Art That Needs Assistance

The Wall Street Journal comes up with interesting art news every few weeks. The latest item worth passing along is "The Art Assembly Line" by Stan Sesser in the 3 June 2011 issue (link here).

Its lede brings to mind a post I wrote back in January regarding artistic skills:

Alexander Gorlizki is an up-and-coming artist, known for paintings that superimpose fanciful images over traditional Indian designs. His work has been displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Denver Art Museum and Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, among others, and sells for up to $10,000.

Mr. Gorlizki lives in New York City. The paintings are done by seven artists who work for him in Jaipur, India. "I prefer not to be involved in actually painting," says Mr. Gorlizki, who adds that it would take him 20 years to develop the skills of his chief Indian painter, Riyaz Uddin. "It liberates me not being encumbered by the technical proficiency," he says.

Sesser goes on to mention other currently active artists who make use of assistants in their work. This has been common for sculptors all along, thanks to the demands of large-scale fabrication and its requirement for specialized, non-artistic skills.

But the practice has been rare for painting in recent times. As Sesser notes,

For centuries, the use of assistants and apprentices was standard in the art world. Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Rubens relied heavily on the assistants in their studios. With the rise of the Impressionists, however, the idea of a studio practice, which maximizes incomes by using assistants, fell into disfavor. Artists were supposed to be pouring out their personal visions onto the canvas—not instructing employees on how to do it.

By the time Pop art came into fashion in the mid-20th century and Andy Warhol began cranking out silkscreens and lithographs with the help of workers at his well-publicized Factory, opinion began to swing back the other way. "The value of a work of art is not invested in the hand that made it, but in the intention and the realization," says Robert Storr, dean of Yale University's School of Art.

This last point makes me cringe. I can accept it when dealing with architecture and even sculpture. But painting should be the artist's own work because, but its nature, it is something one person can do without help. (I'm happy to quality this for exceptionally large paintings such as murals where the primary artist can leave the grunt-work bits to others.)

The statement also strikes me as the "art is whatever" attitude all too present present in this Modernist era. Let's reconsider the abandonment of the concept of High Art, because I think we've reached the point where it is desperately needed.

Back to Sesser, this regarding Jeff Koons:

At the other end of the spectrum is Mr. Koons, who runs his vast, high-ceilinged studio with an efficiency that discourages personal interactions. Everyone has an assigned task, from painting a section of a canvas by following elaborate diagrams to mixing dozens of paints to produce exactly the right color. Large paintings are lifted up a wall by electric hoists; in one room on a recent afternoon, two painters worked silently on a canvas at floor level while two others painted the upper part from a scaffold. There's a hierarchy of supervisors, including a studio manager, a painting supervisor and several assistant managers. It brings to mind an assembly line, but the 56-year-old Mr. Koons, who is married to one of his former assistants, bridles at the analogy of a factory. "People get misconceptions that it's about production, like a machine," he states. "But I've thought for a year about almost everything before starting to make it."

Mr. Koons, whose use of assistants is widely known, says he supervises the work intently: "I'm here Monday through Friday and I try to travel as little as possible. The paintings are as if I made every mark myself." Mr. Koons says he doesn't mentor his artist employees, and they don't bring paintings into the studio to show him. "This is about production of the work," he says. "I want them to stay focused on the work here."

Even though painters abandoned use of assistants as the 19th century wore on, the practice was continued in commercial art. For example, Norman Rockwell used an assistant to do the tedious work of transferring his drawings from preliminary sheets to a canvas where the artist could begin to apply his paints. This clearly is a minor level of help, because the assistant did neither the preparatory drawing nor the final painting.

A case where assistants' work appeared in the final product was the newspaper comic strip in its classical 1930s and 1940's form. Cartoons were printed much larger than they are today, and adventure strips often included a good deal of detail such as those of room interiors and streetscapes serving as background for the action. Assistants often did those backgrounds. I've read of a few cases where the main artist left all to assistants save the character's faces.

Comic book and graphic novel production can follow similarly. Often the lead artist "pencils in" the images and an "inker" uses brush and pen to realize the final images.

So yes, art is often a cooperative endeavor. But sometimes this can be taken too far.

Norman Rockwell, Colorist

There's a Norman Rockwell exhibit rattling around the country called American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell. It's currently playing in Tacoma, Washington, so of course I had to see it -- the goal being to reinforce impressions gleaned from seeing his works at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Not surprisingly, that museum is the organizer of the exhibit, because its collection of Rockwell's paintings and artifacts is comprehensive.

Years ago when I lived in Albany, New York, I drove across the hills to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a charming town that was Rockwell's last residence. He was living there then, just around the corner from the Red Lion Inn; you could easily spot his detached studio near the house. There was a Norman Rockwell Museum even then. It was housed in ... a house (if my memory is correct: a house or another structure in or near the Red Lion). I went through it once, but at the time was out of touch with art and still in thrall of the modernism that Everyone told us was what was true in Fine Arts. Rockwell was considered a curiosity.

Setting aside the subject-matter, what one finds is a high level of technical skill. One aspect of this that impresses me is that this skill shows even though Rockwell had to do the actual execution (not including planning, reference photography, etc.) in a matter of days or perhaps a week or three to hit his deadlines. Contrast this with some of the Pre-Raphaelite artists who might labor for months on a single work.

One example that struck me was his treatment of a wooden chest of drawers that served as part of the backdrop to the main subject; the wood grain was very nicely handled and more detailed than other contemporary illustrators might have bothered with.

The title of this post asserts that Rockwell was a "colorist" -- to me, that means someone appreciative of color subtleties and interactions and who is able to include such in a painting. Fine Arts painters are most likely to fall into this category, but illustrators also can make the grade. Examples include Frank Frazetta, N.C. Wyeth and, of course, Norman Rockwell.

Lincoln for the Defense (click to enlarge and improve quality)

The painting shown above was part of the exhibit. If your computer allows enlargement, this can be done in two stages; after the first enlargement, click on it again and you might get an even larger view. Even if you are able to enlarge it, Rockwell's use of colors is still not as apparent as when viewing the painting in person. In the stage-two enlargement you might notice areas of dark red in several places, especially on the sleeve folds of his bent arm. In person, this red is much brighter and, in my judgment, unnecessary. Otherwise, Lincoln's skin and clothing contain many hues and not just the basic color.

Many of the faces Rockwell painted have bits of blue and green along with the expected variations around red-orange. I was often a little startled when a sort of turquoise kept popping up on subjects' skins. These subtleties often didn't make it all the way to printed magazine covers, so Rockwell clearly felt he had to do his artistic duty in full knowledge that his fans wouldn't be able to see all that he'd actually wrought.

Other items in his illustrations also were painted with traces of color complementary to the main hue, creating a rich appearance. For example, a large leather bag slung over a coachman's shoulder contains more dark green than tans and browns.

I could go on, but perhaps the best thing I can do is urge you to view some of Rockwell's originals. The best site is the museum in Stockbridge. If you can't get there, then try for the exhibit I've been discussing (the link lists locations following its Tacoma stand). And there might be examples of his work here and there; check the internet to discover if a Rockwell is nearby.

Mannequins and Facial Features

The photos below are a bit out of focus (I was shooting telephoto; plus, my camera in one case apparently was more interested in the Nordstrom store itself than the subject), but I'm displaying them to illustrate an idea I've been mulling for a while.

Back in the glory days of academic training, young prospective artists would have to slave away for months and even years drawing images of plaster casts of sculpture. Nowadays, an artist so-inclined can buy a model of a human head where the surfaces are reduced to a set of planes -- this to better understand the structure.

But there is another potential reference source: the store mannequin.

Now some mannequins are stylized beyond usefullness. Others are not. Consider the mannequins in the Las Vegas Nordstrom store pictured here. Some are definitely simplified, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because all artists except hyper-realists simplify anyway. Then there is lighting. The Nordstrom mannequins are lighted from above, and that provides useful information regarding the eye socket, the muzzle area around the mouth, and the lips and chin.

Not all stores welcome photography (a Chanel staffer gave me a stern warning once), but if you pack a camera and find a useful mannequin setup, consider snapping a reference photo.