My primary teacher, Bill Schultz, would often say, “When you hang your painting on a wall indoors, you want to be able to step back and feel the outdoor light that first moved you.” I truly became aware of this phenomenon of outdoor light being viewed indoors when, on the Wharf in San Francisco, I entered a very large railroad car. The car was entirely empty and the quality of its light was that of a warm dark enveloping velvet. When I reached the center of the car I saw that a large door on the right had been rolled opened and I could see, far off in the distance, the waterfronts of Oakland and Berkeley. It was amazing. The warm velvety walls of the railroad cars that framed the distant waterfronts made them seem so high key and atmospheric. And the energy of the atmospheric light was palpable. The difference of seeing the far away cities from outside as compared to inside the railroad car was just amazing. I wished I could always see outside subject matter like that!

 

The Great Puzzle

Recently, one of my students from my online course wrote about the painting she had submitted: I “was” very happy with my painting. It was singing and so was I! But the moment I brought it home and looked at it, it was DULL!  I have had this happen on several paintings lately. They seem great, until I am done with them and bring them home.”

She said she was perplexed. Why did her painting look rich and vibrant outside when she painted it, but dull and “bleached” when she got it home? I told her that she ought to go back to where she had painted it to see if it then looked vibrant once again. So she did and, yup, it was vibrant once more.

So I remembered my experience with the railroad car and below is my effort to recreate the situation where the subject is far away and surrounded by a lush, dark velvety frame or indoor light. Below is her painting framed by dark indoor light, as it were.

And here is her painting simply posted on a white page.

Mystery solved. In the first image the painting does what it is supposed to do. One gets the feeling of outdoor light indoors. The painting is magical. On the white background, the painting still looks great but without it being related to anything, I can see where someone might say that it looks dull. Moral of the story? This kind of dullness is a difficult and important quality – something we should strive to achieve.

 

Monet’s Example

At the turn of the last century, plein-air painters understood this principle. The best example is Monet who said, in effect, “some painters paint the tree, the house, the boat, I paint what is between me, the house and the boat” – which is appropriate because that is how we see during every moment of our lives, always and forever – through atmosphere. So if we want our paintings to have that sense of transcending the facts of “a picture,” of conveying the energy of outdoor light, we really need to learn to see and feel atmospheric color.

First example, notice how Monet treats a sunny day. Often on sunny days, there is little obvious atmosphere. Yet, do you see the harmony that Monet’s atmosphere lends the painting? It is as though everything sits behind a screen or a veil because everything does sit behind huge chunks of atmosphere. Our task, if we wish for the light to propel us – and the viewer – into another realm of perception, is to become aware of this screen or veil.

Below is another sunny day. Same thing. Total harmony and nothing is dark.

In the landscape below, notice how the distant mountains are covered by a veil and the closer mass of trees on the right are covered by this same veil as well.

The haystack is seen here as against the light but the dark side of the haystack and the cast shadow is enveloped with atmospheric color.

Women on a boat – mostly dark and middle values, but still behind a veil.

And the same is true looking down into a dark patch of waterlilies. Do you think if he had made the warm greens a degree or two darker, the painting would be as mysterious and seductive?

And here is a one-minute video of Sotheby’s presenting a glorious Monet haystack that sold recently at auction. (Click image to see video.)

Finally, here is a 4-minute video of me painting the Bellagio waterfront with an explanation of how I paint atmosphere. (Click image to see video.)

 

Bottom Line

Expressive painting is all about each of us becoming more of who we are. The method I teach is intended to give you the language and tools to help you do just that. So if atmospheric harmony isn’t your thing or if you want your colors to “pop” instead of sitting behind a veil, then go for it. Throw all this out the window and discover who you are most.

However, if you are moved by the mystery and harmony that atmospheric colors give a painting, then never work from photos. And become more aware of the “ishes” (bluish, greenish, pinkish, purplish, etc) that vibrate in front of you, between you and the subject matter.

 

I like to read about artists that I like, but not what others say about them. Rather I like to begin with how artists understand what they are doing, how they interpret their own processes. Pissarro, Cézanne, Monet, and Matisse for example, talked a lot about the subject being a prompt to which they respond. The notion of sensations – both sensations of light and sensations they feel or frissons from the experience – were important to them in explaining what they do.

Below are very brief thumbnail sketches of 8 great artists from different disciplines. I’m interested in their processes, habits, motivations. How do they go about their work?  And what might we learn from their respective approaches?

8 Artists and Their Peculiar Thoughts and Practices

1. This artist is a woman writer. She writes while lying on a made-up bed. She has with her a bottle of sherry, an ashtray, and a bible. She reads the bible to get a sense of rhythm in language. She reads it to make contact with melody so that melody may infuse her mind and body. She says when asked if she had been nervous reading her poem at Clinton’s inauguration, “No. I was inside the poem.” Her name was Maya Angelou.
2. This artist is a male actor. He is taken by the way a child, seemingly possessed, can be captured by a leaf, compelled to look at it for a long time. He says he wants what that child has. And if in his work, he isn’t captured in similar ways, he believes that he’s “in danger of, in some small way, kind of dying.” His name is Gabriel Byrne, nominated for many Tony, Golden Globe, and Emmy awards, and listed as the 17^th best actor in all of Irish history.
3. Our third artist is a musician. He says that “All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.” Thinking about the payoff, he adds, “The real risk is not changing. I have to feel that I’m after something. If I make money, fine. But I’d rather be striving. It’s the striving, man, it’s that I want.” His name was John Coltrane.
4. The fourth artist was a male painter. Once, when he was a young man, his friends became concerned when they hadn’t seen him for a month. When he reappeared, he was asked where he had been. His response: “I’ve been walking around looking at clouds.” His name was Renoir.
5. This male artist was a musician. So involved in the process of writing music was he that he often left music he had written scattered about his house, as he would simply move on to the writing of the next piece that interested him. One day, his students gathered up some of the music that he had abandoned, set him down, and performed the music for him. After hearing this music he said, “My that’s lovely. Who wrote it?” His name was Franz Schubert.
6. One male painter’s explanation of how he worked through a painting was not dissimilar to Schubert’s process. While thinking about a work he has just begun, he said “I’m treading very gently….If it were possible, I would leave it as it is….[and carry] it to a more advanced state on another canvas (my emphasis). Then I would do the same thing with that one. There would never be a ‘finished’ canvas, but just the different ‘states’ of a single painting. ….because I am searching for spontaneity, and when I have expressed a thing with a degree of happiness I no longer have the courage to add anything at all….” His name was Picasso.
7. A seventh person, also a painter, revealed a rather odd belief: “People think a sugar bowl has no physiognomy or soul. But…you have to take them, cajole them, those little fellows. These glasses, these dishes, they talk among themselves. They whisper interminable secrets….Fruits…love to have their portraits painted. They…apologize for changing color….They come to you with all their aromas and tell you about the fields that they left….Objects penetrate one another. They never cease to be alive. Do you understand?” His name was Cézanne.
8. Finally, an eighth artist, a woman and a political painter and sculptor who lived through both world wars in Germany. She suffered greatly and her work expressed the suffering of ordinary people. She was quite clear about what it was that was fundamental to her life as an artist: “Where do I stand? I too want to be free of everything that hinders my real self. I want to develop myself, that is to unfold, to pull myself out of the state of suffering and come to a clear sense of my own powers. The process is like a photographic plate which lies in the developer: the picture gradually becomes recognizable and emerges more and more from the mist.” Her name was Kæthe Kollwitz.

The Take-Aways

Many of the things that occur to me when I read about each of these artists is how much their individual approaches link together to form a single approach. No one in this collection of art makers, unlike Warhol, Koons, Hirst, and many contemporary artists, uses the activity of art making to realize some end external to the activity such as private gain, power, or wealth, for example. Instead we find that it is in the process of doing, of articulation, that there is intrinsic value. While the selling of books, music, paintings – that happen along the way – may be a business, the activity of making art clearly is not for them nor can it be.

Let us consider each of the artists separately:

Angelou: She really is her own person. And so are we. Each of us is the only person who has to live our life, of course. Artists – and here we may assume everyone in their work – need a healthy degree of independence, yes; but all of this, especially in the case of Angelou, is in the context of the melody of solidarity.

Byrne: We need to let go of reality we perceive and enter a realm where nature is affective and talking to us. It is useful to see things as a child, open to nature and allow ourselves to be captured and carried away. I agree with Byrne that without the “being captured” by something external to us in the process of work is to die a little in the process.

Coltrane: In our art making we ought not be doing things to achieve a specific result. We don’t know where our art is going when we are in the process of creating it. Striving or growing turns on the creative risk of being who we are.

Renoir: We ought not enter the creative space roiling with intention. At times we need dead space to clear away the list of things we want to accomplish.

Shubert: We need to work under the influence of the moment, getting into the absolute passion for the thing we are doing. That’s the entire payoff.

Picasso: Our work is merely an endless series of attempts, just starting points from which we grow, realizing our power so that we feel larger as we move on to the next beginning.

Cézanne: Our world isn’t fully calculable. There is mystery, agency, and magic often erupting amid the everyday.

Kollwitz: It is not an instance of self-absorption to want to be free of everything that hinders our real self, particularly if such constraints come from social institutions and social mores. All expressive art making in this context, at its most fundamental level, is then a process of becoming –  and resistance.

 

 

 

 

The following is taken from the introduction to my online course: Painting as Enchantment: The Authentic Impressionist Method. The notion of enchantment I employ is one where your work, in this case painting, is an expressive activity, one in which you realize your powers and where you feel larger, and with that sense of empowerment propels you, as Wolf Kahn would say of himself, on to your next painting. The point of painting then is not to make a picture but, as Robert Henri taught, to “obtain an extraordinary moment.” The picture happens along the way.

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I thought I would begin by asking a simple question: what does a painter do when she goes out into the field, so to speak, to do a painting? Most people think that essentially a painter makes a copy of what she sees and that there is a lot of natural skill that is required. You will often hear people say, for example, when asked if they paint, “Oh no, not me.  I can’t draw a straight line.”  But for the method I am about to show you, that response is a bit of a category mistake. It would be like saying when asked if you like drinking wine, “Oh no, not me.  I can’t distinguish a cabernet from a merlot.” It makes no sense because the enjoyment of drinking wine doesn’t depend on some natural ability to distinguish a cabernet from a merlot. It depends on whether or not you get a good feeling back from tasting the wine. This method is like that, too. It is about feelings. It begins with getting good feelings back from looking at things but then moves onto a sense of exhilaration in realizing your ability to render those feelings.

I made similar assumptions about painting when I first began as well. But after studying with William Schultz for many years, I began to realize that making a picture of something was not the same as making art. After years of study, I could do the former, but I could not do the latter. To put it as succinctly as I can, making a picture of something does require some skill, but if one wishes to make art, one needs not only to have mastered the notes, one needs to have an understanding of what it means to play the music.

So let us begin by making a distinction: there are artists whose paintings describe the subject they are painting and there are others where the subject is merely a prompt or point of departure. This is not to say that the two types of paintings do not merge in some cases. But, for our purposes, the distinction is a necessary one if I am to provide you with a way to make paintings that have more to do with being alive than they do with achieving a likeness.

 

Descriptive Paintings

Many paintings are primarily pictures of things. With this type of painting, the goal is to make an accurate picture of that thing, a house or flower or person, or whatever. With this kind of painting, the intention of the painter is to make a picture of the subject.  That’s the point of the exercise. In the end, her painting refers to the subject. She, the painter, is not really visible on the canvas because the painting is not about her. Her personal brushstrokes, or desire for flatness or distortion, or her emphasis on atmosphere, for example, are not expressed and are not part of the painting. The painting is about the literal qualities of the subject and the final painting functions as a reference to the subject. The artist, in effect, becomes a human camera who with great skill and materials describes the subject in oil or some other medium. We call this type of painting descriptive because the work is intended to describe the subject.

 

The image above is a famous descriptive painting by John Singer Sargent. It is the Portrait of Theodore Roosevelt, painted in 1903. This painting was commissioned by the U.S. government. Sargent was, in effect, directed by the people involved in the commissioning process to make a picture of President Roosevelt. In other words, the painting had to be a genuine likeness or an accurate description of the model. The painting is about the model to whom it refers. Let us compare this approach with a different approach, one that I am calling expressive.

Here’s another descriptive painting:

 

Expressive Paintings

Something often happens after a painter makes one hundred or three hundred or five hundred descriptive paintings. As she gets good at it, she begins to take delight in having mastered the descriptive process and begins to feel larger and more powerful as she begins to enjoy the painting process for its own sake. And before you know it, she begins to put a little flair into the marks she makes. She begins to dance about, so to speak, maybe making that hint of emerald green in the sky more visible, or that almost-straight line curl just a bit because it wants to. We may say that she is feeling more alive as she paints. Getting an exact likeness now is less important than it was before. In fact, the activity of painting becomes a way of not only realizing unexpected feelings but also rendering those feelings. An important shift has occurred: the painting is now more about who she is than it is about the subject. This time her personal brushstrokes are right there for everyone to see.  We call this type of painting expressive because the painting activity is a process in which the painter expresses who she is. It follows too that the subject is merely a prompt to which the painter responds by expressing the feelings that the subject engendered within her. So Matisse, who is in favor of expressive work, will say, “The artist’s job is not to transpose something he’s seen but express the impact the object made on him….”

The painting below, Impression, Sunrise, is by Claude Monet. It is a good example of what I would call an expressive painting. It was painted in 1872. Notice how the painting is not an exact description or likeness of the subject. Rather the subject is a prompt for Monet to express or render his feelings about his visual experience. We don’t say that the painting is a picture or description of the harbor of Le Havre. Rather we say it is a Monet.

 

There was a point at which I had learned how to make rather decent descriptive paintings, but compared to my teacher’s work, and the work of other genuine artists, I felt my paintings, while correct, were, nonetheless, dead on arrival.

That was roughly 40 years ago. I’ve learned a lot since then and I believe I understand better what it takes for paintings to come alive.  It’s basically pretty simple:  for paintings to come alive, the painter must come alive as well. And, it turns out, that the feeling of being alive or of getting a rush as one paints is just about the entire payoff. It’s the reason I paint. The painting is simply a by-product of my becoming.  Another way of saying this is that the process produces the work and your loyalty to developing your gift is to find that process. It took me awhile to find that process and I want to share it with you.

Here are two more contemporary examples of expressive or non-descriptive painting. The first is by Jacques Truphèmus and the second is by Wolf Kahn. Both painters died recently and both lived into their 90s. It is easy to see in these paintings the expression of a personality. And it follows that upon seeing them we would say, “Oh that’s a Truphémus” or “That’s a Kahn.” The subject matter for them was merely a prompt or point of departure.

 

 

The featured paintings at the top are both by Monet.  The descriptive one on the left (A Farmyard in Normandy) was painted in 1863 when he was 23 years old, while the expressive one on the right (Agapanthus) was painted between 1914-1926.

 

 

 

I have never participated in any of the plein-air “paint outs” or group painting affairs. It is great that this sort of thing exists. Hopefully a plein-air movement is underway.

I have gone to YouTube, however, to see what these painters are doing and there is one feature of these events that puzzles me. Everyone paints small. The largest size canvas is probably around 12×16 inches and no doubt most are smaller. Why is this I wonder. I really don’t like painting on such small canvases. I feel cramped. I also don’t believe the space is conducive to developing a painting with layers or with a variety of subtle color and varied brushstrokes.

Not long ago I met with a former student who happened to pass through Bellagio. She has become quite successful in the plein-air circuit so I asked her, “Why does everyone paint so small?” She responded: “Well, there are two approaches. One is where you paint small and then work in the studio to develop larger pieces. And in the other camp are painters, like you, who paint large.”

Not a terribly satisfying answer. I should have asked, “So what percentage would you say are in my camp?” Among professionals, I really don’t think there are many at all. I know of no one. Although there has to be many, right?

Here’s what I think is going on. First, it is a bit of a pain to pack up all your stuff, drive out to a site, find parking if the site is in the city, unload everything, set up where passersby or tourists can annoy you, deal with the weather, pack up again and head home, only to repeat the effort two or three or more times, depending how long the painting takes and how much the weather cooperates. I get that. But what about skiing or golf or any number of outdoor activities that require as much preparation and weather cooperation, not to mention cost?

Second, and this is my fear, is that we live at a time when painting has become akin to manufacturing. So if efficiency and productivity work to the advantage of a professional painter – where a painter has to supply several galleries, then perhaps it makes more sense to do a little painting, bring it back to the studio, and make larger versions in the relaxed setting of the studio. Sorry, but that just doesn’t appeal to me. It feels – and of course I’ve done that sort of thing – like work, like a job. I’m just not inspired during the process.

With this in mind, let me tell you about my most recent outing. Here’s the scene:

This is the property of some friends who rent out their villa (Il Poggio di Bellagio) and they allow us to have access to it. Conchitina was with me so she was reading and taking photos as I painted.

Here’s the challenge that I was confronting. The weather forecast was predicting rain and my canvas was 36×36 inches. I knew the weather was likely to turn greyish and that I might not be able to go too far. Moreover, the forecast was predicting thunderstorms for the next 5 days so it would be great if I could do this in one sitting, which was unlikely. Normally, under the best of conditions, I would make two trips: the first to get a full underpainting completed within an hour and a half. Then return, refreshed, and concentrate on the painting stage itself for another hour and a half or so. But this time my plan was to paint quickly. Maybe I could do this in one sitting. Either would be fine.

Before I began, I tinted the canvas very lightly the same color as the lightest lights in the clouds. Using some of the grey gunk from my brush cleaning jar, a touch of cadmium orange and vermillion, I quickly spread everything around over the canvas with paint thinner, a brush and a rag. I then wiped nearly all of it off so that the residue created a warm tint. I placed the canvas on the easel. I was ready. Then, just for the hell of it, I asked Conchitina for the time. It was 11:00 am. Okay, then. Let’s do it.

Often when I look out at a lake scene like this, I think of organizing the painting into five or six pieces, like a big, super simple, jigsaw puzzle. I’m looking for movement and an initial composition that feels right. So with a piece of charcoal I quickly drew in the above sketch. It felt right to me.

I then put in a stronger line that would give me an armature of sorts so I used cobalt blue and white. If I weren’t painting something with tons of atmosphere I would have used a yellow ochre type color but most everything in this painting was far away so I know these lines would melt into the underpainting. You can see at this point I’m just beginning the underpainting, squinting, scumbling in the darkest of the darks but not going too dark yet. That would come in the painting stage later on. At this point I would say that I have used up about 5 minutes.

This is after another 15 to 20 minutes. I’m using a number 10 flat filbert, moving along pretty quickly. I want to scumble in everything except the lights. But I’m also noticing that the weather is changing. What was a rich blue sky is now getting pretty hazy. In fact, everything is getting a purplish- bluish haze. I strengthened a few lines because I knew I would be going in to painting in a minute and wanted a stronger structure or armature there to support stronger if not aggressive brushstrokes. I put a strong line where I felt the warm clouds separating from the bluish grey behind them. Immediately I sensed that that line was too strong. But don’t correct, I said to myself, just keep moving along deliberately.

I have just begun to paint into my lights. The sky continued to become more hazy and grey, but there was still enough rich blue to balance the feeling of grey with a touch of summer sky. You can see that I’m leaving parts of my tinted canvas open so that it will show through and lend a degree of harmony. The size of the canvas permits me to make vigorous long strokes and long sweepy strokes in the lake-mountain-sky area of the painting which I would find difficult to do with a small painting. Further, given the large amount of space available to me – as I begin painting into the lights, I could get more specific with a greater variety of brushstrokes, dropping down to a No. 6 flat filbert in some areas (in contrast to the No. 8 and a No. 10 that I was using throughout up until that point). I realized (at 30 minutes?) that I would be able to go as far as I wanted to in this sitting. So I began to slow down and look for subtleties.

In the last 15 minutes or so I began to layer in over the top of my painting, strokes of color that wasn’t very perceptible but which I thought added a magical feeling. Quinacridone and white over the top of some of the greenish colors in the foreground and also in the sky and clouds. I placed touches of cadmium light yellow and white over mostly emerald green and white in the light fields. I added lively touches of sevres blue and white over the mountain to the left and I purposefully left a lot of space for the other colors to come through. I added streaky small strokes with a No. 6 brush of dioxin purple and white in the lake and in the sky. I had been carried away and now I was feeling satiated. That’s enough; I don’t want to say any more.

I asked Conchitina for the time: “12:09.” My point with the time isn’t to suggest that one ought to paint slow or fast, just deliberately and that the notion that painting large takes a lot of time is really a myth.

One reason I don’t paint small, relatively speaking, is that they just take too long for what you end up with. More importantly, though, copying a small painting into a large painting in the studio just feels like manufacturing. If that is what it took to be an artist, every week I would be thinking “Thank God it’s Friday” instead of yearning to find another great place outside. And as Pissarro noted long ago, painting is the “opposite of manufacturing.” In the studio, the painter stops when the copy is finished. Out of doors, I stop when I’m finished – when I’m caught up and carried away and then brought back down. Aaah, that was nice.

Painting large en plein-air is where it’s at. It’s such a magical adventure. Or maybe it’s just me.

 

 

 

Do you like the Rabbit or do you think it is kitsch? Was the $90 million that someone paid for it at auction a sign of the vitality of our culture or its decadence? Is Koons a super talented guy or someone so bad that as Robert Hughes once said of him, “He could not carve his name in a tree?”

These are the kinds of question that commonly arise in response to Koons’ work. And that’s the problem. By focusing on the merits of the work, that is the product, we are blinded to what the success of Koons and a slew of artists like him actually represent.

It would be misleading to think of the Koons phenomena as the phenomena of a single person. Koons and Hirst and others like them are but faces on a relatively new but misunderstood art system regime that has essentially killed off the artist as unitary author. Joachim Pissarro, the great-grandson and well know curator, once said that painting, and we can generalize to include all art made by a single person, is at its most fundamental level, a process of becoming. This may have been true from the middle ages on up until World War II; and it may be true for people like you and me who still labor away with brush in hand with easel before us. But we don’t count. We are unimportant even if we do manage to survive within bottom-basement markets that cater to much ridiculed public sensibilities and refrigerator magnets. It’s not that we don’t have our exhibitions and prizes, magazines, and big money markets. We do, pretty much like the Global Wrestling Federation. But I’m telling you, we ride the wind of decades past. We’re dead, killed off by the Koons Regime and even if you have a comfy niche somewhere, know that your ability to pay the bills has an expiration date.

The Magic of Expression

Just the other day, a painter friend of mine was explaining how when she just looked at her still life for extended periods, in an almost absent-minded gaze, hints of color seemed to emerge, flicker, and then change or disappear. I knew what she meant. Anyone who paints from nature and responds to visual sensations is likely to have felt this vibrating energy – and is likely to have been moved by that oneness with what she sees.

The next step, however, is the one filled with magic: she tries to mix the hint of color that she saw and felt and with her hand and with her brush she touches the canvas. In other words, as a single person, as a unitary author, she acts. It is in that move from the shadowy world of color in her mind to a clear stroke of color on the canvas, a color that she chose, that she makes manifest, precisely in that moment of time, who she is. In that moment, she realizes a feeling that she could not have possibly known prior to the act, a feeling of being larger, a feeling of power, a feeling of self-realization as a unitary author. The tingling, breathtaking surge of life that passed through her, down through her hand and brush then passes on to the canvas allows the world to know and feel who she is. And it is in that moment of creativity that she receives the entire payoff of being an artist. This is the magic of unitary author expression, from Da Vinci, on through Beethoven, and now you and me.  But in the upper strata of cultural power and wealth management known as the art system, access to self-worth and this particular kind of fulfillment has been utterly frustrated by the Koons Regime.

Here’s the kicker. When work is properly organized, as a process of becoming, artists remind us that work is not just fulfilling, but that it may be among the most fulfilling of human experiences. “I need to work to feel well,” noted Manet. Cezanne argued that external rewards were not the reason he painted: “The pleasure must be found in the work.” Wolf Kahn, a recently deceased painter said, “I don’t need a feeling of success. I just need an appetite to work to feel alive.” A friend of Matisse noted that “Matisse couldn’t live if he couldn’t work.” As unitary authors, we get that. But what if we had to work under the division of labor that marks all the organization of work in all capitalist countries, where work is separated into planning and execution, where the planners are the “idea men” who direct the people who execute the mindless work. What would we become if we were so directed? Adam Smith had an answer. He said that “The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations…always the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention….loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and…becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become….” Is it no wonder that most people who labor under this relationship thank God that it’s Friday and dream of early retirement.

Arrival Of The Idea Man

After Abstract Expressionism ran its course, artists began bringing that very division of labor into the studio. A key starting point was the career of Frank Stella, an artist from the Second Generation, New York City School. He began making paintings, as would a house painter, using the tools, materials, and techniques he had learned as a house painter. However, he said that he didn’t want to be an artist per se. Rather, he wanted to be known as someone with the “capability of making art.” This was another way of saying, as Caroline A. Jones notes, that he wanted to be an “ideator-executive: the designer of diagrams and plans that the artist-worker could execute” or more simply as Stella would call it, an “executive artist.”[i] In other words, an executive artist as studio boss would direct or control the work of his worker-artists, nominally referred to as “assistants.”  “All the structures, values, feelings of the whole European tradition…[it] suits me fine if that’s all down the drain,” crowed Stella. In other words, it wouldn’t bother Stella and the regime behind him if all the fulfillment attached to the unitary-authored moment of creativity went down the drain as well. Not surprising. Executive artist types or idea-men-bosses need a feeling of success, not an appetite to work, to feel alive.

In addition, during the 1960s, the teaching of visual art was moved from the studio of the master-artist into the university. The notion of the studio with master as unitary author was not only abandoned but reviled. With the death of traditional painting at the rarified heights of major art fairs like the Venice Biennale along with the master-artist-studio-system, the studio as factory or the large-scale factory as studio soon followed. I find it interesting that this colossal shift in the making of art and what it means to be an artist was not resisted by artists but embraced. Andy Warhol, who helped pioneer this studio metamorphosis would proudly proclaim: “somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me.”

One of Jeff Koons’ workers wrote an op-ed piece complaining that he was a serf doing paint by numbers. But he was mistaken; his problems at the art factory were not due to a feudal mode of production. They were due to the free enterprise system, with artists-as-entrepreneur or as “idea men” as Koons likes to present himself to the world.

And so it goes. Stories of Koons laying off workers in a rather brutal fashion and/or replacing some workers with robots often grace the art news. This is not an aberration, of course. This is only the expression of what any number of recent major artists have enthusiastically supported whether it be Warhol’s vision of “Business Art Business” or his desire “to be a machine,” Stella’s executive artist fantasy, or Hirst’s branding and product lines using mass production workers.  “America was hit by industrialism and capitalism harder and sooner and its values seem more askew….I think the meaning of my work is that it’s industrial, it’s what all the world will soon become,” noted Roy Lichtenstein, in 1963. Many other major artists (Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, are a few that Jones mentions) have bought into the studio as factory and executive artist as boss.

We ought not to accept art system arrangements because we have inherited them nor should we accept the authority of people who just happen in our time to hold power. One thing that working as a unitary author does besides providing a source of self-worth and fulfillment  is that it incentivizes independence. I get a tickle every time I read Monet’s declaration: “I can’t care less what so-called art critics think. They are all as stupid as one another. I know my worth.” And yet, it is rather discouraging knowing that today the notion of artists-as-entrepreneur or as idea-man or “as-assistants” is unreflectively accepted, even celebrated. Paraphrasing James Baldwin, it is not unlike watching people cling to their captivity.

 

[i] Caroline A. Jones, Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 124

Above is a detail of a recent painting (“On A Dreamy Afternoon”) of mine. I work within the tradition of French Impressionism.[i] Yet I am reluctant to call myself an Impressionist for the simple reason that in the year 2020 a painter doing Impressionism will be thought of by elites in the world of visual art as someone whose work is derivative and chocolate boxy. Worse, perhaps, I would be thought of as someone who is clueless as to the advances – pointed to, of course, by these same elites in visual art – during the hundred and forty-six years since the Impressionist held their first exhibition in 1874. The cognoscenti, however, are polite. They would simply dismiss me and my work out of hand as unfashionable.

Fair enough. I can accept that. Besides, unfashionable in some circles is often quite fashionable in others. But I am also convinced that the challenge of sincerity posed to the art world by a handful of Parisian painters in 1874 is as relevant now as it was then. Therefore, I have chosen a different appellation. I am an authentic Impressionist.

Let’s begin with a brief summary of the story of the painters who became known as the French Impressionists and in whose tradition I work.

 

Who, What, Where, When, and Why

 

Where: Paris, the center of western culture during the 19th century and into the 20^th century.

Who: The names you will find most often associated with French Impressionism are Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cezanne, Frèdèric Bazille, Edgar Degas, Èdouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, all of whom came of age in the late-19^thcentury.

However, in explaining the philosophy and practice of the movement known as  French Impressionism or what I have been calling authentic Impressionism, I shall focus on Pissarro, Cèzanne, Monet, and Degas[ii], given that they left behind the most developed thoughts on what was considered a new approach to painting. In terms of the work itself that I will show you, these same painters plus Morisot are, perhaps, the most emblematic of the kind of work that issued from this new approach.

When: The period during which the French Impressionist dominated Paris, strictly and narrowly, can be bracketed by the first and last of their eight independent exhibitions. The first of these independent exhibitions took place in April-May 1874, while the last was held in May-June 1886. Some of the Impressionists lived well into the 20^th century and their influence impacted painting around the world. So it is not uncommon to find celebrated Russian Impressionists or American Impressionists working in the early part of the 20^th century, for example. But before we can understand French Impressionists and what makes their work distinctive, we need to know what independence meant to them and why it was so important. It is this part of the story that is the least understood and the most revealing.

What and Why: A Special Kind Of Freedom

The French Revolution, which took place in 1789, led to the abolition of absolute monarchy. But the stranglehold by the aristocracy over art education and the all-important career-making exhibitions of the Salon de Paris persisted late into the 19^th century. The painters that would become known as the Impressionists were artists in a long line of painters who since the French Revolution pressed repeatedly for control over the making and exhibition of their work. With the aristocracy greatly weakened through war and political uprisings, particularly in Paris, the Impressionists, known initially as the Intransigents, launched a series of exhibitions independent of the Salon. It was by means of these independent exhibitions that our merry band of reluctant rebels achieved the long sought-after goal: they had absolute control over their art making, democratic control over the organization of their exhibitions, and established, for the first time, “a direct relation with the public.” The Salon de Paris, steadily displaced by private galleries, agents, and exhibitions, by 1890, never was to recover its prestige or authority.

We shall delve further into the “what” as we actually examine the work of these painters, but in order to do that we need to look more closely at “why.” It’s a story all artists ought to know.

“There’s no sincerity.”

In 1862, a 22-year old Monet was studying in the atelier of Charles Gleyre, along with Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille. Gleyre had garnered notable success at the Salon early in his career. Having the opportunity to study with him, then, presented an opportunity in the conventional sense: the opportunity for an artist to make painting a career. There were no other similar opportunities.

But then an astonishing thing happened. Monet suddenly urged his fellow artists to revolt. But why? What had gone wrong? The event that triggered Monet’s abrupt dissatisfaction was a critique that Gleyre had given him. Gleyre had told the young Monet that he had made a stocky model look stocky. “But he is stocky,” said Monet. “True, but that is ugly,” warned the master; “Moreover, you have made his foot too large.” Again Monet, “But his foot is large.” Gleyre cautioned Monet that if he wished to be juried favorably into Salon exhibitions, he “must think of the works of antiquity.” Keep in mind that a young student’s future patronage, in that moment, turned on his (and it was mostly his) ability to glorify powerful political and religious figures, their military campaigns, stories in the literature they favored, as well as their feet and bodies – large and stocky notwithstanding. Monet’s response: “Let’s get out of here. The place is unhealthy. There is no sincerity.”

Here we come to the very heart of the philosophy of authentic Impressionism. Consider the concept of “unhealthy” in this context. Monet was articulating the notion that while he and his compatriots dreamed of a painting career, it would only make sense if in that career they could be free to become more of who they already were. If career meant that they would become the picture-making instruments of someone else, they would never discover their own individual and distinct abilities, or what moved each of them differently, or know the means of expression they would each invent and employ for themselves. They would never know in their lifetime who they were most. At 22, Monet knew he would never have the opportunity to become Monet. That’s what was unhealthy. That is why Monet believed that there was no sincerity in the studios teaching painters to become Salon art stars.

Naturally, this point of view was understood by art system elites then as subversive. It meant that while the selling of paintings might be a business, particularly in light of the growing “bourgeois” economy, as it was called, the making of paintings was not and never could be. The reward was in the work, Cèzanne would implore, never in adjusting one’s natural aesthetic proclivities in order to capture a career advancing “opportunity.”  Competitions were derided for the same reason. Respecting the dictates of juries entirely divorced from each artist’s personal unfolding, as it were, only diminished the control over their work that they sought. Not that members of the group did not pursue a variety of exhibition venues. They did, compelled to often, but they were shrewd about it and clear. Monet, for example, referring to a painting he was submitting to the Salon in 1880 acknowledged, “This is not Monet.” Pissarro felt that were he to exhibit at the Salon he would have to “make too many concessions, thus sacrificing the honor of his cause.”[iii] But the direction and the value they consistently prioritized and the one that explained their approach to painting was that of self-direction.

 

What Distinguishes Authentic Impressionism In The Work Itself

Before I show you examples (primarily details of larger paintings) of their work and mine, there is a last link in the chain that completes the circle and that is you. The Impressionists sought and obtained a “direct relationship with the public” because they wanted to pass onto the viewer the experience they had while making the work. Degas noted, for example, that “Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see.” And Cézanne: our methods are only “simple means for us to make the public feel what we feel.” Keep in mind that this transfer of feeling, were we to paint to please juries or agents, would eventually be eroded. This is precisely what Degas had in mind when he recalled the shared sensibility of the serious artists of his generation: “In my day, people didn’t ‘succeed.’”

Below I have listed a few distinguishing features of authentic Impressionism but not all. For example, the role that a sense of atmosphere plays – particularly in the work of Monet and Cézanne, would require a considerably longer essay to explain.

1. Do not make pictures of things; make visual experiences

“No tasks, no tasks.” This was an admonition articulated by several in the group including Manet who early on was considered the group’s thought leader. This meant that painting should serve no external purpose, should not refer to the subject matter for its meaning or beauty. Making paintings with social commentary or paintings that depended on iconic figures for its ability to project feelings was viewed by Pissarro, as Joachim Pissarro (great grandson of the painter) reports, as nothing short of “aesthetic slavery.”

This is a huge shift in the understanding of what the activity of painting could be all about and, I might add, this shift is still not grasped, I would argue, by scholars writing today who mistakenly assume that painters, then and now, are akin to human cameras and picture-making journalists or sociologists. As odd as it may sound, we do not make pictures of things, even though a picture may result. We are visual artists and because of this we are not indifferent to visual stimuli such as line and color. In fact, because we are moved, essentially, by the visual elements that we see, it is best, then, that we not see the thing as a thing with a name but rather the visual elements of which the thing is composed.

2. You must be moved by and feel “sensations.”

You are not a painter if you don’t love painting more than anything else; but it is not enough to know your métier, you must also be moved.        – Manet     

Moved by visual elements, to be more specific. In other words, I may feel nostalgia when looking at my childhood home or loneliness in walking alone on a beach. But this isn’t what Manet is getting at. The visual elements that we respond to are sensations of color and line which, as stimuli, possess us. This oneness with nature is part of the sensation of feeling larger and, as our brush touches the canvas, we are propelled into a new realm of perception. So necessary is this metamorphosis to the activity of painting that it requires, as Monet instructed, that we do not see the thing before us. Just see little pieces of color. This means I must get past seeing things with names, like tree, house, person. Paint the head as you would a doorknob, advised Cézanne.

I live on Lake Como. And because my intention is not to make pictures of the lake, my challenge is to avoid the beauty of the lake that is horribly obvious to everyone! How can I get past that? How can I escape into a realm, where the lake as a lake not only disappears but the lake just as line and color begins to possess me?

Learning to see just the sensations of light provides the answer. And so I enter into a ritual: I must escape from the normal realm of perception by breaking my vision into visual pieces. These pieces of color stir feelings within me. My effort to mix these colors through an orchestration of varied brushstrokes completes who I am in that moment.

In the painting above which I did on Lake Como, yes, there is the lake and buildings, but look again (click image below for a larger version) through the eyes of someone trained to see past the facts of the lake and buildings; it becomes possible to actually see the vibrating sensual pieces of nature that we call line in some instances and color in others.

Color first. Lake and buildings second. I pulled out little pieces of color that I actually did see and placed them in a way that they vibrate off the canvas, carry, and mix optically at a distance. The intention here is to make a painting where the brush strokes of paint feel like the sensations of light that moved me. “Impressionism,” said Monet, “is only direct sensation.”

Below we find Monet making marks that enable viewers of his work to feel the light that moved him.

Degas (below) responding to the sensations of nature (models) in the studio.

Morisot (below), not seeing people or a bench but the sensations of light reflecting from human figures, uses emotive brushwork to give you the experience she had.

3. We Avoid Literal Precision

An example of a picture that is literally precise is a photograph. As noted above, we do not want our paintings to refer to or depend upon the subject matter for its emotional impact, we rely on a variety of visual elements to both express and evoke feelings. The brush stroke may be the most important of these elements for brush strokes are the language of feelings that the painter realizes.

Sometimes we caress the canvas; at other times we attack the canvas. Brush strokes are extensions of the liveliness of nature, a nature as source. Varied and raw, they transfer to the viewer the feeling of pure presence that the painter had. Authentic Impressionist paintings, therefore, aren’t about finish. We are not baking cakes or making something the value of which is determined by some external standard called “finished.” The value of a painting are the feelings we had as we made it. Paintings are alive at any point in time. Just as we would not say that a 10-year old is unfinished and therefore unworthy of our attention, we would not say that the Morisot painting above is incomplete and would hold more value were we to make it more literal.

Below is a detail from one of Monet’s water lilies. The painting is not about water lilies. They are the prompt. It’s about the feelings that Monet newly realizes as he stands before nature in what he called a posture of “total self-surrender.” Authentic Impressionists straddle two realms of sensations: the realm of the prompt or the subject matter and the realm of emotion that he or she wishes to render and make visible for the world to see and feel as well.

In my painting below, the prompt was lake, boats, and buildings. My purpose in surrendering to the sensations of my vision was to get captured and propelled into a realm where I am moved and able to move someone else.

A viewer may initially conclude that authentic Impressionist’s work is not precise. But, as with the concept “finish”, the concept “precise” is a category mistake. Are relationships among people precise? We ought to treat paintings as living things. If when you see a Monet painting and are moved and we know that his intention was to “render his feelings,” we could say that he was precise in that rendering, but making a picture of a boat look precisely like a boat didn’t interest him nor does it interest me. Personally, I find literal paintings to be rather boring.

4. We Paint In Layers

You may have noticed that these paintings are painted in layers. For example, let me take a detail of the painting above to illustrate what I mean.

On the left (above) is the detail and it enables us to look more closely at a section of the painting in question. On the right is a diagram showing how the painting was painted in layers. The top layer is the final layer or painting. The layer under the top layer is the underpainting and the bottom layer is the canvas. Now, understand that the use of three layers would be the simplest version; Monet used dozens of layers, but the virtue of this construction is that it allows the viewer to look down into the painting and past the surface layer, sometimes all the way down to what is called the ground or actual canvas. This gives the viewer a sense of space, almost 3D like. Lines and color tangle, adding a sense of movement or freshness along with depth.

Above are two details of the paintings you have already seen. Note how lively brush strokes sit on top of brush strokes below and, in the case of Morisot, we see down to the canvas itself. It is obvious, particularly in the case of Morisot, that she is not seeing a little girl but the sensations of line and color that compose the little girl. We can feel, by her marks, how she was moved, how nature touched her.

5. A process of becoming

Meyer Shapiro, an important scholar of visual art, said that the longer he looked at the work of Manet and the Impressionists the more he understood that their accomplishment was “to preserve painting – as a practice, a set of possibilities, a dream of freedom.” This is the essence of authentic Impressionism. The activity permits us to express our feelings and realize new ones that could not have been possible had we not made those marks. There is an unfolding, a self-creation, a becoming that is the single most important motivation for an authentic Impressionist. Which is not to say that we are not interested in sales and security. Of course we are. But not at the expense of becoming who we are most.

This particular understanding of freedom as a process of becoming was stated nicely by Cézanne who wrote, “Every time I stand in front of my easel, I am another man, and always Cezanne.” He is saying that with every painting he grows a little, and in some small way, he is another man. And yet, he is always Cézanne.

But this type of freedom, linked all the way back to the need for self-direction in terms of independent exhibitions, is not easily grasped in our culture today because the emphasis is on the process, less so on the painting, which merely happens along the way.

For example, the painting on the left above is by Cézanne, the one on the right is by me. Cézanne’s painting looks as though it may not be Impressionist work. It seems a little flatter. There is less overt vigorous brushwork than someone like Morisot. His work generally does not employ the bright colors that we find in Monet or Degas’ work. For reasons having to do with the Cézanne product, then, scholars have consistently declared Cézanne a Post-Impressionist. Yet Cézanne was born before Monet, exhibited with the Impressionists, studied with Pissarro, and he himself identified with the group, saying at one point, “For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject but to realize sensations.” He also offered this Impressionist admonishment: “The artist must be a laborer in his art and discover early on his means of realization…It all comes down to this: to have sensations and to read nature.”

Authentic Impressionism turns, then, not on the result of the process (i.e., the product) but the process itself that issues in becoming. So the distinctive features of authentic Impressionism outlined above are likely, maybe probable, but not determinant.  When we render our feelings sincerely by making marks on a canvas, those marks are a manifestation and a completion of who we are in that moment, as we have seen. The process puts us on our original path. Because of this, it is easy to distinguish the work of one Impressionist from the next and probably most easily in distinguishing the work of Cézanne from the others. Yet given their approach, their self-understanding, they were Impressionists all.

If truth be told, the “what” of Impressionism was not the independent exhibitions or even the “new painting.” Rather, the “what” of Impressionism” was and is the new painter, a painter committed not to the production of canvases or even the finishing of them,  but to the process of becoming that is part of the making of them. The “why” of sincerity explains the “what” of independence.

 

And the Viewer

In this mode of painting, I wish to make paintings that refer to nothing. The boats, the trees, or houses are merely prompts or points of departure. I want the viewer of my work to feel something of the sensations I felt when I made it. The need to have work of this nature in one’s home is not the need for decoration or the need to have a ready chocolate box at hand. Rather, it is to have a continuous source of pure presence and of exhilaration. It is to have a way to get caught up and carried away, always. It is to have access to a mood of fullness or liveliness, or of plenitude. Think of a painting not as an object but as a state of interactive fascination that propels you into a crossing, a metamorphosis, a becoming. You, as the viewer, can have a similar experience as I did when I made the painting. Hence, the virtue of collecting art that moves you.

A well-known painter by the name of Vibert ran into Degas in a museum one day. Anxious to have Degas visit his exhibition, Vibert implored, “You must come to see our exhibition of water colors. You may find our frames and rugs a little too fancy for you, but art is always a luxury, isn’t it?

“Yours, perhaps, “ retorted Degas, “but mine are an absolute necessity.”

—

[i] I studied primarily in the studio of William Schultz. Schultz’s primary teacher was Robert Brackman. Brackman studied with Robert Henri for a time and Henri studied in Paris in the 1880s. Brackman also studied with Ivan Olinsky who was a student of John Singer Sargent. Sargent in turn was close to the French Impressionists, especially Monet. I also studied briefly with Wolf Kahn who was a student of Hans Hoffman.

[ii] Degas inveighed against the spontaneity of Impressionism and at other times he complained that his serious eye problems made working out of doors impossible. Yet he worked from nature indoors and from memory. “I would rather do nothing than do a rough sketch without having looked at anything.”

[iii] As reported by his great-grandson Joachim Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean, p. 19.

 

From the 1860s into the 1930s, a period that might be called the grand tradition of painting, the task of visual artists was to respond to visual sensations. Manet, Cèzanne, and Matisse each spoke of the subject as merely a prompt. The experience of looking was broken down into visual pieces and the pieces would be put back together according to the will of the painter. Painters did not do portraits, as such, where the task was to achieve a likeness if not a visual expression of the very personality of the model. Instead, as Cèzanne inimitably advised, “Paint the head as you would a door knob.”

You can see the difference by comparing the sensibility of Nicolai Fechin with Edgar Degas. 

 

That Fechin was a master painter is not in question. I can admire the skill and brushwork and the wonderfully presented likeness. But at the same time, the painting (above) feels distant, as though the model were far away, separate from my time and space. This may be because painting is about the face, not the space in which the model poses. It’s a portrait. She’s gorgeous but I would have preferred a study where the face is not prioritized, where the head, in space, is more of a door knob.

These are figure studies by Degas. It is not about the beauty or the psychology of the models. It is more about the pedagogy of sensations, of being alive at that moment, in a space with others in that space. It’s about an affective attachment, a moment of pure presence that is alive a century after the hand of Degas touched the paper. The models were just a prompt.

Again Degas. This work (above) is a study. We can see construction lines where values separate, none where values melt. The colors are somber and minimal and appropriate given that the model is against the light. I feel as though I could be in that room.

Berthe Morisot’s approach is similar to that of Degas. The face of the model (above) is very much there, but it is not pulled out of the space in which she sits. It is as though Morisot does not see the head or the dress or the grass as head or dress or grass. Chronological time is suspended. We are one in the same space and time.

These are studies by Morisot. As opposed to a literal treatment of the subject, Morisot seeks instead to open her visual experience, wanting to be possessed by it – the relationship of gesture and scale, the way the light falls on the subjects in that moment, the feeling of air, the energy of color. Morisot is not painting a picture of two people as much as she is rendering her feelings of fullness as a response to visual sensations. The painting is a Morisot.

This young girl is not distant from us today. We can exit through Morisot’s work and straddle two realms. Our “now” melts into the “now” of the young girl drawing.

Even with this traditional pose, we find Morisot locating the two figures inside of tonality of a given space. These studies remind me of Jane Bennett’s characterization of activity that exists apart from and beyond commercial activity. Writes Bennett: “Enchantment is a feeling of being connected in an affirmative way to existence; it is to be under the momentary impression that the natural and cultural worlds offer gifts and, in so doing, remind us that it’s good to be alive.”

Studies, as opposed to portraits, are never under one’s control, never “only or fully the product of will or intention.” Consequently, there is something vibratory, possibly unintended, that keeps on moving forward.

NOTE: The featured image at the top is a head study by Bill Schultz.