Art and Individuality

I think everyone responds to the glowing, liquid beauty of glass, with its essence of light playing through it in magical ways.  I have always felt that, for instance, one of the most amazingly rapturous places for stained glass in the world is Chartres Cathedral.

North Rose Window, The Glorification of the Virgin, Chartres Cathedral

South Rose Window, The Glorification of  Christ, Chartres Cathedral

My introduction to Chartres was walking into the Cathedral, cleared of all pews, as part of a student pilgrimage on foot from Paris.  The afternoon sun was streaming in, blue, scarlet, gold, but it was the overall impression of the blue that I remember.  It was the most magical serious introduction to stained glass, all the more amazing because most of it dates from the early 13th century.

Lower Window, Signs of the Zodiac, detail - Libra, Chartres Cathedral. c. 1235

Later, back in Paris, I learnt to love Sainte Chapelle's windows equally, but there, the slenderness of the stone structure adds to the extraordinary magic of the stained glass.  Despite its almost secular feel today, the stained glass takes one back to times when this was the chapel built by King Louis IX in the 1230-40s to house his scared relics, including Christ's Crown of Thorns.  Only the most wondrous of structures was worthy of such sacred objects.

Upper Chapel, Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

I was recently reminded of the magical sensations that these stained glass windows engendered in me while I was reading a truly beautiful book, Stained and Art Glass. A Unique History of Glass Design and Making, by Judith Neiswander and Caroline Swash.  The depth and breadth of the contents are impressive and of course fascinating, taking the reader from the earliest glass making up to 2004, (the book was published in 2005), in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

As the use of glass in architecture and in objets d'art increased in the last century, with new materials, techniques and a hugely increased interest in the beauty and properties of glass, so there has also been a divide that has grown up between individuality and more anonymous approaches to glass making.  This amazing medieval art form - stained glass - was a group creation, with very few windows ever signed.  Church windows told the illiterate faithful about the Scriptures through narrative or symbolism; there were just a few books written on the subject of glass manufacture itself.  By the last century, however, glass had become an art form where individuals can become like Dale Chilhuly, often described as the rock star of glass.

Dale Chilhuly, Collection at the Morean Arts Center, Florida

Dale Chihuly, Seaform Detail, Tacoma

In this Neiswander/Swash book, there is an interesting quote by Patrick Reyntiens, a noted British glass artist who translated John Piper's designs into stained glass for Coventry Cathedral, for example.  In 1990, writing in The Beauty of Stained Glass, he remarked, "On the one hand, 'art' is the triumph of the individual, the prophetic side of man - the liberation of people's aspirations.  It is the guarantee of individuality and personal worth.  On the other, 'design' is the expression of the sinews of society, of those activities that hold the whole of  the fabric of society together..."

I think that this is a really perspicacious remark - it also pertains to every single creative discipline. Every artist endeavours to further his or her individuality, basically in order to survive and succeed in that creative field.  We all seek to have our own voice ring out, our own optic and means of expression.  Of course, every artist suffers serious pangs of self-doubt and angst, but also learns to follow doggedly that star, that small inner voice that one has to trust.  "Aspirations", the "prophetic side of man" - they are the pathways to artistic individuality.

Reyntiens is correct about design being "the sinews of society".  One only has to think of the astonishing architecture of our times, the urban planning and design of our burgeoning cities, even the intricacies of  software or Web design...  There may be individuals who stand out in the design world, but their creations tend more to the impersonal, the machine-made, the anonymous, made on a far larger scale than any artistic creation every could be. In essence, made for the underpinnings of our society...

Glass, stained, etched, blown, cast or shaped, is one of the most perfect media to demonstrate this dichotomy in the world of creativity. It allows artists to excel as individuals, while lending itself to wonderful old and new enhancements to societal life.

Gratitude and Art

There was a wonderful quote at the bottom of an art site that I saw recently: "The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude."  The wise man who said this was Friedrich Nietzsche, author and originator of countless bons mots.

It is true.  Think of how you feel as you come out of a wonderful art gallery or museum, where you have feasted your eyes on wonders and stretched your mind in new directions.

When you encounter a portrait or a self portrait of someone who inspires and humbles, it makes one grateful.  Take Rembrandt, for example, with his unflinching self-portraits, that tell one of life's experiences, the highs and the lows.  They give one perspective for one's own life.

Self-Portrait, 1669.  Rembrandt van Rijn's last self-portrait (Image courtesy of the National Gallery, London)

I am always delighted when one feels a connection to past artists, a sense that there is a marvellous heritage to inspire one's own artistic endeavours.  As a silverpoint artist, I love it that Rogier van der Weyden recorded Saint Luke drawing the Virgin in silverpoint.

Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, c. 1435–40, Rogier van der Weyden (Image courtesy of  Hermitage State Museum, St. Petersbourg)

Think of the way Paul Cézanne can take one to expansive, simplified yet oh so powerful places, thanks to his obsessive staring as he painted his beloved landscapes around Aix-en-Provence. His watercolours of Mont Sainte-Victoire  take one to magical worlds.

Château Noir devant la montagne Sainte-Victoire
1890-1895, Paul Cézanne ,watercolour, and pencil on white paper, (Image courtesy of 
Albertina, Vienna) 

Nietzsche was right about the gratitude.  He also remarked, "Art is the proper task of life". Definitely a coherent man in his thoughts about art and artists.

The Journey that is Creating Art

As any artist quickly finds out, creating is a journey fulls of twists and turns.  No matter how clearly the artist envisages the work ahead of time, things never work out exactly as planned.  Perhaps that is the addictive, enriching part, or maybe the maddening, humbling part!

There is always the wise advice of doing quick - or detailed - preparatory sketches, whatever the medium in which the artist is working.  That is fine, but I personally find that nothing ever quite correlates in the finished work, even if you go to the lengths of griding out the preparatory drawing, or even tracing the outlines. Something, somewhere, changes, even subtly, and so you are dealing, in essence, with a different creation. It does not seem to matter, either, that you might have done something very similar before.  Each time, you will create something unique, because you have altered a little or a lot, the time and circumstances are different and thus the creative journey is changed. ("Don't bother trying to look for something new: you won't find novelty in the subject matter, but in the way you express it", counselled Pissaro in a letter to his son, Lucien.)

Flexibility, serendipity and a blind confidence that the work will turn out alright in the end seem to be necessary ingredients in creating art.  The journey can be an anguishing one, full of hiccups, misgivings and general doubts.  Or else, like any journey to another land or a new city, you can view the whole process as a challenge full of interesting wrinkles, a learning process and an opportunity to do something new and exciting that could enrich not only your own life, but also, In sha'Allah, that of someone else.

I was reminded of this aspect of an uncertain journey in art-making when I read of Louisa Gillie's approach to creating beautiful works of art in glass. This young English glass artist was featured in a 2006 book on Fifty Distinguished Contemporary Artists in Glass, with examples of her kiln-cast glass that are then polished and textured.  As she works with the glass sculpture, the process becomes her inspiration.  I quote: "Nothing is ever straightforward with glass and it is this unpredictability that she loves. She never quite knows how a piece will look until it is totally finished.  The titles of many of the pieces often refer to the journey it has taken from drawing and original idea to finished piece."

Cosmos, Louisa Gillie, glass, (Image courtesy of the artist)

Labyrinth, Louisa Gillie, glass (Image courtesy of the artist)

Andrew Lambirth, the wonderful art critic in The Spectator, wrote an interesting comment about the Tate Modern exhibition in July 2012, Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye".  He remarked, "But painting is not just about ideas - unless it be that poor relation, conceptual art - it is also about the materials: the canvas and the coloured mud and the marks made with them." To me, that remark is a way of saying that the creative journey is full of twists and turns.  How you  conceive of a work, how the actual execution of it turns out when you are dealing with the materials, your sureness of  hand-eye coordination, your state of mind... so many factors that enter into the creative equation.

Ultimately, nonetheless, as artist all know, that journey, however challenging, is addictive - we all go on trying to create more art!

Finding Time to Create Art

I have recently been feeling that I have little time nor energy to create art  - care-giving has rather taken over life for a while.  However I got a timely jolt yesterday as I watched the PBS documentary that Rick Meyer created, The Ghost Army.

The Ghost Army insignia

The documentary chronicled the deceptions practised by a total of 1,100 creative G.I.s, who formed the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops to mislead the Germans about troop movements and points of attack as the Allies advanced towards the Rhine after D-Day, 1944.  Using camouflage, inflatable tanks and other war materiel, acoustics and phony radio traffic, these inventive men created such convincing "information" that the Germans were frequently mistaken in their assessments of where the Allies were advancing, where they were planning to attack, how many troops were in the area, etc.  Most of the G.I.s involved came from artistic backgrounds - many straight from art or architecture school - and after the war, many of them would have successful careers in fashion, photography or art.  Among them were fashion designer Bill Blass, painter Ellsworth Kelly and photographer Art Kane.

What impressed me as I watched the fascinating programme was that here were artists in the thick of war, under orders and often in very complicated and stressful circumstances.  And yet, and yet, they were still passionate artists.  They took with them to France and beyond small painting blocs, drawing paper, watercolours, pen and ink, pencils... whatever they could. Whenever they could snatch a few moments, they drew and painted.  No excuses for weariness, stress, lack of time.  They kept on drawing and painting, in the French villages, during a brief time in liberated Paris, during operations.

A photograph of  some of the men painting, and  one of the watercolours, Church at Trevières (Image courtesy of Ghost Army. org)

Small French Town, 1944,  watercolour, Tony Young

A Village in Germany, Bill Sayles: Portrait of Ray Hartford, Victor Dowd

Resting Soldiers, (Image courtesy of Ghost Army.org)

Lookout by the Water, (Image courtesy of Ghost Army.org)

Bill Blass, as recorded by Jack Masey

Artist Victor Dowd at work

French Cyclists, Victor Dowd

Doris, Victor Dowd

"The Americans are very strong", Arthur Shilstone

This last wonderful painting was done later, by artist Arthur Shilstone.  He recounted that somehow two Frenchmen had penetrated the guarded area and saw, to their dumbfounded amazement,  a seemingly normal, 40-ton tank being lifted bodily by  the four American soldiers!  Shilstone simply remarked that Americans are very strong.

Just the small selection of work above is the perfect demonstration that every artist can manage to create art, given the will, even under very trying and taxing circumstances.  A wonderful reminder for me...

When is a Work of Art "Finished"?

Listening to an interview with author Khaled Hosseini the other day on NPR about his new novel, And the Mountains Echoed, I was interested in a remark he made about his books.  Talking about this book and his two previous best-selling books on Afghanistan, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns,  he said, in essence, that he would like to be able to go back and alter things, rewrite things and generally revisit the books.  In other words, in his view, his work is not really ever finished, despite being hugely successful in the market place.

I think that most creative people must feel this about their work. I know that personally, when I have tried to finish a painting or drawing to the best of my ability, I am sure that I will later look at it again and see things that need to be changed, if possible.  With silverpoint drawings, however, that is often a difficult proposition, and even with watercolours, changes are often complicated to make.

There is also another dimension to this question of when a work is "finished".  Mark Rothko, for instance, was very conscious of the fact that he needed to achieve a communion with his public in each painting, to reach out to the viewer and establish a bond.  Without that dialogue, the work would never be completed.  Rothko himself might have applied the last brush strokes, but that was merely the beginning, not the end of the creative act, for him.  The viewer had to play his or her part in the creative act, becoming an active partner in the painting.

Responding to Rothko at the Tate Modern

Responding to Rothko

Responding to Rothko

Responding to Rothko

Hardly surprising that amid the many reproductions on the Web of wonderful glowing Rothko paintings from the late 1940s onwards, there are many images of people communing with his works in the museum galleries.  Rothko himself said,  "Silence is so accurate".  This open-endedness about defining his work and its stage of completion allowed each viewer to expand and clarify the painting.

Every artist, writer, musician or creator... becomes aware that while a work may seemingly be "finished", it seldom is. But there comes a point when the work has to be cast off into the world to stand on its own feet, at least for a while..

"The True and the Essential" in Art

I am still mulling over the twists and turns of Vincent Van Gogh's life as an artist, with his highly intelligent reasonings or rationalisations about each phase of his art, especially in his letters to his brother, Theo.  So much to think about because, to a greater or lesser extent, most artists can learn a great deal from Van Gogh.

There is a wonderful quote of his in Van Gogh, A Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith.  Writing in mid 1889, when he was staying at the Asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, at Saint-Rémy,  Van Gogh remarked, "In the open air, one works as best one can, one fills one's canvas regardless.  Yet that is how one captures the true and the essential - the most difficult part."

Iris, Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1889 (Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles)

Even before Van Gogh was allowed to leave the asylum to paint further afield, he was "doing little things after nature", like these gem-like Iris.  Rather than thinking too much, he was going out to "look at a blade of grass, the branch of a fire tree, an ear of wheat, in order to calm down".  Painting as best he could, with spontaneity, and indeed, the essence of irises sings from the canvas. 

Landscape from Saint-Rémy, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889 (Image courtesy of NY Carlsberg Glyptotek)

Olive Grove, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889, (Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Netherlands)

Green Wheat Field with Cypress, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889 (Image courtesy of Národiní Galerie, Prague)

These paintings show the progression of Van Gogh moving further out from the asylum, exploring the Midi landscapes, working en plein air, in heat and wind and sun, trying to capture this wide world in his new-found serenity of mind.

Mountains at Saint-Rémy, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889, (Image courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY)

During this amazingly productive time, Van Gogh had found the clarity and peace that allowed him to cast away the fetters of mind and even those of drawing with the aid of his perspective frame.  He simply worked "by feeling and by instinct", in the same way, he decided, as the ancient Egyptians had done in their creative work.

I find it interesting that this was a brief time, for Van Gogh, when order, simplicity of living, and a cloistered serenity in the asylum all fostered his creativity.  He had the peace of mind and energy to go to the heart of what he was seeing and simply paint and draw.  

Time and time again, we get reminders of how solitude and peace help artists to find the "true and the essential" in their art.  Agatha Christie found inspiration and amazing productivity in her writing at her beloved home, Greenway, near Torquay, because of the quiet peacefulness there.  Author Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote a wonderful small book in 1957, A Time to Keep Silence, about his stay at the Abbey of St. Wandrille de Fontanelle, near Rouen in France.  He had gone there to write, but found that once he had become accustomed to the silence and deep orderliness of the life of the Benedictines monks, he was filled with an energy and creativity of "limpid freshness".

We all need that solitude and order in our lives to be able to reach whatever is true and essential to us as artists.Not always so easy in our world of today...  We need seriously to organise ourselves and find the discipline to turn off phones, unplug from the computer, make space and time and serenity...But there are rewards.

Gauguin versus Van Gogh - Their Art-Making Argument

When Paul Gauguin finally came south from Brittany to spend time with Vincent Van Gogh in the famous Yellow House in Arles in 1888, one of the many arguments that erupted between the two artists still has huge relevance for practically every artist today.

The argument boils down to the different approach to creating art. Should one work from real life, often plein air, as Van Gogh believed, or should one create art de tête, from one's head, by using prior drawings and painted studies, composed and executed in the studio, as Gauguin did?

Alychamps, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil on canvas, Private collection

Alyschamps,Arles, Paul Gauguin, 1888, oil on canvas, (Image courtesy of Musée d'Orsay)

These two paintings were among the initial salvos in this argument between the two artists.  Gauguin chose Les Alyschamps as a destination for painting, a place that Van Gogh had not talked of during his earlier seven months in Arles.  It had  been a necropolis since  Roman times, and over the centuries had evolved into a sacred burying ground, before having a railway track put through and the tombs destroyed.  By the 1880s, Arles' city government had transformed the debris into an allée with trees and gardens, a rendez vous for lovers and parading city dwellers.

As the days went past, Van Gogh and Gauguin continued to be more at odds than not, as is vividly detailed in the superb book, Van Gogh: A Life, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. As they write, "Vincent wanted to paint: Gauguin wanted to draw.  Vincent wanted to rush into the countryside at the first opportunity: Gauguin demanded a "period of incubation" - a month at least - to wander about, sketching and "learning the essence" of the place.  Vincent loved to paint en  plein air; Gauguin preferred to work indoors.  He saw their expeditions as fact-finding missions, opportunities to gather sketches - "documents" he called them - that he could synthesize into tableaux in the calm and reflection of the studio. Vincent championed spontaneity and serendipity....; Gauguin constructed his images slowly and methodically, trying out forms and blocking in colours.  Vincent flung himself at the canvas headlong with a loaded brush and fierce intent: Gauguin built up his surfaces in tranquil sessions of careful brushstrokes...." (pp.671-72).

The Night Café, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil on canvas (Image courtesy of the Yale University art Gallery, New Haven)

Night Café at Arles (Mme.Ginoux), Paul Gauguin, 1888, oil on canvas, (Image courtesy of Pushkin Museum, Moscow)

Earlier that year, Vincent Van Gogh had lugged his heavy easel into the all-night Café de la Gare in Arles, for three nights in a row, to paint its garish "clashes and contrasts", human and material.  Later, in the deadly psychological warfare that had broken out between Gauguin and Van Gogh, Gauguin drew a study of the wife of the Café's owner, Madame Ginoux.  Behind her in the painting he then did, he changed the viewpoint of Van Gogh's  café scene, inserting images cherished by Van Gogh, but he produced in essence a close evocation of Van Gogh's Café.  However, Gauguin created this imagined café scene in the studio, not in the Café de la Gare.

Pure imagination, arbitrary colour, invented compositions versus "surrendering myself to nature" as Van Gogh preferred to do, celebrating "the things that exist", as Vincent's brother, Theo, once observed; that remained the tussle between them.  There were many ramifications to this contrasting way of creating art, but part of Van Gogh's difficulty was often with the depiction of human figures.  He needed models in front of him to be able to grapple with the human form, and even then with difficulty.  He felt uncomfortable with the "more mysterious character" of the imagined scene.

During a rainy spell, Gauguin challenged Van Gogh to paint a scene from memory that Van Gogh ironically had described vividly to him a short time before.  He had told Gauguin how the vineyards at the base of Montmajour, past which they were walking, had looked a few weeks previously, during grape harvest.  He had told of the workers, the vivid colours and how these women had looked in the intense, autumnal sun. 

The Red Vineyard at Arles, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil, on canvas (Image courtesy of the Puskin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)

Grape Harvest at Arles, Paul Gauguin, 1888, oil on canvas, (image courtesy of the Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen)

Van Gogh used old drawings and relied on his knowledge of field workers.  By contrast, Gauguin reverted to the labourers of Brittany, not those of Provence, and with his enigmatic composition and depiction of the the two introverted figures, he raises more questions than gives answers.  His painting was a far cry from Van Gogh's more predictable, if a little awkward, painting of the grape harvest.

Van Gogh soon gave the de tête version of art another try.  He was triggered by family letters and waves of nostalgia to travel back mentally to his childhood home in Etten, Holland.  He imagines the two ladies he depicts might be his mother and his sister; he uses compositional tricks Gauguin used to wind through the canvas, leading the viewer to Midi cypress trees and the brilliantly hued gardens his mother used to cultivate.

Ladies of Arles (Memories of the Garden at Etten), Vincent Van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg)

Old Women of Arles, Paul Gauguin, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Once more, the two men created such different works - hardly surprising, however.  Again and again, as the days passed in The Yellow House,  the tensions flared between the two men. One painting in particular that Gauguin did of Van Gogh sums up his ability to go for the jugular... and how poisonous the atmosphere had become between the two protagonists.

Vincent Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, Paul Gauguin, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

The rows and temporary amnesties eventually only ended when Gauguin left Arles and precipitated the famous ear-slicing episode that everyone remembers about Vincent Van Gogh.  

Yet those same issues - how to create art, no matter of what description, persist to this day.  Most of us oscillate between the two camps, sometimes working from real life, often en plein air.  At other times, imagined compositions, mosaics of different images placed together to create messages, images, ideas, predominate in our work.  The head versus the eye - every artist knows the argument.

Perhaps Van Gogh's remark in a letter to Theo sums up the situation we all know about: "In spite of himself and in spite of me, Gauguin has more or less proved to me that it is time I was varying my work a little."  In other words, be open to experimentation and change...