Friday, May 20, 2011
Sadie Valeri
talks about the concept I've talked about, the difference between drawing brain and talking brain. John Ruskin called it "training the naive eye".
I love Sadie Valeri's still lifes with glasses and bottles and silver things wrapped in wax paper. They're classical realism without being melodramatic or too photograph-ey. She has a few videos of the process which are fascinating, but really needs to post up more. She has a blog too.
If you are in Rome, you can study this method of drawing here. Atelier Canova is named after the great Antonio Canova, the last of the great neo-classical Italian marble sculptors. The studio where we work is the same room he did his drawings in.
There are classical realist ateliers all over now, though the school nearly died out when the Asteroid hit the art world in the 1950s. Look for them here.
Learning to draw according to these ancient principles is something I think should become a standard part of the curriculum...when we've restored Western Civilisation and All Good Things.
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If you got the time, you might want to view a series of lectures given by artist David Clayton at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary.
http://www.romeofthewest.com/2010/12/audio-recordings-of-kenrick-glennons.html
According the Clayton, all of the revived academies ultimately derive from one elderly American who happened to survive the Asteroid. Imagine the odds against that!
He doesn't like things too photograph-ey, and I tend to agree with him. Photographic Modernism - which likes everything sharp and in focus - isn't good for portraiture or even landscapes.
Yes, his name was Richard Lack. He died just a couple of years ago. It's all on the ARC website.
This talk should be shown to people in RE classes. And in offices. And and and. The point about not jumping from "here is what I need to change" to "I'm a bad person" - whether in one's own observation, or in what people say. A similar point came up in discussion during the lecture series I was at this week - that your average Western person, when the word "bad" comes up, assumes there is blame attached to it. And that where there is blame, there is a Bad Person. If you say someone did something wrong, you are saying he's a Bad Person.
I think this is why I like this drawing thing so much. It's about The Real. Only The Real counts.
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