stlukesguild
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This will be the last look at my older paintings for a while. I'll be seriously tied up with school for the rest of this week and don't have time to organize these old photographs and edit them (some files are huge!).
One of the criticisms frequently leveled at paintings of the female nude (or near nude) is that like fashion photography they present an unrealistic and often unattainable ideal. I might argue that we need to be able to differentiate Art from Reality. Art quite often is based in fantasy and ideals. But I would also note that whereas the fashion industry promotes a single ideal body the history of Art shows artists embracing a wide spectrum of ideals.
For years, until I accidently broke the glass, we had a framed print of Peter Paul Rubens' Three Graces hung on our bedroom door:
Besides Rubens, Titian, Degas, Renoir, Maillol, and many other artists employed a more voluptuous figure that would be deemed obese by many within the film, fashion, and beauty industries. I had painted a few more Rubenesque figures over the years... closer to myself and my wife. As I began this painting I was thinking of the recent so-called "plus-size" models who had begun to challenge accepted notions of what qualified as "beauty" withing the fashion and beauty industries.
The drawing for this painting came together rapidly... without a great deal of erasures. To emphasize the mass and strength of these women I pushed the figures to the edge of the paper as if they were about to bust out beyond the physical limits of the picture plane.
Originally, I thought of the woman on the left as sitting on some sort of platform... as I had done with my earlier painting, "New Fallen Snow". However, when I drew the halo... which need to fill the entire space left-to-right due to the distance between the two women, it ended up looking as if the seated figure were actually sitting on the halo.
I liked the idea as a sort of formalist game that reminded me of something of Richard Lindner, the German painter who often blurred the line between sculptural foreground figures and the flat geometric patterns of the background:
As I began this painting, I was thinking of my usual palette of colors. I primed the ground an earthy red tone and quickly established the black & white checkerboards.
At this time, however, I was looking at a lot of Pop Art beyond Lindner. I was intrigued with Warhol's neon colors... especially as we had the DayGlo paint company right down the street.
I was also looking a good deal at Tom Wesselmann's series, The Great American Nude:
I was also looking a good deal at the book, The Great American Pin-up by Charles G. Martignette, who had amassed the largest collection of American illustrations, and Louis K. Meisel, who had acquired a huge collection of classic Pin-ups, Pop Art, and Photorealism. His gallery remains in business today. Not only was I intrigued by the imagery and the colors I was seeing from these more populist sources, but I also loved the title: The Great American Pin-ups. It spoke of models who were well-fed, beautiful, confident, and powerful.
One of the criticisms frequently leveled at paintings of the female nude (or near nude) is that like fashion photography they present an unrealistic and often unattainable ideal. I might argue that we need to be able to differentiate Art from Reality. Art quite often is based in fantasy and ideals. But I would also note that whereas the fashion industry promotes a single ideal body the history of Art shows artists embracing a wide spectrum of ideals.
For years, until I accidently broke the glass, we had a framed print of Peter Paul Rubens' Three Graces hung on our bedroom door:
Besides Rubens, Titian, Degas, Renoir, Maillol, and many other artists employed a more voluptuous figure that would be deemed obese by many within the film, fashion, and beauty industries. I had painted a few more Rubenesque figures over the years... closer to myself and my wife. As I began this painting I was thinking of the recent so-called "plus-size" models who had begun to challenge accepted notions of what qualified as "beauty" withing the fashion and beauty industries.
The drawing for this painting came together rapidly... without a great deal of erasures. To emphasize the mass and strength of these women I pushed the figures to the edge of the paper as if they were about to bust out beyond the physical limits of the picture plane.
Originally, I thought of the woman on the left as sitting on some sort of platform... as I had done with my earlier painting, "New Fallen Snow". However, when I drew the halo... which need to fill the entire space left-to-right due to the distance between the two women, it ended up looking as if the seated figure were actually sitting on the halo.
I liked the idea as a sort of formalist game that reminded me of something of Richard Lindner, the German painter who often blurred the line between sculptural foreground figures and the flat geometric patterns of the background:
As I began this painting, I was thinking of my usual palette of colors. I primed the ground an earthy red tone and quickly established the black & white checkerboards.
At this time, however, I was looking at a lot of Pop Art beyond Lindner. I was intrigued with Warhol's neon colors... especially as we had the DayGlo paint company right down the street.
I was also looking a good deal at Tom Wesselmann's series, The Great American Nude:
I was also looking a good deal at the book, The Great American Pin-up by Charles G. Martignette, who had amassed the largest collection of American illustrations, and Louis K. Meisel, who had acquired a huge collection of classic Pin-ups, Pop Art, and Photorealism. His gallery remains in business today. Not only was I intrigued by the imagery and the colors I was seeing from these more populist sources, but I also loved the title: The Great American Pin-ups. It spoke of models who were well-fed, beautiful, confident, and powerful.
