Tattoos and Mr. Lopez. The BP Portrait Awards 2015.

'Sebastian' oil on canvas , by Czech painter  Jan Mikulka. 70x100cm

 Today was a very rainy day here in London. So after running a few errands I was on my way to make a few gallery visits. We visited the White Cube in Bermondsey with it's usual collection of massive art where the only mystery is how do they move it around and how much did it cost to build. Took us all of five minutes so back in the rain we went. Our last stop was at the BP Portrait Award  show currently displayed at the National Portrait Gallery. One thing I really like about this show is that it takes chances and  it selects a great variety of styles within a strict definition of painting. Moreover, it doesn't shun figurative artwork or traditional skill. What are they thinking!?

Like last year, why the first prize went to the painting it went to will remain a mystery to me. I thought it was a-ok, a bit uneven, miming photography and uninteresting despite the pretense that it was inspired by a biblical passage or something lofty like that. Oh well.

 My favorite piece was the beautiful portrait of a man in the forest by Jan Mikulka, pictured above. The visitors consistently vote him as a favorite but no prize this year. I think he already won one in a previous edition.

The second prize was the stunner below, very Dutch, timeless. Quite beautiful and executed with the precision required when one attempts to go for it and make things hyper-realistic... or bust. Moreover, it doesn't have the tired rendering of every nook and cranny so typical of hyper-realistic paintings, it leaves room to breathe despite accounting for every hair. 

 

 ' Eliza' by Michael Gaskell (b.1973)   370 x 270mm, acrylic on board. 2nd Prize.

"My mother and my brother on a Sunday evening". Borja Buces Renard (b. 1978) oil on canvas, 1500x2000mm

Every year there has been an increased presence of Spanish artists and some of them are excellent so it is quite natural that the Third Prize went to the one pictured above. It wasn't my favorite painting of the 'Spanish group', to give it a name, but it had nice dissolving edges and directness.

And now for the rant: Why so many portraits with tattoos? No, not that one. 

It seems to me that the abundant presence of Spanish painters and the clear ambition of many of their canvases indicates a lack, rather than an abundance, of venues and conduits in my native country. These painters are here in London because Madrid and Barcelona and every other town in between must  not be offering the market and the livelihood some of these artists would want and aspire to. Where is the Spanish National Portrait Gallery? Where are the monetary awards? True, Spain is going through a Greek-like financial debacle right now. Can it be that simple? I suppose it can but shouldn't there be  more Italians or Greeks as well?.

 It is great that these artists are seeking international exposure. Being myself a product of an art school in Madrid, either these gals and guys must have put great effort into surmounting the dismal quality of art schooling in Spain  or the schools have changed dramatically.  May be they were left with the only option: To look  at the masters they had around, quixotic as that may be. Except  in this case they all happened to pick the same one.

It's quite clear that the shadow of Antonio López looms large in current Spanish figurative painting, may be too large. Invariably, all the portraits from Spain had that bleak,  underwear-and-socks, asylum lighting and morbid look that López mastered. Don't get me wrong, I love love love Antonio López and he is himself following a  tradition of austere and matter-of-fact art that is oh-so-very Spanish but the portraits here presented could almost be authored interchangeably. That doesn't make them bad but it is hard to believe that some of these artists are really looking for a unique voice. Take a a look:

"Natalia" Jorge Abad-Jaime De Aragón. (oil on canvas)

"The Red Chair" Maria Carbonell. (b. 1980) oil on canvas.

"Back Portrait n8" Daniel Coves. Oil on canvas.

"Juanito" Jose Luis Corella.  Oil on board.

"Rocío, desnudo sobre alfombra" Eduardo Millán (oil on canvas)

Odd, isn't it ? They are not even from the same city and yet they all share an uncanny family resemblance. Of all the Spanish paintings, my favorite without a doubt had to be this one. There were many worthy pictures to be seen here and, as a visitor, you won't leave without some nifty ideas about where to place your next tattoo.

Underground sketching, drawing at full speed.

Commuting in the underground is not always wonderful. It beats driving any day however. At the very least it is a chance to spend some time with yourself (granted, a very squeezed yourself enveloped in humanity with all that implies). I actually have come to look forward to the trip because I can sketch the immense diversity of London types. For anyone that wants to emulate this activity, here are some things I find useful:

Often, I add some marker shading at home, not in the train.

You will find a wide array of models to choose from in the tube: young, old, well dressed  or messy, black and white and everything in between. While there is a lot of variety, most people spend their trip staring at their phones which makes for strikingly similar demeanor.

The page format is irrelevant but it should be comfortable to carry discreetly.

Eye-contact in the London tube is tantamount to assault so I try to chose someone to draw who is not too close or  directly in front of me -no matter how tempting the beautiful guy with the turban might be. I haven't gotten into any serious trouble but I've had the occasional gal deliberately turn away and the random guy give me dirty looks. If the subject is a child,parents might  or might not like you  doodling. The London crowd is a vocal crowd so you'll know. For the most part, people are complimentary and curious. When drunk, they invariably want you to draw them so avoid drunks like the plague.

If tsubjects stay long enough, you can make elaborate compositions.

It goes without saying, there is no telling when your model will  move or simply bolt out with no regard for your beautiful rendering. Don't linger, this is an exercise in speed, gesture and memory. As in life, nobody is too precious and they all are.

so many races and outfits. So many cellphones and earphones as well.

Guess what else moves. The train. Modern trains are a whisper but drawing in the Bakerloo line will test your limits so don't wait for full careening down the tunnel to add that perfect nose line. This might be the time to work on a particularly wiry afro for example.

The morning commute, not a good time to pull out the pencils.

Weekends and evenings have more variety anyway.

Snoring, kissing, reading, eating and breaking into song, all in the tube.

Equipment simplicity: This is not the place to  pull out an easel and take measurements with extended arm. Backpacks and clipping boards are not efficient. A simple pencil box and a notebook that fits in your pocket are best. That's it, quick and to the point. Add an eraser and pencil sharpener for emergencies.

Stations themselves have some unique features and depth.

 You learn to draw the figure through gesture, its pose and the pose of clothes. You also learn to reduce the figure to its most salient features and details without time for perfect outlines, shading or intricate skirt patterns. I try to make little portraits, not generic ones. A casual observer should be able to pick each character individually.  You'll discover that being selective with detail is much more important than adding every detail.

so many faces, so little time.

Don't sweat the wrong stuff.  Go for the next victim...er model.

Compose the page. Make the whole page look interesting to look at. This is actually fun. Leave some blank space, play with negative shapes, use contrasting figures and groups. Incorporate a bit of the environment if it helps to break the monotony or move from faces to feet to dogs  to suitcases. 

More than anything, tell a story, be tender, humorous, grotesque, nobody is paying you, so feel free to add, subtract and exaggerate. Give in to your inner cartoonist (carefully) or your inner novelist. Make notes, add stains, you are making art no documenting immigrants or taking the census. Have fun.

Can you find the dog? 

William Morris, The Avengers and collective art.

This entry is a rambling reflection on the nature of "collective art" -not to be confused with "art collectives", very different and a whole bundle of separate trouble-. It was prompted by a visit to one of the museums dedicated to William Morris in London, a trip to the multiplex to watch that visual effects mishmash that is "Avengers, Age of Ultron" and some troubles I had with my contract back in February. I'll throw in the recent experiment that the Dulwich Gallery conducted in which they hid a Chinese-made reproduction  of a Fragonard original and asked patrons to find the copy in the museum among all the other paintings. Only 11% recognized the copy as such!

WilliamMorris Museum, Walthamstow. watercolor

It is sort of a given that an artist has a vision, a signature or style that is unique and can't be reproduced. This notion wasn't always widely accepted. For centuries, artists toiled as anonymous craftsmen conforming to a model and only rarely stepping out out to be "original". Artists created wondrous cathedrals and beautiful scrolls after lengthy apprenticeships and many years of imitative practice. Only during the Renaissance did we start to seek individual uniqueness in Western art. The fever pitch of artistic exceptionalism occurred during the Romantic period when grabbing a pen or brush with some merit transformed poets and painters into divine lightning rods. It was also at this time that craft gave way to individual expression as the most sought out characteristic in a work of art. We are still suffering the aftermath of that. No artist  can be satisfied today if something doesn't have his/her personal touch. A craftsman might enjoy and be rightfully proud of a well made shoe but wherever the word "art" is uttered, we expect to see something distinct, not just a well made product.

St Cecilia stained glass window. W. Morris workshop.

Being a computer artist by day (and a desperate artist by night and on weekends), i couldn't help but notice the similarities between the computer graphics artists of today and the medieval manuscript illustrators or Morris weavers and printers of yesteryear. CG artists, like their more traditional counterparts, have a client to satisfy, deadlines and quality controls. As any traditional artist should do, they breathe their craft day and night. Even those whose job is to replicate photo-real images or follow the art director's commands to the letter are bona-fide artists constantly being diminished by people who think computers do all the work ...which is like saying Word Perfect wrote the Harry Potter books and some recent legislation. And yet, he final product is as anonymous as the lengthy list of credits at the end,  that wall to the fallen that scrolls on the screen at full speed  and  where noone can find their name. The personality in movies is better left to the actors and the directors and that's fine.

On a side note: I've grown wary of producers and other "visionaries"  filling their mouths with the word "artist" to address overworked employees and animators. It is a cheap means of flattery. It comes attached to implicit demands for shorter deadlines and weekend work . It challenges employees to live up to their calling and shut up because a "true artist" would demand nothing but relentless devotion to the project beyond any  concerns for family or health.

If they ever  use  the term "family" to address their crew, then it's time to head running for the doors. Family members don't get laid off.

Artwork for Avengers, by ILM. Beautiful imagery in a really dumb movie.

May be this is why it is sometimes difficult to find satisfaction in a job that demands a well crafted product, not necessarily a personal one. There are many , many, similar or worse jobs out there but as someone trying to interact with the world as an artist, "well made" or "technically proficient" might not be enough. I know I'll get in trouble for this but in some cases it might not even be necessary. Programmers and technicians, on the other hand, can develop their creativity to their full potential making cg movies because their "product" is rarely the film itself but the technical achievement that made it possible. The film itself could be two hours of beautifully simulated liquids and flying debris and that would be great. Wait, isn't that what we normally get? I'll admit personal limitations play a role in this as well when trying to reach artistic goals. .

It is possible that the artists and craftsmen employed by William Morris felt the same way. W.M. was an utterly interesting socialist and artist who advocated a return to craft and simplicity and whose clients were invariably wealthy since they were the only ones able to afford his designs. His friend Burne-Jones contributed numerous designs that were transformed into tapestries, tiles and stained glass. But his workers might not have been the happiest bunch even though they were not too bad off compared with other workers inhaling fumes and cotton dust in Victorian London. Their products were glorious but did they think of themselves as artists? Did it matter? Self-realization is a recent phenomenon after all.

William Morris bust

I wonder if the Chinese copyist that painted the oil commissioned by the Dulwich gallery to entice patrons to test their nose for fakes (attendance increased four fold during the challenge) felt any artistic satisfaction beyond the production of a decent copy. Seeing the two pieces side by side, it is obvious the Chinese piece lacks a lot of the subtle transparencies and mystery of the original. Yet only 1 in every ten visitors found the fake among all the paintings in the gallery. 3 out every 100 though a portrait of a lady by Rubens was the fake piece shuffled among the priceless artworks.

The true Fragonard.

Chinese copy commissioned by the gallery from a company that mass produces such copies.

Two observers compare the copy and the original now placed side by side.

Does a weaver have time or even want to weave a single napkin for himself after 9 hours at the loom? My conclusion because I need to make up one is that for any artistic satisfaction to occur, most effort should be poured into that napkin, personal projects of any kind, no matter how small or unmarketable , drawings, photos, animated shorts, models.. I should have followed that advice myself in regards to my own career. Even when studios stipulate in their contracts that they own every dream and doodle, nobody gets paid enough to give away the art they create outside work, their mark in the world.

Notes on Constable

This  entry was prompted by a Rob Adam's  blog entry . His article is of a similar nature.  After visiting the V&A Constable exhibition in London he reevaluates our regard for John Constable. His contention,  if I'm allowed to paraphrase and which he exposes very eloquently, is that Constable was a painter unduly elevated to the level of a, say, J.W.M Turner by critics that go on parroting what other critics have said before them instead of taking a new hard look at the actual art in front of them.

After reading Rob's  blog -and being better acquainted  with Constable's work now that I've seen  the show at the Huntington in San Marino and the V&A in London today- I wanted to clarify my thoughts on this proto-impressionist's standing, oh and gush about his bravura brushstroke and thick handling.

I have to concur that Constable is not at the level of Turner but he is not that far behind despite the fact that both painters ,who were rivals in life, have been made into the poster children  of the Victorian landscape. The exhibition had some pieces by contemporaries of Constable and a few were quite good but in my view Constable is deservedly lifted a bit above. He shares with Turner the romantic handling of the brush, chaotic at times, heavy handed often and almost abstract in the pursuit of movement and light.

My first gut reaction after seeing the show: there is much to love in Constable. The full size massive study for "The leaping horse" was breathtaking. Notice I said the "study". The final painting was quite bland in my opinion. In the study, the cloying impasto lends an enormous energy to the main figure of the rider  that seems to be pulling away from the dark soil. The startled horse is clearly the muscular center.  The sky seems a bit heavy and troweled . How much of my liking this painting  is due to my biased view as a 21st century observer...i can't tell.

Jump to the finished piece and,voila, Constable has placed the willow stump smack in the middle paralyzing everything and quartering the picture. It seems he wants to open the right side to the view but I think it actually just looks oddly static and contrived all of a sudden. The river area is now a band of specks and  rendered details below the bridge, a sort of "a below the ground" cut-out storage. The barge in the final work competes with the horse for attention. The sky is probably the only thing that has improved in the final piece by receding and becoming more airy.

"Leaping Horse", study"

"The Leaping Horse". John Constable.

But but but, as I was saying, there is much to love in Constable. I am talking mostly about his outdoor studies. Constable was a pioneer of the outdoor sketches even though he was not the first one to attempt them. He carefully made notations about clouds and skies, kept pocket books full of drawings and generally devoted himself to capture transient moments. He did many close studies of buildings, plants, animals  and man-made objects. One of my favorite studies had to be this elm trunk. In the exhibition, it was displayed between two very similar studies by Lorain and Lucien Freud.

"Study of foliage"

His studies done in canvas shreds, wood planks and paper are really  good and they show a keen appreciation for nature. However, his subject matter, unlike that of Turner's, is very limited and he is clearly uncomfortable with grander themes.

So what, if anything, would make Constable step down a few notches from the pedestal he has been placed by art historians? Well, I think he is still one of the best landscape painters of his time and I am in no position to un-seat him but he is safely dead and indifferent to my musing so here are some thoughts:

His paintings often lack focus, especially the finished ones. This is a tough one because nobody says a painting has to absolutely have a focus but Constable seemed to have a chronic need to populate every bit of landscape with figures or elements in his finished pieces. Chicken, donkey, boy, dog, chicken, peasant girl, horse, birds....oh, another chicken! nah, water hens.  This creates tiny accents all across that distract and muddle the otherwise perfectly nice landscapes. He also has a strange propensity to highlight every bit which almost feels like the paintings are seen through a snowstorm of specks.

Here is a painting that is just adorable despite, or may be because of  all the bits of business in it.

"Cottage in the cornfields" The photo doesnt do it justice but you still can see the two butterflies, can't you?

Here are two nice paintings . The study for "The cornfields" is lovely. The final piece is not bad either but he has added a flock of sheep, a kid getting a serious case of cholera (ok, I'm extrapolating), a dog and two women. It's starting to feel crowded and the kid seems a bit odd. In the final piece, there is so much going on around the barge  with all the little "nativity figures" that  it seems clear  the artist  is not convinced the beautiful -but somewhat technical- rendition of the boat will be sufficient to deliver the painting.

"Study for the cornfields"

"The cornfields"

"Boat Building Near Flatford Mill"

And then there's this crazy mess...

"Opening of the Waterloo Bridge"

 Clumsy perspective. Constable didn't like perspective, I can tell. But not because he didn't care. His studies and copies of  Paolo Ucello make it perfectly clear he cared. A lot of his church towers seem tilted, his ponds and rivers often "climb" beyond reason  and he favors compositions that act as "open windows" and layered distant vistas over anything too architectural or layered. There are quite a lot of examples of this. He also liked to put things in the middle of his paintings, again, that is not an error per se but it makes things a bit static and just why?.

On a side note ..but somewhat related,,  his tendency to mismatch reflections. I know, I know, it is not essential to be accurate but in almost every Branch Hill pond study and painting the sky light  wasn't symmetrically mirrored. I know people could find physical explanations and the offset is more noticeable in some cases than others  but it drove me bonkers.

"Branch Hill pond" with the sun mirrored slightly off

Tortured compositions. Constable based many oh his compositions on Lorain, Poussin, Ruisdael and other masters he studied through his extensive collection of prints. On his own however, he either flatly reproduced  what was in front of him or didn't seem to know where to place things and ended up scattering elements of equal importance all over, creating tortured compositions or placing things smack in the middle.

I cannot really comment  on his sense of color since  I suspect many  pigments have probably faded or have been altered by time.  


Here is another composition. This is a finished piece probably started in the field with the aid of  a tracing frame. It basically portrays an "accurate view". It is competent, pleasant but a bit blah,  almost just decorative. If it wasn't Constable, would you have stopped to look at it?

"Watermeadows near Salisbury"

Would have been my favorite painting of the show (again, the photo is not nearly as impressive as the real thing) except for that TRIANGLE on the sky. Couldn't he at least have interrupted the straight line by chopping a few branches? The bottom of this painting was out of this world beautiful!

"The Path to Church"

In conclusion, Constable was a great painter that seems to have certainly hit some highs and elicited a great response in the public. All masters make mistakes or produce substandard work from time to time. Should abundance of the substandard work take away from the merits of the highlights or is it the payment in the from of labor that every master must pay?

Study of tree trunks. Sweet... but a bit more love in that figure?