Shows to Hit (and Miss)

D. Read Lockhart, PAFA Annual Student Exhibition

 I had a lovely day of show hopping in Philly last week.  Unfortunately it started off a little rough.  

We began at PAFA's Annual Student Exhibition which I make a point of seeing each year, but not usually at the crazy opening.  It is such a crowded show, seeing it when no one else is around is the only way I can even mildly process it.  I have to say my overwhelming feeling was: it was exceptionally weak this year.  My take away from the MFA floor is the painting above.  It is the only thing that I loved.  But no one 'wall' held my interest or felt like a complete thought/investigation.  Maybe if there was less work everywhere or students had curated themselves better I would have seen more to latch on to.  But as it stood, it felt like a lot of posturing towards contemporary looking things but no underlying motivations.  I felt this last year too.

The undergraduate show was a little stronger, a few interesting walls but still in need of development.  I was impressed with the amount of commitment of hours from some students especially after having worked with undergraduates all year.

left: Maguire, right: Lovitz 

Next we jumped over to Space1026 where Adam Lovitz and Patrick Maguire have put together a really cohesive two-person show. (full disclosure: Adam is a friend and was one of the gallery goers I was with.  But, I only hang out with painters whose work is awesome;)  So this review is truthful)

Patrick Maguire

Adam Lovitz

far wall: Maguire, close: Lovitz

This wall was built by the pair and has installation sculpture built in.  You'll have to go to see it!

Patrick Maguire

Of course it is much easier for two people to make a space feel cohesive.  The sheer number of students at the ASE creates a cacophony of voices.  But, Lovitz and Maguire are working with a similar aesthetic as many in the ASE were attempting and curated in a way that made it feel meaningful.  The work looks the way it does as a result of a sustained investigation into surface, paint, color.  Not through jumping from one 'look' to the next.  

Everything was essential and that made viewers want to examine and try to garner content.  The work feels both microcosmic and larger than life, as if looking at earth from the moon.  The scale is not human, however it feels rooted in being a person but simultaneously, otherworldly.

Jun Kaneko

Pat Steir

The day ended at Locks and a look at the two new shows: Jun Kaneko and Pat Steir.  I really loved Kaneko's ceramic work, especially the slabs that were mounted to the wall and painted on (as seen above).  They were between sculpture, ceramic and painting in medium and felt both gesturing to serious modernist thought but also playful in a fresh, right now kind of way.

The Steir show had some interesting moments of color relationships in paint.  I thought the best pieces were the more limited/less primary relationships.  Worth a look.

Best of: Beginning Drawing

Here is a quick run down of how my beginning drawing for a mix of majors and non-majors panned out.  I'm always wondering how other people organize their classes so I guess that is why I am now sharing mine.  Unfortunately I wasn't so fantastic at getting a lot of photos so I only have one or two examples of each in class drawing, usually I made up a homework to go alongside.

We started the first day doing blind contours.  The first was of the room (picture 1), the second was of your hand or shoe (picture 2), the third was of how it felt when your tongue went around your teeth in your mouth.  This last one I lifted from an old professor of mine.  Students were looking around like I might have kidnapped the real drawing teacher and taken the class rogue at this point.  Pure terror.  But nice drawings.

Then we moved to extended line drawing of organic shapes, placing emphasis on line weight and finding composition.

Then so they didn't get too line obsessed, (which happened anyway), we worked with the idea of negative space in creating composition.

From there we continued with organic objects and did cross contour studies.  I think this helps in understanding how to apply the charcoal when later moving on to value.  To think about the direction of the edges and planes.  But it was confusing for a bit for them.

Then we jumped into value with subtractive charcoal drawings of well lit drapery.  The drawings turned out pretty well but it was a big leap.  I think because the patterns of light and dark are so abstract at first, students are really anxious that it won't 'look right'.  But it helps push them outside of that thinking into trusting their eyes and locating shape.

From there we went on to geometric shapes and did a bunch of structural, proportion work with bottles and teapots and things.  Then they did an extended drawing which had both a glass and metal object so to observe the way lights and darks disperse in these materials.

For the midterm, they made drawings using conte crayon on mid tone paper, building both the lights and darks.  I made up these really ugly machine like still lifes that I called 'grandpa's attic' for these.  I think we were all sick of bottles and plants at this point.

After spring break, we launched into two weeks of perspective.  First they just made up imaginary boxes in one and two-point perspective.  Then they made up an interior space in one-point and a street corner in two-point to get the abstract idea of it.  Then we did a perceptual one-point of the hallway (no picture of this) and went out and drew the engineering building on campus in two-point.  Surprisingly a lot of students like doing this, I personally am happy when it is over.

From there we moved on to figure.  They started by doing pencil self portraits but I don't have any to post this semester.  Then we spent two weeks with a model, doing gesture drawings with different parameters (15 lines only, straight lines only, zooming into the entire page, fitting the whole pose and touching the top and bottom etc.)  Then we did two two-day poses and students chose the medium.  I forced them to try ink during gesture and some really loved it and continued with it (and some did not).

Then for the last week of classes we went outside and made landscape drawings, medium of their choice, quick or extended.  It was a nice change from the structure of the classroom setting and also the parameters sometimes felt in learning 'representational' drawing.

And for their final, they had to work completely outside of the class on a drawing that had a figure in a space, from life.  Some were quite classic, some were more inventive.

Spring Studio

Spring in the studio. 

Best of: Beginning Painting

This semester I taught a painting class for non-majors.  In general, it was a good time and group.  I loved to watch the work change with each painting and also their attitudes.  Everyone starts out wanting to make a masterpiece.  They quickly get frustrated to the point of wanting to drop the class.  And then they settle in, listen and believe me when I say that painting is hard and they need to take risks and make shitty paintings and all of the sudden some really interesting things come about.

Here are a couple of my favorites in chronological order of the semester:

We started with grayscale painting and palette knife.  No details allowed.  They wanted to die at this point.

Then we moved to complementary color with palette knife.  This was helpful in forcing them to learn how to make chromatic grays.  But they still hated me at this point.

Then I had them make collages of paintings that another painter had made.  The top one was originally a Ken Kewley, the bottom, Yael Scalia.  By isolating the task of color mixing they were able to loosen up and work on this without getting too caught up in the placement of things.  

Then they painted the painting.  I debated doing this, I don't always love the idea of a 'master copy' but it gave them great confidence and as a picture they had looked at so closely, they were able to really understand the structure and shapes that built the painting.

Then we did a lot of still life work.  At this point, the idea of composition, paint quality and color are starting to be understood, while maintaining an individuality:

Then back to value for portraits.  Some students loved this, some really hated it.

Then color portraits:

Then we discussed interior spaces:

Luckily enough the weather was beautiful and we spent the last week on the back porch doing landscapes:

And finally they brought in a painting that was multiple sessions, any subject but from life, for their final:

This is the work of at least 12 different students, unfortunately I missed about 4 students work for photographing.  But I think (and hope) they got a basic understanding of how to build a painting, from paint application to color mixing to composition to scale, shape, value, light, space, that they can take with them in making future paintings.  But also a comprehension of their own interests in making a painting, the process of it and how they, specifically, look at the 3-D world and translate it onto a flat surface.

The Goldfinch

You should read this.  I know its getting a lot of attention and sometimes that makes me suspect of things --  but this attention is for good reason.  

I read this 700 odd page book in about a week.  It has all the best things; great character development, a twisty plot and beautifully crafted language.  I kept thinking she does with words what I try to do with paint.  She can be writing about walking down the sidewalk, something everyone does, but in such a way that I am both instantly familiar with the type of day and mood but also written with a freshness that I have never thought to express.

On top of that, the book orbits around the topic of great art.  In particular, the painting by Fabritius The Goldfinch, but also in broader ways.  It discusses that magical realm in which great art lives, between the illusion and the paint, and she posits that is where great love lives too: 

“And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.” 

And she talks about the love that is so real and serious and specific to looking at a certain piece of art and feeling it in your stomach:

“—if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.” 

"For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time—so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.” 

And as a result of writing such a story about such real things, Tartt has made a thing like the paintings she discusses, a real gem to grab onto and feel deeply through.

PIERO

Piero della Francesca, Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, 1450, Tempera on Wood

I found the magic that is Piero della Francesca while studying abroad in Italy.  I actually first saw his work in person which is a pretty unlikely thing to say, but right then I knew I was standing in front of something serious. (we also had this crazy art history professor that had a microphone that went directly into our headsets as we walked through the entire town of Sansepolcro.  So..., that could have been the voice telling me it was something serious)

But I still really marvel at his paintings even if it is mainly in reproduction.  Imagine my disappointment when last night I realize this gorgeous beyond glorious painting was at the Met while I was seeing the gobs of mostly mediocre stuff just blocks away.  Bummer.  

Anyway, isn't it the most wonderful looking painting?  Luckily the Met has a really fantastic virtual viewer here.  Such a composition.  The red in the foreground, the simultaneous flatness and depth in the trees, the translucence of the lion, the reflections in the water, the way St. Jerome becomes part of the mountainside.  I'm in love!