DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

2011/08/30

A Torso Even More So

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Anatomy — Tags: , , , , , — fred @ 15:08

Face of the Body, 2011, by Fred Hatt

“Torso” is the art term for a depiction of the human form focused primarily on the trunk of the body rather than the head or limbs.  The word derives from a Greek/Latin word meaning stalk.  It’s a botanical analogy, like its synonym, “trunk”, the core out of which the branches grow.  The Greek root word, thyrsos, denotes the magic wand of the followers of Dionysos, a god of fertility, ecstasy, ritual madness, and theater.  The thyrsos, a fennel rod with a pine cone head, twined with ivy vines, embodies the unruly and indomitable life force.

Nautilus, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The torso often expresses this life force in its ability to twist, though as far as I can determine it is a coincidence that the word torso resembles the word torsion.  Torsion means twisting, and that word is related to the terms torque, torture, and torment.  The torso can express coursing vital energy but also vulnerability, leaping joy and convulsive anguish.

Mesh Fem, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The torso includes the heart and lungs and the organs of digestion and sex.  It is the seat of gut feelings, and of the swellings of erotic desire, hunger, and pride.

Supine Lotus, 2010, by Fred Hatt

We all grow in the womb and find our first nourishment at the breast.  Humans and other mammals crave the feeling of warmth and acceptance that is only felt in an embrace with full body closeness.

Arranged Around the Knee, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The torso is a rich subject for the artist because of its complexity of form, revealing different aspects at different angles of view and in varying relationships to the limbs and head.

Oxbow Hip Curve, 2010, by Fred Hatt

In drawing the body, I always imagine that my hands are feeling it, clasping the waist, holding the ribcage, following the underlying structure of bones and the fibers of muscle, sensitive to the warmth of the body, the expansive tide of the breath and the buzzing of nerves and blood vessels.

Inverted Rest, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The arms and legs thrust or relax outward in various directions, and their long forms create expressive angles, but the origin of the energy expressed by the limbs is always found in the core of the body.

Iliac Power, 2010, by Fred Hatt

My friend Mana Hashimoto, a dancer who is blind, teaches workshops on “Dance Without Sight“.  Part of her workshop involves observing the movement of another person by touch alone.  When I took Mana’s workshop I was struck by how clearly I could  understand all the movements of another person with hands placed gently on the back.  It was impossible to follow a dance by touching the head or extremities, but a hand on the back could feel the movements of all parts of the body, including the head, arms, and legs.

Back and Bottle, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The classic standing pose in figurative sculpture and painting is “contrapposto“.  This generally means the weight of the body is primarily on one leg, causing the pelvis to be tilted, and usually the shoulders are tilted in the opposite direction.  The slight asymmetry that is introduced in this way gives an appearance of liveliness to a still figure.  In practice, there are countless variations on the basic principle of contrapposto, as the ribcage/shoulder girdle and the pelvis can each be shifted or tilted in many directions, and the spine can be arched forward or back, bent to the side, twisted, extended or compressed.

Curved Torso Straight Arm, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Symmetrical poses, however, do not need to appear rigid.  In fact, symmetrical poses can be very relaxed because of their balanced weight. Looking at such a pose from an angle is all it takes to give assymmetry to a drawing, and if the artist’s calm hand follows the calmness of the model, the picture will have a certain serenity.

Balasana, 2011, by Fred Hatt

In a drawing, the body reveals its structure in the form of curves and angles going in various directions.  In the drawing below, note the forward thrust of the shoulder softened by the curling hair, and the rearward angle of the elbow balanced by the point of the breast.

Chair Back, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The outside contours of the body, the curve of the spine, and the shadows and highlights make the drawing below a study of sinuous flow.

Sheen, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The contrapposto principles can be seen even in an unusual seated pose seen from the side, as below.  A line drawn across the nipples and one drawn across the crests of the pelvis would create an angle pointing to the right.  The head turns away from the viewer while the far knee and hand come toward us, giving the pose that dynamic twist, while the near arm reaching out of frame to the left acts compositionally like an unresolved chord in music, keeping things a bit off balance.

Hoop Earring, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The spine is really the core of the body, and its movement is a key to the energetic expression of the pose.  Notice the difference in the next two drawings.  Here the spine seems to be lengthening, rising up.

Uplifting, 2011, by Fred Hatt

In the one below, by contrast, there’s a feeling of weight, of the spine relaxing downward.  Unlike most of the other drawings in this post, these two show facial expressions, which surely contribute to the contrasting moods, but even if you cover the faces you can see the difference in the energy.

Leaning on Wall, 2011, by Fred Hatt

In the two drawings above, the abstract treatment of the light around the figures suggests a kind of energetic aura.  In the drawing below a similar effect is achieved by using colored lines to indicate the complex ways that various light sources, both direct and reflected, flow over the curves of the body.

Mesh Masc, 2010, by Fred Hatt

All the parts of the torso are formed around a center line.  I try to locate this center line and then to develop the forms to either side, sketching with cross-contours, or strokes that follow the three-dimensional shapes of the body.

Terrestrial Body, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Here’s another contrapposto from behind, with the angles of the legs echoing the angles of hips and shoulders.

Helical Zigzag, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The energy of the pose below emerges powerfully from the stable center of the sacrum, the base of the spine.  The cross contours show the structure of muscles and bones of the back as a kind of swirling energy.

Sacral Center, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Here’s an unusual pose supported on one hip and forearm.  All four limbs are bent at more or less right angles, all pointing in different directions.

Lateral Bridge, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The features of the frontal torso are arranged similarly to the features of the face.  The face is the window of the soul, showing emotion, intelligence, engagement.  The torso is the face of the life force, showing energy and balance and movement.

Hand on Hip, Forearm on Doorknob, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The torso can embody vigor, sensuality, boldness, timidity, and so on.  The quality of spirit resides in the body as well as in the mind or brain.  Entering into a contemplative state requires releasing and balancing and stabilizing the energy of the body as well as the mind.

Grounded Sitting, 2011, by Fred Hatt

 

All the drawings in this post are about 50 x 65 cm, or 19 1/2″ x 25 1/2″, aquarelle crayon on paper.  All of these were drawn during 20-minute poses at Figureworks Gallery in Brooklyn.

(The title of this post is a line from the song “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”, by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, made famous by Groucho Marx in the 1939 film “At the Circus”.)

2011/07/26

Freudian Analysis

Filed under: Homage: Visual Artists,Top Ten — Tags: , , , , , , , — fred @ 19:55

Double Portrait, 1986, by Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud, who just died on July 20, 2011, devoted his long career to painting figures and portraits from life, perfectly ignoring all the art-world trends of his era.

Bella, 1987, by Lucian Freud

Many of his images are of people and/or animals sleeping.  He always painted directly from live models, often friends or family members rather than professionals, and he worked very slowly, so the sleeping poses may be an accommodation to the models.  I am struck, though, by the sense of struggle and intensity in these works.  Freud’s paint has the writhing quality of Goya’s horrors or El Greco’s spiritual transports, but in pictures of people simply relaxing on beds and sofas.  I think the sense of agitation arises from Freud’s own restless struggle to see more deeply and to capture in paint the intensity of his own visual experience.  For Freud, every canvas was a wrestling match against a powerful foe.

Pregnant Girl, 1961, by Lucian Freud

The fleshiness of his painting can be a distraction.  I got a better understanding of  the energy of Freud’s searching eye by looking at his etchings, where the quality of movement stands out.  Most portraitists view their sitters across a distance.  Freud’s perceptual focus hikes over his subjects like a surveyor mapping a territory.  He treats the figure as a landscape, to be explored by touch and movement.

Head and Shoulders, 1982, etching by Lucian Freud

Freud loved animals, and he often shows his own dogs posing with his models.  He told William Feaver, who wrote a book about Freud’s work, “I’m really interested in people as animals.  Part of my liking to work from them naked is for that reason.  Because I can see more, and it’s also very exciting to see the forms repeating through the body and often the head as well.  I like people to look as natural and as physically at ease as animals, as Pluto my whippet.”

Sunny Morning - Eight Legs, 1997, by Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the progenitor of psychoanalysis.  Sigmund Freud spent hundreds of hours with his subjects lying on a couch, trying to penetrate the hidden recesses of the mind through dreams and free association.  Lucian Freud also spent hundreds of hours with his subjects lying on a couch, but he kept an intense focus on the surface.  I think he felt that the physical body, truly seen, could reveal hidden depths.  Surely Lucian Freud’s work reveals depths, although, as with Sigmund’s work, it could be argued that those depths belong to Freud more than they do to his subjects.

David Hockney; Lucian Freud, 2003, photo by David Dawson

Freud said, “My work is purely autobiographical… It is about myself and my surroundings. I work from people that interest me and that I care about, in rooms that I know.”  Given the necessity of spending a great deal of time with his sitters, he wouldn’t work with anyone unless he genuinely liked that person.  Still, he absolutely avoided any sentimentality or idealization.  Freud’s subjects had to accept that he would portray their every flaw, that he would reveal their mortality.

David Hockney, 2003, by Lucian Freud

While Freud, as far as I know, never worked from photographs, some of his models were photographed while posing for his paintings, which gives us an excellent way of seeing where he exaggerates and what he emphasizes.

Sue Tilley posing for Lucian Freud, 1995, photo by Bruce Bernard

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, by Lucian Freud

The painting above is one of Freud’s best-known works, having set a record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist when it was sold at Christie’s in 2008 for 33.6 million dollars.  Notice how much older the model appears in the painting than in the photograph.  He seems to have made her more obese and more splotchy.

Many figurative painters do the opposite, omitting bruises and calluses and visible veins, subtly idealizing the body.  And many people are repelled by Freud’s figures, with their sexuality and mortality so blatantly on display.  Speaking for myself, this is the very aspect of Freud’s work that gives it spiritual power.  It is the essence of the human condition that we are spiritual beings manifested in animal bodies that experience fear and desire, suffering and decay.  I see this as the quality of art that Federico Garcia Lorca calls duende, the life force intensified by the closeness of death.

Naked Man with Rat, 1977, by Lucian Freud

Freud’s earlier work, such as the portrait below of Lady Caroline Blackwood, lacks the blotchy impasto of his later work, but there is already a kind of magical realism, with enlarged eyes and expressive distortions.

Girl in Bed, 1952, by Lucian Freud

Freud said, “The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.”  You can see this principle not only in the individual works, but across the artist’s entire oeuvre.  The later work is unquestionably more abstract, the strokes wilder and freer, but they also have a living presence that is much stronger than in the earlier work.

Four Figures, 1991, etching by Lucian Freud

 

The Painter's Mother III, 1972, painting by Lucian Freud, and The Painter's Mother, 1982, etching by Lucian Freud

The face below is surely distorted, yet you can see the intensity of the artist’s perception in every thick stroke.  There is a kind of aura, a powerful presence that cannot be achieved by working from photographs and fretting over accuracy.

Esther, 1982, by Lucian Freud

 

Lucian Freud and model, 2004, photo by David Dawson

Freud said, “Perhaps when you have the sort of temperament that is always looking for flaws and trouble it might stop you from having what you always want, which is to be as audacious as possible. One has to find the courage to keep on trying not to paint in a stale or predictable way.”

Night Portrait, 1978, by Lucian Freud

I’ll conclude this post with two of my favorite Freud nudes.  Night Portrait, above, finds beauty in a pose that seems to be both resting and running, and in the textural contrast between the body and the quilt.  Naked Man, Back View, one of Freud’s many paintings of the model Leigh Bowery, also well known as a performance artist and costume designer, suggests an interior life through the turned-away display of a mountainous back.

Naked Man, Back View, 1992, by Lucian Freud

All the images in this post were found on the web.  Clicking on the pictures links to the pages where I found them.  The Lucian Freud quotes were also found on the web.  All the quote sites seem to have a similar collection of Freud quotes, unfortunately not sourced.

2011/06/03

Choices

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Practice — Tags: , , , , , — fred @ 11:08

Opposite Sides, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Life drawing as a practice involves a tension between habit and novelty.  Everyone I know who attends open figure drawing sessions has their favorite places to set up, their usual distance and scale, their familiar materials and techniques.  Anything unfamiliar, even a model you aren’t used to, is likely to make the quality of your work suffer.  Naturally, most artists are happy when they’re drawing or painting fluently, and unhappy when they’re struggling and stumbling, and they find that cleaving to habitual ways helps a lot.  This is as true for me as it is for any artist.

On the other hand, constantly working a well-worn rut will never get you anywhere new.  It’s exercise, but not the kind of exercise that builds strength or expands capacity.  It’s boring, and often the artwork that comes out of it is well-controlled but boring.  I believe most artists are far too sensitive to doing bad or awkward work, and far too insensitive to the hazards of the rut.

Boredom is a regular aspect of life drawing sessions.  Even when you love drawing and love looking at naked bodies, and often feel excitement and flow in your work, there are times when you’re looking at the same model in the same pose you’ve seen a hundred times, when your angle of view obscures the most dynamic part of the pose, or when your energy level flags.

My strategy is to introduce controlled variations, to break one part of the set of habits at a time.  I might try changing my scale of drawing, moving away from my habitual spot, or focusing on a particular aspect of the pose or scene that’s different from my usual approach.  When the model takes the pose, I’ll often make a choice at that moment:  Which element of my work should depart from the norm?

The drawing at the top of the post is from the Monday morning long pose class I supervise at Spring Studio.  After a set of quick poses for warm-up, the model takes a single pose for the rest of the session.  Subtracting the breaks, we have about two hours of drawing time for the long pose.  I’m quick, so my greatest hazard is to overwork drawings, a mistake I still find myself making sometimes.

Kuan, the model for the above drawing, has a beautifully toned and well-defined body.  She took a sideways seated pose, looking towards the center of the room.  I took the opportunity to go to the left side of the room and study her back.  But I thought I’d be likely to overwork just the back, so I used half the sheet of paper, saving the other half for a study of the same pose from the opposite side of the room.  Besides going beyond the one-sided view to which two-dimensional artists usually confine themselves, this turned out to be a fascinating study in proportional and structural relationships.

Absence, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The 20-minute drawing above was done at Figureworks, where the models pose in an archway between two rooms.  I was at an angle where this reclining pose was highly foreshortened and partially blocked by the edge of the arch on the left.  I could have moved to a different spot, to see an unobstructed view, or a more straight-on angle.  Instead, I chose to let the left edge of the paper be the edge of the arch, centering the composition on the empty part of the blanket on which the model was lying.

Floor Cloth, 2010, by Fred Hatt

In this reclining pose, I also focused on the floor and the blanket, leaving the body as a silhouette with some cross-contour shading.  Here the shape formed by the body is defined by its negative space.  The folds of the fabric even help give a sense of the weight and solidity of the body.

Framing, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Here’s another pose defined largely by coloring in the negative spaces.  The colors used for walls, floor and fabric have nothing to do with the actual hues of the scene.  They’re chosen to enhance the form of the pose.  I particularly like the diamond-shaped space between the arms, chest and thigh, that takes on the appearance of a tetrahedron with yellow and green faces.

Contour, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Here’s another archway pose, with the model turned away from me and the edge on the right blocked.  I started drawing in red, just the front contour of the body from shoulder to knee, but then I decided I wanted to include the foot and the hair, so I flipped the paper upside down and drew again, at a smaller scale, on the opposite side of the page.  I left the upside-down red contour, making an interesting river of negative space between the two views of the pose.

Right Triangles, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Side views of the body are particularly challenging, especially when none of the landmark features are visible.  Here my attention was captured by the squareness of the seated pose and the angularity of the model’s face.  The colored areas in the background are pure invention, to emphasize this contrast between right angles and diagonals.

Cluster of Fingers, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Here is yet another seated pose, viewed from the side.  I could find no dynamism in the pose or composition, and couldn’t see the model’s face, but the hands were clasped together in a way that was highly complex, and I was close enough to see them pretty well, so I took the opportunity to practice hands, widely considered the most difficult part of the body to capture in drawing.

Nazarene, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Like complicated hand positions, the face at an unusual angle is very challenging to draw, so I try to practice it when the opportunity arises.  These attempts often turn out with distortions, and this drawing does have certain distortions, but I think it succeeds in capturing a sense of aliveness, not only through the facial expression, but also through the angles and composition.

Sketcher and Poser, 2011, by Fred Hatt

This portrait from a Figureworks life drawing session needed one more element, so I included a sketch of Randall, Firgureworks’ proprietor, with his sketchbook on the other side of the room.  I made him much smaller in relation to the main figure than he actually appeared from my angle of view, which makes the main figure appear to be seen from very close.  This is the same effect you get with a photo taken from close to the subject with a wide-angle lens, with the perspective differences between foreground and background exaggerated.

Facing Light, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Here’s a back view with the shape of the figure highlighted by the window she’s facing and the light from the window reflecting off the polished hardwood floor.  Sometimes a very simple treatment of the background greatly enhances the sense of real presence of a figure by creating a space for it to occupy.

In a Room, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Here’s a more complex variation on the same idea.  The space is simplified into areas of differing value and color, just enough to make the figure a solid reality in a world of air and light.

Many of these poses could have been boring drawings had I not made choices to do something different from my habitual approach.  These experiments aren’t always successful – in fact they increase my chances of making terrible, embarrassing drawings.  But without the unusual choices, the results might have been competent but rather dull.

All the drawings in this post are aquarelle crayon on paper, approximately 18″ x 24″.

2011/04/21

Public Sculpture

Filed under: Public Art,Sculpture — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — fred @ 19:10

The Rocket Thrower, 1963, sculpture by Donald De Lue, Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, NY, photo 2004 by Fred Hatt

The wide variety of reactions I heard following my recent post on Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates got me thinking about public art, which can be highly controversial, but which also becomes such a part of the everyday environment that people stop noticing it, like that bum that’s always on that certain corner every time you pass by.  The Gates was only up for a few weeks, but most public sculpture stands for decades or even centuries.  It is much more widely seen than any other kind of traditional visual artwork, but most of the artists are not well known. In preparing this post I researched the pictured sculptures so I could provide names and dates for them.  In many cases it was easy to find pictures of these sculptures, but surprisingly difficult to find information about the artists, dates, etc.  If you live in or have spent much time in New York, you’ll surely recognize many of these pieces, but I’ll bet you didn’t know the names of the artists, and if you look at the captions here you will see that most of them are not exactly famous names in art history.  Public sculpture is ubiquitous but anonymous.

In this post we’ll take a look at a wide variety of public sculptures in New York City.  I took most of these photos, but not all of them.  The ones I didn’t take link back to where I found them on the web.

The lead picture above, with its incredible leaping energy, is in the Flushing Meadows Park location of the 1939 and 1964 Worlds Fairs.  This sculpture has the Art Deco style of the 1930’s, but it was actually made for the ’64 fair, and its title, “The Rocket Thrower”, makes it a monument of the space age.

Here’s another allegorical naked man in Queens:

Triumph of Civic Virtue, 1922, sculpture by Frederick MacMonnies and the Piccirilli brothers, Queens Borough Hall, Queens, NY, photographer unknown

Queens congressman Anthony Weiner has recently created a lot of publicity for the old statue “Triumph of Civic Virtue“, calling it sexist and offensive, and suggesting it should be sold on Craigslist.  This piece was originally installed in City Hall Park in Manhattan, but it was always controversial, as it presents an allegorical male figure of virtue standing victorious over two female siren or mermaid figures representing vice and corruption.  New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia finally “exiled” the statue to Queens in 1941, and there it has continued to be ignored or objected to to this day.

I wonder why we haven’t heard such controversy about another old-fashioned monument, the equestrian portrait of Teddy Roosevelt that stands in front of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.  This statue shows Roosevelt on a horse, leading an Indian and a Negro who flank him on foot.  I’m not sure what this sculpture is trying to say, but it seems to embody a kind of paternalist colonialism that we’re no longer comfortable with, and this piece is in a much more prominent location than “Civic Virtue”.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1940, sculpture by James Earle Fraser, American Museum of Natural History, NYC, photographer unknown

“Tilted Arc“, one of Richard Serra’s curved and leaning steel walls, was installed in Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan for eight years.  People who worked in the area hated having to navigate around this 12-foot high, 120-foot long barrier, and it was eventually cut into pieces and removed, against Serra’s objections.  I’ll side with the workers on this one.  Serra’s space-bending works are quite popular when people can experience them in an appropriate location, but there is something oppressive about imposing such a wall on people who have no choice in the matter.

Tilted Arc, 1981, sculpture by Richard Serra, Federal Plaza, NYC, photographer unknown

Of course, most public sculpture doesn’t arouse such animosity that it has to be chopped up and junked or put up for sale on Craigslist.  Most commissioned memorial sculpture looks dated and stodgy as soon as it goes up, but it does add an element of human liveliness to the built environment.  Plus, it’s very popular with the pigeons.

Figures from the Maine Memorial, 1913, sculpture by Attilio Piccirilli, Central Park, NYC, "Pigeon God", 2002 photo by Fred Hatt

There must be hundreds of traditional bronze figurative monuments in the city, 19th century depictions of the Great Men of the era.  The craftsmanship is classical but the style is stiff and generic.  Sometimes an unusual point of view can make one of these into a fascinating abstraction.

Abraham Lincoln, 1870, sculpture by Henry Kirke Brown, Union Square, NYC, "Bronze Cloak", 2003 photo by Fred Hatt

There are stores that sell cast sculptures for private gardens, reflecting the common taste rather than the institutional preferences of public monuments.  In the display below, I’m struck by the similarity between the busts of Elvis and David on the right, as well as the middle finger and “kiss my ass” sculptures in the front row.

Statuary Store Street Display, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

Many public sculptures are war memorials.  Such monuments exhibit an interesting range of styles.  There’s the “realistic” depiction of the band of brothers-in-arms:

107th Infantry Memorial, 1927, sculpture by Karl Illava, Central Park, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

The gothic romance of the young soldier embraced by the angel of death:

Prospect Park War Memorial, 1921, sculpture by Augustus Lukeman, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, 2003 photo by Fred Hatt

And this depiction of the soldier as void.  This reminds me of the traditional symbol of the “released spirit” in Jainism.

The Universal Soldier, Battery Park Korean War Veterans Memorial, 1987, sculpture by Mac Adams, Battery Park, NYC, 2006 photo by Fred Hatt

Gandhi is a different kind of warrior, a figure that is both a spiritual and a political icon.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1986, sculpture by Kantilal B. Patel, Union Square, NYC, 2006 photo by Fred Hatt

Some sculptures salute the power of love, like these kissing cherubs, not a public monument but a type of decorative sculpture that adorns many homes in my neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Eroded Cherubs, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

A youthful and willowy Romeo and Juliet gaze into each other’s eyes outside the Central Park theater that hosts free Shakespeare in the Park every summer.

Romeo and Juliet, 1977, sculpture by Milton Hebald, Delacorte Theater, Central Park, NYC, 2005 photo by Fred Hatt

And these full body casts by George Segal commemorate the gay civil rights movement just outside the Stonewall Inn, where a 1969 riot sparked a rebellion of the oppressed.

Gay Liberation, 1980, sculpture by George Segal, Christopher Square Park, NYC, photographer unknown

Many sculptures use figures to depict the spirits of Nature, and the human connection with Nature, like this boy dancing with goats.

Lehman Gates, 1961, sculpture by Paul Manship, Central Park Zoo, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

Or the irrepressible nature spirit Pan.

The Great God Pan, 1899, sculpture by George Grey Barnard, Columbia University Campus, NYC, 2007 photo by Fred Hatt

Or the trickster imp Robin Goodfellow, or Puck, best known as a character in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.  This Puck shows us ourselves in a mirror.

Puck, 1885, sculpture by Henry Baerer, on the Puck Building, NYC, 2005 photo by Fred Hatt

Of course the supreme god in Manhattan is The Almighty Dollar.  One of Manhattan’s Subway stations features many little bronze figures and scenes by Tom Otterness commenting upon both rich and poor in the money-driven society.  These figures embody a cartoon aesthetic in the traditional monumental medium of cast bronze.  Many people rub this moneybag head for luck as they pass by on their way to transfer trains.

Figure from "Life Underground", 2000, sculpture by Tom Otterness, 14th Street and Eighth Avenue Subway Station, NYC, 2004 photo by Fred Hatt

Mr. Moneybags isn’t the only sculpture people touch like a sacred relic.  The atrium of the very upscale shopping mall at the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle is dominated by two gigantic rotund bronze nudes, “Adam” and “Eve”, by Botero.  So many tourists are compelled to touch Adam’s penis that it shines in a golden color, while the rest of the figure is dark bronze.

Eve, c. 2003, sculpture by Fernando Botero, Time Warner Center, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

This magnificent pagan goddess, Cybele, was a powerful presence in Manhattan’s Soho district for over a decade, but she’s gone now.  This depiction is a modern variation on the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus.

Cybele, 1993, sculpture by Mihail Chemiakin, Prince Street, NYC, 2006 photo by Fred Hatt

These natural spirits can be embodied in a more abstract mode.  Alexander Calder applied his unique sense of organic form to the modern medium of riveted steel sculpture.  Look how beautifully the angles of the Calder “Saurien” are reflected in the angles of the buildings across the street from it, particularly the faceted glass LVMH building, second from the right in the top photo below. ( The LVMH building was constructed a quarter century after the sculpture was installed.)

Saurien, 1975, sculpture by Alexander Calder, Madison Avenue and 57th Street, NYC, 2004 photo by Fred Hatt

Saurien, 1975, sculpture by Alexander Calder, Madison Avenue and 57th Street, NYC, 2005 photo by Fred Hatt

About a block away from the Calder, another abstract modernist work portraying an embodiment of life force is Joan Miró’s “Moonbird”.  (If you look closely on the left of this picture, it appears that Pam Grier is heading for a meeting with Walt Whitman.)

Moonbird, 1966, sculpture by Joan Miró, 58th Street, NYC, 2009 photo by Fred Hatt

“Alamo”, better known as the Astor Place Cube, has long been popular despite its dry formalism because it rotates on its base if you give it a good firm push.

Alamo, 1967, sculpture by Tony Rosenthal, Astor Place, NYC, 2009 photo by Fred Hatt

I’ll conclude with what I consider one of the ugliest public sculptures in New York, though this picture flatters it a bit.  This one has a chunk of boulder, a replica of the hand from the equestrian George Washington statue across the street from it, bricks with gold leaf ringing an aperture that puffs out steam, and, unseen in this picture, a deliberately unreadable enormous digital clock display that is supposed to express “the impossibility of knowing time”.  This piece is the ultimate example of the hazards of art that is concept-driven and committee-chosen.  The artists’ website on this piece describes the significance of the elements of the piece, but understanding it doesn’t really improve it.

Metronome, 1999, sculpture by Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel, Union Square, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the subject of public art here, even restricting myself to a single city and to work that can be considered sculpture.  In case of a future follow-up post, I’d include Greg Wyatt’s “Peace Fountain” near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Eric Fischl’s Arthur Ashe memorial, Alice in Wonderland in Central Park, Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park, the Statue of Liberty, the Wall Street Bull, and . . . well, please send me your suggestions!

2011/04/11

Academic Figure Studies

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Practice — Tags: , , , , , , — fred @ 15:03

Ali, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The term “figure study” seems calculated to evoke pedagogical sobriety absent any whiff of lasciviousness.  Even the word “figure” suggests cogitation rather than concupiscence.  Representational artists have long found contemplation and analysis of the human body to be both an invaluable skill-building practice and a source of inspiration, but in the imagination of the general public all artists are roués and their models are not simply “undraped” but downright nekkid.

Those who are actually familiar with the practice drawing from life know that a room full of artists focused on the model is often suffused with a meditative intensity more like the atmosphere of a monastery than that of a brothel.  For fifteen years I have served as the monitor (supervisor) of a three-hour weekly class at New York’s Spring Studio.  We do a set of quick poses to get the energy flowing for both model and artists, and then a single long pose for the rest of the session.  Minus the breaks, we have about two solid hours to study and draw a single pose.

I’ve featured many drawings from those sessions in various posts on this blog.  Sometimes I work on the portrait, other times I concern myself with the subtleties of color and light or the complexities of foreshortening.  In this post I’ll feature drawings from the Spring Studio long pose sessions that come as close as I ever come to the ideals of traditional academic figure drawing practice.

Betty, 2009, by Fred Hatt

The academic approach to figure drawing generally demands that the entire figure be scaled to fit the page.  Artists may use a variety of measuring aids, such as a plumb line or a viewing grid, and use special techniques to establish accurate relationships, often spending more time in measuring and mapping than they do in actually drawing.  Some artists who work this way attend the long pose classes at spring studio.  They usually use graphite sharpened to a needle-fine point and work very carefully.  They’ve often been schooled in the techniques taught by Charles Bargue and Jean-Léon Gérôme, where students start their studies drawing from plaster casts of classical sculpture before graduating to the live figure.  Some of Bargue’s own drawings are particularly beautiful, and many other artists use these techniques to wonderful effect, although the danger always seems to be that the live model comes out in the drawings looking like a plaster cast.

Marilyn, 2009, by Fred Hatt

If you’re familiar with my work, you’ll know that this traditional academic method is quite far from my way of working.  For me it would be painfully slow and timid.  I do some measuring when I’m drawing, but more for checking and correcting rather than initial construction.  As a self-taught artist, I prefer to work as quickly,  spontaneously, and boldly as possible.  It’s certainly not the appropriate way for everyone to draw, but for me it’s how I get the feeling of aliveness into the work.

James, 2010, by Fred Hatt

So these aren’t really “academic figure studies” at all.  They are, however, drawings in which I have striven to depict, as accurately as I can, the reality of the model on the posing stand.  This includes the individual characteristics of the models and the way their bodies rest on or around the various boxes and bits of furniture and fabric that make up the completely artificial environment in which they are placed for our observation.

Emma & Maria, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Two models posing together lets us see the body in relation to another body, with all its differences and similarities.  The models for the drawing above were a mother and daughter.

Jeremiah, 2010, by Fred Hatt

It is rare in the open drawing long pose sessions that we get to study the back.  The back is just as complex as the front of the torso, but its defining points are much more subtle and therefore more challenging to draw.

Claudia, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The drawing above is of Claudia, the great model-blogger behind Museworthy.

Elizabeth, 2010, by Fred Hatt

For the drawing above, I was sitting on one side of the model’s platform in Spring Studio’s horseshoe-shaped arrangement.  I’ve included a very rough representation of the other artists on the opposite side of the room.

Jiri, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Standing poses are often considered the simplest and most basic poses for drawing, because they generally lack foreshortening and tricky juxtapositions.  I find them challenging, though, first because the tall and narrow standing body doesn’t fit well within the moderate rectangle of the drawing paper.  I find it hard to make myself draw so small, and I have a tendency to make the head too big because it’s hard to get the needed detail in such a small area.

Jennie, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Seated and reclining poses come more naturally to me, but every pose presents its own special challenges.

Maria, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The boxes and fabrics and objects around the model become part of the composition, but they also create a set of geometrical relationships that can help the artist to analyze the scene and establish proportions.

Yisroel, 2011, by Fred Hatt

For me, the reason to understand the anatomical structure of the body is not to be able to alter the figure to more closely resemble an ideal, but to better appreciate the range of variations on every part of the form that makes each figure unique.

Jun, 2011, by Fred Hatt

On most of the drawings featured in this post I’ve remained fairly faithful to the actual background objects on the model’s platform, though I’ve often simplified them and altered the colors to please my own sense of composition and color harmony.

Kuan, 2011, by Fred Hatt

I’ll close with another dual-model pose.  These men are not related as were the mother and daughter seen in the other two-model drawing here, but they had a great rapport.  Both of them look like they belong in the 19th century!  The younger model is the same James seen in the fourth image in this post.

James & Tram, 2011, by Fred Hatt

All of these drawings are 18″ x 24″ or close to that size, aquarelle crayon on paper.  All were drawn at Spring Studio’s Monday morning long pose sessions.

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