Darren Daz Cox, now in Pekin Illinois!
Proficient or good? which are you?
The greatest masters have never done pictures "out of their heads." is a quote from The Painter in Oil, by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst who was pretty strict in his opinion of how an artist should paint the figure, directly from a live model or suffer artistic failure!
I challenge this closed-minded thinking and propose that you can get better results by working "out of your head".
Parkhurst was also a student of arguably the most proficent painter of all time, William Bougereau. Being proficient however doesn’t necessarily equate to "good", after all, most people don’t know who Bougereau was but most everyone has heard of Vincent Van Gogh and a majority of them consider Van Gogh to be a "good" painter.
Van Gogh sold so few paintings because most art patrons in his time expected work in the neo-classical/accademic style of painters like Alexandre Cabanel. Cabanel, like Bougereau, painted with a technical perfection that had echoes of Renaissance master Raphael. Raphael will forever be beloved and stand as one of the greatest masters, so why not seek to reach his level of perfection? When you work from a live model and know all the techniques to make a 2d picture look 3d you can produce some stunning paintings, but you have to add in the human factor to be considered "good".
I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. – Emile Zola
Poor old Cabanel and Bougereau were only upholding the ideals of masters like Raphael when they blocked the Impressionists from the salon, they thought they knew what was "good" based on an idealized perfection that could only be achieved through superior craftsmanship. But craftsmanship alone is not enough for things to be regarded as good.
There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman. - Emile Zola
I think that the sketches Michelangelo did ‘out of his head’ rank among his finest work, here is one of them.
MICHELANGELO di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
(b. 1475, Caprese, d. 1564, Roma)
The Fall of Phaethon
c. 1533
Black chalk, 41,3 x 23,4 cm
Royal Library, Windsor UK
Michelangelo made many erotic drawings for Tommaso dei Cavalieri, including the Rape of Ganymede, The Punishment of Tityus and this one with Phaethon being zapped by Zeus for his reckless behavior.
This is a drawing that Michelangelo drew for pleasure, a drawing with real passion and stands as sweet example of non-accademic proficency, perhaps Parkhurst had never seen this sketch at the time of writing his book?
Another example that counters Parkhurst’s statement is arguably the most famous and referenced figure drawing of all time, Leonardo DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. No model was used for that one!
I suggest that if want to stand out of the crowd and shine then seek to be good at what you do rather than to be proficient at what you do. This is not mere sematics. Proficiency encourages work that seeks to reach an ideal, an ideal is a generic concept and generic concepts don’t grab you by the heart until they are made specific. Making something specific requires that you make your stand, get off the fence and lay your cards down etc etc. You can be romantic but you don’t truely know what love is until you take that leap and risk having your heart broken.
The first time people saw Michelangelos fresco of god as a rugged old man with white hair it captured the imaginations of all who saw it, but a thousand variations on the theme later the idealized concept of god as a white haired man loses it’s punch no matter how well it is painted.
Thomas Kinkaid’s lighthouses and sunbeams show the concept of god in a different but far more popular way these days and while Kinkaid is not highly regarded as an innovative painter he did take that leap to make his art specific to something rather than just follow the idealized concept of ‘pretty art is good’. Take that leap, find a step off point before reaching ‘perfection’ and don’t be afraid to pull an idea out of your head.
Originally posted 2008-01-24 13:07:38. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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February 4th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I think this post ties in really well with one of your previous ones, re: most people not making art past the age of 11. When people are encouraged to be perfect first, expressive second, it can take the joy out of art making and creativity. And oh, how we are pressured to be perfect in our society…just like how one can learn techniques to render a perfect looking drawing from real life, which can serve to mask the underlying poet, one can learn how to render a perfect looking life through a series of steps (high paying job, big house, nice lawn, 2.4 children, dog…), which can serve to mask the spiritual, creative and existential aspects of oneself…
No, not everyone who can render a “perfect” drawing from life squashes their creative vigor. No, not everyone who has a house with a white picket fence is denying underlying existential needs. Some people are able to balance both. However, unless people are encouraged to remain open to what seems to be a less respected aspect of human potential, one may resign him/herself into believing that they are not worthy unless they put forth what is considered perfection in our society.
Thankfully the idea of rendering perfectly from reality is not the goal for many artists, art educators and art therapists. If one can learn to respect the poet inside first, and second learn the craftsmanship, hopefully this realization can be generalized to one’s everyday life.