Fresco painting is a hellishly difficult medium to master. Like watercolour, paint dries fast and a brush mark, once made, stays for good in dry plaster. There are only two great artists who have truly mastered this ancient technique, have in fact, made it their own, due to their super human confidence with a brush. Those two men are, Michelangello and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.
They seem to have visualised hideously complex dramas in their minds eye and then said, “Right, now all I have to do is paint the damn thing so mere mortals can see it too... And no mistakes!”
I just marvel at Tiepolo’s paintings and think... How the hell did he do it!
Friday, March 19, 2010
Degas Was Not Your Typical Impressionist
For one thing he disliked open air landscape painting, saying that an open season should be declared on artists littering the countryside with paint boxes and easels. I’m sure he did not want his Impressionist friends peppered with lead buckshot, it was just his belligerent way of saying that art is not about dashing off quick impressions before the light changes.
Degas was a classical studio artist. That is, an artist that liked to plan a painting slowly and carefully, with preliminary figure studies, compositional layouts and the like.
“My paintings are not the product spontaneous sensations,” Degas asserted in one interview, “They are as cunningly planned as a crime.”
So, if he was not a fan of Monet, Pissarro and Sisley, all basically outdoor landscape specialists... who were his heroes?
The great classical painter, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was a big influence on the young Degas and his early work shows a preference for Neo Classical subject matter...
‘Spartan Girls Teasing Boys.’ In the National Gallery, London, Is probably Degas’s best painting from his classical period. However, the adolescent figures have that firm Degas line and he makes no attempt to polish the canvas to death in an attempt to replicate the camera lens, the laborious practice of most Neo Classical painters in the 1800s. One critic described Neo Classical detail as, ‘A mountain of work for a mole hill of result.’
Manet was another huge influence on Degas, He was also the bad tempered, reclusive artist’s best friend. Both men had wealthy parents who could afford to fund their sons artistic experiments, so money was not an issue for them.
Manet convinced Degas that modern life was the perfect subject for a modern artist, that a contemporary dance class could be just as exiting as an ancient slave market. A parisian washer woman just as worthy of his art as some Roman slave girl in a bath house.
When we look at a Degas now, it is hard to see what his contemporaries found so shocking about his glowing pastils and rich oil paintings. Maybe we are looking at Degas’s work from the perspective of the 21st Century, with all that has passed for modern art since Degas’s era.
Degas was a classical studio artist. That is, an artist that liked to plan a painting slowly and carefully, with preliminary figure studies, compositional layouts and the like.
“My paintings are not the product spontaneous sensations,” Degas asserted in one interview, “They are as cunningly planned as a crime.”
So, if he was not a fan of Monet, Pissarro and Sisley, all basically outdoor landscape specialists... who were his heroes?
The great classical painter, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was a big influence on the young Degas and his early work shows a preference for Neo Classical subject matter...
‘Spartan Girls Teasing Boys.’ In the National Gallery, London, Is probably Degas’s best painting from his classical period. However, the adolescent figures have that firm Degas line and he makes no attempt to polish the canvas to death in an attempt to replicate the camera lens, the laborious practice of most Neo Classical painters in the 1800s. One critic described Neo Classical detail as, ‘A mountain of work for a mole hill of result.’
Manet was another huge influence on Degas, He was also the bad tempered, reclusive artist’s best friend. Both men had wealthy parents who could afford to fund their sons artistic experiments, so money was not an issue for them.
Manet convinced Degas that modern life was the perfect subject for a modern artist, that a contemporary dance class could be just as exiting as an ancient slave market. A parisian washer woman just as worthy of his art as some Roman slave girl in a bath house.
When we look at a Degas now, it is hard to see what his contemporaries found so shocking about his glowing pastils and rich oil paintings. Maybe we are looking at Degas’s work from the perspective of the 21st Century, with all that has passed for modern art since Degas’s era.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Faithful Impressionist
When I think of Impressionism I think of Monet, and it’s not just his preference for painting finished landscapes in the countryside and not in his studio. A revolutionary practice at the time. It’s not even his vivid colours that drenched every corner of his canvases, even the shadow areas.
What sets this artist apart from his contemporaries, even his friends and fellow Impressionists, is his total commitment to the Impressionist style.
When Renior was getting tired of broken colours and sun drenched landscapes, was painting important commissioned portraits and large figure compositions in a decidedly classical style, Monet stuck to his sketchy broken brushwork and vivid colours.
When Pissarro was experimenting with Georges Seurat’s optically mixed dots, Monet was still doing standard Impressionist canvases.
By the end of the 19th Century Monte's style was being called old fashioned and even, ‘Academic,’ an accusation that would have horrified the youthful Monet, then he was derided by real academic artists, who thought Monet was a joke, the guy who painted daubs and had the nerve to submit them to the Salon. Their sacred place, reserved for official artists with medals and titles and artistic pretentious to match.
What sets this artist apart from his contemporaries, even his friends and fellow Impressionists, is his total commitment to the Impressionist style.
When Renior was getting tired of broken colours and sun drenched landscapes, was painting important commissioned portraits and large figure compositions in a decidedly classical style, Monet stuck to his sketchy broken brushwork and vivid colours.
When Pissarro was experimenting with Georges Seurat’s optically mixed dots, Monet was still doing standard Impressionist canvases.
By the end of the 19th Century Monte's style was being called old fashioned and even, ‘Academic,’ an accusation that would have horrified the youthful Monet, then he was derided by real academic artists, who thought Monet was a joke, the guy who painted daubs and had the nerve to submit them to the Salon. Their sacred place, reserved for official artists with medals and titles and artistic pretentious to match.
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