Jan 172014

There is still plenty of figurative art being done today but we never see or hear of it in the media. It has been eclipsed perhaps because no one writing about art now has the experience to look at it and make sensible judgments about it. As observation has been the main stay of art for the previous 40,000 years we are clearly living through a long hiccup in a major and important field of human activity. Why?

As a student I subscribed to the growing interest in abstraction. Art seemed to be returning to an area that had fallen into neglect in the late 19thC. Brancusi and Picasso seemed to be reconnecting with an element in primitive art that demonstrates the abstract nature of thought resulting from the triumph of word and number. Human knowledge is transmissible and can therefore develop through time as a result of these abstract systems. That said, art is one of the few areas where we can confront and compare nature with what we think we see; we are often surprised. I see observed art as constructing bridges between the abstract nature of our minds and the complexities of the outside world.

The study of primitive and child art can teach us a lot about the way the mind twists the evidence. The advanced study of drawing used to recommend a number of ways in which we could learn to correct some of the loss that inevitably results from abstraction. Now alas, we have the situation where abstract art is matched with nothing. It is beyond criticism, in a world of its own. Our response to the outside world is visibly deteriorating as a result; particularly in the field of response to our fellow humans. Body-language is often misread which was once reliable and  instinctive. This developing loss of touch with reality could endanger our survival as a species. (The catastrophe of Rembrandt scholarship over the last 50 years in de-attributing half his genuine works is a forceful reminder of our loss.)

This brings me to the point where I must attempt an answer to my initial question. The change in the course of art coincides with the rise of art history as a deciding power in art. Previously an artist’s fame was influenced by their standing with their peers, now it is decided by the mass-media directed by art experts who paradoxically know little of what has driven artists in the past. A paradoxical result of introducing professional art historians into British art schools is that a noble history of Man’s endeavor over 40,000 years has been cut down to the last 50. So recent students no longer feel that brotherhood of artists: that conversation with the past that frequently leads to genuine originality.

This essay was triggered by chancing upon a book on drawing “ Studien zur Gestalt des Menschen” (Urania 2005) by Gotfried Bammes. He reproduces splendid drawings by his students on various courses in the German speaking world. Such a book would be near impossible in the English speaking world, we are far too individualistic, aiming at novelty rather than that long established quality that we find here. Congratulations Herr Bammes for keeping civilization alive in difficult times!

An anatomy drawing by a nameless second year student at art school

An anatomy drawing by a nameless second year student at art school

Many illustrious artists have wrestled with such subjects in the past. For sensitivity to the quality of bone, to the articulation of the joints and the movement in space I do not think this has ever been bettered. Talent still exists but not the ability to promote it; because we have left that in the hands of a band of deluded experts. We, who do not profit from their delusion recognize it to be a ludicrous scam from which we can only lose (through our pension funds as well as the emptiness of our museums of modern art.) The vast sums spent on encouraging establishment art discourages the eclipsed majority of artists.

Value in art is now dictated by the auctioneers and their gambling clients, who  are probably unaware of the damage they are inflicting on civilization.

Jan 172014

I published my discovery of Vermeer’s use of two mirrors in The Artist Magazine in Jan.1980. (British Version) under the title “Vermeer’s Method of Observation”. Looking at his The Artist in his Studio, sometimes called Ars Pictoria I asked myself the question “how did Vermeer see himself in back view?” Two mirrors seemed the obvious answer. When I carried out the experiment to see if this was true I realized that this was his general method and this, one of his last paintings, was a cryptic description of that method. Very many of his paintings contain an area of painted cloth in the left or right foreground where his own head would normally be reflected in the mirror on his easel. The cloth substitutes for his own reflection. The second mirror has to be bigger and placed about a meter and a half behind him.

More recently (July 2011) I placed two films on Youtube where Anne Shingleton demonstrates how helpful the system is. The chief benefit is the fact that the loss of light, particularly in a 17thC mirror which uses silver not mercury as the reflector, reduces the image down to a point where light can be matched with pigment. In July 2012 I put up a third film pointing out the improbability of his use of the camera obscura as a general method. In my view he was primarily interested in light, and to observe unfocused light he was obliged to use the camera obscura, as the eye refocuses automatically.

I am delighted to see that Tim Jenison has reopened the debate but am not convinced that his explanation of Vermeer’s unique genius in judging colour and tone is better than mine. Mine is simpler and accords with the evidence in many of the paintings (particularly Ars Pictoria). Probably most important it affords Vermeer a panoramic view of the subject and the reduced image of it after bouncing twice in 17thC mirrors thus allowing him to match light with pigment. This is the crux of Vermeer’s success in painting light.

More at www.nigelkonstam.com

Jan 042014

Many of us feel the need to make things. As a sculptor I am something of an addict. I certainly exhibit withdrawal symptoms after a few days without this addiction. It is sad that machinery has speeded and perfected so much hand work that mankind has become very short of these soul soothing activities.
Cookery, music, dance, gardening and art have to stand in for  all those useful crafts that we once did but are now done elsewhere or mechanically. Only thirty years ago there were little workshops in every village in Italy making shoes , garments, even hand made cars, most of them have disappeared leaving only the disappointed traces in creative humans with no outlet. This lack of opportunity will have to be addressed as western culture falls apart. Passive entertainment is no substitute.

Art has been recognized as a useful therapy and I am the last to wish to cut off this safety valve. The democratization of art has undoubtedly contributed to the sum total of human happiness. But it has had the negative effect of reducing our expectations from a work of art. It comes as no surprise that the average time spent looking at a work of art is now 20 seconds. I have often spent less time myself. Art has become a private matter.  Abstract art does not lead to the sharing of vision in the way observed art used to do.

Artists in their great moments have been the helmsmen guiding human perception; they spend their lives looking and comparing what they make with what they see in nature. But their tentative perceptions have been drowned out by the loud-speakers of a mass-media, entirely subservient to a fashion for art so meaningless that it requires no response or study.

We need an elitist art again based on observation to keep the pathways to perception from being lost. There are very positive signs that the human race is very much less responsive to its own body language than it used to be. The long running demotion of Rembrandt’s vision by the “experts” is an outstanding symptom of this disorder. It could prove fatal to humanity in the long run.