Sunday 6 March 2011
Course work: Work on Project Three, Painting a Plant, continues.
Reading and theoretical studies:
Albert Kostenevitch The Nabis
Parkstone Press International, New York, 2009
Pp. 174-195
(This book has a great deal to recommend it. It deals not only with Bonnard and Vuillard, but with the less-well-known Valloton, Roussel, and Denis. Illustrations are generous in number, all are in color, most are full-page, and many are less-familiar works from Russian museums and private collections. Negatives would include a somewhat choppy and disorganized text, far too many illustrations remote from their discussions, and far too many works described in some detail but not illustrated (30% in the Bonnard section, for example). With these caveats, I would still recommend this book to the student interested in the Nabis: just looking though the large illustrations provides pleasure enough to justify the book’s quite reasonable price in the on-line used-book stores. The diversity of painting styles demonstrated leads one to wonder if the Nabis would be better considered as a group of friends rather than a coherent art movement, although an interest in color effects and influence by Japanese woodcuts is expressed in the works of each to a greater or lesser extent.)
Sketchbook work: The thought came to me when I was half-awake that it would be interesting to see how many ways I could find to arrange three circles, leading to this sketchbook page. One inversion crept in by error, but I think that the rest are all different. I followed this with a study after Matisse’s The Green Blouse, using markers to emulate the dark outlines and fairly flat colors (the Japanese influence). There are some drawing errors, and my colors are not true, as my marker collection is extremely limited, but I gained some insight into the distortion of perspective, the flat picture plane, and the symbolic and frequently unidentifiable decorative shapes that Matisse so frequently employed. The distorted facial features almost seem to presage Picasso. Overall, this was a useful exercise.
Weekly reflections on learning experience: Three days with the house filled with workmen and with no heat or water severely affected my efforts this week (and will probably do so next week as well). I was able to spend some of the lost time considering what further I needed to do to the Project Three painting, and beginning to think a bit about Assignment Three, and this proved to be a worthwhile activity.
Time today: 2 hours 6 minutes
