Gauguin for composition, 4×5 ft. Especially “D’où venons nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? (Where Do We come from? What Are We? Where Are We Going?)” 1897
This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series Class Notes
Painting by Arshile Gorky The Artist’s Mother, 1926 or 1936 Charcoal on ivory laid paper 630 x 485 mm
Class notes, from Advanced Drawing Studio with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991
Look at Gorky’s portrait of his mother in our collection.
Focus on the theme, medium, or image of our work – substantial # of drawings – qualitative development of an idea through many works. Sketchbook, also.
Work must grow.
Make a collection of whatever subject or form for our project.
Class notes, from Advanced Drawing Studio with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991
Basil, switzerland – Folk Museum – tradition of Carnival prior to Lent; also South Am., Mexico, New Orleans.
Plant form growing out of nose
Animal head-masks
Pig-tail nose
Skull-mask – design fashion
Masks of Mexico
1. collection of Donald Cordry shown at Smithsonian.
2. Mexican masks in Chicago Collections at SAIC (6-7 yrs. ago)
Types of masks:
Heads w. spikes/thorns/claws/teeth: all in one form.
Bird as nose, under eyes. Airplane as nose?
Masks w/horns, then horns as abacus beads.
Eyes as eyebrows. Post and lintel for eyebrow.
Devil masks.
Snake curled as nose or trunk or anteaters tongue or those things that you blow.
Skeleton as eyebrows, nose, nostrils, mouth opening.
Over bull-like face.
Hair for tongue, cork for nose, antlers for ears (sense of arms).
Pelvic bones of animal as face.
Also looks like gas mask.
Polished wood looks like plastic, like Darth Vader.
Lizards as eyebrows.
Crucified Christ as eyebrows, nose and mouth.
Turtle back mask. Painted red face with real hair – second mask to snake nose area.
Elephant suggested in huge bead form from Africa.
***
Prepare to do self-portrait substituting one or more features for an analagous form – develop 20-40 ideas, several visualizations for 1-2 final drawings.
Go to Field Museum to look at masks. Draw for analogies & what you respond to.
Portraits of Chicago artists at State of Illinois Center (43 portraits). Patty Carroll.
***
Self as house? Bugs, beetles as eyes?
Retablos – devotional pictures painted on tin. For people who have experienced a miracle cure – how they got healed (in churches after person has gotten healed – story of the cure). In show from Mexico – Fine Arts Center Museum catalog.
Class notes, from Advanced Drawing Studio with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991
Purpose of the class: development of personal resources, more inventive with how you represent things; more significant to you.
Look at modes of representation, both Western & other.
It happens by doing it all the time – TOTAL COMMITMENT!
Start where you are. Move on from there. Maximize your good points, push them further.
*Sketchbook or journal – most important tool!
Collector and assessor of your own experience. Watch yourself watching the world.
Things occur as they occur.
Keep note of the visual experiences that strike you.
Keep a picture file. Xerox things from books that impress you; take photos.
You can’t will your experiences, but pay attention to them after they’ve happened.
Subjective-objective experience of the world.
Every day – several pages.
You should probably date when you took a picture or saw an image.
Everything you hear that really strikes you.
****
Slides:
at Hirschhorn:
Balthus – Golden Days; mirror as dagger? Dress as the shape of a chair, fire; vaginal forms.
Like Piero della Francesca – face, hair. Contrast between sensuous life and intellectual life — sensuous form larger, more illuminated. Drapery like armor, face in the cloth. Woman as vessel. Even negative shapes become references.
Nude woman as Christ figure; intellectual figure as Mary Magdalene?
at Met:
Master of Barberini panels; architecture as backdrop for sculptural figure with loads of drapery-fabric as stone.
Make composition with original object – use analogies, incorporate into a composition. – any kind of space – highlight original form.
Make composition with original form and identify best analogy or pun, drawing original form while suggesting second form. Visual metaphor in one form.
Take detail of painting from museum – look at it for analogical form underneath the structure — rework into large drawing. Can be abstract – make other form more strongly present.
Look for masks where features of form are transformed into analogical objects — xerox or draw them (look at books or in museum) where one form is substituted for another – like full figure is substituted for nose, eyebrows, etc. & put in sketchbook.
Class notes, from Advanced Drawing Studio with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991
“The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature—translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive and every work of art should be alive.”
– Hans Hoffman
Think about forms of nature that excite you: creatures, clouds, rocks, wood, trees, bones, water, fog.
Make lots of drawings of abstracted form merging with the landscape.
This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Class Notes
Class notes, from Advanced Drawing Studio with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991
Check out the book, “James and the Giant Peach,” by Dahl – children’s book with lots of cloud-people. This is related to a series of paintings and drawings I was doing at the time that involved cloud people.
