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" the artist isn't as free as he sometimes appears" having no control over underlying structures or images..." just obeying a vision that forces itself on me"

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In the book about Picasso by F Gilot there are some quotes that describe Picasso artistic process that involves puzzle- like problem solving. "Painting is poetry and is always written in verse with plastic rhymes, never in prose. Plastic rhymes are forms that rhyme with one another or supply assurances either with other forms or with the space that surrounds them" " when you compose the painting you build around lines of force that guide you in your construction.

There is one area where the first graphic sketch evokes the idea of a table, for example; another one where you create an idea of the movement of space behind the table. Those lines of force set up a resonance that leads you to where you are going..."

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Quote from the book: " Today we are in unfortunate position of having no order or canon whereby all artistic production is submitted to rules. They - the Greeks, the Roman's, the Egyptians - did. Their canon was inescapable because beauty, so- called, was by definition, contained in those rules. But as soon as art had lost all link with tradition, and the kind of liberation that came in with Impressionism permitted every painter to do what he wanted to do, painting was finished. When they decided that it was the painter's sensations and emotions that mattered, and every man could recreate painting as he understood it from any basis whatever, then there was no more painting; there were only individuals. Sculpture dies the same death.

Beginning with Van Gogh, however great he may be, we are all, in a measure, autodidacts - you might almost say primitive painters. Painters no longer live within a tradition and so each one of us must recreate an entire language. Every painter of our times is fully authorized to recreate a language from A to Z. No criterion can be applied to him a priori, since we don't believe in rigid standards any longer. In a certain sense, it is a liberation, but at the same time it is an enormous limitation, because when the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order, and when you are no longer able to attach yourself to an order, basically it is very bad.

... as cubists we were individuals dedicated to ourselves. As soon as we saw that a collective adventure was a lost cause, each one of us had to find an individual adventure. And the individual adventure always goes back to the one which is the archetype of our times: that is Van Gogh's - an essentially solitary and tragic adventure.

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More spring!

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I love spring because there is so much new.

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Continued...

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Texture series 2024, continued

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Texture series 2024

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From F Gilot book about Picasso.

" I asked Picasso how a painter could work like nature. Well, aside from rhythm, one of the things that strikes us most strongly in nature is the difference in textures: the texture of space, the texture of an object in that space - a tobacco wrapper, a porcelain vase - and beyond that the relation of form, color, and volume to the question of texture. The purpose of papier colle was to give the idea that different textures can enter into composition to become the reality in the painting that competes with the reality in nature. We tried to get rid of " trompe-l-oeil" to find a " trompe- l'-espirit". We did not any longer want to fool the eye; we wanted to fool the mind. The sheet of newspaper was never used in order to make a newspaper. It was used to become a bottle or something like that. It was never used literally but always as an element displaced from its habitual meaning into another meaning to produce a shock between the usual definition at the point of departure and its new definition at the point of arrival. If a piece of newspaper can become a bottle, that gives us something to think about in connection with both the newspaper and bottles too. This displaced object has entered a universe for which it was not made and where it retains, in a measure, its strangeness. And this strangeness is what we wanted to make people think about because we were quite aware that our own world was becoming very strange and not exactly reassuring"

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" I asked Picasso if he thought the green was balanced by violet. That is not the question, he said. I don't need to know that. I am not trying to make this first proposition more coherent. Right now I am interested in making it more disturbing. After that I will start to construct - but not to harmonize; to make it more deeply disturbing, more subversive.

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I m reading a book by Francoise Gilot that has some interesting quotes by Picasso. "I've always felt that painting must awaken something even in a man who does not ordinarily look at pictures. The great majority of people have no spirit of creation or invention... they can know what they already know. So how do you go about teaching them smth new? By mixing what they know with what they don't know.

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I have been exploring painterly curves that resemble the draping of fabric. Not tol happy with the. Yet..

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Most fascinating mixed media and fabric exhibit at the Visual Art Center of NJ in October 23 (this is where I teach 2 art classes)

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Prepping the surface for painting is important... gessoing recycled cardboard .

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Colors colors colors! Teaching the method to mix any color

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Unsettled?

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This weekend I have dine some "housekeeping " such as stretching canvas and priming. It is very peaceful.