The Chronicle of Higher Education posed the following questions on its web site under Colloquy:"Free-standing art schools have long produced leaders in the arts -- and controversy.
An article in the new issue of The Chronicle profiles students at the San Francisco Art Institute, which recently experienced an uproar when a student there -- as part of a class performance -- had oral sex with a bound volunteer. The article explores the students, their artwork (ranging from a piece in which doughnuts are served in bathrooms to a work in which colored ice melts), and the educational ideas behind the program there and at other leading art schools.
Faculty members at the San Francisco institution say they must let students take risks -- including risks that result in artistic failures -- to promote creativity. Does this philosophy work? Are today's art schools producing good artists? Is the emphasis on performance art and genre-bending work improving or hurting art schools? What are the strengths and weaknesses of art schools today?"Virgil Elliott's response follows:The art school system is long overdue for reform, in fact its agenda has been so off-base for so long that reform is far too mild a term. It needs a complete overhaul, from top to bottom. The worship of all things purporting to be avant-garde has denied several generations of aspiring artists and would-be artists the kind of training they sought, and had every right to expect to find, in an art school or art department of an educational institution.
What has been promoted instead of actual education is an indoctrination to a very perverted avant-garde party line. Its emphasis has always been on novelty and audacity; superficial and fleeting qualities, if they can be called qualities at all, which evaporate upon short exposure, leaving behind nothing of substance once the hype has been removed in its never-ending pursuit of the latest thing. The products of this pointless endeavor are thus doomed to ultimate obscurity, as the creators of it have never been taught how to imbue their works with the kind of intrinsic appeal that allows works of art to transcend the centuries.
For art to endure, it must connect with human sensibilities on a deeper level than can be reached with gimmickry and fashion. Intrinsic appeal does not find its way into a work of art by accident, by magic, or by inspiration alone.
It must be engineered with that purpose in mind, and the effort can only be successful when the guiding intelligence behind it is well-equipped with the discipline and mastery of technique necessary to carry it through. These are the things that can and should be taught in art schools. Creativity cannot be taught. It is up to each individual to find it, and then put voice to it using the technical means that should have been learned and mastered in the educational institutions.
Art should be able to carry its own message to the viewer without requiring an interpreter to explain away confusion, or to supply meaning where none is apparent. The notion that art must have a supporting theory behind it to be legitimate ignores the fact that it is the purpose of the art itself to convey its message, and that if it fails to do so, it has simply failed as art, and no amount of talk can change that.
The solution will not be easily implemented, as it must include the removal of entrenched tenured incompetents who never should have been hired in the first place, whose lack of versatility precludes the possibility of their ever changing. Until they die or retire, the professors' unions will oppose any attempt to purge the system of them. What can be done in the meantime is for the administrators of these institutions to hire new instructors who can demonstrate actual competence in the disciplines of art that they will be called upon to teach, and to treat them well enough, and pay them well enough, to induce them to stay, despite the opposition they are likely to encounter from the existing faculty. What it will take to bring these administrators to the realization that this must be done is for the students to be very vocal in demanding it. They must express their dissatisfaction to the people in charge of the institutions when the instructors do not provide what they, the students, have come there and paid their tuition to learn. They must likewise inform the dean when an instructor does his or her job exceptionally well, and express appreciation for that instructor. Merit should be rewarded. Incompetence should not be tolerated.
Art suffered many setbacks in the last hundred years. It is important to the future of art that the worst aberrations of the Twentieth Century not be continued into the twenty-first. Their string has long since been played out. It is time for them to go.
Virgil Elliott
Atelier of Virgil Elliott
111 Goodwin Avenue
Penngrove, CA 94951
(707) 664-8198
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
The Innovations of Rembrandt
Virgil Elliot has some great essays!
The Innovations of Rembrandt
by Virgil Elliott
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn is considered by many to be the greatest artist of all time. His genius was apparent as soon as he arrived on the scene, already surpassing the established Masters of the day, including his teachers, by the tender age of twenty-three.
Rembrandt had learned all that was then known about oil painting while still a student, and immediately began to add his own discoveries to the technical knowledge of his time. To this day Rembrandt's best works remain unsurpassed and serve as inspiration to the rest of us who paint.
What techniques he was taught may be discerned by studying the works of his instructors, Jacob Isaacxszoon Van Swanenburch and Pieter Lastmann. The genius of Rembrandt is immediately apparent by the extent to which he so obviously surpassed both his teachers, and in how early in his career he did so. Nonetheless, his training under them was an important factor in his artistic development and should not be minimized. Both teachers seem to have possessed a working knowledge of the painting methods in use at that time, which formed the basis of Rembrandt's early work.
This would include the Flemish Technique (painting in transparent and opaque color on wood panels primed white), the Venetian Technique (executing a neutral or monochrome underpainting on canvas, then painting over it in transparent and opaque color in stages), and the Direct Painting Technique (รก la prima or premier coup, i.e., painting in one step in full color).
Various examples of his work show that he was not limited to any technique, but employed them all, the choice depending on which approach best suited the subject in question, and for what purpose the painting was intended. His facility with all three soon led him to combine aspects of one with another, and to add innovations of his own.
Some of his paintings are on wood, executed in what appears to be essentially the Flemish Technique; some small studies on wood panels were done in a variation of the Direct Painting Technique, and some on canvas in both the Venetian and Direct techniques.
The primer for the panels is white, probably glue-chalk gesso, covered with a transparent brown imprimatur of Burnt Umber mixed with varnish, which creates the golden glow characteristic of his work. His canvases are primed with a warm grey made from lootwit (lead white with chalk, ground in linseed oil) and Raw Umber, or sometimes with white lead alone, with a transparent brown imprimatur.
Rembrandt was an extremely versatile artist and did not follow an unthinking repetition of the same procedure every time. He thought his way through each painting from the genesis of the idea to the last brush stroke, never lapsing into a routine approach. He exploited to the fullest the qualities of transparency and opacity, relying on the underglow of light coming through transparent color for many special effects, with opaque lights built up more heavily for the brightly lit areas.
Colors were sometimes modified by subtle glazes, semiglazes or scumbles. Transparent darks and opaque lights were orchestrated to play against one another for maximum visual impact and depth, probably influenced by the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio.
Clues as to his choice of primer may be seen in areas where he has used a sharpened brush handle to scratch through wet paint in order to indicate bits of hair. This is evident in a very early self-portrait, now in The Hague, and in many other portraits. The primers and/or imprimaturs thus revealed show that he followed no one single procedure, but varied the choices, based on the effect he was after. Scratching with a sharpened brush handle into wet paint was one of his earlier innovations.
Not long afterward, he began building up the opaque passages in his lights more heavily, and texturing them to take on the physical convolutions of the lighted surfaces of his subjects, most notably the skin textures of male subjects, including himself. The texture was created, or at any rate can be duplicated, by applying the paint somewhat heavily with large brushes, then gently passing a large, dry, soft-hair brush over the surface of the wet paint, back and forth, until the desired texture is attained.
The consistency of the paint was modified by the addition of a medium containing a long oil (sun-thickened linseed or walnut oil or boiled oil) and sometimes a resin, to give it a long brushing quality. Paint exposed to the air for several hours begins to take on this same characteristic, as the oil begins to polymerize.
Subsequently Rembrandt began to superimpose glazes of red over these textured passages when dry, then wipe them off with a rag, leaving traces remaining in the low spots to create an even more convincing texture of rough flesh. Someone, at some point, said you could pick up a Rembrandt portrait by the nose.
As he began to expand the effect of glazing over dried impasto to other textures as well, he devised a method employing two whites; one for impasto and one for smoother passages. The impasto white was faster-drying, probably made so by the addition of egg, and possibly chalk, into the formulation. In any case, it was very lean, and consisted mostly of white lead with a minimum of binder. He began applying it more and more heavily as the first stage of a two (or more) stage operation which was finished with transparent glazes and wiping to create fantastic special effects.
The most extreme example of this is the man's glowing, golden sleeve in the painting referred to as "The Jewish Bride," in the Rijks museum in Amsterdam. The brilliance of this effect cannot be obtained in any other way. He has used the same technique on the bride's costume in the same painting, but here the underpainting contains vermillion, and is glazed with red lakes, perhaps Rose Madder. The gold chain in "Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer" is done in much the same way. The underpaint appears to have been troweled on with a knife or some sort of flat stick, then sculpted before it dried.
In the Lieutenant's uniform in "The Night Watch," Rembrandt used this method, but with less heavy impasto, for the ornate brocade work. The wet underlayer, which in this case included Lead-Tin Yellow, was worked with sharpened brush handles and other tools while soft, then allowed to dry before the darker glazes were applied. By wiping the glazes off while they were still wet, Rembrandt was able to create a bas-relief effect of remarkable three-dimensionality as the glaze remained in the nooks and crannies. By glazing again, this time with transparent yellows and/or browns, instead of Ivory Black, he gave the textures a rich, golden glow.
He is known to have sometimes used Asphaltum as a glaze, for the most part successfully overcoming its tendency to crack and wrinkle by keeping its percentage low in a mixture with Sandarac varnish. The reader should note that both Asphaltum and Sandarac are problematic substances, risky to use in painting, and are unnecessary now that synthetic substitutes for both have been developed, which do not share the defects of the older materials.
A full range of transparent browns may be mixed from Transparent Oxide Red and Phthalocyanine Blue, the relative warmth or coolness adjusted by varying the proportions of the two, while the Sandarac is best replaced by an alkyd painting medium.
Rembrandt had at least one life-size jointed mannequin, on which he would pose the clothes of his sitters. The mannequin, unlike a living person, would remain motionless for as long as Rembrandt needed to paint the clothing, the folds remaining undisturbed for days, or weeks, if necessary. A live sitter would have to visit the bathroom, eat, sleep, move around, etc., and the folds of the cloth would never be likely to resume their previous shape afterward. The use of the mannequin may or may not have been Rembrandt's innovation, but it was, and is, a good idea regardless.
We cannot expect to be able to rival the great genius of Rembrandt merely by following some of his procedures and using the same tools and materials he used. These are only a small part of his brilliance as an artist. At the core was his intelligence and artistic sense, his ability to constantly strive to improve upon what he had already done without losing sight of the original concept for the painting, to devise techniques on the spot, which would create the effect he was after.
We might hope to achieve the best results by adopting this same attitude towards our own work, rather than by attempting to reduce the methods of a great genius whose works we admire to a simple formula and then following it, unthinking. This is not meant to disparage technique, but to show it in its proper context. The more we know of technique, the more effects we have at our disposal, to serve our creativity and inspiration in the execution of our finest conceptions.
If there is anything remotely approaching a formula for creating Great Art, it might be stated as the combination of knowledge and intuition in a single endeavor, plus a lot of work.
The Innovations of Rembrandt
by Virgil Elliott
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn is considered by many to be the greatest artist of all time. His genius was apparent as soon as he arrived on the scene, already surpassing the established Masters of the day, including his teachers, by the tender age of twenty-three.
Rembrandt had learned all that was then known about oil painting while still a student, and immediately began to add his own discoveries to the technical knowledge of his time. To this day Rembrandt's best works remain unsurpassed and serve as inspiration to the rest of us who paint.
What techniques he was taught may be discerned by studying the works of his instructors, Jacob Isaacxszoon Van Swanenburch and Pieter Lastmann. The genius of Rembrandt is immediately apparent by the extent to which he so obviously surpassed both his teachers, and in how early in his career he did so. Nonetheless, his training under them was an important factor in his artistic development and should not be minimized. Both teachers seem to have possessed a working knowledge of the painting methods in use at that time, which formed the basis of Rembrandt's early work.
This would include the Flemish Technique (painting in transparent and opaque color on wood panels primed white), the Venetian Technique (executing a neutral or monochrome underpainting on canvas, then painting over it in transparent and opaque color in stages), and the Direct Painting Technique (รก la prima or premier coup, i.e., painting in one step in full color).
Various examples of his work show that he was not limited to any technique, but employed them all, the choice depending on which approach best suited the subject in question, and for what purpose the painting was intended. His facility with all three soon led him to combine aspects of one with another, and to add innovations of his own.
Some of his paintings are on wood, executed in what appears to be essentially the Flemish Technique; some small studies on wood panels were done in a variation of the Direct Painting Technique, and some on canvas in both the Venetian and Direct techniques.
The primer for the panels is white, probably glue-chalk gesso, covered with a transparent brown imprimatur of Burnt Umber mixed with varnish, which creates the golden glow characteristic of his work. His canvases are primed with a warm grey made from lootwit (lead white with chalk, ground in linseed oil) and Raw Umber, or sometimes with white lead alone, with a transparent brown imprimatur.
Rembrandt was an extremely versatile artist and did not follow an unthinking repetition of the same procedure every time. He thought his way through each painting from the genesis of the idea to the last brush stroke, never lapsing into a routine approach. He exploited to the fullest the qualities of transparency and opacity, relying on the underglow of light coming through transparent color for many special effects, with opaque lights built up more heavily for the brightly lit areas.
Colors were sometimes modified by subtle glazes, semiglazes or scumbles. Transparent darks and opaque lights were orchestrated to play against one another for maximum visual impact and depth, probably influenced by the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio.
Clues as to his choice of primer may be seen in areas where he has used a sharpened brush handle to scratch through wet paint in order to indicate bits of hair. This is evident in a very early self-portrait, now in The Hague, and in many other portraits. The primers and/or imprimaturs thus revealed show that he followed no one single procedure, but varied the choices, based on the effect he was after. Scratching with a sharpened brush handle into wet paint was one of his earlier innovations.
Not long afterward, he began building up the opaque passages in his lights more heavily, and texturing them to take on the physical convolutions of the lighted surfaces of his subjects, most notably the skin textures of male subjects, including himself. The texture was created, or at any rate can be duplicated, by applying the paint somewhat heavily with large brushes, then gently passing a large, dry, soft-hair brush over the surface of the wet paint, back and forth, until the desired texture is attained.
The consistency of the paint was modified by the addition of a medium containing a long oil (sun-thickened linseed or walnut oil or boiled oil) and sometimes a resin, to give it a long brushing quality. Paint exposed to the air for several hours begins to take on this same characteristic, as the oil begins to polymerize.
Subsequently Rembrandt began to superimpose glazes of red over these textured passages when dry, then wipe them off with a rag, leaving traces remaining in the low spots to create an even more convincing texture of rough flesh. Someone, at some point, said you could pick up a Rembrandt portrait by the nose.
As he began to expand the effect of glazing over dried impasto to other textures as well, he devised a method employing two whites; one for impasto and one for smoother passages. The impasto white was faster-drying, probably made so by the addition of egg, and possibly chalk, into the formulation. In any case, it was very lean, and consisted mostly of white lead with a minimum of binder. He began applying it more and more heavily as the first stage of a two (or more) stage operation which was finished with transparent glazes and wiping to create fantastic special effects.
The most extreme example of this is the man's glowing, golden sleeve in the painting referred to as "The Jewish Bride," in the Rijks museum in Amsterdam. The brilliance of this effect cannot be obtained in any other way. He has used the same technique on the bride's costume in the same painting, but here the underpainting contains vermillion, and is glazed with red lakes, perhaps Rose Madder. The gold chain in "Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer" is done in much the same way. The underpaint appears to have been troweled on with a knife or some sort of flat stick, then sculpted before it dried.
In the Lieutenant's uniform in "The Night Watch," Rembrandt used this method, but with less heavy impasto, for the ornate brocade work. The wet underlayer, which in this case included Lead-Tin Yellow, was worked with sharpened brush handles and other tools while soft, then allowed to dry before the darker glazes were applied. By wiping the glazes off while they were still wet, Rembrandt was able to create a bas-relief effect of remarkable three-dimensionality as the glaze remained in the nooks and crannies. By glazing again, this time with transparent yellows and/or browns, instead of Ivory Black, he gave the textures a rich, golden glow.
He is known to have sometimes used Asphaltum as a glaze, for the most part successfully overcoming its tendency to crack and wrinkle by keeping its percentage low in a mixture with Sandarac varnish. The reader should note that both Asphaltum and Sandarac are problematic substances, risky to use in painting, and are unnecessary now that synthetic substitutes for both have been developed, which do not share the defects of the older materials.
A full range of transparent browns may be mixed from Transparent Oxide Red and Phthalocyanine Blue, the relative warmth or coolness adjusted by varying the proportions of the two, while the Sandarac is best replaced by an alkyd painting medium.
Rembrandt had at least one life-size jointed mannequin, on which he would pose the clothes of his sitters. The mannequin, unlike a living person, would remain motionless for as long as Rembrandt needed to paint the clothing, the folds remaining undisturbed for days, or weeks, if necessary. A live sitter would have to visit the bathroom, eat, sleep, move around, etc., and the folds of the cloth would never be likely to resume their previous shape afterward. The use of the mannequin may or may not have been Rembrandt's innovation, but it was, and is, a good idea regardless.
We cannot expect to be able to rival the great genius of Rembrandt merely by following some of his procedures and using the same tools and materials he used. These are only a small part of his brilliance as an artist. At the core was his intelligence and artistic sense, his ability to constantly strive to improve upon what he had already done without losing sight of the original concept for the painting, to devise techniques on the spot, which would create the effect he was after.
We might hope to achieve the best results by adopting this same attitude towards our own work, rather than by attempting to reduce the methods of a great genius whose works we admire to a simple formula and then following it, unthinking. This is not meant to disparage technique, but to show it in its proper context. The more we know of technique, the more effects we have at our disposal, to serve our creativity and inspiration in the execution of our finest conceptions.
If there is anything remotely approaching a formula for creating Great Art, it might be stated as the combination of knowledge and intuition in a single endeavor, plus a lot of work.
Oil Painting Mediums
July 6, 2003: Update on Oil Painting Mediums
(Published in The Classical Realism Journal, Volume VIII, Issue 1. )
One of the most frequently discussed topics among oil painters is oil painting mediums. There exists a wide diversity of opinion and preferences on the subject, both in books and from artist to artist, with certain mediums enjoying almost cult-like advocacy. Much information has been published on the subject, some written by persuasive authors, many of whom disagree with one another on many points, resulting in a great deal of confusion over which ingredients are best for a given painting style. As in most things, the issue is not as simple as it might seem. It must go beyond focusing on the mediums alone, and begin with the reasons painters feel they need them in the first place.
Some commercially available oil paints, as they come from the tube, are of a stiff consistency that does not facilitate the utmost in control, and thus require the addition of something to improve their brushing qualities. Enter painting mediums. It is important to note that in the days of the Old Masters, the paints were ground in the artists' studios, by the artists and/or their apprentices, in all likelihood to the desired consistency for optimum control under the brush. In such an instance, there would be little or no need to add any medium at all. This hypothesis seems to be borne out by scientific testing conducted by the National Gallery, in London, on many of the paintings in their possession. The preponderance of the 16th and 17th century paintings tested showed no detectable resin content in the paint layers, to the surprise and disbelief of so many who had read 19th and 20th century accounts alleging that specific artists of the earlier times used mediums containing natural resins like mastic, copal or amber. What was found, in most cases, was pigment bound in linseed oil, and in some cases, walnut oil. The indication is that the addition of resin varnishes to oil paints as a common practice dates back to perhaps the mid-1700s, and no farther, with certain individual exceptions. Of course there are many unanswered questions, and the possibility remains, at least theoretically, that the testing methods used were simply unable to detect the resins that might actually have been there. Thus it is not necessarily a closed issue, at least in the minds of those mistrustful of science. But if the current prevailing opinion in the conservation science community is correct, as the best evidence strongly suggests, there may well be a correlation between the widespread use of resinous mediums and the introduction of pre-prepared oil paints on the scene. To artists making their own paint, the only concern would have been the quality of the paint, but to those in business to make a profit selling paint, the temptation to add less expensive ingredients to keep production costs down was very strong. It is known that many adulterants and fillers were added to paints sold ready-made by artists' colormen, and this undoubtedly affected the brushing qualities of the paints in question. The need for mediums to improve the consistency of the paints seems to have grown from this. In modern times, manufacturers add aluminum stearate, a soap, to mitigate the tendency for oil and pigment to separate in the tubes as the paints sit on store shelves or in artists' paintboxes. Aluminum stearate changes the oil from a fluid to a more colloidal consistency, and changes the way the paint handles. However, some manufacturers exercise greater restraint in the use of such substances than others, and artists have choices. With this in mind, the painter of today can get by with less medium simply by choosing less stiff paints to begin with, or by grinding his or her own, as was done in the days of Rembrandt and earlier. There are a number of quality paints currently on the market that exhibit a fluid consistency as they come from the tube, and require little or nothing to be added to them in order to be controllable. Should they require a bit more softening, a drop of linseed or walnut oil may be all that is needed.
From a structural standpoint, the strongest paint layer is one with the optimum ratio of binder to pigment. The best commercially available oil paints are already very close to this ratio. Adding too much of any medium is likely to produce weak spots in the resulting paint film for lack of sufficient solid matter, just as a wall made with poorly fitting stones and too much mortar will be weaker than one in which the stones fit more closely together and a minimum of mortar is used.
Natural resins were long thought to impart desirable properties to oil paint films, but this belief may well be in error, at least as far as permanence is concerned, as each introduces its defects into the paints to which it is added. Discoloring and embrittlement over time are chief among these defects, which are well documented in art conservation circles. The prevailing opinion there, based on the best information to date, is that the paintings composed of simple combinations of linseed oil and pigment are more durable and less problematic over the centuries than those containing significant amounts of any of the natural resins. The works of Rembrandt and others seem to bear this out. Of course, in the world of science, there is always the possibility that new information will come to light that will warrant the revising of opinions. Research is ongoing.
References:
National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Volumes 15 and 17, National Gallery, London
Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, by Ernst van de Wetering, published by Amsterdam University Press
Art in the Making: Rembrandt, by David Bomford, Christopher Brown, and Ashok Roy, with contributions from Jo Kirby and Raymond White, published by the National Gallery, London
On Picture Varnishes and Their Solvents, by Robert L. Feller, Nathan Stolow, and Elizabeth H. Jones, published by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
©Virgil Elliott, 2002
(Published in The Classical Realism Journal, Volume VIII, Issue 1. )
One of the most frequently discussed topics among oil painters is oil painting mediums. There exists a wide diversity of opinion and preferences on the subject, both in books and from artist to artist, with certain mediums enjoying almost cult-like advocacy. Much information has been published on the subject, some written by persuasive authors, many of whom disagree with one another on many points, resulting in a great deal of confusion over which ingredients are best for a given painting style. As in most things, the issue is not as simple as it might seem. It must go beyond focusing on the mediums alone, and begin with the reasons painters feel they need them in the first place.
Some commercially available oil paints, as they come from the tube, are of a stiff consistency that does not facilitate the utmost in control, and thus require the addition of something to improve their brushing qualities. Enter painting mediums. It is important to note that in the days of the Old Masters, the paints were ground in the artists' studios, by the artists and/or their apprentices, in all likelihood to the desired consistency for optimum control under the brush. In such an instance, there would be little or no need to add any medium at all. This hypothesis seems to be borne out by scientific testing conducted by the National Gallery, in London, on many of the paintings in their possession. The preponderance of the 16th and 17th century paintings tested showed no detectable resin content in the paint layers, to the surprise and disbelief of so many who had read 19th and 20th century accounts alleging that specific artists of the earlier times used mediums containing natural resins like mastic, copal or amber. What was found, in most cases, was pigment bound in linseed oil, and in some cases, walnut oil. The indication is that the addition of resin varnishes to oil paints as a common practice dates back to perhaps the mid-1700s, and no farther, with certain individual exceptions. Of course there are many unanswered questions, and the possibility remains, at least theoretically, that the testing methods used were simply unable to detect the resins that might actually have been there. Thus it is not necessarily a closed issue, at least in the minds of those mistrustful of science. But if the current prevailing opinion in the conservation science community is correct, as the best evidence strongly suggests, there may well be a correlation between the widespread use of resinous mediums and the introduction of pre-prepared oil paints on the scene. To artists making their own paint, the only concern would have been the quality of the paint, but to those in business to make a profit selling paint, the temptation to add less expensive ingredients to keep production costs down was very strong. It is known that many adulterants and fillers were added to paints sold ready-made by artists' colormen, and this undoubtedly affected the brushing qualities of the paints in question. The need for mediums to improve the consistency of the paints seems to have grown from this. In modern times, manufacturers add aluminum stearate, a soap, to mitigate the tendency for oil and pigment to separate in the tubes as the paints sit on store shelves or in artists' paintboxes. Aluminum stearate changes the oil from a fluid to a more colloidal consistency, and changes the way the paint handles. However, some manufacturers exercise greater restraint in the use of such substances than others, and artists have choices. With this in mind, the painter of today can get by with less medium simply by choosing less stiff paints to begin with, or by grinding his or her own, as was done in the days of Rembrandt and earlier. There are a number of quality paints currently on the market that exhibit a fluid consistency as they come from the tube, and require little or nothing to be added to them in order to be controllable. Should they require a bit more softening, a drop of linseed or walnut oil may be all that is needed.
From a structural standpoint, the strongest paint layer is one with the optimum ratio of binder to pigment. The best commercially available oil paints are already very close to this ratio. Adding too much of any medium is likely to produce weak spots in the resulting paint film for lack of sufficient solid matter, just as a wall made with poorly fitting stones and too much mortar will be weaker than one in which the stones fit more closely together and a minimum of mortar is used.
Natural resins were long thought to impart desirable properties to oil paint films, but this belief may well be in error, at least as far as permanence is concerned, as each introduces its defects into the paints to which it is added. Discoloring and embrittlement over time are chief among these defects, which are well documented in art conservation circles. The prevailing opinion there, based on the best information to date, is that the paintings composed of simple combinations of linseed oil and pigment are more durable and less problematic over the centuries than those containing significant amounts of any of the natural resins. The works of Rembrandt and others seem to bear this out. Of course, in the world of science, there is always the possibility that new information will come to light that will warrant the revising of opinions. Research is ongoing.
References:
National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Volumes 15 and 17, National Gallery, London
Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, by Ernst van de Wetering, published by Amsterdam University Press
Art in the Making: Rembrandt, by David Bomford, Christopher Brown, and Ashok Roy, with contributions from Jo Kirby and Raymond White, published by the National Gallery, London
On Picture Varnishes and Their Solvents, by Robert L. Feller, Nathan Stolow, and Elizabeth H. Jones, published by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
©Virgil Elliott, 2002
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Is it Art?
When first the dawn of a new born sun shown on the green and gold, our father, Adam, sat under the tree and scratched with a stick in the mold.
The first rude sketch that the world had seen brought joy to his mighty heart.
But the devil whispered from behind the leaves, “It’s pretty... But is it Art?”
Rudyard Kipling
The first rude sketch that the world had seen brought joy to his mighty heart.
But the devil whispered from behind the leaves, “It’s pretty... But is it Art?”
Rudyard Kipling
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Repetition
Monty Python alumnus Terry Gilliam was recently bemoaning the
current sad state of British film comedy: "The worst thing that
can happen to anyone in the movie business," he says, "is
success. It takes away the desire to strive. At the same time
it makes one prone to repetition--which is the death of
creativity."
In my modest practice as art mentor (I do it for free), I
frequently get letters that say, "Please take a look at my work
and tell me in which direction I should go--and, by the way,
how do I get into galleries?" I often find myself replying,
"You need more consistency. Your work is all over the place.
You need to develop one style or another and go in that
direction." In other words, I'm advising, "Repeat yourself."
In the painting game, repetition is one of the disciplines
needed for self-realization. Variations on a theme, however
subtle, lead to development and refinement. I'm a believer in
the concept of "set." Making a set or series of any subject or
idea is the way to further invent and codify style. The
unification of set can be managed by subject matter--for
example, all you ever wanted to know about peonies, or pumas,
or Pontiacs. As well, format, size, medium, colour and time
development are just a few of the other set-makers that invite
creative repetition. The benefit of set is to draw an artist
along on a purposeful voyage of discovery. Often, when I look
at an artist's collection of works, particularly in early
career, it reminds me of a flotilla of unique rental boats tied
up at a pier. Any one of these boats could be rowed off in any
number of felicitous directions.
Fine art is not like the movie business, where huge amounts of
capital and a variety of skills are needed to keep pace with
accepted norms and financial risk. Fine art is generally a low
investment, individualist industry, where private sweat pays
dividends to a self-directed, exploring soul. This takes place
with a combination of courage, stick-to-it-ive-ness and
character. Not everyone can pull it off. These days there are a
lot of distractions. There may also be too much information out
there. The current rage for diversity and the perceived need
for exploring new materials have spread the virus of
dilettantism. Jack of all trades--master of none.
Best regards,
Robert
PS: "Freedom is found along the guiding lines of discipline."
(Yehudi Menuhin)
Esoterica: "How do I get into galleries?" is not always an
appropriate question. Many of us just want to feel the joy of a
job well done. But for those who ask, part of the answer lies
with my first concerns about consistency, style, and the
willingness, like Yehudi Menuhin's, to keep repeating
variations until the work itself rises above the competition. I
suppose, implicit in this, a gallery must feel that if an
artist is capable of making exploratory sets, then an artist
must be capable of ongoing, dedicated work. In the words of my
late friend, the painter Egbert Oudendag, "If you want to be an
apple vendor, you've got to have apples in your apple cart."
current sad state of British film comedy: "The worst thing that
can happen to anyone in the movie business," he says, "is
success. It takes away the desire to strive. At the same time
it makes one prone to repetition--which is the death of
creativity."
In my modest practice as art mentor (I do it for free), I
frequently get letters that say, "Please take a look at my work
and tell me in which direction I should go--and, by the way,
how do I get into galleries?" I often find myself replying,
"You need more consistency. Your work is all over the place.
You need to develop one style or another and go in that
direction." In other words, I'm advising, "Repeat yourself."
In the painting game, repetition is one of the disciplines
needed for self-realization. Variations on a theme, however
subtle, lead to development and refinement. I'm a believer in
the concept of "set." Making a set or series of any subject or
idea is the way to further invent and codify style. The
unification of set can be managed by subject matter--for
example, all you ever wanted to know about peonies, or pumas,
or Pontiacs. As well, format, size, medium, colour and time
development are just a few of the other set-makers that invite
creative repetition. The benefit of set is to draw an artist
along on a purposeful voyage of discovery. Often, when I look
at an artist's collection of works, particularly in early
career, it reminds me of a flotilla of unique rental boats tied
up at a pier. Any one of these boats could be rowed off in any
number of felicitous directions.
Fine art is not like the movie business, where huge amounts of
capital and a variety of skills are needed to keep pace with
accepted norms and financial risk. Fine art is generally a low
investment, individualist industry, where private sweat pays
dividends to a self-directed, exploring soul. This takes place
with a combination of courage, stick-to-it-ive-ness and
character. Not everyone can pull it off. These days there are a
lot of distractions. There may also be too much information out
there. The current rage for diversity and the perceived need
for exploring new materials have spread the virus of
dilettantism. Jack of all trades--master of none.
Best regards,
Robert
PS: "Freedom is found along the guiding lines of discipline."
(Yehudi Menuhin)
Esoterica: "How do I get into galleries?" is not always an
appropriate question. Many of us just want to feel the joy of a
job well done. But for those who ask, part of the answer lies
with my first concerns about consistency, style, and the
willingness, like Yehudi Menuhin's, to keep repeating
variations until the work itself rises above the competition. I
suppose, implicit in this, a gallery must feel that if an
artist is capable of making exploratory sets, then an artist
must be capable of ongoing, dedicated work. In the words of my
late friend, the painter Egbert Oudendag, "If you want to be an
apple vendor, you've got to have apples in your apple cart."
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Bowing to value
Yesterday Emily Moore wrote, "Recently I have been admitting
that the bottom line is 'light, middle and dark.' I resisted
the importance of value over color for a long time, but I have
succumbed. Bowing to value can liberate color options, so color
can waltz in the back door and right on down to the front row
while value is being courted at the front door."
Thanks, Emily. Nice way of putting it. Better work happens when
we're able to keep both dancers on the floor at the same time.
True, most of us need to think of tone value before we think of
colour. Here are a few thoughts:
Work with large and small patches or areas of tone.
Particularly at the beginning, consciously avoid colour. Make
sure there's an abundance of middle tones. A photographer's
gray-scale is a surprisingly handy tool. By emphasizing middle
tones you'll find it easier to find your darker and lighter
ones. Here is a tried and true academic sequence: middle tone,
darker dark, lighter light, darkest dark, lightest light. Don't
be afraid of basic and simple palettes. A lot can be done with
the likes of umber, ultra blue and white. Tones of grey--even
those made with black--can give suggestions for colours that
might follow later. A great exercise is "grisaille," where the
composition is laid down and nearly completed in monotone. If
it works in monotone, it'll certainly work in colour. Colour,
in the grisaille system, is applied last--often with
transparent glazes. In the event that a colour begins to
dominate, as some tend to do, half close your eyes to see
what's going on, and make adjustments. If you don't like
squinting, a quick black and white photocopy can often show you
where the problems lie. Paintings go best when you think of the
whole exercise as a "set-up." The lightest lights, in
particular, need to be kept in the quiver for the final shots.
"I don't like working this way because it doesn't seem
natural--it's not as expressive," said a student in a friend's
workshop. We are living in an age of expressiveness where
individualism and quick satisfaction are in style. I like to
point out that many seemingly dated processes, when learned and
pocketed, are really a key to growth. For many of us, these
academic processes may hold an even greater potential for
expression. A lot of lovely waltzing got started with a few
stiff black and white step-marks painted on an old studio
floor.
Best regards,
Robert
PS: "If you have used colour throughout most of your artistic
life, try just black and white. It will take your painting to
another dimension where tone and form in all their permutations
reign supreme." (David Louis)
Esoterica: "Think value first, then colour," says water-media
educator Carl Purcell in "Painting with your Artist's Brain."
If a painting is turning out to be dull and uninteresting,
throwing on some bright colours is not the solution. If values
are poorly planned, no amount of colour will fix things up.
"Good colour is key to the success of any painting, but a
well-executed value plan is what will captivate your viewers."
(Carl Purcell)
that the bottom line is 'light, middle and dark.' I resisted
the importance of value over color for a long time, but I have
succumbed. Bowing to value can liberate color options, so color
can waltz in the back door and right on down to the front row
while value is being courted at the front door."
Thanks, Emily. Nice way of putting it. Better work happens when
we're able to keep both dancers on the floor at the same time.
True, most of us need to think of tone value before we think of
colour. Here are a few thoughts:
Work with large and small patches or areas of tone.
Particularly at the beginning, consciously avoid colour. Make
sure there's an abundance of middle tones. A photographer's
gray-scale is a surprisingly handy tool. By emphasizing middle
tones you'll find it easier to find your darker and lighter
ones. Here is a tried and true academic sequence: middle tone,
darker dark, lighter light, darkest dark, lightest light. Don't
be afraid of basic and simple palettes. A lot can be done with
the likes of umber, ultra blue and white. Tones of grey--even
those made with black--can give suggestions for colours that
might follow later. A great exercise is "grisaille," where the
composition is laid down and nearly completed in monotone. If
it works in monotone, it'll certainly work in colour. Colour,
in the grisaille system, is applied last--often with
transparent glazes. In the event that a colour begins to
dominate, as some tend to do, half close your eyes to see
what's going on, and make adjustments. If you don't like
squinting, a quick black and white photocopy can often show you
where the problems lie. Paintings go best when you think of the
whole exercise as a "set-up." The lightest lights, in
particular, need to be kept in the quiver for the final shots.
"I don't like working this way because it doesn't seem
natural--it's not as expressive," said a student in a friend's
workshop. We are living in an age of expressiveness where
individualism and quick satisfaction are in style. I like to
point out that many seemingly dated processes, when learned and
pocketed, are really a key to growth. For many of us, these
academic processes may hold an even greater potential for
expression. A lot of lovely waltzing got started with a few
stiff black and white step-marks painted on an old studio
floor.
Best regards,
Robert
PS: "If you have used colour throughout most of your artistic
life, try just black and white. It will take your painting to
another dimension where tone and form in all their permutations
reign supreme." (David Louis)
Esoterica: "Think value first, then colour," says water-media
educator Carl Purcell in "Painting with your Artist's Brain."
If a painting is turning out to be dull and uninteresting,
throwing on some bright colours is not the solution. If values
are poorly planned, no amount of colour will fix things up.
"Good colour is key to the success of any painting, but a
well-executed value plan is what will captivate your viewers."
(Carl Purcell)
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Tales from the Crit
Hard to comprehend that today is the last day of the semester from hell for me, but indeed it is, and what a glorious day!
It was a wild ride, and it will be so nice to sleep in a bit later rather than wake up at 5 a.m., to maybe clean my house and watch a few dvds rather than work from sunup to sundown 7 days a week, for a few weeks at least, until the summer humanities classes I have registered for begin.
I think I have done well, still keeping my fingers crossed on my two big philosophy classes. I have a final video crit today at 1:00 and then a final exam in Dr. Todd's Western Intellectual History class, I have had little time to study for it, hopefully 15 weeks of attention and notetaking will magically flutter out of my brain tonight for this final exam.
Tomorrow is predicted to be a sunny day with temperatures in the mid 70's. Bring on the margarita's, bare feet and lounging on lake Washington in the boat :) I might even pick up a few geraniums for the deck.
It's been a great semester, I've worked like a dog, produced some decent work and have lots of ideas to spring board from over many disciplines and have deepened friendships with many talented artists. Life is good.
/big sigh of relief
Tales From the Crit: For Art Students, May Is the Cruelest Month
Micah Ganske
By JORI FINKEL
Published: April 30, 2006
AN early scene in "Art School Confidential," a movie by Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes that opens Friday, shows a classroom of students analyzing one another's drawings. It takes less than a minute for one character to burst into tears. Her name is Flower. And she has just received a withering comment from her classmate Jerome, played by Max Minghella: "It looks like a lame Cy Twombly imitation to me. It looks like she did it in about two minutes."
So goes another day in art school, complete with the emotionally and intellectually trying ritual known as the group crit, short for critique. A staple of master of fine arts programs, the group crit consists of a student showing finished work to professors and peers, who then question, interpret, analyze, contextualize and otherwise assess its intentions and effectiveness. It's why so many students across the country right now are holed up in their studios, putting the finishing touches on their paintings, drawings and installations, in time for their last reviews.
"It feels kind of like being on trial, and your work is the evidence," Titus Kaphar, a painting student, said earlier this month, just hours before the final critique of his last year at the graduate program at Yale. "A faculty member will basically say: 'So you say your work means this, but exhibit A shows that.' " (Mr. Kaphar sounded remarkably calm for someone heading to trial, perhaps because he had already faced great scrutiny for his participation in "School Days," the much-discussed show of student work earlier this semester at the Jack Tilton Gallery.)
May is the big month for final crits, which often involves several professors weighing in on work. But group crits led by a single professor also take place throughout the year. Depending on the school, a student may face one group crit a semester, or one every week or two. The frequency of individual crits, which essentially resemble studio visits from a professor, also varies widely.
So are there really tears? "It does happen on occasion," said Gareth James, chairman of the visual arts program at Columbia University in New York, "but we try to make sure we are not just handing down judgments. These conversations are really about trying to get inside the internal logic of a work."
Catherine Opie, who teaches photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, adds: "There are criers. Usually women, but I hate to say that because it's so stereotypical."
Some of the tears can be attributed to the competitive climate of today's leading art schools, which have become so instrumental to gallery success. But much of the pressure comes from the loaded psychodynamics of the group crit, a ritual with counterparts in drama, design and architecture programs as well.
For not only are students exposing themselves in public to negative comments about their art, which is presumably close to their hearts, but they are fielding these remarks from professors they generally respect and students they invariably know, perhaps too well.
"They are your friends, your enemies, your lovers, your peers," said Lynne Chann, who finishes her M.F.A. degree at Columbia in May. After one rough crit, she said, she couldn't work for a couple of weeks.
"Think about the general nightmare of standing nude in public," said the painter Lisa Yuskavage, who earned her degree in 1986 from Yale. "But add something else you fear, like standing nude on a scale."
She compares the process to a friend's training in the military. "My experience was a lot like her boot camp," she said. "Only in the military they break you down to build you back up into a team player who serves a leader. At Yale they break you down and leave you to put the pieces back together."
Becky Smith, who earned her Yale M.F.A. in 1998 and now runs Bellwether Gallery in Chelsea, has another analogy: "It's like a gladiator spectator sport. And yes, it can be traumatic."
It's no coincidence that Ms. Yuskavage and Ms. Smith both attended Yale during the original "pit crit" days, known for being particularly brutal. Until six years ago, the art school was housed with the architecture school in a concrete building by Paul Rudolph that students compared to a prison, with a courtyard in the center known as the pit. That's where students gathered for spirited peer reviews and for some of the more formal final critiques, which drew the entire art department as well as voyeurs from other schools on campus.
Ms. Smith remembers a crowd of maybe 75 people on good days. "One of the meanest crits I can remember was of Everest Hall, who did these teeny-tiny, precious oil-on-copper paintings, old-masters-style paintings of gay porn stars," she said. "Everyone tore it to shreds. They thought it was illustrative, manipulative. They didn't like the subject, and they didn't like the presentation." (The market apparently disagreed. When he later exhibited this work in New York, Ms. Smith said, it quickly sold out.)
Now Yale's art school has its own building, but it, too, has a pit. And the pit crits, though said to be less torturous, continue. "The philosophy here is that you shouldn't sugarcoat anything," Mr. Kaphar said. "I can't think of a more rigorous program anywhere."
One reason is the Conceptual artist Mel Bochner, on Yale's faculty since 1978, whom many students singled out for being particularly blunt. He is known for telling students whose grasp of art history seems thin to "go back to the library and start with A."
Mr. Bochner declined to be interviewed, but the photographer Gregory Crewdson, who has taught at Yale since 1995, tried to explain the educational rationale. Applying such pressure to a student's work, he said, is meant to help them gain the critical distance and vocabulary to analyze their own work, and ultimately improve it. He finds that photography critiques also help students to think in terms of groups of pictures, instead of just individual shots.
"The crits that I received were always devastating," said Mr. Crewdson, who earned his Yale M.F.A. in 1988. "The idea is that what doesn't break you will make you stronger. But I always tell my students to forget 99 percent of what they hear. Find that 1 percent that really helps you."
Mr. Crewdson compares the experience his students are facing to group therapy. "My father was a psychoanalyst, and I see a lot of similarities," he said. "The act of putting your pictures up on the wall involves a lot of trust, like sharing your personal history. And the whole thing can be very theatrical, very emotional." He likes to end his crits by heading across the street to a bar, so that everyone can unwind over a beer.
If Yale represents one model, U.C.L.A. offers another — or at least John Baldessari's course does. He has taught a popular crit seminar there for the last seven years, and earlier he introduced the first group crit to the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts, in Valencia. In all that time, he has never seen tears in his class, "though I don't know what happens afterward," he joked.
"For me the group crits are really successful if I could walk out of the room" and the conversation continued, he said. "I see my role as being a good moderator or navigator."
Some say this is typical of group crits on the West Coast, which are known for being more relaxed. Thomas Lawson, a CalArts dean, argues that this is for the better. "The courses out here tend to have more student participation — more of a peer review process," he said. "On the East Coast there is still a lot of faculty grandstanding."
Several of Mr. Lawson's students agreed. "Generally the faculty will quietly, or subtly, direct the conversation to make sure we cover certain topics," Kaari Upson, a first-year student, said, "but there seems to be a respect for the M.F.A. students to drive the discussion."
The most famous critique course at CalArts is taught by the Conceptual artist Michael Asher, who is known for his discursive endurance. Once a week, he leads a detailed discussion of works by two or three students, beginning at 10 A.M. and sometimes running until 10 that night. ("I throw away the clock," he said.)
If the crit dynamic has not fundamentally changed over the last couple of decades, student awareness of the ritual — and the attendant horror stories — has grown. In fact, some students are making art about the critiques themselves, which they then cheekily submit for review.
Last semester at Columbia, Lynne Chan, a second-year M.F.A. student, staged a boxing match called "Big Crit Brawl," pitting student against student in a ring in her studio and playing hip-hop music to set the mood. The performance drew on her training in Thai kickboxing and also served as a pre-emptive strike, as the professors decided not to interrupt the event to critique it.
A couple of years ago at Hunter College, for his mid-program review, which is closed to students, Jules de Balincourt, an installation artist, built a tree-house-like structure in the school gallery. His act of resistance was to hide in the shelter and videotape the proceedings. Around the same time at Yale, Hein Koh made a painting that depicted an entire panel of professors reviewing her work. When it was hung in front of that very panel, it made one faculty member so uncomfortable that he changed seats.
Today on the Yale campus, students still speak of a 1995 painting by Hilary Harkness of Mr. Bochner, which depicts him naked, sliding down an icy slope, being sexually assaulted by a cow. The painting, she says, was her way of turning the tables.
"Mel is very smart and a very good critic," said Ms. Harkness, who now shows with Mary Boone in New York. "But he once said to me, 'If I saw your paintings in a window, I would walk right on by.' Maybe he meant that constructively, but it was hard to take that way."
Mr. Bochner's reaction to the scene with the cow? "He didn't want to discuss it," she recalled. "He said he didn't care for revenge paintings."
But silence, the student artists agreed, is very rarely the goal. The only thing worse than receiving a harsh critique is to make a work that gets no reaction at all, whether because the work does not find an audience or the audience does not find it worthy of contemplation. That, of course, mirrors the experience of many struggling artists after graduation, even in today's youth-obsessed market.
And that was also, it turns out, the classroom experience of Mr. Clowes, the graphic novelist who wrote the "Art School Confidential" screenplay after his comic of the same name, both of which were based on his undergraduate days in the early 1980's at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. A cartoonist surrounded by fine artists, he felt neglected.
"Here I am spending hundreds of hours creating a narrative with words, while someone else puts a tampon in a teacup and calls it art, and all they can do is give me a lot of blank stares," he remembered. "The students were not interested, and my teachers were actively discouraging."
Did he get anything out of the critique process? "Nothing," Mr. Clowes said, before pausing to rethink the question. "Then again, I have a very contrary personality. The fact that nobody encouraged me may have helped in the long run. It probably helped me to feel like I was going in the right direction."
It was a wild ride, and it will be so nice to sleep in a bit later rather than wake up at 5 a.m., to maybe clean my house and watch a few dvds rather than work from sunup to sundown 7 days a week, for a few weeks at least, until the summer humanities classes I have registered for begin.
I think I have done well, still keeping my fingers crossed on my two big philosophy classes. I have a final video crit today at 1:00 and then a final exam in Dr. Todd's Western Intellectual History class, I have had little time to study for it, hopefully 15 weeks of attention and notetaking will magically flutter out of my brain tonight for this final exam.
Tomorrow is predicted to be a sunny day with temperatures in the mid 70's. Bring on the margarita's, bare feet and lounging on lake Washington in the boat :) I might even pick up a few geraniums for the deck.
It's been a great semester, I've worked like a dog, produced some decent work and have lots of ideas to spring board from over many disciplines and have deepened friendships with many talented artists. Life is good.
/big sigh of relief
Tales From the Crit: For Art Students, May Is the Cruelest Month
Micah Ganske
By JORI FINKEL
Published: April 30, 2006
AN early scene in "Art School Confidential," a movie by Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes that opens Friday, shows a classroom of students analyzing one another's drawings. It takes less than a minute for one character to burst into tears. Her name is Flower. And she has just received a withering comment from her classmate Jerome, played by Max Minghella: "It looks like a lame Cy Twombly imitation to me. It looks like she did it in about two minutes."
So goes another day in art school, complete with the emotionally and intellectually trying ritual known as the group crit, short for critique. A staple of master of fine arts programs, the group crit consists of a student showing finished work to professors and peers, who then question, interpret, analyze, contextualize and otherwise assess its intentions and effectiveness. It's why so many students across the country right now are holed up in their studios, putting the finishing touches on their paintings, drawings and installations, in time for their last reviews.
"It feels kind of like being on trial, and your work is the evidence," Titus Kaphar, a painting student, said earlier this month, just hours before the final critique of his last year at the graduate program at Yale. "A faculty member will basically say: 'So you say your work means this, but exhibit A shows that.' " (Mr. Kaphar sounded remarkably calm for someone heading to trial, perhaps because he had already faced great scrutiny for his participation in "School Days," the much-discussed show of student work earlier this semester at the Jack Tilton Gallery.)
May is the big month for final crits, which often involves several professors weighing in on work. But group crits led by a single professor also take place throughout the year. Depending on the school, a student may face one group crit a semester, or one every week or two. The frequency of individual crits, which essentially resemble studio visits from a professor, also varies widely.
So are there really tears? "It does happen on occasion," said Gareth James, chairman of the visual arts program at Columbia University in New York, "but we try to make sure we are not just handing down judgments. These conversations are really about trying to get inside the internal logic of a work."
Catherine Opie, who teaches photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, adds: "There are criers. Usually women, but I hate to say that because it's so stereotypical."
Some of the tears can be attributed to the competitive climate of today's leading art schools, which have become so instrumental to gallery success. But much of the pressure comes from the loaded psychodynamics of the group crit, a ritual with counterparts in drama, design and architecture programs as well.
For not only are students exposing themselves in public to negative comments about their art, which is presumably close to their hearts, but they are fielding these remarks from professors they generally respect and students they invariably know, perhaps too well.
"They are your friends, your enemies, your lovers, your peers," said Lynne Chann, who finishes her M.F.A. degree at Columbia in May. After one rough crit, she said, she couldn't work for a couple of weeks.
"Think about the general nightmare of standing nude in public," said the painter Lisa Yuskavage, who earned her degree in 1986 from Yale. "But add something else you fear, like standing nude on a scale."
She compares the process to a friend's training in the military. "My experience was a lot like her boot camp," she said. "Only in the military they break you down to build you back up into a team player who serves a leader. At Yale they break you down and leave you to put the pieces back together."
Becky Smith, who earned her Yale M.F.A. in 1998 and now runs Bellwether Gallery in Chelsea, has another analogy: "It's like a gladiator spectator sport. And yes, it can be traumatic."
It's no coincidence that Ms. Yuskavage and Ms. Smith both attended Yale during the original "pit crit" days, known for being particularly brutal. Until six years ago, the art school was housed with the architecture school in a concrete building by Paul Rudolph that students compared to a prison, with a courtyard in the center known as the pit. That's where students gathered for spirited peer reviews and for some of the more formal final critiques, which drew the entire art department as well as voyeurs from other schools on campus.
Ms. Smith remembers a crowd of maybe 75 people on good days. "One of the meanest crits I can remember was of Everest Hall, who did these teeny-tiny, precious oil-on-copper paintings, old-masters-style paintings of gay porn stars," she said. "Everyone tore it to shreds. They thought it was illustrative, manipulative. They didn't like the subject, and they didn't like the presentation." (The market apparently disagreed. When he later exhibited this work in New York, Ms. Smith said, it quickly sold out.)
Now Yale's art school has its own building, but it, too, has a pit. And the pit crits, though said to be less torturous, continue. "The philosophy here is that you shouldn't sugarcoat anything," Mr. Kaphar said. "I can't think of a more rigorous program anywhere."
One reason is the Conceptual artist Mel Bochner, on Yale's faculty since 1978, whom many students singled out for being particularly blunt. He is known for telling students whose grasp of art history seems thin to "go back to the library and start with A."
Mr. Bochner declined to be interviewed, but the photographer Gregory Crewdson, who has taught at Yale since 1995, tried to explain the educational rationale. Applying such pressure to a student's work, he said, is meant to help them gain the critical distance and vocabulary to analyze their own work, and ultimately improve it. He finds that photography critiques also help students to think in terms of groups of pictures, instead of just individual shots.
"The crits that I received were always devastating," said Mr. Crewdson, who earned his Yale M.F.A. in 1988. "The idea is that what doesn't break you will make you stronger. But I always tell my students to forget 99 percent of what they hear. Find that 1 percent that really helps you."
Mr. Crewdson compares the experience his students are facing to group therapy. "My father was a psychoanalyst, and I see a lot of similarities," he said. "The act of putting your pictures up on the wall involves a lot of trust, like sharing your personal history. And the whole thing can be very theatrical, very emotional." He likes to end his crits by heading across the street to a bar, so that everyone can unwind over a beer.
If Yale represents one model, U.C.L.A. offers another — or at least John Baldessari's course does. He has taught a popular crit seminar there for the last seven years, and earlier he introduced the first group crit to the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts, in Valencia. In all that time, he has never seen tears in his class, "though I don't know what happens afterward," he joked.
"For me the group crits are really successful if I could walk out of the room" and the conversation continued, he said. "I see my role as being a good moderator or navigator."
Some say this is typical of group crits on the West Coast, which are known for being more relaxed. Thomas Lawson, a CalArts dean, argues that this is for the better. "The courses out here tend to have more student participation — more of a peer review process," he said. "On the East Coast there is still a lot of faculty grandstanding."
Several of Mr. Lawson's students agreed. "Generally the faculty will quietly, or subtly, direct the conversation to make sure we cover certain topics," Kaari Upson, a first-year student, said, "but there seems to be a respect for the M.F.A. students to drive the discussion."
The most famous critique course at CalArts is taught by the Conceptual artist Michael Asher, who is known for his discursive endurance. Once a week, he leads a detailed discussion of works by two or three students, beginning at 10 A.M. and sometimes running until 10 that night. ("I throw away the clock," he said.)
If the crit dynamic has not fundamentally changed over the last couple of decades, student awareness of the ritual — and the attendant horror stories — has grown. In fact, some students are making art about the critiques themselves, which they then cheekily submit for review.
Last semester at Columbia, Lynne Chan, a second-year M.F.A. student, staged a boxing match called "Big Crit Brawl," pitting student against student in a ring in her studio and playing hip-hop music to set the mood. The performance drew on her training in Thai kickboxing and also served as a pre-emptive strike, as the professors decided not to interrupt the event to critique it.
A couple of years ago at Hunter College, for his mid-program review, which is closed to students, Jules de Balincourt, an installation artist, built a tree-house-like structure in the school gallery. His act of resistance was to hide in the shelter and videotape the proceedings. Around the same time at Yale, Hein Koh made a painting that depicted an entire panel of professors reviewing her work. When it was hung in front of that very panel, it made one faculty member so uncomfortable that he changed seats.
Today on the Yale campus, students still speak of a 1995 painting by Hilary Harkness of Mr. Bochner, which depicts him naked, sliding down an icy slope, being sexually assaulted by a cow. The painting, she says, was her way of turning the tables.
"Mel is very smart and a very good critic," said Ms. Harkness, who now shows with Mary Boone in New York. "But he once said to me, 'If I saw your paintings in a window, I would walk right on by.' Maybe he meant that constructively, but it was hard to take that way."
Mr. Bochner's reaction to the scene with the cow? "He didn't want to discuss it," she recalled. "He said he didn't care for revenge paintings."
But silence, the student artists agreed, is very rarely the goal. The only thing worse than receiving a harsh critique is to make a work that gets no reaction at all, whether because the work does not find an audience or the audience does not find it worthy of contemplation. That, of course, mirrors the experience of many struggling artists after graduation, even in today's youth-obsessed market.
And that was also, it turns out, the classroom experience of Mr. Clowes, the graphic novelist who wrote the "Art School Confidential" screenplay after his comic of the same name, both of which were based on his undergraduate days in the early 1980's at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. A cartoonist surrounded by fine artists, he felt neglected.
"Here I am spending hundreds of hours creating a narrative with words, while someone else puts a tampon in a teacup and calls it art, and all they can do is give me a lot of blank stares," he remembered. "The students were not interested, and my teachers were actively discouraging."
Did he get anything out of the critique process? "Nothing," Mr. Clowes said, before pausing to rethink the question. "Then again, I have a very contrary personality. The fact that nobody encouraged me may have helped in the long run. It probably helped me to feel like I was going in the right direction."
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