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Admin note from Chris Saper: This thread was split off from Linda Brandon's Oil Critique, "Jack", since it delves more into philosophy better suited for discussion in the Cafe.
In response to Jim Riley's comment:
Quote:
John,
I agree with your comments and attempted (without luck) to find Robert Henri's book "The Art Spirit" where he provides helpful comments on the role of backgrounds in a portrait. I do recall that he believed the background recedes and exists only as a compliment to the figure.
I also like Chase's quote regarding overt quests for every detail.
"Don't hesitate to exaggerate color and light. Don't worry about telling lies. Most tiresome people - and pictures are the stupidly truthful ones. I really think I prefer a little deviltry."
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Jim,
I couldn't agree more with you and Chase about the artists who equate pursuing slavish detail with art or truth. A case in point is the work of several (not all) of the so-called classical realists, who unquestionably possess uncanny 'reality'-rendering skills but whose paintings are, yes, boring. Not quite the same can be said of our friend (no names mentioned here) whom I referred to in Reston as practicing 'portraiture as high technology', remember? At least his work ocasionally exhibits some depth, some 'gravitas'. The bland/ prettyfied classical realists can be found, for those who are reading this but are not familiar with their work, in a site called artrenewal.org, in its "Living Masters" gallery. The artrenewal gallery as a whole contains a wonderful array of past and present painters besides the bland classical realists, bless their heart. Unfortunately it also contains high-horse editorializing against 'modernism' which reflects an overt bias if not outright ignorance of art and culture history and painting.
From my own high horse I'd like to emphasize that, in my own experience, artistic truth does not lie in 'copying' or 'duplicating' visual reality, no matter how 'selectively' and 'artistically' the task is approached, as most of us portrait painters soon find out: the edifice of reality alone is composed of many floors, some decidedly closer to heaven, with no fast elevator anywhere around
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