[John de la Vega]

Timothy,
Thank you for the info on Shanks' work on ARC. Shouldn't he be in the Living Masters Section? Nothing comes up entering his name for a search on the site (yes, large and somewhat convoluted), which is really an oversight, woudn't you think?

I do think we agree on quite a few issues, besides inclusion in ARC. I will look up the names you gave me.

By the way, I wasn't refering to tightness or looseness in my comments on the classical realists. Tightness is perceptually unpleasant, whether boring, masterly, or not. Looseness can be boring also, I'm sorry to say, as your guy here, Fechin, could be in some of his paintings (I very much like this particular drawing and a LOT of his other work).

The great Lawrence Olivier was asked by a critic what lied at the heart of his acting, to which (who many consider) the greatest actor of the twentieth century quickly replied, "Well, it's all in the EYES, isn't it?" For us people painters particualarly, and I believe for painters in general, we could say something like,
"Well, it's all in the FORM, isn't it?"

I'm not talkin' psychological insight into human expression or any such esoteric or obtuse malarkey here: an ARM can be rendered to perfection in 'shape' and modeling nuances of lighting on the form, beautiful and accurate color (what I was referring to when I talked about 'copying' and 'duplicating') and still be totally devoid of 'the soul of the form' as Henry Hentsche, quoting Hawthorne, mentioned in a workshop I took with him many years ago.

Perhaps 'higher' truth and expressiveness, whatever these may mean to each and every one of us, are elusive things. Believing they will be arrived at through exhaustive execution of detail and 'duplication' totally misses the point, precisely because academic technique - whether in Parisian, Florentine ateliers or those on our own blessed land - often obscures and blocks the more direct path to essence, to a Zen transmition of a higher order of seeing and awareness.

By the same token, exhaustive copying and rendering, used as a gate to discovery, control and eventual mastery, alla Geoffrey Mims, can indeed function as the right gate, but just that, a gate, an important checkpoint on the road to artistic integration and self-realization. Surely one of many, but not necessarily the most important.

Sadly, in the case of many realists - not just some of the classical realists, but realists of all stripes - technique becomes, in my own subjective or objective evaluation of what they do - an obstacle to higher consciousness. The result is often contrived, shallow, sterile, albeit it very 'correct' work, which pulls the wool over many people's eyes.