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| Veronika, ca. 1988, Oil on Linen, 16 by 14 in., Collection of the Artist |
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| My Home Studio en Deshabille |
Many artists fall in love with portraiture when they are
studying traditional painting methods at the art academies. But when their school days are behind them,
they quickly learn how difficult it is to make a living painting portraits, unless
they are ready, willing and able to copy photographs of CEO’s, a popular “how-to”
subject curiously omitted from Robert Henri’s inspirational bible, “The Art
Spirit.”
I have often wished I could eke out a living by painting
head and shoulders portraits from life on a regular basis for a couple of
hundred bucks apiece. Alas, for my sake
only, I’m no clever entrepreneur, and dreaming about this was as far as I ever
got. Along with a plethora of character
faults I’m saddled with, I blame my ill-suited home studio for not realizing this
dream.
You really need a grand space to paint portraits on a regular basis, and the
wealth of an Arabian sheik to acquire that space in Manhattan. Your regal sitters should not have to walk
through slipshod living quarters to get to a cramped, cluttered home studio
that used to be a bedroom in a middle-class, pre-war New York City apartment,
and which most certainly was not designed for creating portraits in the grand
manner.
One of the problems with painting portraits by natural light
in my home studio is that I have to paint very close to the two adjacent,
average-size windows in the room to get enough light on my sitters and my
canvas. The light is further reduced
because I block those windows with shades about three-quarters of the way up to
get at least a semblance of the 45-degree angle of light that we traditional
painters prefer. One of my dealers was amazed
that I could paint with so little light.
Well, the reduced, concentrated natural light is acceptable for painting
still lifes, but inadequate for portraiture.
In essence, my painting area
isn’t big enough and the light isn’t strong enough to allow me to explore a
variety of poses to get the most flattering light effect on my sitters. The two windows are in the middle of the short
wall of the 11 by 20 foot room. That’s
another major problem. I’m not able to back
up far enough alongside that short wall to compare the sitter and my painting on
the same plane and in the same atmosphere.
With necessary storage at both ends of the short wall, it’s really only
about 7 feet of usable space for the model stand and my easel.
There are many accounts of the great portrait painters like
Sargent and Philip de Laszlo getting a lot of exercise walking long distances
back and forth as they painted. Both men
set their canvases beside their sitters.
Describing the visual phenomena necessitating all this physical activity
is not an easy task. “I must go fairly
far off to see the general effect of my subjects as a whole in all that
rightness of relation upon which I insist so much,” de Laszlo said in “Painting
a Portrait,” one of a series of little
“how-to” books published in the 1930s by The Studio Publications of London and
New York. “When I stand back I am
recording mentally what I am going to put on my canvas when I walk up to
it.” Not many portrait painters are able
to work that way today, but we can still judge the proper values and general
effect much better at a distance than we can up close.
I know that many painters today like to work close to their sitters
at all stages of the painting to get that photographic detail they can’t live
without. But in addition to needing room
to back up, I need a few feet of psychological distance from the sitter to be
comfortable while I paint and talk to the people I paint; that is, on the few
occasions when I do paint them in my home studio. I’ve never had much demand for my portrait
work. Must I add, “With good reason?”
I probably shouldn’t complain, however, even though I’m good
at it and it’s what some friends claim I do best. I’ve heard about far worse situations from quite
a few apartment dwellers who are also serious painters. An easel set up temporarily in the corner of
a living room is often the only option, given the outrageously high rents for tiny
studio spaces in New York City. Some urban artists just continue to paint in
the art schools because it’s impossible for them to paint at home.
My friend Albert Herr (1923-2008), an excellent painter who had
been one of the top courtroom sketch artists for television news programs for
20 years, initially had a similar home studio setup, with the daylight coming
from large terrace windows on the short wall of a very long room. Al painted a lot of portraits of paid models
in his home studio, as well as many portraits of an Eastern European man who
just loved getting his portrait painted by Al.
That man wasn’t wealthy, as far as we could tell, but he bought some of
Al’s paintings of the models and paid Al $500 each time he sat for the dozen or
more portraits Al painted of him. The
man got into trouble with his landlord, I was told, because he was a first-class
hoarder. His apartment was apparently piled
to the rafters with his “collectibles” -- and Al’s paintings. Al passed away and I never heard the outcome
of his patron’s apartment problem. I
always wondered why the man wanted so many portraits of himself and why Al kept
painting them, even though he was getting paid each time. I’m sure the money came in handy. But “no mas” is my usual reaction after
painting the same face just a couple of times.
The point of introducing Al into my musings is that he gave
up painting by natural light in his home studio at the suggestion of his friend
Hananiah Harari (1912-2000), a well-known painter and popular teacher. I once watched Harari paint a demonstration
portrait at the Art Students League and was very impressed by how casually he
went about capturing an excellent likeness of the model with a simple palette
and a direct painting method, with
absolutely no gimmicks or drama involved.
Harari’s unusual name, by the way, was invented by his step-father, who
thought it would be better suited for an “important artist” than his birth
name, Richard Falk Goldman, according to a Wikipedia account that says a citation
is needed for this tidbit.
Harari told
Al to forego painting by natural light and turn his setup around to paint by
artificial light so he could back up more.
Al needed a lot of light to paint by in his later years, so he mounted
eight of those long daylight fluorescent tubes vertically on a board, which he attached
high up on a stand with wheels to easily adjust the angle of light.
I’ve also painted portraits under artificial light a few
times in my home studio, using the original three-light fixture on the ceiling in
the center of the room to light both the model and my canvas, and it worked out
just fine, in fact far better than when I have tried to devise some other
artificial light setup. With the
sitter’s back to the darkened windows on the short wall, there is plenty of space
behind me to back up to see what I’m doing.
I don’t know why I didn’t just give up painting people by natural light like
Al did and use this overhead lighting all the time. I guess it’s because of that plethora of
character faults of mine that I alluded to above.
I painted Veronika under this light more than 20 years ago
in two evening sessions of about two hours each, if I remember correctly. What a wonderful and beautiful creature she
was. And she had such a perfect
complexion. I asked her to wear her
leather jacket, which she accessorized with that lovely floral scarf tied
neatly around her swan-like neck. She
was an excellent model and knew how to put together a very paintable ensemble. Veronika was from Germany
and an artist herself. She had a husband
living somewhere in Spain. Or was he an ex-husband? I don’t remember. We chatted amiably while I painted. I can’t remember what we talked about so long
ago, but I remember how much fun it was to paint her and how nice it was to
receive her flattering comment about the finished product.
I found Veronika when she was modeling in the late 1980s at
Joe Catuccio's beloved basement drawing center on Greene
Street in Soho, which was
called “The Project of Living Artists.” The
setting was an immense live/work space that never received the light of day. Joe slept behind a screen in a back corner and
created his mural-size, boldly expressionist paintings in the huge workspace,
where the drawing sessions were held evenings and weekends for 26 years, from
1971 to 1997. The place was reeking with
bohemian-artist atmosphere, not to mention sometimes as many as 12 cats roaming
around foraging for food in the artists’ belongings they had placed on the
floor beside their chairs while they were drawing the models. Everybody in New York
who was into life drawing back then probably has fond memories of Joe’s place,
although I have met some spoilsports who said they couldn’t draw there because
of the cats.
I drew at the “Project” on Saturdays and some evenings every
summer during the 1980s, a period when my usual drawing venue, the Art Students
League, did not have open classes for members on weekends. I loved drawing at Joe’s place. I loved the casual, carefree, counter-culture
tone that Joe had established through his art, his lifestyle, and his burly,
soft-spoken presence. He was always
broke, but he scraped by somehow, doing odd jobs, like working for a moving
company when necessary. I contributed a
little extra to the cause by always purchasing a cup of his fairly decent percolator
coffee and a stale piece of coffeecake served up from his little kitchenette
during the breaks.
The models that posed at Joe’s place often seemed more
interesting to me than the standard art school models I was accustomed to
drawing. Some of the “Project” models posed
for a lark, like one famous woman writer I chatted with briefly, or because
they were penniless at the time, like a female pop icon. Robert Speller, an ex-dancer, booked all the models
for Joe and some of the downtown art schools and independent drawing groups
around the city for many years. When a
model didn’t show up, he would often substitute. Speller played a very important role in
keeping all those drawing venues supplied with models. He was a true professional in a job that is
too often left to disconnected amateurs at the full-time art schools. And he was an excellent model himself.
Joe moved his “Project” drawing center to Williamsburg
in Brooklyn in 1997 when he was finally forced out of
his basement rental space in Soho as a consequence of
the booming real estate market in Manhattan.
The
New York Times wrote an article about Joe and his “Project” in 1994. You can find that article and information about
Joe’s drawing center online. And here is
a link to his artwork: http://www.newyorkartworld.com/gallery/catuccio2.html. The New York Times also wrote about Robert
Speller’s art modeling career a couple of times and you can read those articles
online as well. I think I’ll write a separate
blog post about my friend Al Herr at some point. I never saw Veronika again after she posed so
sweetly for that portrait. I wonder how
she got on with her life and art.
With
the passing years, I’m often awash in hazy, melancholic memories, and don’t
even know how I got on with my own life and art. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a plan.
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| Albert Herr, Courtroom Sketch |
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| Drawings of Robert Speller, late 1980s |
