Simplicity in Art

It is thought-provoking for every artist to see Albrecht Dürer's statement that "Simplicity is the greatest adornment of art". In some ways, it is a bit ironic for Dürer was perfectly capable of making complex, crowded works of art, especially his woodcuts.

Hands of an Apostle, Albrecht Dürer,  (image courtesy of GraphischeSammlung Albertina).

Nonetheless, the image that of course comes first to mind when I read his remark is his super-famous Hands of an Apostle, a grey and white drawing on his favourite blue paper. This drawing was done in preparation for the Frankfurt church altarpiece that Jakob Heller commissioned him to paint in 1508. This is indeed a devastatingly simple drawing in one sense, but look at the rendering of the skin texture, the way Dürer conveys the gentle meeting and touching of the finger tips, as well as the effort of keeping the hands together, despite their weight. The blue paper used, "cartaazzurra", was a new enthusiasm for Dürer; he learned about it when he went in 1507-08 to Venice. Artists in Northern Italy had been using it since 1389, and Venetian artists favoured it because it allowed them to use wonderful chiaroscuro effects.

Twelve-year Old Christ, drawing, Albrecht  Dürer (image at right courtesy of the GraphischeSammlung Albertina).

He was using this paper again for this study of the Twelve-year Old Christ, an extraordinary, sensitive and yet very straightforward drawing.

Dürer continued to use this paper and took a goodly supply of it back home to Northern Europe. I remember reading somewhere that when he ran out of it, he went to great lengths to find alternative blue papers. This drawing of the Arm of Eve was again, a very simple, powerful drawing Dürer did on blue paper in 1507.

Arm of Eve, drawing on blue paper, 1507l Albrecht Dürer  (image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art)

I think that it is a real discipline for each of us, as an artist, to try to simplify our work, to distil it to its essence, not to dilute and maybe obscure the message. There is always the temptation to add in more detail, more complexity. When you think of it, however, that a simple study, drawn 503 years ago on a small piece of blue paper, can remain so memorable, so vivid, so powerful is a total confirmation of Dürer's statement about simplicity being the greatest "adornment of art".

The Process of Discovery

When artists embark on a creative venture, particularly one that uses Nature as its springboard, a process of discovery is often necessary.

Take, for example, a tree that may be inspiring a sculptor, a photographer, a draughtsman or a painter. Unless the artist already knows that tree very well, he or she will need to study the tree to learn of its characteristics. Height, form of growth, girth, type of leaf and bark, its flowers and seeds, its general look that identifies it as an oak, a cherry tree, or a poinciana. Only after learning about that particular tree can the artist move on to creating art that evokes it, in some form. By finding out about the tree, you can then decide what to depict, what to emphasise, what to eliminate, how to weave the fruit of your discoveries into a composition, a work of art. In essence, the process of discovery allows one to distill some order out of the seeming chaos in front of one's eyes.

For a painter or draughtsman/woman, small thumbnail sketches are one passport to imposing some order on one's discoveries. Frequently, when one is working en plein air, there is such an abundance of information pouring into one's brain that it is overwhelming. Translating all those discoveries of form, light, pattern, whatever... into a coherent composition is daunting. So small, quick studies, trying out compositions, seeking to simplify shapes and strengthen light patterns and passages. introducing repetitions and contrasts, are a way to further the process of discovery.

These studies don't take very long, one can try out lots of versions, in any medium, and each one helps further to refine what one is trying to say. They are also a form of shorthand note-taking, helping to catch fleeting light or shapes, or sorting out complex aspects. I find that they are especially valuable before I launch into a silverpoint drawing, because they can save me lots of troubles, given that silverpoint precludes any alterations or erasures.

Thumbnail drawings of landscape (Image courtesy of Marion Boddy-Evans. (Licensed to About.com, Inc.)

Since I have never scanned any of the thumbnail sketches from my drawing books, I am indebted to other artists for allowing me to illustrate ways of using thumbnail sketches. Above is an example of small exploratory drawing/paintings which use knowledge already absorbed from the landscape to determine which is the best way to proceed.

Park Sketches, George Bumann

These thumbnail drawings are done by George Bumann, a noted wildlife sculptor living in wild and beautiful Montana. The studies were apparently done on a visit in 2009 to Yellowstone National Park. Eloquent shorthand, they show how his knowledge of those landscapes, born of multiple discoveries and observations, helps define his art. I am grateful to him for such illustrations.

Because an artist has taken the time and made the effort to discover what it is that makes a subject notable, beautiful, interesting, relevant... the resultant distilled knowledge becomes a passport to making good art, art that rings true without having to be a faithful reproduction of what is being viewed. As the French poet, Charles Baudelaire, once remarked, "All good and genuine draughtsmen draw according to the picture inscribed in their minds, and not according to nature."

For that picture to be inscribed in the mind, there needs first to be a process of discovery.

The Test of Time

How often do images of artwork remain with one long after going to the exhibition? I always find it to be a good test of how much I like a piece of art, how much it has spoken to me, and how it has become embedded in my mind.

I was thinking about this aspect of viewing art in relation, for instance, to the Summer Exhibition 2011 at the Royal Academy in London. I went to see this huge show in early June - it stays up until 15th August. Now, nearly six weeks after I saw the exhibition, I find that there are only a few of the thousand-plus works of art that remain fresh in my mind and still interest me. Naturally, as I invariably find, the art I like is seldom illustrated in any catalogue (let alone postcards in a museum)! So it is even more an acid test that I need to remember the artwork entirely without prompts, save for any notes or quick drawings I might have made at the time.

The RA Summer Exhibition, a selling exhibition, is a giant affair, with eminent Academicians in charge of hanging different rooms. Christopher Le Brun was the show's main co-ordinator; he operated under the thesis, "There are two ways of showing paintings. One is the classic orthodox hang with lots of space around every single piece. But here it's like a battle of the paintings - forty big pictures on one wall alone!" By contrast, Michael Craig-Martin, who curated another room, went in another direction. He explained, "Normally, the Royal Academicians are hidden among everyone else. I wanted to show their range and quality by focusing for the first time on RAs only, because there are lots of new ones and nobody quite realises that they have all arrived here."

Photographs, paintings, etchings and other prints, artist's books, architectural renderings and models, sculpture, drawings - the 1117 works gave everyone a taste of today's art. You need a few hours or several visits properly to absorb the diversity, quite apart from having to navigate the crowds which ebb and flow according to the hour. It makes the test of time even more demanding, in fact. But as I remember back, some works remain to delight me.

Frederick Cuming's large oils were a delight of subtle atmospherics, whose titles, "Crescent Moon and Sea" "Clouds Evening, Camber", "Clouds and Reflections" or "Dawn Garden, Frost" tell of his interest and skills in conveying almost abstractions that evoked northern climes. Later, I found his silkscreens, "Etna" and "Thaw", and promptly fell for them!

May Evening, Crescent Moon,  Fred Cumming, oil on board. (courtesy of the Artist)

Winter Sea Camber 14, Fred Cumming , oil on board (courtesy of the Artist)

At the other end of the spectrum, a warm evocative abstraction in reds, "Window Screen Ajanta" took one far to the tropics - it was an oil by the late William Baillie. I have to say it was positively miserably hung, and almost impossible to view - shame on the RA for such a disservice to the artist.

In between, of course, there were the large and dramatic, the small and delightful, the ugly and strident, but more importantly, the gems. One, for me, was Edmund de Waal's "Untitled, 2011" white lacquered cabinet, hung on the wall, with clear laminated glass, containing 70 diminuitive celadon and white vessels. Discreet and elegant, interesting and evocative of so much history eastern and western in the ceramics world, I was not surprised that it was already sold. The other reason for my pleasure at seeing it was that the artist is also the author of one of the best books I have read for ages, "The Hare with Amber Eyes".

Another series of eight drawings, "Marks on the Edge of Space" were a fascinating use of conte, graphite and mylar by Ann Christopher RA. Layers, stainless steel rivets to attach them, use of shadows to evoke water, fields of grass, trees – so many plays of tone and shape to delight. Very sophisticated, lovely work.

THE LINES OF TIME -15, Pastel / graphite / crayon, Ann Christopher (courtesy of the Artist)

THE LINES OF TIME -20, Pastel / graphite / crayon , Ann Christopher (courtesy of the Artist)

THE LINES OF TIME -21,  Pastel / graphite / crayon, Ann Christopher (courtesy of the Artist)

There was another delight in the drawing section - a silverpoint. Small and quiet in its faintness, it was a lovely portrait, "Dulcie" by Dylan Waldron. Marvellous to find another silverpoint artist!

Dulcie, silverpoint, Dylan Waldron

Of course there were many other stimulating or beautiful works of art at the RA. Nonetheless, the artworks which have stood the test of time for me and that come first to mind are, as I have mentioned above, but a handful. Of course, that is just my personal selection: vive la difference is definitely the operative phrase at a show like the RA Summer Exhibition. It is worth going to the exhibition if you are in London, for it is a good way of testing the pulse of a wide selection of British artists.

Connecting the Dots - again!

A few months ago, I read the dense and absolutely fascinating book, "The Discovery of France" (with the additional title in the States of "A Historical Geography") by Professor Graham Robb of Oxford University. It is the most amazing work - the result of many years of research and some 14,000 miles cycled through France on his voyages of discovery. Graham Robb shows how the cohesive nation of today, "la belle France", was far from being either cohesive or civilised until very recently, really until the 19th century. Paris was an island of learning, culture and enterprise in a sea of very primitive, divided groups of people who had little concept of belonging to a nation and who, for the most part, did not even speak French until well after the French Revolution.

One of these groups, the Savoyards from Savoie, a beautiful area to the east of France, in the Alps region of Lake Geneva, had such trouble surviving in their inhospitable and highly taxed lands, that they would send their very young children to Paris for survival, of sorts. This had been going on for centuries, and these young children, virtually in servitude in many cases, would walk to Paris and there, they organised themselves into groups. They were especially famed as chimney sweeps because, being skinny small children, they could clamber up the narrow Parisian chimneys to clean them out.

Graham Robb tells a lot about these impoverished Savoyards, with their sense of solidarity, and their importance to their families back in Savoie to whom they would send money every year. Balzac and Victor Hugo wrote about the Savoyards, with their heroic attempts to survive, turning their hand to any job deemed unfit for others.

Standing Savoyarde with a Marmot Box, Antoine Watteau

Eventually, some 150 years ago, they progressed from chimney sweeping to another tightly knit category, the "collets rouges", the official porters at Hôtel Drouot, the most famous and oldest auction house in Paris. 110 porters, all Savoyards, have the right to transport, sort, store and carry all the auction items in the Drouot precincts. Recently, there have been some "irregularities" discovered and porters have been investigated for serious wrong-doing, something the French do not seem surprised about!

But the wonderful connecting of dots that happened again for me was when I was reading about the clearly fabulous exhibition currently on at the Royal Academy, London, of Jean Antoine Watteau's drawings. I had known that Watteau drew all sorts of contemporary scenes in Paris, not just the "fêtes galantes" of the Royal Court and 18th century French society. But I had forgotten about his drawings of the Savoyards. The Royal Academy exhibition apparently has eighty-eight drawings, divided into five themes, of which one deals with the Savoyards.

The Old Savoyard, red and black chalk with stumping, 1715, Antoine Watteau, (image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)

The Old Savoyarde,, 1715, Antoine Watteau, red and black chalk (image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum).

These two drawings of elderly Savoyards, impoverished and marked by hardship, date from 1715. The old lady carries a marmot box, for the Savoyards would train marmots and use them for street entertainment in their quest for survival. Watteau apparently executed about a dozen drawings of the Savoyards in total.

Only such a master draughtsman as Watteau could so vividly illustrate the dire straits of the Savoyards that Graham Robb describes.

Mark-making - Playing with Fire

My artist friends in the silverpoint world are always guaranteed to surprise and delight with their creative inventiveness. I have just had a fresh reminder of this when Jane Masters, a fellow British/French import to the Northeast, sent me a notice about a show which she has just had at the Miller Block Gallery in Boston. She is a most successful artist with a wonderful resume of achievements to her name.

INstallaation View, Miller Bock Gallery show, Jane Masters

Entitled "Playing with Fire", this was clearly a most unusual exhibition and very well reviewed in the Boston Globe. This is an installation view of the exhibition she sent me.

Jane has, in addition to her wonderful silverpoint drawings, been extending her vocabulary to include mark-making by burning hand-forged steel brands on heavy-weight Arches watercolour paper. The resultant burnt drawings are wonderfully eloquent and energetic: the richly-hued burned marks and remaining smoke marks combine to form complex, sophisticated dances on the paper.

The images below are examples of this work.

Playing with Fire Curve, Jane Masters artist (Image courtesy of the artist)

Playing with Fire Circle, Jane Masters artist (Image courtesy of the artist)

Playing with Fire, Playing with Fire announcement, Jane Masters artist (Image courtesy of the artist)

The works  (Playing with Fire - circle) and  (Playing with Fire - Curve) are full 22 x 30" sheets of watercolour, while the centre image is a panel of four full watercolour sheets, or what is left of them after the creative and elemental forces are done. I am left awestruck, not only at the sheer dedication and skill of making such drawings, but also by the fact that beforehand, Jane makes the steel brands by hand-forging them. That is a labour of love and passion.

Jane shows the same passion (which I had seen in her silverpoints) when she also uses heated needles to pierce holes through the paper to create pinhole drawings that make me think of Victorian samplers, albeit with a lovely sense of humour in the messages she includes.

Jane Masters reminds me that there is such a multiplicity of ways to make marks on paper that become wondrous drawings. All it takes is creativity and passion. Bravo, Jane!

A Dedication to Line-making

There is a very talented and dedicated artist whose work is currently on display at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia - Curtis Bartone. His ability to make lines sing and tell dense, thoughtful stories is remarkable.

I first met Curtis when we both were part of the 2006 Luster of Silversilverpoint exhibition at the Telfair Museum, and we later coincided with the second Luster of Silver exhibition at the Evansville Museum of Arts, Evansville, IN in 2009. When I first saw Curtis' fine lines in his silverpoint drawings, I was impressed and intrigued, for he uses his skills to make thought-provoking juxtapositions of human activity and nature.

Curtis Bartone; Forbidden, 2009; Lithograph on Arches 88; 22 x 28 inches; Courtesy of the Artist

In his current large exhibition at the Telfair, Domain: Drawings, Etchings and Lithographs, which runs from February 4th to June 26th, 2011, Curtis Bartone pulls one into realms that challenge one's assumptions about life on our planet, while leaving the viewer marvelling at his skills in etching and lithography, as well as in creating huge graphite or charcoal drawings and luminous silverpoints. Every work rewards careful study, like the print shown here, entitled Forbidden. In each drawing or print, dense lines build up compositions of flora and fauna against backdrops that jar, challenge and provoke our concepts of how we humans coexist with nature.

Domain is an exhibition that warrants repeated visits. The printer's skill and the draughtsman's skill, allied to an intense, informed series of disturbingly beautiful yet troubling messages, are such that you can't absorb everything all at one visit. Go and celebrate a master "line-maker" and draughtsman. Bravo, Curtis!

Lines

When you think about it, life is full of lines. Power lines, phone lines, railway lines, the lines that define buildings and streets, cobwebs and even the veins of leaves. For an artist, however, using lines in drawings can give rise to many different philosophies and approaches.

For instance, Paul Klee famously and deliciously said, "A drawing is simply a line going for a walk". That statement goes along with his whimsy and imaginative approach to creating art. Just like his statement that "a line is a dot that went for a walk".

Paul Klee "Lines, Dots and Circles"

This is beautifully illustrated by one of his numerous drawings. It shows that whilst Klee was clearly drawing very intelligently, and often with deliberate wit and parody, particularly as the Nazis rose to power, nonetheless intuition and pure creativity flowed happily.

Another artist who allows the line simply to flow from her, without premeditation, is Christine Hiebert. Very widely exhibited and heralded for her inventive approach to drawing with media ranging from blue tape to charcoal, she investigates the nature and language of line. She starts a drawing on a blank wall empty of ideas, not using a pre-drawn sketch. She says, "The final outcome is always something I didn't anticipate. The process can be unsettling, but that is how I prefer to work. For me, drawing starts with the problem of the line, how to form it and how to follow it. In a way, it ends with the line too. The line remains independent, searching, never completely absorbed by the community of its fellows." (Except from her Davis Museum brochure for Reconnaissance, August 2009.)

Untitled, charcoal and rabbit skin glue on paper, 2000, Christine Hiebert, (Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York)

I find her approach of visual thinking through drawing fascinating, because there is also another, more traditional approach to drawing. That is based upon seeing or conceiving of an image which the artist then proceeds to translate, through line, into an permanent image. This has been an accepted way of creating line drawings in Western art since the monks began to delineate their illuminations on vellum and parchment and their heirs, during the Renaissance, brought the art of drawing to great heights. Not only were the lines then used to explore ideas and make studies in preparation for paintings, but the artists also made finished drawings, line after careful line. Indeed, for many centuries, skill in drawing was almost predicated on little erasure, in silverpoint (that permanent line won't budge!), but also in red chalk (the bravura medium), black chalk, pen and ink and even charcoal.

Today, many artists are pushing the definitions of using line or making drawings far beyond those traditional approaches. Perhaps it is only fitting in a world where man made lines - the power grids, the computer chips, or whatever - predominate.

Wiki.Picture by Drawing Machine 2

When a beautiful drawing can be produced by Drawing Machine 2, using a mathematical model, the lines indeed go for their walk. Paul Klee would certainly approve, I am sure. It is good to remember that any approach to lines is possible, as long as we artists allow ourselves to be creative and free. That is my definition of fun!

Lost and found edges

Yesterday I spent time again at the Telfair Academy in Savannah, looking at Dennis Martin's amazing metalpoint drawings, in preparation for a silverpoint workshop I am giving there today.

One of the aspects that has fascinates me about Martin's approach to drawing is his superb use of lost and found edges. By this, I mean his method of making a transition from a contour line to shadows and ill-defined edges of an object. The defining line gets lost, then reappears again, and the overall effect allows for a very satisfying, yet often mysterious integration of subject matter into a background, for instance. He uses a mixture of goldpoint, platinumpoint and graphite, all media that do not change colour (unlike silver which tarnishes eventually in the marks on paper), and thus they can be used as three different values that can seamlessly move from very light to much darker, even extreme darks of graphite.

Dennis J. Martin - Deanna XXVI (1995), 24k gold and platinum on paper, Metalpoint

Lost and found edges can add greatly to the interest of a piece of art, not only in drawing. Many wonderful artworks are strengthened in this manner. Rembrandt, for instance, frequently used this method to anchor and enhance the atmosphere in a drawing, often in pen and ink and ink washes. These are just a few examples of his superb sense of darks and lights and their use and placement in the drawing.

Self-Portrait Etching at a Window , Rembrandt, (Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Saskia Sleeping, Rembrandt

From a self-portrait to a small quick drawing of his wife, Saskia, sleeping, one of his wonderful lion drawings to studies of Women and Children, they all show his ability to merge the subject with the background in darks that anchor, meld and ground the subject.

Lion resting, turned to the Left, Rembrandt, c. 1650-52 .Louvre, Paris

A child being taught to walk; two girls, seen from behind, supporting the child on either side, a figure seated on the ground at left encouraging the child, a woman standing behind with a pail. c.1656, Pen and brown ink on brownish-cream paper., Rembrandt (Image courtesy of the British Museum)

Rembrandt - Saskia (”Woman Leaning on a Window Sill”)., between 1634 and 1635

Seurat was another artist whose consummate skill with atmospheric transitions from dark to light often involved the use of lost and found edges. His charcoals were especially famous for this. These are examples of a lady embroidering and another reading - intimate, shadowy drawings that evoke the dim light of a Parisian apartment, where edges are ill-defined and light falls fitfully (courtesy of the Fogg, Cambridge).

Embroidery, George Seurat, charcoal

"Washing away the Dust"

Autumn seems finally to be here, with a crisp sunny day that implored one to go out and enjoy it. I managed to get the chores of daily life either done or postponed and went out to draw, feeling a fraction harassed and short of time.

Then - bliss! I settled down to draw a wonderful old oak tree which had split in two. One portion had simply fallen over into the marsh mud, and has now died. But since it is a live oak, the graceful skeleton will remain as a frame for the marshes and salt water creek for many years. It was a peaceful afternoon with just soft bird songs and a gentle Labrador friend who came to greet me with a wagging tail.

The Fallen Oak, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

I was working in silverpoint, so it was slow and meditative work. The world fell away from me, and by the time I had finished the small drawing, I was feeling much better, albeit a bit weary. I then remembered a wise statement (of the many!) that Pablo Picasso purportedly made. He remarked, "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life". He was exactly right.

Shadows

I have always loved the way shadows are the underlying abstraction in even the most realistic of paintings or drawings. Perhaps because I have spent so much time in countries where white walls are the most perfect surfaces for shadows, I frequently find them more interesting than their "source objects".

Leonardo daVinci once said, "Shadows have their boundaries at certain determinable points. He who is ignorant of those will produce work without relief; and the relief is the summit and the soul of painting." He was one of the pioneers of chiaroscuro, the play of light and dark that helps describe an object; before the Renaissance, artists did not depict objects or people using this system of darks and lights. Leonardo's study of hands and arms illustrates his study of the shadows that help define these arms and hands.

Study of Female Arms and Hands, Leonardo da Vinci (Image Courtesy of Royal Library, Windsor)

What is Leonardo's subtext is his message - look, look, look at what you are depicting. Study the way the light falls on the object. Examine the shadows, the way the shadow is darkest near the object and tapers out as it gets further from the object casting the shadow. Remember to look for the reflected light near the object that is bounced back into the shadow from any light-coloured object, like an egg.

The shadows define the curves and angles of every object, allowing us to understand their configurations - like a visual language whose vocabulary one needs to acquire and practice. As all the light outside comes from the sun, the shadows will move, change, evolve as the sun moves across the sky. Leonardo's Study for the Kneeling Leda, done with bold in hatching, shows what he was talking about in the use of shadows.

Study for a kneeling Leda, 1503-07
Black chalk, pen and ink on paper, 126 x 109 cm
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Accurate observation of light, and thus shadows, will implicitly tell the viewer what times of day the artist was working, and even indicate at what latitude the painting was done if carefully examined. The constant change in light is one of the main challenges to plein air art. It is a non-stop gallop as one can never work fast enough, it seems, to catch up with the movement of light and shadows. That is where quick sketches indicating shadows and light angles can help greatly later on. The light situation is also one of the main reasons why artists resort to photographs as the shadows are suddenly frozen. Nonetheless, working solely from photos tends to produce airless art, even if it is easier and an artist can control the process a little better than just working plein air.

I am reminded that there is another dimension of this need to look at shadows to find the "relief" for a drawing - at the moment, I am in the middle of doing a silverpoint drawing of ginger lilies, those wonderful, fragrant white butterfly-like flowers. I picked the head with the buds half open. With the indoors warmth, the flowers are opening fast, changing all the time, and of course, the plays of lights and darks are constantly altering. Since silverpoint is slow, this is a constant juggling act to keep a coherent composition going, remain reasonably faithful to the flowers and yet use the light and shadows to tell about the graceful forms of these flowers. Using artificial light, even my faithful daylight-accurate Ott Lights, makes the shadows so harsh that it is not appealing, so I am working in daylight, with its own set of challenges.

Challenges, yes, but Leonardo was right – the play of light and shadow can be the summit and soul of a piece of art.