See more of George Tooker’s work.
Class notes, SAIC, 1991.
See more work by Nicholas Africano
Notes from Oxbow, 1991:
Class Notes: Some Artists to Look At
Tips for Improving Your Paintings
Class notes from art camp classes with George Liebert and Dan Gustin, Oxbow, MI, summer 1991.
Make a list of verbs and adjectives about your own work.
When struggling with a work, isolate parts of it and do lots of sketches to come up with a better composition.
Class Notes on Color
Class notes, SAIC, 1991
- More transparent colors recede; more opaque colors come forward.
- Unify the painting by using the same yellow, orange, etc.
- Gray colors by using their complements.
Painting is Not Depicting
Class notes from SAIC, 10/29/91
Christian Metz
Check into film theory (time).
Iconology and iconography.
“The Banquet Years” – Roger Shattuck – mix of art and ideas.
“I no longer know how to live with everyday objects.” Braque to Shattuck, 1951.
1947 – book by Braque – quotes:
“The artist is not misunderstood, he’s barely recognized. People exploit him without knowing who he is.”
“I cherish the rule that corrects emotion.”
“Limited means engender new forms, invite creation.”
Progress – not extending one’s limits, but working within them.
Visual space separates objects from one another. Tactile space separates us from objects.
A painting is finished when one has effaced the idea. The idea is the launching cradle of the painting.
Dover edition of Braque’s book – $6.00.
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Turner and Impressionism – “I paint what I see, not what I know.”
Cubists paint not what they see, but what they know. Mind + eye.
G. B. – “Art is a mode of representation.” (?)
Do not imitate what you want to create. CREATE.
The painter does not try to reconstitute an anecdote, but to constitute a pictorial event.
Hershel Chip’s “Theories of Art.”
I am more concerned with being in tune (unison) with nature than copying nature.
Writing is not describing. Painting is not depicting. Likeness is merely an illusion. Something cannot be both true and a likeness – you have to choose.
You cannot have a thing both in mind and before your eyes. Forget about things; consider only relations.
The present – the context (circumstances).
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Combination of some likeness; some convention (language). Book of meditations reflecting some doubt.
“You cannot always have your hat in your hand. That’s why the hatrack was invented. Painting a nail on which to hang my ideas – that allows me to change them.”
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Valerie Taglieri – Cloud paintings. Artemesia – 700 N. Carpenter, through Nov. 30th.
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Distortion of the image through reproduction gives art a new meaning – 80’s.
Ersatz.
Puryear – opposite – craftsmanship, process, diversity of materials.
(Artswager and Deacon) Minimalism led into the ’80s.
Difficult, but direct art – not easy to read. More self-contained than M. More additive, a fusion of smaller things into a whole. They all contain a space. Enclosures.
M – forbidding, couldn’t be possessed, intentionally difficult to read – challenge to viewer. Threatening, non-yielding.
Puryear – work that slows down the process of art making and art viewing. An invitation to viewer. Reserve and discretion.
More Artists to Look At
Class notes from SAIC, 1991
Look at the work of some German Expressionists:
Drawing vs. Painting: More Artists to Look At
Class Notes from Art School, SAIC, 1991
More artists to look at:
- Leon Golub: lots of layers, painting, disrupting it, etc.
- Roche Rabell
- de Kooning
- Rothenburg: an investigation of the same form; break it down, open it up, more abstracted. Space horse is in; deconstructing, reconstructing. Another layer of movement added by lines.
- Donald Sultan, Clyfford Still – idea of shape.
- Palladino
- *Louisa Chase; Frankenthaler
- *Forest Bess – visionary abstraction.
- Phillip Taffe – simplified landscape.
- Baziotes, Jonathon Lasker – the role of line.
- Louise Bourgeois
- Gary Stephen
- Terry Winters
Figuration and abstraction.
How ideas are developed.
Comes from nature.
Look at source periodically.
Can you not go back and be very particular after moving fast, getting abstract?
Look at:
Diebenkorn (Diebenkorn’s missing works) – colors on cigar box top – beautiful: Yellow, lavendar, green, pink, peach, white – very pale with strip of red, brown. Archeological presence of landscape – strata, layers.
Giorgio Morandi – simplicity of shapes. The less there is to look at, the more you look at it (a specific edge). Drawing aspect vs. painting aspect – how to find out from different material.
- Paul Klee – still lifes.
- Gregory Gillespie – very intense – collage (too tight) + wonderfully encrusted walls.
- William Bailey
- Nicholas de Stael
- Pat Stier – 3 still lifes.
- Giacometti – drawing as a presence in the painting.
- Brice Marden – calligraphic, gets looser as time goes by, more figurative. Great interview here.
- Joan Mitchell
- Mel Bochner drawings – lines of force.
- Romare Bearden – NOT flat collages.
- *Charles Burchfield
- Kenny Sharf
- Malcolm Morley
- Sherrie Levine
- Jan Cherkey (?)
- Melissa Miller
- Roberto Matta, more
- Robert Stackhouse, more
- Jake Barlow (Batow?)
- Ross Bleckner
Poems are Made of Words
Class notes, SAIC, 1991
At a dinner party, Dore Ashton on Degas – complaining about working on a sonnet – he had lots of ideas, but…
Paul Valerie – “Poems are made, not of ideas, but of words.”
Artists to Look at for Paint and Pictorial Methods
Class notes, SAIC, 1991
Look at these artists:
Florine Stettheimer
Jim Lutes
Gaylen Hansen — all in Ryerson Library
Robert Barnes
Marcy Hermansader
Cheryl Lemli (?)
Jacob Lawrence
Phillip Guston (content inherent to painting as well as line, form, etc.)
ask Laurel Bradley, AH teacher.
Gradual accumulation of paint on surface until you get to center of interest.
All of Francis Bacon’s paintings are covered with glass – they reflect the viewer & architecture of the room. Change as you change position to it.
Continue reading “Artists to Look at for Paint and Pictorial Methods”
Creating Movement Through Color
Class notes from SAIC, 1991
Strive for awareness of movement from:
- warm to cool
- bright to dull
- repetition to change
- quiet to noisy
The Essence Lies in the Visual Meaning
Class notes from SAIC, 1991
The image must communicate something special which appeals to the senses through the way they are presented.
Abstract concepts help to provide visual meaning (aside from subject matter).
The subject supplies literal meaning.
The essence of a work lies in its visual meaning.