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Creator of "Dinotopia"!
This daily weblog by James Gurney is for illustrators, comic artists, plein-air painters, sketchers, animators, art students, and writers.
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Last night we saw
Otello at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It was a thrilling production of Verdi's late masterwork based on the Shakespeare play.
The sets, designed by Michael Yeargan, evoked the grandeur of the Venetian republic in Cyprus, with soaring columns anchoring the structure for both indoor and outdoor scenes. Duane Schuler's lighting design evoked everything from stormy seas to victory bonfires to sunny courtyard gardens.
To create the sketch above, I drew the orchestra pit and the audience during intermission. I drew the staging from memory on the train ride home since there wasn't enough light to see my book during the show.
According to
reviewer Marion Rosenberg, this production by Elijah Moshinsky "draws on the rich but subdued palette of such Venetian masters as Titian and Gentile Bellini and sets the drama on Cyprus, where Verdi and Shakespeare envisioned it. A cult-site for the goddess Venus, evoked as the morning star in the opera’s love duet, the island is thus a bitingly ironic setting for a tale of shattered devotion."
During the show itself, I tried to capture some of the expressive poses of Thomas Hampson, who played the villain Iago. The role requires not only prodigious vocal skill, but also the ability to project the character's gravity and emotion through broad acting, and Hampson delivered brilliantly in all departments.
I recommend this opera to any artist who enjoys Golden Age illustration or academic painting, because it feels like a painting by Lawrence Alma Tadema or Jean-Leon Gérôme or Howard Pyle brought to life on stage. This is one of the Met's classic, traditional, and eye-popping productions, and of course it is Giuseppe Verdi at his very best.
There are still three performances of Otello remaining this season: Saturday, March 23, Wednesday, March 27, and Saturday, March 30.
Here's the Met websitein a Moleskine watercolor notebook
. Given the environment, I didn't use my watercolor set, but the pencils and brush pens are very discreet and work well in low light. Thank you, Paul
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By: James Gurney,
on 3/19/2013
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Where should we look for inspiration? Art or nature?
(Above left: by Giovanni Boldini, 1842–1931), above right: by Adolph Menzel, 1815-1905)
By “Nature,” of course, I don’t just mean the wild woods, but just the real world around us. It’s an age-old question, one that passes through my mind sometimes when I’m making a long pilgrimage to a museum to study paintings of a favorite artist. Such journeys take me past scenes of foggy streets or quiet streams that beckon me to paint them. Hurrying to enter the gallery, I ignore the inspiration of reality in favor of the product of another artist’s hand.
The appeal of Art is strong. Those who have gone before provide a stimulus, a high example. Facing nature can be bewildering. On its own, reality is overwhelming and infinite.
Seeing what others have painted provides a way through the maze of appearances. The example of great art provides new ways to interpret Nature. Nature has already been translated, made comprehensible, achievable. The greatest artists of the past have blazed trails into the wilderness that we can use as a guide for our own personal exploration, just as the mountain climber is lifted up by knowing which routes have been scaled before, by whom, and with what equipment.
What if we turn only to Art for inspiration? Those who base their work only on other Art find that their productions quickly becomes sterile, mannered and derivative. Even the most able artist risks falling back on safe habits, familiar methods, and trite motifs.
Sometimes while looking at a painting by an artist I admire, I can imagine his or her voice whispering to me: “Don’t bother looking at my paintings. Go outside, where I got my inspiration, and find your own art there!” Other times I find myself filling folders on my computer with more and more digital images, and I feel like the diner who keeps eating out of habit, savoring the taste less with each bite.
One might object that the two quantities are fundamentally dissimilar and can't be compared. Art is an artificial creation of the human mind, and Nature is unknowable except through human culture. In fact it can be argued that we can't really approach Nature as artists without the guidance of some template of previous tradition. So it's not really a question of Art or Nature, but cultivating the habit of alternating the appreciation of one with the other.
"Art and Nature" by Francisco de Medrano, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The study of Nature—informed by feeling, memory, and imagination—has been the stimulus for many great movements in art history. And it is the source of the art that I love most. In his poem "Art and Nature,"
Spanish poet Francisco de Medrano (1570-1607) expresses how art is like a cloistered garden compared to the limitless divine creation, a message that inspired me so much that I wrote it out with a dip pen above.
Here's a sketchbook study of the kitchen at my friend's farm, drawn in graphite pencil with gray wash. They told me over coffee that they're expecting their first lambs of the season in two weeks.
A couple of years ago I visited the
Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University as the guest of the illustration department. After giving a lecture, I did a portrait demo of painting professor Tom Barrett.
As you can see, there were at least three sources of light (two incandescent floods on stands and the window light, but the one next to the table predominated. The drawing is in water-soluble colored pencil and watercolor about 8 x 6 inches.
Once I had established the preliminary drawing, one of the earliest decisions was where to place the highlights, since I was using transparent watercolor only. So when I laid the first washes of skin tone across the face, I painted around the white spaces on the forehead, the tip and bridge of the nose, and the cheeks.
In watercolor, since highlights are the lightest values, they must be left as unpainted white paper. They can also be masked out from the start, or applied with gouache at the last. In oil paintings, highlights should generally be saved for the last.
There's a lot more on the subject of "highlights and specularity" in the six-page article that I wrote for the current issue of International Artist magazine, which should be on the newsstands now.
----
Flickr stream with more photos of my visit to AIBArt Institute of Boston at Lesley UniversityInternational Artist magazine, Issue 90This subject is also covered in my book
Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Amazon)
,
also available signed from my website store.
I painted this 8x10 oil in 1995 in the west of Ireland, and I send it to you with my warm wishes on this Saint Patrick's day.
If you'd like to hear some Irish music from the comfort of your own computer today, tune into the live-streaming music site
Concert Window.
Co-founder and Irish traditional accordion player Dan Gurney will be performing in Texas this afternoon with his good buddies Sean Earnest (guitar) and Joey Abarta (uilleann pipes).
The show starts at 4:00 Eastern U.S. time. They're touring in support of their new album "The Yanks."
Concert Window websiteHear a free track at the the Yanks Band website
Review of the new Yanks album on Irish Echo
(Video link) This seven minute video shows the process for sculpting a hand in water-based clay by Philippe Faraut.
The general thought process is very similar to painting in opaque oils. You first establish the big forms, then carve them down to smaller planes and finally blend and refine the surface and the small details.
The artist's website, with more info on his materials and tools
Mr. Faraut's books:
Mastering Portraiture- Advanced Analyses of the Face Sculpted in Clay
Portrait Sculpting: Anatomy and Expressions in Clay
Via Best of YouTubeMore on highlights and specularity tomorrow.
This photograph shows three spheres with varying surfaces. The one on the left is matte, the one in the middle is glossy, and the one on the right is highly reflective.
On the matte sphere there is no highlight. On the glossy sphere in the middle, the highlight is clearly apparent. The mirror-like sphere on the right also has a highlight, which is really a reflection of the light source. The light source is the sun shining through a window.
The right sphere also reflects the scene around the ball, including the white paper background and the dark room behind the camera. In the right ball, you can even see a reflection of the middle ball, with a highlight in the middle of that reflection.
That same pattern of reflections of the paper, room, and neighboring ball is subtly visible in the middle ball as well.
In the middle ball, there is a second, smaller highlight just to the right of the primary highlight. This secondary highlight is the sunlight is reflected
three times. The light bounces off the middle ball, bounces back off the right ball, and bounces
again off that little highlight on middle ball back to your eye.
So we've arrived at a definition: A highlight is a specular reflection (Latin "speculum"=mirror) of the light source on a shiny surface. The shinier and smoother the surface, the brighter and clearer the highlight.
These three diagrams show what's happening at the surface level. On the matte surface, light arrives from the top left and hits the rough surface. Some light gets absorbed and the rest scatters away in all directions. This is what happens when light hits a matte surface like a sand dune or a sweater.
The glossy surface of the middle ball bounces a a portion of the light at the same relative angle as the incoming light, but some of the light rays hit uneven spots and bounce in random directions. This is like bouncing a golf ball on a country road. It will probably bounce the way you want it to unless the golf ball hits a crack or a pebble.
The mirror-like surface is so smooth that all the light bounces off the surface predictably at the same relative angle, like bouncing a ball off a basketball court.
Since highlights belong to the world of specular reflection, they should be thought of as somewhat separate and distinct from the normal modeling factors (light, halftone, and shadow) of diffuse reflection. Artists in the world of 3D computer graphics can control the form-modeling and the specularity as separate components.
I wrote an article on this subject of "highlights and specularity" for the current issue of International Artist magazine, which should be on the newsstands now. This blog post is just a little piece of it.
The six-page article contains a lot more examples and explanation, and it incudes artwork that has never been reproduced in print before. I'll talk more on the blog about highlights in real-world examples tomorrow.
----
International Artist magazine, Issue 90This subject is also covered in my book
Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Amazon),
also available signed from my website store.
The first-ever comprehensive exhibition of the landscape paintings of Martin Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908) is currently on exhibition at the Meadows museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
The exhibit features 106 works of art, including paintings, drawings, and sketchbooks, with sparkling views of Paris, Venice, and Madrid. According to the
museum, "Rico championed the technique of painting en plein air, famously painting while stationed in gondolas throughout the Venetian canals."
(
Video link) The show is the fruit of a longstanding collaboration between the Meadows museum and the Prado in Madrid. It will continue through July 7.
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"Impressions of Europe: 19th-Century Vistas by Martín Rico"
By: James Gurney,
on 3/14/2013
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(
Video link) In his
Big Think lecture, "What is Art?" Bard College president Leon Botstein makes the assertion that art is a distinctly human activity, unique to our species. This is a rather antiquated notion, one that scientists began to disprove 50 years ago.
It turns out that several kinds of animals make art. And their art-making behavior fits the definitions of art that Mr. Botstein proposes. These species range from birds, elephants, cetaceans, and most particularly, gorillas and chimpanzees.
One of the pioneering scientists in this field is
Desmond Morris (born 1928), who wrote the 1963 book
"The Biology of Art: A Study of the Picture-Making Behavior of the Great Apes and its Relationship to Human Art."
Morris worked with a chimpanzee named Congo from the London Zoo. Congo picked up some art supplies and rapidly became obsessed with the experience, favoring it over even eating or sex.
Congo's artistic behavior appeared strangely human. Many of the design motifs he used were similar to those used by human artists. Morris said, "To put it simply, the position of one line influenced the position of the next line, and so on, until the drawing was considered (by the ape) to be finished."
Congo got angry when Morris tried to take away a painting before he was finished working on it. Morris says: “In tests with Congo it was repeatedly clear that he had a very distinct concept of when a drawing or painting was finished. On the rare occasions when attempts were made to encourage him to continue working on a picture that he considered ‘finished’, rather than on a new one, he lost his temper, whimpered, screamed, or, if actually persuaded to go on, proceeded to wreck the picture with meaningless or obliterative lines.”
When Congo was “paid” with a treat for doing a painting, he started to lose interest in the work. This paradoxical behavior mirrors what happens with human children and adults. Rewards and praise have been shown to have a chilling effect on creativity and output.
Morris summarized his observations into the six "biological principles of picture making."
1. The principle of Self-rewarding Activation The act of painting yields satisfaction apart from materialistic rewards.
2. The principle of Compositional Control When faced with a choice, chimps (and also capuchin monkeys and birds like jackdaws and crows) will select a more orderly arrangement of shapes. Given the tools to make marks, their pictures follow classic principles of balance and rhythmic repetition.
3. The principle of Calligraphic Differentiation Chimps develop increasingly complex and shapes and marks, developed over time.
4. The principle of Thematic Variation Visual themes such as fan patterns emerge and go through variations, later to be replaced by different themes.
5. The principle of Optimum Heterogeneity There seems to be a preferred optimum between maximum simplicity and maximum complexity (a mass of random, fussy detail)
6. The principle of Universal Imagery Drawings of chimps seem to resemble humanoid faces not unlike those made by human children. In children from around the world, there are universal features to their initial and most basic drawings of houses and figures.
Congo did over 400 paintings. His work was
noted by art critics such as Waldemar Januszczak. Picasso collected his work. One of Congo's paintings sold for US$25,000. Salvador Dali declared: ''The hand of the chimpanzee is quasihuman; the hand of Jackson Pollock is totally animal!"
Since Congo's heyday, other chimpanzees have taken an interest in artwork. One of them, named Cheeta, did a lot of paintings during his Palm Springs retirement from acting in the Tarzan movies. He took pride in his work, signing it with a fingerprint.
Further reading
Previously on GurneyJourney:
While we wait for the Catholic cardinals to make up their minds about the new Pope, let's enjoy some paintings by Jehan Georges Vibert (French, 1842-1902).
Vibert was known for his gently satirical portraits of ecclesiastical life. This one is called "The Preening Peacock." Vibert entered the
École des Beaux-Arts at age sixteen and then studied with the painter
François-Edouard Picot.
Here is "Cardinal by the Fire." In addition to being accomplished both in oil and watercolor, Vibert wrote a book about the science of painting, mostly about pigments and chemistry. He was also a dramatist, and wrote several plays.
And he loved to dress up. At one ball hosted by the dealer Goupil, "He dressed up as a very convincing Napoléon I with an entourage, including Detaille as the duc de Reichstadt. When Vibert came face to face with his 'descendant,' Napoléon III, in the person of the painter Jundt, they proceeded to decorate everyone in sight, including the waiters, before ending the evening with a remarkable quadrille."
"Emancipation."
There was an exhibition of his work twenty years ago called "Cavaliers and Cardinals: Nineteenth Century French Anecdotal Paintings," which featured Vibert, Bargue, Meissonier, and Detaille. You can still find used copies of
the exhibit catalog
, which is the best recent source for biographical information about Vibert.
"The Diet."
Vibert's paintings were very popular with American collectors such as John Jacob Astor and William Vanderbilt. According to
Wikipedia, "A large collection of works by Vibert was amassed by the heiress May Louise Maytag on behalf of then bishop of Miami Coleman Carroll, who greatly fancied them. This large cache was then donated to the Florida seminary St. John Vianney College in Miami. At this location the extremely impressive collection has had a somewhat checkered conservation history, as well as exhibition history due to the discomfiture of later bishops with the seeming anti-clericalism of the paintings."
---
Here's a pencil drawing of a man standing by
Joseph Christian Leyendecker (American, born in Germany, 1874–1951) 12 1/2 x 9 5/16 inches, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum.
The drawing is built from patches of tone made of parallel diagonal strokes. This way of drawing creates a relaxed, impressionistic effect. The white spaces between the strokes keep it open and airy.
Another master of this method is the Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860-1920), who made many portrait etchings in addition to his famous oil paintings. Instead of using lines to outline the form in the usual sense, he achieved a painterly treatment and a sense of atmosphere by organizing his parallel strokes in broad, sweeping movements.
Another example is American illustrator
Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944). This pen and drawing shows a voter's reaction to the news the morning after the election. The eyes, hands, and mouth are just suggested, leaving a lot to the viewer's imagination.
All of these artists probably took some inspiration from
banknote engraving and
wood engraving, both of which use sections of parallel lines to build up larger tones. When pen and ink drawings could be photomechanically reproduced, it brought about a flowering in the art of the pen.
This way of drawing might also be called called "painterly" or "impressionistic." This term fits not only because the patches of parallel strokes suggest big strokes of a bristle brush, but also because it exemplifies one of the fundamental doctrines of impressionist painting during this period, namely the preference of broad optical effects over a delineation of form and substance.
The goal of the artist was to concentrate on the representation of the appearance of an object. As Sir Edmund Gosse puts it, "The picture was to be a consistent vision, a reproduction of the area filled by the eye. Hence in a very curious way, the aspect of a substance became much more real to him than the subject itself."
------
Further exploration:Other artists to look at for painterly drawing:
Stanislaw Bohusz-Siestrzencewicz (Polish, 1869-1927)
(American)
and
Chinese / Russian academic drawingPreviously on GurneyJourney:
Line Direction,
Banknote engraving, and
Wood engraving
By: James Gurney,
on 3/11/2013
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Yesterday at the farm was the warmest day so far this year. The four draft horses were out in the barnyard soaking up the sun and munching their hay. Patches of snow still lingered in the shadows, but everywhere else the ground had thawed into mud and manure under their big hooves.
The horses looked up when they heard a commotion coming from the pond. They walked to the water's edge to see what was wrong.
Two Canada geese were loudly squawking and flapping from the middle of the water. The geese had landed in the center of the pond, not realizing it was still covered a thin layer of ice. They tried to walk on the surface of the ice, but it was rotten and they broke through. They couldn't swim out and they couldn't take off and fly either. So they fussed and flapped until they finally broke a passage through the ice and made it to the shore.
Turk the and the other horses quietly watched this drama unfold. Then he went back to digesting his hay and dozing in the sunshine.
By: James Gurney,
on 3/10/2013
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SIGN PAINTERS (OFFICIAL TRAILER) from samuel j macon on Vimeo.
(Direct link to video) Directors Faythe Levine and Sam Macon documented the stories of more than two dozen sign painters who still follow the traditional methods of lettering by hand. Here's the trailer for their documentary "Sign Painters," the first anecdotal history of the craft, featuring the stories of more than two dozen sign painters working throughout the United States.
"There was a time, as recently as the 1980s, when storefronts, murals, banners, barn signs, billboards, and even street signs were all hand-lettered with brush and paint. But, like many skilled trades, the sign industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled promise of quicker and cheaper. The resulting proliferation of computer-designed, die-cut vinyl lettering and inkjet printers has ushered a creeping sameness into our landscape. Fortunately, there is a growing trend to seek out traditional sign painters and a renaissance in the trade."
Book related to the project:
Sign Painters
by Faythe Levine
Documentary website:
signpaintermovie.comPreviously on GurneyJourney:
"Hand Painted Signs"There are several Flickr groups devoted to this subject:
“Hand-Painted Signs of the World.”“Folk Typography”“Signpaintr,” dedicated to the lost art of hand-lettering
“Hand-Painted Signs of Cambodia.”
There's an exhibition of the work of French fantasy artist Aleksi Briclot called "Genèse: des croquis à l’œuvre" ("Genesis: Sketches at Work,") at the
Maison d' Ailleurs, in Yverdon, Switzerland through August 25. The show focuses on the growth and development of Briclot's images through various techniques.
And opening today at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts is "
Istvan Banyai: Stranger in a Strange Land." Hungarian-born Banyai's illustrations have appeared in
The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, The New York Times, and many other publications. The
Banyai exhibition continues through May 5.
The print edition of
Glamour magazine in Germany regularly asks its editors where they have been getting inspiration lately. This time it was fashion designer
Kai Margrander's turn.
He mentioned the book
The Great Gatsby
, the
Café de Flore in Paris, his Morgan silk jacket....and Dinotopia. He says: "On a stroll through Tumblr, I discovered the whimsical fantasy paintings of the 54-year-old U.S. illustrator. One of his favorite subjects: dinosaurs."
Mr. Margrander's other favorite things include his garden in Lower Bavaria, the song "
Nagh el Borda" by Oum Kalthoum,
Star Wars, and the word "Absolutely!"
------
Thanks, Mr. Margrander!
Kai Margrander's blog: "The Talented Mr. M"Courtesy of the print edition of Glamour magazine, German edition, February 2013 issue.
The original painting of "Garden of Hope" is still on view through March 13 in New Hampshire.
I recently completed five new paintings for a book called Nuthin' But Mech 2, which will be published later this year. The book is a collaboration of about 25 concept artists who love to paint robots, spacecraft, walkers, and other kinds of mech designs.
Here's one of my pictures called "Intruder." It is set in Dinotopia's dramatic ancient period known as the "Age of Heroes." The image shows a crab-like vehicle known as a sprog patrolling the marketplace of Prosperine, just behind a
Triceratops.
The painting uses sepia watercolor and colored pencil to suggest the vérité look of an old photograph. This animated gif captures a few steps in the process. The first step shows a pencil drawing with a light wash over the surface. Then I painted sample area of the foreground and background to establish the range of values and the atmospheric perspective. Then it was a matter of carrying each area to finished effect with brush and colored pencil, fixing goofs where necessary with gouache.
For example, note the man facing us at extreme left. I sketched his head in too big at first, so I had to shrink his head a couple of times until he fit into the perspective. The warm color cast at the end is not a change in the painting but an adjustment in Photoshop.
Brain Children• The illustration board I used is a
Cottonwood Arts cold press watercolor booklet with 16 glue-bound heavyweight pages. It's a nice format for hand painted concept pieces or plein air studies. Cottonwood Arts is the brainchild of
John Park, one of the other contributors to NBM2.
• The blog that started it all:
Nuthin' but Mech, brainchild of
Lorin Wood, another contributer to the book and a senior conceptual designer for
Gearbox Software.
• The publisher is
Design Studio Press, brainchild of
Scott Robertson, yet another contributor to NBM2.
Here's an optical illusion GIF that I created to demonstrate color afterimages. Bring your face close, turn up your screen brightness, and stare at the center of the grid.
(
Direct link if the GIF doesn't work) Every three seconds it switches from bright colors to neutral gray. The afterimage effect tinges the gray squares with the complementary (or opposite) color. The effect doesn't last long because the stimulus is short and the color receptors don't have much time to get depleted.
(
Video link) The same principle applies to this video, where a color afterimage infuses a black and white photo with the appearance of natural color.
To get the best effect, watch the video at full screen size and stare for the duration of video at the dot in the center. When it switches over to the photo, keep looking at the center. Your retinas have been primed with a seemingly random (but really a complementary) color pattern for a longer period of time. The colors are more stable this time because the depletion is more dramatic.
By: James Gurney,
on 3/3/2013
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ROBOT ART
(
Direct link to video) In this 1959 video, Parisian inventor Jean Tinguely demonstrates his kinetic sculptures that he calls "Meta-Matics" or "happy" machines. Participants insert a five shilling token into the slot to activate the whirring kinetic sculptures. They then choose from an assortment of pens and markers to make randomized "do-it-yourself abstract art." Note the old fashioned
barrel-handled magic markers at 1:25.
The Making of John Mayer's 'Born & Raised' Artwork from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.
(Link to video on Vimeo)
David A. Smith is an artist from England renowned for his traditional hand-crafted signs, which are etched and gilded on the reverse side of glass.
David recently produced a cover for American singer/songwriter John Mayer's album "Born and Raised" by matching the style of turn-of-the-century trade cards and letterheads.
This behind-the-scenes video captures the many stages of the process. The video is by Danny Cooke, shot on a Canon 7D.
-----
Previously on GJ: The style of lettering known as engrossing.
Thanks, Dick Hill
The sketch is about 2x4 inches. This is a fun way to sketch for a moody, film noir look. The paper isn't really made for water media. It has a smooth surface that resists the water at first. The painting is mainly transparent black gouache applied with a half inch flat brush. I used white gouache at the end mainly for the light, the open book on the chair, and the coffee table in front.
----
Thanks, Paul Tobin and
WCW'ers
, for the sketchbook. I'm putting it to use!
By: James Gurney,
on 3/5/2013
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Thanks to Mark Frauenfelder for announcing the New Hampshire Dinotopia exhibition on the blog BoingBoing. Mark is one of my inspirations for blogging. He describes himself as a "wide spectrum enthusiast."
In addition to founding BoingBoing (one of the top 20 blogs), he is a prime mover of the Maker's movement—check out his book Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World
More about the exhibition in New Hampshire, which ends March 13.
By: James Gurney,
on 3/5/2013
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(Video link) In this archival video, Philip de László (Hungarian 1869-1937) paints a quick portrait of a model in oil. He establishes the shapes and refines the tones with the brush, comparing frequently to the model. The canvas is placed right alongside the model in the "sight-size" method, with the artist frequently backing up to check the likeness against the model.
In the voiceover, his son recalls how walking back and forth to the canvas wore out the floor and aggravated the varicose veins in the artist's legs. One of de László's portraits, "Vita Sackville-West, 1910" is currently being featured at the "
Edwardian Opulence" exhibition in New Haven, Connecticut.
The video was posted by
Darren Rousar, and there are many descriptions on the web of the
sight-size method.Note that "mannequin" is a term from the fashion industry for a live clothes model.
Previously on GJ is another archival video:
Philip de László Paints Venice
It is the fruit of over ten years of work for Angus Trumble, senior curator of painting and sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art and the team of art historians who have joined forces on the book and the museum show. The book itself is a massive production: 10 x 12 inches, 420 pages, and weighing six and a half pounds.
(Above:
The Two Crowns, 1900, by Frank Dicksee)
The period of the reign of King Edward VII lasted from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 until Edward's death in 1910. The exhibition follows an eclectic approach, examining not only paintings and photographs, but also costumes, jewelry, silver pieces, sculpture, furniture, and ephemera. Seen and studied together, these various treasures evoke the spirit of the times.
(Above:
"His Master's Voice," 1899, by Francis Barraud)
The introductory essays, written by eight different academic scholars, mostly from Yale, explore topics such as "The Glittering World: Spectacle, Luxury, and Desire in the Edwardian Age," and "'That's the Life for a Man Like Me,' Rural Life and Labor in Edwardian Art and Music."
(Above:
Sigurd, by Gilbert Bayes, 1910.)
The catalog describes 115 objects, divided into themes of Imperial Splendor; Grand Design; The Great World; Charles Conder; Men of Mark; Town; Country; History, Myth, Pageant; Problem Pictures; Landscape and Memory; and War, Sleep, and Death.
(Above:
The Kensington gardens are in London, where the King lives," 1906, by Arthur Rackham)
The text is authoritative and well researched, and what emerges from the book as a whole is a thoughtful view of Edwardian era from a variety of contemporary perspectives. The downside of the eclectic "visual culture" approach to curating is that the paintings and the artists inevitably receive less attention. The stories of the artists, their training, and their working methods, is scarcely addressed.
The artwork selected includes some of the greatest masterworks of the era, and it is well reproduced in color, but I only wish that it had been reproduced larger. Unfortunately most images are no larger than postcard size despite the generous dimensions of the book. If I had my way, every art book would start with the artwork as big as possible in the layouts, and then a relentless editor would trim the writing to be concise enough to fit in the remaining spaces.
(Columbus in the New World, 1906, by Edwin Austin Abbey)
In the painting above, Abbey portrays Columbus in armor plants his sword in the New World as he worships at an outdoor mass, with sails and flags and flamingos flying in the sky behind him.
Various authors in the book reflect on the Edwardian spirit of nostalgia for the life of previous centuries and the interest in mythology and adventure.
(Above:
Boer War, 1900, by Byam Shaw)
The painting shows the melancholy of a woman whose fiancée is away fighting in the South African conflict, while is the lavish adornment of nature surrounds her, unappreciated.
(Above:
The Temptation of Sir Percival, ca. 1894, by Arthur Hacker)
During the Edwardian era, England has been described as "a world asleep on a volcano," poised between a "lingering past and a portentous future." Electricity, telephones, phonographs, automobiles, airplanes, cinema, and color printing were arriving in rapid succession, effacing much of the traditional culture of the upper classes. By the First World War everything was to change forever.
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All the works shown in this post are in the exhibition, along with other paintings by Boldini, Brangwyn, Sargent, Poynter, Hacker, Solomon, Collier, Waterhouse and de Laszlo.
Book:
Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth CenturyExhibition at the Yale Center for British Art , New Haven, Connecticut, through June 2
(Direct link to video) CBS News reports that George Lucas will turn his attention next to opening a museum in San Francisco to share his large collection of golden age illustration, comic art, and movie development artwork.
More at Firewire blog
Thanks, Jodie!
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I was there last night as well!
I particularly enjoyed the two dynamic set changes, and was amused when the audience had a very audible response to the reveal of the courtyard (immediately following intermission).
I concur that Iago was spectacular. I was looking forward to the solo "Credo in un Dio Crudel" and was not disappointed.
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Alex Rex made a post on "Muddy Colours" regarding a tour he took through the studios of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Towards the end of the picture set is an image of something which he couldn't quite identify, and he asked/wondered out loud "Does Gurney read this blog?"
Perhaps you'd care to take a look and see if you can enlighten us? :)
http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2013/03/bonus-post.html
(Edited to correct typos)
James, have you ever ventured into Production/Set design? If you haven't I think you'd LOVE it! I am SO jealous....NY has James Turrell's exhibit this year AND my favorite LD is doing Magic Flute at the Met later this year! I do miss the experimentation, discussion and overall sense of collaboration and fulfillment of work in the theatre. Also, Rob Wilson is one of my FAVOURITE LDs/Set Designer/Directors of ALL!!! Have you read Max Keller's "Light Fantastic?" Amazing amazing amazing (for one birthday a few years ago, I got a signed copy of his book..I was floating all day long!) To be able to interpret and create new concepts from music and pages of a script in a way that feels so tangible is awe inspiring!
Hello James! Sounds like an amazing production... I had the pleasure to see this play produced in the cloister ruins of Roma on Gotland. It was probably in the other direction from your experience - quite minimalist in many ways, but with a real flavour of its own. They did some unexpected things - Desdemona took a bath onstage in act IV!
Some pictures still extant here: http://romateatern.se/arets-forestallning/
I'd love to see it as opera...
And yes, a good Iago is joy to watch, isn't it? :D
James, you are a true rennaisance man! I have to admit that opera is an art form that I haven't been able to appreciate in the way that I think I could (not to be confused with "should"). I have a feeling that the best in-road into opera would be to see a live production, to be fully immersed in the aural AND visual experience. You've inspired me to try to do so.