How Abstract Expressionists Help Me Survive Old Age. Part Five by Dave Jaffe.
There were quite a few male abstract painters in the U.S. in the late 1940's. Of course there were some women abstract painters too. Yet if you turn to an art history book written and /or published before say 1980 you won't see too many or any women abstract artists in those books.
Linda Nochlin, the American art historian wanted to find out why women weren't included in most art histories. "Why have there been no great women artists?" Nochlin asked in the title of her 1971 essay. Nochlin reeled off in her essay the very many obstacles women artists have faced for centuries. The obstacles ranged from not being allowed into on what were called" life drawing classes" or places where there were nude models, to having no rich powerful patrons who would buy the women's paintings. Many men did have these and other advantages.
Since that groundbreaking essay, many women art historians have re-examined the artistic past and have re-written art history. Women who were totally ignored have been liberated from the silence about women artists. In the late 1940's and into the 1950's, artists like Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning (the wife of Willem De Kooning), Helen Frankenthaler, and Lee Krasner who married Jackson Pollock, were painting and exhibiting their work. Then as Claudia Roth Pierpoint pointed out in a recent New Yorker story, along came pop art and these women disappeared from the art scene.
Yet in the early 1970's a second wave of feminism sprung up and many forgotten women artists were re-discovered like those I mentioned above along with many women.. Nochlin's essay was part of this re-writing of art history.
If American women were erased or never mentioned in art history books, so were many others. Most American art history books rarely mention Canadian artists whether male or female. Artists in Canada like Gita Caiserman-Roth, Jean Paul Riopelle, ,Harold Town, and Jack Shadbolt painted abstract paintings yet are rarely if ever written about in most American art histories. Other artists who painted realistically don't even get noticed. "Portraits," Willem de Kooning once said, "are pictures that girls made."
In any case I draw abstract pictures based on the paintings that American abstract male artists did many years ago. Soon I may turn to the works of Canadian women abstract painters, and use their works as a take off point for my work. But don't blame me for may male fixated work. I'm just following the art historians of the past. These men and women unfortunately didn't recognize women artists until very recently.
Saturday 20 October 2018
Wednesday 17 October 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. How Abstract Expressionists Help Me Survive Old Age. Part Four
How Abstract Expressionists Help Me Survive Old Age - Part Four .
Modern abstract paintings probably emerged in about 1910 or a little later. Artists like Vassily Kandinsky, Sonia Delauney or Gabrielle Minter may have been the first modern abstract painters. Yet whoever was the first of these artists there's always been a problem with abstract art. Many parents look at abstract art and say, "Oh my five year old could do something like that."
Whether this is true or not, I deal with that objection or comment by doing a line drawing over the abstract work that I first draw. In other words there's two stages to my art work. First, I do an abstract drawing. Then on top of my abstract work I do a line drawing of a landscape or a portrait or whatever. My line drawings show some skill and I don't think any five year old and could draw as well as I do. Yet even here I'm willing to admit that there may be out there some very young artist that could put my work to shame.
After all, I've met many young teenagers who can do better art work than I can. In any case the American abstract painters who surfaced in the 1940's and later have impressed me. This doesn't mean that they're the only ones that have. The Dutchman Piet Mondrian, the Quebecois painters like Paul Emile Borduas and Jean Paul Riopelle, and French artists like Henri Michaud were also very good abstract artists..
Still right now the American abstract expressionists have made my life a lot more fun and also made it easier for me to do art work. They've given me a reason to go on drawing and painting. And I thank them for the work they did many years ago. They've been an inspiration to me as I wander through old age.
Modern abstract paintings probably emerged in about 1910 or a little later. Artists like Vassily Kandinsky, Sonia Delauney or Gabrielle Minter may have been the first modern abstract painters. Yet whoever was the first of these artists there's always been a problem with abstract art. Many parents look at abstract art and say, "Oh my five year old could do something like that."
Whether this is true or not, I deal with that objection or comment by doing a line drawing over the abstract work that I first draw. In other words there's two stages to my art work. First, I do an abstract drawing. Then on top of my abstract work I do a line drawing of a landscape or a portrait or whatever. My line drawings show some skill and I don't think any five year old and could draw as well as I do. Yet even here I'm willing to admit that there may be out there some very young artist that could put my work to shame.
After all, I've met many young teenagers who can do better art work than I can. In any case the American abstract painters who surfaced in the 1940's and later have impressed me. This doesn't mean that they're the only ones that have. The Dutchman Piet Mondrian, the Quebecois painters like Paul Emile Borduas and Jean Paul Riopelle, and French artists like Henri Michaud were also very good abstract artists..
Still right now the American abstract expressionists have made my life a lot more fun and also made it easier for me to do art work. They've given me a reason to go on drawing and painting. And I thank them for the work they did many years ago. They've been an inspiration to me as I wander through old age.
Tuesday 16 October 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Part Three of 'How Abstact Expressionist Painters Help Me Survive Old Age'
How Abstract Expressionist Painters Help Me Survive Old Age - Part Three by Dave Jaffe.
There was a hidden story to the rise of the abstract expressionist painters in the United States that only emerged in the 1980's. The reason for the sudden fame and exposure of these artists to the American public and then to people outside the U.S. was due to the Central Intelligence Agency. In the late 1940's when these painters were creating their work, the U.S. had become the world's greatest power. It was locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union for world supremacy.
The communist ruled Soviet Union government led by Josef Stalin loathed abstract painting and probably shipped abstract artists to the Gulag. Stalin and his communist comrades preferred a s dull socialist realism. The U.S. government proclaimed itself 'The Leader of the Free World'. Abstract painting was allowed in the U.S. and its existence showed that the U.S.was truly free, unlike the Soviet Union.
The Central Intelligence Agency used all the media of the day to popularize abstract expressionism. Photo journals, documentary films, newspapers, radio and the now emerging television stations gave space and time to these abstract artists. Yet it was the CIA that enlisted the media to do this job. "In this way," writes art critic John Berger, "a mostly desperate body of art was transformed into an ideological weapon for the defense of individualism and the right to express oneself."
I knew all this back story when I started drawing and painting over 30 years ago. Yet I found that these abstract painters were really easy to copy and to make paintings and drawings influenced by their work. Also I did try to work out drawings using paintings by other artists who did abstract work. Yet I found out that the paintings by people like Philip Guston, Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn (who came along a little later than the abstract expressionists) were easier to use and made a greater impression on me than any other abstract painters.
Of course the U.S. painters weren't the first abstract painters. Abstract painting has been around for many years. And the first modern abstract artists came along at around 1910 or a little later.
There was a hidden story to the rise of the abstract expressionist painters in the United States that only emerged in the 1980's. The reason for the sudden fame and exposure of these artists to the American public and then to people outside the U.S. was due to the Central Intelligence Agency. In the late 1940's when these painters were creating their work, the U.S. had become the world's greatest power. It was locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union for world supremacy.
The communist ruled Soviet Union government led by Josef Stalin loathed abstract painting and probably shipped abstract artists to the Gulag. Stalin and his communist comrades preferred a s dull socialist realism. The U.S. government proclaimed itself 'The Leader of the Free World'. Abstract painting was allowed in the U.S. and its existence showed that the U.S.was truly free, unlike the Soviet Union.
The Central Intelligence Agency used all the media of the day to popularize abstract expressionism. Photo journals, documentary films, newspapers, radio and the now emerging television stations gave space and time to these abstract artists. Yet it was the CIA that enlisted the media to do this job. "In this way," writes art critic John Berger, "a mostly desperate body of art was transformed into an ideological weapon for the defense of individualism and the right to express oneself."
I knew all this back story when I started drawing and painting over 30 years ago. Yet I found that these abstract painters were really easy to copy and to make paintings and drawings influenced by their work. Also I did try to work out drawings using paintings by other artists who did abstract work. Yet I found out that the paintings by people like Philip Guston, Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn (who came along a little later than the abstract expressionists) were easier to use and made a greater impression on me than any other abstract painters.
Of course the U.S. painters weren't the first abstract painters. Abstract painting has been around for many years. And the first modern abstract artists came along at around 1910 or a little later.
Saturday 13 October 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Part Two of "How Abstract Painters Help Me Survive Old Age'.
How Abstract Painters help Me Survive Old Age - Part Two by Dave Jaffe.
One talented visual artist summed up my visual art this way. "Mister," she once said, "all you want to do is copy." I can only admit she was right. Nearly every day after I wake up I read for an hour or so . Then I thumb through a book on modern art. In this book or a second one I have, I search for an abstract painting by one of the American painters that are grouped under the title of 'Abstract Expressionists'.
Usually I hone in on paintings done years ago by artists like Philip Guston, Mark Rothko or Franz Kline. Then I paint or draw a variation of one of these artists' paintings. I often use coloured pencils that I can easily change with an eraser. In the second stage of my art work I look at some of the photographs I've stored away in files, or I browse through books on photography that sit on my bookshelf. I select a photo and then do a line drawing over the abstract image. The drawing is based on the photo I'vec hosen. Yet I also change the photo from the original as I draw or paint it.
As that visual artist also told me years ago, "You don't have an original bone in your body." Once again this lady hit the nail one the head. Yet how easy it is to do a drawing with my method. Years and years ago when I first started drawing with coloured pencils it would take me hours to complete a poor drawing. I would go to parks on Vancouver's west side and if the sun shone, sit down in the park and try to capture the scene around me.
I nearly always failed and after a few tries at doing a picture of part of the park, I was ready to give up drawing with coloured pencils. Then I came across a book on Andy Warhol, the famous painter of Campbell soup cans and many other things. As I read about Warhol's life I realized that most of his paintings were based on other people's photographs. "Uh, I dunno," Warhol once told a journalist who kept asking Warhol why so many of his paintings and silk screened works dealt with death and destruction.
I don't know the reason for Warhol's fascination with electric chairs, car crashes, paintings of a grieving Jacqueline Kennedy and the by then dead Marilyn Monroe. Yet I quickly flashed on to the fact that Warhols's work was based on other people's photos. "Why can't I do the same thing?" I asked myself and quickly concluded that I could. Then I realized that I still needed to find a painting style. A few years ago I came across the paintings of the abstract expressionists, and started to do works based on their styles.
Then one day a few months ago, I realized what I had to do. As other writers have pointed out, it was the "Aha moment" when it seemed as if a light bulb had gone off in my head. Now I realized that doing drawings based on other people's works was really easy. I've been following this method now for over three months. It usually works out very well.
One talented visual artist summed up my visual art this way. "Mister," she once said, "all you want to do is copy." I can only admit she was right. Nearly every day after I wake up I read for an hour or so . Then I thumb through a book on modern art. In this book or a second one I have, I search for an abstract painting by one of the American painters that are grouped under the title of 'Abstract Expressionists'.
Usually I hone in on paintings done years ago by artists like Philip Guston, Mark Rothko or Franz Kline. Then I paint or draw a variation of one of these artists' paintings. I often use coloured pencils that I can easily change with an eraser. In the second stage of my art work I look at some of the photographs I've stored away in files, or I browse through books on photography that sit on my bookshelf. I select a photo and then do a line drawing over the abstract image. The drawing is based on the photo I'vec hosen. Yet I also change the photo from the original as I draw or paint it.
As that visual artist also told me years ago, "You don't have an original bone in your body." Once again this lady hit the nail one the head. Yet how easy it is to do a drawing with my method. Years and years ago when I first started drawing with coloured pencils it would take me hours to complete a poor drawing. I would go to parks on Vancouver's west side and if the sun shone, sit down in the park and try to capture the scene around me.
I nearly always failed and after a few tries at doing a picture of part of the park, I was ready to give up drawing with coloured pencils. Then I came across a book on Andy Warhol, the famous painter of Campbell soup cans and many other things. As I read about Warhol's life I realized that most of his paintings were based on other people's photographs. "Uh, I dunno," Warhol once told a journalist who kept asking Warhol why so many of his paintings and silk screened works dealt with death and destruction.
I don't know the reason for Warhol's fascination with electric chairs, car crashes, paintings of a grieving Jacqueline Kennedy and the by then dead Marilyn Monroe. Yet I quickly flashed on to the fact that Warhols's work was based on other people's photos. "Why can't I do the same thing?" I asked myself and quickly concluded that I could. Then I realized that I still needed to find a painting style. A few years ago I came across the paintings of the abstract expressionists, and started to do works based on their styles.
Then one day a few months ago, I realized what I had to do. As other writers have pointed out, it was the "Aha moment" when it seemed as if a light bulb had gone off in my head. Now I realized that doing drawings based on other people's works was really easy. I've been following this method now for over three months. It usually works out very well.
Friday 12 October 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter One of: How Abstract Painters Help Me Survive Old Age.
How Abstract Painters Help Me Survive Old Age . Chapter One
There were ten of them, or at least I counted ten of them. They were all white males who flourished in the 1940's to the 1970's. They painted abstract paintings that made them famous, and they were called "Abstract Expressionists. "Jackson broke the ice," Willem de Kooning one of the ten said about the most famous of the group, namely Jackson Pollock.
Pollock was a charismatic brooding figure who was filmed, photographed, and put on at least one national magazine cover. He was called' Jack the Dripper', 'A drooler' and many other insulting things. Yet anyone who appreciates visual arts and looks at paintings by Pollock like 'Lavender Mist' and many other works Pollock did in the late 1940's and the early 1950's, can see that Pollock was a talented artist.
Pollock later went wild and nearly drank himself to death. "I am nature," he boasted to another fine painter Hans Hofman who came from Germany. Pollock then died in a car crash in 1956. Before Pollock came along the Armenian-born Arshile Gorky had painted some great abstract works and then beset by problems killed himself. It did look like these artists were cursed. After Pollock the Dutch-born Willem de Kooning leaped to the head of the pack and into the public eye. Like Pollock de Kooning was a a massive drinker who tried to stop gulping down alcohol. For a while de Kooning abstained from the bottle. He didn't stick to painting abstract paintings. He also painted frightening pictures of demonic grinning women.
De Kooning and Pollock gained the most publicity. Yet I prefer the paintings of three abstract expressionists namely Franz Kline, Philip Guston and Mark Rothko. Rohtko's massive paintings are often used only two colours in which yellow oblongs of paints are framed by deep red stripes. Or Rothko's works are just long red stretches of paint. Rothko who was born in Russia did not escape the curse that may have hung over these painters. He committed suicide after achieving great fame and making lots of money.
In the 1950;'s and later Guston painted abstract works with lush paint or a multi-coloured image in the centre of his works. Later he reverted to more realistic paintings.. I prefer his earlier work. Then there's Franz Kline who big black sweeping images have always attracted me.
There were ten of them, or at least I counted ten of them. They were all white males who flourished in the 1940's to the 1970's. They painted abstract paintings that made them famous, and they were called "Abstract Expressionists. "Jackson broke the ice," Willem de Kooning one of the ten said about the most famous of the group, namely Jackson Pollock.
Pollock was a charismatic brooding figure who was filmed, photographed, and put on at least one national magazine cover. He was called' Jack the Dripper', 'A drooler' and many other insulting things. Yet anyone who appreciates visual arts and looks at paintings by Pollock like 'Lavender Mist' and many other works Pollock did in the late 1940's and the early 1950's, can see that Pollock was a talented artist.
Pollock later went wild and nearly drank himself to death. "I am nature," he boasted to another fine painter Hans Hofman who came from Germany. Pollock then died in a car crash in 1956. Before Pollock came along the Armenian-born Arshile Gorky had painted some great abstract works and then beset by problems killed himself. It did look like these artists were cursed. After Pollock the Dutch-born Willem de Kooning leaped to the head of the pack and into the public eye. Like Pollock de Kooning was a a massive drinker who tried to stop gulping down alcohol. For a while de Kooning abstained from the bottle. He didn't stick to painting abstract paintings. He also painted frightening pictures of demonic grinning women.
De Kooning and Pollock gained the most publicity. Yet I prefer the paintings of three abstract expressionists namely Franz Kline, Philip Guston and Mark Rothko. Rohtko's massive paintings are often used only two colours in which yellow oblongs of paints are framed by deep red stripes. Or Rothko's works are just long red stretches of paint. Rothko who was born in Russia did not escape the curse that may have hung over these painters. He committed suicide after achieving great fame and making lots of money.
In the 1950;'s and later Guston painted abstract works with lush paint or a multi-coloured image in the centre of his works. Later he reverted to more realistic paintings.. I prefer his earlier work. Then there's Franz Kline who big black sweeping images have always attracted me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)