Class 2: Painting/Drawing/Printing

Key Ideas (4)

1. How is the meaning of an artwork shaped by how it was made?

2. Why did the artist choose this specific material over another?

   • What are the innate qualities of the material?

   • What method of treatment do these qualities demand/enable?

   • Where might the work had been completed? (e.g. layering of oil paint couldn’t have taken place en plein air)

3. What visual (and hence emotional) effects does this enable/preclude?

4. What method of viewing does this demand? (e.g. from a distance? or up close?)

Svetlana Alpers, 'The Master's Touch: Rembrandt's Enterprise' (4)

1. Rembrandt's techniques: high impasto, unconventional usage of glaze & gold

   • High impasto: in highest-lit areas (vs. convention: would appear the most ephemeral as light erases form)

     • Sometimes worked paint w/ palette knife or fingers

   • Glaze: to draw attention to dark areas (vs. convention: to create a sense of luminosity & ephemeral movement)

   • Gold: to emphasise luster & solidity of gold objects depicted

     • NOT concerned w/ using the monetary value of gold to elevate the value of his painting/for symbolism of status

     • Not creating ‘expensive illusions of expensive possessions’

2. Celebration of rough (vs. smooth) painting

   • Vs. at the time: rough painting unrefined, uncouth behaviour of artist

   • Rembrandt draws our attention to painting as work done in the studio

3. Not concerned with narrative & illusion, but ‘describing materials and the way they feel’ through paint

   • RATHER than creating the illusion of 3-dimensionality/solidity, Rembrandt creates 3-dimensionality/solidity itself

4. Touch supplements sight as the primary vehicle of human contact, understanding, & love

Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, 'Drawing Time' (5)

1. Montage > composition

   • Did NOT draw to fit a preconceived composition

   • Intervals between frames matter as much as the frames themselves

     • The r/s between each figure > their r/s to reality

   • Temporality of Watteau’s drawings did NOT reflect temporality of real life

     • NOT faithful records of a continuous sitting

     • Rather, collage of different moments into 1 situational temporality on the page

2. ‘Time materialises in Watteau's work as the basic condition of the medium’

   (1) Immediacy of drawing

   • Unmediated poses; direct observation from nature/life

   (2) Idea of the prosthetic

   • Chalk as an extension of the artist’s hand

   • Immediacy allows for thinking through the materials: quasi-mechanical quality

   (3) Drawing as a process taking place over time

   • E.g. visible immediacy of hurried strokes; usage of 3 chalks at once

   • E.g. adding additional strips of paper during the drawing process

   • E.g. visible weariness & changes in the sitter’s appearance

   (4) The internal temporality that a page creates

   • The shape of the page defines the way the model appears on it

   • + repetition of subjects to produce difference (if often minimal), NOT sameness

   • + pairing of motifs

     = creates a quasi-cinematic effect of spatial & temporal sequence

3. Invention of the portable watch (late 1700s)

   • Time as accessible, measurable, & individualised

   • Shaped the way in which Watteau distributed figures on the page

4. Skeptical empiricism

   (1) All contents of the mind derive from external sensations

   • Watteau’s:

     • Sustained commitment to observation

     • Mistrust of visual given (e.g. the academic pose)

     • Reluctance to compose a preconceived whole

   (2) Personal identity as a collection of different perceptions, in perpetual flux

   • Watteau’s albums do NOT coalesce into an image of a coherent artistic self

   (3) Time as an idea that can only be formed through the experience of particular things/ideas that appear to us in succession

   • = Watteau’s emphasis on the figure’s existence in its own particular moment, rather than in an imposed narrative time

5. Watteau's nomadic life: ‘opted out from unity & coherence as a means of self-definition’

   • His work may have conditioned this

   • Recording the endless multiplicity of being in the world > a totalising view

Caroline Fowler, 'Introduction to the Art of Paper'

Assumptions/Limitations (1)

Qualities (2)

Historical significance (2)

Assumptions/Limitations of paper

• Paper is (apparently) denied of the capability to convey a message

  • Paper itself is NOT the object of representation

Qualities

• Accessibility & ubiquity (by 16th century)

  • Cheaper than parchment/bronze

• Preservative capabilities

  • More difficult to forge vs. a parchment document

    • Resists erasure (tears)

      • Vs. animal skin: could be scraped down & erased, reused

Historical significance

1. Tool of administration amidst rise of administrative governance & bureaucracy

   • E.g. in Europe: European notaries’ record-keeping; revival of Roman law

2. Artistic tool, mark of authenticity

   • Paper is cheaper = allows for artistic experimentation

   • Paper as a mark of authenticity

     • Marks the direct trace of the artist’s hand

     • E.g. in 16th century: Giorgio Vasari described a Michelangelo drawing as a relic

       • Direct correlation between Michelangelo’s body & his work on paper

Lucretia (1666), Rembrandt

Characteristic of the ‘rough’ style of painting

• Brushstrokes are clearly visible

  • Exposes the paint & the artist’s process

  • Painting as a performance - making the studio more visible in the painting

• Usage of gold

  • Materiality of gold chain > formal (illusionistic) detail

    • Sense of luster, solidity

  • Appropriately viewed from a distance

    • Up close, detail & precision are obscured; materiality of paint & the artist’s hand are apparent

The Art of Painting (1666/68), Johannes Vermeer

Characteristic of the ‘smooth’ style of painting

• Each detail is painted meticulously

• Brushstrokes are not visible

• Concern w/ a convincing illusion > materiality

• Appropriately viewed up close

  • Where minute details can be appreciated

Historical context

Description

Interpretation (1)

The Shell (1650), Rembrandt

Historical context

• Etching w/ drypoint & burin

  • Almost a contradictory impulse

    • Coarse execution vs. smooth, glossy surface of actual shell

    • Lines & dots of black vs. pale colours of actual shell

Description

• A shell

  • Iconography: seen as Natural artifice

    • Nature producing something that looks as if it were crafted by a man

    • Nature as an artist

Interpretation

• NOT trying to conceal the process of artistic creation

  • Through technique of etching

  • Intentionally calls attention to the difference between real object & its image

    • E.g. you can see the amount of time & effort taken to build up the background = necessary for our reading of the object within space

    • Intention is NOT to display a taste for natural knowledge/the possession of rare & expensive objects (‘expensive illusions of expensive possessions’)

(2)

Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, known as The Jewish Bride (1665-6), Rembrandt

• Ambiguity of background

  • Directs focus to human subjects

  • Emphasises that this is a painting: background detail has been selectively & intentionally left out by the artist

• Calls on our sense of touch

  • Invites viewers to desire touching the painting

    • Coarse brushstrokes draw attention to the physical presence of paint on the canvas, and its texture

    • Allusion to hands

  • Love between man & woman is demonstrated through overlaying of very large hands

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632), Rembrandt

• Focus on the surgeon’s hand

  • Near the centre of the painting

  • Dr Tulp’s left hand raised

• Aristotle: the human hand is NOT 1 instrument but many

  • The physical counterpart of human reason (instrument of the soul/intelligence)

• Mutuality of interest between professions

  • The hand as an instrument for both artists & surgeons

  • In a time when these professions, being manual, traditionally needed defense against the higher claims made for the intellectual liberal arts

    • An attempt to define & elevate these professions

Self-Portrait with Two Circles (1665), Rembrandt

Four Studies of a Woman’s Head, Antoine Watteau

Eight Studies of Women’s and a Man’s Heads, Antoine Watteau

Nude Man Holding a Bottle in Each Hand, Antoine Watteau

• Shape of the page defines the way the model appears on it

  • His body seems to have assumed the paper’s rectilinear shape

• Offers an image of posing as much as that of the pose

  • Duration has inflected the appearance of the subject

    (a) E.g. Watteau had to expand the sheet by gluing an extra vertical stripe on the right side to accommodate fully his model’s left arm

    (b) E.g. Man’s pose is unmistakably fatigued/bored

    • Weariness on his face

    • Slackness of his pose

    • Open, sketchy outlines = haste

    • Makes clear the EFFORT of posing

Standing Male Nude with Folded Arms, Edmé Bouchardon

In contrast,

• Pose is more idealized

  • Not slouching

  • Graceful (e.g. left leg lifting slightly off the ground)

• Well-articulated musculature

• Tightly contained by an uninterrupted contour

• Appears to capture an instantaneous moment in time

Study for a Satyr about to Attack (ca. 1717), Antoine Watteau

Jupiter and Antiope (1715), Antoine Watteau

Four Studies of Soldiers at Rest and One of a Standing Woman, Antoine Watteau

Three Studies of a Young Girl Wearing a Hat, Antoine Watteau

• Had to work relatively fast to follow child’s movements

  • Visible in her hat

    • ‘Oyster’; pluridirectional, multiplied strokes

    • Agitated, gestural & unruly performance

    • Sense of movement: vector accentuated by the pointed tip of her hat

• Vs. her more softly fleshed out hair & face

• Mixture of black & red chalk dragged together = likely held in one hand

  • Chalk: instantaneous, no drying time

  • Chalk as an extension of the artist’s fingers

    • Greater immediacy between the artist & the artwork

Portrait of the Artist’s Son Nicolaas (ca. 1619), Peter Paul Rubens

• Trois crayons study (white, black, & red)

• Exquisite mimeticism > visible traces of the artist’s hand

  • Both subject & artist’s hand are well-behaved, constrained

  • NO sense of movement; idealised form

A Garden Urn, Édouard Manet

Historical context

• Oil on canvas

• Study for ‘In the Conservatory’

Areas of discussion

1. How did the sketch inform the final work?

   • Linearities

   • Colour: blues & greens

2. What might give away that this was a study?

   • Form of urn has been directly & roughly painted

     • Little building up of paint layers

     • No preliminary sketch, immediacy

       • Suggests that the urn wasn’t the point of focus, just needed a vague form

       • Vs. more detail in foliage

   • Dripping paint

     • Oil paint was thinned

     • Suggests that Manet hadn’t intended to layer/build up any paint layers

       • Would’ve required drying time

3. How did Manet’s studies challenge conventions of the Salon?

   • (Lack of) Finish

     • Sketchniess, done w/ great speed

     • Painted directly onto the white ground

     • No attempt to disguise the brushwork

       • Svetlana Alpers’s Rembrandt’s Enterprise