Category Archives: painting

Hero Worship is Passé

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Falcon Hunting in Algeria, Fromentin

Eugene Fromentin‘s The Old Masters of Belgium and Holland sounds more like a textbook than memoirs of an artist’s 1875 trip to Holland to see Dutch paintings, which is why I borrowed it from the library. I quickly discovered my mistake. It might sound charming, but this book is actually full of long-winded, vague descriptions and similarly long, vague rhapsodies over the genius of Rubens and Rembrandt. (With some sleights to the new Impressionist school in France.)

Fair enough, you might say. Rubens and Rembrandt are generally thought to be great and important painters. But when I say rhapsodies I mean full-blown, adulatory praises ala:

that morose and witty dreamer, who without living apart had no relation with any of them; who seemed to be painting his epoch, his country, his friends and himself, but who at bottom painted only one of the unknown recesses of the human soul. I speak, as you must know, of Rembrandt.

[Rubens] fills the last division of the gallery, and there sheds abroad the restrained brilliancy, and that soft and powerful radiance which are the grace of his genius. There is no pedantry, no affectation of vain grandeur or of offensive pride, but he is naturally imposing.

Hero worship of this sort if dead. In every artistic field, we practice new forms of criticism that analyze structure or context or socio-political aims. Anything but pure, old fashioned worship. We use more naunced words that genius, and we certainly don’t assume the great art stems from souls of great moral worth, as Fromentin does. He sees valour and searching wit and genorosity of spirit in the lines of Rembrandt’s drawings. I see lines–and maybe it is my loss.

Arabs, Fromentin
Fromentin was no great critic, not like Matthew Arnold or Baudelaire who practised and preached. But when it the last time you read a review that put the artist on a pedestal? We treat artists as cultural specimens to be dissected. The only critic not afraid of the term genius is annoying Harold Bloom, and I suspect that’s only because he wants to be able to include himself in his self-defined pantheon. I wouldn’t mind hearing a little simple admiration. I don’t mind the damming reviews, as they tend be better written and more intersting. Yet with all the snark floating about, earnestness can seem almost too exposed, too simple.

Maybe more appreciation would be appropriate. That is what moves us to write about and talk about these things in the first place.

Francis Bacon at the Met

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Painting
Francis Bacon, the British painter (not Renaissance thinker Sir Francis Bacon), has always stuck out like a sore thumb in the history of painting. A sore gangrened thumb at that. When everyone else was painting abstractly, he remained resolutely figurative. Where people went to art school, he taught himself by going to museums. And when most people shy away from the sheer horror and grotesqueness of his jailed male figures surrounded by meat, he delved into it.
Triptych, 1974-77

The artist broke a record for contemporary art sales when a triptych of his sold for $86 million dollars last year, and he was the subject of two retrospectives at the Tate during his lifetime, and another last year. (He died in 1992.) Now the retrospective is moving to the Met (of all places). It opens tomorrow–and I look forward to seeing it. Jerry Saltz wrote an excellent article on Bacon in this week’s New York Magazine because of the new exhibition, asking the question “Was Francis Bacon really the greatest painter of the twentieth century, or just a fascinating mess?” “Greatest painter of the twentieth century” is quite a title, and not one I’m sure I’d grant Bacon, although he was a good painter who created resonant, interesting works of great color. (If you want to see what a fascinating mess he was, Saltz touches on his life history.)

Figure with Meat

Bacon is a tough artist to understand: His paintings create such a visceral reaction in the viewer that I think it can be difficult to look beyond the subject matter. Margaret Thatcher famously described him as “that man who paints those dreadful pictures.” People commonly assume that such repetitive grotesque angst can’t be real, that he’s hamming it up. (Excuse the pun–and just be glad I haven’t tried my cleverness on his last name yet.) Saltz feels it becomes gimmicky, and so did quite a few people I was talking to the past Sunday. Yet the artist is at his best with these bruised mutants encased in flat rooms of color.

So what do you think, a yay or a nay for Bacon?

See Two Coats of Paint for more information on the exhibition itself.

Raw Canvas

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It’s rare, even unheard of, that I offer you business advice. If you have any sense of this blog at all, you know my thoughts do not that way tend. However, I do follow a super fun and interesting trend-spotting site, Springwise, and I want to share a trend that I wish would spread to NYC:

Hoping to unleash everyone’s inner artist, Vancouver-based Raw Canvas is a creative hybrid: bustling café and full-service art studio.

Besides offering the usual café fare—organic coffee and tea, snacks, comfy couches and wifi, as well as wine, beer and tapas at night—Raw Canvas encourages customers to pick up painting. They can drop in at any time, buy a canvas and just get started in the open studio space that’s connected to the café. Raw Canvas provides paints, brushes and all other supplies, and staff members and resident artists are on hand to offer encouragement and tips.

Inspired by popular art jams in Hong Kong, Raw Canvas aims to provide a low-threshold venue where people can come in for a few hours and explore their artistic impulses without committing time or money to a series of classes. With, of course, the added pleasure of a latte or glass of wine. Canvas pricing varies by size, ranging from CDN 40 to CDN 80. If you’re a café owner looking to add a new source of revenue to your business, be inspired and get creative!

Now I don’t think it’s just me: the appeal of going to a cafe, maybe having a glass of wine with a friend, and then doing increasingly goofy portraits of said friend is universal. In fact, I might start throwing art parties as the weather in New York gets warmer and we can paint en plein air.

Anybody up for a painting party?