That's Not Art

I imagine that many Americans are feeling pretty burned out politically after the past election, but if I can be forgiven, there is a comparison I would like to make between American art and American politics. In both there are essentially two camps (I know this is an extreme oversimplification, but please bear with me): one group values the establishments of the past, and the other presses for new strategies and ideas. Politicians and artists in one camp attack the other other camp, and, with both politics and art, neither is willing to accept the other and the divide grows wider. In art both sides claim that the other side is not art.

I overheard a few days ago a painting professor telling his class that accurate representational painting is not art--that a teacher cannot teach a student how to paint because they will never learn to be creative. I of course disagree with that philosophy because while It is true that mechanical representation is boring and lifeless, creativity that is dictated by inability is hardly creative. This example represents the tension between the side of art that admires and appreciates the skill and dedication required to create visual interest and beauty, and the side that rejects the aesthetics of the past or seeks to illuminate some great unknown or question perception. The problem, as I see it, is that neither side can see the value of the other side.

I taught a painting workshop last summer in a city several hours from here. Near the location of the workshop is a university with an art program. Many of my students were students of this university who came to my workshop to learn HOW to paint because they could not learn it there. They complained to me about how terrible, in their opinion, the art program was and described "swirls of paint" and "throwing mud at canvas" from painting classes they took there. I was sympathetic because I felt like I had also been a victim of an academic art imbalance.

Realism and traditional skill in representation are uncommon in academia. A person who wants to learn to paint representationally may have a difficult time learning it at many colleges or universities because many art professors don't appreciate it, and/or they don't know how to do it.

Without diversity of artistic recognition and appreciation art is like a hand with all thumbs, making for some pretty awkward stuff.

My work is obviously representational and I appreciate traditional skill and craftsmanship, but that doesn't mean I don't also appreciate work that is far different from my own. In fact I had the opportunity recently to view the work of an art graduate student that I found absolutely exciting and fascinating despite the fact that I had absolutely no desire to create work that was similar in any way to hers. He work was conceptual in nature and challenged social rules and forced the viewer to reevaluate their instinctual obedience to these rules. I loved the way it was presented, and I thought it was exceptional, but I knew I could not make work like hers. I don't want to, and I think that's ok.

I believe in balance. Imagine if Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, capitalists and socialists, Tea Partyists and Occupiers, and artist of all kinds learned to appreciate the perspectives and values of those they currently see as rivals. A wheel and and engine may be quite different, but neither can get very far on its own. There is a benefit to accepting differences and working together. Like a sophisticated machine, each part plays an important role.

Art should be a celebration of diversity in all its forms. Let's stop saying "That's not art."

There are basically two aspects of portraiture in the way I approach it: getting a likeness of the subject and positioning that person in a pose that looks and feels natural and matches their personality. I want to separate these two aspects and see what happens. I will paint a portrait with the subject making eye contact with the viewer that is simplified to its basic element and focuses only on capturing a likeness of the person. Then I will paint a portrait where the subject refuses to make eye contact with the viewer and the focus is on the pose and composition to capture a feeling of the person without the importance of capturing a likeness.

I've been working lately with portraits that deliberately make contact with the viewer as a way to create a feeling of confrontation, but when I position the subject in a way that feels like he or she is deliberately avoiding eye contact with the viewer, it seems to me that this feeling of confrontation is amplified.

I must explore this more.

I See Little Things

I want to slow down the world, cause it to pause for a second and look, really look, the way I look. Experience the way I experience--experience the details.

Painting for me is about learning to see. I don't paint with my hands; I paint with my brain, and I paint with my heart. Painting for me is a process of learning, and I've learned a lot so far, but I feel like I have much more to learn. In fact I do not believe I can ever possibly learn everything there is to know about painting, and I find that satisfying. It means painting will always be exciting.

Painting is enjoyable because of the challenge. I decided to paint portraits largely from the fact that I saw it as the most difficult subject matter. I knew that if I were to paint still lifes or landscapes no one would ever know if a tree or an apple were misshaped or out of placed, but if an eye or nose is even the tiniest bit off it is obvious to almost anyone.

I sometimes have a hard time talking about my work because the challenge I overcame to to paint a particular piece was the learning process I experienced during the time it took me to paint it, and since I learned from the work, I no longer see things in the same way, and I am not the same person I was when I painted it.

In order to appreciate my portraits I think it is important to understand what I am not doing. I have no ambition to create some great change in the world. I don't care to make a grand statement or give the impression that see things more clearly than anyone else. But I do see things a little bit differently than most people, and the difference is in the details. I see little things. I see colors and shapes. I see faces as planes and values. Portraits are nothing new, but in a world saturated with images, I want to call attention to the beautiful details of reality.

Likeness

In order to make a painting look like the person I'm painting, there are lots of factors that I have to take into consideration. First of all I have to make sure that everything is proportionate. The head needs to be the right size for the shoulders and the eyes and nose need to be the right size for the face. Then I need to make sure that everything is the right shape. I have to represent values correctly. I have to think about temperature and color. I have to consider saturation.

Painting the features of the head requires accurate drawing and careful observation. Noses and ears are the easier features, and often people won't notice if they are a little off. Mouths are harder. The portrait painter John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925) is quoted as saying, "A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth." But the most difficult feature to paint is the eyes. Making the eyes too big is a very common and novitiate mistake, and one that I unfortunately make all the time. The challenge with painting eyes is that they immediately become the focal point of the painting, especially if you position the subject to look out at the viewer as I have done a lot lately, and nearly everyone can tell if there is something wrong.

Sometimes I get a likeness, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I spend hours and hours just trying to make the portrait look like the person I'm painting. Sometimes I throw paintings away because after hours of struggling to get a likeness, I still cannot get it right.

Getting a likeness requires a lot of skill: the kind of skill that takes years of practice to acquire, and as we all know, skill has nothing to do with art. That's why we don't talk about it in critiques. We don't talk about primers, paints, or mediums. We don't mention if we choose to paint in the alla prima style or a more traditional approach.  We can't talk about proportion or anatomy. In art we don't care about skill, and we don't care about likeness.

So I quit. I have decided that as an experiment I will no longer use skill or try to get a likeness in my portraits.

I will begin a new series of paintings in which skill, accuracy, representation, etc. are no longer utilized. I understand the magnitude of the shift in my work, but I feel it necessary in order to progress as an artist. To highlight this removal of representational emphasis, instead of painting people I know, I will paint portraits of celebrities, and I will attempt deliberately not to get a likeness. My first painting in this series, "Portrait of Brad Pitt" (2013), is shown below. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

What If

I painted today. I painted from a photo I took of a person I know, and I painted him in a lighting situation that was very difficult for me. With natural light, I placed him in front of the light so that his face was in shadow. I positioned him to look straight at the viewer because I like the way the confrontation makes the painting feel indignant. I wanted it to feel indignant because I am frustrated that when I paint a portrait I don't know what to say about it that makes it sound like art. I am frustrated that I feel like I have to say something about it to make it sound like art. I am frustrated that I don't know how to say that I just want to paint because I just want to paint.

So I keep painting, and when I'm asked what I'm doing, I still don't know what to say because what I have to say doesn't seem to be what I should be saying. The problem may lie in the fact that the things I think about when I paint are not the things I try to explain. In order to paint a portrait, create a good composition, with accurate proportions, clean color and believable values, and get a likeness of the model, I have a lot more to think about than any statement I would want to make about the piece. In justifying the painting latterly I give an illusory review of the painting process, and I wish I could just tell the truth.

But I see an easy way out. It would be a lot easier, and it would take much less time: I could take photographs. Much of my work is done from photography, and everything I have discussed about involving the viewer and forcing interactions and interpretations of emotions could be accomplished much more easily with a photo. I might not have to pick up a brush ever again. In fact I believe I could create a much more interesting and creative concept through photography than I ever could through realistic painting, and in a way it sounds kind of nice. A 200 ml tube of paint can easily cost over a hundred dollars, but I wouldn't have to pay for paint, brushes or canvas ever again. I wouldn't have to spend countless hours in my studio working and struggling to get an eye to look right, and I wouldn't have to throw away paintings because the colors are all wrong or the proportions are off. Think of what I could do with my free time!

But the easy way out would feel empty and insincere. And what about passion? What if I started painting for a different reason than to explain a concept or get people to think about things in a new way? What if I really did just want to paint "pretty pictures"? Would that be so bad? What if I painted simply because I love to paint, because I love the challenge, or to be able to do something that other people can't do? A builder builds, a baker bakes, and a writer writes; is it so wrong for a painter to paint without having to explain his reasons to the world? I don't want to take photographs, sculpt, garden, perform, or throw mud at canvas: I want to paint, and I want to capture what I see, the way I see it.

Is that really so wrong?