Painting

The Grand Canal: Thursday

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The Grand Canal is one of the principal routes through Venice, one of the widest “streets” in the city. The City of Venice is an archipelago in the Venetian lagoon, composed of over 100 islands separated by “canals”. [In English, a canal is an artificial waterway, but in Italian, canali (usually translated as canals in English) really mean channels.] The Grand Canal is (not surprisingly) a very popular subject for visual art. Many of the most familiar pictures are by Canaletto, whose work we’ve looked at before. Canaletto was really named Giuseppe Antonio Canal or Canali, and his father Bernard Canal was also a painter. Our painter’s use-name, Canaletto, was a nickname applied when he a child–meaning “little Canal”.

Canaletto painted a series of 14 different views of the Grand Canal on commission for a patron, Joseph Smith (not the Mormon founder). Today’s painting is perhaps the best known of the 14. It shows the Entrance to the Grand Canal, near the Santa Maria della Salute Church, at the seaward end of the canal where it discharges into the lagoon. The canal is busy with boats–not only gondolas, but a variety of more utlitarian types. Like all of Canaletto’s paintings, it is incredibly detailed and so crisp. I find such pleasure in looking at his paintings–I almost feel like I’m wallowing in the gorgeous colors and the sharp contours.

The Entrance to the Grand Canal (Oil on canvas, c. 1730)

A successful cricket & the Japanese art of ink wash painting: week 10, day 4 (Tuesday)

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A month or so ago, I posted a Japanese ink brush painting by Sesshu, one of the earliest Japanese masters of sumi-e (Ink brush painting). Ink brush painting (also known as ink wash painting) originated in China and was adopted and adapted by the Japanese. The ink is made of particles of soot suspended in water. Colors are used in a pretty restrained manner–many paintings are only shades of gray, produced by diluting the ink to various degrees with water. Chinese ink paintings tend to be more complex, containing more brush strokes, and color is used a bit less. Japanese ink paintings tend to emphasize simplicity of form, with fewer brush strokes. Sometimes, watercolors are used to add color into ink paintings.

Years ago, I stumbled upon the work of a local artist who has studied ink brush painting quite extensively, in Japan and China. She’s an amazingly impressive person, holding a PhD from BU, and continuing to teach, consult and paint. Her scholarly field is interdisciplinary, and my best attempt to describe it would be a crossover between cultural studies, design, and urban planning (If that’s not accurate, it’s on me.) I’ve only seen her paintings online, but they are absolutely spectacular. I urge you to look at her paintings and I hope myself to be able to see some of them in person someday.

I selected one today that hews to the Japanese style of relatively few brush strokes, and is enhanced with simple watercolor. The subject is a cricket, a symbol of success and fertility. The painting conveys a lot of feeling with few brush strokes, white and a narrow range of grays, with a blue wash for the sky.

Linda Ruth Salter, sumi-e, undated

I succumbed to another social justice print (and this one IS visually striking): week 10, day 2 (Sunday)

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I have chosen prints with social justice themes or messages a few times. Once, I picked something that I did not find visually interesting/stimulating, and regretted it., even though the message was compelling. As a result, I am making sure now not to allow my enthusiasm for the theme override my judgement about the visual impact of the artwork.

I’ve shown a print by Charles White before. The portrayal of the two people in that print is so detailed, and conveys so much. I really love his work, especially his faces.

Today’s mixed media piece portrays a somewhat less realistic face, but striking and appropriate to the social justice theme of the piece. People more knowledgeable than me murmur about cubism and Picasso-like influence. Please tell me what you think.

Headlines (Ink, gouache, and newspaper, 1944)

Grafton Tyler Brown and the American West: week 7, day 7 (Friday)

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Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918) had a fascinating life. He was the first African-American professional artist known in California. He had a varied career, working as a mapmaker, a commercial artist with his own business, a draftsman for US Army Corps of Engineers, and at times when his finances permitted, he devoted himself to fine arts. He was both a printmaker and a painter. He has done numerous absolutely gorgeous paintings of the American West, Pacific Northwest, and even into Canada (having lived in Victoria, BC for a while). Most of his paintings are landscapes, a large number of which involve water.

Today I have chosen a lovely look down the Columbia RIver (which divides Washington from Oregon) at Mitchell Point on the Oregon side, east of Portland near Mount Hood.

Mitchell Point looking down the Columbia River (oil painting, 1887)

Magic realism/surrealism–Rob Gonsalves, Escher’s “artistic descendent”: week 7

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Escher (early 20th century) is perhaps the currently best known artist for creating “impossible art”–realistic appearing scenes which involved internal inconsistencies that render them impossible in reality. Another frequent element in Escher’s work involves repeating patterns with a gradient of gradual transformation from one end of the work to the other. Rob Gonsalves (1959-2017) was a Canadian painter Acrylics and oils) who created many visually appealing impossible scenes, mostly in a particular style involving gradient perspectives which make him feel like Escher’s artistic/spiritual successor. There’s no doubt that Gonsalves’ style was heavily influenced by Escher as well as surrealists like Magritte and others.

I’m not interested in parsing definitions–Gonsalves’ work has been labeled magic realism or surrealism–so much as appreciating and enjoying his artwork. Like Escher, most of his works can be categorized into a small number of basic patterns, and within categories the intellectual side of the paintings can actually become boring after looking at a number of them. Within categories, however, the expression of these clever impossibilities varies a great deal, and even within one category there can be several different pictures that I love them.

This is all very abstract and if you haven’t seen his work, it’s probably nothing more than gobbledegook, so I encourage you to look at online collections of his work such as I link to above. As with so many of these artists I love, choosing only one picture to show is difficult , but I will undoubtedly come back to him from time to time. Here’s today’s picture:

Still Waters (1994, acrylic on canvas)

Canaletto–two views of the Grand Canal at Santa Maria della Carita: week 6, day 6 (Thursday)

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Caneletto (1697-1768) was prolific, producing many paintings of important places (especially his native Venice), as well as numerous drawings and some etchings. His paintings are incredibly detailed, technically superb, and in many cases absolutely beautiful. I showed one of his oil paintings a few weeks ago. The subject of that painting was the Grand Canal–one of the largest and most famous of Venice’s waterways, and one which he consequently painted many times in many variations– from different angles, at different times of day, and so on.

Today I am displaying two paintings of the same portion of the grand canal, at the church of Santa Maria della Carita, painted from almost the same angle. The first–entitled “Grand Canal from the Santa Maria della Carita to the Bacino San Marco”–was painted during full daylight on a pretty sunny day. There are a few shadows, painted carefully, feeling very accurate. It’s a pretty cheery scene–tourist photo or picture postcard style.

Now compare this to “The Grand Canal near Santa Maria della Carita” (very similar titles).

An overcast day, nearing sundown perhaps? The shadows here convey a vague sense of menace or sadness. It’s not just the shadows falling on the church itself (foreground right)–it’s also those on the buildings on the left bank of the canal, and the color and texture of the sky. It’s remarkable how much enjoyment I derive from looking at multiple pictures of the same scene–the pictorial equivalent of the musical variations on a theme.

Another digression from prints–East Asian ink brush painting: week 6, Tuesday (day 4)

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Long before my current fascination with prints began, I was enamored of Japanese ink brush painting (sumi-e), in a sort of desultory kind of way. I didn’t give it the same enthusiasm or intensity with which I have been lately learning about print art. One of the Japanese prints I was looking at over the weekend reminded me about ink brush painting, and I plunged into a frenzy of research, just as I have been doing with prints. Ink brush painting (also known as ink wash painting) seems to have started in China in the 7th century of the common era, and after becoming a major Chinese art form, was brought to Japan in the 14th century by Zen Buddhist monks from China. (It subsequently spread to Korea, though it never achieved the popularity there it had in China and Japan.) In China, this mode of painting was particularly associated with the intellectual upper class from whom government officials were drawn. Among this group, calligraphy and painting were almost an expectation and these artistic skills were part of how their class was distinguished from lower strata. Often, a picture had a large chunk of text calligraphed on it, and this might be a poem based on the picture, or the picture might have been inspired by the poem.

The painting technique was essentially an adaptation of Chinese calligraphy, using the same brushes and water-based ink. It is most often done in monochrome, typically black ink on white paper or on silk scrolls, though color is not unheard of (and is in fact present in today’s example). Shades of gray are created based on the degree of dilution of the ink. Unlike watercolors, once the ink is applied it is permanent and cannot be blended or moved around, which clearly influences the technique.

The commonest subject by far for ink brush paintings was landscapes, which you may have already noticed I love. Today’s painting is by Sesshu Toyo, a 15th century first-generation Japanese ink brush painter (i.e. his teacher was a Chinese artist who taught in Japan). Unlike the prints of Stow Wengenroth, the landscape is more abstract, though still very detailed. These landscapes, similar to the best print landscapes, draw me in and make me feel as if I’m in the pictured place.

As you can see, the scroll is very tall, with a significant amount of calligraphed text at the top, and then a large blank space between the text and the painting. In order to allow you to see the painting portion, I have cropped the picture below and displayed it at a larger size.

Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto): Week 3/Day 6

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You may have noticed that I have a penchant for prints that show a lot of detail. I recently ran across an oil painting with that same quality of knock-me-over-with-a-feather detail that I love in prints, which is what I am sharing with you today. Canaletto (the “use name” of Giovannai Antonio Canal) was a Venetian painter of the early to mid 18th century who was famed for his detailed and precise paintings of places. (You may also have noticed that I tend to enjoy landscapes more than portraits or still lifes.) His style has been described as “almost topographical”. He painted views of some places from many different vantage points, and is also known for painting capricci, or fantasies, of imaginary places, or imaginary juxtapositions of existing places or buildings. Here is today’s beautiful picture.

The Grand Canal, Venice, Looking Southeast, with the Campo della Carità to the Right, by Canaletto