I spent a month in the spring of 1979 in the 2nd floor studio of the revered anatomy instructor Robert Beverly Hale (1901-1985) at The Art Students League, often dozing off in the growing warmth of the afternoon as he pointed out the bones and muscles of the human body on large anatomical charts. After the lectures he let us do a little drawing from the model. He offered some individual guidance to his most devoted students. I was not one of them.
In addition to teaching at the League, Hale was the first curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a position he held since the department was founded in 1948 until his retirement in 1966.
When Hale retired from the League in 1982 after some 40 years of teaching, two of his top students immediately took his place, basing their instruction on his lectures. Hale taught drawing and “Artistic Anatomy,” the title of an essential book on the subject written by the French anatomist, physiologist and artist Dr. Paul Richer (1849-1933), who was professor of artistic anatomy at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Richer’s book was published in 1890. Hale translated and edited the highly regarded English language version, which was first published in 1971.
While the study of anatomy never appealed to me, I did enjoy perusing this book when I was younger and full of energy for exploring everything related to drawing and painting. And I can tell you that Richer’s simplified drawing of the ear made the construction of this convoluted appendage immediately clear to me for the first time. Many of us learn to paint the eyes, nose and mouth acceptably, but only the best figure and portrait painters can do a good job when drawing and painting the human ear from life.
Hale’s lectures were videotaped at the League in grainy black and white in 1976, apparently with no thought other than to provide a low-budget historical record of them, which his many devoted students felt contributed immensely to their development as artists. All ten lectures are now available as a DVD set for a mere $799 from someone very close to the scene who snared the copyright on the tapes in 1997. At that price, the copyright holder, Jo-An Pictures Ltd, has apparently decided to market the set of lectures primarily to educational institutions, where students and others can view them at no cost. But judging from comments on the Internet, the exorbitant price for the full DVD set, over 13 hours of viewing, has angered many former students and admirers of Hale. They believe the lectures should be available at low cost to all interested students and artists, in the same spirit as they were initially transcribed. I’m curious as to how this power grab came about, but not curious enough to do any further research into the matter. Some bits of the lectures are available free on various Internet websites, but Jo-An Pictures Ltd. has established strict guidelines with regard to duplication and public performance rights. So thereby hangs a minor tale in the irritable bowels of art history.
Hale’s lectures were delivered with the elegant patrician
authority to be expected from this descendant of a prominent New England
family, whose grandfather was Edward Everett Hale, author of “The Man Without a
Country.” I just wasn’t that interested
in the subject. I tended to accept the judgment
of Frank Mason, who taught painting along the lines of Rubens at the League and
had a large and enthusiastic following himself.
Musing one day from his more rarefied perch in the big north light
studio on the 4th Floor, Mason said, “There’s a man teaching on the
second floor who knows the name of every bone and muscle in the body, but he
can’t paint them.” Those of us who paint
directly from nature feel that if you do a lot of life drawing from the model,
you will be able to paint and draw the figure well enough without the kind of
thorough anatomical study Hale was preaching.
On the other hand, artists who create drawings and paintings
of the human figure entirely from memory, or apply anatomical features in an
obvious, decisive way when drawing from the live model, have a much different
attitude about Hale’s instruction. When
I’m in an open sketch class at the League and voice my disgust with the ugly
cast shadows on the model caused by careless lighting, someone sitting next to
me always proposes that I make up my own pattern of light and shade, as Hale
used to advise. Easier said than done. Often the figures these anatomy loving artists
produce, when drawing from memory or from life, with all the exaggerated muscles
in approximately the right place, don’t look quite human, but that doesn’t seem
to bother them one bit. One of Hale’s most
devoted students used to draw from the model in charcoal or conte crayons with
one hand while holding an open book of Old Master drawings in the other to help
him with his “Rubenesque” drawings.
There are lots of bones and muscles in the human body, and
it can drive you a little crazy if you really dig into the subject of anatomy. Especially unnerving to me are artists who feel
the need to visit morgues and observe dissections in medical schools to improve
their knowledge of anatomy.
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|
Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819
Oil
on Canvas, 193.3 in. by 282.3 in.
|
Gericault
visited morgues and hospitals to study the flesh tones of the dead and dying in
preparation for his greatest painting, “The Raft of the Medusa,” which shows his
friend Delacroix posing as the corpse lying face down, one arm outstretched, in
the center foreground of the huge composition.
Gericault even reclaimed for further study severed limbs and one severed
head, which were left to decay in his studio.
Gericault died in 1824 at the age of 32 of chronic tubercular infection
in Paris after a long period of
suffering. I don’t suppose rotting body
parts lying around in the studio had anything to do with his suffering and untimely
death.
During the month that I was attending Hale’s class, there
was a tall, handsome young man who stayed after class every day to collar Hale regarding
some specific muscle attachment or other.
He was the picture of youthful, scholarly enthusiasm as he pressed Hale
for answers to his questions. Not long
after I left Hale’s class, this young man started to hang around the front of
the League building looking increasingly disheveled and out of sorts. Pretty soon he was becoming a public
nuisance. One summer morning I was
painting in Central Park when he came rushing out of the bushes, all wild hair
and flashing eyes, bare to the waist, his tattered trousers nearly falling off,
and shouted in my face, “I know you!”
Naturally, I was taken aback, and quite frightened, actually. But luckily that outburst was the climax of
our encounter. I managed to say a docile
“hello” or something, and he wandered off into the bushes from whence he had
come. By the way, that incident took
place when Central Park was far less manicured and
fenced off than it is today and far more agreeable for painters. The young man’s social skills continued to
deteriorate. He surfaced occasionally in
either a normal or a deranged state, before eventually disappearing from the
scene entirely. The young man was very
likeable and I always hoped that he would get some treatment to rid him of
whatever demons were afflicting him. I
don’t really believe the cause of his anguish was taking the study of anatomy
too seriously. But you never know.
When artists become too preoccupied with the study of any of
the components of representational painting they aren’t going to hit many home
runs on canvas, in my opinion. I often
think of Chardin’s remark to a fellow painter who was going on and on about the
colors he was using. After awhile,
Chardin became annoyed and said, “Yes, yes, we use colors, but we paint with
feeling.” His words have sustained me
through the years. When I read about artists
working for weeks on a painting as they render the smallest details to photographic
perfection, I often wonder what emotional state they are in during the
process. I would guess they can’t let their
emotions get the better of them as they plod along to the finish line.
Can you paint a really great picture without experiencing alternating
waves of euphoria and despair during its creation? I don’t believe so. We have read quite a lot about the emotional
state of painters from days gone by, but very little about their working
methods. It’s just the reverse
today. Painters are constantly publicizing
their latest creations with blow-by-blow accounts every step of the way, mit still
images und video. But we hear very
little about the interesting stuff -- their psychological makeup when they were
in the passionate throes of artistic creation.
That moment when they were ready to slit their wrists. Degas once said, “There is a kind of success
that is indistinguishable from panic.” All
we hear from the painter today is he used so and so’s high-end brushes and oil
colors and painting supports to paint his photographic pastiches in the
presumed exact same technical manner as one of the Old Masters, mit many glazes
und many scumbles. Maybe passion has
left the building.
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| Joseph Henry Sharp, The Marigolds, Oil on Canvas, c. 1940, 25" x 30" |
One of the many charming songs the brilliant American songwriter
Frank Loesser wrote for the 1952 movie “Hans Christian Andersen” perfectly
describes a significant element missing in the paintings of today’s
photographic renderers:
Measuring the marigolds
Seems to me you'd stop and see
How beautiful they are
