Blue Nude

Biskra Blue Nude. 2015. Pastel, Charcoal & Graphite. 17" x 14.75." Casey Klahn.

Sketch, White Nude on Blue. 2015. Graphite & Pastel. @6." Casey Klahn.

Blue Nude. Digital Drawing. Large. Casey Klahn.

My inspiration for the blue nudes originates with the 1907 work of the same subject by Henri Matisse, shown below. A disrobed woman in Algeria was his model, and the painting reflects his search for new imagery in north Africa. 

Matisse, in Biskra, Algeria: "I went from one surprise to the next - without being able to tell if my amazement came from the vastness of the country, or the new types of human being I was seeing, or from purely pictorial emotions."

A conversation between Picasso and Walter Pach, while viewing Matisse's Blue Nude: "Does that interest you?" asked Picasso. "In a way, yes...it interests me like a blow between the eyes. I don't know what he is thinking." "Neither do I," said Picasso. "If he wants to make a woman, let him make a woman. If he wants to make a design, let him make a design. This is between the two."

Late in his life, in 1952, Matisse revisited the Blue Nude title with his series of famous cut-outs. 

Henri Matisse, 1907, Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), Nu bleu: Souvenir de Biskra, oil on canvas, 92.1 x 140.3 cm (36 1/4 x 55 1/4 in.), Cone collection, Baltimore Museum of Art.

Steal Like An Artist

The Back of a Figurine by Matisse. 2014. 

@10" x 8" 

Pastel & Charcoal

Casey Klahn

ART THEFT!

Photo by:

Olya Powzaniuk 

Let Me Explain

MATISSE & PICASSO: The Titans of the Twentieth Century

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Charlie Rose interviews the curators of the Matisse & Picasso exhibit that was up at the MoMA in 2003.  These videos were posted this year.


Kirk Varnedoe and John Elderfield are the curators.

Wine Steward Filches Famous Fine Art?

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Picasso Biography Videos

This series of biographical videos on Picasso is very informative.  For some reason my mind works better with the chronological revelation of what happened, versus the all-at-once story that you get when you read a one page bio.


Now, I am beginning to get a handle on what Picasso did.  The link to the first vid of nine is here.

Picasso Cache - Truth or Theft?

Poor Pierre Le Guennec. All he wants is the almost eighty million dollar windfall that ought to come with his recently revealed cache of artworks made by Pablo Picasso. Unfortunately, few believe his story that the master artist gifted him with an enormous treasure of drawings, paintings, collages and more. Generous the artist was, but $80 Million? That was some great electrician-client relationship that Guennec had with Picasso!

For my part, I want to believe the French working man. I even hope he gains profit from this somehow, but hopes don't make proof. I advise anyone giving their art as a gift may want to provide some documentation along with it. Who knows who will accuse the beneficiary of art-theft in generations to come?

Words on Drawing

Duc d'Orleans, 1894, Ingres.

"The drawing is three fourths and a half of what constitutes painting." Ingres

"Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt." Picasso

Mary Adam - Drawing Criteria

Mademoiselle Romaine LascauxPierre
Auguste Renoir

Mary Adam, of Trinidad & Tobago, blogs at Drawing, Etc. She has posted a concise and spot-on article about drawing basics that caught my attention. With her permission, I bring you Some Drawing Criteria:



Mary Adam:
I've always thought that Renoir was a brilliant draftsman and that everyone else would think so too. But it's by no means a universal view, and in the end it's a matter of taste and how different people define drawing. In fact there's no universally accepted definition of drawing, and it's futile to devote too much time to thinking about it.

However, it's important to me personally to have my own understanding of what drawing is, and especially what good drawing is, because otherwise how do I know what I'm striving for, and whether or not I've achieved it?

These are the criteria I use to judge drawings, my own and others:

Unity. Everything in nature has intrinsic unity. If the unity is disrupted or broken the object ceases to have life or to be itself, or the drawing is not convincing. Unity in a drawing is easiest to see in figure drawings, especially hands, and in animal drawings; but there's unity in everything, including landscapes and man-made objects. For an example of a lack of unity, imagine a drawing of a flower pot that looks as if it's made of plasticene.

Balance. I've blogged about balance in drawing before (A sense of balance). The kind of balance I mean relates to the law of gravity and it can be sensed or felt with one's own body rather than seen. A lack of balance in a drawn or painted figure or object is to me a fatal flaw, especially if it's my own drawing, unless there's a compelling reason for it to be like that.

Three dimensional form. A drawing that gives a solid illusion of three dimensions on a flat surface is a beautiful thing to see. Dark and light tones (or "shading") can help to achieve it, but there's more to it than that because a seemingly flat silhouette, or a simple contour, can give a convincing sense of three dimensional form with no shading at all. What it means is that drawing is a more complex and mysterious skill than at first it seems.

Life. Achieving a feeling of life is tied up with unity, balance and three dimensions. There's a magical quality about a sense of life in a drawing or painting, and if the work has life, then other shortcomings might be overlooked.

Renoir's painting of Mlle. Lacaux has all these qualities -- unity, balance, three dimensions and life, satisfying all my criteria. I wish I could draw like that.

Oddly enough, Picasso's sketchbook drawings of invented "creatures" (links below) satisfy all my criteria too. The fact that they have 'life" is especially remarkable because these particular drawings are of invented inanimate clunky objects which could be carved from wood or plaster.

Some of Picasso's invented forms from 1927:
(first link, bottom of page; second link, top of page)

http://picasso.csdl.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksIndex?Year=1927&ViewStyle=gallery&CurrentItem=31

http://picasso.csdl.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksIndex?Year=1927&ViewStyle=gallery&CurrentItem=61

Some of Picasso's invented forms from 1933 (titled "An Anatomy")
(first link, bottom of page; second link, top of page)

http://picasso.csdl.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksIndex?Year=1933&ViewStyle=gallery&CurrentItem=31

http://picasso.csdl.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksIndex?Year=1933&ViewStyle=gallery&CurrentItem=61

The King of the Fauves - Henri Matisse

The Goldfish, 1912

o/c, 146x97 cm
Matisse

Since the proto-colorists were called "Fauvists," it has been my long time goal to study that most-noted Fauve, Henri Matisse (1800-1950). Matisse persisted in his ultra colorful style even after the era of the short-lived Fauvist movement (1905-7), which featured stylized realism and assigned non-local color to objects.

The giant Pablo Picasso overshadowed Matisse as they both worked simultaneously to create Modern Art in the early part of the Twentieth Century. Picasso, the great Cubist, and Matisse, the father of Fauvism, were friendly rivals. The one brought us the line, the other brought us color in the Modern Art sense.

As I bring this study along, I will be writing reviews of the books and articles that I am reading, and I will generate a link list and a "Quick Key" button for this blog page that will lead you to the best Matisse info on the web.



Bibliography:

Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: the Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954

By Hilary Spurling

The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse: the Early Years, 1869-1908

By Hilary Spurling

Matisse,
By Volkmar Essers



Matisse Factoids:

Rude patrons at a salon displaying Matisse paintings would openly revile his work, and to amuse themselves would smear the still-wet paint with their fingers.

The Red Studio was voted the number 5 most influential Modern Artwork of all time by a panel of 500 art experts.

Like our hero, Mark Rothko, Matisse has a chapel. Don't you? Maybe I'll have to start a post about great artists and their chapels.

Part of Matisse's legacy has been his active progeny. One of his sons, Pierre Matisse, and his daughter, Marguerite, were influential in interpreting their father's works and life. Also, Pierre ran The Pierre Matisse Gallery, in New York City, which gave first-time exposure to a lexicon of notable Twentieth Century artists. His grandson, Paul, and his great granddaughter Sophie are active artists working in the US today.

My Moleskine

Artist's Tape, Moleskine and Pencil

Sketch Box, Moleskine & Mouse

A Moleskine owned by

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Notebook No. 53, June-September 1912,
9 x 13.5 cm
kept in the Musée
National Picasso of Paris

The sketchbook of
Vincent van Gogh (1888–1890)
Kept in the Van Gogh
Museum of Amsterdam

Moleskine Sketch books are the grail of bibliophiles, such as myself. I will post the few sketches that I do, warts and all, as I create them.

"A Piece of Picasso"

Le rêve 1932
Pablo Picasso

It looks like David Pryce-Jones has weighed in on Pablo. I would say that he pulls no punches.

See:
Picasso.

I guess I was being a little too kind on the old boy.

Pick on Picasso Picture.

Guernica, Picasso

Picasso is probably the greatest (by reputation) artist of the twentieth century. His mural Guernica appeared at the Paris World's Fair in 1937. If it was a statement against war, it failed utterly in purpose.

I do, however, respect the formal artistic qualities of his art. He really did move the institution of art forward, as a founding Cubist, which is a direct influence on my own art. I especially like his drawings.

Pablo Picasso. (Spanish, 1881-1973). La belle qui passe. (1904). Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 15 3/4"
MoMa

Have a look at Picasso's exceedingly strange and eventful personal life, beliefs and politics. I rarely concern myself with these things, even letting my artist heroes "get away" with murder, because I want to focus on their art. But, if contemporary times are concerned with social aspects of art, I offer Pablo as the poster child of strange (may I say "goofy"? - he was very extreme) artist lifestyles.

In this vein, I wonder about his life and times. I see, in Wikipedia, that he was an "Anarcho-Communist". That finally makes sense to me of his remaining in Paris under the Nazis. A communist would've been at the throat of the Nazis, but his brand of anarchist was allergic to conflict. His Cubist buddy, Braque, considered him a coward. You be the judge.

I'm sorry to get into politics, which is outside of my art blog direction, but the social subjects of contemporary art criticism and art history are hand in glove with politics. I think Picasso's funny beliefs and behaviors are illustrative of why I avoid these things in my own art direction. The more "out-there" an artist's politics, the less I feel they offer the advancement of art. I call my position: "art as art". Of course, he was a great artist, so I guess someone could argue the other direction.

Picasso website.