Art Blog - Art In History

On to Constable, my kindred spirit. Perhaps not as great in the fullest sense as Cezanne or Rembrandt, but wonderful in his sensitivity to the familiar in nature. He never left England, and did not travel very widely there, going only to Brighton, Weymoutn or Salisbury, within easy reach. How different his subjects are from those of his contemporary Turner, who always sought out the magical transforming moments in nature: sunrise, sunset, monumental storms. Constable made his art from that which was most familiar in his surroundings, seeing it with a sensitivity which was unmatched until the next generation. Yes, he did break new ground, despite his unambitious enterprise… Continue reading… 0 comments

I decided that, before leaving the topic of the Renaissance, there was more to say about the mastery of the depiction of solid form and three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. This was a major thread in my last blog, the Annunciation of the Renaissance, as part of an exploration of the birth of Humanism. But the rendering of solid form and space is fascinating on its own. The work I am leading off with is clearly not the seminal moment; rather it represents the culmination of three centuries of trial and exploration. I start with it because it is one of my alltime favorite works, and arguably the most complex and subtle exploration of spatial ideas of the period… Continue reading… 3 comments

The colors of water are endlessly fascinating, and a source of everchanging interest in landscape. If the sky (according to Constable) is the "chief organ of sentiment in nature", then the water is its mirror, reflecting its many moods and colors, and mixing them with colors of its own. I have just returned from a week in the Carribean, on St. John, and the colors of the tropical ocean were one of the singular glories of the visit. It was a week of broken clouds, driven by high winds, creating an endless succession of light and color conditions, duly reflected in the colors of the water. In addition, there were the unique tones of the tropical ocean: turquoise where the bottom was sandy, lavender when the bottom was reef, and a deeper blue over deep water… Continue reading… 2 comments

This is a subject I have worried around before (see for example "Significant Art: What does it Signify?") because it gets to the heart of those subconscious doubts I have about the value of my work. Though I am going to look at it here from the persepctive of art history, I clearly care about it as a kind of self-justification. My art is not an art of innovation. What uniqueness it has comes unconsciously and inevitably from the personal vision which each of us has, not from any attempt to break new ground. I am not even an experimental artist (a much less demanding standard); many artists who never break new ground nevertheless experiment with different styles and media, doing work that is new for them if not for art as a whole… Continue reading… 8 comments

A few years ago I did a small piece under this same title, comparing two landscape paintings which treated the viewer very differently, one inviting him in, the second deliberately blocking his way. As a follow up to my recent posts on landscape painting, I thought that I should say more on this topic, which involves many of the most powerful tools available to the landscape painter. The most compelling aspect of a landscape painting is its ability to draw the viewer into its world. We will see later that the choice to exclude the viewer is powerful precisely because it frustrates this natural impulse to enter and explore. The "Cornfield" by Constable is a beautiful example of the magic of invitation, and of many of the most common devices by which it is nurtured… Continue reading… 2 comments

Over the course of the 18th century there was a remarkable change in attitudes toward nature, discoverable in all the arts, especially literature, painting and landscape architecture. It culminated in the Romantic landscape tradition in Europe and America in the 19th century, the golden age of landscape painting. It marked a major change in the relationship of man to nature. Romantic landscape covers the gamut between the Pastoral - inhabited landscape: comfortable and relatively tame, with shepherds and peasants - and the Sublime - wild nature: vast and powerful, inspiring terror and awe. The Pastoral was not a sea change in attitude… Continue reading… 8 comments

When we think of the naturalistic tradition in English landscape painting at the beginning of the 19th century we immediately think of the work of John Constable. Constable's work, done almost entirely in the Dedham valley of his youth, with excursions to nearby Salisbury and Brighton, is a celebration of the ordinary. With its marvelous sensitivity to the nuances of everything familiar, known and loved, he raises to the level of high art that which we see everyday and normally find unremarkable. But we are less likely to connect his great contemporary Turner to the naturalistic tradition. His work is so far from our day-to-day experience of nature, and so exciting in its foretelling of later abstract art, that we can easily ignore its essential naturalistic roots… Continue reading… 0 comments