I feel, for me, that painting the human figure from life is the best way I can express myself. Is it better than working from a photograph, I will let others judge.

The direct experience in painting from life is almost inexpressable. You are not painting an interpretation of a thin sheet of paper or a digital image but from an interaction with a real live human being. It is difficult, expensive and frustrating. The reward is something that may be light years beyond the original concept, something that takes flight in our imagination that is not shackeled so often to re-imaging the photographic source.

It is a difficult thing to do, it requires many years of dedicated training and work to be able to paint or draw the human figure with any degree of ability. Our culture does not allow this today but celebrates the shortcuts and calls it 'personal expression', no matter what kind of garbage or personal neuroses is displayed upon the canvas. We have lost the quest for exquisiteness in our work.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Marcel Duchamp- a legend in his own mind or why I think he is pompous and overrated.

It is his work that has died- this is his own art obituary. He was one of the first artists to pull the wool over the collective public's eyes and the stupid public went along with it because they were too cowardly to do otherwise. Why does a painting to be shocking, outrageous or surprising to be good? He limits the definition of art to suit his own argument and his own work. Why have we ever listened to this charlatan, this art goon?


Marcel Duchamp once said that "after 40 or 50 years a picture dies, because its freshness disappears. Sculpture also dies. . . . I think a picture dies after a few years like the man who painted it. Afterwards it’s called the history of art." The painting and sculpture that seemed so outrageous -- surprising, even shocking -- at the beginning of the 20th century was almost a century old by its end, and had long since become part of art history.

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