artists

Those who’ve been reading here for awhile or have delved into the archives know that I’ve sometimes experimented with a traditional painting medium called tempera grassa. TG was most commonly used in the 15th and 16th centuries; it represents a transitional medium between egg tempera and true oil painting. TG consists of pigment mixed with an emulsion of egg and oil. Since the 16th century, TG has been fairly obscure—the best recent example would be the 20th century Italian master, Pietro Annigoni.

In the 19th century (especially in Germany), painting recipes were developed that involved various combinations of tempera ingredients, often including some combination of egg white, whole egg, linseed oil, stand oil, dammar varnish, stand oil, and turpentine. You can find many such recipes on the internet with a few simple Google searches. I’ve usually avoided these relatively complex recipes in favor of simple emulsions of egg yolk (the traditional binder for egg tempera) and linseed or walnut oil, mixed with pigment/water paste.

Recently, I ran across a web reprint of Egg Tempera Painting, Tempera Underpainting, Oil Emulsion Painting: A Manual of Technique, by Vaclav Vitlacyl and Rupert Davidson Turnbull. Published in 1935, it is a compendium of various tempera techniques. One that caught my eye is a recipe they call “putrido.” Putrido is one name for tempera grassa (because it starts to smell bad after a few days). They say that this is based on a recipe from an old manuscript found in Venice. For all I know it’s what was used in the Renaissance.

Take whatever quantity of dry color you wish to prepare. Divide it into two equal parts. Rub up one part with yolk of egg only into a fairly stiff paste. Rub up the other part with sun-bleached linseed oil, to about the consistency of ordinary tube colours. (To save time or trouble, it is possible to use ordinary tube oil colours, but to be sure of your ingredients, it is always advisable to grind your own colour in oil.) The part that is rubbed up with oil may be slightly larger in quantity than the part rubbed with yolk of egg. Then take the two parts so prepared and grind them together, preferably on the marble slab. It will be found that when these two parts are put together, the resultant mixture will stiffen at once into a very stiff paste, too stiff to be easily rubbed. This may be softened down by the addition of either water, emulsion, or linseed oil. If you wish to use the Putrido in its leaner form, add either water or the emulsion (Medium Fat Emulsion), but if you wish to paint with it as an oil paint using oil as the medium, then thin it down with oil. In either case, add the water, the emulsion, or the oil very slowly, only a few drops at a time, until the paste becomes a smooth cream easily handled on the marble slab.

I find this to be pretty interesting. It is a recipe that is similar to what I’ve done before, is simple to make, doesn’t involve solvents, and uses egg yolk (rather than the white or the whole egg), with which I am more familiar. They suggest that adding a small amount of oil of clove will preserve the paint mixture and allow it to be kept for some time (although not indefinitely). I expect that storing them in a refrigerator, especially in warm weather, would be a good idea. The oil of clove would also act as a retarder for the oil component of the paint, causing to dry more slowly. That could be a good or a bad thing, but I expect one would have to wait between layers for the paint to dry. You could try to balance the retarding effect of the clove oil by adding a small amount of lead napthenate, but that makes for a more complex reaction than I am really comfortable with.

I’ll have to try this recipe soon. I have a large painting that I started in tempera and then stopped work on. It might make an excellent underpainting for this TG recipe.

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Some 20th-century realists, such as David Hockney, tend to paint a blank wall as, well, blank. By that I mean that they mix up some color and paint that wall a flat tone. No texture, no color variation, just one plain color. If the blank wall has, say, a cast shadow falling on it, they will paint that, but the shadow will also be just one undifferentiated color, just like the light portion of the wall. Skies, tabletops, streets—even skin tones—tend to get the same treatment.

That doesn’t work for me. First of all, it’s not “realistic,” in that human vision (at least as I experience it as a human with functioning vision) never has areas of flat color. If I look at a plain wall, it has constant variations in hue, chroma, and value. I just don’t see any flat color there.

That doesn’t mean the artist can’t paint it flat if that’s the way it looks to him or her, or if that evokes a certain feeling the artist wants to reference. But the big problem with flatness is that it distances me emotionally from the painting. Flat color pushes me away. It says, “there isn’t anything to see here—this space intentionally left blank.” A flat area of color emphasizes the reality that the painting itself is flat. The painting becomes less realist and more abstract, in a way that I find unappealing. Flat paintings are more “modern” (in the sense of being more 20th century), but that’s not a selling point as far as I am concerned. I like simplicity in paintings, but not that kind of simplicity.

By contrast, texture pulls me into the painting. It can be used to create a sense of mystery, as in the subtle darks of a Rembrandt painting. It communicates more about the visual reality that the painter is attempting to lure me into observing. It gives me a reason to spend more time looking, and from the standpoint of a painter, that is never a bad thing.

As a result, I spend lots of time with the “blank” parts of my paintings. I typically use multiple layers and think about how much texture and color variation to apply. Some blank areas get more attention than detail areas. That doesn’t show so much in a photograph of the painting—but that’s just one more reason why the original is better than any reproduction. And that, from the standpoint of a painter, is an excellent thing.

Hans Memling (ca. 1440-1494) was one of the great portraitists of the 15th century. Clearly influenced by the pioneering Netherlandish oil painters from the earlier part of the century—Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyen—Memling concentrated on formal rendering of detail. This one is “Portrait of a Young Man,” ca. 185-90, oil on panel, 11.5 × 8.7”. Although there is relatively little form modeling of flesh tones, you still get a sense of personality and “aliveness.”

Peter Howson (b. London 1958) is one of these painters who are “writing” their art with their life; or - in other words - they continuously provoke challenges and arrange “scenography” in order to give their work a reason for existence. In that sense Howson occupies the opposite side to, for example, Henry Matisse or Joan Miro who lived comparatively ordinary lives of family men and their paintings seemed to emerge, first of all, from their intense inner life. Peter would be one of these artists, with whom Marcel Duchamp was likely to be fascinated. Artists with an amazing personal story and controversial work. I found myself being fascinated by that story both as a humanist and a person studying art.

Peter Howson met with violence and humiliation at a young age being bullied by his classmates. He was small, quiet and “different”, he wouldn’t play football during brakes simply because he preferred to stay inside and draw. Lately, he names his sickness of the soul as the Asperger’s Syndrome. The psychological effects of that early loneliness and brutality were to be long-lasting. At 17 he got into Glasgow School of Art (Peter’s family moved to Scotland when he was four and he’s recognized as a “Scottish” artist) but he found himself fighting with bad, non-understanding teaching.

Disillusioned, he quits school after a year and enrolls in the British Army. It’s quite an unusual move for a sensitive, introverted boy with the history of bullying. He stands military life for nine months and appreciates the period as being one of the most formative in his entire life. Personally, I admire that choice made just in the right time and probably with the instinct that in order to learn how to swim one has to throw himself into deep water. Peter Howson had confronted his fears and perhaps bad memories and he did this struggling through the hard, an extreme way. That “extreme” trait will develop to be the painter’s alter ego - Howson as we know him now.

Having finished the art school (thanks to an encouraging teacher - Sandy Moffat) Peter starts yet another fight, this time lasting throughout his mature life of an artist and man. It’s a battle of wills between Peter Howson - a victim of his own psyche and Peter Howson - a man of action and adventure, a talented painter with a great insight in the human soul.

In his early 20s the painter faces his fascination with the gym and heroes in A. Schwarzenegger’s type. Soon he admits that because he took things to a ridiculous extreme he had became so muscle-bound that he hated the way he looked. Also, his first painting series would be an acute, although slightly caricatured depiction of body builders, hard men and hooligans. At the same time the artist speaks out how much he actually detests the world he depicts: I hate violence. And I believe that everyone, no matter how gentle they think they are, has the capacity for it within them…

Through mid-1980s his profile rose steadily and within relatively short period of time Howson found himself being collected by Madonna, David Bowie, Bob Geldof and being rejected by the respectable museums at the same time. Initially thrilled by the fame he soon realizes a trap he and his admirers have set up - a trap of generating works in a one, recognized style and in a one popular thematic circle (just think about dozens of other artists who would never try to escape from such a comfortable trap). He knew he had to make himself different.

That’s how he threw himself into another very deep water - he became an official painter of the war in the former Yugoslavia, so-called Bosnian War (1992-1995). That was certainly the most extreme challenge of the “extreme painter”. First time he went unprepared and came back seriously sick, the home press labelled him “a coward”. He had returned and demanded an army uniform and to be treated like a soldier. That experience was about to make him a different man. The war is one of the most barbaric in the history - a civil butchery based on ethnic grounds with mass fratricidal killings and rapes, tortures and mutilations. Howson called it a war of violence and humiliation becoming himself a kind of a poignantly experienced expert in both. What exactly the painter witnessed remains his mystery (he rejected the presence of journalists at his second visit) but he admits that he had never been closer to suicide and - paradoxically - never felt more alive.

A series of Howson’s Bosnian huge-scaled canvases caused a big debate in Great Britain and beyond with the major media - The Times, BBC being involved. And it started even before they had their premiere at the Peter Howson: Bosnia exhibition in the Imperial War Museum (London) in 1994. Some of the paintings appeared “too explicit” for a public view (especially the powerful Croatian and Muslim depicting a brutal rape), some were questioned on a basis of their historical value as the painter admitted not to witness himself some of the scenes (but “just” using his imagination).

The paintings belong to the most powerful images of the contemporary figurative art. They depict women being raped, castrated men, hanged animals, ragged refugees and above all - anonymous faces, formidable, unforgettable physiognomies of those who went through hell. These works have the drama, fantasy, emotional intensity and visionary quality of W. Blake’s and H. Bosch’s paintings. They were born from sincerity and an authentic spiritual pain, from passion and courage, from a sinful fascination by the evil side of the human nature and a heroic struggle against it. It has to be said that the contemporary art seems to be nothing like that…

Recently, Peter Howson makes headlines over abusing drugs and alcohol. He turned towards religious themes.

In Phaidon’s 20th Century Art Book his name appears among 499 the most important artists of the past century.

Here is Howson’s official web page:Peter Howson

For further reading I do recommend books:

- Jackson, A. A Different Man, 1997

- Heller, R. Peter Howson, 1993

P.S.

Dear Readers,

With David’s permission I would like to invite you on my own page I’ve been developing throughout the last week - Terra Incognita

We agreed on cross-posting (I will publish some of my texts/images on both blogs and David - feel free to post on my site), but I would like also to contribute some pieces designed just for this site.

All The Strange Hours will remain a terrain of my debut, so it will always be a little bit special for me.

Johannes Vermeer has only a few peers and, I think, no superiors in the history of painting. Here’s an excellent web site that explores his work and times. It’s not very fancy, but keep clicking; there’s a lot of material and it’s all worth looking at.

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Miles Mathis has posted an extended commentary on some painting practices advocated by William Whitaker. He objects to some of Whitaker’s painting methods and materials, and I thought I would comment what he’s written.

Before I do, I should point out that Mr. Mathis is, so far as I can tell, a professional artist who supports himself with his very good paintings. I, by contrast, am no more than a wannabee. On that basis, he has and deserves far more credibility than I. He is, however, commenting on the practices of another professional artist of at least equal stature (and fairly similar artistic style). It is certainly true that some professional artists throughout history have used ill-advised materials and painting methods. In any event, either Mr. Whitaker is right or Mr. Mathis is right on any of these issues (or they are both wrong) and I, lowly hobbyist that I am, will attempt to compare one to the other against my own limited experience. (CONTINUED) ⇒

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It’s here.

He’s got lots of discussion of his process of watercolor painting and drawing. Good stuff. Check it out.

Also of interest

• You say “sfumah-to,” I say “sfumay-to” (0)
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He’s the original “painting a day” guy, although he doesn’t do one every single day anymore. Of the work currently on his website, I’m really fond of both “Odalisque” and “Two Plums and a Sunset.” His work is simple and evocative. I am particularly impressed by his sophisticated use of low-chroma color to create a contemplative mood.

Also of interest

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I didn’t see the Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” I was disappointed, however, by a small moment in the preview. The makers made a big point of having the movie be in the original Latin and Aramaic. When Pontius Pilate parades the tortured Jesus before the Jewish crowds, he says, “ecce homo,” which means, “behold the man.” He is attempting to demonstrate to the potentially-rebellious Jews that Jesus is no divine Messiah, only a mortal man who can bleed, suffer, and be made to submit to Roman authority like anyone else.

My pedantic quibble is this: Pilate pronounces “ecce” wrong. He says, “eche.” I’m no Latin scholar, but it is my understanding that there are no soft “C” sounds in classical Latin. It should be pronounced “eke,” just as Caesar would have been pronounced “kaisar,” not “seesar” the way we say it today. The soft “C” pronunciation is from Medieval Church Latin, which did not exist circa 33 A.D. Any real scholars should feel free to correct me on this. (CONTINUED) ⇒

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Many landscape artists try for spectacular light effects. Mostly, they fail to make it look convincing. Georges Inness (American, 1825-1894) made it seem easy.

Not all of his paintings depend on special effects like this, but these are some of his best.

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Every time I hear it on my local public radio station, it annoys me. There’s an Edward Hopper exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. That’s good—I like a lot of his stuff.

The radio ad says that he painted the, “beauty of everyday things.” Grrr. I can understand why the ad copy is written that way—they think it will pull in more visitors. But I believe it completely misstates Hopper’s work. I don’t think he did that or tried to do that. He wasn’t really interested in beauty; if he had been, he wouldn’t have painted the way he did.

Hopper was trying to paint the way everyday things feel, which is by far a more difficult and worthwhile thing to do. He didn’t always succeed, but when he did (as in the brilliant “New York Movie,” for example) his paintings were fine indeed.

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Check out these details of “The Madonna and Cannon Van Der Paele” by Jan Van Ecyk. What’s particularly amazing to consider is how new this “Ars Nova” movement was when Van Eyck was painting. Almost no one had done anything like it before. And yet Van Eyck’s work is so stunningly fluent.

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“In art as in literature, ugliness rendered with compassion is beauty.”
—W. Joe Innis

This may be the 20th century painting I most admire. It’s “Adam,” an egg tempera painting by Andrew Wyeth. It depicts Adam Johnson, a poor farmer and a neighbor and friend of Wyeth’s. It was painted in 1963, the year I was born.

I think this is a great painting because it projects a sense of compassion. You feel Adam’s hard life, and you feel a sense of connectedness to him. He’s a real person, a human being with his own life, his own humanity, his own tragedy. You don’t know his story (although you can imagine a small part of it from the context), but there is a strong sense that there is one. Few paintings, even by great artists, manage this.

When I used this as an example of a great painting on an internet art forum awhile back, one poster didn’t get it. He said that the use of a poor black man in a painting was just another banal stereotype. The painting was kitsch, not art. I disagree. Wyeth knew this man. He wasn’t painting some symbol of underclass rural life, he was painting Adam Johnson, his friend.

I also think the composition is brilliant. The format is very wide, with Adam presented in three-quarter front view just slightly offset from center. The middle ground objects, and the background hills, curve downward to the right behind Adam, creating a sense of dynamic movement juxtaposed against the stasis of the obese Adam standing stolidly in the foreground with his eyes resolutely shut. The eye is stopped at the right by the fence post and at the left by the handles of the tools leaning against the wall, keeping us within the scene (it’s not easy to do that in such a wide-format painting). The sense of movement in the background is enhanced by the flock of birds in flight, an effect that would seem excessively melodramatic, but in the context of such a grounded picture it gives a sense of strangeness that speaks to another level of reality within world created by the painting.

It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s a deeply humane one.

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was one of the great Northern painters of the late Renaissance. Gossaert was born about 1478 and died in 1532. He was also called Jan Mabuse and Jennyn Van Henegouwe. In 1508 he traveled with his patron Phillip of Burgundy to Italy. His mature style became a brilliant synthesis of traditional Flemish tight realism, Italian Renaissance styles, and the innovations of Albrect Dürer. He was one of the first Northern artist to paint large-scale secular nudes as decoration for an Italian-style palace for his humanist master Phillip.

This painting is his last. It depicts Danaë as she is approached by Zeus as a beam of sunlight, just before the god impregnates her with the hero Perseus (Greek myths are like that). The subject was also painted by Titian and Rembrandt, but I am particularly fond of Gossaert’s version.

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was one of the great realist painters of all time. Born in 1400, he was one of the pioneers of early oil painting in Northern Europe, along with his teacher Robert Campin and contemporary Jan van Eyck. Most of his career as a mature painter (he lived until 1464) was spent in Brussels. His work was renowned in his own time and when he visited Italy in 1450 he was welcomed, given several prominent commissions, and apparently asked to tutor Italian artists in the methods of Flemish oil painting. Despite his great influence on later artists, after his death his name fell into relative oblivion, and it was a matter of scholarship in later centuries to identify his (invariably unsigned) work, recognize his amazing skill at high realism, and clarify his role in the development of modern painting.

This painting, “Lady Wearing a Gauze Headdress,” was probably painted around 1445. It is thought by some to be a portrait of his wife, Elizabeth Goffaerts. This theory is given support by the (then quite unusual) direct gaze of the sitter and a slightly softer style than was usual for van der Weyden.

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