Industrial Cathedral

Industrial Cathedral
"Industrial Cathedral" charcoal on paper 131 x 131 cm Jane Bennett. Finalist in 1998 Dobell Drawing Prize Art Gallery of NSW Finalist 1998 Blake Prize Winner 1998 Hunter's Hill Open Art Prize

About Me

My photo
Sydney, NSW, Australia
I'm an Industrial Heritage Artist who paints "en plein air".If it's damaged, derelict, doomed and about to disappear, I'll be there to paint it.
Showing posts with label art review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art review. Show all posts

Tuesday 29 November 2011

Homage to Picasso, Part 2 - Postcards from Picasso

The following sketches were all drawn in the Musée National Picasso in 1997 during my Marten Bequest Travelling Art Scholarship.
I had run out of paper, so I took some free postcards from the bookshop to record my thoughts.



This is the other side of the postcard from the bookshop of the Musée National Picasso.
I used the back of these to draw on at first as an act of desperation - I had run out of art materials and money!
However, from that time on, whenever I visit an exhibition I now always use the catalogue or booklet from the gallery to record my thoughts about the exhibition. It gives the sketches some context, I can remember exactly what I have seen and where.
At school I had driven my teachers crazy by annotating my textbooks in a similar fashion whenever I was bored, which meant about 99% of every lesson. This turned out to be a good foundation for my future career rather than timewasting and daydreaming. Somewhere in a dusty school cupboard there might still exist a few of my "illustrated manuscripts".


My sketch of "Study for 'Les Desmoiselles D'Avignon' "
Pablo Picasso 1907
ink on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 


During my Travelling Art Scholarship I filled page after page every day with annotated sketches of famous paintings and observations about my surroundings. Sometimes this was to learn some technique or to note some aspect of the painting for use later in one of my own paintings. Mostly it was just to make sure that I really looked at the works and didn't just skim over them. If I draw something I will remember what I have seen. If I've just taken a photo of something, I'll swiftly forget it. The greatest compliment you can pay to a work of art is to give it your time and attention.
I was interested in seeing the working sketches for iconic works such as 'Les Desmoiselles D'Avignon'- what was included; what was discarded - the paths not taken.The painting is now such an icon of modern art that it is easy to forget that its final form was not inevitable, but arrived at after months of struggle.


My ink drawing of
"Head of Marie-Therese Walter" Pablo Picasso, Boisgeloup 1932
ink on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 


My drawing of "Le Viel Homme Assis" by Pablo Picasso
graphite on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 


My drawing of
"Le Fou", a bronze sculpture by Pablo Picasso from 1905
graphite on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 
This little bronze was also exhibited in the current exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW "Picasso: masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris".


My ink drawing of one of Pablo Picasso's classically inspired heads.
ink on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 
I love the Protean nature of Picasso's art - how he would switch from the restrained classical poise in this example to the wild energy and cartoonish violence of the next example without missing a beat.


My gouache and ink drawing of
Pablo Picasso's Le baiser (The kiss) 1969, oil on canvas,
97 × 130 cm, and above it "Les Banderilla"
ink and gouache on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 

This oil painting is also included in the current exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW "Picasso: masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris".

My gouache and ink drawing of
Pablo Picasso's 1961 "Woman and child"
ink and gouache on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 


My gouache and ink drawing of Pablo Picasso's
1961 project for a monument
"Femme aux bras ecartes"
ink and gouache on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 


My gouache and ink drawing of
Pablo Picasso's"La Jeune Fille assise"
ink and gouache on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 


My gouache and ink drawing of a faun by Pablo Picasso
ink and gouache on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 


My gouache and ink painting of
"L'homme au mouton (Man with sheep)" Pablo Picasso, 1940s
ink and gouache on card 36 x 13cm 1997
Available 

Close up detail of my gouache and ink painting of
"L'homme au mouton (Man with sheep)" Pablo Picasso, 1940s
ink and gouache on card 18 x 13cm 1997
Available 

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." (Pablo Picasso) I loved the gentle expression on the face of "L'homme au mouton (Man with sheep)" Pablo Picasso, 1940s. If I was having a difficult day, I would feel revived by looking at his calm and tender features.
"I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else." (Pablo Picasso)
In the very first week of my Travelling Art Scholarship, I had accidentally dropped my camera off a bridge in Rotterdam. It seemed like a disaster at first, but it turned out to be the best thing I could have ever done to hone my drawing skills, as it forced me to get faster and more decisive with my work or miss the moment entirely. My drawings were more interesting than my photos were anyway and I didn't bother replacing my camera until after I got back to Australia.
Another thing that initially seemed to be a disaster and turned out to be a blessing in disguise, was that I am completely useless at learning new languages. Despite my best efforts, my German is appalling, my French is pitiful and my Italian is worse. And according to the English, I don't speak English all that well either! If I wanted to make myself understood, I would have to draw whatever I needed. This would at least get a laugh, if nothing else. It worked a treat, and I had no problems with communication wherever I went. Art is truly a universal language.
It taught me that a work of art can have many purposes, from shallow to deep.

Related articles
(guardian.co.uk)

Related posts in this blog

Homage to Picasso Part 1

Sunday 27 November 2011

Homage to Picasso Part 1

My drawings of the exhibition "Picasso: masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris" Art Gallery of NSW
I dropped off my entry to the Dobell drawing Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW just before the cut-off time on Friday afternoon and had a rare spare couple of hours to myself before the opening of the "Ship to Shore" exhibition at the Mosman Art Gallery.
The Art Gallery didn't look too crowded for once so I visited the Picasso exhibition.
During my Marten Bequest Travelling Art Scholarship 1996 -7, I spent a total of 6 months living in Paris, almost long enough to feel like a local. As I had won a studio residency from the Trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW, I had spent most of that time living in the Moya Dyring studio at the Cite Internationale des Arts in the Marais. However, after my residency had finished, I then spent about a month living in the charming hotel L'Hostellerie du Marais in a 17th-century building located near Place des Vosges and the historic Marais district.
It was not far from the Cirque D'Hiver and just down the road from the Picasso museum in the rue de Thorigny. I would often drop in there on my way back to my hotel, so most of the works on display in this exhibition were old friends.


My drawing of
Pablo Picasso's Le couper des tetes
(the head-cutter) Spring 1901
Available  

However, there were still a few surprises. Just when I had thought I was familiar with all of Picasso's early work, I came face to face with a very confronting little sketch, which I sincerely hope wasn't done from life!
I was trying to pin down what the unnerving look on the face of the "head cutter" reminded me of. The droogy leer of Malcolm Mc Dowell in Stanley Kubrick's iconic film of "A Clockwork Orange" perhaps, plus the stance of the swaggering murderer Lacenaire, played by Marcel Herrand in Marcel Carne's "Les Enfants du Paradis" . The artistic ancestors of this drawing surely include Picasso's countryman Goya and the caricaturist Daumier, but the most immediate influence would have been the recently deceased Toulouse-Lautrec, who had a taste for subject matter verging on the morbid or perverse. Possibly Picasso would even have been aware of Walter Sickert's series of paintings about the Camden Town murders.



As you can see here, whenever I run out of pages in my drawing books, I will use whatever comes to hand.
I like using the catalogue to record my impressions of the exhibition.


My sketch of
Pablo Picasso's "La Celestine" 1904 and "Etude academique"
Available 


My sketch of a Pablo Picasso sculpture
Available 

My sketches of
Pablo Picasso's "L'homme au mouton"
and his assemblage of the bicycle seat/bull's head
Available  
In my next post "Homage to Picasso, Part 2 - Postcards from Picasso" I will show some of the sketches I did when I visited the Musée National Picasso in Paris in 1997.

Related articles
"Picasso: masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris"
Garance: our lasting affair | Agnès Poirier (guardian.co.uk)
Picasso's Hungry Hand Stars in Flipbook Show at Frick: Review (businessweek.com)
Les Enfants du Paradis - review (guardian.co.uk)
Les Enfants du Paradis - review (guardian.co.uk)
Stanley Kubrick & Malcolm McDowell on the set of A Clockwork Orange (1971, dir. Stanley Kubrick) (via The Stanley Kubrick Archives) (sgtr.wordpress.com)
Letters: Tainted Paradise (guardian.co.uk)
Pablo Picasso show pays belated homage to Spanish genius (guardian.co.uk)