A Matter of Timing

I learned long ago, by hard experience, that when working en plein air, you need to be opportunistic and aware of what is happening around you. Somehow luck and timing often are part of the artistic process!

On a windswept hilltop overlooking wide Burgundy plateaux of ploughed fields and neat vineyards, I was deep into drawing a small goldpoint.Ii was trying to be mindful of Matisse's dictum: "one must always search for the desire of the line, where it wishes to enter or where to die away." That wisdom seems so appropriate when drawing in metalpoint, with the ability of the stylus to state its own terms about energetic moments and those when it fades away to a whisper.

I suddenly became aware of the roar of a mighty behemoth of a tractor approaching. I happened to be parked at the edge of a field of barley stubble, as I had become fascinated by the random patterns of the chaff and stubble half lying, half standing after the harvest. The tractor got closer and closer.

I was just trying to decide if I had finished the drawing or not when I glanced up. The monstrous machine was heading straight for my part of the field and the farmer atop his giant tractor was looking hard at me!

I hastily moved right out the way and waved my apologies to him. He nodded, lowered his plough, and before I could count to ten, my barley stubble was no more. Instead, rich russet soil was being churned up in powerful furrows, the first move in the every-renewing cycle of life in the farming world of cereal cultivation.

Barley Stubble, Noyers, goldpoint, J. Cook artist

My timing was impeccable. There were no other fields left of cereal stubble visible anywhere. I had managed to find the last field to be ploughed. In essence, I had more than followed Matisse's idea of finding where the line wishes to enter or die away. The plough was the guiding factor! Or in other words, carpe diem works in art too!

A Delightful Discovery - the Musée Zervos at Vézelay, Burgundy

It was a chance remark made as I was leaving to revisit Vézelay, the amazing Basilica which dates from the mid-ninth century: "You'll be going to the Zervos Museum too, won't you?" I stopped in my tracks. I had never heard of this museum. So it was explained to me that this was a small gem of a museum, not to be missed. Easy to find as you climb the hill to the imposing Basilica dominating the hills of green central Burgundy.

So after I had lingered and marvelled at the Romanesque architecture, the extraordinary stone carvings on portals and pillars (now a little over-restored to my eyes, but perhaps I should not cavil) and listened to monks and nuns chanting their midday services, I found my way to the discreet entrance to the Zervos Museum.

After a charming welcome, I wandered into the house, once the home of Romain Rolland, the French writer, who spent time there during the Second World War until his death in 1944. Christian Zervos, born in Greece but a naturalised Frenchman, was noted for his Cahiers d'Art which he edited from his rue du Dragon office in Paris' 6th arrondissement, above the gallery he also ran. His connections to Vézelay began when he and his wife bought a small farm there in 1937; there they entertained Picasso, Léger, Le Corbusier, Paul Eluard and many other artists over the years. In 1970, Zervos left his collection of Cahiers d'Art and art to Vézelay. He and his wife, Yvonne, are buried in the cemetery near the Basilica.

Zervos Museum

I was indeed fascinated and astonished at the museum art collection, which ranges from Kandinsky, Giocometti and Miro to Calder mobiles and a small painting, Picassos, a huge Léger mural, Raoul Dufy, Dogon sculptures from Mali, small but exquisite Cycladic and Middle Eastern pieces. A personal collection, acquired with friendship and a keen, discerning eye - the result is a delight to see.

Grasshopper (detail), oil on canvas, 1934, Max Ernst (image courtesy of zervos Museum)

La Nostalgie de la Mer, André Masso, (image courtesy of Zervos Museum)

Help Spain,1937 poster, Miro (in exile in France) (image courtesy of Zervos Museum)

Zervos Museum

Zervos Museum

Cycladia Head

One of the Picassos at the Zesrvos Museum

The small museum is beautifully arranged, with a clever adaption of the house and its still-personal Roland touches. The views out over Burgundy are timeless and beautiful, even on a grey afternoon. The bonus is the wonderful post and beam attic, where the Cahiers d'Art,  the Cycladic and other objects are displayed. It is just beautiful in its strength and harmony.

I was so entranced that I forgot to take photographs, but I have found these images on the web. They give a flavour of a museum well worth a visit when you have the luck to travel to Vézelay, France.

Une Prière à Rembrandt

J'adore lire des remarques faites à propos de l'art de dessiner. Je suppose que ma prédilection personnelle du dessin y joue une partie. N'empêche, j'ai beaucoup aimé cette prière à Rembrandt, que j'ai trouvée dans le livre de Yankel, Pis que Peindre, publié chez Chimère en 1991. La prière: “Le régal des dessins est d’une autre nature: c’est l’émotion sur le vif, au bout des doigts. La main est là, on la devine derrière le moindre trait évanescent ou asséné. Il y a un miracle de la ligne chez Rembrandt : qu’il soit rageur, incisif, écrasé ou, au contraire, fugace, fulmineux arachnéen ; son parcours est si vrai, si juste, qu’on reste éberlue, ravi, consterné. Qu’il s’arrête pile à un millième de millimètre ou qu’il dépasse l’objectif, c’est juste comme ça que cela devait être. Instinctivement, sa ligne a trouvé ce qu’il faliait d’intensité pour réinventer une vie nouvelle sur une simple feuille légèrement teintée. Le côté fragile, dérisoire, du support, ajoute encore à l’approche extasiée que j’ai de cette rencontre avec le génie. »

Regardez les dessins qu'a fait Rembrandt de sa femme, Saskia van Uylenburch, du moment qu'ils se sont mariés le 6 juin 1633.  Le premier, fait en pointe de metal, (qui ne s'efface point), est de ce même jour.  Ensuite, ses études de 1636 d'une Saskia endormie ou avec des enfants, parmi d'autres, sont, pour moi, des examples de la ligne de Rembrandt au plus tendre, plus juste, plus merveilleuse.

Saskia regardant par la Fénêtre, 1635, encre, (image du Musée Boynans van Beuningen, Rotterdam)

Saskia au Lit, encre, 1634, (image du Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden)

Saskia endormie, encre, 1638 (Image du Musée Ashmolean, Oxford)

Je crois que c’est la justesse de la ligne chez Rembrandt qui le rend si extraordinaire aux yeux de ses admirateurs, génération après génération. Chaque fois que l’on se retrouve à une exposition de ses dessins, dans une lumière tamisée, le silence et l’attention intense règnent dans les salles. Tout le monde scrute les petits dessins dont les lignes semblent faites avec désinvolture, mais avec quelle émotion, quelle vérité. Que ce soit un dessin à l’encre ou, rarement, au stylet d’argent, la ligne reste, en effet, miraculeuse.

Enseignant un Enfant à Marcher, encre, c. 1660-62 (image du British Museum)

Jeune Femme Endormie, c. 1654, encre, (image du British Museum)

Tout artiste admire, aspire à en faire pareil, mais – combien de fois dans la vie ? Rembrandt est unique. Tout artiste reconnait ce génie comme un cadeau aux générations suivantes. La prière de Yankel se comprend !

Artists' Philosophies

It is always fascinating to read what other artists have thought about the state and office of being an artist. Many times, I find myself reading something an artist has written and I think, oh yes, exactly, that is what I think or feel. It is nice that there is often a community of thought between artists, even separated by many  generations. I suppose it is really because the demands of art creation remain essentially those of finding a means to express thoughts, passions, emotions that can be communicated to others, visually, audibly, in tactile fashion. In a way, an artist is, willy nilly, a conduit for personal or societal issues and interests, joys and sorrows, stories and inventions.

Some of Josef Albers' philosophical statements are both pithy and very relevant to every artist. For instance: "The content of art: Visual formulations of our reactions to life." Or: "The aim of art: Revelation and evocation of vision."

Grey Facade, oil on masonite, 1947-54, Josef Albers (image courtesy of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation)

Variant, Orange Front, oil on masonite, 1948-58, Josef Albers (image courtesy of Josef and Anni Albers Foundation)

It is remarkable to think about the diversity of reactions to life shown by artists thought the ages and even more so today, in the wide-open world we all evolve in. It is testimony to both artists' individuality and their cohesion that the art created is often such a powerful evocation of their vision and that it can be understood and shared by such wide and far-flung publics.

The aspects of revelation and evocation of vision are tackled with many different means. Painting, video, sculpture, photography, drawing... are just some of the visual means. Drawing, for instance, my favourite medium, is a passport to exploring and understanding the world about us in potentially exquisite detail.

Study of Stag, Lucas Cranach the Elder,, 1520-30 (image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum)

Study, black chalk on tinted paper, 1515-1516, Titian (image courtesy of Asmolean Museum, Oxford)

Head of Bearded Man, 1523-25, red chalk,, Francesco Mazzola Parmigianino, (Image courtesy of Städl Museum, Frankfurt)

Artist, Australian Brett Whiteley, said something very wise about drawing: "(It)i s the art of being able to leave an accurate record of the experience of what one isn't, of what one doesn't know. A great drawer is either confirming beautifully what is commonplace or probing authoritatively the unknown."

Shankar, 1966, charcoal, ink, spray paint, enamel, collage on paper. Brett Whiteley (Image courtesy of Art Gallery, New South Wales)

Another interesting remark about drawing: "Every motion of the hand in every one of its works carries itself through the element of thinking, every bearing of the hand bears itself in that element. All the work of the hand is rooted in thinking." Convoluted but in essence, this remark of Martin Heidegger harks back to what Albers said about our reactions to life in art making.

Design for disputa, c. 1508-09, pen & ink , black chalk, Raphael (image courtesy of Stadl Museum, Frankfurt)

Actually the artist's thinking involves a lot of effort even before the hand begins to draw or paint. The initial idea for the creation necessitates decisions about medium, support, size of work, choice of colour (or not), even to work in the studio or outside. The hand's actions then reflect all these earlier thoughts and decisions, even if the actual art is more visceral and seemingly spontaneous.

All serious art-making is underpinned by care and effort and, consciously or not, by  thoughts and observations that add up to that artist's philosophy.  Often these philosophies are not articulated as such, but sooner or later, each artist, talking or writing about creating art, will begin to enunciate these thoughts. Artists' statement, for instance, are a vehicle for these thoughts.  (However, I recently discovered that there are websites where you plug in various characteristics of your art, your age, etc., and hey presto, you have a seemingly skilled sample of "arts-speak" that says everything and in truth nothing at all - the very opposite of thinking about one's personal artistic philosophy.)

Perhaps it is an indication of deepening artistic experience and - ideally - skill that an artist can talk coherently and interestingly about what moves him or her to create art, what is important, how it is achieved.  Somehow it is part of our collective heritage that artists can talk of  how and why  their art forms part of the extraordinary continuum of creative endeavour that links artists and humanity in general down the ages.

Artists' debt to Michelangelo

In the superb Martin Gayford biography on Michelangelo (Fig Tree Press, 2013), there is a thought-provoking quote from Giorgio Vasari. Writing in 1568, he wrote, "All artists ar under a great and permanent obligation to Michelangelo, seeing that he broke the bonds and chains that had previously confined them to the creation of traditional forms."

I found this an interesting thought, because in today's context, artists probably consider Michelangelo as very traditional compared to the art and architecture often created now. Nonetheless, just as Cézanne is considered a pioneer of modern art, perhaps it is salutary to think of Michelangelo leading the way to today's wide-ranging possibilities of self-expression in art.

Vasari was in fact talking of work that Michelangelo had done 25 years previously, after he had already pushed out artistic boundaries hugely when painting the Sistine Chapel. With the Medici Pope Clement VII elected in 1523, financing on the work for the Medici funerary chapel at San Lorenzo was released, Since there had been a hiatus since Michelangelo conceived the first architectural forms in 1520-21, he had evolved and the later way he designed the tombs and surrounding elements was totally different and revolutionary.

As Martin Gayford wrote about the "breakthrough": "in the windows in the third storey of the interior of the sacristy" which "contain, in embryo, the potential of not just one future style, but two. In their wilful, witty breaking of the classical rules is the essence of Mannerist architecture. Beyond that, the lead towards the Baroque of a century later." In essence, Michelangelo had created window sides that are at an oblique, dynamic angle.

Miichelangelo's New Sacristy, San Lorenzo Church, Rome

Third storey, New Sacristry

Third Storey, New Sacristy

New Sacristry Dome

It is an interesting thought that long, long before the Cubists, the later 20th century architectures like Frank Gehry or any of the other "daring" idioms of the modern art world, Michelangelo dared to do the pretty-well-unthinkable in painting, sculpture and architecture. it just goes to show that we all need to dare, to adventure, to think independently in our creations. Boundaries are there to be crossed, limits transcended, risks embraced. Like that, just as Michelangelo did in his determined, meticulous attention to every detail of art-making, each artist can aspire to "break the bonds and chains" though serious effort and trust in that little inner voice.

Burgundy's Stones

Stones along the roadside or lying in a ploughed field; they are really humble objects that often go unnoticed. During an art residency in Noyers, Burgundy, however, I found stones beginning to speak insistently to me.  I found it surprising and entrancing. My first discovery was that many of the stones held tiny fossilised shells of many kinds. I was fascinated, as the stones were really heavy, very different from the limestone rocks lying everywhere, rocks which split amazingly flat and thin. Then I began to find limestone thin slabs with the most beautiful patterns on one face, patterns of minute granulations in golds and browns.

Gold silverpoint on black

My stone collection got heavier and heavier! I retreated to my wonderful studio perch at La Porte Peinte in Noyers, and entered the complex world of these stones as I started to explore them by drawing them in metalpoint.

To my astonishment, their tiny world bewitched me so much that I found myself drawing almost at their command, creating work that was different, almost automatic in what I  found myself  drawing as I wove the details together.  I kept seeing different details that transformed themselves into other images as I studied them, revealing a whole world of personages, mythical animals, landscapes, a panoply of the imagination's possibilities.

Stone Lace II, silverpoint and Prismacolor, Jeannine Cook

The next discovery and delight was learning of the minute fossilised oyster shells that help form the famous "terroir", the hallmark of a wine - in this case, the terroir that makes Chablis such a famed and wonderful white wine experience. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow samples of these heavy conglomerations of fossils from a wonderful wine grower, Vincent Dauvissat,  in Chablis. His stones held me in their thrall for days, as they told of ancient seas teeming with life over 180 million yers ago where now there are rolling fertile hills and valleys, home to the Chablis vineyards.

Huitres de Chablis I, silverpoint, Prismacolor, Jeannine Cook

I spent days in company with these quiet but eloquent stones, utterly involved in creating metalpoint drawings from their configurations. The wonderful artist residency inevitably finished and so I rushed to the Post Office with a very heavy parcel – to send home, of course, more of the stones!

Here's to continuing my metalpoint conversations with these humble stones that lie along the roadsides of Burgundy. I can't wait to get back to them!

Echoing Joan Miró's Wisdom

Joan Miró

The Fundacion Pilar I Joan Miró a Mallorca is a wonderful place in which to spend a hot summer morning.  From the sunswept terraces that overlook the brilliance of the Mediterranean to the cool, diffuse light of alabaster screens in the exhibition spaces, all the senses are awakened by unexpected juxtapositions of interest and beauty. Rafael Moneo designed the exhibition spaces as a complement to Miró’s studio and Pilar and Joan Miró’s home.  Gardens and reflecting pools are glimpsed from the building through often low windows, enhancing the building’s spaciousness and its spare simplicity.

In a way, the buildings follow a concept that Miró enunciated about his paintings in black and white.  Writing in 1959, Miró said, “My wish is to achieve maximum intensity with minimum means”. Many of his paintings verge on the oriental in many ways during this period.

Painting on a White Ground, Joan Miró, 1968 (image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Painting on a White Ground, Joan Miró, 1968 (image courtesy of Tate Britain)

His desire to use an intense but spare vocabulary in monochromatic work resonated with me, for increasingly, that is what interests me in my metalpoint drawings.  How to say a lot in a condensed or powerful fashion, using the minimum of means.  In truth,metalpoint is such a simple, humble drawing medium: just a piece of metal, making marks on a smooth surface prepared with a ground.  Its range of tones is limited, its scale often limited because of the slowness of execution, its discipline of technique demanding. Yet despite all that, like Miró’s black and white paintings, metalpoint at its best is quietly powerful.  Its lustre is alluring and unusual, its economy of form arresting.

One of the masters of silverpoint/metalpoint was of course Leonardo da Vinci. He led the way in the maximum impact-minimum means league.

A Rider on Rearing Horse Trampling a Fallen Foe (Study for Sforza Monument), Leonardo da Vinci, metalpoint on blue prepared paper, (image courtesy of Windsor Castle, Royal Library)

Another silverpoint artist working today with a very different approach is Roy Eastland, a British artist.  Nonetheless, to my eye, he is highly successful in the impact he achieves with the humble medium of silverpoint.

What wouldn't I give to grow old in a place like that, Roy Eastland, 2010, silverpoint on gesso

One of my minimalist recent metalpoint drawings owes its origins to the patterns I saw recently on a huge plane tree one hot July day in France.

Traces IV-V-VI, silver-goldpoint, 2013, artist Jeannine Cook

Rules of the Plein Air Game

It is always fascinating to realise how one evolves as an artist. I am constantly surprised at how things change, whilst the core impulses and responses remain consistent.

I was reminded of this yesterday as I found myself responding to the intricate beauty of ancient olive trees and mighty Mediterranean pines in a way that I would not have done a year or two ago.

Olive Tree (Olea europaea)

Mediterranean Pine (Pinus halepensis)

Yes, I love trees, and have always found them of intense interest and delight. But now, with my eyes more attuned to their texture and patterning of wood and bark because of the way I am frequently drawing in metalpoint, I “see” differently. And more than that, I find myself learning more and more adapting and moving to a very selective mode of drawing en plein air.

There is an interesting passage in a book I read some time ago, Monet by Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, published by Abradale Press in 1989. Discussing painting (and by extension drawing) en plein air, “To paint directly, to follow the rules of the plein air game, means to start with what is given from a particular position. Studio painting avoids occlusion problems (i.e. one near form hiding another behind it), but plein air means you have to choose your position and you have to deal with being blinded by overlapping features.”

Where you chose to stand or sit, what details you pay attention to: these are critical decisions for the artist to make at the onset of a work of art. The passage in Monet gives the example of a view down a straight road.

It establishes the visible world in depth at the same time that it establishes the position of the observing eye. It defines the relationship between seer and the seen within a geometrically precise structure.

Every time now that I start a metalpoint drawing, I need to decide on my position – where I am going to sit. This determines the details that visually jump out at me amid the welter of detailed information on the patterned bark of a tree, for instance.

Those selections dictate the “geometrically precise structure”, the composition that I have in mind (although that tends to evolve as I work). It also means that I have to “prune away” details that will not fit nor strengthen the drawing towards which I am almost instinctively groping.

It is indeed ideally a rather instinctive, non-conscious-thinking mode that I hope to achieve because I find that is when the best drawing happens. Not always possible, alas!

These are some of the more recent choices I made whilst sitting in front of mighty trees as to where I sit and what details are thus predominant and visible.

Walnut Freize, silverpoint, artist Jeannine Cook

Oak Labyrinth, gold-silverpoint, artist Jeannine Cook

Oak Labyrinth I, gold-silverpoint, artist Jeannine Cook

The rules of the plein air game become paramount.

Pouring your Life into your Art

Whether you like it nor not, your art is often the reflection of who you are and where life has taken you. That may be an unnerving idea, but it seems to be one that most artists, in all disciplines, have to come to terms with.

“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved,” wrote Ansel Adams. And for photography, you can substitute any art form, from dancing to singing to visual arts or theatre.

Images of Sacha Copland dancing on a wine barrel at La Porte Peinte residency in Noyers, France, as she choreographs a new work, The Wine Project, tells us about all her past experiences and ideas. As she herself writes about The Wine Project, "There in the glass was the soil of a place and in that soil was a soul”.

Sacha Copeland, Artist Director, Java Dance Company, New Zealand (photograph courtesy of Emma Hellowell)

Sacha Copeland, Artist Director, Java Dance Company, New Zealand (photograph courtesy of Emma Hellowell)

Sacha Copeland, Artist Director, Java Dance Company, New Zealand (photograph courtesy of Emma Hellowell)

Frequently, the artist has little awareness of what is going into the art being created, if that small inner voice is in charge. It is only later that one realizes that there is a wonderful circularity in what is happening, a reason and its result, direct and obvious or much more subtle. It may be years and years later that something seen, something experienced comes floating up and into the art.

I began to realise, for instance, that my childhood exposure, on walls of my home in Tanzania, to Japanese woodcuts, wonderful prints that had been created after the 1923 earthquake in Yokohama, Japan, was the reason for my always feeling comfortable with negative spaces reaching all four sides of a piece of paper. Drawing or watercolours, it does not matter: I feel almost compelled to use the entire surface of the paper, edge to edge, to create “dis-balanced” spaces that play into the whole composition. To me, it is part of my concept of art-making; I feel very strange when I confine the work I am creating to the inner parts of the paper, leaving blank space around the image.

Marronniers III: Chestnut Bark, gold-silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Le Chant des Pierres III: la Bourgogne Profonde, gold-silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

To me, the richness of art forms resides to a great degree on all these inner layers of life experience that the artist brings to the act of creation. Sometimes you capture and understand them, sometimes you don’t. There, again, part of the fascination of art is how each of us completes the dialogue of the art work.In other words, sometimes that artist’s life experiences resonate with the viewer. Sometimes they don’t because the viewer has had a radically different life and finds it difficult to find bridges stretching across to the artist’s world.

The question that lingers at the back of my mind is: what happens as present-day ever-accelerating giant changes in technology, urbanization, life styles and cultural mores show up more and more in art forms?

Do these changes create huge divergences in art and its adherents, particularly between generations? Or do we continue to acknowledge that certain art, in whatever form, transcends generations and centuries because the richness and power of its content and message? And, ultimately, who amongst us is the arbiter of the enduring character of that art? The super-wealthy buying at art auctions, the more “humble” supporters of all forms of art, governments and/or non-profit art organisations funding the arts, or who?

I wonder if Ansel Adamsthought of those “down-stream” aspects of art-making as he created his wonderful photographs.

Environments that Help Artists

Every artist instinctively seeks an environment that helps them create their art.

It is not always so easy to find either the place, nor the time and serenity to create, however. Every artist knows those stumbling blocks. Sometimes they are easily surmounted, other times it is not so easy.

Sometimes, luck intervenes too. In my case, Lady Luck definitely came calling this summer.

For a multitude of reasons, it has become difficult to have the time to spend in my studio, so I have been fortunate enough to be able to slip away for a while to different art residencies that I have been awarded hither and yon. This year, I had a magical two weeks in spring in Portugal.I was then able to have time at another residency, La Porte Peinte, in Burgundy, France, a country I adore anyway.

It is of course always a bit of a gamble going to art residencies.

It may be a wonderful place, with good studio facilities, but the area may not sing or the people who run the residency may not be terribly compatible – there are so many variables.

Until you get to the place, it is difficult to judge accurately whether you will be able to be truly creative there.

Even recommendations from other artists are not always an accurate gauge for one’s own needs.

La Porte Peinte, in Noyers sur Serein, in north-east Burgundy, near Auxerre, proves to be the most wonderful place in which to create art.

I have just spent the first half of a month’s residency there, and it was the most supportive, comfortable and welcoming place I could have dreamt of.

For a start, the medieval village is a delight.

You enter from the south over the Serein river.

At the entrance to Noyers sur Serein, photo J. Cook. 

And these are views from my eyrie perch window in my room.

Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, Noyers, photo J. Cook

Up the street from La Porte Peinte, photo J. Cook

L'Hôtel de Ville (Town Hall), Noyers, photo J. Cook

Michelle Anderson, the Executive Director of La Porte Peinte, is not only the most gracious of people, but her very international approach and wide knowledge of people and places make her able to help in so many ways. She also knows a lot of local people and that means that an artist has suddenly all sorts of insights and introductions into other ways of life in the area. That is beyond price. Her husband, Oreste, runs their elegant and diverse Gallery and does a million other things to make life at La Porte Peinte so pleasant and constructive. And yes, La Porte Peinte is situated in rue de la Porte Peinte - how about that for destiny!

The more I spend time at art residencies both in the United States and Europe, the more I realise that the atmosphere created by the people in charge is critical to an artist’s ability to create, explore new horizons and grow as an artist.

There is a subtle difference between being left to one’s own devices, to work in peace, and being left to be independent but at the same time, being offered the opportunity to involve oneself in the local cultural world, to meet other artists of all descriptions and disciplines and to be psychologically supported as an artist.