and he asked me if I had seen "that guy who paints on TV" and what I thought of him. I said I had, that he had mastered the skills of his craft, and had developed visual ideoms for natural elements which were now second nature to him. Then, in an effort to explain why that did not make him a great artist, I told him about Cezanne. Later, I decided that might make a good series of posts to do: artists whose chosen enterprise was such that the challenge of it elevated them way above the norm.
I told my chiropractor that Cezanne, far from whipping off images that he could do in his sleep, set himself a goal that is arguably the most challenging ever set by an artist…
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