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Painting Instruction: Finding the Words

Originally posted on July, 14, 2007

«Walk in Provence», Oil on canvas, 65cm x 50cm, July 2007.

Over the years I’ve been approached many times for advice and instruction. For me it has never been easy or clear as the best way to proceed. And it has not been often that I’ve undertaken the task to give much advice or attempt to teach. It is just too dammed difficult. Thinking about this problem has been with me for a good long while. And I am not comfortable seeming to be aloof.

The main problem, it seems to me, is the emphasis which has been placed on technique. It is as if most people have a cookbook approach to doing things. Here is the crux of the matter: the huge gulf between what is known and direct immediate experience. Abstract first principles are substituted for intelligence. Our world is now threatening to become opaque and unintelligible. It is so opaque that some contemporary writers describe our society as a hologram.

Since Plato, the painter and particularly anyone audacious enough to teach painting have been considered marginal members of Society. If Gestalt Theory is correct, and I believe it is, seeing and thinking are not separate processes. Perception is intimately involved with how we learn to think. It is nothing short of criminal that this has not been addressed in our educational systems. We are literally teaching our young people to be stupid. The painter has much to teach and much misunderstanding to overcome.

As an aside, last week we were spending a couple of days in a chambre d’hôtes in Alsace. We had the TV on in order to catch the weather forecast. On “Who wants to be a millionaire” a man was asked “in which century was impressionism born: the 17th, the 18th, the 19th, or the 20th”. He did not know the answer. So does the 50-50 option. This gives him a choice between the 18th and the 19th. He still doesn’t know. It was for 12,000 € and he quits. I was dumfounded. I wonder if he had ever heard of Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, or Renoir? Does one need to be part of the cultured elite in France to have this inside information?

Getting back to the subject at hand. Seeing and thinking are not separated activities. When you see a tree there is a time lag between the stimulus on the retina and the recognition “tree”. We tend to think that this time lapse is unimportant. It is a big clue that there is something going on here (See Robert Pirsing).

The good news, getting back to helping someone is that if you understand the problem well enough it is possible to help others. You can help them to understand the difficulties connecting with direct immediate experience. It may be more difficult than teaching painting techniques but I believe it is worth the effort. For me, I am slowly reaching the point where I understand well enough to find the words.

Denis.

Published in french as Conseils pour peindre : comment trouver les mots ?

Posted in Painting, Teaching | Comment

Recent Thoughts

Originally posted on June, 24, 2007

Hopefully, as we become more intelligent, our intellect leads us to more enjoyment. Asking questions is a process of refinement and simplification. In a natural way it leads to understanding that it is the process itself that is the important thing: direct experience with life. This implies that we have a direct experience with the natural world.

Artists and children have much in common: curiosity and the spontaneous joy of discoveries. I want you to do a little experiment. Please go get a piece of paper and pen or pencil. Now sign your name as you always do.

Okay, now I want you to sign your name alongside the original signature. This time do it carefully trying to make it exactly like the original.

We could go into the psychology of what took place. The main point, however, is when we become self-conscious our performance is not the same. I will leave you to your own conclusions.

In life and Art,
Denis.

Published in french as Pensées Récentes

Posted in Artist-Art | Comment

Big Answers

Originally posted on June, 15, 2007

I guess that I never was educated out of believing in answers. All of us, when we were little, did not become nervous when the teacher put a problem on the blackboard. We KNEW that she had the answer. Somewhere along the line most of us forget that life is like that. There could not be a problem, or a question, unless there was a pre-existing answer. It cannot be otherwise There are many complex explanations as to why we forget this. One often overlooked reason, is that much of what shapes and underlies modern reality is not sensible. Buckminster Fuller wrote about this. He talked about the changes in industry during the first-world war. The new technology became invisible. (And when the masters of technology reached the point where they no longer understand what was going on? Then what?) Another big reason why we devalue our innate intelligence is our poor understanding of what art is and how it functions.

A much used method of explaining modern culture is to class people into two groups: the literary/artist type and the scientific type. Then you oppose art and science and explain art on scientific terms. All that has been written based on this reasoning is nonsense. Point. Okay, I understand those who live in a glass house should not throw stones. But this is too important. I have read tons of art criticism. Most of it, particularly from the 20th century, is nonsense. Literary people are no longer seeing the forest for the trees. It must be the fault of our education system. Verbal expression is by its very nature dualistic. Visual imagery in the form of paintings or photographs is two dimensional. We can allude to the non-dualistic or to the third dimension but we cannot change the nature of the medium. When we try to do so, for me, it simply becomes nonsense.

Art is not technology. Art is measured in terms of EVERYTHING. Art is directly related to the world (all there is). A work of Art contains NO content. Confusion continues on this point because the literati continue as though it is possible to separate form and content. THERE IS NO CONTENT. Nothing is hidden. Art’s function is to nourish us; to expand our sensibilities and our consciousness. There are not any formulas to follow. None the less this is the big answer to the question of Art. What our modern and somewhat deprived world needs is a new and more open way of looking at the world. Hopefully, we will reaffirm our connection to the sensible.

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” Oscar Wilde, in a letter.

Published in french as Grandes réponses

Posted in Art, Artist-Art | Comment

Big Questions

Originally posted on June, 5, 2007

"The little house", oil on canvas, 46cm x 38cm, June 2007

With Cézanne came the painters concern for the problems of man. Improvement of life as well as the world became important concerns. These are vital concerns but it is a mistake for the painter to directly address them. Our concern is to explore perception and visual experience.

The philosophical and the literary domains directly address the big questions of life. Their difficulties in adequately understanding and explaining “experience” has led our culture astray. (I’m using the world “experience” in a Kantian sense.) We now seem incapable of solving life’s most basic problems. We have a technological paradise in the middle of cultural squalor, war, and human starvation. Enough said…

Since adolescence I’ve pursued a better understanding of philosophical and literary problems. This has been done from an artistic perspective: a concern with life as well as a medium of expression. This medium is not a philosophical dialogue nor is it literary. Writing has always been difficult for me. It is not my medium of choice. Painting is. By the same token, talking about life’s problems particularly with a few glasses of good spirits, never fails for me to be enjoyable and stimulating.

The impressionists had some misconceptions about their culture and the big philosophical and literary ideas. However, they wisely refrained from engaging the philosophical and the literary. Other movements that were motivated by ideas of a religious or political nature, or the philosophical, enjoyed only limited success.

The importance of the liberation of colors by the impressionists has not been understood neither appreciated by yesterdays nor today’s intellectuals. It raises a profound doubt as to the accuracy of Kant’s understanding of intuition. Other questions follow. But it is not really the painter’s job to verbally educate the intellectuals. They must enquire.

For those of you not familiar with the importance of Emmanuel Kant, he was the Copernicus of Western intellectual and philosophical thought: the tipping point. He ended the rationalistic and the empirical explanations of human knowledge. We have with Kant an idealistic and psychological description of experience: an experience that is divided into the subject who knows and the object to be known.

Denis

Published in french as Grandes questions

Posted in Artist-Art | Comment

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