“The best thing is to draw men and women from the nude and thus fix in the memory by constant exercise the muscles of the torso, back, legs, arms and knees, with bones underneath.” – Giorgio Vasari

“The nude does not simply represent the body, but relates it, by analogy, to all structures that have become part of our imaginative experience.” – Kenneth Clark

“Learning to draw the figure is a crucible, and you’re melted and transfromed when you’re in it, and you leave behind what you used to be.” – Jacob Collins

Some time ago, in an interview with American Painting Video Magazine, Jacob Collins spoke of the ‘crucible’ that is learning to draw the human figure. He spoke as one both obsessed and indebted. So what is it that’s so transformative about drawing humans in the flesh?  ’Self corrective’ by nature (in no other subject are the slightest errors so glaringly evident), drawing the nude is an excellent exercise in form. But it’s not just about gaining technical mastery (although its study would still be worthwhile even if this was the only benefit). Nor is it merely an expression of desire or a celebration of physical beauty. There are other lessons to be learned from taking the nude as a subject in its own right, enduring lessons that simultaneously rely on and go beyond the immediate problems of proportion, structure and balance – as many an impassioned artist has attested to with insight and lucidity, and with not a little of the ‘crucible’s’ searing intensity still attached.

These lessons have much to do with the obvious truth that when we draw any human figure, we draw ourselves – the universal human condition is undeniably stamped on every body, melding as it does the classical ideal with ordinary mortality. And for an artist, what could be more captivating than a subject whose every facet is charged with will and intelligence, heritage and destiny, weakness and strength, life and death, whether it be abstracted to an ideal or transcribed faithfully as the real? There is also the figure’s place in the evolution of  art – its imprint on architecture – its place in the appreciation for classical geometries. But I wonder if there’s more to figure drawing than virtuosity, more than analogy and tradition, and more than simple awe at a living, thinking subject whose physiognomy mirrors our own. Could the act of drawing the figure – in whatever style – endow something of the spark that’s needed to truly energize art in the first place, to lend it focus, refine its purpose…its potential? Are we not made ‘in the image of God’?

I’ve always been in love with drawing the human figure: clothed for as long as I can remember, and unclothed since my first life-drawing class at age sixteen (that’s the model whose relative state of undress I speak of, not my own), so when Jacob Collins spoke of a ‘crucible’ he really only articulated what I already knew, albeit intuitively. But it makes a difference when an ‘ARC living master’ like Jacob says it – looking as he does like someone who just now stepped out of said crucible and still has the little flames in his eyes to prove it.

My immediate response to the APVM interview was to book me a place in a weekly figure drawing session…only to have my best intentions undone by six-year-olds in search of chauffeurs to unfortunately timed ballet classes, husbands required at work all hours, and various other little and big person related obstacles. However, the words never lost their force, and nor has my commitment to return to the business of being an artist. So I’m newly resolved to make Jacob Collins’ (and countless other artist’s) crucible my own this year,  once a week, for two hours.  And if all goes to plan…the way forward will be forged.

With that in mind, I’m starting a new page…literally. The hiatus art blog will now feature a visual diary of my fortnightly figure drawing sessions.  Look out for it, critique it, enjoy it – with any luck none of us will blush.

“I am tired, so very tired of thinking about Lacey Yeager…”

I grew up watching Steve Martin finesse the family comedy in such genre defining moments as Father of the Bride, The Three Amigos, Parenthood…the list goes on. Now, I find, the thespian is a novelist, and his talent for telling a tale surpasses even his ability to garner grammies for banjo playing (it’s sort of offputting for an aspiring novelist to read Martin’s author bio – how can I expect my manuscript to be taken seriously if I can’t even manage a logie for my stand up act?) So when I happened to score an advance copy of Martin’s latest novel – An Object of Beauty – I dove in with much anticipation and mixed expectations. I wasn’t disappointed – this book is a class act. It’s a great example of how the art world can be successfuly represented in a fictional work for a general audience. And I really liked it.

An Object of Beauty is a coming of age story set in the Manhattan art scene in recent decades, when the art market evolved from a brief slump in the early nineties to the profit induced giddiness of the naughties. The novel’s plot actually interweaves with the expansion of the art market bubble, and its climax connects to the bubble’s collapse; it is, if you like, a portrait of the times. Through the eyes of a sometime lover (relegated mercifully to ‘friend’ in the early pages of the story), we follow Lacey Yeager as she pursues her fortunes first as a graduate in the hallowed basements of Sotherby’s, then as a commercial gallery assistant, and finally as an independent player in the game. 

“This was a fresh and clean New York, where you dressed nicely every day and worked in a soaring smoke-free, drugless architectural building filled with busts, bronzes and billionaires. What the parents forgot about were the weekends and evenings when their children left the Cezannes and Matisses and crept underground, traveling back to shared downtown spaces where they did exactly the same things they would have done if they had joined a rock band.”

The protagonist is an intriguing figure, whose mercenary approach to relationships and plain professional grit are not quickly forgotten, even if she is, at times, unfathomable for it. I recently read an article claiming that five percent of the population are sociopaths – that’s one in 25 – and we’re rubbing shoulders everyday with people whose consciences don’t necessarily fire with the same alacrity as we’re accustomed to in ourselves.  While I don’t necessarily put much store by such notions – I actually think any conscience is capable of degrees of enlightenment, regardless of which percentile it belongs to when the lights are out – I like the theory as an explanation for characters like Lacey:

“Lacey made men feel that she was interested only in that special, unique conflation of DNA that was you, and that at any moment she was, just because you were so fascinating, going to sleep with you. She would even take time to let one of your jokes sweep over her, as though she needed a moment to absorb its brilliance, then laugh with her face falling forward and give you a look of quizzical admiration, as if to say, “You are much more complicated and interesting that I ever supposed.”

Sociopaths aren’t necessarily violent criminals – they’re just manipulative. They’re likely to lack empathy, to act ruthlessly, and ultimately be incapable of remorse. Handy for a whole spectrum of villains, and Martin’s main character certainly fits the description. But Lacey’s not a villian. She’s not an anti hero either – she’s sexy, savvy and her lines are witty. Yet at heart, she’s not exactly heroic; her personal agenda takes precedence at every turn, regardless of the risk or harm it brings to her friends and family. So how does a story operate when the main character is so darn shady? What makes the reader want to keep reading about her, to cheer her successes even…to fret over her fate? The answer is this: the author’s voice, chanelled by the narrator, Daniel Franks - an arts writer, and a galant soul easily subsumed. Daniel is a helpless admirer of the charismatic Lacey, and the story is delivered to us through the filter of his awe - judgements are circumspect and forgiving, everything is subtly skewed to reflect the narrator’s weakness for type A art afficionados in skirts. When the story reaches its finale, this relationship of narrator to subject gets more tantalizing yet - though how that happens is of course beyond the scope of a spoiler-free review.

Here is where I like the book the most though, in the way Martin treats wrongdoing, the way he softens it, smudges it, turns it sideways…without erasing it or excusing it. Its clever crafting, the story is well told, and, it must be said, aptly titled. The prose is point perfect, the dialogue snappy – it’s really fun to read. Now that I’ve sampled Martin’s writing, I think I’ll work my way through his backlist, starting with The Alphabet from A to Y, with Bonus Letter Z.

And to close, a pithy quote from Daniel:

“My goal, once I discovered that my artistic aspirations were not accompanied by artistic talent, was to learn to write about art with effortless clarity. This is not as easy as it sounds: whenever I attempted it, I found myself in a convoluted rhetorical tangle from which there was not exit.”

A screenshot of Google Art Project - love the background colour and layout.

Even better, when you find a work you’ve always loved (masterpieces from Correggio, Cezanne, and Rembrandt, to the ceiling of Versailles and even Byzantine icons are represented), but thought you could never take home with you, there’s a link in the bottom right of the screen that enables you to add it to your personal virtual collection. You can take notes, share, even choose to store the work  ‘zoomed in’ (you might want to show a particular detail for curatorial purposes, for instance).

Botticelli's Venus in detail

The site itself is easy to navigate, and there are plenty of handy features, like the option to view a floorplan of the museum whose corner you’ve somehow managed to crawl into irretrievably for instance. In addition to the 1,061 high res images of paintings currently included, each of the 17 museums involved in the project chose one artwork to be photographed in super high ‘gigapixel’ resolution, allowing virtual viewers to see previously invisible details, brushtrokes, even, apparently, the patina of such works as Bruegel’s Harvesters and Botticelli’s Venus. 

...and more detail

Art educators will undoubtedly be serving up tailored Google art tours to their students in the new year’s curriculum, and here in Oz, where our distance from the world’s collections can be felt keenly, particularly by cash-strapped and reclusive artists such as myself, efforts like this are hugely important. Nevermind the unnerving ubiquity of their project to electronically catalogue the visual world, Google gets my morning coffee held high in salute. I spent the wee hours (the hours immediately after my children pulled me out of bed, that is), curating my pick of the paintings on offer – it was as much fun as I’ve had from my swivel chair in a long time.

Through a return to simpler living comes control of desires. In control of desires stillness is attained. In stillness the world is restored.

There may be some small error in my transcription – I must confess I could not keep my eyes from straying from the text, back to Jill’s sumptuous paintings.

Tree at Water's Edge, Jill Kempson

While my lack of resistance would indicate an obvious failure to practice the way of control advised by Lao Tzu, it nevertheless is testament to the desirability of the paintings.  These are no mean offerings – they are a veritable aesthetic oasis. As a painter Jill demonstrates some sadly rare attributes: a close observation of nature, a good control of technique, and an interesting, rewarding absorption in her subject. That such attributes are remarkable in the present age is telling, but to explore here what it tells would detract from the review of her work, so for once I will endeavour to subject my writing to discipline, and explore that wearying nutmeg in another post. Because painters like Jill Kempson are an exception to the present rule, and deserve to be understood and appreciated on their own terms, since it is precisely the ethic by which they themselves operate.

Through a return to simpler living comes control of desires. Insofar as composition is concerned, Jill’s paintings are anything but simple.  They are carefully realised, detailed, and labour intensive paintings.  This is not to say that the resulting paintings are ‘laborious’, or ‘intense’; these idyllic scenes of lakesides and hilltops, dales and cottage gardens, are infused with peace and effortless order. They’re illustrations of a life that might exist away from the rat race, in a simpler time…they are, after all, manifestations of the artist’s own retreat into such environments. But even more than her choice of subject, it is the artist’s simple pursuit of an earnest, unjaded realisation of her capabilities, unswayed by current trends, unsullied by any perceived need for an agenda, which permeates the exhibition, which gives it depth and stillness. The absence of provocation and irony is good for the soul.

Parc de Sceaux, Jill Kempson

As classical, fully realised works, the smaller paintings are particularly effective. My favourites were quite small: the sepia inspired mauve and magnolia coloured works, and two or three exquisite small scenes – Luxembourg (23 x 30) and Pink Forest (23 x 30) among them – their compositions were neatly solved, whilst their depth of tone, and layering of elements combined to render them truly alluring.

Knowing the tendency of some critics to dismiss work that fails to meet the modern prescription for ’important’ art – that is, that it be either provocative, political, or impenetrable, the question might arise, how can an artist paint like this, in the present age? Personally, I don’t see any great leap from the inner life of any of us to the notion of order and balance celebrated by paintings like these.

Luxembourg, Jill Kempson

To be sure the discordant clamour of present day life, with its timetables, its traffic and its technologies, seems far removed from the world Jill portrays. But how limited is it to suggest that only that particular ‘contemporary’ zeitgeist merits attention from present day artists? Why question an art that celebrates instead the idea of inner discipline, of stillness, of ancient aspirations to harmony and balance?

Aren’t these aspirations equally held by us, now? The yearning for stillness, and the hidden dimensions it holds, is surely behind Rothko’s popularity as much as it is behind Vermeer’s or Monet’s. Perhaps the expression of this yearning is even more important now, in as much as it contrasts with our experience of the limits and ultimate insufficiency of this age to meet our ’higher’ desires, to provide a world that does not want for restoration, despite its broadly advertised promises.

On the Sunday I looked in, the gallery was all but empty, so solitude was there to be had in a very literal sense. But there is also a solitude within the works, a sense of focus and exclusion naturally attendant on studies like these.  It’s obvious, looking at such full, sun-sharpened petals and faithfully nuanced blades of green, that a dutiful eye has lingered on every detail, and a receptive spirit has absorbed the garden’s beauty in a world of silence, one imagines – the lively silence of a day in the garden, a silence layered with bird calls and breezes and perhaps the odd distant passing car. The benefit to be had from close encounters like these is distilled and lovingly trasferred to canvas, and as a result the paintings convey the artist’s gratification, the same peace and fulfillment of desire that comes with being in a garden - that has inspired the garden’s comparison with paradise, or to the heart of God.

One room off to the side of the main gallery is almost entirely devoted to great mauve waves of wisteria. Stepping in, the scent of wisteria wafts across the room due to some artfully placed cut arrangements, and combined with the oversized canvases the experience is quite immersive. But the scent is not necessary. Elisabeth specialises in immersion – the sheer scale of every work ensures our attention at the periphery, and that sensation of being startled by the simple miracle of a single leaf is amplified and sustained throughout the exhibition. Her paintings put emphasis on the small, enlarging literally and metaphorically, so that here a budding rose is four times the size of a human head, there a vase could as easily hold people as poppies – and the shift in scale brings elation, as well as the peculiar, if not wondrous sense of being dwarfed in a meeting with something profound. 

Its the sort of trick that will be missed if the paintings are not seen in person – seeing them printed again in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition – while rewarding enough for the expertise to be found in the compositions, and the representational success – is like missing the point. I feel, when I’m standing in front of these paintings, the brushwork opens up, and it seems like I’m seeing a section in detail from a Renaissance, or Pre-Raphaelite painting. But seeing the paintings in person, the point is plain: the detail is the subject. It’s a thought that transfers to several of Elisabeth’s works from other series also featured in the retrospective: the snippets of frames and other paintings in The Last of the Cool Skies…the mirrored abstractions in Mirrored Gul Butterflied and Seen in a Vase…even the humourous cross sections of innards and chests, where bodily organs have been replaced by non-descript vegetable forms and decorative lettuces – an intermingling with the organic substance of plants that takes communion with nature for the material truth of the gardener’s heart. 

But the flowers steal the show, and the scale of Elisabeth’s blooms evoke the unfettered celebration of spring. Its an indulgent, generous response to gifts freely given, and the loosened blossoms snowing, to the delight of my two-year-old daughter, onto the street outside, provide a fitting goodbye.

Of course, with the exception of Thornton’s fellow anthropologists, like most readers, I approach the idea of the ‘Art World’ with bias. Some of us are outsiders, some collectors, some critics, some dealers, some practioners, some of us are even superstar curators. Thornton’s study has something for everyone (and let’s face it, we’re all dying to know what goes on in the camps we’re not privy to). I’m an artist, prematurely retired, precisely because I looked ahead and foresaw a kind of ontological void, or in any case, a battle I was not equal to. I can’t help but observe that this is also the character of the world described by Thornton in Seven Days – a world where art in its various operations is at the mercy of a climate of shifting meanings and values, as construed by a horrific sort of conglomerate machine – Thornton prefers to describe it as a “conflicted cluster of sub-cultures” - quite profoundly alien to the principles our subject might be expected to aspire to. Perhaps these very aspirations for art are precisely the conditions that make the art world we know today possible, even inevitable – the conditions Thornton alludes to in her introduction when, in musing on the quasi-religious nature of contemporary art, she borrows a quote from Francis Bacon describing the function of art after the decline of faith: “…art has now become completely a game by which man distracts himself…” 

If in the process of reviewing Thornton’s book I’ve digressed to personal histories and theories we’ve lost the technology for, it’s only more proof that Seven Days in the Art World is a powerful work, and anything but a dry study. Powerful in its breadth, its ludicity and also in its authority. It’s an authority earned by detachment, even if Thornton confesses in her introduction that “it’s bliss to stand in a room full of good art”, and she later describes her experience of David Altmejd’s installation in the Canadian pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale as a place where she “lost her bearings in a positive sense.”  But there are very few instances of personal opinions intruding on the text, which is not to say therefore that we’re treated to an automaton’s view of the Art World. On the contrary, it’s her own vibrant enquiry, in combination with the ‘colourful’ characters she interviews along the way, which makes for such an engaging read. Thornton tells us the mode of her enquiry is ethnography, a method of anthropology involving “participant observation”. “Any good ethnographer,” she reveals, “has to flirt with ‘going native’, but she can’t forget her original spy-like mission.” 

The research for the book spanned a period of four years, during which time her sociological cool does not preclude her from enjoying an immersion in her subject, complete with personal anecdotes, affinities and judgments. Yet her insights, when they strike through the satisfyingly dense samplings of the various spheres that form the world of art - a mixture of casual encounters, in depth interviews, admirable infiltrations, and eye-opening excursions – are devastating.  For example, reflecting on the ultimate outcome of an evening art auction, Thornton writes: ”Even if the people here tonight were initially lured into the auction room by a love of art, they find themselves participating in a spectacle where the dollar value of the work has virtually slaughtered its other meanings.” Similarly astute, Thornton describes an extended art school crit session: “For a fleeting moment, the crit appears to be a weird rite engineered to socialize artists into suffering,” a thought that she instantly retracts, before relinquishing to her fatigue and lying down on the cold, hard floor, where its comparative comfort prompts the exclamation: “Bliss!” 

Head, 1948, Francis Bacon

This particular chapter, titled ‘The Crit’, is an accurate portrayal of the contemporary experience of an art student, gleaned by Thornton in the space of fifteen intense hours and related with a veracity that rendered it all too vividly reminiscent of my own experiences at art school (which now seems a walk in the park in contrast to the rigorous inanity championed by the CalArts curriculum as witness by Thornton). Aside from its exceptional quality as a document though, it plumbs a frightening truth, thanks to Thornton’s admirable fortitude and tenacious scrutiny. Her audit provides an account of the vertiginous formation demanded of an individual intent on practicing as a visual artist of the ilk required to keep the whole contemporary art apparatus going. The frightening part is how very far from the ground it all is, and how very spurious the epiphanies it pends on. 

The contemporary definition for art is seeded in art schools like CalArts, whose curricula Thornton compares with “supertankers” – unlikely to be easily swayed from their course. If true, this does not bode well for the future of art. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for artists suffering…provided it’s for the right reasons. My diagnosis is this: misplaced religiosity, or art as ascetic practice (an idea explored rather elegantly in this essay by Daniel Siedell). When Thornton quoted Francis Bacon in the comment referenced earlier, she omitted a large chunk that might prove illuminating with regard to the fifteen hour crit. In its entirety, Bacon’s hypothesis, as recorded and filmed in London by the BBC Television, May 1966, is this: 

“As man realizes that he is an accident and his futility… that he is a completely really futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason. I think that even when Velázquez was painting, even when Rembrandt was painting, in a peculiar way they were still, whatever their attitude to life was, they were still slightly conditioned by certain types of religious possibilities, which man now, you could say, has been completely canceled out for him. Now, of course, man can only attempt to make something very, very positive by trying to beguile himself for a time by the way he behaves by prolonging possibly his life by buying a kind of immortality through the doctors. You see, painting has now become, or all art has now become, completely a game by which man distracts himself. What is fascinating actually is that it’s going to become much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to be any good at all.” 

In summary: art as mass casuistry. It’s not too much to expect, is it?

I could theorize on the meaning of it all for oh, fifteen hours (Heaven forbid that anything should be left unsaid). But I will refrain, lest lingerers rethink. Already I stand accused of the very fault ArtForum’s contributing editor Thomas Crow tells Thornton he is most wary of in art writing: “If your material is vivid enough, you don’t need to adopt an ego driven voice where you’re always reflecting on your own formulative experiences or your own complexities of mind.” Oops. Nevertheless, I think the fact that a remembered reprimand from her book has even now pulled me back into line with the ArtForum style guide, is ample evidence that Thornton’s writing is vivid enough. As for the tone of Seven Days, Thornton gets it precisely right. It’s not exactly neutral, but closer to ‘blithely accepting’, an achievement only an anthropologist could achieve in the face of so much blatant absurdity. Says Thornton in her afterward to the 2009 edition: “Overall…cynicism doesn’t appeal to me and disbelieving in contemporary art (as a category) strikes me as either nihilistic or retrograde.” Putting aside its obvious irony, given that contemporary art has become the very theatre of the nihilists (at least in a superficial sense), this remark comes as a relief. A different confession would have tainted the lightness of touch that works so effectively in Seven Days in the Art World, with the sort of agenda driven weightiness exemplified, for instance, in this review. 

Seven Days in the Art World was written before the global financial crisis pinned the art market bubble and reduced the hysteria at its periphery to a slightly more civilized pitch. But Thornton rightly observes that the “structures and dynamics of the larger art world are relatively stable”, and I would agree that the relevance of her study is not reduced in the slightest by shifts in the shape of the market. In fact her exploration of the art market at its peak makes for fascinating reading, with insanely high prices “in lieu of stunts” and an insider’s view of such curious creatures as the ‘hard buy’ and the hedge fund speculator. Thornton is nothing if not thorough. The book consists of an introduction; seven chapters covering ‘The Auction’; ‘The Crit’; ‘The Fair’ (Basel); ‘The Prize’ (The Turner); ‘The Magazine’ (ArtForum); ‘The Studio Visit’ (Murakumi); and ‘The Biennale’ (Venice, 2007); as well as an afterword; an author’s note; bibliography and index. 

No really, you must.

Alas, the process of beginning again is fraught with frustration and obstacle. I cannot find the time. I’m the primary carer of three small children, of the high maintenance variety, and of the general age group that can’t be trusted within fifty square metres of a palette of paint. Even if I do somehow find the time, I must also eke out enough space in our tiny rental house to establish some sort of pseudo studio, and considering I want more than anything to begin with a portrait, I will probably have to move our 400 kg dining table at least a metre from its current position, so as to have an uninterrupted view of the spot in which I am expecting my hyper active five-year-old to stand for a couple of hours every day for the next week or so.

Does this sound unachievable? Hmm. You’re right, I may have to settle for a still life (the dusty dried king protea and collection of pewterware already adorning the middle of said 400 kg dining table). Of course, I’ll have to get outside at some point to size the required canvas, and given that it has been raining solidly for the past month, I figure I’ll get my window of opportunity soon – the odds of a dry day turning up soon are in my favour afterall.

Lets face it, the hiatus continues…just not sure how long I can withstand this torrent of inspiration coursing through my painterly veins. The question is, will it ever be enough to shift 400 kg of solid walnut?