N.B., Click on images to zoom.
'Reclining Female'
Oil Pastel on Paper, 90 minute study.
This is a recent, fairly quick study of a female figure. I regularly do life drawing, alongside Mari, simply because it is such an interesting challenge both visually, technically and intellectually.
Unfortunately, with the growth in popularity in the art schools of Great Britain of post-Duchampian conceptualism, life drawing has been in recession since the sixties.
So generations of students have missed out on the best drawing discipline that exists. And of course, as night follows day, many lecturers, who trained during this period, have since been employed in the art schools who never had life drawing themselves, and so could not be expected to pass on the tradition with any confidence and enthusiasm. This is a great shame.
There have been some attempts recently to revive the tradition, and here is a review of a life drawing exhibition at the Royal Academy, which attempts such a renewal.
So generations of students have missed out on the best drawing discipline that exists. And of course, as night follows day, many lecturers, who trained during this period, have since been employed in the art schools who never had life drawing themselves, and so could not be expected to pass on the tradition with any confidence and enthusiasm. This is a great shame.
There have been some attempts recently to revive the tradition, and here is a review of a life drawing exhibition at the Royal Academy, which attempts such a renewal.
Prepare yourself....
From the Spectator Magazine
Here is the full text of the article . . .,
Few artistic disciplines have fallen from grace quite as dramatically as life drawing, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Once considered an "essential element" in art education, the rise of modern art saw its importance diminished to the point where studying the human anatomy was considered a "throwback to an irrelevant past".
Indeed, by the 1980s it had become so "unfashionable" that some art schools banned it altogether.
With this in mind, you could say it's courageous of the Royal Academy to have mounted an exhibition on the subject, aspiring to take a fresh look at life drawing and to debunk the notion that "artists these days have forgotten how to draw". Alongside drawings and paintings dating back to the 18th century, it presents a host of work by Lucien Freud, Anthony Gormley, Yinka Shonibare and the like, as well as inventive, technological installations pointing to a possible future for the medium.
Alas, while it aims to mount an "eloquent, sprightly defence" of life drawing, it achieves no such thing. Instead, it is "excessively mumbling and indistinct".
True, it's a "triumph of style over substance", said Adrian Searle of the Guardian. Early on we see a "grubby" canvas by Freud showing little more than a "fragment of a head" - a "shred of a thing, a relic rather than a painting".
Altogether more desultory is a "cubistic" self-portrait the artist Jonathan Yeo created using new Google software; far from saying anything new, this is just "self-aggrandising piffle".
It's not all bad, said Matthew Collings in the London Evening Standard. The "excellent draughtsman" Humphrey Ocean provides a "beautifully conceived" sculpture of a chair, while Jenny Saville's painting of a newborn baby depicts its subject as a "monstrous" creature reminiscent of Francis Bacon's nightmarish visions.
The clear highlight is a selection of "gangling and awkward" self-portraits by Chantal Joffe, said Laura Cumming in the Observer. Their strength lies in the fact that, unlike most of these artists, Joffe can actually draw.
Jeremy Deller, by contrast, cheerfully admits he has "never even been to a life class". Yet nearly a third of the exhibition is taken up by a project for which he invited the musician Iggy Pop to sit as a life model for art students. We see their efforts here, and the pictures are "striking for their weakness".
Overall, this is a confused affair that has precious little to say about the "ancient tradition" of life drawing. What a "shambolic" exhibition.
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......Well, that was rather depressing.
Anyway, there are still artists who kick against the tyrannies of post-modernism, and it's detestation of quality and of hierarchy. (.....y'know the kind of thing, - "all cultures are equal", - and therefore it's not PC to suggest that Rembrandt for example, produces work of better quality than any other artist!)
To demonstrate how non-PC I am, - here are a few more of my own life drawings. And in a subsequent post I'm going to list my personal choice (from the whole range of the history of art), of the 'Top Ten Greatest Figure Drawings'.
'Seated Figure'
Oil Pastel on Paper, 20 minute study.
'Sitting Female'
Oil Pastel on Paper, 90 minute study.
'Preliminary Studies'
Conté Crayon on Paper, 10 minutes per figure.
'Preliminary Studies'
Conté Crayon on Paper, 10 minutes per figure.
'Seated Model'
Oil Pastel on Paper, 90 minute study.
'Standing Female'
Conté Crayon on Paper, 10 minutes.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details......” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
(The answer will be in the next posting.)
And here's the answer from the last posting -
'Boy with a Pipe'.
by Pablo Picasso, 1905, Private Collection
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details......” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
"In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing."
Vincent Van Gogh
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Music
Click here to find a few songs on YouTube, and I'll add more as time goes by.
Music
Beyond painting, my other preoccupation is music - particularly songwriting.
I've recently started, just for fun, linking the two preoccupations together, by featuring a few paintings along with one of my recorded songs. If you have a spare minute, you're welcome to take a look. . .
These songs can also be found on (and downloaded from) iTunes, Spotify, CDBaby, and many other platforms, - (my intention is to upload a different song each month)
Also in the last period I've been recording some songs with some friends - have a listen here if you have the time.
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. . and now, a Recommended Read . .
Play All
Published by Yale University Press
Published by Yale University Press
Funny and perceptive!
Television and TV viewing are not what they once were—and that’s a good thing, according to award-winning author and critic Clive James. Since serving as television columnist for the London Observer from 1972 to 1982, James has witnessed a radical change in content, format, and programming, and in the very manner in which TV is watched. Here he examines this unique cultural revolution, providing a brilliant, eminently entertaining analysis of many of the medium’s most notable twenty-first-century accomplishments and their not always subtle impact on modern society—including such acclaimed serial dramas as Breaking Bad, The West Wing, Mad Men,and The Sopranos, as well as the comedy 30 Rock. With intelligence and wit, James explores a television landscape expanded by cable and broadband and profoundly altered by the advent of Netflix, Amazon, and other “cord-cutting” platforms that have helped to usher in a golden age of unabashed binge-watching.
Review from Amazon.
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