On Craftsmanship… and walking the Camino de Santiago

There is a difference between good technique and good craft, or craftsmanship. Technique is the style in which an artist attempts to realize the concept. It is merely a part of the craft and not the same thing. There are some highly skilled artists who are seduced by their own bravado and rely too much on their developed level of technique to carry the work. As a result, the objects become more representations of the artists’ admiration of their own abilities and the piece becomes stale and lifeless. Good craftsmanship is not realized. On the opposite side, there are plenty of artists who see good technique as taboo. Often because they have not been able to develop their own technique adequately enough for various reasons, and the skilled technique of another can certainly be threatening. As a result they shun technique and rely on irony and camp to carry their ideas- a witty sense of humor then replaces the need to develop technique. It becomes a matter of convenience. (Technique is not just the ability to render representationally, technique is any means one chooses to best achieve his or her desired product. Jackson Pollock had as much of a technique as Velazquez did. Which artist utilized his technique best within his craft is up for debate.)  Perhaps the main and most unfortunate reason that quality technique is abandoned and therefor good craftsmanship is not realized, is our own competitive commercial market. An architect in New York, competing with other architects to build an apartment complex, no doubt seeks the cheapest materials and labor to keep the cost low and stay competitive. In the name of efficiency, the best materials are not used and an adequate amount of time and labor is not invested to see the project thoroughly through. And so, the building leaks in a rainstorm or the mice find their way in through the seams. And now the owner must pay extra, in the long run, because shortcuts were made in the beginning, simply because the architect needed to keep costs low to beat out his or her competition if he or she is to survive in our commercial market. Enough about technique.

Good craftsmanship is exercised when an artist thoroughly conceives an idea, exhausts all options as to how best to translate that idea into substance (the substance being the final product: a painting, performance, building, etc.). The artist spends as much time as is required to get to know the material, to explore all options as to how the pieces of the idea come together upon realization. (That is where technique comes in.) And when the seams don’t quite fit, the artist is willing to start over, to comprehend what went wrong, what went right and to begin again, and again, and again as many times as is needed until the idea takes form, organically, through trial and error in a seamless fashion. When it is clear that a painter has thought through his or her execution, that the artist struggled and strove to find the best possible answers to solving such a complex problem as how to create a good work of art, that he or she dedicated as much time, energy and thoughtfulness, thoughtfulness above all, as was needed- the painting exists as a single entity. The colors, the mediums, the linen or cotton, the size, the width of the support structure, all elements come together harmoniously and create a solid, independent object of beauty (Beauty not in the taboo sense of the word, but beauty that can exist in the horrific or ugly as much as in the pleasurable.) that does not rely on the artist, art dealer, critic or literature to carry its weight. This is good craftsmanship. This rarely happens, but when it does, it’s incredibly powerful and it moves the viewer on a deep but simple level of the viewer’s subconscious that can not be described by words.

Below are a few examples of work that I believe have achieved that level of craftsmanship.

Michelangelo's Pieta

John Constable, oil on canvas

Quaker chair- the Quakers are known for their excellent craftsmanship

Lucian Freud, Benefit's Supervisor, oil on canvas

"Wet" by Hendrik Kerstens, print

Pantheon, Rome

Suleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul

On walking the Camino-

I recently came back from walking the Camino de Santiago with my brother. The Camino de Santiago is a European Union Cultural Landmark which involves trekking across Spain. There are several different paths one can take, however the Camino Frances, is the most popular and believed to be the path taken by St. James as he walked across Europe to preach Christianity. The destination of the Camino is Santiago de Compostella in Galicia, believed to be the resting place for the bones (minus his head) of St. James, the apostle. According to Christian legend, the eleven apostles (Judas, the twelfth, having hung himself, of course) dispersed across the known world after the execution and resurrection of Jesus to preach His Word and spread Christianity. St. James, one of the grumpier of the eleven apostles, made it as far as Galicia in modern day Spain, but was ultimately not very popular with the locals and so headed back to Judea where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in 44 AD becoming the first martyr of Christianity. (Christianity wouldn’t become the official religion of the Roman Empire until after the Emperor Constantine converted nearly three hundred years later.) From here it gets a bit hazy, there are several stories as to how the the headless corpse of St. James found its way back to Galicia. “A beautiful legend was elaborated, telling how the body of St James was returned to Galicia after his death, ‘by a raft with neither sail nor rudder’. The arrival was followed by a series of fantastic adventures : the followers who had accompanied James asked a heathen queen, Luparia, to bury the body of the Apostle in her lands. She refused and the unfortunates fled, pursued by the royal troops who, conveniently, died by drowning, thanks to the collapse of a bridge. Then Luparia tried wild oxen guarded by a dragon. They killed the dragon and tamed the oxen, upon which Luparia converted, and finally allowed the burial in a place which was soon forgotten.” (www.saint-jacques.info) The remains were not discovered until sometime in the 9^th century by a hermit. The reigning Pope was quick to declare the bones as being those of St. James. Though, realistically, there was no way to be certain. Since then, the bones have been hidden countless times from various invaders and were even lost at one point for a period of time, commencing the decline of the pilgrimage to Santiago. In 1884, bones were yet again recovered and, once again, the reigning Pope was quick to identify them as the relic of St. James- though, today, apparently the Vatican acknowledges the uncertainty of the declaration.

In any case, by the 1100’s, the Camino de Santiago had become one of the three most popular Christian pilgrimages and at one time even surpassing that of the Vatican in Rome and Jerusalem in popularity. Today, the Camino sees over 100,000 pilgrims each year (though many take modern day transportation to Sarria, only 100 kilometers away from Santiago and begin their pilgrimage there.) My bother and I began our walk in Roncesvalles, 750 kilometers away from Santiago. Many of the towns along the way have managed to maintain their medieval presence in the form of the architecture and religious art even when their inhabiters have no doubt changed with the times like the rest of us. The pilgrims that pass through every year have equally changed. Whereas before, people trekked thousands of kilometers in the name of Christianity, many pilgrims today, my brother and myself included, do so in the name of vacation. And I don’t mean this as a belittling reason. Religion aside, the experience of walking across Spain, climbing over mountain ranges and gently rolling hills covered in vineyards and wheat, descending valleys and exploring medieval villages and castles perched on hilltops, hearing tales of knights and invading Muslim armies, and some of the most beautiful landscapes you will ever see- this is enlightening enough for any modern day pilgrim. The pace at which you cross through Spain, a slow and steady walk, allows you to thoroughly absorb the vast layers of cultural history, accrued from the various ruling peoples from pagans to Christians to Muslims and again to Christians and is of great contrast to the speed and busyness of modern day life. (There are also plenty of examples of excellent craftsmanship from the Middle Ages to the Baroque along the way.)

In addition to a daily journal, I painted one watercolor a day, at the end of the day, of something in my new environment, as more of a record than of self-expression. Below are a few examples.

Day 1

Day 9

Day 10

Day 12

Day 13- Scallop shell with the Cross of the Order of Santiago

Day 14

Day 15- where we stayed for the night.

Day 16, my brother, after walking 40 kilometers in a day.

Day 17

Day 18

Day 20- old, Galician oak tree

Day 23, Santiago Cathedral, south facade.

Meaning Vs Significance and Self Portrait in Winter Hat Reworked

The Wheat Sifters

Meaning is a man-made concept. Significance is real. However, the value of a thing’s significance is relative and can therefor be misleading.

That said, we have always projected meaning into things where there is none. It’s what we do. And it’s quite fulfilling. It raises the value of the significance of the thing (whatever that thing may be- a painting, a house, a country, a religion, our own lives). This is a phenomenon that is common with the practice of art, the study of art history and art theory. It, most likely, has existed since the beginning of image making and it continues to happen all the time. To be clear, I am not referring to meaning as in the standard visual metaphors, like a skull in a painting meaning immortality. Rather, I am referring to a much broader sense of the word. For example, in the book, The Rape of The Masters, Roger Kimball writes that a certain theorist came to the conclusion that the scattering of grain in Courbet’s The Wheat Sifter “can also be seen as a downpour of menstrual blood- not red but warm-hued and sticky seeming, flooding outward from the sifter’s rose-draped thighs.” An interesting meaning indeed. And we can see how the imagery might allow a contemporary theorist (having lived during and after the feminism movementof the 60’s and 70’s) might go there. But Courbet lived nearly a century before the Feminist Movement. This connection is completely irrelevant to the painting as the artist intended it. The only relevance can be seen through the eyes of a contemporary individual. The newly derived meaning adds mystique to the painting and to the legend of the artist, boosting the value of the painting’s significance and, ultimately the main goal, to boost the status and career of the theorist. An artist does the same thing. He or she will be tempted to insert meaning into an image of his or her own creation in an effort to make the piece more substantial in the eyes of the viewer. When in reality, quite often the artist doesn’t exactly understand why he or she made the image in the first place, let alone what it is supposed to mean. Meaning is often slapped on at the end and the result can be the opposite of the artist’s intentions- it can cheapen the image.

One of Richter's Candle

During this last crash in the art market I was working as a temp art handler in the basement of Christie’s auction house and was fortunate enough to witness one of the biggest beasts of the art market deal with the crippling crash. Before a catalogue for an auction is put together, a group of specialists meet in front of each painting and one by one, they discuss and determine the monetary value of each piece. This value is normally reached not only on the quality of the piece and the authorship but, also, largely by the story of the piece- the importance of the past owners, the roll that the piece has played in art history thus far, etc. The idea is that the meaning that the artist, critic, historian or even these specialists have inserted into the piece, through the means of a good story, will sky rocket the piece’s value and a collector will feel, if even falsely so, that he or she has gotten his or her money’s worth. In reality, this meaning is simply an add on and has nothing to do with the quality of the physical piece itself. But we love a good story, and so, normally we will pay extra for it. I carried a Richter painting, one of his candles, from the second floor of Christie’s to the loading dock in the basement. As I was on my way with the painting in hand, the art handler who handed it to me mentioned as an ironic aside that I might want to be careful with this one as it is worth over 13 million dollars.  In an interview, when asked about the high asking prices at the auction houses, Richter says, “…It’s flattering, of course, but at the same time it’s shocking…They do indeed tend to pay far too much for art. There is a huge discrepancy between the true value and the relevance of art and the insane prices people are paying for it.”

I was present during one of these meetings in the Christie’s basement of Rockefeller Center. The group of specialists were looking at a DuBuffet- not a particularly interesting piece by the artist. They were going on about the importance of the previous owners when the head specialist stopped the others and said that because of the crash, they could no longer base their prices on the stories behind the paintings. In the new market, it is only about the DuBuffet itself. It is now a question of how much does the painting look to be worth and not about how much they can make it worth. People are no longer willing to pay the high prices for the stories that go along with the paintings.

On mimicking:

The contemporary world does not need another painter trying to paint like Velázquez. Velázquez fulfilled his roll and it was a necessary roll in the timeline of art history. Those artists who emulate Rembrandt or Velázquez in their pursuit of painting a significant painting are simply emulating art history and not engaging in a dialogue with our current world and our current issues. This goes for an artist who emulates a more contemporary artist such as Francis Bacon or Lucian Freud. These two painters fulfilled, or in Freud’s case- are fulfilling, their rolls. They came to their styles based on their own conclusions. And an artist who makes paintings in the likeness of these artists is simply mimicking. Of course I have my favorite artists, Freud and Velázquez being two of them, and I have certainly borrowed and will continue to borrow elements from their repertoire, but I have borrowed in an attempt to further realize my own means towards reaching a painting. All developing painters do this. It’s a necessary way of looking and researching. The manner in which one comes to making an image in paint should be the most genuine and honest manner possible in relation to the current times. This desire for honesty has brought me to my current, confused state. Exciting but confusing. I am happy with this last self-portrait. I feel like it is the only self-portrait I could come to, if I am to be as genuine as possible. But perhaps the significance I see in it is a result of some sort of self-imposed meaning. Perhaps I am fooling myself with this desire for a genuine response to existing in our contemporary world and inserting meaning where there is none. Perhaps I am going down the wrong path. But to that, at least I can say I am going down the wrong path honestly. (Note: Since this entry I have painted over the most recent self-portrait. It has come to several different “finished” stages and though there was much that I liked about the painting, in the end, there was something that just wasn’t working. It’s best, after several weeks of work, to paint over it and start fresh then to blindly and continuously tweak it.

an early finished stage of Winter Self-Portrait

most recent stage of Winter Self-Portrait

A bit more on the use of photography versus working from life:

My choice to work from life is not something I think about often. It’s a decision that seems natural. However, often I am asked the question of why not take a photograph of the model since it would save time and money. Two things I seem to have very little. I suppose that photography is such a dominating visual medium today that my decision to paint from life must be evaluated from time to time. I have mentioned before, the specific technical reasons for my decision- a photograph is a static display of information. You may not obtain any more information than what is recorded for you in two dimensions in the photograph. Painting from life allows a constant shift of information with each and every second. From the model changing, from the light changing, from my position, my mood, etc- things are constantly in flux which provides me with an infinite number of paths to take the painting down. I can keep the painting open for as long as I wish and add new information for as long as my subject is there in front of me.

When it comes down to it, when the technicalities are stripped away- I paint from life because, for me, it is more fun. Painting from a photograph is incredibly important when first learning how to paint. Translating three dimensions into two dimensions takes an understanding of a specific visual language. A language that, for most people, is not intuitive. Of course, the camera is an expert at this and a photograph is a flawless example of translating 3-D to 2-D. It knows the short cuts. It knows how to condense an infinite amount of tonal information into a finite amount- the bare minimum that is needed for the human brain to understand that a represented object has volume within a represented space. Put simply, in a photograph, the camera has already done the hard work of translating 3-D to 2-D for you. You need only observe the decisions made by the camera in the photograph to understand the basis of the specific visual language of representational painting. A lot can be learned in painting by copying a photograph. In college, I made the decision to leave the photograph. I felt like I had learned enough from it and I wanted to better comprehend this representational language without the photograph as a guide. Mature painters who choose to use the photograph as a resource for their paintings and who already understand this language are able to not only merely copy the photograph, but to manipulate the information that the photograph gives them. This allows them to bring the painting beyond the limitations of the photograph. It’s not a question of which approach to painting is better than the other. What is important is that you truly understand this language of representational painting. Once a painter (who chooses to work from a photo) is familiar with this, then the photograph can become a handy tool assists in the process of translation and does not limit the potential of the painting.

Deer Head 1

Deer Head 2

A quick note on the most recent paintings- with the recent self-portraits and this series of paintings of the deer head, painting has become less about the final outcome and more about the investigation of the 3-D to 2-D translation. Through painting the same subject over and over again, painting becomes considered more as a verb and less as a noun. I reworked SP in Winter Hat after  a friend brought it to my attention that the drawing in the arm was off. I also covered over the red smear that I assumed was absolutely necessary. It’s a stronger painting as a result.

Open Form vs Closed Form (Silhouette), Color, Light, and More Paint

I’ve been trying not to close the form. Instead, through passages of color, bring the surrounding atmosphere into the form, and visa versa. Hopefully, this does a couple of things: it remains an acknowledgment that this is indeed a painting, that I am not trying to trick the viewer into thinking that the illusion of a watermelon is the same thing as an actual watermelon in real space. I want to put absolute illusion aside and instead to try and take full advantage of the physical characteristics of this oily substance- the inherent tendency toward “accident” and disorganization. The second aspect that I hope this might accomplish is to imitate the nuances of actual vision. Forms are not closed, they are fragmented, blurred, they disappear and then reappear. The “borders” that run along a form as it turns away from the viewer fade into the darkness of a shadow, or are blurred from backlight. The cool grey patch on the side of a woman’s cheek is grey because the wall she stands against is cool grey- and there the form and the atmosphere merge into one. This is open form.
Looking at a white wall, really looking at it, one will notice the vibrations of light creating atmosphere. We see, in a sense, the same way we hear- through vibrations. And these vibrations of light allow us to see color which comes together to form the white wall in front of us. The white wall is really composed of lights and darks, cools and warms, reds, blues, and yellows, and our brain organizes these variations into a solid, white wall. A painter knows this, if only subconsciously, by hours spent in the studio, looking at life and mimicking it through paint. What’s interesting about a photograph is it has already done what our brain does. It has merged all of the variation of that wall together, and instead of hundreds of tints of light and variety of colors (as can be seen in life) the photograph replicates the wall with a much more limited range. And to paint from that photograph, you are in a sense making a condensed, limited version of a condensed, limited version. A lot of artists use photographs and there is nothing wrong with this as long as the artist is aware of the limits of the photograph. If that artist has spent hours painting from the real world, he or she can easily make up in the painting for what the photograph lacks, by adding nuances of temperature, color, value and tone (if, of course, the nuances is important to the painting). Jenny Saville is a case in point. I am only now, trying to bring this out in my painting- the vibrations of different color, mimicking atmosphere, opening up the figure to the environment around it.
On silhouettes- One of my favorite professors once said that a closed form is inherently better than an open form due to the fact that when we walk away from a painting, we are left with nothing but our memory. And over time, even the memory fades, and what remains is the most basic representation of that painting- in a sense- the symbol, the silhouette. The earliest forms depicted by man of the objects around us are in silhouette (e.g. Lascaux cave paintings). And so, depicting your subject in closed form to give it an absolute, distinct silhouette, is the best way to leave an impression deep inside the viewer’s memory. The silhouette becomes a symbol and we are hardwired to connect with symbols at the most basic level of consciousness.

Ingres and Davíd were masters of the closed form.  My memory of their paintings brings to mind beautiful, sometimes extraordinary silhouettes. But I’m not entirely sure that the silhouette taking on the form of the symbol and therefore potentially being easier to recall is a sound argument for suggesting that the closed form is the superior way to depict form. Of course, first it depends on what the artist is trying to convey. If the artist wants to convey a memory, he or she might blur “boundries” of the form, those moments when the form meets the atmosphere. Thereby opening the figure. This gives the impression of a faded image- faded in memory, as in many of Gerhard Richter’s paintings.  When I think of Lucian Freud, I think of streams of colors, flowing over the volumes, and between crevasses, converging in pools and collecting in mounds. When I think of Saville, I think of patches of colors that slam into each other and bounce off one another, describing the forms along their trajectory. When I think of John Currin, I think of thin films of paint, economically placed and having been delicately dragged over the top of the linen, leaving moment where one can peer straight down into the weave. Rembrandt- dabs and pools of colored grease that appear from the shadows and collect in the light.

In my memory, when I pull away from the canvas, and my nose is no longer firmly planted in the oil paint, I can make out the subjects. I am at the MET staring at the backside of Leigh Bowery, or at the Gagosian, facing the underbelly of a giant sleeping or slaughtered pig. The dabs and pools of grease come together to form Rembrandt’s signature bulbous nose. I can just make out the subjects, but the silhouettes are vague. Instead, at least for me, it is the feeling that I am left with, or the memory of that feeling. And that feeling is sometimes best evoked by the physicality of the paint.

James Elkins- WHAT PAINTING IS- some passages

Besides the occasional couple of hours here and there, its been several days since I’ve been able to get into studio and really hunker down. I’ve been getting rather anxious. I’ll try to get up early so that I can at least get four hours in tomorrow before I have to work. Carlo Pittore said with absolute conviction that the goal is to paint six hours a day, six days a week, and rest on the seventh. Biblical.

I have included some passages from James Elkins’ book What Painting Is- one of my favorite books on the act of painting.

“Pictures can have many meanings of those kinds, and art history is a rich and complex field. But a painting is a painting, and not words describing the artist or the place it was made or the people who commissioned it. A painting is made of paint- of fluids and stone- and paint has its own logic, and its own meanings even before it is shaped into the head of a Madonna. To an artist, a picture is both the sum of ideas and a blurry memory of “pushing paint,” breathing fumes, dripping oils and wiping brushes, smearing and diluting and mixing. Bleary preverbal thoughts are intermixed with the namable concepts, figures and forms that are being represented. The material memories are not usually part of what is said about a picture, and that is a fault in interpretation because every painting captures a certain resistance of paint, a prodding gesture of the brush, a speed and insistence in the face of mindless matter: and it does so at the same moment, and in the same thought, as it captures the expression of a face.” Pages 2-3 James Elkins, What Painting Is

“To a painter, it is the life’s blood: a substance so utterly entrancing, infuriating, and ravishingly beautiful that it makes it worthwhile to go back into the studio every morning, year after year, for an entire lifetime. As the decades go by, a painter’s life becomes a life lived with oil paint, a story told in the thickness of oil. Any history of painting that does not take that obsession seriously is incomplete… Paint records the most delicate gesture and the most tense…Paint is a cast made of the painter’s movements, a portrait of the painter’s body and thoughts. The muddy moods of oil paints are the painter’s muddy humors, and its brilliant transformations are the painter’s unexpected discoveries. Painting is an unspoken and largely uncognized dialogue, where paint speaks silently in the masses and colors and the artist responds in moods. All those meanings are intact in the paintings that hang in museums: they preserve the memory of the tired bodies that made them, the quick jabs, the exhausted truces, the careful nourishing gestures.” Page 5 James Elkins, What Painting Is

I have more passages from the book, but if I am really going to get to studio early tomorrow, it is going to have to wait.
The following images are paintings that are currently being exhibited at The Phillips Collection in DC in the show- Paint Made Flesh.

Jenny Saville/ Phillip Guston/ John Currin/ Lucian Freud