chelydra

Q: That yin-yang circle did not appear to fit this challenge in the tiny version in your message, but when I look at it big, and see the way things are floating in, and interacting in, (very well-defined) space, it seems just fine for our purposes.

Here's a further suggestion for everyone: THINK ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING RELATES TO EVERYTHING ELSE IN YOUR PICTURES. Forms, colors, spaces, and the borders of your canvas — all are dynamic, all part of a whole, all actively interacting.

five

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103403

chelydra

Hooray! If it ain't the life of the party herself! Incidentally that thing I was trying to explain about resolving the contradiction between the space WITHIN the canvas and the space OF the canvas will make a lot more sense if you visit five's gallery. She does it. Most of us (me included) don't do it at all, or even think about doing it.

five

The black lines do at least a few things, which also can be done by hard edges or sharp value or color shifts. First, they emphasize the verticals and horizontals and sometimes diagonal (often, the diagonals are left for the brain to fill in) of the "cube" -- and for the more organically inclined, the arcs of "cylinders"/"spheres" though those are just special cases (imagine those forms inside a cube). Second, if they completely surround a color(s) making a complete "2D" shape -- square, circle...., they emphasize the orientation of the contained color(s) to the picture plane; such 2D forms perfectly aligned with the picture plane can be viewed as picture planes within picture planes, and depending on their relation to one another, recede or protrude from one another within the picture space. Third, at some point, a thick "line" becomes a plane itself (in the extreme, think Motherwell).

By the way, I think Matisse perfectly assimilated and then transcended Cubism. There's currently a show of his work from this time period at the Art Institute in Chicago. It's great.

chelydra

And when you're visiting five's gallery, be sure to open up "After Morandi" and check out five's manifesto in the messages. If you I'm going overboard in my theorizing about space and stuff, wait'll you see hers! I'm still trying to figure it out. Reminds me of how I felt when I spent two years getting through just the preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit. But I did get through it, and I swear I'll make sense of five one day too, however long it takes.

chelydra

(While I was writing that, five was posting the message above it. See what I mean? I love having someone here who can theorize circles around me!)

five

Nonsense -- your explanation of cubism is one of the clearest I've seen. As an aside, Braque never gets enough credit .

five

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103416

chelydra

First a quick note to Q: About that "highly deconstructivist AND playful" portrait you posted in message #18... Okay, now your problem is do some things that are MORE "highly deconstructivist AND playful" than that! Your problem is not to fit the round peg of your natural style into the square hole of Mild Cubism. Your problem is to follow your natural inclinations further than you ever have before. Qslivian Mild Cubism will be turn out to be a very round hole, rounder than any you've ever imagined!

And to five: Around the twelfth time I re-read your "black lines" message just now, it finally dawned on me why I keep tuning out instead of comprehending these notes you write. It's because I flunked perspective two years in a row in art school. We had a dry, grim, chunky teacher from Germany, a young lady with an old man's personality. Whenever I see a reference to "the picture plane" — and you use a lot of 'em — it takes me back to her basement classroom (it felt like a basement anyway) and I feel like I can't breathe, like I need to run outdoors for some fresh air. Now that I see what my hang-up was about, I expect I might go back to "After Morandi" and breeze through your ideas without a problem.

An aside, to anyone who's interested in such things: I did eventually figure out perspective in my own way, when I realized the vanishing point is actually located in the viewer's own eyeball; it's created, and placed in its location, by the point of view. (And everything in between POV and the alleged VP recedes within the Inverse Square Law, just like light and gravity.) But my personal theory of perspective (which I later found in an obscure little book too, so it's not just mine) has no use for picture planes. I hate the idea of seeing the world through a rectangular plane of glass, being on the outside looking in. I wonder if it's a coincidence that Europe (and its progeny America, apartheid S Africa etc) did so much damage to the world (itself included) after deciding that this is how the world should be regarded, as a foreign territory separated from the Individual, from the I, and from the eye, by an impenetrable plane of thick strong glass. (Of course the Crusades were pretty ugly and they came earlier, and Genghiz Khan had a different worldview, and I'm not sure the Japanese were seeing in "scientific" perspective when they embarked on their nasty conquests, so this falls into the category of My Crackpot Theories. But I still like to think it's true.)

Back to five: the web site I recommended visiting, back around message #5 or #6, features a very fine mini-gallery of Matisses that supports your assertion. He understood everything. You're also right that Braque never gets enough credit (except from my brother-in-law, who raves about him endlessly — he's the same with Robert Browning, the poet). I confess I'm somewhat prejudiced against Matisse and Braque (and Browning too). I get off on the wild machismo of Picasso and the brutal grandeur of Beckmann, Van Gogh's ecstasies and Munch's morbid sensuality. Calm, contained, civilized art doesn't quite do it for me. However, this is mostly a hold-over from my impatient, sensation-seeking adolescence, and I've been slowly outgrowing this bad attitude over the past 45 years, so in another 45 years or so I'll probably love them all equally.

five

"when I realized the vanishing point is actually located in the viewer's own eyeball; it's created, and placed in its location, by the point of view. (And everything in between POV and the alleged VP recedes within the Inverse Square Law, just like light and gravity)" ...

And what I say is complicated??? I've heard this before, or something like it, I think, but ack, you've injected math.

Forget "perspective". Seriously. I NEVER liked linear perspective (boring and I thought distorting), or the idea of the picture plane (put up with my words just a little more) being a "window" to the world or vanishing points or any of that, which is why I love cubism (or my breakdown of it anyhow). More real. I have a background in materials engineering, so cubic and other structures are very appealing.

I much preferred tinkering with orthogonal projection or reverse perspective. I prefer to put myself and the viewer inside the picture if I can manage it, with theoretical vanishing points behind, in front of, to the sides of, inside of, etc, me/the viewer and me/the viewer roaming around. Kidding. Sort of. I don't use horizon lines or vanishing points very much, or think in those terms.

In my mind I am always translating from 3D to 2D (or 2D to 3D) -- so I use those 2D words like picture plane to describe it -- but when I project myself into the picture space I am not thinking oh, "picture plane". Its always about being in space, whether the space is the real 3D world or the constructed 3D space inside the 2D picture.

Hopefully, that was not too much gobbledigook to slog through.

five

Oh, I like Picasso, but I have more of a kinship with Matisse, as I am not a technical virtuoso. I have to work at, just like Matisse did.

five

Just barely...

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=103420

five

To Q and her question whether you have to "geometrize" ...

I don't think so you have to think at the outset in terms of breaking down form to simple geometric shapes like cubes, cylinders, etc, though that's certainly part of how "Cubism" is thought of. But you do fundamentally have to "see" a volume you see as made up of flat shapes at various orientations to one another. You already do this naturally, even if you don't think of it those terms. When these flat shapes are reduced to the minimum needed to define volume, it ends up being a cube. Since the brain will fill in the diagonals, you just need the front and back planes of the cube.

five

oops, typo. should have been "I don't think you have to think" leave that "so" out of there.

chelydra

Hi again 5! This new pic will do fine... Remember this is MILD Cubism here, and while I wouldn't say "the milder the better", anything like this, or like what Qsliv offered as examples from her past work, is okay — just not as rigorously cubist as it might be. On the other hand, really rigorous, formal cubism is of course not what Mild Cubism is about either — that's why it's Mild.

I'd reply to the rest of what you wrote but at the moment I'm getting tired of the sound of my own voice (or the pecking of my keyboard). But I did intend to mention before that I do realize that when you say 'picture plane' you mean something quite different from what's-her-name in that nightmare classroom meant. It was just a Pavlovian reaction to the term itself. Also, the Inverse Square Law is beautiful and extraordinarily simple — and this is coming from someone who flunked, or nearly flunked, every math course he ever took, from 4th grade on. Check it out, you'll love it. (The Golden Mean is also mathematical, and I expect you already love that one.) So I did reply after all, just a bit more economically than usual.

chelydra

(Again my replies are showing up after new messages arrive.)

Qsilv

nod... don't worry about the timing of our messages. It's called line-overlap and it's rampant in the world of the 'net, so we all just learn to allow for it.

Happens I took drafting, so I learned quite a bit about the rules of various perspectives. But I also had an aunt who was a portrait sculptor and she taught me a few tricks of pure illusion, along with encouraging me into the more valuable art of really seeing.

In terms of the 2-dimensional flat stuff we're working on here in TD, anything eliciting a feeling of depth (or texture, for that matter) is illusion. Trickery.

All there is, is up, down, left and right.

Well, ok, and color... and relative tonality.

From those elements, adroitly tinkered with, people viewing the assemblage form mental concepts --and, sometimes, feelings.

Well, ok, from those elements AND the viewers' own personal baggage.

;>

chelydra

Here are some examples of more-or-less Mild Cubist tendencies among contemporary artists, none great or famous, but generally pretty good. The first and second are very simple, very clear examples of what I mean about combining deep space with an effective "flat" design, being aware of how the edges and corners of the canvas affect the placement of the contents.

http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=39069
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=78157
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=39067
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=39092
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=500&i=3709
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=500&i=3708
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/view_art.asp?ArtistID=282#a2177
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/view_art.asp?ArtistID=3781#a76433
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/view_art.asp?ArtistID=195#a1539
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/view_art.asp?ArtistID=1957#a26518
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=28124
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/view_art.asp?ArtistID=127#a42444
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=63949
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=65654
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=30499
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=78143
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=30499
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=39065
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=28125
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=30500
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=65651
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=63948
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/view_art.asp?ArtistID=5512#a68647
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=41768
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=500&i=3711
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/view_art.asp?ArtistID=5004#a76723
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=302&i=1261
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=302&i=673
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=302&i=678
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/view_art.asp?ArtistID=86#a45670
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=78148

chelydra

Oddly enough, I found so many mildly appropriate samples that I gave up on gathering more after using about a quarter of the artists' work on just the four or five (out of 20-25) pages I glanced at. If 25% of a throughly random assortment of rather average professional artists shows Mild Cubist tendencies (in most cases very mild, and more an affectation of a style than a way of really seeing, but nonetheless there), I'm pretty sure that's a result of the influence of those paintings done circa 1910-1914 by the original Mild Cubists. After all, this idea I keep trying to describe is probably more or less synonymous with what was known as the School of Paris in the first half of the 20th Century. I included my own art in that collection but you probably won't recognize it.

chelydra

Qsliv, I think you might have to expand on that last message. Like for instance, HOW did your aunt teach you to "really see"?