Interior with Portraits, by Thomas Le Clear, ca. 1865, oil, 25 7/8 x 40 1/2. Collection the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.A interesting exhibition just closed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and is moving to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (February 28-May 23, 2010). The show is called American Stories. Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915, and it includes major works by Winslow Homer, John Singleton Copley, George Caleb Bingham, William Merritt Chase, and dozens of other artists who commented on political, social, economic, and artistic issues in America during the time period.
One particularly amusing and relevant painting is a studio scene by Thomas Le Clear in which he expresses his opinions about the impact of the new technology of photography on fine art. At first glance it appears that the painting reveals two children posing for a portrait photograph in an artist's studio. The room is filled with sculptures, paintings, sketchbooks, an easel, and a mahl stick and yet a photographer is preparing to take a photograph with the subjects posed against an artificial backdrop. As art historian Margaret C. Conrads points out in the catalog for the exhibition, "at a time when photography was considered the more truthful medium and was a strong competitor of painting for portrait commissions, Le Clear unmasked the illusion, even deception, in the mechanics of both media, as well as the complicity of painters and photographers in their creation."
It turns out that neither of the two children posing for a photograph were alive at the time the painting was created (the young girl, Parnell Sidway, was 13 when she died in 1849; and her brother, James, was killed in a fire in 1865 when he was 25), and the setup in the studio is completely inaccurate. Le Clear seems to be saying that while photographer may be able to capture the truth of one moment in time, artists have the power to present a truth about life that transcends the limitations of time and random occurrences. This distinction would have been extremely important to artists in the 1860's when photographers were suggesting that their accounts of the Civil War were more significant that the drawings and paintings artists created on the battlefields. And when the market for painting collapsed during the recession that followed the war, artists like Le Clear felt that their very livelihood was at stake.
Questions about photography's impact on painting are still being raised today. There are those who feel artists must draw and paint from life in order to perfect their skills of perception, but there is a significantly greater number of painters who use photographs as supplementary resources or as primary references. The relevant issues are just as important today as they were for Thomas Le Clear in 1865.
photography is just another tool available to today's artists. Even more relevant for us is the advent of Photoshop and other computer generated graphic programs. I don't feel we need to fear any of these means to create art. Each tool used alone has severe limitations. A true artist is one who can incorporate all the tools, including real life experiences.
ReplyDeletewell said Diane. I totally agree with your statement, Good article.
ReplyDeleteA photograph - tool for the artist, is similar to what film and recording devices are to the actor and singer.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I am amazed at how we artists can forget that the tool is not nearly as important as what we do with it. As human beings, some of us are more comfortable with a sketch book and others are at home behind a camera. If a compelling piece of art comes from one or more tools, who is to say that the tools cheapen the result. And who is to say that "old fashioned" tools are out of date. If it works, it is good.
ReplyDeleteTo use the tool of photography well, nothing helps the artist more than the ability to draw what one sees. I teach Figure Drawing at MICA. My students do in-class work directly from the model and do work at home sometimes based entirely on photographs. The students who excel at working from photographs are the same ones that do the best work from the model.
ReplyDeleteIn particular, the sense of light is more convincing in the drawings done from direct observation. So often the expressive poetry of a painting comes to us through its qualities of light.
Interesting Philip. I definitely prefer drawing from life. Photography certainly comes in handy at times, but I find it to distort the figure too much, even when doing a portrait which focuses on the face. Perhaps I've never used the right type of camera or lens. I simply find too many discrepancies in the interpretation of the figure from the camera's eye. I use it though sparingly while taking these factors into account.
ReplyDeleteOf course, photography is better than drawing/painting at catching a single instant such as that of a bird flying. I certainly appreciate the photo.
My friend Alice Dalton Brown is a very good photo-sourced painter. She finds taking many many different exposures of the same source material very helpful. She once showed me the source photos for the porch oil she was working on. Seriously she had about a hundred of them, each with slightly different tones and colors in the shadows. It seemed to help her see the drama that often happens inside the shadow areas.
ReplyDeleteBottom line, we artists have to see more than other normal people, and then be more selective about which of the many things we've seen should be presented in the finished painting.
While in college in art and medical illustration I did alot of drawing of models etc but then once married and living in a forest, that ended...but to say because I no longer had models and could not draw them from real life makes me not an artist is an error. I found photos my saving grace! But with a lack of people around me I began to paint the flowers that I grew...again since I have winter 7 or months out of the year, my resource became my photos...still I am not less of an artist. So crazy to be putting others down and raising others up on pedestals...when we all are just striving to express ourselves the best we can with what we have. I do not have an "art league", society or club to even meet with...I do what I can with what I have. It is a struggle to continue sometimes because all I hear is that I am not a true artist then...because I use my photos. It is disheartening and such a terrible thing we do to one another. If we would stop judging and move on it would surely help. You might say there are the "have's and the have not" but I say there are "the have's and the have different." We should celebrate our differences instead of insulting one another without knowing the circumstances they work under.
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