Summer Reading 2021

 

Memorial Day signals the start of summer life.  And with summer comes summer reading!  How well I remember those lazy, hazy days of summers past, when "pleasure reading" took the place of textbooks.  In case you are looking for ideas on what to read next, I thought I'd share a few thoughts. Art themed, granted, but these books are not just for artists.

I just picked up a copy of "Spring Cannot be Cancelled", hot off the press, about David Hockney's COVID spring in Normandy.  Hockney used the lockdown at his farmhouse in Normandy as an opportunity for enhanced devotion to his work.  The book comes highly recommended by a good friend, and reviews are very positive.  The dust jacket flap calls it "an uplifting manifesto that affirms art's capacity to divert and inspire." I can tell just by thumbing through my copy that it is rich with art history, as well as personal reflections of Hockney.  Can't wait to dig in!

"Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking" is a classic that has been around for a while, but never grows stale.  The authors discuss the fears and pitfalls that haunt artists of all types (musicians, photographers, painters, sculptors, etc).  I just read it for the second time, and I think it contains life lessons that are broader than just the arts.  Worth a read, especially if you are working in one of the "arts" fields.

I can also recommend from personal experience "The Man in the Red Coat" by Julian Barnes.  Published just last year, it's a very current read.  The book is an amusing and enlightening romp through Belle Époque Paris, in the company of Dr. Pozzi and his friends.  Think Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Proust, Whistler and other characters of the day.  Dr. Pozzi is the man pictured below, in Sargent's famous painting.  Julian Barnes has a way with words, and his wit and insight make this heyday era in Paris spring to life.  Enjoy!

Black Mountain

 

How could I have lived so close to Black Mountain, NC, for so many years, and not appreciated until recently its role in mid-century American art history?!!  Put very briefly, Black Mountain College was an unconventional, somewhat experimental school. It took a holistic approach to learning, in which the study of art was deemed essential to a liberal arts education.  Its faculty and students came to include many luminaries of the art world--more about which below.

The head of the art program at Black Mountain was Josef Albers.  Albers was born in Germany, and was active in the Bauhaus group until it was shut down by Hitler.  Under Nazi pressure, many German artists, including Albers, fled Germany for the US, where he joined the faculty at Black Mountain.  Albers was an abstract artist who published extensively on seeing and teaching color.  His most celebrated series of paintings is "Homage to the Square", in which each panel consists of squares of solid color, nestled within each other. 

Albers at the Highlander Mountain House

Imagine my surprise and delight when I recently visited the Highlander Mountain House inn in Highlands, NC (not too far from Black Mountain), and found an original Albers painting on the wall!!  It is said that Elaine de Kooning, who studied with Albers at Black Mountain College, asked to interview him for a feature in ArtNews.  Albers agreed, and added "I will do a series of color demonstrations and will call it "Homage to the Square".  Thus began a series that would occupy him for the next twenty-six years.  

If you are a serious student of color, Albers' books are a must read.  A couple of his quotations:  "In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is." And "In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually." So true!

"Asheville"

Willem de Kooning, 1948

Oil and Enamel on Cardboard, appx 29 x 32 inches

You might not know of Albers, but you are more likely to know others who were at Black Mountain College. Among the most famous are Willem de Kooning and his wife Elaine.  Also Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly, and Robert Rauschenberg, to name a few.  The painting just above was painted by Bill de Kooning at Black Mountain College during the summer of 1948.  It was one of his first great all-over paintings, marking a turning point in his style.

Black Mountain College closed in 1957.  It is now the site of Camp Rockmont for Boys.  But all is not lost:  you can visit the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC.  I've got it on the itinerary!

Progress!

 The peonies in my little garden have flowered, and I could not resist taking a vase of them to the studio to paint. The bloom season is very short--but a painting lasts forever!  I thought it might be fun to share a few photos showing how the painting materialized.

Top shot:  I "blocked in" the big shapes.  At this first step, the most important things to me are (1) getting the big shapes in approximately the right place on the canvas, and (2) paying attention to which shapes are in light and which are in shadow.  The shadow shapes are toned in a fairly deep blue-ish color. If I'm not excited by what I'm seeing at this point, I don't proceed.

Next step:  I paint the background.  As painting instructors say, one should "paint the SPACE around the thing", rather than painting the thing itself.  Getting the color down accurately for the area behind the flowers tells the viewer where the flowers are located in space.  It makes the painting believable.  Plus, notice how the painting almost seems to paint itself once this is done.  Sometimes I wish I could stop here and let my mind entertain all the possibilities, without having to commit to any one of them.

Third step:  Trying not to mess up the magic of the underpainting.  This is the hard part: keeping room for the imagination, and deciding which parts are important to emphasize.  It's a battle between the general and the specific.  I definitely don't want to draw each petal!

Fourth:  Stopping point.  I've worked far enough through the prior steps to stop for a while.  I'll let it sit for an hour or two, or a day or two, and see whether it feels finished.  The key from here on out is to avoid the temptation to fiddle and fuss so much that the freshness is destroyed.  Wish me luck!