My last post was about the discovery that Edward Hopper had copied some of his early paintings (previously believed to be originals) from paintings photographed in magazines. Since then, I have been thinking about the difference between "copying" and "transcribing".
"Copying" could be called an attempt to make an exact replication of the original. "Transcribing", on the other hand, is not aimed at replicating the original, but rather at getting into the mind of the master. The goal is to see how the master painter saw the subject, to understand how his composition worked, and to feel how he applied the paint to the canvas. This type of transcription is an important part of the curriculum at many art schools.
Along those lines, I just watched "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix (worth a watch, by the way). I learned that serious chess players spend time re-playing the matches of grandmasters. They don't just study the moves from a book, but actually set up the board, and touch and move the pieces. The physicality of the process is an important element in retaining the concepts.
Twyla Tharp, the great ballet dancer and choreographer, used a similar approach. As a young dancer, she would stand behind every great dancer then in New York, and literally mimic him or her. She said that this process imprinted their movements into her own creative DNA. I love the idea of developing mastery this way!
In case I needed another prod, I happened to attend a talk by the talented painter Elizabeth Geiger. She discussed her practice of copying from masterworks. Geiger advised that all painters should study a variety of masters whose work they admire. Each painter will draw a different "thread" from each master. As a result, the tapestry that any particular painter weaves with those threads will be different from that of any other. We all draw on our predecessors, but each of us is unique.
I'm illustrating this post with a few transcriptions I've been working on. Enjoy!
