Blake Gopnik trashes official portraits in Washington Post article

[Cindy Procious]

From the Gopnik article:

"Official portraitists don't share many of the tools, techniques and materials used by the contemporary artists whose work ends up in art museums -- they hardly even seem to share the same appetites. Recording a face for posterity and making it look fine and noble barely registers as something worth attempting in contemporary art, especially given how well it's been achieved before. What artist could hope to make a mark as a second Gilbert Stuart when there's hardly an American museum that doesn't already have a picture by the first ? When it comes to working in oil paint, the past's great portraitists have left so little breathing room that most artistically ambitious painters are likely to try their luck elsewhere."

Wow.

This is so patently ridiculous it's laughable.

[Thomas Nash]

Yeah, pretty funny isn't it? It kinda shows how much Gopnik is stuck in the confused 1970's or 80's art world mind set, far from being the "cutting edge" expert he would like us to think he is.

I think this concept has been pretty well debunked a long time ago. I addressed it in my response to the W. Post, we'll see if they print it.

He praised Gilbert Stuart for being an "important" artist of his day and never suggested that he should have been pursuing something "more cutting edge". Gopnik, (who has gotten his art history wrong in the past) seems to have forgotten that portraiture already had a strong tradition and the bar had been raised pretty high when Stuart decided to take a shot at it.

Many thought (and still do) that Anthony Van Dyck had taken portrait painting as far as it could go. Van Dyck had been dead 114 years when Stuart was born. Had Stuart been the more "artistically ambitious artist" that Gopnik envisions, and been afraid to even try to paint portraits, the folks lining up today at the National Gallery to see his work would be in for a big disappointment. Fortunately for everybody, Stuart didn't have access to Gopnik's wise council.

Gopnik has no problem labeling Sargent as an example of an "artist who mattered most" , despite the fact that by the time he took up the art form, BOTH Van Dyck and Stuart had already "left little breathing room". Fortunately Sargent didn't buy into Gopniks silly notion either. Aren't we all glad that our Mr. Sargent at least "gave it a try"?

Like you said, laughable.

[Michele Rushworth]

Tom, I'd be very interested to read what you wrote to the Washington Post, and I'm sure others would also. Could you post it here?

[Thomas Nash]

Gopnik never interviewed me before critiquing my painting of the Speaker of the House.

If he had he wouldn't have made his silly claim that it "looks like it was done from a photograph". There's nothing wrong with using photos, but this was one painting where I used more artists license than usual. Newt actually posed in my studio in Georgia because the sun would not hit his face the way I wanted when he stood with his back to the Mall. The sun would have had to shine through the solid building to hit like it does in my painting. Apparently this critic was completely fooled by my ability to make this scene up.

Newt sat while I did color studies of the general light effect.

I will try to post some pictures. The first will show me with my pochade box. You can also see a small oil color study I did of the Mall. It's laying on the table.
I will add more eventually.

[Thomas Nash]

I used a big light fixture to emulate the sun. It doesn't show in the picture but you can see the light pole. The north window light is too soft to get the effect I needed for this painting. I don't always do things the same way. I do what I have to do once I design the painting in my head.

[Michele Rushworth]

Thanks for showing us parts of your process. It's fascinating!

[Thomas Nash]

This will give you some idea of what the painting looks like.

[Thomas Nash]

This gives you some reference point for the scale of things. My wife took this picture from down in front of the Capitol while I painted the colors of the Mall. Most people don't see the bird net from a distance, but it is a big distraction when you are right behind it trying to look out at the Mall.

[Thomas Nash]

My wife snapped this wide angled picture when I was in the very early stages of trying to get familiar with the Mall and capture it's colors. In the three days I spent there I found I liked it better when the sun was shining more clearly. I was already pretty sure I wanted to paint the column on the right side of the painting but it didn't line up the way I needed, in order to see both it and the view of the Washington Monument at the angle I wanted.

I sometimes keep my brushes behind the painting where you might otherwise store another canvas. I have a box for wet canvases. You can see the brush tops sticking up. It's divided into three parts so that the brushes don't all run together if they have wet paint on them. The middle is not as deep so I can put short brushes there and they don't fall down. I wasn't using any real short handled brushes at this early stage. The canvas is toned grey. I sometimes work on toned, sometimes on white. I used a bit of charcoal to rough it in. There's not much to see of the painting, just thought some people might find the set up interesting.

[Thomas Nash]

One of my biggest challenges was that the positions of the various elements did not cooperate to make the painting I envisioned in my head. The Washington Monument for one thing, is a very tall and insistent structure that would've been too much of a distraction had I not "worked with it a bit". Have you ever painted someone who owned a really large dog and tried to find a way to not have it hog the picture?

The pattern of the railing didn't line up in an interesting way and the height of the top bar and the way it would intersect the view down below was unfortunate. I could write a book on the artifice and liberties employed to make the painting that the W.P. critic was certain was just a copy of a photo.

Here I'm just sketching and figuring, trying to find a way to make my idea work out. The easel is one of those light weight aluminum ones with the telescoping legs.