A Brave New Pixelated World

Some guy, a clinical sociologist, I think, surmised a few years ago that we are spending so many hours in front of our television and computer screens that we will eventually lose our sense of depth perception, and cars will be banging into each other on the freeways with great regularity.  We’ll probably have those “smart cars” before that happens.  But it should be obvious to everybody that the lens of a film or digital camera flattens and compresses space and form and exaggerates detail and color, among other optical aberrations.  The resulting images bear little resemblance to the way things look to us in the natural world. 


An event recounted by Wade Davis, a western advocate for the world's indigenous cultures, illustrates this truth very well.  It seems that a group of five missionaries were attempting to make contact with an indigenous tribe in Ecuador in 1957.  They first dropped 8x10 glossy photographs of themselves into the rainforest as a peaceful gesture of introduction.  The tribesmen had never seen a two-dimensional image before.  They turned the photos every which way looking for form and figure but found nothing.  So they concluded the photographs "were calling cards from the devil," says Davis, and when the missionaries arrived in person they were speared to death by the tribesmen. 

Now you could argue that the same thing would have happened to Rembrandt if he had ever ventured out of Amsterdam to drop a self-portrait into the same rainforest, but I would have to strongly disagree, although not from behind the point of a spear.  I'm a peaceful advocate for oil painting from life, which enabled Rembrandt to capture the impression of his real form and figure on canvas so convincingly that it would surely have elicited smiles of recognition from even the most obstreperous of indigenous tribesmen.

There is no doubt, however, that the civilized world’s sense of visual reality is being challenged subliminally by the virtual reality encapsulated in the multitude of electronic image devices that permeate our daily lives.  We already can’t tell whether images seen on a screen are the real thing or fake.   Computer-generated imagery is so advanced that a video showing crowds of people feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square can be produced entirely in a studio in Burbank with all the elements layered seamlessly into the scene via electronic pixels.   Many purported on-location interviews seen on news programs are actually done in the studio with computer-integrated video of the actual scene playing in the background.  Computer graphics software now enables artists to produce professional looking films, graphics and fine art from their home computers.  Natural looking landscapes and realistically animated images are part of the CGI portfolio.  Photoshopped images abound in the electronic and print media without attracting undue censure from the public. 

 

Bush-Kerry Morph, http://vhil.stanford.edu/projects/

Zoe, A Digital Talking Head, http://youtu.be/kOil2HSDq0E

Computer morphed or digitally simulated people look just like real human beings on the screen nowadays and can easily fool us into believing they are, indeed, composed of flesh and blood.  We can’t tell the difference, and frankly, Scarlett, we just don’t give a damn.  “Everything is so sharp.  It has to be real.”  We believe the high-definition images on television and our home computers to be a more accurate portrayal of an event than what we witness with our own eyes, which we primarily use now to stare at the tiny screens on our cell phones, iPods and tablet computers when we are out and about. 

We are in the midst of a truly amazing assault on human visual perception.  This brave new world composed of nothing but pixels is part of the ongoing campaign to replace human intelligence with artificial intelligence for all critical thinking.  So what, says the human race, this electronically “pixelated” world is a far more entertaining place to live in than the world of our ancestors, who only had boring things like flowers growing in the backyard and sunrises and sunsets to gaze upon in their leisure hours.

Art and Commerce

Everybody loves to paint pictures.  The “Joy of Painting” is in full bloom in this country.  The late Bob Ross would be so proud of the burgeoning industry he helped create.  The Internet is awash with artist’s websites, blogs and how-to videos promoting this extremely pleasurable activity.   Scratch one cheerleading blog and it leads to 20 others.  Making art is an all-consuming passion.  And it helps keep our minds off troubling world affairs that we can’t do anything about anyway.    

The problem is what to do with all the paintings you create.  You can’t sell them all, and sometimes you can’t even give them away.  Storage capacity is never adequate.  It is hard to believe people are so blind to their merits, considering all the heart and soul and enthusiasm that went into creating them.  But even you don’t like them so much after you are done with them.   Then when you dig one out of storage years later, it looks better than anything you are painting today.  What happened to the joy of painting?

As a self-employed artist, I must try to sell my paintings.  Despite my deep love of the painting process and unabashed conviction that I am a companion on a spiritual journey with the great painters who came before, I must candidly admit that my traditional oil paintings are way down on the list of essentials for a civilization survival kit. 

Nonetheless, many people still like to decorate their walls with paintings of one sort or another.  And a few collectors get genuine emotional satisfaction from looking at original oil paintings that fall within their highly selective aesthetic range.  We are fortunate if our work attracts one or two of them when we are getting started.  The rent must be paid and art supplies replenished, after all. 

Art investors, on the other hand, like to speculate that the painter they collect will be the next Jean Paul Basquiat or Gerhard Richter, and that a fortune awaits at Sotheby’s or Christie’s when their work is ultimately put up for auction.   You may have heard that Richter’s enormous, tediously worked, purposely fuzzy, black and white oil painting copy of a black and white photograph of a Milan plaza recently sold for $37 million at Sotheby’s, setting a new auction record for a living artist.  The buyer was a Napa Valley vineyard owner who said the 9 foot square work “just knocks me over.” The previous owners of this painting probably felt the same way, as will the next owner of this painting.  These great works of contemporary art are so beloved by their owners that they like to recycle them through the auction houses on a regular basis to give others the chance to get “knocked over” before they arrive at their final destination, some world-class museum as a generous, fully tax-deductible bequest from the estate of a prominent collector. 

These investors tend not to come knocking on the studio doors of painters of traditional subject matter – onions, apples, blue and white ginger jars, and the like.  I don’t really care.  I’ve never had much interest in making money, but I’ve always made sure I’ve had just enough of it to get by on so I can continue painting pictures.   And I don’t consider myself a disillusioned artist at all, since I’ve never marketed my work hard enough to get to that state of discontent.

Unlike a lot of artists I’ve met, however, I’ve never had a family to support.   Too many talented young artists have had to work full time in other fields to support their families.  One guy I knew supported his family by painting houses for a living, while continuing to paint still lifes in his spare time.  Louie was a passionate Italian with a rugged face and broken nose, who was prone to brief episodic seizures when startled by someone’s approach.  Louie couldn’t get gallery representation for his paintings.  He told me he was making the rounds of the Midtown galleries with his portfolio one day and was getting rejections at all of them.  When he walked into one gallery, the elderly owner took one look at him and cried out, “Michelangelo,” and fainted dead away.  The Avon ladies get much better receptions cold-calling their products.  The last time I saw Louie he told me he was no longer painting pictures.  “I’m not going to paint any more pictures until I’ve sold all the ones I’ve already painted,” he said.  Good luck with that!

Some of us “starving artists” envy the way painters have been treated in other countries, particularly those in the Communist bloc during the Cold War era.  Those terrific Russian artists had to paint a few pro forma portraits of Lenin and Stalin, of course, but they had plenty of art supplies and models and time to paint some beautiful figurative paintings, being descendants of the great Repin and Kramskoi, giants of painting from the pre-Soviet era whose influence continues today in Russia and China.  A similar system of largesse for artists was operated by the Dutch government for years.  Unlike the Russians, though, the liberal Dutch may have been too generous.  Many of the artists spent most of their time lolling around cafés in the 1970s, I was told.  The last of the subsidies ended in 2012.   Here in America, I am hopelessly lost in the unprincipled aisles of capitalism’s free market. 

For those of us smitten by Robert Henri’s “The Art Spirit” and similar inspirational pep talks, it is unfortunate that most people don’t care at all if the painting they buy was painted entirely from life by an artist using his own two eyes and brain and brush handling skills to interpret the scene before him.  They don’t care if the painting was copied from a photograph or created entirely on a computer.  It doesn’t matter.  If it looks good, it is good, paraphrasing Duke Ellington’s quote about music.  As with most things in this morally bankrupt world, the bottom line is Machiavelli’s observation that the end justifies the means, no matter how mechanical and inartistic the result may seem to more sentient beings like yours truly.  Most folks just want their paintings, prints, posters, photographs or collages  to remind them of their beloved pet dog, a trip to the Mojave Desert, a scene in a Disney movie, a ride on a San Francisco cable car, or whatever.  Nostalgia is a powerful sentiment.  

Peonies, Oil on Canvas, 20x24"

Meanwhile, your own pretty good painting of peonies, which you knocked out in three hours in the throes of intense passion before the flowers wilted, and which warranted a victory dance to the crescendo of the tune playing on your cassette tape deck, better match the color of the client’s walls or it’s not leaving your studio.  That’s the reality we learn early on in our careers.  You resign yourself to the fact that two framed “original” oil paintings produced in some sweat shop in China and purchased for a total of $50 at a mall warehouse in suburban New Jersey are about all the fine art most people can take in one lifetime.  You want a copy of any oil painting ever painted?  Just click on one of those Chinese art factory websites.  Some people combine their vacation cruises with a trip to the ocean liner’s art salon where the wares of “internationally known” artists are hawked immodestly.

Before dealers took control of the art market in the late 19^th Century and opened Pandora’s box, the only subjects fit for painting were fruits and vegetables, flowers, trees, mountain ranges, buildings and people.  And the paintings had to look pretty close to the real thing as it existed in nature or you wouldn’t be getting much business in that earlier fiefdom of artists.  Now you can paint anything you feel like any way you want using any reference material at your disposal, call your work original art and sell tons of it, providing you are adept at marketing and self-promotion and are in several top-notch galleries around the country.

So how does an ethical oil painter who wants to remain true to his abiding love of creating paintings only from life, taking all his inspiration from nature, just as Robert Henri and his contemporaries did, fare in a market where “skim milk masquerades as cream” and anything goes and nobody cares?  Don’t ask me right now.  I’m thinking about troublesome world affairs that I can’t do anything about either.

Provenance: Artist's Studio, Dumpster, Gentleman of Title

The comfortable old wooden benches in the lobby of The Art Students League have served to rest the weary bones of thousands of artists over the years, including many whose days in the sun were behind them.  They enjoyed occasionally revisiting the place that inspired them to begin their lifelong love affair with art when they were young and energetic and ready to conquer the world.  It's the same scene today.  And not insignificantly for all of us loyal to our “alma mater,” you can always count on the League's restrooms if the need arises when you are out and about in the Midtown area.

Often, the last time you will see League acquaintances is when they are sitting on one of those benches.  Some years ago a retired Brooklyn high school art teacher I knew pretty well from the members’ sketch classes was sitting there on a Friday evening looking very pale and extremely worn out.  I asked her how she was feeling and she said she was fine, just a little tired.  It turned out she had walking pneumonia and died a couple of days later.  I still regret not having called for an ambulance right then and there.   An artist I know well told me that a good friend and classmate of his at the School of Visual Arts in the early 1950s was sitting on a bench one afternoon and casually announced, “I’ve got leukemia.”   “Jerry, that’s terrible,” the artist replied.  “Wait right here.   I’m just going to my locker.  I’ll be right back.”  When he got back to the lobby a moment later his friend was gone and he never saw him alive again.   Probably every League artist has a favorite bench story or two in their book of memories.

Many of the bench sitters I got acquainted with in my first years at the League in the 1980s were Second World War veterans who had studied at the League under the GI Bill.  A fair number of them took jobs in commercial art after their training.

One of those veterans was Arthur “Artie” Albert.  He was a bench regular  in the late afternoon for several years, always wearing his Greek fisherman’s cap and holding a sketch book and a pencil or pen in his hands.  Artie, who studied with Reginald Marsh at the League, had recently retired from his work as a comic book artist.   His own work had a somewhat comical slant to it, as well.  He tended to sketch or paint intricate, multi-figured scenes of a surreal nature.  One piece that he was working on for a long time showed a populous nudist colony being buzzed by a low-flying, banner-streaming, single-engine airplane.  The drawing was excellent and it was fun to explore all the action going on within the sketch, accompanied by Artie’s witty “balloon” text.

As he was color-blind, I think he avoided working from live models in his later years.  But he enjoyed viewing the work of other painters, often stopping by the Saturday members’ painting class to take a look at how I and my friends were doing.  He loved to tell stories from his student days.  One I like to retell involved Morris Kantor, a Russian-born painter who taught at the League in the 1940s and 50s.  It seems one of his students, a woman of means, was working on a painting with unusual zeal.  As Kantor walked over, she began babbling enthusiastically about her very original idea, saying it was inspired by a wonderful dream she had the night before.  Kantor took a good look at the painting and said, “It don’t verk!”  And that was that.  In years past, crusty old painting teachers did not mince words if the student work was truly worth nothing, unlike the gentler approach favored by today’s more youthful cadre of instructors.

Artie, a bachelor, had enough money to live reasonably well in retirement, it seems.  And to the best of my knowledge, he made absolutely no effort to market his own accomplished paintings and sketches in his later years.  But he continued to make art until his unexpected death in 1987 at the early age of 68.

Artie's good friend Phil Alfieri, whom I wrote about in a previous blog entry, told me later that when Artie's family came up from Florida to attend to his affairs, everything was thrown into a dumpster on the street outside his studio.  Phil told me that shortly after the disposal, a neighbor was seen rummaging through the dumpster, salvaging a lot of Artie’s paintings and drawings.  The next thing you know, some of Artie's work was being put up for auction.  Ask/ART, a subscription website that tracks auction records for artists, states that 17 paintings in all were put up for auction.  I have no further information about this affair.  All the people who knew Artie well are probably gone by now.  And I’m not about to pay Ask/ART for the privilege of delving deeper into their scant auction records and zero biographical information on Artie,  who they confidently say was “known for: genre, figure-dance-nude, surreal.”

I never saw any of Artie’s finished works, but I knew he could draw as well as anybody, inspired by his teacher, Marsh, a famous American artist celebrated for his figurative line work.  And I learned in researching this tale that Artie was an excellent painter as well.  He was a pretty private guy and apparently just enjoyed making art without all the hassle of the New York gallery scene.

Arthur Albert, "Sin," Dimensions and Media Unknown

Arthur Albert, “Gallery of Faces,” Pastel, ink and pencil on paper. Back of sheet inscribed in pencil Arthur Albert ,  5 1/8 x 10 ¾”.

I could only find two images of his work on the public Internet.  One of them, titled “Gallery of Faces,” was listed in Sotheby’s auction archives as part of Lot 999, “Arcade Furniture and Decorative Works of Art: Including a Fine Collection of Fine Canes and Chess Sets from a Gentleman of Title.”  I’m guessing that this "Gentleman of Title” was not the person who allegedly did the dumpster diving to salvage Artie’s work. Estimated at $600 to $900, the work sold for $1,200 at auction on June 16, 2004.

Ask/ART tells me that the highest price for one of Artie’s works was recorded on June 1, 1989, two years after his death.  I don’t know the amount, but you could find out for yourself if you pay them their “economy” artist rate of $16.50 a month.  And you could then see six other images of his work on their website.   

Arthur Albert, “Artie” to his friends and acquaintances, isn’t one of those artists who become famous after their death, but at least he got his name listed in Sotheby’s auction records.   That is a fact worth noting for those of us on the waiting list for a dumpster.

Zuloaga Paints Patterns

Ignacio Zuloaga, Self-Portrait, 1942

Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta (1870-1945) was an exceptional painter whose solid, largely earth-toned figure and genre paintings served for many Spanish critics and devotees as a kind of sober antidote to the sun-filled brilliance of the work of his contemporary, the great Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923).  Both were drawn to depicting scenes from the culture and folklore of their native land, but with very different means to that end.  Arguments raged over which artist captured the true soul of Spain in his work, the Valencian Sorolla or the Basque Zuloaga.  Sorolla employed his impressionistic, lightning-fast bravura brushwork mainly in the great outdoors to depict Spain as a land of sunny days and happy people.  Zuloaga’s Spain was a darker, more introspective place.

Portrait of Maurice Barres on Toledo Background, 1913

Gregorio in Sepulveda, 1908

Zuloaga was primarily a studio painter in the tradition of the Old Masters he revered and often referenced in his work, particularly Velasquez, Goya and El Greco.  His 1913 portrait of the French writer and nationalist politician Maurice Barres, author of “El Greco, or the Secret of Toledo,” pays homage to El Greco’s iconic view of that city painted some 300 years earlier. Many of Zuloaga’s paintings have a similar tonality.  His superb handling of the earth colors marvelously captures their sincere, natural beauty.  I have long felt that the earth colors have a spiritual quality to them.   No other pigments can match them for depicting human flesh.  We are of the earth and therefore the earth pigments are of us.

One of the things that fascinate me about Zuloaga’s paintings is his handling of the complicated fabric patterns he often used decoratively in his figure work, which has been characterized by many reviewers as “theatrical” in nature, and that’s a pretty good description. 

He didn’t slavishly copy these textile designs, as seems to be the practice of most of today’s photographic realists.  It’s a mystery to me how he was able to paint intricate patterns so boldly, precisely and convincingly from life without apparent effort.  Did he do a careful preparatory drawing of the exact shapes with a mannequin in place?  Did he alter the shapes to suit the composition?  Did he just invent some of the patterns?  How long did he work on those textile designs?  There is a similar boldness and solidity to his figures, as well, so his approach to painting these textile patterns seems entirely appropriate. 

In a 1916 book for a touring exhibition in America of Zuloaga’s paintings, the author, his friend Rita de Acosta Lydig, a beautiful American socialite who was famously painted by Sargent, Boldini, and Zuloaga himself, gives some indication that these patterns were primarily aesthetic creations in keeping with the painter’s “love of arabesque, of formal distribution and balance.”  She says Zuloaga made no preliminary sketches and used only written notes to suggest future compositions, which he undertook only after long deliberation and not until the spirit moved him.  He began his work with a bold charcoal drawing of the main outlines of the subject on a canvas toned a light gray.  From then on he painted without hesitation, employing a limited color palette to depict his subjects with firm contours in a manner she described as “sculptural.”

Zuloaga told her during one of their many conversations that he abhorred “with all my being mere slavish fidelity to fact -- the stupid and servile expedient of those who are content simply to copy nature.  I hold that the painter is entitled to arrange, compose, magnify, and exalt those elements that go to make up a given scene.   How is it possible for anyone still to believe that we should prostrate ourselves before actuality, especially today when we have at our disposal the camera, the cinematograph and color photography…The longer I live the more I detest those trivial, snapshot effects without a trace of individuality, of strangeness, or imaginative force.”

Zuloaga’s attitude, expressed so long ago, was perhaps influenced by the presumed but unproven use of the camera by his rival Sorolla.   It’s too bad he isn’t around to give this lecture today, broadcast live in HD in movie theaters in every city, to a stadium full of today’s photographic realists, who are bent on capturing every pore on the surface of human skin almost as well as any digital camera can.  But I guess it would just be a hopeless cause.

Whether Zuloaga invented his fabric patterns out of “whole cloth,” or altered the actual patterns significantly to suit the rhythmic composition of his paintings, this integrated, decorative work is truly amazing.  It seems to have been accomplished effortlessly in the course of his painting, and not as the result of some masochistic ritual.

I’m enormously impressed, regrettably, by painters who have the stamina and brush control necessary to paint fabric from life in great detail -- folds, patterns, tapestries, oriental rugs, intricate lace and such.  I get frustrated very easily when painting such things with my direct painting method and give up well short of paying proper homage to the designer or maker of the fabric.  I also don’t have the patience for carefully copying lettering on labels, newspaper headlines, and the like.  In short, putting in precise detail of any kind is damned hard work!

I remember that the late Ray Goodbred, one of my teachers at the Art Students League, used to advise us to paint just a few details near the center of interest and loosely suggest the rest.  I’m sure he would have gotten an argument from Daniel Greene, his classmate under the tutelage of Robert Brackman, who seems to enjoy painting every tile on a subway wall.  Flower painters also used to advise doing just a few of the important blooms in a bouquet and suggesting the rest.  There are a couple of Realist painters today who have built successful careers around this selective approach.  Scores of their students closely replicate their visually appealing, idiosyncratic techniques in lockstep and do quite well themselves in the art marketplace.

But for those who paint directly from nature without a special flair, suggesting detail is not good enough for the majority of today’s art collectors, who are in love with photographic rendering.  A perfect example of what many buyers of contemporary Realist art want is what they get from William Acheff, a southwestern painter of Indian paraphernalia.  His Native Indian potteries are portrayed to perfection.  And he puts highlights on every last one of those tiny beads in a beaded Indian moccasin.  Phew!  He does extremely well.  So do many other studio painters who focus on flatly rendering, in a photographic manner, all surface details of old kitchen items, plastic toys and anything else they have lying around the house.

There is a world of difference, though, between today’s painters of infinite detail and the Old Masters who painted in a similar vein.  The old painters established a solid, volumetric foundation first, in an atmospheric setting, and only then painted their incredible details to a fare-thee-well.  They managed somehow to keep those details subordinate to the beauty of the picture as a whole, only revealing them in all their glory upon close inspection.   I’m thinking at once of the linen collar ruffs often seen in Dutch 17^th Century portraits and the delicately embroidered dresses in French and Italian women’s portraits of the 18^th Century.

Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt,1628,Wallace Collection

Joseph Siffred Duplessis,  “Madame de Saint-Maurice,” 1776,

 Metropolitan Museum of Art

These painters had such fantastic brush handling skills that it may have been possible for them to freely interpret intricate textile designs as Zuloaga seems to have done, but in a much more subtle manner.  Who really knows?  Some of it looks so authentic that I guess they just turned the TV off and kept on trucking until they got all the fabric embellishments exactly right, as we attempt to do today.

It is really remarkable how the Old Masters, using finely pointed brushes loaded with fluid, full-bodied paint, made flawless calligraphic strokes to place the minutest details in low relief on the surface of the canvas.  Forever after, painters have been searching for an oil painting medium to match these “secrets of the Old Masters.”  The jury is still out on maroger and all the other “miracle” mediums introduced over the years.  But I believe that the remarkable effects obtained by these earlier painters were primarily due to their extraordinary paint handling skills acquired through long apprenticeships, which they entered into at a very early age.  This training enabled them to gain complete control of their materials, which included fluid, hand-ground paints and unremarkable, quick-drying oils.  We are just guessing when we try to modify commercial tubed paints in hopes of achieving similar effects.

You might see an incredible feat of lace painting by a painter today, but it literally shouts to the viewer, “Look at all my fine holes.  Didn’t the painter work hard to put them all in!”   Today it’s all about slavishly copying each little detail purely for photographic effect.  The resulting work looks flat as a pancake and lacks any discernible pictorial sentiment.  Say goodnight, Zuloaga.