Artists' Materials Forum

[George O'Hanlon]

A comment was made in this forum to the effect that materials is a small part of making art. I agree with that viewpoint in that there are much greater concerns when art making. However, it is the unfortunate state of affairs today that most studio painters lack practical knowledge about materials and hence wrestle with this "insignificant" area for much of their careers. It is for this reason, I believe, that materials take on an often exaggerated and important position in the discussion of artists. Or perhaps it is because materials is tangible and palpable and hence an easier to topic to discuss. Whatever the case, this is the primary objective of this forum and it is encouraged here, because after all this is also an artists' materials company. This does not mean that I and Natural Pigments are not interested in discussions about aesthetics, but from my experience with forums these often devolve into petty matches inflamed by personal egos. Until we learn to control the monsters from our ids (now there's a reference to the all time classic science fiction movie, Forbidden Planet, and they just do not make women like Anne Francis anymore), then I would like to limit the discussions to materials.

Another thought occurred to me today while in my laboratory is that although many readers of this forum have much valuable experience, there is something unique when you grind paint on three-roll mill, measure physical parameters using instruments, make endless variations of batches to fine tune formulas, and review results from analysis. I wish all readers could spend even one day with me in our laboratory and production facility. The benefits from this experience would add knowledge of artists materials that might otherwise take years to attain. It is this that I am trying to impart through this forum.

[ChrisB]

Originally posted by Admin:
I wish all readers could spend even one day with me in our laboratory and production facility.

I'll be right over! Let me find my keys ... Ha!

Thank you is in order to you and all those here willing to lean and teach.

Chris

[J.A. Borgesse]

George,
I am one of those artists guilty of neglecting my knowlege of materials, confining myself to a minimum of paints and mediums, and it is as you say, an unfortunate state of affairs. It is like being a novelist without a dictionary and a thesaurus: One has much to say but no words with which to say it. The Old Masters had a profound knowlege of their materials and how to apply them, which is I believe part of the reason for their powerful command of the visual and concptual feats they achieved. Imagine the average contemporary artist taking on one of the great frescos or murals of the Rennaisance...need I say more? Knowlege of materials, in my opinion, can help expand one's aesthetic visions just as a command of language produces a William Shakespear. Consider his tremendous scope of self expression. There are many artists like me who in our later careers have mature visions from years of life experience and contemplation, but the technical know how of our student days. Like me, such artists require updating our knowlege and skills in order to advance our visions before age and health make this impossible. A forum devoted to materials and techniqes is therefore a blessing, especially to artists in my position---big visions, small technical knowlege. This forum has helped change that for me, and my new work is benefitting from it I'm thrilled to say.
Many of us wish we could spend time at your lab and production facility as you mentioned. Have you considered creating a DVD or some other media form that takes the viewer on a tour of Natural Pigments facility? If not a DVD, then a photo-tour that can be posted right on your NP website? That'll wake us up!
JAB
http://www.jaborgesse.com/

[George O'Hanlon]

I say it is an unfortunate state of affairs because of our system of education. I believe the best method of teaching the arts is to work as an apprentice for some years in a real viable workshop, and then one can strive out on his or her own. The method we use today, university and colleges, has only limited benefit and in the end leaves artists bereft of any real knowledge of materials and worse not having any experience to run their own art business.

We will be producing videos of various topics in the near future, but this requires some amount of resources, which I am at present limited.

[George O'Hanlon]

Originally posted by ChrisB:
Thank you is in order to you and all those here willing to lean and teach.

Whenever we do get visitors, they are most welcome to spend time with us and they usually are adorned with gifts. So, if you are ever in the area, please do not fail to visit us.

We recently had visitors from the National Gallery and Smithsonian (two research fellows), and we spent most of the day discussing materials. I can easily say I learned as much as they did!

[Paul Rhoads]

George, you wrote:

A comment was made in this forum to the effect that materials is a small part of making art.

The comment in question, I assume, was my own, and I am glad you are bringing it up.

…it is the unfortunate state of affairs today that most studio painters lack practical knowledge about materials and hence wrestle with this "insignificant" area for much of their careers.

I don't know where you get "insignificant", unless you are taking it out of context. I have always been highly concerned with materials. I began fooling around with making paints - gouache, oil and egg-tempera - when I was 15. Later I became absorbed in Maroger's book; I’ve read Ralph Mayer many times, and I continue to study the problem. I do not consider myself an "expert"; I am incapable of, and not particularly interested in, chemistry, though I am happy to benefit from those who are. I come to it from a practical angle, and with time have managed to understand certain things at the crucial point: where materials and artistic problems intersect.
Last time I looked I was the most frequent poster on this board, and you have even quoted me in your promotional material. So let's get this cleared up: I by no means think materials, or discussion about materials, is "insignificant"!

Because of widespread ignorance about materials, you believe that...

...materials take on an often exaggerated and important position in the discussion of artists.

I don't get this. Ignorance about materials is certainly widespread, but the intensity of discussion is certainly stimulated by interest in the subject, and there can be nothing wrong with that!

Or perhaps it is because materials is tangible and palpable and hence an easier to topic to discuss.

Well, yes; it is possible and useful for artists to compare notes, and many are certainly eager to have access to a true expert.

Whatever the case, this is the primary objective of this forum and it is encouraged here, because after all this is also an artists' materials company.

Of course. The problem is that it is sterile, not to say impossible, to talk about artist materials without talking about Art, and Art is the larger subject of which it's materials is a part. The problem of materials is subordinate to the problem of Art.

An obvious example: lead white. Chemical explanations about the nature of this pigment miss the heart of the matter. It is the experience of using it - in the context of the effort of a certain kind of artistic expression - which really tells. For this reason a discussion, among painters, about, say, lead white, must always tend to become a discussion about Art as well.

This does not mean that I and Natural Pigments are not interested in discussions about aesthetics...

Indeed, it is both a fact that you keep the forum open to wider discussion, and in my opinion wise of you to do so, because it would be a less attractive place if you didn’t - though I can't say it is attractive in the absolute, though that is not altogether your fault! The internet is a troubled place, and moderating a site is not simple.

...but from my experience with forums (discussions about aesthetics) often devolve into petty matches inflamed by personal egos.

Look George, "recent events", to say nothing of others, had nothing to do with a discussion about aesthetics, it was a discussion about linseed oil as a medium, of all things, and one which "remained on topic".

The problem is not discussing aesthetics, the problemis is discussing. Not discussion itself, but discussion in the context of our present cultural delema.

Let me restate my original point - to which you are reacting here - which expands the subject into the other issues you evoke. The majority of the painters who come to this forum are mostly younger people who have been swept up in the “academic revival” or “classical realist” movement, plus a few somewhat older people who, perhaps like myself, rejected the “contemporary style” prior to, and outside of, the rise of the “classical realists”, or defected to traditional painting from “contemporary art”. The “contemporary style” artists - perhaps with a few eccentric exceptions - are, for obvious reasons, not interested in traditional artists materials.
Now, many of these painters tend to confound painting with its material problem, just as they tend to reduce the art of painting to the art of imitation. These mix-ups are not unrelated, because the reduction of painting to imitation - the interest in “munsel” and the widespread recourse to copying photographs, are the most flagrant examples - is the reduction of Art to Technique, and materials are profoundly implicated in painting technique.
But painting technique is by no means limited to materials, and materials are by no means the most important aspect of painting technique! One need only think of drawing. The problem of drawing is not - as the titles of many drawing classes imply - the problem of drawing with ink or charcoal!

This subject is large. I can only mention one aspect of the limitation of view which tends to characterize painters today. Though these painters are interested in “traditional” painting, at the same times their minds are in the grip of cultural relativism - which is a social phenomenon much larger than Art. There are new examples of this problem almost every day here on your board! For it is almost impossible to discuss materials among painters in a meaningful way without discussing technique, and it is almost impossible to discuss technique without discussing Art. And it is impossible to discuss Art these days without running into the wall of cultural relativism.

Not every discussion of materials is doomed to wander off into abstract flights of aesthetic theory, but look at the discussions! Painters are motivated by personal aesthetic impulses and desire to emulate the old masters; these things bring them to materials, and it is back to these which they hope greater knowledge of materials will carry them, and this deeper dynamic is reflected in what goes on.

Which brings me to this:

I believe the best method of teaching the arts is to work as an apprentice for some years in a real viable workshop, and then one can strive out on his or her own. The method we use today, university and colleges, has only limited benefit and in the end leaves artists bereft of any real knowledge of materials and worse not having any experience to run their own art business.

What art students learn in universities, to paraphrase a friend of ours, is that:

If you can’t understand that different cultures create different tastes and represent beauty in a different ways, then you just can’t understand anything.

If this is true, however - and I have tried to explain this several times - there are several grave consequences:

a) The “contemporary art” style is as valid or “artistic” as any other, and in fact, because it represent the present, it supersedes all previous manners.
b) Interest in “traditional” painting is essential antiquarian.
b) Conversations between painters may be, at best and somehow, amusing or comforting, but can serve no meaningful or really useful end, because each artist encloses a complete and utterly personal world of meaning.
c) Information about materials is ultimately irrelevant.

Your idea of apprentices in workshops, and art as a business, is touching but unreal. And I mean no disrespect because, as a matter of fact, I gave a couple of years of my life to this very idea. I had three or four aspiring young artist under my wing, to whom I gave daily instruction in drawing painting and sculpture, with a view to their participating in large-scale art projects. We did accomplish some paying projects, though for various reasons the whole thing never got off the ground. The fundamental reason such an effort cannot work today - unless you count the factories of operators like Jeff Koons (and my own father - sometimes with help from his son - designs sculptures which are built in a shop by teams of workers) - is because, thanks to cultural relativism, and the lock on, or blockage of, the “cultural scene” this gives to the “contemporary art” style (which I would argue is a sort of anti-art) means that - except for some specialty cases, like frescos for new orthodox churches, or the little icon factories some monasteries have, and these must remain a very narrow market! - there is no longer the sort of market there used to be for portraits, public decorations and the other things which kept painters in business, and in need of help, as was the case in previous centuries. (…woosh! Sorry for that last sentence!!) The progressive collapse of the market made Art into a mostly individual affair in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the rise of “contemporary art” has dispersed, as if by explosion, what remained.

I am extremely familiar with this situation, which works like this. Cultural relativism - though it has some grains of truth - is nonsense. Therefore the fact is that people who subcribe to this doctrine (which is almost everybody) are constantly expressing opinions which imply hierarchies - and thus contradicting themselves. If one of these people were brave enough to defend his position honestly, he could be made to admit that, if he is right, all discussion is meaningless. But this never happens. Instead, as soon as anyone (usually me) frankly expresses a hierarchical opinion, or points to the hierarchies implied in the statements of his interlocutors, the words “hitler”, “jihad” “intolerance” and so on, explode on all sides like the fourth of July.

Saying that the resulting exchanges are “petty matches inflamed by personal egos”, misses the point on two counts.

First, they are not “matches”, but attacks which sometimes call for a defense. You may note that to most of the insults, and usually the worst - like “Saturn’s” recent attack on my painting - I don’t bother to respond because I’m not interested. What does interest me is the possibility of discussion, so I respond to those things which destroy discussion. Attacking my painting does not destroy discussion, it is even, in a round-about sort of way, an invitation to discussion, because it implies a hierarchy. I try to show such people that I can't be pushed around that way - because it is no favor to them to be allowed to think they can - but I also try to knock some sense into them, which is pretty nice of me I think, or lucky for them.

Second, while other people’s opinions are not a problem for people like me, other people’s opinions are a serious problem for many people. Examples lie all over this board - just glance at the flamed-out areas! But this is not about “inflamed personal egos”! Certain people may occasionally behave like little creeps, and their egos - for all I know - may be inflamed, but their indignation is not personal; it is ideological. This is very clear! One need merely read what they write. They are true believers in the cultural relativist doctrine, and it’s enemies inspire them to righteous anger, and that anger, naturally, almost always carries them into petty personal attacks - not because it is righteous, but because it has no other issue. They can't argue normally because their doctrine forbids it. Were they to say: "you are wrong because of X and Y", they undercut their basic argument which is that "you are wrong because you do not understand that you are denying the relevance of a whole culture, and you are therefore a monster!"

You could be of great help. You could, rather than damming all houses, gently interdict insult in detail. You could also calmly insist that relativistic hypocrisy would not be tolerated; i.e. that expressing opinions - for example that the Russian school is weak and inferior - is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, and that proper responses to such opinion would include statements of agreement, statements of disagreement, arguments for or against the proposition, but not smothering statements of cultural relativism, such as that quoted above, the whole purpose of which is the disqualify the interlocutor, and thus to avoid addressing the question - which they are also free to ignore!

You will please note that Kenneth tried to disqualify me in exactly this way because I dared to opine that, among the multifarious possible oil techniques, there is one which is best. I may be wrong about this, but does thinking it make me a sub-human monster at whom it is ok to toss insults? This is terrible!

I am sorry for the length of this post, but I hope I have made clear the profound nature of the relation between discussing materials and the flame wars which sometimes occur on your board.

[Steve Ladd]

Whew! That's quite a post Paul. I appreciate and respect your seriousness about painting, and your abhorrence of "cultural relativism". I would also like to support George's idea about doing apprentice work in an old-style workshop. I don't romanticize the rigid guild system of hundreds of years ago, but do wish there had been something akin to that when I was an art student in the 60's. I had fun and my college instructors were open-minded and exciting artists. But there was no real ground-work in materials and technques. I've had to do all the vital research and experimenting on my own throughout the ensuing years. That's okay, one learns best from hands-on failure & success. But it has caused me to go backward in time to pick up what I missed, instead of learning it at the beginning and going forward.
George-your lab sounds pretty exciting to me, as exciting as a painting studio. I liked your warehouse of products when I visited you, but would love to see the mad scientist at work in a real lab.

[ChrisB]

Originally posted by Steve Ladd:
I had fun and my college instructors were open-minded and exciting artists. But there was no real ground-work in materials and technques. I've had to do all the vital research and experimenting on my own throughout the ensuing years. That's okay, one learns best from hands-on failure & success. But it has caused me to go backward in time to pick up what I missed, instead of learning it at the beginning and going forward.

Same here - you took the words right out of my mouth. Its like a stool that is missing or has a weak leg.

A sound materials foundation + creativity + motivation = a good stool to sit on.

[Paul Rhoads]

Yeah, technique, and materials, but to what end?

[George O'Hanlon]

Paul, You misunderstood portions of my post and because you wrote a tome in response, I do not have the time to respond to it in like manner.

The use of the term "insignificant" was not a reference to any of your comments. I believe the discussion of technique and materials is important, but in relation to other topics about art, it is secondary, which I think you agree.

I was not suggesting a return to workshops as it was in former centuries, because the art market is completely different today. However, art students must be taught more about technical and business issues in order to cope with the art market and not depend on public grants as their sole support. I think, and this is my humble opinion, that a new market for art should be developed, one that does not rely on public money. What that market may consist I do not know or venture a guess.