etching « L. Joshua Goodman’s Art Blog

November 25, 2009

Resisting the Urge

Filed under: General Discussion — Tags: Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Aquatint, art, artists, etching, Intaglio, landscape, landscapes, Occum's Razor, pictorial, Sataf, Sataf Spring, spray paint, telling the story — Joshua @ 8:42 pm

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (1900-1945)

The Urge to Do Something can be powerful.

But good practitioners of any discipline are skilled at stripping away frivolity. The famous dictum, Occum’s Razor says something like, “Whatever doesn’t support, detracts” (that is not an exact translation, but it is an accurate translation). In Hebrew they say, “kol mosif gorea” which means “additions diminish”.

At the risk of violating the above principles I’ll tell you what brought this to mind. I just pulled a print. It’s the second state of a small plate that I took with me to a hillside not far from where I live. It’s located above the Sataf Spring just outside of Jerusalem. I drew out the landscape, the hills cascading one behind the other and the hungry sky above. I etched and printed it last week, but I felt it needed some atmosphere, some depth, so I did a few things (involving spray paint aquatint) and today I pulled the second state.

I don’t know exactly what to do right now. The decision is to Do Something or to consider it Done. It might actually be finished, but, and this is crucial, maybe it needs more. There is more that CAN be done, but I’m uncertain if there is more that SHOULD be done.

Meanwhile, I’m resisting the Urge.

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November 13, 2009

Turkish Tiles

Filed under: General Discussion — Tags: etching, Floral designs, Intaglio, Moslem, Moslem culture, Multiples, Original Etching, Original Prints, Piano, Piano concepts, Prints, Turkish Tiles — Joshua @ 4:35 pm

In 1972 I went to Israel in search of employment. I stayed in a few run down youth hostels that fortunately were so old that they still had the old flooring from the previous century. Thus, I discovered Turkish Tiles.

izani To see samples of original Turkish tiles, go to; http://www.bazaarturkey.com/tile.htm or http://www.rugart.com.au/about_tiles.htm (image at right: samples from rugart.com)

What I found so fascinating was the nature of the design. Mostly, they were a single pattern that formed a greater whole when placed next to each other in an area like a floor or a wall. I thought how very much like Printmaking this could be.

You may notice that each of the designs in the sample shown (right) are actually four tiles. If you’re quick you can see the four quadrants that form the larger image. Each of those smaller quadrants is a design that is different than the bigger combined image. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The nature of Printmaking is multiples — printing multiple prints of the same plate. This means that a large finished work could be made from a combination of prints from a small(er) plate. Very efficient.

This concept frees printmakers from the need to think in terms of editions. That is, each “work” is made up of multiples. If one “work” was twelve tiles then an edition of say twelve “works” would be 144 individual impressions.

It’s probably already been done, but if not this would be a first. (I love a sentence like that…please accept my apologies!) I’ve never seen anything like this before, but you never know. Probably somewhere somebody has already come up with this idea. However etchings have heretofore been printed as sets of deliberately limited numbers (to hold value), sold either as a whole edition of individual prints or as single numbered prints (each one an original). But no longer! As of 1972 a single print is a mere building block in the making of a greater work.

In any event I find the idea of Intaglio prints as building a greater whole from multiple prints to be engaging. Of course the decorative floral designs of Moslem culture are not the only designs susceptible to this technique.

Pianos for example can be given this treatment. Or even a Community of Faces (see my website and other posts of this blog for examples).

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October 17, 2009

Improvising and finishing

Filed under: General Discussion — Tags: assigned value, Chaos, etching, Intaglio, Jerusalem Print Workshop, kitchy art, landscapes, painting — Joshua @ 10:26 pm

We had a very interesting conversation over dinner dinner last night with a very interesting gentleman, a concert pianist and composer.

Finished Painting

The first interesting thing is that during the day I had been thinking about “How do you know when you’ve finished a painting“. I’m not sure anybody knows the definitive answer to this. Of course some painters have a fixed goal in mind and they paint until they reach that goal. Like paintings on black velvet of bullfighters and puppy dogs or certain seascapes. But for most artists, the exercise of seeing is never quite totally consummated. Except when it feels good. Or when it feels that there is nothing more that one can do. Or undo.

Improvisation

So during dinner the subject of musical improvisation came up. I suppose I was trying to make the point that plastic art was superior to music in that the performance may be sublime and profound, but simply lasts for only one performance and then is lost. On the other hand a great painting can be seen again and again. My pianist friend told me several very interesting things. First he said that sometimes Bach and Mozart would indeed write down later from memory what they had improvised. He further said that all the great composers were great improvisers and found it helpful in their work.

And then he said, “Painters are improvisers too. The proof is that they never finish a painting!” I was mightily impressed by this. I know that Rouault was (in)famous for never finishing a work. He even was known to ask for a painting back after it was sold for a few finishing touches only to return a completely reworked and totally different piece! In graphic design Paul Rand changed the IBM logo (adding the stripes) two years after it was originally launched. He also reworked the UPS logo and asked the client to use his finessed mark in place of the original but was refused. The old was good enough. This is the visual equivalent of improvisation.

Improvisation is the technique by which artists (plastic artists as well as musicians) sketch; improvisation becomes a search for perfection. If not perfection, then at least improvement. Can anybody really say that they’ve done the best that can be done on any particular work of the moment?

I was criticized once in Art School for overworking my paintings. I still don’t know exactly what is meant by this. I have lost clients because I have modified the design after approval (and before final printing). To do otherwise would be personally irresponsible if not professionally derelict! Good clients know this.

It’s not overworking; it’s seeing more in the light of what has already been done.

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October 4, 2009

The Story of a New Project/Background

Filed under: General Discussion — Tags: Arik Kilemnick, art, art students, artists, assigned value, etching, Fractal, Fractals, hammers, hands, Intaglio, Iron, Jerusalem Print Workshop, kitchy art, landscape, landscapes, Matisse, old masters, pictorial, sans serif, Sculpture, telling the story — Joshua @ 11:53 am

Where does an Idea begin.

I’ve tried to make it easy on myself. I have a running series that I am continually working with. It’s called “The Hammer and the Hand Series”. It gives me a framework to relate to.

As you can see from my website, there are several works that feature a hand (always my left hand) and a hammer. A hammer is the quintessential low tech tool. From the first time that man picked up a rock to pound a stick (perhaps a tent peg) into the ground, rather than using his bare hand, man has been using hammers.

This is, of course, an extension of the “Hand” series. This started because of two bits of information that came my way over the years. The first was when Miss Bennett (see previous post) mentioned that the best draughtsman in school has a thousand drawings of her left hand. So, since High School I have known that the way to draw well is to draw what’s close at hand. Literally.

Sketchbooks of the Old Masters

The other piece of intelligence that came my way was when I learned that the Old Masters had sketchbooks where they had drawn thousands of versions of hands in various positions. Then when they had a composition that required a right hand extended and foreshortened to the left, they just reached for their archive and pulled out the closest variant and they were good to go.

So my left hand, being close, serves as a model. And when I wanted to extend the idea, I turned to that First Tool and started the “Hand and Hammer” series.

Now it turns out that I have a plate from the old “Hand” days. Three years ago I started a new working of the old idea. Rather than print one large (it’s about 50×70 cm / 19.5×27.5 inches) print, I decided to cut the paper into tiles, each of which are about 17 cm square (6.75 inches). Then (and this is another unrealized idea from the past…like about from 1972, November) I decided to print these tiles as Ottoman or Armenian tiles where the single tile is not visually complete or even readable, but the whole coherent image comes from the joining together of multiples (and multiples is almost essentially warp and woof of printmaking).

The Hammer and the Piano

grand-piano-2021a Extending the idea of a hammer I decided that a piano had hammers and might be more visually interesting than a simple hammer. And a piano references another deep interest of mine, music.

Bartok said that the piano was a percussion instrument and the music he wrote with a piano part shows this clearly. The piano is banging and crashing. I believe he even specified that the piano should be placed in the back by the tympani. The reason the piano is so percussive of course is the hammers. Eighty-eight hammers at the tips of the fingers.

Amazing!

Like I said, this was started three years ago; I printed one printing of the “Hand” on twelve tiles each about 17 cm (6.75 inch) square. I drew, etched and printed a separate plate with a piano in the corners, but wasn’t satisfied. I put it aside to rest.

Until this week.

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June 5, 2009

No Pretty Pictures

Filed under: General Discussion — Tags: Andy Warhol, art, etching, Franz Kline, pictorial, Rembrandt, Reubens, Surrealist Manifesto, telling the story, Van Gogh, Vermeer — Joshua @ 1:24 pm

I am philosophically opposed to pretty pictures. I’m not sure I could do a pretty picture even if I wanted to. Maybe I could and maybe I couldn’t. But the thing is that there are enough pretty pictures.

Now don’t get me wrong. Making Ugly Pictures is not the only alternative. There is enough of that too. Sometimes it’s even the same work that is pretty and ugly at the same time. That’s called “kitsch”.

But I’m not talking about that. I mean, that for me for an etching or a painting to be satisfying, fulfilling, and maybe even appealing, has to be intellectually satisfying as well. I want it to talk back to me and tell me things that I’ve been thinking. Or that I would think, if I would have thought of them. I want to ask, “What’s going on here?” and I want the piece of art to tell me what is going on; and I want it to make a certain amount of emotional and/or reasonable sense.

I don’t mind if there is a verbal explanation of the work. Everybody from Rembrandt and Vermeer to Franz Kline and Andy Warhol had their explanations of what they were doing and that, interestingly, enhanced the pictorial value of each piece. The Surrealists and others had their manifestos. Telling the story is a big part of what pictorial art is about.

To look at a Reubens and to see the hand(s) of his students is a big thrill for me. But until somebody explained that most of Reubens’ paintings were painted by his studio, I just saw a painting, or perhaps an illustration of a Bible story. I didn’t see the genius of the hand of Reubens in the sections that he actually painted until someone pointed out that the backgrounds were not actually painted by Reubens.

Stories is what makes Art.

Everyone knows that Van Gogh was ignored in his lifetime. What people don’t generally know is that he only became known because of his tragic life. His paintings were a by-product of his compelling human interest story. Now, I’m not going to cut off my ear. But I am going to tell the stories that are the reasons for what I do.

Blogging as a gentle alternative to ear-cutting.

Be well.

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May 2, 2009

Texas size landscapes

Filed under: General Discussion — Tags: art, etching, experience, Fractal, landscape, painting, Texas — Joshua @ 10:34 am

We were in Texas last year. Had a great time. One thing we did was to visit a gallery in Dallas (or maybe Ft. Worth, I never knew exactly where I was). Two brothers shared studio and gallery space in the same building. Among a lot of great painting were several very loooong landscapes. What is so very interesting is that the question immediately arises, “Why so very long??” and the answer equally immediately arises, “that’s the way landscapes are in Texas!!” You stand there looking out on a ton of space and look from side to side 180 degrees and see nothing but landscape. Painting just a standard rectangular landscape might be fine, and pretty, but a painting that is so long that you can’t look at the whole thing at once is giving the same experience as looking at the landscape that you experience in nature.

So I came home and decided I was going to try the same thing. I went out and found a wonderful spot up on a hillside not far from where I live. I set up two easels (one easel is for the normal-size painting) and put up a two meter (about six foot) gessoed board. I haven’t actually finished the painting. I went out twice. Nevertheless, I decided that I was going to make this into an etching.

So recently I have started a series of three plates. I can’t print a six foot plate on my little three foot long press. So I’ve broken up the landscape into three sections. Each section, not surprisingly, can stand on it’s own. Each section is a complete landscape in itself. This is in line with my theory of the fractalic nature of the universe (more on that in another blog). And of course they work together as a very long landscape.

Just the way landscapes are in nature. Long. And Lovely.

Be well.

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