In his introduction to Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters on Cezanne", Heinrich Wiegand Petzet quotes this remark made by Rilke to Count Harry Kesler in front of a picture of Montagne Sainte-Victoire:
"Not since Moses has anyone seen a mountain so greatly"
I cannot know which of the multitude of versions of "Mont Sainte-Victoire" they were looking at, but that doesn't really matter: the remark evidently applies to either of them, or rather, to all of them. Just pause and have a long look at this painting above, letting Rilke's sentence play in your mind, and you will feel it.
Paul Cezanne is often called "the father of modern painting", and that's true in so many senses that it almost becomes false: it's a father who would probably never acknowledge most of his "children". What I mean is that (I believe) Cezanne achieved a new kind of synthesis between different aspects and elements of painting, and his various "descendants" took this fragile whole apart, running away with one or another part of it (and often making it into an all too easy "recipe" for painting-making). So, for example, Cubism (especially the analytical cubism) evidently descends from Cezanne's achievements, but it's very much debatable whether Cezanne himself would have accepted its flat planes without colour modulations as a painting (as we know, he intensely disliked even Gauguin's flat shapes).
What I want to do is go back to the original synthesis, to try and understand how this all works together in composing a painting. As of now, I am planning a two-months series of (weekly) posts on Cezanne's composition (to be completed before my two-weeks vacation in September), but it may be continued later.
Several weeks ago, I began a little study of Matisse's still life after Jan de Heem's "Table of desserts", which has turned into something much longer and deeper than I expected, and even involved my own painting studies. Here are these paintings again, side by side. If you are interested in larger images, click here.
To conclude this adventure, which I have shared with you in six blog posts so far, I want to summarize what I have understood and learned as a result. Here are the major steps of my journey:
What are Matisse's "modern principle of construction", and
How and, more importantly, why has he changed the abstract structure of the painting?
It is obvious from the first sight that Matisse reveals the internal geometric structure of the painting, hidden in de Heem's original; and also that he has moved two major triangles of de Heem's composition upwards, so that their apexes are no longer located within the picture plane, but outside, above its upper edge. It also seems that turning the lute towards the viewer, showing its strings, is part of the same overall change Matisse is after. However, I don't really know at that point what this change is all about: the explicit geometric grid can be preliminarily understood as a sign of modernity, but the reason for moving the triangles remains a mystery to me.
Returning to the comparison between de Heem and Matisse, I focus on the locus of simplicity vs. complexity within two compositions: de Heem foregrounds the complexity of detail and form within the still life set-up against the backdrop of simple and straightforward overall design of value areas; Matisse simplifies the things being painted, moving the complexity "outwards", into the overall design of the picture plane. One result is that de Heem's composition is endocentric and somewhat downward-oriented, "closed" within the picture plane with a clear area of focal interest in the lower part, whereas Matisse's construction is exocentric, moving outwards from the center in all directions and outside the picture plane, with no clear foci of interest within.
Armed with the understanding I have gained so far, I engage in a "practical" analysis of this remarkable interaction between two masters: I took two (roughly) impressionistic, and fairly similar to one another, still lifes of my own, and attempted to push one of them towards de Heem's principles of composition, and the other one, towards Matisse's. The utmost relevance of the overall value design becomes even clearer in the process; I understand better the formal essence of Matisse's modifications, but not its inner significance (yet). Here are the results of this work again, with original studies in the top row, and the new versions, in the bottom row:
And here comes the breakthrough: the work on my own still lifes leads me to the discovery of a "hidden" substance of de Heem's painting, represented by the heap of books behind the drapery, near the apex of the right-hand major triangle. This discovery sheds new light on the synthetic, intermediate position of this work in de Heem's ouvre; as though an expression of an uneasy, hidden compromise. It also reveals an additional change made by Matisse: he downplayed the books on the right, but decidedly opened up the landscape behind the window, near the top of the left-hand triangle, barely visible in de Heem's original.
In the last post of the series, where I show the final images of my own still lifes and lament neglecting in my analysis (initially, at least) the fundamental, unbreakable link between meaning and form in painting, between a paintings' inner harmony and outer construction.
But now, at least, the link has revealed itself with utmost clarity: just think of these still lifes in terms of the oppositions between open(ed) vs. close(d), reveal vs. hide, outwards vs. inwards, and their formal structures and their inner significance come into the focus of awareness, and, what's more essential in the domain of painting, become indistinguishable.
Still life without a mandoline. 2009-2013. Original versions in the top row. 20"x20" each.
This collage is a preliminary result of "painter's" approach to analysis of Matisse's still life after de Heem's "Table of desserts" (if you want to read earlier posts in this sequence, or see Matisse's and de Heem's originals, please look up the "In Studio with Masters" tag on this blog). In the top row, you see two impressionistic still life studies I did in December 2009-January 2010; the bottom row shows them reworked, pushing the left one towards de Heem's approach to composition, and the right one, towards Matisse's "modern principles of construction".
Although I am still in the process of absorbing and formulating the results of this analysis, there is one major lesson already clear. It's nothing new, but, as it seems, still not quite learned well enough (by me, at least). I began this series with a certain frustration with the discussion of Matisse's work on MOMA website and its focus on superficial matters of technique, which seemed so much beside the point of this work. The thing is, I know from experience that, if something frustrates me, it means, quite often, that I do something very similar myself without realizing it: it's almost always easier to notice such things in others than in oneself. And so it was in this case: I was focusing on the overall structure of composition and value design as though they could be detached from the content of a painting, its meaning and its message, and understood on their own. And that's simply not how great paintings come to exist. Of course, I was mislead by the "identity" of the subject matter in both paintings; and yet, the subject matter and the meaning aren't the same: de Heem's meaning is "hidden" together with his books; and Matisse's, in his still life opening up to the landscape beyond it. But in any event, it was my focus on composition that lead me to discover these meanings eventually: de Heem "closing up" his design with simplified darker value areas of the background; Matisse opening it up with stark value contrasts all over the place, "split" chiaroscuro as it were. And that was my initial focus in reworking my own still lifes, so I'll close this post with a posterized black-and-white version of the same collage, which shows this "evolution" from impressionism: back in time towards de Heem, and forwards, to Matisse:
Still life without a mandoline (after Matisse after de Heem).
Work in progress, 20"x20", oil on canvas
It's now the fourth week that I am spending with Matisse, de Heem, and their interaction across time, trying to figure out why and wherefore Matisse chose de Heem's still life as an anchor point for his version. In case you've missed the previous posts, they are the three most recent ones under the "In Studio with Masters" tag. I've suspected for some time that, in order to understand Matisse properly, I will have to repeat his endeavor in some way or another, probably taking another Flemish or Dutch still life as my anchor point. I will probably do it later on, but for now, I recalled that I have a series of three 2009 still lifes which I can try and use to explore Matisse's ideas and intent, using them as "underpaintings" for my reworks. Not that the process itself is new to me, but this time, I thought, I would consciously try to understand Matisse, not just to rework a painting...
Two weeks ago, I began an analysis of Matisse's still life after de Heem, in an attempt to clarify for myself the essence of re-design undertaken by Matisse. Here are these two paintings again, in their chronological order:
Jan Davidsz. de Heem. A Table of Desserts. Oil on canvas. 149 x 203 cm (58.7" x 79.9"). 1640.
Last week, I started an analysis of Matisse's still life after de Heem's "A table of desserts"; to be frank, I had imagined it would be one blog post, but the more I think about it, the more interesting things emerge, so I've decided to stay longer on this topic, to go into this analysis more deeply, because the contrast between these two paintings seems to touch some essential, fundamental questions about painting, and life, and art, and time.
Henri Matisse. Still Life after Jan Davidsz. de Heem's 'La Desserte'. Oil on canvas. 71 1/4" x 7' 3" (180.9 x 220.8 cm). 1915 Image courtesy of Wikipaintings
Matisse painted this still life after de Heem's "A table of desserts" (1640), a painting he had copied much earlier as a student. According to a commentary on MOMA website, his idea was to remake the painting based on "the methods of modern construction". This kind of work seems, therefore, ripe with opportunities to learn more about how he understood these "methods of modern construction" of paintings. What stays unchanged, and what follows the time's spirit?
Rembrandt van Rijn. Self-portrait with Gorget. c. 1629
37.9 x 28.9 cm.
Mauritshuis, The Hague
I recently had a chance to see this self-portrait very close up, at the exhibition from the Mauritshuis in San Francisco. Exhibitions from the Dutch "Golden Age" never fail to leave me with a rather odd feeling. It's always a show of a very strong stylistic coherence of the age, and an extremely high and consistent mastery of skills in realistic treatment of details. This display of realistic exuberance seems to attract most viewers' admiration (maybe because it's back in fashion nowadays), almost hiding from them the genuine, age-independent, power and artistic strength of some paintings (not all of them, by no means). I will probably return to this motive in a later post. I am not sure how many of the viewers notice that the "like a photo" level of illusion is often achieved by completely "unlike a photo" means; in many cases, the illusion of detailed realism is supplied by the viewers' minds at a certain distance, and disappears if one looks closer. It might seem that every leaf on a tree is painted as such, but "in reality" it's just a mess of suggestive brushstrokes. In this context, this self-portrait of Rembrandt's stands remarkably apart from the crowd (leaving alone, for the moment, all the other reasons why it stands apart). What you see in the photo is more or less close to what you see from a couple of steps away from the painting: a precocious young man, with smooth, nearly cherubic look (or it would be, had he not been looking at you with obvious pride in himself and a bit of hidden ironic smile: he knows his worth, and would have gladly overestimated it if that were humanely possible in this case; I can do anything, his look says, you just try me). If you get a chance to look closer, though, you will see something quite unexpected: the portrait seems to show every single tiny imperfection of his skin, let alone the imperfections of that morning's shaving. "Oh, it's realistic details you want?" -- the young painter seems to ask his potential clients ("You want it to look like a photo?" -- he would have asked had he lived now). "Well, if that's what you want, I can give you more than you've ever asked for; more than your poor imaginations can take. And I will even try to hide my smile from you, albeit not very successfully, while I am at it." What the portrait shows, and how it is done, merge together perfectly, with an unmistakeable touch of genius. Unfortunately, this painting doesn't seem to be represented in Google Art Project as yet, but to give you some idea of what I am talking about, there is another one from approximately the same time: just zoom in, and you will see what I mean.
I've got to come up with a response to +Shauntelle Hamlett's interview question about inspiration, its sources and strategies, and I am a bit stuck. So, using my beloved strategy of structured procrastination and also as a bit of warm-up, I've finally got around to editing the final photo of this recent painting, "Magdalene". Where are the sources of this work? All over the place, to tell the truth. To begin with, my painting work is always anchored in visual impressions, in what I see; even if I paint a poem, I don't pull imagery out of nowhere. In this case, the original visual impression happens to have been recorded properly.
Reclining nude. 24"x26". Oil on canvas. 2009
This is the initial study of a nude model, from life, in Larry Robinson's figure painting class; focusing on composition, shapes and flesh tones. This last autumn, I decided to use it as a foundation for a Chagall study, as a part of my autumn spent with Marc Chagall, +In Studio with Masters. That's where the idea of turning the canvas, and combining two figures on different scale, comes from. Once the canvas was turned, both the imagery and the (slightly new) composition invoked, in my mind, a poem by Boris Pasternak, written in the voice of Mary Magdalene. When a poem enters my painting, it does so not only with its meaning, but, even more so, with its rhythms. Unfortunately, the rough draft of my translation of the poem's openings I was able to come up with so far, doesn't convey its enchanting rhythm adequately, but still, here it is:
Each night, my demon's here again, My reckoning for the past, Remembrances of harlotry Come and suck my heart, When, a slave to men's whims, I was a raving fool, And the street was my shelter. A few minutes left, before the deathly silence. But, before they pass away, Having come to the edge, As an alabaster vessel, I break my life before thee. So this, or rather its Russian original, is another source of this painting. But that's not all: this painting is also a part of my explorations of Kandinsky's take on inner meanings of colours (in his book, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art"), with the reds for passions, the blues for spirituality, the yellows for soil and flesh. All in all, the story of this work seems to illustrate rather nicely these words attributed to Pablo Picasso, that Inspiration does come, but it must find you working. All the sources of inspiration listed here were called forth by the painting itself, while it was finding its long way to materialization, not before.
Henri Matisse. The Large Blue Dress. 92.7 x 73.6 cm. O/c. 1937
One of the highlights of our recent trip to NYC was Henri Matisse's exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum, an exhibition particularly interesting to a painter because of its focus on the process, the search (rather than just the result). As it seems, Matisse was quite keen on having a record of this search, first by letting earlier stages alone and starting afresh on new canvases (to the delight, one must assume, of his collectors), and later by hiring photographers to document intermediate stages (quite similar to what many of us do now as a matter of daily routine).
Although the exhibition spans many decades, the general direction of his search remains constant: from a more realistic drawing towards simplicity of shapes and lines; from quite muted, washed down colors towards brightness and intensity. In sum, towards being child-like. It was really striking, at times, to see how long and hard his each new path towards the "child-like" simplicity and brightness remained, always starting from nearly the same point which one can, for lack of a better word, call "reality".
I've chosen this work to illustrate this post because its (usually hidden) process was most surprising for me. I am using an image from Wikipaintingshere, because, if my memory serves, it represents the colors of the original more accurately than the images on the Met website (especially the blue from the title), but here isthe story of this painting and its documentation from the exhibition website. Maybe the large blue dress, made by Matisse's friend and model, Lydia Delectorskaya, herself, specifically for this painting, and also exhibited, side by side with the painting, adds to the effect. An intensely bright silk dress, with simple straightforward lines and in Matisse's favorite shade of blue, as though made with the intention to make the process shorter, its starting point somewhat closer to the desired result. But the path of Matisse's search for the final painting, as the photographic evidence shows, was still quite windy and long.
To tell the truth, the question remains with me, is it really essential to begin anew every time? Was it necessary to study this real woman, in all richness of realistic detail, to arrive at this stylized image, its pure lines and flat bright color areas? Did he know his final destination, or at least its rough outlines, from the very beginning, or was he hoping, every time, to arrive somewhere else?
Reflections on Kandinsky's spiritual interpretation of
colours. 16"×12", Oil on linen panel, July 2012
In this earlier work, I've attempted to set up a battle between the three primary colors, blue, yellow and so test, if only for myself, Kandinsky's interpretation of their inherent semantics: to exaggerate and oversimplify a bit, for him, the yellow vs. red vs. blue triad straightforwardly maps onto the "body/earth vs. soul/passion vs. spirit/mind" triad. The battlefield created here was acutely noticed by +Mark Davis when I first posted this on Google+. After all, these values exist rather in interaction with one another than in the state of forced separation; in unity rather than in discord. Or at least they are supposed to.
Conversation. 11"x14". Oil on canvas panel. July 2012
This observation inspired another approach to the same motive, called "Conversation". I used an earlier still life study for this, and it hasn't quite worked out: as you can see, the earthly, mundane nature of the subject matter took over and the "spiritual" blue all but disappeared, being represented only in a couple of spots here and there (and, of course, merged into the green). Come to think about it in retrospect, this outcome might be taken as a confirmation of Kandnisky's claims; yet it turned out that this motive, this general line of thinking apparently hadn't completed itself in my mind, and came out again in this month's work.
Still life with three lemons and a mirror. 16"x20". June 2010
It is also based on an earlier, straightforwardly impressionistic still life study; when I decided to re-work it, and started thinking about it again, it somehow pulled out of the deepest well of my memory lines and pieces of Friedrich Schiller's Punschlied. And its focus on inherent unity of "four elements" that "make the life and build the world", its association of these fundamental elements with everyday still life stuff like sugar and lemons, brought me back to my unfinished conversation with Kandinsky. The new work is also all about three primary colors, but they are now nearly merged together in a life-like outburst.
Chagall's lessons I Chagall's lessons II Continuing with the series of five lessons from five Chagall's paintings I've studied in detail over the last several weeks. This is the third one.
Pablo Picasso is often quoted saying that it took him four years to learn to paint like Rafael, and a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. Marc Chagall, apparently, didn't need that: in spite of his teachers' best efforts, he seems to have never un-learned to paint like a child, but perfected this ability to an unmatchable degree.
This applies both to his imagery and his technique. Consider this self-portrait, with the artist in the most classical of self-portrait poses, in front of his easel. Yet not only did he depict this hard to describe (and even harder to capture), expression of childlike curiosity, but look closely: he also conveys the essential problem known to any painter who has ever painted from life, the need to look at the subject matter and at the canvas at the same time. And he conveys it with childlike playful directness: the painter's eyes are looking in different directions, just like that. Unrealistic yet basically true: in sum, childlike.What is even more remarkable is that this naive directness is combined with masterful modelling of the face, with almost Renaissance-like subtlety: just look at the light and shadows on his forehead!
What really fascinates me is how apparently easily and naturally he manages to combine seemingly stylistically incompatible approaches within the same picture plane: compare the subtle, quite "adult" modelling on the forehead and the cheek with the markedly naive rendering of the nose.
Or here, in the arm and the hand: the arm, not unlike the body (left out in this detail crop) is rendered naively, with completely unrealistic proportions, nearly flat. In the hand, though, this naivete delicately transforms into a much more realistic representation, which shows us exactly how he holds the brush, with each finger in an anatomically realistic position (in a striking distinction, by the way, to Modigliani's take on similar contrasts in representation).
There is more: look at the treatment of brushes and canvas in the lower left corner: the brushes are barely indicated, more "placeholders" than brushes, conveyingrather straightforwardly, without much ado, their relative irrelevance at this moment, while they are not in the painting hand.
But see these black dots along the lower edge of the canvas: a dot for each little nail? In the painting, they rhyme with another string of dots, along the edge of his collar. Considering that this collar is attached to a very roughly and flatly rendered shirt, which, in its turn, covers a primitively represented body, this sudden accuracy in depicting the ornament on the collar is unexpected, to say the least. Why are these dots there? Is it a childlike unwillingness to let the painting go when there is still some fun to be had? Is it a barely recognizable reference to detailed treatments of clothing in Renaissance paintings? Or both, and more? I don't really know, but I find these dots absolutely and inexplicably fascinating...
As my "Autumn with Marc Chagall" rolls towards its inevitable end, I want to try and summarize key lessons learned from five studies of specific paintings of his I've done for my G+ friends (there are still two remaining to be done, but they are somewhat delayed). For each painting, I'll try to single out one major technical lesson and one major conceptual one, which will probably result in more than one blog post over the following days. The first thing that struck me in this first painting, "The Birthday", was the sheer amount of "decorative" details in the background, quite outside what can conceivably be thought of as focal areas. Not just details (they are abundant in other Chagall's paintings, as well, but rather the way they cry for viewer's attention, but do not detract this attention from the major motive of the painting. This is, of course, not unheard of in the history of painting: it used to be quite a common practice to show off one's skill in detailed treatment of fabrics, furs, golden stuff, etc. What we have here is different, for two reasons: the abundance of decorative details aren't an inherent part of any "style" accepted at the time, and they are also very far from being "realistic"; rather they are unrealistically decorative both in the original environment and in the painting (especially in the pillow and the throw cover on the bed). In other words, their treatment in the painting is not realistic, but rather directly borrowed from the "style" of the room being depicted; the ornaments in the room are not so much "represented" in the painting as they are actually present in it, as though they have jumped in there from the room without the painter's mediation. This reflects the conceptual motivation for their presence: they aren't here to show off the artist's skills; they enact the somewhat artificial ornaments of the poor yet newly decorated room of newlyweds in the midst of larger-than-life catastrophes of the surrounding history. However artificial and superficial, their childish charms protect this birthday celebration from the outside world. This enactment (rather than realistic representation) is what makes this painting belong to its time, even though Chagall's reaction to the broken fabric of everyday life is so very different from most of his contemporaries.
This is the current stage (not a very good photo) of my fourth Chagall study, the green violinist. In my previous post in this series, I have outlined a couple of ideas I had in mind before beginning this study; and the question I wanted an answer to, namely, why is he green? Do I have the answer? I believe I do, maybe even a couple of them. The main conceptual answer is that Chagall's green is the color of tender sadness and longing; here, perhaps the color of the painter's nostalgie for his home village, its funny and somewhat weird ways. Approaching this more technically, there had to be some green here to make the violets and magentas work as they were intended to, and it couldn't be the mundane green of greenery, if only because the painting had to be set in winter. Yet as I was studying this painting, the original questions gradually faded into the background, to be replaced with a focus on painting's ultimate mystery, compositional rhythms. There used to be a time when it was assumed that only drawing can be taught and trained, whereas color is a matter of pure in-born talent, the magic of this artform. In the post-impressionist world, it is now accepted that this is not quite the case; in fact, quite a lot about color can be formalized and taught (provided the student has some color sense, at least; and even that can be trained and refined, to some extent). The rhythmic qualities of a painting's composition, however, remain more mysterious and defy formalization, beyond mere basics. I am not sure these secrets can be learned, but that's what I am trying to do; because there is hardly any painting in which these qualities play a more prominent role than in Chagall's Green Violinist -- insofar as a silent piece canvas can be made to represent the voice of a violin, the rhythmic movements of the bow, can be made to sing, he did it here. All the folds of the fiddler's coat, each tiny detail of the surrounding landscape -- all of them work together to create this melody. I don't know about you, but this is the song this painting sings to me:
They say they played this song in Auschwitz, each time a gas chamber was at work. An underground Russian-Jewish poet and musician of the XXth century, Alexander Galich, wrote a variation of this song, where the refrain combined the tumbalalaika of the Yiddish text with my heart is bursting and weeping in Russian. That's about how I feel about this painting.
Marc Chagall. The Green Violinist. 198 x 108.6 cm. 1923-1924
I came to believe this particular twist of my "Autumn with Marc Chagall" -- suggesting my friends on Google+ challenge me to seven studies of individual paintings of their choice -- was a remarkably good idea (for me, at least). It forces me into studying images and effects I would have probably never decided to study "on my own" and keeps me together on rough and rowdy days. The photo albums of my "In Studio with Masters" page on Google+ document three studies I have already completed. This painting, the green violinist, will be my next subject. The original is rather large, almost two meters high, and I am dearly tempted to do the study almost as large. Realistically, though, I'll have to confine myself to a much smaller scale, probably 24"x12" (61 x 30.5 cm). We'll see how it goes... There are three things that capture my attention about this painting. First, although it is linked thematically with the Liozna series of portraits (many of which were done from life), this one nearly ten years later, completed in Paris in 1923-1924. That is, it's a memory of his native village and its inhabitants, probably a nostalgic one. This maybe the reason for the basic formal contrast: that between the nearly monochrome background and the decoratively colorful figure (which the second aspect that interests me in this work); there is a hint of warm vs. cold distinction in the background, but no more than that. And finally, the color scheme of the figure is based on the opposition of three nearly pure secondary colors (violet, green and orange), with green shifted a bit towards the blue, and the violet, towards its warmer, magenta, shades. In studying this painting, I entertain a nearly hopeless hope: maybe I might find an answer to the question Chagall himself claimed he never knew. Namely, why is he green? If I find an answer, I'll certainly tell you...
Today's post in the "Autumn with Marc Chagall" series is, essentially, an announcement:
The Chagall Challenge Show on Google+ will take place in cooperation with the next First Friday Art Walk event on December 7, 2012.
This event is open to any work inspired by Marc Chagall, in any genre: painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, mixed media, digital images, sculpture, photography, poetry, short stories, or anything I have forgotten to list here. Insofar as your work is inspired by Marc Chagall, it is welcome to our show.
(I occasionally dream, as a matter of fact, of what would have happened had the giants of XXth century painting lived even longer than they did and could have been here for the inception of digital art. I believe we would have had quite a different art history then.)
"Inspired by Marc Chagall" can be interpreted in any way you wish, from a study (or copy) of an individual painting to a general stylistic association to a loose thematic link. But in case you need additional hints, here is a list of minor "Chagall challenges", that is, ideas to explore:
1. "Wrong color": something painting in a color that might seem wrong but feels right!
2. "Green vs. red": explore the ways Chagall used greens in his paintings (he was really good at it, and obviously loved greens).
3. "Break the scale": combine within the same painting things in "wrong" relative sizes!
4. "Turn it upside down": include things with "wrong" orientation, or just turn your support upside down in the middle of the process.
5. "Let it float": let things that usually remain earth-bound (like cows or goats, for example) fly in your skies.
All these ideas are just ways to increase the freedom in your work, not to confine it to one or more of them!
If you remember, this painting by Marc Chagall is what my "Autumn with Chagall" studies are currently focused on, and I must admit, it challenges me at some deepest levels, much more than I expected. The more I look at the painting, the more surprises and little miracles I find.
What I find most fascinating in this self-portrait is how it combines and harmonizes things seemingly incompatible. Look at it from a distance, and your first impression is of extreme freedom, a certain roughness,an "unfinished" look characteristic of the XXth century. Indeed, some parts of the paintings are rather sketch-like (look at the brushes he holds in his right hand, for example, barely outlined). But look a bit closer – and you see that he found it necessary, for some mysterious reason, to meticulously indicate each single nail along the lower edge of his canvas, rhyming with something like dotty ornament along the edge of his collar.
Another paradox has to do with the anatomy, the modeling of the figure itself, which varies from something nearly Renaissance-like in subtlety of tonal variation (on his forehead, for example) to the extreme in-your-face naivete (in the treatment of his arms, for example) both in drawing and in modeling of volume (or rather, lack thereof). A similar contrast in the treatment of color – from subtlest nuances to rough, free brushwork, from complete control to total freedom – but here, at least, I can begin to understand why and how it is done.
Painter with his easel (after Marc Chagall). 30"x20".
Here is how my study looks like at the moment – more like a variation on the theme than like a study per say.
I have already spent more time on this particular study than I had planned, and I think I'll set it aside till next week. For one thing, what should be done with it requires that the current layers of paint be dry to the touch. More importantly, though, I need to let my impressions and experiences brew themselves in my mind for a while, without forcing them onto the canvas; this, I feel, is an essential prerequisite (albeit by no means a guarantee) for bringing this study to where I want it to be.
