 Drawing 09·26·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches It is getting scary. The drawing I present today is undeniably deep and profound. That's the scary part. This drawing's in-your-face centerness insists you look, not look away. When is scope and depth undeniable? Take a look at Alberto Giacometti's "Diego" (below). That is one answer in addition to the one I give you in my drawing. Look and hang; you will discover yourself.  Alberto Giacometti, "Diego", oil on canvas, 1953
0 Comments
 Drawing 09·17·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches On his deathbed, at 88 years of age, Michelangelo complained, "Why must I go now? I am just learning the alphabet of my profession." I do worry. I seek perfect clarity. What I seek is better proclaimed as pellucidity. Pellucidity is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in one's lifetime. Pellucidity is defined as "lucid in style or meaning; easily understood." I strive to be lucid. I make Art. Always I walk away from my products knowing full success has not quite been achieved, Yes, but... I can, and I must, become pellucid.
Yesterday's drawing was better than the two that preceded it. Is it perfect, correct, pellucid? No way! Today I go back in search of my clarity. I seek intellectual and emotional pellucidity. I want pellucidity to inhabit my works of Art.  Drawing 08·24·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Aristotle wrote, "Style to be good must be clear.... Clearness is secured by using the words that are current and ordinary." In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman states, "He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher." And here I am. I have learned from my teacher (Philip Guston). I have now removed all his idiosyncratic ideas from my works. I did not destroy him, as Whitman suggests I do, but I have moved away from him, I have created my own style. Clearness is an issue with me. I am working toward strong personal engagement with my viewers. Aristotle's idea is important to me, i.e., use of ordinary language is necessary to clarity. For me, the visual artist, ordinary language is visual art's most basic principles and elements. The most basic language of art is non-representative; it is color, form, composition, surface, value, et cetera. Basic visual art language also contains imagery because it has form and it contains the artifice of light. The viewer may call this "Representative Imagery," but I do not want to dilute meaning in art by representing something perceived in the real world. I have destroyed one idea of Philip Guston's. Guston's late work, it allegiance to simple, Representative Imagery, is the distraction I have destroyed. It must be destroyed because it hinders perception of the actual expressive quality that resides in the basic language of visual art. Yesterday's drawing exhibits an exploration of surface, surface as a flow of light and space. As I made this drawing I thought of Mark Rothko's work. Rothko's clarity was his reduction; his painting are reduced to expressive play on surface and light.  Mark Rothko, Blue & Gray" oil on canvas, 1962  "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 7), oil on canvas, 52x57⅞ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)} I didn't know! Who knew? Not me! I am in search for personal monuments. One of my greatest influencers is Henry Moore. I adore his work. I have always been intrigued by Moore great, monolithic, monumental sculptures. Henri Matisse said an artist should look at one's earliest works as he searches for self; in doing so the artist discovers his natural affinities and purpose. I believe the most important education for the artist is reflection upon one's earliest impactful, intensely emotional responses to visual discoveries. Yesterday's work on the painting, "Honorable Terms", altered this painting from a mess of form and light to a monument to form and light. "Honorable Terms" now reflects personal centering. Yesterday's work was mindful discovery linked to personal, emotional responsiveness. "Honorable Terms" is now a monumental, intellectual success.  Henry Moore, "Atom Piece", Bronze Sculpture, 1964  "Gonna Speak to the Crowd" (2021 No.5, state 10), oil on canvas, 62¾x57⅜ inches, {"I'm gonna spare the defeated — I'm gonna speak to the crowd. I'm gonna spare the defeated, boys, I'm going to speak to the crowd. I am goin' to teach peace to the conquered. I'm gonna tame the proud." - Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Day Blues" (2001)} I am not happy with the way this is going. Is "Gonna Speak to the Crowd" getting away from me? I am concerned about centering. Is this painting reluctant to find center? I am working to find center, but trouble continues. I am concerned. Engaging by simplicity has been difficult. Is it possible? Can "Gonna Speak to the Crowd" become centered in both personal and compositional realms? I have not given up. Somehow this painting reminds me of a complex painting by Richard Diebenkorn.  Richard Diebenkorn, "Urbana", oil on canvas, 156.2x121.3 cm, 1953  Drawing 07·07·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches This type of drawing comes from anxiety. Yesterday nothing seemed right. Mail I sent two days ago got lost in transit (found this morning in Stamford CT, despite it being addressed to Tunbridge VT, just across the river from me). Yesterday afternoon I went to dispose of my trash at our local dump. I returned; I felt something crawling on my neck. I grabbed it in my hand. It was a tick! Where the hell did that come from? I am always careful; I don't even walk on grass! Ticks around here carry scary diseases. Yesterday's drawing is a dark, marvelous drawing. I believe Mark Rothko would have liked it. I could not find a place to sign it on the image side of this drawing; I signed on the back.  Mark Rothko, "Untitiled", oil on canvas, 233.7x200.3 cm, 1969  Drawing 06·26·2021, pencil oil paper, 20x16 inches The lines at the bottom of today's drawing used a solution from my most important teacher, Philip Guston. Here I exhibit Guston's continual influence on me. I accept Guston's discovery of impactful compositional solutions. It is not just an idea espoused by Guston; Guston is in the good company of Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, and me. It is the in-your-face solution: this is a great means to capture and involve the viewer.  Philip Guston, "Room", oil on canvas, 1975(?)  Drawing 06·22·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Do images require a primary form. Is there misdirection without a primary form. Yesterday I read an article in the New Yorker, "My Struggle with Cézanne," written by the art critic Peter Schjeldahl. It is the following two paragraphs that spoke loudly to me:
"It’s a return to roots for MOMA, which initiated its narrative of modern painting in 1929 with a show that included van Gogh, Seurat, and Gauguin as well as Cézanne, whose broken forms made the others look comparatively conservative as composers of pictures. He stood out then, as he does now, for an asperity of expression that is analytical in form and indifferent to style. The appearance of his works is an effect, not a fulfillment. He revolutionized visual art, changing a practice of rendering illusions to one of aggregating marks that cohere in the mind rather than in the eye of a viewer. You don’t look at a Cézanne, some ravishing late works excepted. You study it, registering how it’s done—in the drawings, with tangles of line and, often, patches of watercolor. Each detail conveys the artist’s direct gaze at a subject but is rarely at pains to serve an integrated composition. Cézanne was savagely sincere in his ways of looking, true to what he called his “little sensation” in how things, bit by bit, met his regard. He made pictorial vision the exercise of an artist’s concerted will and a challenge to a viewer’s understanding." Recently I have this fear, a fear that my complex vision, the manner in which I make art, is broken into minute qualities and quantities of form, all searching for a coherent composition. With my "tangles of line," and "little sensation" after "little sensation," I find a composition. I fear I have a propensity to work like Cézanne, who Peter Schjeldahl says, was "rarely at pains to serve an integrated composition." Now I am at pains to serve an integrated composition. My recent idea is to identify a central form, or central thematic area, in each of my works. Yesterday's drawing is such work.  Drawing 06·18·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The force of my will made this one. It is apropos of my need to grab your attention, grab my attention. I center you, I center me, by using strong vertical forms. Somehow, when I was finished with this drawing, I was reminded of Picasso's "Crucifixion" from 1930. I believe it to be one of Picasso's most remarkable works, different as it is in color, space, and forms from anything else Picasso. Yes, in this crucifixion there is relationships to everything Picasso had done, and would do, but Picasso's approach here is quite different. The viewer is centered by the light-valued blue of the Christ figure and his distraught mother. After this centering, the viewer can wander, be continuously surprised by the complete animation, the literal references, within the composition, one after the next. My drawing is simpler, yet equally haunting. This bring me to the question of background. There is blank paper in my drawing. Does that work? I usually like to touch every surface. I usually feel the need to identify every part of my paper's surface as part of my space, my time, and my composition. That did not happen in this drawing's background. Does it work? There is a bold, forceful grab here: the viewer is captured by strong, vertical forms, I do believe the white paper ground serves its contrasting purpose. I see the white as definitive space; it is the flat plane in front of which the rest of the composition resides. Notice how Picasso dealt with his background and the negative space; four flat colored areas: blue, yellow, orange, red. Is the viewer bothered by these unidentifiable spaces? No! Instead the multiple compositionally positive forms grab and install the viewer within the composition. The forms are strong enough to support the vague spaces and surfaces Picasso's flat colors depict.  Pablo Picasso, "Crucifixion", oil on panel, 1930  "The Opposite of Indifference" (2021 No.4, state 13), oil on canvas, 54x51 inches, {"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Because of indifference one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead. His or her neighbor are of no consequence. Their hidden or visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an Abstraction." - Elie Wiesel, "US News & World Report" (27 October 1986)}  Drawing 06·17·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The background of the painting, "The Opposite of Indifference", reminds me of an old master painting, such as Rembrandt's "Self-Portrait" of 1665 (below). My browns and yellows come from Cadmium Yellow and Manganese Violet. Did Rembrandt do the same? I do know. My painting called for a touch of pure red, just as Rembrandt's did! My War, my seeking Peace, is strongly upon me. I am at War because of my desire to force myself (also, my viewers), into spotlight, concentration, and focus. This is me seeking Peace; I have been calling this centering. It is much more sophisticated than than simple centering. In both of today's works I compositionally grapple with this idea of forcing myself (and my viewers) to center into my work of art. Rembrandt did this well. Rembrandt's invention of semi-circles in his "Self-Portrait" moves the viewer off center into the spotlight of his face. Abstraction was Rembrandt's great gift; he always used it to control the composition, forcing the viewer into absorption, and involvement. Rembrandt captured us, his viewers, with abstract brushstrokes, light, color, shapes, and forms. I love Rembrandt's "Self-Portrait"of 1665 because you can see his complete mastery; Rembrandt grabs, captures his viewer through abstracted qualities available in the arsenal of a painter's tools. Yes, Rembrandt experienced War too; he too sought Peace through his art. For the artist, this War seeking Peace is the endless. It is the game we play.  Rembrandt, "Self-Portrait", oil on canvas, 111x85 cm, 1665 |
To read my profile go to MEHRBACH.com.
At MEHRBACH.com you may view many of my paintings and drawings, past and present, and see details about my life and work. Archives
September 2021
|
RSS Feed