Sub Title

(That is a picture of me when I was a little less of a fat ass)

I have decided on a sub-title for the book about pictures: Picture Systems. I do not know what the main title will be, but I think this book is going to take at least five and maybe ten years to write so I have a lot of time.

I went for a long walk today and I was wondering about how much it costs to get the rights to reproduce a famous painting from a museum. Because I think it might be helpful if the book could have some examples from history, and use them to explain the systems as well as contemporary art. I think if it had both old and new art then it would be more accessible to a wider audience, and I like a lot of old painting.

I was thinking about color, and how it is taught in colleges. Basically they follow the Joseph Albers method using paper painted a flat color with gouache to make collages that demonstrate different principles of color interaction. I think while this is interesting, and probably helpful, it is also limited in its scope of application, by which I mean that most students will not put the pure concepts into a useful taxonomy to be used when making pictures. It is too distant. I think color should also be taught in a way that makes students approach their paintings with an ability to think in color, and think in relative color more importantly. They need to have a painting class that thinks about color more than any other topic. It could be called: pragmatic color and your studio practice. That is just a working title... haha

If you can get color and space integrated into your thinking then I think you can become a really excellent image maker. I think it helps to have an idea about composition, but that it is not nearly as important as color and space.

I was also trying to break down the three categories I listed yesterday: Space, Color, and Composition. To try and find out where non-literal representation pictures belong, like contour line drawings where there is information being displayed that is not a reproduction but an invention... That is where it starts to get tricky, but I think contour lines can be placed firmly into the category of space because they depict an edge in space, and if you use cross contour lines then you are depicting form which is a sub-category of space.

I think I may also have a bonus kind of chapter, based around all the best and most simple tricks used in picture making. I can think of a couple right off, like the fractured space of a cubist painting, and the sunsets in American luminist landscape painting. They are both pretty easy to describe, because they are formulaic, and you can pete and repeat them.

I have a copy of the new McSweeneys here too, I have not read that much of it yet because I have been feeling under the weather. It is three books, two little pocket sized books of short stories and a hardcover book that goes over intelligence reports on countries that are a threat to the US (I did not see that one coming, I thought it was going to be satirical, but it is literal).

Space

Some painters get seduced by light, or images, or non-referential abstraction, but I think what most seduces me in a painting is space.

Space comes in so many varieties, and it is what makes a painting special for me. Because space is the magical thing that makes something which is completely flat look like a window into another place. The artist has control over the depth the space, the quickness that the eye moves through space, the overwhelming or surprising qualities of space.

I have been thinking about the ways to create pictorial space:

1. perspective
a. linear, renaissance technique of using converging lines
b. aerial, colors desaturate as they recede from your viewpoint
c. observed or intuitive, using the above techniques by letting them inform your recording of phenomena

2. overlapping forms, if something is in front of something it is in front of it

3. depth of field, hard and sharp edges, like hard focus and soft focus in a photograph

4. size comparisons, space can be suggested by the scale of different images in a painting

5. Space that does something unexpected, like a Tiebetan Mandala

6. Shallow space indicated only by a form and the space it takes up, or the shadow thrown by a form against a illusary wall.

What gets really exciting is when you can get two or more of these systems for creating space working in the same image, and maybe with the same marks, collage, or paint.

Can anyone think of any other systems used to create pictorial space?

Gerhard Richter was my introduction to depth of field painting when I was learning how to paint at the University of Massachusetts.

Josh Podoll uses space well.

I have always had a soft spot for the paintings of Gregory Gillespie. Space can be shallow too.

Tintoretto is a good old one for perspectival deep space, and enormous canvases too.

Giorgione makes very synthetic images, which feel like the space is act of creation. I have always liked the way he rendered form too.

Titian renders space in a way that makes it look like a backdrop.

Dan Attoe uses all kinds of space, hard to pin him down on one type of illusion.

I am looking for suggestions on how to broaden my understanding and come at this problem of pictorial space from as complete an understanding as I can. So, please, if you have any ideas, let me in on what you are thinking.

Images in post are from the Hubble telescope.