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Feb 26, 2004
Why do artists still draw people and why would someone stand (naked) before a room full of people for hours? I thought of this yesterday when I read the piece by "J" (artist, Jen Caban) at 2 Blowhards, titled "Confessions of a Naked Model." As a representational painter, I've spent many hours drawing and painting from the model. I've also modeled for other artists. It's hard work, naked or not, which is one reason why so many artists' models are dancers, athletes, or actors. According to Ms. Caban, many professional models are also exhibitionists:
"In good models, exhibitionism runs deep.... the high of being looked at isn't something I can deny. I fly when I'm on the model stand; afterwards, I'm bouncy and exhilarated, and more flirtatious than I'd ever be in normal, subway-riding life. Modeling changes you. You start to accept your flaws. After seeing naked bodies, lovely and otherwise, on the stand, and not having onlookers shriek at your own, you start caring less about cellulite-y bottoms and sagging breasts. You see that your naked body’s something worth paying to look at. And noble or not, this brings a smile to my face."
I have noticed that some of the better models seem to be having a lot of fun up there, but I've known a few who just needed the money, and had discovered a talent for holding a position. A good model is a joy to work with and they're worth every bit of the money they make. Here are a couple of my favorite models:
(Sorry, I had to remove the pix - too many frat boys were downloading them.)
These two would cheerfully create and hold interesting poses for as long as we needed them. Body type or attractiveness is not particularly important to most artists, but the pool of available models is heavily populated with the young and fit.
Few artists can afford to hire their own models, so we tend to pool our resources by forming groups to split the cost. And then the next problem is, who has a studio big enough to accommodate the model and several artists? Forget using family or friends as models - they start whining after the first ten minutes, and then they make demands
about where and when we can show the work.
One time I was in a group of artists that met once a week in "B's" studio. She was the only one with a studio big enough for all of us. We each took turns posing for the rest of the group. All except "B" - her contribution was the studio, so she didn't have to pose. After a few months we started looking around for other models. A non-artist friend of mine volunteered to pose for us. She wanted to see what it was like. I asked her to write a short bit about the experience and here's what she had to say:
" At my first ever posing for a group of female artists the attention felt blissful, freeing, and impersonal. It was exquisite to be the focus of pure, impersonal adoration for the physical, coming at you from every angle. There was no need to involve my ego, or personality. Quite a contrast to my normally mind-driven life. Exhausting and tough, keeping the same pose for 3 hours, even with breaks.
The second posing for an artist, who was at the time in a grip of a major personal conflict, was different. It felt as if she was using my body as a resource for her inner war. It startled me. There is an awesome connection, I think, between an artist and a model, but it is hard to explain it in words."
Some of the models for the figurative painter Xenia Hausner talked about the experience of sitting for her, in the monograph, "Xenia Hausner, Heart Matters":
Knut B. - "I am sitting for a portrait. The most relaxed attitude becomes torment when it has to be sustained. My muscles soon begin to ache, arms and legs go to sleep. In front of me the painter is in motion. She fixes her gaze on me , springs back to the easel, and paints."
Elfriede J. - "When you sit for a portrait you are for a long, a very long time - longer than I had thought - subjected to the strange matter of staying still, of representing a body in an environment, a body that will then be stretched flat like a sheet."
Christina W. - "... the conversation seeps away. My embarrassment at being subject to such close attention vanishes in view of the other woman, constantly moving - forward, back and forward again. I consist of nostrils, a crooked mouth, a difficult shadow, the long wrinkle; disintegrated into components of which I know nothing. In fact, she has forgotten me."
Barbara W. - " I tried to analyze the artist's always brief, fixing glances. This glance reminded me most of the passport officers' inspections in Moscow. The surface of the face is sized up section by section, and compared with the passport photo. It is not an act of communication between human beings - the eyes are avoided - but a way of 'frisking' segments of the surface. The light effects on the skin are much more important than the inner expression."
In my personal experience of posing, I tended to pick a comfortable position and then zone out - go somewhere far, far away. I was usually startled when they told me that my time was up, like being awakened from a dream. It wasn't particularly pleasant or unpleasant, but it wasn't drawing, which is what I wanted to be doing.
Drawing the human body is an almost perfect workout for the kind of educated seeing and eye-hand coordination that artists need. Finished paintings of academic nudes don't interest me, but I think that the regular practice of life drawing has had a positive impact on my work - even the cityscapes and still life paintings.
Danny Gregory, on "Anatomy of Anatomy"
The Bad Art Cafe, on Artists' Models
How to Become an Artists Model, by Kelly Borsheim
Bodies of Art: French Literary Realism and the Artist's Model, by Marie Lathers
Figure Drawings by San Francisco Photorealist Dale Erickson
Figurative Painting from the John Pence Gallery, San Francisco
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Feb. 23, 2004
Hey! I got a mention in Modern Art Notes! My first hint that someone is actually reading this. Thank you, Tyler Green.
From Bill Jay's column in the current issue (#51) of "LensWork" magazine:
"This is a warning to all art students: Your major is dangerous. A survey of more than 8,000 men who attended Glasgow University between 1948 and 1968 found a correlation between the students' areas of study and lifespan. Engineering students fared the best. Only 8.92 percent of them died during the study, compared to 14.81 percent of art students. The study leader, Peter McCarron, concluded that arts students die younger because they have less earning power and suffer from more stress and malnourishment. That's the bad news. The good news is that arts students are the least likely to commit suicide. I guess the lesson is that artists die earlier but they die happy."
Sheesh, what a week! Three days of computer hell (requiring a reformat of my hard drive, and then the digital version of finding, unpacking and arranging the furniture and office supplies) put me way behind in my painting (and writing.) I had an early appointment today at Almac to get my slides done, and wanted to have a good batch of paintings to take in, but just managed to finish two.
Almac is one of those hidden gems that you only find out about from word-of-mouth. You would never in a million years find this place on your own. Don and Nancy Felton provide a critical service for the artists, galleries and museums in San Francisco, and they do it all in a space the size of closet, next to the southern end of the Stockton tunnel. See the Kodak logo (orange square) at street level, below the "Green Door Massage" sign?
That's your only hint that something is behind those blackened windows. When you open the inner security door, it bumps Nancy's chair, and she has to roll away from the desk to let you in. IF she lets you in, you enter a dark and chaotic jumble of artwork, photographic equipment, and the detritus of a family business that's been in the same location for decades (think bowling trophies, family snapshots, and needlework projects.) After you carry in your paintings or sculptures (and try to find a place to set them) you see Don at his tripod, silhouetted by the light exiting the black velvet chamber at the other end of the room. It never fails to give me a lift when I see one of my paintings on that back wall, illuminated by a zillion watts. This is when it really looks finished - ready for prime time. You never know who you might bump into at Almac. Everybody goes there, the big names and the unknowns. They never advertise. They don't have a web page. Call Nancy if you want an appointment: (415) 986-6327.
Feb 14, 2004 -
Yesterday I took CalTrain down to the San Jose Museum of Art show, "Not-So-Still-Life, A Century of California Painting and Sculpture." I sat in the upper deck on the train so I could indulge in one of my favorite pastimes - watching the scenery roll by at a leisurely pace. Even though I've taken this ride many times, I always see something new. This time I noticed how often buildings along the rail corridors use the roof tops as storage areas. Most attractive was the house with five canoes (each a different color) casually arranged on the tar and gravel roof. Other buildings sported a hot water heater, a collection of ladders, auto body panels, dismantled scaffolding, stacks of old lumber, piles of 5 gallon buckets, and various plumbing and building supplies. Flat roofs are pretty common around here and real estate is expensive, so I guess it makes a kind of sense. Maybe I noticed them this time because I was thinking in terms of still life... the meanings of arranged objects.
Once at the museum, I went straight to the ground floor (permanent collection) exhibit. I wanted to visit a few of my favorite paintings. I hadn't seen John Register's "Desert Restaurant" in a long time - it was so much more loose and painterly than I remembered. I'm always surprised and gratified when that happens. I admire certain artists, and tend to burnish my memories of their work until it gets to the point that they seem unattainable, and I feel like, "I will never be that good." But once I stand in front the painting again, and I can see every step, and feel the brush strokes in my arms, then everything seems possible again.
I spent some time in front of the Robert Schwartz oils (two images of disasters), and then the Chester Arnold painting, "Ghost". This is the one (based on the Caspar David Friedrich painting, "Wreck of the Hope") that shows a huge pile of junked canvases. A couple of months ago I attended a lecture by Chester Arnold, where he talked about his habit of writing on the backs of his canvases... sometimes quotes, sometimes long poems. In looking at "Ghost" this time, I noticed faint inscriptions on the backs of the canvases: "Purification of Memory", "The End of Art", and "Thy Kingdom Come." It being Friday the 13th, maybe I should have sensed the ominous events that occurred after I left the museum, but I was happier than a bee in a rose garden, and just kept migrating from painting to painting, through the collection.
On my way upstairs to the still life show, I passed the oversized Chris Brown painting, of yellow orange fruit in a tree (I think it's called "Decker's Memory"). I used to hate this painting, but it's starting to grow on me. The colors are actually quite nice.
Upstairs, the still life show was loosely organized by era. The oldest stuff was pretty fusty, but had a few nice pieces, including one of my favorites, by Clarence Hinkle, titled "Still Life" (circa 1930.) It was composed of a pitcher, a potted plant, and a tray of food on a table in front of a window with bright light leaking through closed blinds. The room was dark and the objects were silhouetted against the window, but he managed the incredibly difficult job of coloring and animating the objects in the foreground, while being true to the quality of light from the window.
I was most gratified to see two pieces by Agnes Pelton. I'm crazy about her work, and it's rarely exhibited, but it was a bit of a stretch to call these still life. Both paintings contained abstract objects on an outer-space-sky-like field with stars. "Memory" showed purple morphic shapes erupting from a white container and falling to a gold pillow over green waves. "Even Song" showed a glowing, pulsing urn, overflowing with vapors drifting down to a tear, a pearl, and a white flower with a dark underground steam flowing below. But, so what - SJMA can see them as still life, I'll see them my way.
Minutes after leaving the museum, a car crashed into a building a block ahead of me.
I snapped a photo just before they started pulling people out of there. I didn't see any major injuries, although the back seat passenger seemed wedged in. Suddenly, dark clouds appeared in the sky, a big wind came up, and then sidewalk cafe umbrellas flew out of their anchors and started blowing down the street. I figured it was time to get back to San Francisco, and hurried over the Guadelupe River to the CalTrain station.
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Feb. 10, 2004
I just finished reading two books on figurative artists:
"The Bride Stripped Bare - The Artist and the Female Nude in the Twentieth Century" by Janet Hobhouse, Published in 1988 by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, ISBN 1-55584-217-8
"Curve - the Female Nude Now" by David Ebony, Jane Harris, Frances Richard, Martha Schwendener, Sarah Valdez, Linda Yablonsky; Published in 2003 by Universe Publishing, ISBN 0-7893-0871-1
"Bride" focuses on 13 artists (including Bonnard, Schiele, Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, Lachaise, Balthus, and Pearlstein) and is generous with the reproductions. Each artist gets a chapter of 20 to 30 pages. The author focuses on each artist's relationships with the women in his life, explaining why Bonnard's wife was always in the tub, why Modigliani's nudes seem simultaneously chaste and erotic, and why Lachaise and Balthus were so obsessed. "Curve" is a straightforward review of more than 90 contemporary artists (including photographers) who focus on the figure. Each artist gets two pages with 3 or 4 reproductions and a very short description/explanation of their work. The painters in this collection include William Bailey, Bo Bartlett, Will Cotton, Katherine Doyle, Ahn Duong, Eric Fischl, Ann Gale, Julie Heffernan, F. Scott Hess, Graydon Parrish, Philip Pearlstein, Jenny Saville, Costa Vavagiakis, and Suen Wong. While "Bride" is a deeper look at artists that seem familiar to many of us, "Curve" is mainly an invitation to check out contemporary figurative work, and find a few artists to explore further.
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Feb. 7, 2004
The Sunset Artists' Society held a small show this weekend. I stopped in to see a couple of artists there. Doug MacLean is a sculptor who mostly works in wood, building up the work from smaller, fitted pieces and then burning the wood. His animals have a joyous and spirited presence. He has some bronze and wire work, although he didn't bring them to his show (but he may have them at the Hall of Flowers show in June):
Pam Heyda paints small, exquisitely detailed surrealistic portraits. Her rich colors and beautiful framing add a sumptuous feel to the intriguing, dream-like content:
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Feb 6, 2004 -
Yesterday I went downtown to drop off some sketches for a potential commission, and I took in a few galleries while I was there. I spent about 30 minutes at 5th and Market, waiting for the #27 Bryant, so I had plenty of opportunity to observe... there's always an abundance of visual stimuli at that corner. There were a couple of people I really wanted to paint (and maybe I will someday.) The woman in red stood across the street in the opposite bus shelter. She was Lady Death from Charles Bukowski's Pulp. Her hair was red, as well as her dress, boots, jacket, purse, nails, and jewelry. Every item was a different shade of red. Her clothes vibrated and shimmered, but she stood perfectly still, equally balanced on both feet, looking straight ahead for 30 minutes. Made me wish I'd had my portable easel with me. But I wouldn't have been able to paint anyway - there were a couple of twitchy, speedy types on my side of the street, constantly circling, pacing, mumbling, and looking for an excuse to interact. One of them looked a little like Cleopatra, back from the grave. She had about 0.5 inch of eye liner below her eyes, extending to little curls at the outside corners. Unfortunately, Antony was sitting on the bench in the shelter, using a safety pin to pick open the scabs and blisters that covered his hands and forearms. They left after 15 minutes, unable to endure the wait.
Eventually, I made my way to the Catherine Clark Gallery to see the Sandow Birk show, and I realized that the bus stop had been the perfect introduction for this show, "Dante’s Purgatorio." The show includes five large scale paintings, 69 drawings, and a limited edition leather bound book. This is the second exhibition in a three part trilogy of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Birk's "Inferno" (Hell) was set in Los Angeles. Purgatory is set in San Francisco. I wonder were Paradise will be? The exhibit for "Paradiso" is set for New York in 2005. Birk's ink drawings are based on the work of Gustave Dore and the postures of Dante and Virgil are more or less identical to Dore's. But the other characters and the scenery are given a contemporary spin. If you're familiar with Dore's work, it's easy (and fun) to spot the interpretations. For instance, in Canto II, "The Celestial Transport", Dante and Virgil look much the same, as they wait on the shore, but the angel at the prow of the ferry boat is changed to a #49 MUNI bus coming out of the mist. One of my favorite pieces is Canto XII "Arachne". Dore's woman writhes on the ground, growing spider legs from her sides, but Birk's Arachne is a pile of department store mannequins that perfectly mimics the Dore work. Birk's figurative ink work is not at the level of Robert Crumb, but it's better than most artists today, and at least as good as Dore. This is an ambitious undertaking, still in progress, and already impressive. The Catherine Clark Gallery is selling signed copies of the Chronicle Books edition of Birk's Inferno. (The preface by Doug Harvey is terrific.) Good photos of the opening here: <http://www.artbusiness.com/firstth0104.html>
Onward, to the Hackett-Freedman gallery to see the opening of Ann Gale's figurative paintings, and a group show of small sculptures. I was curious about Ann Gale's work. From what I'd seen in reproductions, her work reminded me of Jenny Saville and Xenia Hausner. The similarities were a focus on the human figure, choppy brushstrokes, and a solid, addicted-to-gravity feeling. I was surprised to see that Ann Gale's paintings, when confronted directly, are quite different. The figures have a weightless, almost ghostly appearance. The paintings look like digital or video images that are breaking up due to poor transmission. The colors seemed dull and muddy to me, but that's just because I have a personal preference for vibrance and saturated colors. One portrait ("Rachel with a black skirt") of a woman in a white slip was exquisitely rendered, as was a small head-and-shoulders image of "Robert". The sitters are individually realized, not just generic types.
The small sculptures really jazzed me - what a warm, wonderful, life-affirming selection, many of these pieces by painters. Case in point: Robert Schwartz. I've been a fan of his fabulously detailed, symbolic gouache narratives for years, but I never knew he worked in 3D. His "Acrobat on Horseback" is in clay, and painted with oils. A stocky horse pirouettes like a ballet dancer while an acrobat, wrapped in a flayed leopard skin, rolls on his back. The same meticulous craftsmanship that characterizes his paintings is apparent here. Even the surface beneath the horse's feet is beautiful. Elsewhere in the sculpture rooms are three beautiful bronze pieces by that fan of the female form, Gaston Lachaise. Also in the I-love-my-wife category is a small standing panel by Alex Katz.
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Feb 3, 2004 -
Each time I realize that I actually paint pictures for a living I want to thank all the goddesses in the pantheon for helping me find my way to this place. Sure, a little more money would be nice, but let's face it, as long as I can buy art supplies and make my share of the rent, everything else is gravy.
"First Thursday" is this week, and I'll be heading out to see the work of Ann Gale at the Hackett-Freedman Gallery. She makes large, figurative paintings with loose/broken strokes... reminds me of Jenny Saville and Xenia Hausner.
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