Thursday 23 January 2020

On Drawing Death and Dying: Part Three by Dave Jaffe.

   On Drawing Death and Dying Part Three.




           The invention of the camera in nineteenth century Europe enabled many people to take pictures of the dead. Roger Fenton may have been the first war photographer. He was British and went to photograph the British soldiers in battle against Russian troops in the Crimean war that erupted in the middle of the 19th century.
     Then came technical innovations that made it even easier to record the dead and the dying. "Lightweight cameras came along using 35 mmm. film that could be exposed 36 times before the camera needed to be reloaded," writes Susan Sontag. "Pictures could now be taken in the thick of battles, and exhausted begrimed soldiers could be studied up close."
      Along came the Spanish Civil War in 1936. This was the first war in which war photography came of age. A war photograph by Robert Capa of a Spanish Republican soldier falling and dying on a hillside became famous. The photo took up a whole full page in a 1937 issue of 'Life' magazine. Capa became famous and lived a charmed life,  until he stepped on a land mine in the French Vietnamese War in the early 1950's and died.
    If the Spanish Civil War was the first photographer's war, the U.S. war in Vietnam became the first t.v. war. On the t.v. screen in black and white from about 1963 to 1973, pictures of dead and dying U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese were flashed around the world.  Yet photographs too played a part in shaping public opinion. In fact, in the 1950's, 60's and 70's photographed images of the dead and the dying were everywhere. "These memorable sites of suffering," writes Susan Sontag, "documented by admired photographers were mostly taken in Asia and Africa."
    Art critics like John Berger and Peter Fuller disagreed over whether photos of war swayed public opinion. Berger argued that photos of war casualties had no impact on people's views on war. Fuller didn't agree. He believed that photos of suffering people did turn people against war. Controversies also raged over whether showing pictures of the dead, the dying and even the very old was good. In the 1980's my sister objected to my drawings of my ageing father. "They make him look terrible,"
   she said. "Draw something nice."
     Susan Sontag wrote one of the most important books on photography rightly called 'On Photography'. Yet as she lay dying, her sometime partner, famed photographer Annie Liebovitz took many pictures of Sontag.. Some people objected to this. In the 1970's prominent fashion photographer Richard Avedon photographed his father who was dying of cancer. Here too, some people thought that Avedon was wrong to do this.
     I don't take a stand on this issue . I'm just one of hundreds of thousands of obscure artists who copy other people's styles and my work will never be noticed. In any case, my attempts to draw dying people failed. At this point in what's left of my life I'll stick to drawing people and trees. It's so much easier.







Wednesday 22 January 2020

On drawing Death and Dying: Part Two; By Dave Jaffe

       On Drawing death And Dying: Part Two.




    My first and last try to draw someone dead or dying didn't work out. I took photos from the U.S. Civil War and made them bigger. I thought these photos of dead Union and Confederate soldiers were taken by Mathew Brady.  Yet I was wrong.
    "The Brady war pictures," writes Susan Sontag, "were mostly taken by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan." The pair were working for Brady, Sontag points out.
     In any case I drew two dead men lying on the ground. The men lie in the foreground of my drawing. On the right side of the picture I drew an older woman leaning over one of the dead soldiers. Her arms are outstretched to him showing sympathy.
   I often copy people's photos and change them. "All you want to do is copy," one artist told me years ago. She was right. Yet I still think imitating some other people 's work is the fastest way to learn and do a good drawing. In  any case, the finished picture bothered me. It clearly didn't fit in in my
sketch book that's filled with drawings of trees and o landscapes. Then, too, I don't want to draw pictures of the dead and the dying. Death's presence now looms too close to me. I want to forget it if I can.
    There's another reason to not draw the dead and the dying. For pictures of this sort don't seem to make it into fine art exhibitions these days. They did in the past. Think of the crucifixion of Jesus. This was a very popular subject for visual artists two to three hundred years ago. So were other scenes of the dead and the dying. Yet then along came the Impressionist painters in the last third of the 19th century. "Everybody is prepared to admit that a painting of a fruit can be as important as a painting of a hero dying," writes John Berger. "The Impressionists did as much as anyone to win this previously unheard freedom for the artist."
    Only one famous artist did pictures of the dead and that was Andy Warhol. Yet even Warhol didn't exactly paint pictures of dead people. He silkscreened other people's photos of car crashes, electric chairs and other roads to death. Then he or his assistants just churned out copy after copy of the dead and the dying.
     Now people still paint pictures of death. You can find their work on the Internet. Just Google 'Pictures of the dead'. I did and came up with many works of art. Still, as said, most people who paint and draw don't paint pictures of dying people or those who are dead. So who does? Well, one group of people do give us such pictures and they're war photographers. ' "The camera is the eye of history," Mathew Brady is supposed to have said. This may be true or not.  For now in an age of Photoshop, photos and history can be changed at will.  Yet the invention of the camera in the 19th century did bring many unpleasant things closer to us all. And one of those unpleasant things was people death.

Wednesday 8 January 2020

Why I Didn't Draw Death and Dying by Dave Jaffe: Part One

   Why I Didn't Draw Death and Dying by Dave Jaffe: Part One.




          A few days ago my sister phoned me from the United States. "I'm getting a tumour taken out of my breast," she said. Now my sister assured me that the tumour wasn't dangerous. And her husband has e-mailed me that the operation was a success.
     Yet me sister's phone call got me thinking about death and dying. For all around me people my age are dying. Some like me are in their late seventies. Others, I note are way younger than I am.  Some are quite older. Still, very year about 50,000 Canadians pass away. No matter how optimistic I am I have to face the fact that my death looms on the horizon.
     "In the long run we'll all be dead," said the British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes died over 70 years ago. Now many of my favourte artists and writers like John Berger, Susan Sontag, Margaret Laurence, Linda Nochlin, Robert Hughes and Andy Warhol have all died. Soon I believe I'll be gone too.
       Every other day or so, I draw something or other. When my sister phoned me I was drawing pictures of trees using coloured pencils. After my sister's phone call I thought of drawing something different. Why, I thought, don't I draw or paint pictures of the dead or dying. Yet this was easier thought of than done.
    Now one man who's still around - I think - is the Toronto-based artist Michael Snow. I was reading his biography by James King during and after my sister phoned m. Snow is a multitalented artist. He has painted  pictures, sculpted, made films and played jazz on the piano. He in his nineties and was very active I'm told..
   "Many art starts when the artist is moved by other work," Snow told the art critic John Bentley Mays way back in 1984. Doing art, Snow said, "comes from the desire for originality based on the depth of what was important for you."  Snow is an incredibly original artist who's light years ahead of me in artistic ability. I'm just one of thousands of amateur artists who paint or draw as a hobby. Yet I did want to draw or paint as Snow said, what was important to me. My thoughts had become focused on death and dying which in recent years have been etched themselves into my brain.
      How would I do this. I didn't know. Still, I soon turned to the internet and googled for black and white photos on death and dying people. At least 17 pictures popped up and I told myself, "I'm in business." For the next  or three days I tried to draw from these photos. Yet in the end I gave up doing this. The whole process just depressed me no end. Now I'm drawing pictures of bottles using Michael Snow's abstract paintings as a takeoff point.
      Death is still waiting in the wings. I know this. Yet I'm in no rush to hurry it along. I'll stick to drawing bottles for now.