Look, See

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Gainsborough's "Study for Diana and Actaeon"

A few weeks ago I saw an exhibition, Judging by Appearance: Master Drawings from the Collection of Joseph and Deborah Goldyne, at the SF Legion of Honor. This collection is huge and wonderful, with many terrific examples. One piece, a Gainsborough landscape drawing, has been on my mind since I saw it. As far as I know, no image of the drawing is available online, and I'm sure my memory of the drawing is poor. I believe it is from the early 1780's and is made with his typical drawing materials: cream or buff paper, black and white crayon or chalk, and ink wash. Seeing the drawing spurred me to look closer at Gainsborough recently, which I'd intended to do more of anyway since I had recently written about his painting Mrs Fitzherbert, also at the Legion, in a brief essay called Gainsborough's Brushstrokes, and also since a year ago when I wrote Thomas Gainsborough: How Modern?, about his The Mall in St James's Park in the Frick Collection, New York.

In Gainsborough (Thames & Hudson, 2002) William Vaughan writes that in comparison to many of his figural and landscape, which we may now superficially see as sentimental, the contemporary eye:

"...might find it easier to appreciate the other apsect of Gainsborough's work that seemed to contemporaries to mark out his genius. This was his drawings. Gainsborough was a natural draughtsman of great verve and facility. Whether he is making a direct study of some natural form-- such as a tree or a cat relaxing-- or mapping out a spirited imaginative composition, he amazes and delights us with the brilliance of his line and the aptness of his markings. He, himself, saw this as the most personal and intimate side of his art. It was a sign of this that he would never sell his drawings, and only gave them to friends as tokens of affection. He was also insistent that it was the individualism of his handling-- whether in painting or drawing, that made his 'genius' most evident."

In The Art of Thomas Gainsborough : "A Little Business for the Eye" (Rosenthal, Michael. Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Arts. Yale University Press. 2000) three studies are reproduced for an unfinished history painting called Diana and Actaeon, a genre rare for Gainsborough. The drawing below, Study for Diana and Actaeon, in the Huntington Library collection, is a terrific example of what Gainsborough could do. "Verve" is a good word for what is going on here. The same kind of mark and energy seen here are what draw me towards the Goldyne drawing, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and The Mall in St. James's Park.

In particular, see the two details below of the trees on the left and right. In the left example look at the short, looping, swirling calligraphic line; there's real economy and character here. These marks are very distinctive and compelling, just slight strokes and flicks. Compare the right side, where the dense buildup of ink and white chalk suggest trees thick with leaves hanging over the group below, to the left side, which is open, airy, and spacious. The figures feel solid, and the water they stand in is reflective. The tree in the left detail is like some feathery peacock on display. In fact, the two tree trunks on the left are almost figurative, and vaguely threatening in a very seductive way. Of the two trunks on the left the right one is scaled to the figures, and bent over, beckoning as if to join the figures (and one sees in other studies of the same scene that, indeed, that tree isn't a tree, but is Actaeon!). But the tree on the absolute left is on dazzling display, opulent and preening, obviously enticing the figure in the center of the composition, and perhaps causing a little hesitation in the rest of the company. Much of this strange narrative, and the tension that comes from it, is created by the kinds of marks that Gainsborough makes. This is an incredibly rich little drawing.

Artists Interview Artists: my turn

The interview I participated in as part of J.T. Kirkland's Artists Interview Artists project has been published as of today at Thinking About Art. Eileen Wold from Washington, D.C. asked the questions. The questions I posed were answered by Michael Grayeagle in an interview published on May 7, 2006.

Read my answers.

Screen capture of Red Machine, 2006, HTML & animated GIFs (10 seconds, looped), 380 x 380 pixels

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Gustave Courbet

Last year, at the SF Legion of Honor to see Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet! (22 January 2005 —3 April 2005), I wondered about the historical use of the palette knife. Did anyone before Courbet use it much to paint with? Perhaps I've found my answer. In the catalogue Courbet and the Modern Landscape for the exhibition of the same name which just closed at the Getty, Mary Morton writes (pp 6-7):

Courbet's fascination with painting technique was given free reign in the genre of landscape, a genre more open to experiementation than figural painting because it was not the heart of Acdemic practice. In contrast to the more routinized and methodical preactice of studio work, the freedom to leave the Academy and studio, sit outside alone, and record one's personal visual impression was part of th appeal of landscape paintings. Many artist continued to paint landscapes as a means of maintaining freshness in their studio work, but Courbet brought it to the center of his pictorial discourse. It was his ideal genre.

Part of the excitement of Courbet's landscapes, and an essential feature of their modernity, is their revelation of process, of the artist's technical exploration. He often painted in large scale, working quickly and applying paint with a range of gestures and a variety of tools: large and small brushes, the palette knife, rags, even his thumb. His completed pictures were often roughly finished, intentionally defiant of the polished fini charateristic of Academic paintings. The self-effacing elimination of all traces of the artist's labor was antithetical to Courbet's project.

The lack of finish in Courbet's landscapes belies their technical complexity. Critics frequently referred to Courbet's unusal manipulation of dense amounts of pasty pigment, scooped up with the palette knife and smeared onto the canvas. For all of their surface texture, however, Corubet's paitings maintain a surprising smoothness. Though a painting like The Gust of Wind looks crusty and thick from afar, it is surprisingly even in surface. His technique involved building up layers of transparent glazes, and he scraped away paint as frequently as he applied it. At close range one can see primary, secondary, and tertiary layers laid bare, with regular adjustments made between them inspired by a referent in nature and/or exigencies of the paint itself.

Courbet achieved a range of nuance and drama with the palette knife that was without precedent in the history of painting. Traditionally, the knife was used to mix paint on the palette, not to apply paint to the canvas, a task considered too delicate for the knife's blunt edges. It was this tool that enabled Courbet to work on a larger than average scale, covering wide swaths of canvas quickly. The hard turquoise glow of Courbet's skies was achieved by the even coating allowed by the knife, as Courbet laid on paint much as the mason trowels cement into place. He also used the knife to create a distinct evocation of texture through scraping and scumpling paint, wet in wet and wet over dry. In contemporary criticism, Courbet's use of the knife was associated with his speed of execution, his spontaneity, and his vigor.

Gustave Courbet, The Gust of Wind (or the Approaching Storm(, ca. 1855, oil on canvas, 56 1/2 x 89 15/16 inches, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

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Don Relyea

Below: Don Relyea's automatically generated Space Filling Curve Generative Abstract Geometric Art, 2006

Below: My Mojave XV, March 16, 2003, HTML, 356 x 655 pixels (JPEG representation; more)

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