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Art School Eleven
Logical Expression of the Motif
It's as Cézanne said, "See in nature the cylinder, the sphere, the cone -- putting everything in the proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards one point.
The work which goes to bring progress in one's own subject is sufficient compensation for the incomprehension of
imbeciles. Get to the heart of what is before you and express yourself as logically as possible."
To which I might add, not forgetting the relativity of even motivations and urges, I find the hunch that -- in accordance with what my first art teacher, Richard Gubernic, once told me that "The world wants another artist like it wants a hole in the head" -- in this crowded pack-jammed suburbanized urbane
existence, that an honest artist is one if it's most crucial entities and it is not art or a
pursuit of loveliness or simple whateveritis beauty which are immoral but the standards of arbitrary economics universally rampant in "civilization" which are
immoral.
So it is in the forthright expression of the composition of the sincere art of the one who chooses to observe not what man has made but beyond what man has made that is the gateway to true human fruitfulness in creativeness and must be in many crowded slums of the
squalor of mankind, no matter how poor or opulent, pointed out and directed to by the signposts or billboards, in a manner of
speaking, of art itself.
Get rather large geometric figures ideally made out of wood approximately ten inches to a foot in
overall size. Paint them with a straight matt white. You know what "matt" means here. It means not shiny but a dull finish or surface when the white paint dries. Get a place to work that is lit with natural sunlight and put them on a large white
cylinder a couple of feet in diameter and about three feet high and paint it
with the same matt white. Set the large cylinder
on end and place the three objects on top in a nice sort of grouping or arrangement. Put nothing else there.
Get your oil paints and paint on paper so you can keep doing lots of them, each
time changing how the objects are aranged. Keep that up for about six weeks, about four hours a day, five days a week if you want some free time. Hey, what do you want, kid? It's art school. So get to work.
Now in our part of the universe, we have a yellow sun shining in what sometimes may be a blue
sky. Sometimes, wherever you are, it maybe an
inclement sky. Some of you may be able to put some corrugated clear plastic panels
in a corrugated tin roof and be stuck in the middle of a half-year monsoon season. Oh well. You know what they say, "The monsoon the merrier." Or something to that effect. If that's the case, though, don't spend the whole of your time working on the geometric forms in rainy season, split it up so that you also do half of the exercise
during dry season as well. And don't go wading through monsoon floods in bare legs unless you can wash at least twice a day. No telling where that water's been. I still have
itchy legs from when I used to do that in Bandung. Better legs than never I suppose.
Now you'll notice with that yellow sun the shadows become purple. The blue sky will also reflect on your white objects even though they have a mat finish, just like papa Pissaro told us. So you'll find yourself diving into that color box after all. Just
remember to bring along lots of white. And if you're wearing a sarong like the lava-lavas we use to wear in Samoa, don't forget that old saying, "Two sarongs do not make a white." Don't go using your clothes for paint rags, a lot of the pretty colors are a bit toxic you know.
Don't allow yourself to get bored with the work. Remember the minimalists. They saw a lot of beauty in the
oversimplified form. You will too, even if you're only going to be at it for six weeks or so. Then you can graduate to
crockery such as pitchers and cups and so on for another six weeks. Two
weeks his own, eh? Put the alarm clock in the marsh and you'll see that
time marshes on.
--Fine art,
digital art, music,
several voice
introductions by me about my work, articles about my artwork
and other topics such as sociology,
the cosmos, economics,
education, medicine,
poetry, humor,
something I call premonitions,
and a series about covered bridges,
all by
yours truly, the webmaster, Paul A.L. Hall. There are feedback and exhaustive contents pages. Plus
my weblogs are
on site, an art
school and classes.
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