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| Peder Mork Monsted (1859-1941) |
I don’t remember where or when I first came across the
observation that “painting is not a spectator sport,” but it doesn’t
matter. I agree with it completely. It’s so sad and annoying that painters are
often forced to paint what they want to paint under the watchful eye of crowds
of tourists heavily armed with image-capturing gadgets of all description. You can’t do good work with spectators
around. The act of painting is a sacred undertaking
between you and your subject, be it a still life, a landscape or a human
being. Total concentration is required.
When I was learning about Edward Cucuel and Leo Putz and
their idyllic summers spent together painting pictures of young women clothed
and nude in a secluded Bavarian forest in the early part of the 20th
Century, I couldn’t help feeling extremely envious of their good fortune. What a contrast that was to my own
experience of painting young women in Central Park with
four of my good painting buddies over the course of seven summers, which I
wrote about in an earlier post. Of
course we had to pose our models with their clothes on.
Our easel setups arrayed before our attractive models
perched on a rock in a touristy section of the park made a very picturesque
mise en scene for picture taking, I must admit.
We were obliged to choose a location that was accessible by public transportation
and had bathrooms nearby. In our case,
the Boathouse Restaurant bathrooms were just two minutes away. We thought of painting in more rustic,
secluded areas of the park, but those are quite a hike from the bus and subway
lines and there are no nearby bathrooms.
I’m sure Putz and Cucuel had an easier time of it with their secluded
lakeshore and woods just a short walk from the ramshackle Bavarian
Castle that was their command
central.
I can’t imagine how many photos and videos exist somewhere
in never-never land showing us old-timers hard at work painting our attractive
young models. Sometimes tourists would
ask if they could take pictures, but usually they just fired away. One man hung around for half an hour shooting
the scene with his video camera. Our
models were non-professionals for the most part and didn’t seem to mind being
photographed. One of our models, an
ecdysiast by night, was pretty outraged initially, but she realized that it was
part of the deal of posing outdoors in Central Park. We joked about putting down a hat for
donations, but we never did that. I hear
there is one woman painting in Central Park this summer who
has a big sign next to her easel alerting onlookers that donations are required
if pictures are taken.
Most of the comments we received from onlookers during our
painting sessions were postponed until the rest breaks. But I used to get annoyed anyway. Like the time I was doing a pretty good job
on my painting when a guy walked up to one of the other painters and said,
“Yours is the best painting.” That put
me in a foul mood for a few minutes, at least.
Another time, some bimbo was hitting on the painter among us who paints
like an Expressionist, while the rest of us paint realistically. She just loved his work and wanted to buy it
and was just getting over some heartbreak or other and on and on. It was all talk, as it turned out, and good
for a laugh with him later.
One of my favorite models was a wonderful guitarist and singer
who had been a teenage celebrity in Israel.
She was posing lying on a rock languidly one day near the Boat
Lake when a young guy in a small group of
tourists recognized her and shouted out, “Hey Y…” We carried on with our painting and she carried
on with her modeling after amiably acknowledging the recognition. That was actually a lot of fun to observe.
I don’t even like painting a model with other painters in an
open painting class that I attend regularly, but I’m forced to do that because
I can’t afford to hire models privately.
Who wants other artists nosing around your work while you are in the
throes of creation? A dozen other
artists may be painting the same model, but I’m going one-on-one with the model
in an intense visual dialogue and can’t be bothered with such
interruptions. Even premature
compliments can interfere with the work in progress by setting you up to fail
at the end. It’s my feeling that such
unsolicited comments might be done on purpose by certain fellow artists to
unsettle me. Paranoid much?
Of course painters who teach have to demonstrate their wares
before spectators. But that is just for
show normally and no serious painting is ever created during such demonstrations,
although some artists do find some sucker among the rapt attendees eager to buy
their demo painting. One young painter
of means coughed up a thousand dollars for a demo painting by a well-known
contemporary painter. By the same token,
I know an attractive woman artist who posed for a demo and begged the famous
portrait painter to give her the painting, which he eventually did, whereupon
she took it home and destroyed it because she hated the likeness the artist had
created.
In the old days, some painters wouldn’t let their portrait clients see their work in progress, keeping
it under a drape until it was finished.
One painter I knew kept a newly finished painting under a velvet drape
for an unveiling at a reception he held in his studio when he was getting his
career started. This painter was using the
maroger medium and when he lifted the veil he found the surface of the painting
was now pockmarked with velvet fuzz.
There’s no business like the show business.
