Passion for Drawing

There was a wonderful article in the November issue of Blouin Art+Auction magazine about Master Drawings and their current market state. Not all that long ago, collecting - or even appreciating - drawings was considered the domain of the few and far-between, the occasional person with a great deal of erudition, an environment where light and temperature control are carefully controlled, and, often, a good deal of money.

In terms of Master Drawings (loosely defined as works created by noted, independent artists and their followers, working from the mid-15th century to about 1800), the Art+Auction  article by Angela M.H. Schuster underlined the change in pace in selling these drawings.  Now, the feverish bidding in the auction house sales has spread from other fields of art to drawings, and the prices are beginning to soar. Passion for drawings is rising.  Take, for example, this drawing which the Duke of Devonshire recently sold from his remarkable Chatsworth collection of art.  It was expected to reach 15 millions pounds sterling at auction in 2012.  In fact, it nearly doubled that estimate,

Raphael’s Head of an Apostle, a drawing for his last painting, Transfiguration, 1519-20, black chalk (Image courtesy of Sotheby's)

Schuster quotes Matteo Salamon, of Milan's Salamon & Company (specialists in 15th-19th century art), as saying, "I sell Old Master paintings to buy Old Master drawings.  When I sell a painting, even an important one, it's just business.  When I talk to clients who are interested in drawings, I know they are passionate collectors.  Most who buy a drawing do so because they like it, not because they were told to like it or because others will admire it."  This is another example of the auction price being far higher than the estimate, $47,500 versus a $20-30,000 estimate. 

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino (Cento 1591 - 1666 Bologna), Head of a young man in profile, looking down to the left, red chalk (Image courtesy of Sotheby's)

I find the same is true in my own art world.  I am always delighted and flattered when someone likes my drawings and wants to acquire one.  When I began specialising in silverpoint drawing, I found that almost no one knew about the medium, which was entirely understandable, given its rarity, but I also found that few people appreciated that you could have a drawing as a finished work of art.  That has changed completely.  As drawing has become more accepted, recognised and esteemed in the art world, so people have become increasingly passionate about the different versions of drawing. Be it silver or metalpoint, graphite, pen and ink, coloured pencils, charcoal or any other dry medium, there are people who fall in love with works done in one or more of these media.

It seems to be a special "addiction", this yen for drawing.  Both for the artist producing drawings and for those who start to appreciate and/or collect them, there is always the next horizon.  Perhaps there is the aspect of size and accessibility: most drawings are of an intimate size and need for the viewer to be close to them properly to see and appreciate them.  Small wonder that the "cabinet de dessins" was traditionally in the heart of a home, where the drawings were close to hand and daily companions.

There is another aspect of drawings that attracts people: the fact that a drawing is often an exploration, a means for the artist to understand something. Renaissance artist were famed for their studies - think of Leonardo da Vinci seeking to understand everything from human anatomy to how water flows, for instance.

Whirlpools of water, from Leonardo da Vinci, pen and ink,  1508-09, Windsor, Royal Library.

That questing, that analysis, that observation - the act of drawing in that manner makes a drawing accessible on a deep level to a viewer. The artist shares with the viewer his or her journey through the artistic process, as the drawing is created.  In essence, a drawing is a very modern affair, just as much a "happening", a performance, a mise en scène, as any of the other versions of art so popular today.

No wonder people get passionate about drawings!  They can be dramatic and addictive - just the ingredients for today's world.

The "Other" in Art

Sometimes, when reading a book that seems far distant from art at first blush, you get insights that are definitely thought-provoking.  This happened to me as I was finishing a really interesting book, "The Spell of the Sensuous" by David Abram.  It is a book which, to me, makes one think mostly about the extraordinary, damaging divorce between mankind and care of the planet in which we all live.  Abram advances some very valid suggestions, tracing the original transformation in man's thinking about being an integral part of the natural world to the development of the alphabet and the gradual loss of oral traditions.

However, it was in one of the notes that I found a comment about art that seemed to be worth pondering.  I quote it, with thanks to the author:  "Genuine art, we might say, is simply human creation that does not stifle the nonhuman element but, rather, allows whatever is Other in the materials to continue to live and breathe.  Genuine artistry, in this sense, does not impose a wholly external form upon some ostensibly "inert" matter, but rather allows the form to emerge from the participation and reciprocity between the artist and his materials, whether these materials be stones, or pigments, or spoken words.  Thus understood, art is really a cooperative endeavor, a work of co-creation in which the dynamism and power of earth-born materials is honored and respected.  In return for this respect, these materials contribute their more-than-human resonances to human culture."

I feel a little diffident about posting two drawings that I did in silverpoint which I feel were indeed groping towards the "Other", but in some sense, they were.  One I drew because on the coast of Georgia, particularly on the barrier islands, there are thousands-year-old shell rings left by the Guale Indians where they came, year after year, to the coast to feast on nature's bounty in the marshes and salt water creeks.  The Indians' presence is almost palpable, and in many ways, I feel we should do them honour as they were far better stewards of these lands than we seem to be in the 21st century.  The other drawing is a meditation about the elements that are integral parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains, humble pieces perhaps, but each a vital link in that mountain ecosystem, and beautiful each in its own right.

At the the Shell Mound, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Blue Ridge Mountain Meditation, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Looking at and communing with "earth-born materials" as I draw and paint bring peace and coherence, I find.  I think David Abram is right in his observations.

Unexpected Delights

It always makes my heart skip a beat when you round a corner in a museum and there you spot some totally unexpected delight. Usually it is something small, often unpretentious and yet sings of an artist's creativity and honesty.

Quite why I am drawn to such pieces of art, I am not sure, but when a piece speaks of creative integrity, any fellow artist warms to it. An artist knows that there is often serious effort, sometimes even struggle, to create a work. So you respect someone who has succeeded, who has created something special, something distinctive and of lasting value.

This week, at the Telfair Museum's Jepson Center, in Savannah, Georgia, I found a delicious trove of small, beautiful objects that sang. They were in a small exhibition, Allure of the Near East, lent by the Huntington Museum of Art. Amongst the many objects collected by Drs. Joseph B. and Omayma Touma and donated to the Huntington to further an understanding and appreciation of all the complex cultures in the Middle East was a small group of early Iranian and other glass vials, vases and bottles. I have always loved early glass, with the iridescence of time on the simple coloured forms.  Many of the early ones that one meets in exhibitions are Roman, Iranian or Sassanian (which encompassed Iraq, Iran and central Asia) in origin, such as these illustrated below.

A Parthian green glass vessel, Iran, circa 3rd Century A.D (image courtesy of Bonhams)

Roman, iridescent vessel, 1st-2nd century (Image courtesy of  Boston Museum of Fine Arts)

Three Roman glass vessels, c. 2nd-4th century AD, (Image courtesy of Archaeological Museum, Istanbul )

Sassanian cut glass bowl, 6th century  (Image courtesy of the British Museum)

Bottle, Mediterranean, Eastern, 4th century, late 3rd-4th century. Glass.  (Image courtesy of the Huntington Museum of Art)

Canteen Flask,Mediterranean, Eastern, 3th century, 3rd-4th century glass. Overall: 3 3/4" x 2 7/8" x 7/8". (Image courtesy of the Huntington Museum of Art)

Unguentarium, Mediterranean, Eastern, 2nd to 3rd century glass (Image courtesy of the Huntington Museum of Art)

There were other delights, but perhaps, again, the simple ones stay in my mind's eye.  One was a  nineteenth century/early twentieth century hanging ceramic oil lamp, beautifully lit and displayed, reminded me of the stillness of time, the peace now so sadly absent from so many parts of the Middle East, and the humble integrity of that artist's creation.

Serendipity always rewards, I have decided.  My Telfair visit reconfirmed this beautifully.

Changing Gears in Art

Now that some time has elapsed since I finished my residency at DRAWinternational in France, I find I am still thinking about how to change gears. I went there on the premise that I wanted to explore the option of working on a larger scale in metalpoint, especially metalpoint on a black ground.

Setting out on a new path in art-making always takes time for one to readjust, I know.  It has happened to me before, but this time, other issues in life have complicated the "digestion period".  You have to filter all the advice, new thoughts and suggestions, new concepts, and try to decide which road to take and how.

This was one route, one way of changing gears, using graphite instead of metalpoint.

Caylus, 14th July, graphite, Jeannine Cook artist

This was another experiment in graphite.

Caylus Stones II, graphite, Jeannine Cook artist

Eventually, I wanted to return to metalpoint, so I started trying to work larger and adjust - at least a little.

Maple Bark, metalpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

I am still going back and forth in my mind about the direction I want now to follow, but I know that the residency was good for me, jolting me out of ruts. 

I am at the stage where I can look back on the work I did in France and join philosopher R. G. Collingwood as he talked of his own artistic upbringing.  He said, "I learned to think of a picture not as a finished product exposed for the benefit of virtuosi, but as a visible record of an attempt to solve a definite problem in painting, so far as the attempt has gone."  For me, the operative words remain, "as far as the attempt has gone".  Still more changes to come, I hope!

Quiet Moments in Art

This morning I was listening to NPR Saturday Edition when Scott Simon interviewed New Republic film critic, David Thomson, about his new book, Moments that made the Movies.  During the conversation,  Thomson talked about the power of quiet moments, or looks or lines, in films that are remembered long afterwards - think Casablanca, for instance. Thomson went on to say that during those quieter moments, we are more able to think ourselves into the scene as viewers, shaping our perception of the film, and thus, later, remembering those moments more vividly than more action-packed scenes.

The conversation made me reflect that in essence, the same reaction often occurs in the visual art world, as each of us walks through a gallery or a museum, looking at art work.  For me personally, many of the works that remain with me, long afterwards, are not the paintings of "sturm und drang", the high voltage works that leap off the walls.  Instead, indeed, the quieter works have more resonance, more power to stay with me and come floating back into my mind's eye to delight again. Obviously, each of us has a different character, different tastes and a different life experience which we bring to the viewing of the art.  Nonetheless, when the art is elegantly quiet, simple and impactful, it often lends itself to being "expanded" by each viewer and allows an "ownership" that then becomes part and parcel of the viewer's experience.

One of the most fascinating examples of a quiet work that I have met is a minute drawing that I have only ever seen in reproduction,  Measuring a little over 4 x 3 inches, it is a silverpoint drawing, Horse and Rider, done by Leonardo da Vinci in 1481 as part of a preparative study for his commission of an altarpiece,  the Adoration of the Magi, in the Church of San Donato a Scopeto, outside Florence. 

Horse and Rider,Leonardo da Vinci, silverpoint, 1481

This tiny drawing, which was consigned for sale in 2001 at Christie's by the late J. Carter Brown, once Director of the National Gallery in Washington, was so esteemed that it fetched the astonishing price of £8,143,750 ($11,474,544) before transaction costs. Clearly, this is a piece of art that haunts people.  Its immediacy, the skill in depicting the foreshortened horse and its motion, its utter simplicity all make it an astonishing piece of art.  I know that it is the first piece of art to comes back to me when I begin to think of art that I have long remembered.

Usually, the works of art that have the most impact on me as I go around a museum are ones that I can guarantee will not be readily obtainable as reproductions in postcards, books, etc.  I seem to have a gift for liking things that are not the popular ones by museum standards - I don't know what that says about my tastes!  However, one remembers, as much as possible, and the magic floats back into my mind at times from those quiet beauties.

Other works that have retained their influence over me range from Alfred Sisley to Chardin, Fatin-Latour to Rothko and beyond - a totally eclectic mix, I acknowledge.

Carafe of Water, Silver Goblet, Peeled Lemon, Apple and Pears, 1728, (Image courtesy of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe)

White Lilies, Henri Fatin-Latour, c. 1883, (Image courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum)

Purple and Blue, Mark Rothko

Each of us has a different collection of remembered quiet moments when art has resonated and stayed with us.  Its diversity and power to uplift, move and inspire come with moments of contemplation and emotion. Those encounters are what  make art so extraordinary and so necessary.

Freedom through Drawing

I am always interested when I read about artists' thoughts about the role of drawing in their oeuvre. As someone who believes that drawing, as a multi-faceted medium, is really relevant to today's art world, I find that more and more artists are voicing similar opinions.

In a review of a current exhibition at Messum's in London, David Tress:Thinking about Landscapes, Andrew Lambirth of The Spectator wrote about Tress' feeling that many admirers of his work see the "frilly bits around the edges, the layers and the vigorous handling", but don't think about how those effects are achieved.  Tress apparently believes that the freedom to create in that fashion only comes through hard work.

Tress maintains, "Unless you've been trained to draw - that good old solid background of representational painting (perspective, space, tonal relationships) - you can't do it." He apparently follows his "gut feeling" in creating his work too, something else that I too firmly believe matters.

David Tress,Oh Summer, Oh Far Summer, 2012 Graphite on paper(Image courtesy of Messum's)

Estuary Light (Laugharne), graphite on paper 2001 David Tress

Each artist brings his or her own wonderful eye to the composition and subject of the drawing, and with life experience implicit in every mark made, the individualism of the artist becomes very apparent, especially with the confidence of time and practice. David Tress demonstrates this very clearly in his drawings and paintings.

Grasmere Lake, graphite on paper, David Tress

David Tress talked to Andrew Lambirth about the vital role of structure too. All that examination of subject matter by drawing it first helps build the layers of the work, so that the final result can flow more intuitively and freely. Sometimes, too, things don't work out as initially planned - more than sometimes, for most of us! - so resorting to more drawing can often help chart a new course for the work.

Burn Moor (Double Rainbow), 2013, collage, impasto, painting and drawing, David Tress

When it is the drawing itself which is the finished work, it rather depends on what you are using when it comes to freedom.  More forgiving media - graphite, charcoal, pastels, watercolours - allow alterations and additions. Metalpoint is less flexible, given that you are working with indelible metal marks. So doing some preliminary drawing, in graphite, for example, can free you up to launch into the metalpoint work because you have a clearer idea of where you want to go in the drawing.

Tress really does make sense about freeing up through drawing.  His work certainly shows what can be achieved by a dedicated, hard-working artist.  We can all learn from such examples.

"Motifs" as Mirrors of the Artist

During my stay at DRAWinternational in Caylus, France, I found myself with the eternal conundrum – to work en plein air or to work in the studio. Partly, in truth, the colder weather made the choice a bit easier, but nonetheless, I was constantly aware of the tug of war internally, for I love to be out in natural surroundings to try and create art.

The other side of the equation is that in the studio, conditions for working are more organized and it is easier, physically, to work, particularly in metalpoint, which tends to be slower and more demanding of time and energies.

However, at the back of my head was a quote that I had read about Monet. He wrote, “All ‘motifs’ are mirrors – or else the project of plein airisme is as shallow as Baudelaire had once argued. The painter’s transactions with the ‘motif’ have as many dimensions as his sense of self and of his place in the world.”  ("Motifs" are subjects and themes in a work of art.)

It is true that one brings to any artwork a sense of what matters, in most cases at least, and I think that when the work is done outside, perhaps the additional, often subliminal, messages are just as important. Man’s “communion” with natural surroundings underpins everything, whether or not today, we realize it.In general, ignoring nature imperils us in so many ways, as we keep finding out.

For an artist, in particular, the web and waft of nature informs every gesture, every impetus, consciously or not. Thus when an artist works outdoors, there are so many complex and often enriching issues that influence the execution of a piece of art.

The other challenge is of course that there are indeed all those other considerations. An artist has to make choices, sometimes quick choices as light changes, or the scene disappears, or whatever. How to distill what one is trying to say, how to select the most simple and hopefully impactful aspects, how to mediate between a considered, controlled choice and a much more spontaneous, perhaps less “finished” piece of art, especially a drawing. Those are other aspects of plein air work. Each of these choices means that the work becomes a mirror of that artist, his or her sense of place in the world and self-definition.

I came across a lovely example of these simple artistic choices: last autumn at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, a wonderful place, there was an exhibition of silverpoint drawings that the American artist, Marsden Hartley, did.

He travelled in the 1930s to the Bavarian Alps and there, he drew a series of silverpoint studies that captured the spare geometries of these mountains. Very simple, very direct work – Hartley was communing with those mountain landscapes.

Marsden Hartley, Mountain Landscape with House in Foreground,  (September 16, 1933). Silverpoint on paper. 14 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Marsden Hartley, Waxenstein,  (September 13, 1933). Silverpoint on paper. 14 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Marsden Hartley, Mountain Landscape , September 1933. Silverpoint on paper.

Travelling south from Hamburg to Garmisch-Partenkirchen,in the Bavarian Alps, Hartley apparently produced 21 of these spare distillations of the mountains. 

Hills by the Lake, #2, silverpoint on paper, 11 x 15 inches, Marsden Hartley (Image courtesy of the Ownings Gallery)

Marsden Hartley produced a body of work that validates Monet's observation about "motifs" or subjects being mirrors of the artist.

Talking about Silverpoint

It has been a while since I could get to this blog – mainly because I am back for the second half of an art residence at DRAWinternational in France, and there is a certain fever of creativity.

No comments on whether the results are good or bad!

But the days fly past with the privileged situation of only requiring that one thinks about art, how to do something that pushes out boundaries and grow. Such luck! Nonetheless, there is the more serious side of the residency, namely giving and talk and demonstration to the public.

Of course, I suggested that I talk about my passion, metalpoint-silverpoint, and then had to spend some time putting together a serious survey of the history of this medium. That is always a fascinating exercice, and it reminds me how many different voices there have been and are today in this rather restrictive medium of drawing with a metal stylus on prepared paper. Selecting examples of contemporary metalpoint to show my audience how varied, elegant and imaginative are the silverpoint voices drives home to me what a special medium this is.

This is the poster/invitation to Sunday’s presentation – which I will give in French.

Poster for my Talk on Metalpoint at DRAWInternatioonal

Meanwhile, I draw and draw, experiment and try to balance long hours of sitting with vigourous walks up hill and down dale in this delicious medieval village of Caylus. The weather is totally unlike usual Mediterranean September weather, in that it is distinctly chilly.

No matter, another layer on and get down to drawing!  In other words, vive l’art and art residencies!

Improving the Capacity to Learn

I have been slowly reading an extraordinary tome while I listen to the early morning birdsong greeting the sunrise.

It is a huge book, but well worth reading: The Primacy of Drawing by Deanna Petherbridge is the result of ten years’ research and careful thought about drawing, in all its implications and manifestations.

With wonderful illustrations of drawings from a multitude of public and private collections, Dr. Petherbridge delves into all the aspects of historical and contemporary drawing approaches and philosophies.

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Galleria dell' Accademia, Venice (1485-90)

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most notable of the Renaissance artists to combine art with science in his endless quest to learn about the world around him.  Other artists, for centuries, have used life drawing, from casts or live models, as a way of learning about the human body and honing their artistic skills.

Life drawing class. c. 1890, (Photo courtesy Leeds Museums and Galleries (Art Gallery))

Deanna Petherbridge discusses many interesting approaches to drawing, but one summation, at the end of a chapter on “Drawing and Learning”, struck me as very apposite indeed in today’s world. I quote it in full, with thanks to its author:

"Learning to observe, to investigate, to analyse, to compare, to critique, to select, to imagine, to play and to invent constitutes the veritable paradigm of functioning effectively in the world.” (My italics.) 

I think that every teacher should think hard about including art, and especially drawing, in the preparation of today’s generations in school, college and university.

Everyone would benefit, now and in the future.

Art and Freedom

A wonderfully pithy statement made me think hard recently:

“To the age, its art; to art, its freedom.”

This was a remark made by late 19th century art critic and author, Ludwig Hevesi,who lived in Vienna.

One only has to think of all the daring experiments in art last century, as the innovators – from Braque to Picasso, from Mondrian to Miro, from Motherwell to Rothko, from Sol Le Witt to Richard Serra, from Agnes Martin to Dan Flavin - stretched the world’s definitions of art.

Site-specific Installation, Dan Flavin, 1996 (Courtesy of Menil Collection)

They did so in tandem with the inventors of technology and so many mechanisms that revolutionized our world in daily living, in waging war, in making love and in how we treat our planet. Every tenet of traditional art-making was broken or so radically reinterpreted that little remained of the look of art familiar to the Western world since the early Renaissance or before.

As to the second part of Hevesi’s statement, “to art, its freedom” – that requires more thought.

Picasso’s Guernica immediately comes to mind, for instance.  Picasso used his art to witness the atrocities visited by the Italian and German planes on the small Spanish town of Guernica in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937 (Image courtesy of Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid)

In one sense, the statement means that art should be a political statement. However, I don’t think that all artists create work with politics in mind – cartoons, yes, as political commentary, and certainly films, if one includes them in the category of visual art.

Yet, willy-nilly, as artists, we are witnesses to our times; we create work that reflects our daily concerns and joys, our interests and the lives we lead within the context of our individual worlds. The people who then view the art created are participants in placing energy and time in that art, whether they “like” the art or not.

The art is, in essence, a symbol, a reflection, of that age or period in which they are living. The art signals what is important to the artist and thus can also alert the viewer to issues that are perhaps worth esteeming, preserving, celebrating – in other words, ensuring the freedom of those aspects of life that artists have highlighted.

Probably each of us has our own personal list of artworks that whisper to us of freedom. Freedom to enjoy viewing them, in the first place, without censure or fear; freedom to view them in a gallery, museum or private setting that translates into a society safe and affluent enough to facilitate such situations. Freedom to have the time and energy, and sometimes the money, to view the art; freedom to look at art with enough curiosity and, in some cases, some background education to understand at least a little about the art.

In other words, lots of freedoms that most of us are fortunate enough to take for granted today, when we go off to a museum or an art gallery. Whether the art created today is a guarantor of freedoms in a wider sense is a more complex question.

Perhaps time has a part in that answer, because art has always been subject to fashion, and never more so than today. Certainly today’s wide-open diversity of art forms and approaches is indicative of great liberty in the art world and general acceptance by the public. Whether today’s art will endure long enough to ensure long-term freedoms for the next generations of artists, as was the case for many of last century’s pioneering artists with their work – only time will tell.

Perhaps, in the end, this simple statement, “To the age, its art; to art, its freedom”, reminds us to cherish art, the arts in general, so that we all – not just those who create – can ensure a world that is as free as possible from the prejudices and restrictions that limit. I am sure everyone can think instantly of places where this ideal situation does not currently exist.

Those are the places where works of art treasured down the ages are destroyed, where passions have obliterated a sense of ownership in beauty and culture, or where hard economic times have eliminated a sense of the need for art to enhance our lives in the deepest sense.

We all need to be passionate advocates for art for it is a hallmark of a civilized society.