Archie Rand - Part 10 Assignments

The first assignments showed anyone has the skill to make a photo realistic drawing. Take a picture of Degas’ horse, and draw a grid on it. On a separate piece of paper draw a grid, and then draw in each square of the grid with the Degas horse.

Take a photo page out of magazine, draw a grid on it. Using the grid, make a drawing of the magazine. 

Archie asked us to draw a profile face, and then to draw the mirror image on the other side of the page. The first face was drawn with conditional knowledge of what an eye, nose, lips, forehead and chin look like. The second face, in copying the first face but backwards, followed the process how far should this line go, how far should that line go… it is what artists ask when they sketch.

In the greenhouse the other day I drew water lilies in the 70 F rain forest tropical room. I sweated my ass off and the sun was in my face to boot. I found it hard to render water. I asked Archie what the deal was… he told me rendering of water changes every 50 years or so…. it is constantly changing art. In the class, another student and I were the only people to draw in the architecture of the greenhouse in the picture. Archie found it odd most people decided to have the plants in their face and draw them from the microscopic point of view.

Then he asks us to do contour drawings. Without looking at our hands, carefully draw synching hand motion to the eye observatory mode. He also asked us to simply draw anything, using various techniques for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes we all hung up our works on the wall and were amazed at how different everybody’s picture was even though Rand gave the same speech to everyone.

Draw something you love.

First shade the page in medium tone with a soft pencil then erase all the highlights out and draw in the darkest darks and then vary the middle tones to create volume and depth. This exercise allow one to see the value differences in the subject. And since all the middle tones are provided by the initial priming coat, we learned to use all the values to create volume in the object.

Draw a set of flowers for 2 hours using really sharp pencils.

We made a huge heap of junk in the middle of the classroom and were asked to sketch it in 8 minutes, then switched seats and drew for 5 minutes, then 4 minutes, etc….

For homework we’re supposed to draw in 2 pt perspective,

Last project. Make a 20 page book combining words and text.

Archie Rand - Part 9 Drawing

Ingres was a master draftsman. Yet his work is devoid of soul. That is, human beings in his pictures are reduced to machines, shapes… where the body is subservient to the artist. He drew Adam and Eve so tranquil and nice. Massacio, on the other hand, one of Michelangelo’s main influences drew Adam and Eve full of anguish.

I used to write for the art magazine for my school. We had an excellent teacher, but she was senile, which was great. We would stick around till 11 PM at night and just do art. We ran competitions throughout high school. There was a guy who wore a leather jacket and could reproduce Raphael’s work like no other. One night, he went up to the chalkboard and proceeded to sketch out the entire School of Athens painting from memory. We laughed at him cause he kept mumbling to himself “you’re great, you can draw, just keep drawing these lines”. Today he paints pinstripes on the sides of cars.

The Yale School of Art is based on the principle of photo-realism. They project slides onto walls, and basically color them in (i.e., Chuck Close)... I went to art school with a Yale guy, he’s been reproducing pictures for the past 30 years. He hasn’t matured a fucking bit since….

I’ll teach something painters employ in their works. That is the concept of drawing through the contours to create a 3D space. Total saturation of space. Pay attention to the contours yet ignore them!

Chardin, a contemporary of Mozart is considered the best still life painter. Yet look at this picture and there’s something not drawn in perspective.

Everytown has 15 or so painters that congregate at the public library every afternoon at 4pm and bitch and whine that nobody understands their art. And for even smaller towns they do watercolors. The point is a lot of people know how to draw in perspective and can do it too.

Michelangelo’s David’s head is extremely large. That is M. thought the statue would be mainly be viewed 20 feet above the viewer’s perspective.

DeChirico drew in perspective, but he put a little in-you-face twist on it., ie., huge public open space and a nude. Picasso and Matisse rejected the notion of perspective.

The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci is a one point perspective emanating from Christ. It was a meditative and irrational experiment of Da Vinci’s.

Today we learned about perspective. Alberti is credited with the scientific breakdown of perspective. Where the lines should emanate from, and how an image changes as it is tilted, etc… is what he was concerned with. Duhrer on the other hand was more concerned with observation, not so much perspective lines. He used chicken wire and made a grid of squares. He would place the grid between him and his object and draw the objects in relation to each other and in relation to the grid. Everything on the page seems to scream out “measure me relatively to the adjacent object!” 

Rand and the TA showed us how to do a 1 and 2 point perspective. Then Rand showed us a 3 point perspective. He was getting a kick out of how fast we were learning how to do perspective. Apparently there is much theory that they teach in art schools which he decided to forgo without class. In 1 point perspective, all perspective lines go to the middle of the page. In 2 point, there are no horizontal lines, just vertical lines and all perspective lines leading to 2 points on the right and left horizon line.

Nobody see things as they are drawn in perspective. Drawings done under perspective systems don’t appear real. The real reason why the human eye is constantly moving and taking visual information in from many angles. That is, if we were shot up with morphine, closed one eye, and held it still, we would be looking in 1 or 2 or 3 pt perspective.

Marvel comics are based on 3 point perspective. It’s perfect for objects being hurled in the air. 

We spent class time drawing gas station architecture. 

Archie Rand - Part 8 Theories

There are two ways of art, neurosis (Ingres), that which focuses on the techniques and the correctness of drawings or communicative art (picasso).

Matisse and Picasso destroyed volumetric drawing. Without belief in volume, one could convey personality. Picasso was envious of Matisse cause Matisse could draw lines and convey humanity.

During the 1930’s Bridgman was famous for his gesture drawings. Beautifully sculpted for volume. Under him, figure drawing went from specific to architectural. 

Nicolaides, 1940’s. Figure drawing became more symbolic. He stressed the freedom of the human body in gesture drawings. This led to the blind contours of the 1960’s.

I have reached the dopey conclusion that the 20th century has seen 4 teachers who’ve changed the way we draw figures. 

The French started 2 dimensional recognition rather than belief. What is the difference between belief and recognition? A stop sign would be recognition, a sign showing a car wreck and carnage would be belief.

banksy

warhol

I have a problem with the concept of negative space. The live carves the object out of the space of the paper. It is a concept sprung from the western mind geared towards conquest and power. The Renaissance art and the use of negative space flourished under the Medicis, the family that killed and plundered Italy for unity. That is why the environment has been so ravaged by western culture. There is no care of negative space. In drawing everything contains information both positive and negative space.

We learned perspective this week in class. A visual language which has been developed specifically by western culture in basically France and Italy. The whole thing about perspective and the ideal of a hierarchy, the way shapes should appear in respect to each other it political… imperial French and Italians at the time were subjugating people left and right. It’s no surprise perspective was developed at the time of conquest and domination.

Jackson Pollock “Art requires new techniques and new techniques require new art”

Picasso “Art is the lie by which we convey the truth”.

My brother came up with a theory about the origins of perspective. Bayeaux Tapestries is a roll of tapestries about the battle of Hastings. It’s like a roll of toilet paper. It goes on forever. Anyways combat in those days was hand to hand, they used swords and axes. Then the battle of A. the English threatened to use the longbow. The contraption could shoot 1.5 miles. In that battle, the French lost 4000, the English 23. To depict the arrows,the artists could just represent (in scale) the space of 15.5 miles on this work by using perspective. 

There are two modes in artistry: the rendition and the subject matter. The problem with modern art today is that both the rendition and the subject are hysterical. There is no grounding for the viewers to respond. Van Gogh had a hysterical rendering of paint, yet he painted mundane subjects (French peasants and countryside, etc…) his paintings strike many as powerful. Poisson painted classically, but his subjects (Rape of Sabine Women) were hysterical. He is able to depict the hysterical gory scene in Roman History because his style is classical. Just like the Beatles singing Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. Maxwell is bludgeoning a teacher with a hammer yet the Beatles render the song so it allows it to be heard and accepted.

Religious painting, nobody likes it. Reform jews are ashamed, orthodox are offended, non jews have no use for it. 

Before the advent of photography, the body was portrayed as a mass. After photography, the depiction of the body became more symbolic.

They came up with concepts of aesthetics to counter the lack of belief.