You Can See the Hand in It
Something else I think about a fair bit is what I (not having the proper words for it) call the amount of hand in a painting. That is, in some paintings, you can see the artist's hand in 'em; there are brushstrokes and paint blended wet in wet, and they're more painterly, it's called. These pictures look like someone painted them, and the process is a little more transparent; you can imagine the painter's brush moving from here to there, because there's a visible record of it right there on the picture. In others, well, who knows how the hell it was made? There's a picture, sure, but god knows how it got there. This latter can happen in a couple of ways, depending on how opaque the paint is. I'll explain a little more in a bit.
To illustrate somewhat clumsily, here are two of my pictures, A Surprise Visit (still available for purchase, pimp pimp) and Master of Spiritual Guidance (heretofore referred to as "Llama" or "the llama," because I never remember the actual names I put on the things):
You can see the painter's hand slapping opaque paint around in a madcap fashion.
No brushstrokes; is this a silkscreen print or what? (Actual question I received.)
In the first, you can sort of see the picture being made; in the second, I used a small paintbrush loaded up with more and thinner paint, which gives the clean lines. The first looks like someone painted it; the second looks like someone maybe figured out how to print on canvas with an inkjet printer. (Which you can do now; they sell 8.5 x 11 canvas sheets at Office Depot!) Roy Lichtenstein, the Pop Art guy who painted huge frames from comics, used opaque paint and rarely showed brushstrokes, for a famous example.
Here's a more drastic example. Here are details from first, a painting by David Park, and then one by Jan Van Eyck.
Park: hand for days
Van Eyck: inscrutable
In contrast to my silkscreen llama above, Van Eyck used, from what I understand, 80 million thin transparent glazes to build up the picture above with admittedly amazing technical precision. Good luck trying to find a brushstroke in that picture.
Now, for me, in 2005, when I look at a painting, I cringe when I see paint trying to be something else. Van Eyck gets a pass because he was doing the above centuries before the photograph even existed. I spent years in art departments at design firms and ad agencies, and I have a passable, if dated, knowlege of how commercial art production works. I use Photoshop for pretty much every picture I make.
So to me, if Mondrian was making these pictures now, I'd say he should put down the paintbrush, use Adobe Illustrator, and save countless time. Bang bang, coupla nice lines, colored box or two, off to the large-format printer, done. Doing a picture like this in oil paint, today, is to me kind of pointless. Sure, it's possible, and it's impressive that he could pull it off, but really, that's not what the materials are good at. You have a picture in mind, you should pick the appropriate medium and not try and shoehorn another medium to fit your idea.
Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue by Piet Mondrian
I have the same reaction to the photorealist guys like Richard Estes and others who make super-detailed paintings that look just like photographs! Photography's already been invented, guys--make a C-print already. These kind of feel to me like an electric guitarist who uses an E-Bow to make the guitar sound like a violin. We already have violins, you know.
Going back to my pictures, by the above criteria, I kind of failed (and made myself a hypocrite) with the llama. It doesn't look like paint, it looks like a silkscreen. Now, generally, I just try and make a nice picture and don't kick myself too hard for not conforming to my own art likes and dislikes. I'm still figuring out how I want to do things, and this is not the least of my stumbles along the way.
Also, the llama picture sold the first time I showed it, and I still have Surprise Visit up in my hallway. Shows you how much I know.
To illustrate somewhat clumsily, here are two of my pictures, A Surprise Visit (still available for purchase, pimp pimp) and Master of Spiritual Guidance (heretofore referred to as "Llama" or "the llama," because I never remember the actual names I put on the things):
You can see the painter's hand slapping opaque paint around in a madcap fashion.
No brushstrokes; is this a silkscreen print or what? (Actual question I received.)
In the first, you can sort of see the picture being made; in the second, I used a small paintbrush loaded up with more and thinner paint, which gives the clean lines. The first looks like someone painted it; the second looks like someone maybe figured out how to print on canvas with an inkjet printer. (Which you can do now; they sell 8.5 x 11 canvas sheets at Office Depot!) Roy Lichtenstein, the Pop Art guy who painted huge frames from comics, used opaque paint and rarely showed brushstrokes, for a famous example.
Here's a more drastic example. Here are details from first, a painting by David Park, and then one by Jan Van Eyck.
Park: hand for days
Van Eyck: inscrutable
In contrast to my silkscreen llama above, Van Eyck used, from what I understand, 80 million thin transparent glazes to build up the picture above with admittedly amazing technical precision. Good luck trying to find a brushstroke in that picture.
Now, for me, in 2005, when I look at a painting, I cringe when I see paint trying to be something else. Van Eyck gets a pass because he was doing the above centuries before the photograph even existed. I spent years in art departments at design firms and ad agencies, and I have a passable, if dated, knowlege of how commercial art production works. I use Photoshop for pretty much every picture I make.
So to me, if Mondrian was making these pictures now, I'd say he should put down the paintbrush, use Adobe Illustrator, and save countless time. Bang bang, coupla nice lines, colored box or two, off to the large-format printer, done. Doing a picture like this in oil paint, today, is to me kind of pointless. Sure, it's possible, and it's impressive that he could pull it off, but really, that's not what the materials are good at. You have a picture in mind, you should pick the appropriate medium and not try and shoehorn another medium to fit your idea.
Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue by Piet Mondrian
I have the same reaction to the photorealist guys like Richard Estes and others who make super-detailed paintings that look just like photographs! Photography's already been invented, guys--make a C-print already. These kind of feel to me like an electric guitarist who uses an E-Bow to make the guitar sound like a violin. We already have violins, you know.
Going back to my pictures, by the above criteria, I kind of failed (and made myself a hypocrite) with the llama. It doesn't look like paint, it looks like a silkscreen. Now, generally, I just try and make a nice picture and don't kick myself too hard for not conforming to my own art likes and dislikes. I'm still figuring out how I want to do things, and this is not the least of my stumbles along the way.
Also, the llama picture sold the first time I showed it, and I still have Surprise Visit up in my hallway. Shows you how much I know.
5 Comments:
On the one hand, I agree with you about your own work. I prefer the one with the visible brushstrokes, and the other really does look like -- and probably should have been -- a silkscreen.
On every other point, though, I really strongly disagree. Maybe it's because you're confusing design-world artwork with art-world artwork, and don't understand that there's generally a lot more to the latter than the merely aesthetic, but something's definitely wrong there.
To suggest that Mondrian would have done better to use Illustrator (and who are we kidding; MSPaint would do just as well) would be to miss the point entirely. It's the fact that a human being gave a shit about rectangles enough to devote so much of his life to painting them that makes that Mondrian worth looking at in the first place.
Brushstrokes are an excellent way to give an otherwise cold and lifeless design project some humanity. But in art (I'm trying really hard not to have to capitalize that 'a'), if the brushstrokes are the only humanity apparent in the image, it's a pretty worthless painting as far as I'm concerned.
Anonymous! Thank you for taking the time to write a comment. I like comments.
On every other point, though, I really strongly disagree. Maybe it's because you're confusing design-world artwork with art-world artwork, and don't understand that there's generally a lot more to the latter than the merely aesthetic, but something's definitely wrong there.Here's a devil's advocate point, and an utterly side discussion: why is there a difference between design-artwork and art-world-artwork? A picture's a picture. Someone thinks about a picture for a long time, maybe does a couple of tests, and finally makes it to the degree to which he or she is satisfied and it goes out into the world where others can see it. Today, there's not necessarily a client with veto power/input into the process with a painting, but you go back to wealthy patrons and the church and all that, then there usually is.
Is it the curatorial process? That a bunch of well-regarded people said it's good? I suppose there's credence to the fact that if X number of people who've seen a lot of art and thought a lot about art (especially over 70 years, like Mondrian) say a painter is important, sure, maybe he or she's important.
But lots of people think a lot about bebop and free jazz, and I have no interest in it. I can agree jazz historians that maybe these styles are important, but that doesn't mean I like 'em personally.
To suggest that Mondrian would have done better to use Illustrator (and who are we kidding; MSPaint would do just as well) would be to miss the point entirely. It's the fact that a human being gave a shit about rectangles enough to devote so much of his life to painting them that makes that Mondrian worth looking at in the first place.Oh, I don't disagree with that last bit at all; that's why you and I know his name. I didn't mean to imply he's bad or not important or anything like that. My point was only that Illustrator makes better straight lines than oil paint. A screwdriver can make an OK can opener, but why not just use the can opener?
Brushstrokes are an excellent way to give an otherwise cold and lifeless design project some humanity. But in art (I'm trying really hard not to have to capitalize that 'a'), if the brushstrokes are the only humanity apparent in the image, it's a pretty worthless painting as far as I'm concerned. Of course, yes, totally, agreed. My personal aesthetic comes down on the pro-brushstroke camp, which may be evident, but I never meant to imply the other side was wrong, per se; I just don't personally like it as much.
The point of the post was strictly and only to talk about the aesthetics of painting execution and styles, and not anything else, positive or negative, about the painters or paintings I mentioned, at all. And that style-wise, after a certain level, I don't see the point of using paint to do things better served here in the future by other imaging methods.
I dunno, I'm totally behind the genius of Mondrian being in trying to produce as mechanically-seeming straight-edge lines using a device utterly unsuited for that -- i.e. a hand, brush, and paint. Struggling against arbitrarily imposed limits is almost the definition of the creative process!
By the way, I think you should re-do lama painting with the words "Clean edges, possibly painted by a robot" actually on on the painting. -- Clive
Hi. Me again. The first Anonymous. Sorry if I seemed a bit hostile. Sorry if I totally missed the point.
Here's a devil's advocate point, and an utterly side discussion: why is there a difference between design-artwork and art-world-artwork? A picture's a picture.Well, I'm not going to argue that a picture isn't a picture, if that's what you were hoping.
The last thing I want to do is start one of those horrible "What is Art?" discussions, but I'm definitely of the opinion that Art and Design, while not mutually exclusive, are very different disciplines. The difference is really mostly in the motivation, though: A designer's main objective is to make art that "looks neat" or "feels right," whereas the goal of the 'artist' is to make art that provokes thought beyond Ooh, doesn't that look nice!. Whereas the latter might say, "Love causes only pain," the former is more likely to say, "Buy these Doritos."
Yes, there is a lot of crossover. Yes, designers are necessarily artists, and vice-versa. Yes, if you hung a Dorito's ad in MoMA it would take on new artistic properties (although the "Art" would mostly be in the act of putting it there, no matter how much thought went into the Cool Ranch color scheme).
And Yes -- to further corrode my own argument -- most "art" produced these days is, more than anything else, just advertising itself:
"Buy this painting."
It's impossible to draw a line between the two and say "this is Art" and "that is Design," but they are indeed two distinct entities.
(If Mondrian were a contemporary designer, I'd have to agree with you on the Illustrator point. If he were a contemporary artist, no.)
Hallo again, Anonymous! Give yourself a name!
I didn't take it as hostile, and I'm glad you didn't intend it to be. One of the reasons I started this thing was to kick ideas around, late-night dorm-hallway style, so by all means come back and talk s'more when you're inclined.
Having done both, sure, I know they're different. I guess I was showing my bias against pretention; I don't think a painting is more important just because someone says it is, let alone the artist, y'know? Designers can be astoundingly full of themselves, sure, but man, artists can be insufferable.
"I'll decide what I think, thanks," I say to them.
I'm pretty sure I look at making paintings a little differently than a lot of artists. I think of it more like I make chairs or something. Maybe for me it's more like craft-work crossed with cartooning. (I try and make a nice picture so you can buy it cheap and perk up the hallway, and when pals come over they will go "Heh.") I'm not really about expression of my inner soul or some such LiveJournal-esque hogwash.
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