Saturday, May 26, 2018

POST #160: FILTHY LUCRE: Working for the Mighty Dollar


As most of my readers know, I taught art history at the University of Connecticut for over 22 years. Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern etc. etc. All the great artists I taught about worked ‘on commission,’ rarely for their own pleasure. Today, we would have called them “commercial artists.” With few exceptions, everything they did was for a wealthy client, usually the church or royalty. They did not look upon themselves as “geniuses,” creating work that might or might not be sold. Of course there were exceptions, eccentric anomalies like a mystical Blake or an exiled Goya, or a wealthy JMW Turner. The greatest artist of all, Rembrandt, did his finest work towards the end of his life when he was no longer in demand and just scraping by selling prints and teaching a handful of students.

When I was growing up in New York City right after the Great Depression, the few artists I actually knew supported themselves and their families by teaching and an occasional sale of work. Unlike today, an artist could live inexpensively and most (men) had working wives who supported them. Currently, I do not know a single artist who survives off his or her art; they either have a pension, savings, inherited wealth or a working spouse. From time to time one of them will sell something, but if they had to depend upon sales or commissions, they would starve.

In a way, knowing that you can’t earn a living off your artwork is liberating. It means you can do whatever you like without thinking about a buyer. Where there is no art market, there’s no need to worry about it. For example, I can paint without concern about a buyer. If I die with an attic full of unwanted paintings, some starving artist will be happy to re-use my canvas and there’s always the recycling center at the dump.  I’m currently working on a giant, 6’x12’ triptych, the last in a series of three that look like Russian Constructivist stage sets. They’re the best work I have ever done. Nobody is going to buy them because no one has room to put them up. When I have some bills to pay, I can take on a historic preservation review project for the City’s zoning department and when that contract runs out, I can always take in boarders. That’s how people did it during the Depression when I was growing up. It beats making artwork that ‘goes with the drapes.’

I’ve done pretty well the past year or two, sold quite a lot of work, mainly from my “rooftop” series based on the view from my daughter’s New York apartment. They are a lot easier to live with than my voluptuous ladies of the night. Since I had a broken ankle, I couldn’t get to Curley’s Diner and the city skyline had to suffice as inspiration.

credit to:
Robert Callahan
In a way, I envy my artists friends who had successful careers as commercial artists and art directors in New York City. They do very finished looking work, nothing edgy or offensive, all of it eminently saleable. One of them puts layers and layers of varnish on her work: abstract paintings with beautiful colors. They sell like the proverbial hotcakes to office decorators. I know another who paints romantic clouds wafting over Florida beaches, also a best seller. This is what they were trained to do: create a product for a market. Even when they try to do something off the beaten track, there’s a slickness and a desire to please in their hand that they can’t get rid of. In a way, I envy the ease with which they turn out work that sells, but I was trained to be a starving artist (although I haven’t missed a meal yet!) 

Since I’m obviously not in it for the cash, what’s my current goal?
First, to keep working for a few years more; I think I‘m getting really good. And….
I would love a decent sized retrospective in a major gallery or museum while I’m still around to enjoy it.

Renee Kahn

Friday, May 11, 2018

POST #159: FULL FRONTAL – no nudity!


I have a friend who saves the art section for me from the London Financial Times. Writing about art, translating the visual into the verbal, is never easy and lends itself to pseudo-jargon and just plain bull s----. but FTs reviewers, especially someone called Jackie Wullschlager, manage to be erudite without being self-important or deliberately obscure. Every few weeks I climb into my bed with a stack of back issues and work my way through them. It doesn’t matter where the shows they write about are held or if they’re over by the time I read about them - I wouldn’t go anyhow - I always manage to learn something.

The March 18th issue had an article by the aforementioned Ms/Miss/Mrs/Mr. ? Wullschlager that discussed a show currently at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam devoted entirely - reputedly for the first time ever - to full-length, life-sized portraits. Of course, being the Rijksmuseum, the stars of the show are two pendant portraits of a husband and his very pregnant bride painted by Rembrandt when he was in his twenties, two of only three such portraits in his lifetime. The idea of full-length wedding portraits only went back a century or so, invented by Cranach in 1514. I guess they were the equivalent of those elaborate formal wedding photos you used to see on everyone’s buffet. Most of the other paintings in the show, however, were of single figures, not pairs.

What prompted this post was a conversation I had with my friend Rachel who paints life-size, full-length portraits of ordinary people, i.e. the owner of a hardware store in Michigan and his wife. We were trying to figure out why artists seem to avoid full-length frontals and came to the conclusion that they are difficult to compose, given that the viewers’ eye ends up smack dab against the model’s belly button. How do you deal with that when you’d rather have them concentrate on the subject’s face. It’s interesting to see how some of the more famous full-length portraits in the history of art: Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy”, Goya’s “Duchess of Alba” or John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” deal with this problem. Rembrandt’s solution was to paint elaborate lace cuffs and waist trim on his pair, creating visual interest, but not enough to compete with their faces.

What prompted my interest in the subject was that several months ago I began a half dozen or so almost life-size oil sketches of people walking on 125th Street in Harlem. I’m working up to a series of semi-abstract paintings like the ones I did of the Lower East Side several years ago. The figures are placed on 2’x5’ canvas scrolls. I start with a photograph or a sketch from life and end up with something almost entirely out of my imagination. I think my goal is to create companionship for myself in the studio, what my psychologist husband used to call my “Only Child Syndrome.”  (I was an “only child.”) When the person on the canvas makes eye contact with me, talks to me, smiles at me, I know I’ve succeeded.  I’m like the Florentine sculptor Donatello, who notoriously would scream at his statues: “Speak, damn you! Speak!” There’s an element of magic involved in all of this and while I have no idea how I bring my painted people to life; I just know when they contact me.