#Vermeer sketches alone

[lesbiancosimaniehaus]

Dianna 🖤

[changelingsandothernonsense]

Random ask: share something weird/funny/quirky about your creative process (could be writing, could be art) that you've discovered recently and went "huh."

Hi!

I can share a few things, been thinking about my painting process a lot because of the tutorial I'm making, though I don't know if they're unique or anything XD

I spend my doom-scrolling time looking for art references, Pinterest, goggles, I buy a lot of reference packs, whatever for inspiration. Sometimes during a doom-scroll I find a reference that gets my mind working and I have to drop everything immediately and draw it. It basically becomes an intrusive thought until I spit it out in Photoshop. This has been more frequent since going off of my old medications, I got my brain back.

I can not, have never and probably will never make thumbnails or practice sketches because I see the image in my head too clearly. It's not an amorphous concept, I do not feel the need to play with it. (My brother has a similar thing with his music).

I essentially use a bastardised version of the oil painting process when I make my art. And there's a heavy, heavy influence from Baroque styles since I fully admit to being in love with that art style completely. I say this as someone with zero formal training in fine art whatsoever. I just read a lot of books, got hounded by a shiddy partner who gave me a bunch of art-related hang-ups and watched a shit ton of youtube tutorials as I developed my painting process.

I start with a sketch, though when I do this I prefer a white canvas and royal blue (it's a holdover from when I used to scan all my art for digital painting, back when I used a mouse and drew exclusively anime vampire boys). I differ quite heavily from more classical styles here just because I don't like black or dark red for drawing. I still use Loomis though.

I layer values starting with mid-tones and then blocking in darks and lights, though I put them mostly together as opposed to leaving them for last. I always skip the eyes and mouth though, no idea why, it's just a preference.

Then I blur the shit out of it and carve it all back in!

Background colour-main base tones-skin-mouth-eyes-hair-clothing-metalics-background detailing if any is necessary.

I may rely too heavily on references but Vermeer traced using the world's most easy light magic trick so...ner!

Like I have 5 up right now for skintone alone.

I've used the same 3 brushes for the last 9 years and I don't want to change them. I modified their settings to my exact liking over the years and nothing else feels right.

I fix all my main lighting at the end of painting, and even out colour mistakes.

My reliance on chiaroscuro as a crutch, there's so much of that. But it gives skin a glowy effect that I'm obsessed with right now.

I actually love painting hands a lot. So I started painting a lot of hands XD

[iekxow]

Reposted from my Wattpad

Xiao x electro yaksha reader

Requested by @yoruna_tokito (on Wattpad)

Trigger warning: Mentions of suicide, blood, and death.

Aqua water, golden leaves, and fresh air. A break from your everlasting duty to protect Liyue and its citizens. You sat upon a ledge of a mountain as you took in the beauty of Luhua Pool. The clear and unpolluted waters of Liyue were always fascinating to see, and the trees surrounding Luhua Pool never got old to watch. They aged slowly, turning from the little saplings from thousand years ago to the majestic, large trees that would forever accompany Liyue.

You had lived thousands of years, most of those going towards working under Rex Lapis, who was now known as Zhongli to the residents of Liyue Harbor. The Archon of Geo had rescued you and Alatus, better known as Xiao, from the evil god who had gotten hold of both Xiao's and your weakness, who then made the both of you commit horrible crimes that could never be repented for.

Xiao had been tasked with eating the dreams of his victims, while you had been, against your will, sucking the hopes out of those who opposed your old ruler. It wasn't at all pleasant, to say the least, but to say that the hopes of others didn't taste good would be a plain out lie. Especially back then, when both immortals and mortals who weren't being controlled by a master could freely wish to do anything they liked. You and Xiao both had that right taken away from you.

Before the control of that god, you and Alatus had lived as friends. Quite good friends, who would often visit each other every day. For some reason, Alatus had stopped talking to you after meeting the god who you grew to resent.

You were both later saved by Rex Lapis, who then offered you a job as one of the Yakshas. After serving your duties in the Archon War, three of the Yakshas turned against each other, successfully destroying each other. A fourth had disappeared. He likely caused his own end because of the unbearable pain from karmic debt. This left you and Xiao, the two surviving Yakshas.

Back at the present, you hummed a tune, which you probably heard a few hundred years back, and fiddled with your purple mask while quickly walking away from someone who had just been approaching. Adepti have no need to meddle in human affairs, you thought while giggling to yourself, sounds like something Xiao would say.

For the thousands of years you have been an Adeptus, there was not a human who was as bold and fearless as the one who had just called out to you, telling, almost demanding, you to come closer so that he could sketch you.

"Me? You do realize that my presence alone could destroy you, right?" You were just as confused as you were annoyed. Does he not understand that the Adepti already spend most of their time protecting Liyue and its people? We don't need humans intruding on the days we have to ourselves.

"Huh? I'm the famous painter, Vermeer. You must have heard of me somewhere."

A painter named Vermeer? Didn't ring much of a bell to you. "Painter? I know what a painter is, but I've never heard of any 'Vermeer's in the thousands of years I've been in Liyue."

"Ah. You're one of the th— two surviving Yakshas, am I correct? I expect that someone so old would like my paintings. Many of the elderly people of Liyue enjoy my paintings. Don't you?"

Elderly... old... just who exactly do you think the Adepti are?!? Have you no respect for the very people who protect you? You obviously didn't like to be called old. Indeed, being called old is almost always hated by people, but to you, it felt more like mocking. Something along the lines of 'Haha, you won't ever be able to age and live a normal life.'

"Look, I'll stop bothering you if you let me sketch the basic lines of you. I just need a model and you're the only person who's here right now."

You cave in, agreeing to let Vermeer draw you as long as he stopped bothering you afterward. "Fine. I'll stay for a few minutes. I don't care if you can't finish within that time. I have more important issues I have to attend to."

Vermeer held up his end of the deal, not speaking even once while working on his painting.

"Hey, are you done yet? I'll get going soon. Wrap up your sketch." You didn't exactly know why you wanted to leave, but the man was acting quite weird. He kept checking his watch and looking behind you.

"Uhhh... uuuhhhh... just a bit longer, please."

Please? What a change of attitude from before— Wait. Behind me?!? Who's behind me?

"Well, well, well. Long time no see, (Y/N). If it isn't the other Electro Yaksha. You took my rightful place as the Electro Yaksha."

"Hey, wait up. No one ever took your place. There weren't and aren't a limited amount of spots for the Yakshas. And why are you so upset about the fact that we're both wielders of electro? Above all that, where the Archons did you disappear off to?"

"You've gotten weak. I've been training all this time for this. Hahahaha! I'll finally be the Electro Yaksha!"

"Get that stupid idea of yours out of your head, dummy. I wanted to get along. Didn't you see? None of us ever thought of you of anything less than us five. Why don't you open your eyes and get that thought out of your head?!?"

He goes in for an attack. You dodge. Ten entire minutes into the fight, there still wasn't a clear victor.

"Ah. I'm done warming up. Time for the real fight. Try to keep. You'll probably lose anyways."

You silently curse. That was his definition of a warm up? Last time I checked, he wasn't half as strong as this—

"Ah!" A scream tore itself from your lips. First try, and he already landed a hit on you. Your left shin had been scraped by the long blade of the other Electro Yaksha. You immediately whipped out your weapon, (Y/W). Looks like talking won't be an option.

"Haha, like I said, little (Y/N). Those years you spent lazing around have weakened you quite a bit."

Where did he get so strong? Was he somehow trained by the Tsaritsa? By the Abyss? You tried attacking, but those attacks seem to not take any effect on him. Blood slowly but steadily seeped out of the wound on your left leg, dragging your speed down by a whole lot.

Another cut. This time, he aimed for your dominant hand, and you screamed once again, your panicking voice not at all matching the peaceful scenery of Liyue. Wait, where did that Vermeer go?

Your question was answered by a hand holding on to each of your arms. Vermeer was working with him... for what reason? You kick and trash, but your wounds weren't exactly helping, and you didn't have much energy left.

The other Electro Yaksha had a wicked grin on his face. "Hah, I defeated you before you even had the chance to use your mask."

Tears stream down your normally peaceful face. You cry, wishing that Xiao could help you.

"Don't worry, I'm here now. You can relax." Xiao's soothing voice seemed like a light in the void of darkness you had been swallowed in.

First, he took care of Vermeer. Just a few strikes, and he was unconscious. You stood for a few seconds before your left foot decided to give up on standing. Your body collapsed, and possibly because of the loss of blood. The last thing your eyes saw before blacking out was Xiao's spear colliding with his weapon. Thank you, Xiao.

Your eyes slowly blinked a few times, then opened completely. "Xiao?" You said the first thing on your mind.

A soft voice spoke from your left."That was dangerous. Don't go anywhere without me knowing, please. I can't lose you too."

"I'm sorry, Xiao. I'll train harder. I guess he was right. I got weak."

"He's wrong. You're not weak. I-if you ever wanna train, I, uh, could help you."

"Aww, is little Xiao embarrassed? Anyways, sure. Who else would I train with? You're my favorite person, and you're strong."

"I— thank you."

You threw your arms around Xiao. "I miss being like this. Why did you even stop talking to me? Is it because of the 'sins' you've committed? Have you forgotten that I've done the exact same thing as you? We've both done terrible things, but everything's going to be fine now, Xiao."

Xiao looked down, and, surprisingly, returned the gesture, wrapping his arms tightly around you. "If... if you don't mind... I..."

"Eh? What are you trying to say?"

"I would uh, kinda like to try out a thing called dating...", he finished with a tint of pink on his cheeks.

"Ehhh? Really? I almost thought you hated me."

"Uh— uhh—"

"Are you kidding me? Of course the answer's yes. I've liked you for so long, you idiot."

Xiao blinked, trying to take this new information in. "You have?"

"Yeah. But don't worry, we can take things slow. We have eternity, after all. I suppose that's one good thing about not being able to age. No matter what happens in the future, we'll protect each other. I promise you that everything will be fine, Xiao."

Hope you enjoyed it! Requests for any of the characters are open! (not counting Klee, Diona, and Qiqi, unless it’s sibling!reader)

[impressivepress]

Exhibition Henri Matisse, le laboratoire intérieur

Throughout the artist’s life (1869-1954), drawing was a core discipline for Henri Matisse, for which he used a wide range of media (pencil, charcoal and stump, pen and ink, quill and brush ...) and supports (sheets from sketchpads, margins of letters, or fine art paper).

This continuous practice in the privacy of his studio was the laboratory for his work as a painter and for his sculpture – Matisse often compared himself to a juggler or an acrobat, daily maintaining the flexibility of his instrument of work. Matisse’s drawings surround, precede, accompany and extend other artistic forms in his oeuvre and also reveal themselves as independent constellations.

The exhibition illustrates the main moments in this artistic journey, arranged in fourteen thematic and chronological sequences: from the apprenticeship years at the very start of the 20th century, through to the studies for the chapel of the Rosary in Vence (1948-1949), the final masterpiece and culmination of an entire lifetime for Matisse. The suggested path identifies the pivotal points in Matisse’s approach to drawing – from the black of ink or pencil to the modulated white of paper, from the softness of smudged shadows to the light emanating from the final brush drawings, in relation to his experiments with colour in his painting or his work on volume in his sculptures. In the exhibition, each room offers a dialogue between drawings and paintings, etchings and sculptures, with works echoing each other and restoring something of the atmosphere of his various studios: Quai Saint Michel, in Paris from 1894, Issy-les-Moulineaux from 1909, Nice from 1918 until his death in 1954, with the exception of 1943-1948 which Matisse spent in Vence.

Learn. Unlearn

Henri Matisse is twenty-one years old when he goes to train in Paris. He attends evening classes at the École des Arts Décoratifs and at the École Nationale des beaux-arts, in particular in Gustave Moreau’s studio where he rubs shoulders with Albert Marquet and Georges Rouault. He was to stay there from 1892 to 1898, six years during which he works in the studio and assiduously visits the Louvre, where he copies the old masters, including Vermeer, Chardin and Raphaël. Copying gives him an occasional income until 1904, but is above all an essential exercise in the mastery of his craft. In addition to these figures from the past, he is hugely influenced by the great artists of his time, Paul Cézanne and Auguste Rodin, who help him formulate his own pictorial language. While Matisse had always assumed an artistic affinity with the old masters, in 1898 he casts off the weight of the past and escapes from it in all the genres he pursues: the self-portrait, landscapes from nature, or working from life with a model. In the early days, his work appears to be a long journey; he works from the major artists of the past and also with his contemporaries - he admires and challenges by copying, reworking and constantly questioning. And finally he unlearns from the masters.

The grammar of poses

In Matisse’s work, the period from 1904 to 1908 is generally associated with the advent of pure colour. During the summer of 1905, the artist worked in this direction, in the company of André Derain, at Collioure. It was in this mythical place that, under their impetus, fauvism was invented – a founding moment of modernity where colour ceases to bear any reference to local colour, where people and objects are indicated by signs, and where volumes and models are absorbed by the coloured surface. Thus, in La Japonaise: Woman beside the Water, colour and line, figure and decorative background become interchangeable, to the extent that they dissolve in a single movement. This apotheosis of colour is however intimately connected to drawing. These two skills feed the manifestly fauvist canvas The Joy of Life (1905-1906, Philadelphia, The Barnes Foundation), its genesis being evoked by a coloured landscape sketch and numerous drawings. The artist develops a repertoire of poses which he uses constantly throughout his oeuvre. In parallel to the paintings from this period, he also works on a group of three woodcuts, plus a set of small ink drawings. Here too, Matisse delves into his grammar of poses, exploring the ability of the black line to modulate the white surface and thereby give it a luminous, almost “coloured” quality.

A motionless dance

From 1906, Matisse concentrates more on the human figure and develops his creative process, alternating painting sessions with life drawing and sculptures. An overall logic unites these various media around the same conceptual approach to form. Pairs, or even series, can thus be organised around the major sculptures from this period. While Two Négresses reveals the artist’s attraction to African sculpture, they also reflect his interest in the theme of the back which he was to explore both in drawings and in paintings. It was again at the heart of the series of monumental sculptures, Back I, II and III, produced from 1909 to 1917 in step with the drawing-sculpture-painting chain focussing on this subject matter. Designed to be looked at from all angles, other sculptures from this period testify once again to Matisse’s interest in the plastic form of the back. This reflects – in Decorative Figure – a quest for monumentality and – with The Serpentine which was produced after The Dance I (New York, The Museum of Modern Art). In this continuity, a series of drawings is produced, centred on the theme of the issue of spatial expansion originating from the representation of a static figure - a motionless dance.

From portrait to face

Only late on does Matisse express his long-held interest in the “human face”. However, particularly between 1910 and 1917, he is encouraged by a group of fervent lovers of Byzantine art and disciples of philosopher Henri Bergson, who found the principles of a non-representative aesthetic in his art and sought to rethink the links between reality and perception. Matisse then embarks on a journey to develop and to get to the essential, reworking this specific theme in depth. In the portrait of Yvonne Landsberg, in 1914, in the drawing portraits of Eva Mudocci and Josette Gris in 1915, in that of Greta Prozor in 1916, or of George Besson in 1918, Matisse does not flinch from deconstructing and then recomposing his models’ faces, striping them right to the bone, producing unsettling works, often beyond the comprehension of their sponsors. He relies on the subtle use of different drawing methods, a practice he was subsequently to develop further and to theorise thirty years later, in his “Notes of a Painter on his Drawing”. Indeed, in the constellations of drawings and prints associated with the portraits from the period 1914-1916, a cinematography of snapshots already co-exists with a part of informed elaboration. It is thus in and by painting that Matisse finally accesses the spiritual truth of his models.

Trees and oranges

In the preface to the catalogue for the Matisse Picasso exhibition held at the Paul Guillaume gallery in Paris in 1918, Guillaume Apollinaire writes: “If one were to compare the work of Henri Matisse to something, one would have to choose an orange. Like an orange, Henri Matisse’s work is the fruit of dazzling light.” A recurring element which prevails, throughout his oeuvre, as a major subject in his compositions, orange is not a simple motif, which plastic possibilities Matisse explores: it is a real testing ground where the artist confronts the tensions in himself. Present in his early compositions, the fruit reappears during Matisse’s first visit to Morocco in 1912. The artist, in a difficult position due to the rise of cubism and futurism which call into question his role as leader of the avant-garde, will then seek to rethink his art in the light of the artistic tradition of this country. This experiment allows Matisse to set himself apart from the development of the avant-garde to better prepare himself to face it. During the winter of 1915, he travels to L’Estaque, in the footsteps of Paul Cézanne and Georges Braque. There, he abandons the motif of the orange, preferring instead that of the tree, its relationships between forms and forces allowing him to question the vocabulary of cubism. This subject was to occupy him again through force of circumstance : in this period of uncertainty marked by the First World War, active contemplation of nature offers Matisse the resources he needs to regain his equilibrium.

The life-drawing session

In late 1916, Matisse embarks on a new working method, a daily face-to-face, repeated for months and sometimes years, almost exclusively with one model, an Italian called Laurette. A professional model, paid by the hour, she poses for close to a year for around forty canvases, and particularly powerful charcoal drawings. Following the rupture marked by his move to Nice, where Matisse reconnects with the human figure, and during the whole of 1919, the young Antoinette Arnoud replaces Laurette. She inspires a remarkable series of drawings, sometimes worked in great detail, sometimes more elliptical, that Matisse decides to put together in an album published at his expense. Cinquante dessins par Henri-Matisse is objectively the first book composed by the artist, to the content and production of which he was completely committed. A demonstration of virtuosity, in an apparently classical mode, this album is however the contrary to a “return to order” – as Matisse’s period in Nice has often been described.

The odalisque form

Actress, musician and ballerina, Henriette Darricarrère becomes Matisse’s principal model from 1920 to 1927, her body alone incarnating the odalisque form. This word and this motif of odalisque, used by 18th and 19th century painters such as Boucher, Ingres and Delacroix, evoke the representation of nudes without sham mythologies, placed in an allusively oriental decor. In this tradition, Matisse inaugurates in 1921, with the Odalisque with Red Trousers (Paris, Musée national d’art moderne), a long series of works in which the odalisque is no longer a simple motif or an iconographic category, but a way of questioning the insertion of the figure in space. In his apartment, at 1, Place Charles Félix in Nice, Matisse even creates a bedroom like a theatre set, with a platform and decoration of fabrics and wall-hangings, to expose the nudity of the odalisque. Matisse examines the possible ways of achieving the tension of body and decor in various techniques – painting, sculpture, drawing and print – without establishing any hierarchy between them, but regarding them as joint methods of exploration. This series is part of the continuing personal quest of the Orient in relation to the decorative art, crystallised during this time of doubt and intense anguish, the Nice period, during which Matisse seeks to renew his approach by following the lessons of the old masters.

Metamorphoses. Nymph and satyr

Matisse develops the theme of the satyr charming a sleeping nymph, in parallel to that of dance, starting from his fauvist years with The Joy of Life (1905-1906). He reconnects with this motif in the illustration of “The afternoon of a satyr” for the Poems of Mallarmé published in 1932 by Albert Skira, which he creates in parallel to The Dance, a mural for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (United States). Between May and June 1935, he re-engages with this subject once again, producing a series of charcoal sketches, the chronology of which is difficult to ascertain, as Matisse changed and reworked them constantly. Starting from a fairly traditional iconography of the satyr, the artist then stylises this figure, neglecting his traditional attributes (horns and goat’s hooves), to focus on the expressive lines of the body. In these compositions, he was to discover the memory of the work he had started the previous year, on illustrations for James Joyce’s Ulysses, for which he turned to Homer’s Odyssey. These elements reappear in the canvas Nymph in the Forest (Greenery), started in 1935 and pursued tirelessly through to the early 1940’s. Its variations around a single motif and its constant metamorphoses testify to the Matisse’s creative process, who stated: “At each stage, I have a balance, a conclusion. In the next session, if I find that there is a weakness in the entire work, I re-enter myself to my painting via this weakness – I enter via the breach – and I redesign the whole thing.”

The artist and his model, Lydia

A young Russian recently arrived in Nice, Lydia Delectorskaya is initially employed by Matisse as a studio assistant in 1930, while he is working on The Dance for the Barnes Foundation. Although she sits for the artist once in 1934, she really only becomes his model in the following year. In The Dream, he shows her in what is to be his favourite pose, her head resting on her crossed arms surrendered to the gaze. This canvas is Lydia’s inauguration into Matisse’s painting, to which she was to be intimately bound for the rest of his life. In the same period, he develops a series of enormously sensual line life drawings of her, in which he returns to the theme of the “painter and his model” and develops the deconstruction approaches started at the beginning of the century. The presence of a mirror in the composition allows the reflection of the model and the hints of the artist’s presence to be mixed in a continuum of lines, which he explores until 1937. It is at this time that Lydia poses again for a major canvas, Large Blue Dress and Mimosas, in which Matisse paints with relish the dress and the ruffles in a set of drawings seeking harmony between pose and facial expression.

The Romanian blouse

Matisse’s close relationship with textiles, culminating in the Romanian blouse series in 1936-1940, seems to have been triggered by his birth into a family of weavers, and confirmed by his path through life : Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Saint-Quentin, Bohain – all towns centred on bobbin lace factories , wool and textile mills. When he arrives in Paris in 1891, he starts to collect fabrics, wall-hangings and rugs – which would feed and support his artistic creation. In parallel, he builds up a wardrobe for his models, one which grows throughout the 1930’s, containing numerous Romanian blouses, which become a favourite element in his graphic vocabulary. His long-held interest in this item of clothing seems to have grown from his contact with Theodor Pallady, a Romanian painter and former studio comrade of Gustave Moreau, but also from the presence of Lydia Delectorskaya, a young woman originally from Russia, who was to become his favourite model. During this period in which Matisse was seeking a simpler structural method, the graphical aspect of the Romanian blouse allows him to explore a work of purification, down to the expression of simple signs, capturing the character of his subject in the most succinct way. The culmination of Matisse’s interest in textiles, the “ Romanian blouses ” series, also occurs at the time when he embarks on a more general reflection on the decorative, starting from the study of specific motifs.

Cinematography. Themes and variations

In 1941 and 1942, Matisse concentrates on drawing. And he produces hundreds, a “flowering”, as he was to say, comprising series in which the initial drawing is a charcoal study of the developed motif. Other sheets of paper then evolve from this work, as if traced by a blind man, in a state of extreme concentration: “drawings in pen or pencil are like the perfumes emanating from this first master drawing.” He was to return to this approach, referring to “a cinematography of the feelings of an artist. A series of successive images resulting from the work on a given theme by the creator.” Matisse wanted to show this culmination, reconciling the two methods of drawing in a book, Themes and variations. The preface, written by Louis Aragon, is the fruit of an intense dialogue between the painter and the writer. Started in autumn 1941, continued in spring 1942, in the darkest days of the war, this dialogue was to go on in a regular correspondence and discussion, commented by Aragon in Henri Matisse roman, published in 1971. Interiors in Vence. Colours, black and white The season of Interiors in Vence, the final “flowering” of Matisse’s painting, starts in the spring of 1946 and ends two years later with Large Red Interior. This canvas sums up this dazzling series and makes reference to the Red Studio from 1911 (New York, The Museum of Modern Art). A double series in fact, in which strongly coloured canvases are accompanied by large brush-and-ink drawings, with the same motifs: interior (studio) / exterior (garden), nudes, ferns or pomegranates, and always palm trees. Palm trees fill the windows of villa Le Rêve in Vence, into which Matisse settles in June 1943, following the threat of the German occupation of his apartment and studio at the Hotel Régina and afteran air raid at Cimiez. Between painting and drawing, Matisse plays masterfully with black and colour, line and mark, the light of white and that of black. The entire series, exhibited in 1949 is received with great public acclaim, first in New York at his son Pierre Matisse’s gallery, then in Paris at the Musée National d’Art Moderne.

From face to mask

After Louis Aragon, Matisse subjects the faces of his grandchildren to the process of “Themes and variations”. Both adolescents, Claude Duthuit and Jackie Matisse meet their grandfather once again after the separation during the war, in 1945 and 1947 respectively. He drew studies of them in charcoal, extensively worked, followed by quick variations in line, arising from successive sensations and transcribed immediately, as well as simplified “faces”, still portraits yet already masks. They all need to be viewed in relation to these words by Matisse: “The face doesn’t lie: it is the mirror of the heart.”

Vence Chapel. Colour and light

The Vence Chapel of the Rosary project arose from Matisse’s meeting with Monique Bourgeois, a young nurse who cared for him following a major operation in 1941, before becoming his confidante and model. Having joined the order of the Dominicans of Vence in 1946, she tells Matisse in the following year of her plan to extend the chapel of their congregation. With the assistance of Brother Rayssiguier and Father Couturier, the artist produces an initial drawing which is approved by architects Auguste Perret and Louis Milon de Peillon. From 1948 to 1951, Matisse also designs the stained glass windows and the ceramic panels opposite them, as well as the liturgical ornaments. The Vence chapel project allows Matisse to design a space in its entirety and to produce a pictorial language which is a synthesis of his work. As the artist expressed it : “In the chapel, my main aim was to balance a surface of light and colour with a solid wall, with a black on white drawing. This chapel was for me the culmination of a whole lifetime’s work for which I was chosen by destiny at the end of my road, which I continue by my research, with the chapel giving me the opportunity to define it by uniting it.” As a whole, the various preparatory studies for the ceramic panels, stained glass windows and the door of the confessional testify to the long process resulting in Matisse’s final monumental project.

Henri Matisse and Lyon

In January 1941, Matisse’s health deteriorates and he is rushed to hospital, initially the Clinique Saint-Antoine in Nice, from where he is subsequently transferred to the Clinique du Parc in Lyon. There, in 1941, he undergoes an operation for duodenal cancer, carried out by Professor Santy assisted by Professors Wertheimer and Leriche. Matisse “miraculously” recovers from this procedure. He leaves hospital in April and convalesces at the Grand Nouvel Hôtel, rue Grolée in Lyon, before returning to Nice in May. During this period, he has many talks with art critic Pierre Courthion, about Lyon, a “city through and through” which is described as “consistent”. It is at this time that René Jullian, the director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, approaches Matisse in order to acquire one of his works. In 1943, the artist sends the museum a copy of his book Themes and Variations, accompanied by a series of six original drawings produced for the book. From this time until 1950, Matisse sends his illustrated works to the museum, including the album Jazz, each bearing an inscription to the Musée de Lyon. The culmination of this relationship was the purchase, after lengthy negotiations, by Jullian in 1947, of a painting by Matisse: the portrait of the Antiquarian Georges-Joseph Demotte. This collection of Matisse’s works at the museum was to grow further in 1993 by the addition of Young Woman in White, Red Background, from the Centre Pompidou to which it had been gifted by the artist’s son Pierre Matisse.

~ From 2 December 2016 to 6 March 2017.

[beginningpainting]

Final Major Project

In this project you will be looking at the work of an established artist (past or present), dissect the materials and techniques that they employ in the creation of their paintings, and emulate these techniques in the creation of your own work.

There are a variety of elements to this assignment which will all be outlined below.

Collect no less than 5 images from the artist of your choice.

If you have no idea about what you want to paint, then take some time and look at a variety of images and movements ( Google “list artist movements”)

So in this case I’ve chosen to look at the work of Artemisia Gentileschi.

First lets do some preliminary research on her. It doesn’t have to be too in depth but you should identify the broader movements that an artist is a part of and some of their contemporaries. If you have chosen a famous artist, this will obviously be easier than some random person you like on Instagram. If you’re unsure of where your artist fits within art history we can look at the work together and I’ll help you out.

So, by just looking at the first paragraph of Artemisia’s wikipedia page I’ve found out the following.

“Artemisia Gentileschi or Artemisia Lomi (Italian pronunciation: [arteˈmizja dʒentiˈleski]; July 8, 1593 – c. 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. “

Now lets ask ourselves. What is Baroque painting? And of course google will tell us.

“Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality that had been prized during the Renaissance. Among the greatest painters of the Baroque period are Velázquez, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Poussin, and Vermeer. Caravaggio is an heir of the humanist painting of the High Renaissance.”

So suddenly we see that our artist isn’t just a lone genius struggling in a garret. They’re part of a larger movement that almost always involves a conversation with their contemporaries (besides “Outsider Art” which we love because it truly does stand alone).  So now let's look at some works from her contemporaries.  For this assignment you must save 5 images depicting other works made during the same time.

Now you’ve got a good amount of images to work with. If you need to find a way to save these images to your phone you can download an image downloader app (sometimes google images can’t be downloaded directly like the good old days).  If you wish, you can compile these images into a PDF (ONLY A PDF… No really, a PDF! Protable Document Format. PDF) and I’ll print them out for you.

Analyzing your images and taking note of technique, materials, and processes.

Ask yourself the following questions.

How is the paint applied? Is it done quickly, or more methodically.

What’s the subject matter in the paintings? Is it a landscape, a figure, a historical painting, an abstract painting, etc. ?

Does the painting involve glazing and layering, or is it all done “alla prima” (all at once, wet in wet)

What did their preliminary sketches look like? This isn’t mandatory since sometimes they can’t be found. But it is a very helpful tool in discerning just how they painted.

5. What materials and techniques are used in the painting? Were there any special materials that an artist is using to help achieve their goals?

You will have multiple classes to work on these projects. For this reason it is important to begin with some preliminary sketching. These don’t need to be highly modeled and finished works, but should show the major value changes that you’re going to be working with. You must have no less than 5 preliminary sketches. These are best done in brush and ink since you want to see the value changes. If working from a photo, you will be using a grid to make sure your image will fit your canvas properly.

We will all be meeting individually to discuss more in depth the characteristics of each work, so everyone’s path may be a bit different.  For instance, if you wanted to make a photorealistic painting in the style of Marilyn Minter then you’re going to need a very different approach than with Artimesia Genteleschi. Remember that artists create what’s called a “studio practice” and this practice often involves a very methodical approach to the creation of their work. Try to identify and see how all of these steps create a finalized work.

You must track your progress every single day from here to the end of class. That means taking a lot of photos of your work and progress. This isn’t an assignment you just hand in at the end of the semester. It’s a project which is dependent on your constant documentation of the work, If you finish a painting early, then you’re going to need to start another painting, and continue to document working every day.  This documentation needs to represent at least 4 hours of work a day, I don’t just want to see small changes every day. It should be evident what was achieved during every class, and there should be significant changes that show clear progress. It’s perfectly fine to document failures as well.

What should I document ?  

You will be required to take at least 1 photo a day of your progress, and also write down what you did during that day. This is just a simple reflection and telling of events. A simple way to do this is to write it down, and take a photo of it.

And example would be “sketched in basic shapes, and blocked in major values”

Remember you’re trying to make a recipe for a painting so it’s important to identify each step.

No, you can’t paint your dog…

[girlreadinginpublicspaces]

The reader and the city

Dear Diary,

The park sprawls out in front of me; I am on a hill, the sprawling lawns spread out before me. The grass washes over the land like a lurid green sea. There are bushes besides me, I can see through their leaves, the branches like bones of some mythological creature. There are a few couples around me, a mustacheod man and a burkha clad woman whisper behind me. I think they are lovers, their voices grow softly into the air as though they are part of the land, of this myth, their shadows are on the ground, framed by the stamped tracery of leaves.

It is too hot, the sun is bearing down on us but I am here. I am here on the grass reading Proust. I have walked through the streets, ambling through the cityscape and trying not to think of a purpose. I walked off from my bus stop, hauling my bag, and through the March afternoon. I walked through it, the city, past rickshaws, past houses made of stone and glass, past men rushing to the call for prayer. I saw it all, the city and its everyday secrets, its muddy puddles, rusted-up railings, fruit carts, almond carts, beat-up old Mehrans, shiny silver Toyotas, pictures and verses on the back of a truck, a little boy’s yoyo, a curse word in the air, sprigs of coriander in a woman’s fist, blue and red flowers on a duppatta (scarf),  parks passing by,  the sky azure, rivulets of sunlight falling into my vision and a red bit of jump rope like a crimson arc in the sky.

And here I am, I have ended up here and I am reading Proust. This project began with him I suppose, him and Baudelaire and Hemingway and Georges Perec. All flaneurs who wandered through paris, as loiterers, discovering the city’s pleasures and secrets, winding down the path to its hidden histories.

A flaneur I should explain is a wanderer, or loiterer, of the city. The figure appeared in the western literary tradition in the last century in texts related to Paris, that bastion of intellectuals and artists for the lost generation.  The flaneur figure in literary texts and literary history is pre-dominantly male, the bourgeois white male because of the long histories of systemic oppressions that have granted them this privilege.  He purveys the cityscapes, he transgresses the order of the modern city by living through the minutest details of the city, giving it life through his notes and sketches as that creature with limbs and memories and voices that can never be contained through the removed gaze of the modern state. He looks for adventure, for the esthetic or the erotic according to Edmund White who wrote “The Flaneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris (Writer and the City).”

A culture trip article explains it well: “It was in Paris that the figure of the flâneur was created, the prototypical modern individual who wanders the labyrinthine urban sprawl, navigating through the morass of human existence. This figure first appeared in the scandalous poetry of Baudelaire, who found in Paris both a muse and a means for depravity”

They made the city their muse, these men, and transgressed social boundaries through delving into the erotic, into the profane. They found pleasure in the cityscape, and beauty, and freedom. As Georges Perec had it they practiced flânerie to gather the city in its beauty, to trace the existence of the infra-ordinary. They did this because they had the privilege to do so as male, bourgeois white Europeans.

Lauren Elkin traced a literary history of the feminine in the tradition of the flânerie. From her book, I found it, the word flaneuse, the feminin noun of the French verb flâner. It is an act, it comes from a verb so it is to describe those who act, those who actively wander and engage with the city. My gendered existence and mental illness has led to a life marked by passivity, by an immobility I cannot shake. The word’s history is one of masculine privilege and leisure. Elkin expanded the word and its dimensions and brought women into the picture. But they were still white, still European. I have started this project to do as they did, to memorize the city with my damned feet. I want to make my city, Karachi, my own muse, to bind myself to its streets, to traces its bones hidden under concrete like some fossil scientists never found. I want to harness it winds. To have them carry me above it all, and watch as the skyscrapers shrink, watch as the air tells me its memories.  

I have begun this task of mapping the city through an emotional and gendered cartography because I want to use engagement with the city, claims to space and transgression of norms to be able to find room to breathe. To gain mobility and to heal from the mental health issues I have had so far. I have been using biblio-therapy and diary-writing as a means to occupy myself and to articulate pain for the past year. The flaneurs employed the practice of reverie to wonder at spaces and their histories, my diary more often than not explore the emotional scapes and literature I engage with, because there is more than one kind of space to be mapped.  And I am reading, I am reading because it is only “through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain as unknown to us as those that may exist on the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.” (Proust, Time Regained)

Today, this is just happening in a public park, in a public space and this is significant because I have been relegated to the private realm for so many reasons. As an upper-class woman in a South Asian context I am continually warned of the dangers of traversing the urban-scapes where the threat of the lower-class male exists. I am embedded into a politics of respectability wherein I cannot walk out alone, ever. And that is why I haven’t told my mother I have come here. She doesn’t know this, she doesn’t know about the journey here, and she will never know though I wish I could tell her. I am meant to always wait at the bus stop, to get in the waiting car and come home, go from one private bubble to another. And I know what privilege this signifies, I know it but I still find it suffocating.

I guess that’s what I am trying to do: breathe.

And I am reading, reading Proust at that and as I run my fingers across the pages, I cannot believe it because for three years reading has been so hard to do. Depression is an awful thing, I think of how it paralyzed me, how I would lie rigid in bed for hours on end because I couldn’t find the strength to move, and another form of immobility I suppose. Mentally ill people cannot traverse the cityscape as well, though I suppose Proust did and here is the proof: Time Regained. It’s such a beautiful (book) on memory, and I am reading it I suppose to articulate, to name my own struggles. As he says “Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself.”

I think of this and then I think of the days where I’d lie in my bed, my room dark, the windows curtained off, as if the sun and the world that spun around it had turned its back to me. I remember not knowing how long I had stared at the walls, traced the curving backs of the seahorses that are spread across the moldings on my ceiling. I remember closing my eyes, and imaging complete darkness, I remembered the absence of time.

I hear a laugh behind me. The woman has taken off her scarf and is eating crisps. They’re both content, they lay across the grass and it has molded itself to their frames, its as if they were born from it. I hear laugh again and it’s high-pitched, the wind carries it and it rolls down the hill. The shadows have lengthened; the trees sway to the left, time has worn on.

And then I wonder if that is my goal: to unfreeze time, to mobilize myself through time and space. Proust says that paying attention to the universe moved along by time immobilizes it instead. And I suppose that is what is happening here, this is a vignette of a Karachi afternoon. This time will be frozen here forever, across these pages.

-H.