11 June, 2008

Atelier Update


Virgin and Child with the Infant John the Baptist and Saint Anne
1499-1500
Dry Media on Paper
Leonardo da Vinci


Artistic growth is a lifetime process. I recently reviewed Classic Drawing Atelier, A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice,
2006, by Juliette Aristides of Seattle. Jen Graves, also in Seattle, has written a savvy article about the atelier, it's larger Academy of Realist Art context and the place of classicism in our contemporary art environment.

4 comments:

Adam Cope said...

so what's a colorist like you doing in place like this??

the article says no colour before a year of drawing & tone...

thou shalt raw umber thy underdrawing shalt be all of the law....????

no seriously, modernism vs. academism asides,the freeing up of colour in the nineteenth century was the first wave of modernist art ...old maps indeed, & now, a hunred years later on, us colourist fauves have our own tradition.

Casey Klahn said...

Yes, I am a walking contradiction, myself. I can't help that I learned to draw at a young age.

But, you know, that education led me to assess the value of Modernism and whatever has come after it, and I saw that it was good (to take a phrase from Moses).

The ARC seems to have a burr in their drawers over the so-called demise of classic art. Aristides is more moderate in her book, as the article says.

I don't take the Hegelian approach to art history. One movement does not eradicate the prior one, in my way of seeing. I love abstract-heavy art, and I love drawing. The figure is one ultimate expression of aesthetics, and art.

Adam Cope said...

funny you should mention Moses....who started out with drawing (the engraved tablets) & ended up with colour (the prismatic arc of the covenant)....

our contradictations make us what we are, & frequently, what are perceived polar opposites are unreal.

hegelain dialectics also say that a synthesis happens between thesis & antithesis.

in my b.a. hons four year art school training, it was two days a week life drawing, alongside the marble casts... but the foundation course was a classic bauhaus course.

Casey Klahn said...

Your training doesn't sound like the "no drawing" meme that is described of contemporary art schools. Well rounded (as is your liberal arts, it seems like).

Maybe I mean more the "applied" part of Hegel, like Rausch. erasing de Kooning.

Abstract Expressionism, Art Criticism, Artists, Colorist Art, Drawing, History, Impressionism, Modern Art, Painting, Pastel, Post Impressionism