There was a terrific exhibition of late pastels by Edgar Degas a few years ago at the National Gallery in London and Art Institute of Chicago called “Degas, beyond Impressionism” consisting mainly of images that the elderly French Impressionist had produced by tracing and re-combining seperate figure studies into new compostions. The traced drawings were mounted on millboard, originally white but now pleasantly yellowed with age to a warm honey colour and then worked over in pastel. There have been a number of blockbuster shows that have gone over Degas’ output with a thoroughness that would put Crime Scene CSI to shame. The catalogue for this particular show even has on page 126, of all things, a graph showing the changing patterns of Degas subject matter from 1880 up to 1900 as if you couldn’t just work it out from reading the text itself. Thankfully Degas in all the various media that he explored was/is a fascinating artist so all this attention is not wasted.
Tracing was frequently used to combine different preparatory studies together to make a single composition. Richard Kendell,the author goes on to say:
“Almost a thousand (Gustave) Moreau drawings on tracing paper survive, the earliest dating from the beginning of the 1850’s, the last linked to some of Moreau’s final and most elaborate compostions of the 1890’s. Significantly, a great flurry of traced studies from the Old Masters were dated by Moreau between 1857 and 1859, the years when he and Degas worked together in Florence and Rome, and the period of Degas’s first tracings in his notwbooks. Like Ingres, Moreau relied on the tracing process for many routine tasks, working in ink or pencil on mainly small sheets of paper that would sometimes be collaged together into larger rectangles, as in his Study of a nude for “Salome”. Such drawings remind us again of the essentially craft based nature of conventional tracing, as Moreau added rough patches of paper to his evolving compostions and casually included registration marks and splashes of ink on his design. In certain larger, grand format compositions on tracing paper, however, like the two-metre/wide Les Sources (Paris, Musee Gustave Moreau), Moreau came close to Degas’s later expansiveness and perhaps offered him a prototype for his mature output.”
Anyway “Degas, Beyond Impressionism” by Richard Kendell ISBN 1 85709 129 9 is out of print but there are copies available second hand by Amazon.
The Leighton House Museum website an online collection of work by the Victorian Painter Alfred Lord Leighton has some preparatory drawings on tracing paper that you can look at. You just need to run a search including the words “tracing paper”.
Hi Will, summers over and checking in again. Great posts and writing, interesting to see you’ve had some animation studio artists drop by, and great item on the Todays Nude program which we haven’t been able to watch here on the tundra and ice floes but which many of us have seen on YouTube. I was probably less critical because I was just grateful to see a whole television series devoted to drawing, and life drawing. But everything you’ve said rings true. Zeppelin sized windbag! I piddled myself laughing…and I love listening to Berger talk!
Thanks for the kind words Clive. Of course you’re right. It’s very rare for anybody to broadcast anything about drawing over here too. I do wonder how long it’ll be though, with You Tube, blogging and increasingly good quality affordable video cameras before we/people in general all just end up making art programmes that we/people actually want to see rather than the clumsy focus group driven market researched stuff that ends up on our screens. So there Channel 4
etc.
Hi Will, too right; it’s already starting to happen with YouTube etc. But even if the mainstream media is using clumsy focus groups, I think we might start to see more. Check out this link when you get a mo, and listen to Part 3 while you work away at something or other:
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2008/200805/20080502.html
Although it’s a Canadian program, I think it’s implications could apply to boomers anywhere in the developed world. One of the panelists, Barbara Moses has written a book called ‘Dish in which she explores female boomers. I suppose it’s the sort of book that marketers might be interested in, to understand the demographic they are targeting. The boomers are a huge target, even just the females. For her book, Moses interviewed 500 women and 90% saw themselves, as they slowed down retiring and semi retiring, getting involved in visual arts in some way or another! This fact doesn’t surprise me, (ok, I was a bit surprised at how high that figure is…) because I live in an area where people flock to retire and slow down, and her demographic are already roosting here and so there are possibly more artists per square kilometre than anywhere on earth. And of course, if they don’t take up woodworking, drinking beer on a couch in front of the telly, or riding a Harley, there are lots of older guys becoming artists too. As well, colleges and Universities are churning out more young ‘artists’ in a mad competition with each other for acolyte’s educational income. There is already talk of a cull. On the one hand, it’s fascinating and wonderful to see so many people engaged in the visual arts; on the other hand if you were starting out as visual artist, always a shaky proposition, it’s never been shakier, as the art market is absolutely flooded. A consolation is that, as a practising artist, you might find some income from offering workshops or instruction. I suppose it’s always been that way, but I would suspect more so now. Anyway, getting back to Todays Nude, it would seem to me that if those focus groups have any merit we might see lots more programs on art and even life drawing. It will be good for our little life drawing group here; maybe we can do two each week! We’re not instructed, by the way, it’s just an open drawing group, but we’re already able to get enough attendees on a drop-in, weekly, non committal basis to run all winter. This, in a village of 3000! Some people come from outside the village. Most of us are those same self-actualizing boomers Moses talks about.
One other quick thought; as well as programmes being made by we/people in general rather than television companies, there are also books being made by we/people in general rather than publishers. Have you checked out the Blurb product? As well as publishing images of great fidelity for the artist or photographer, if you instruct, you could now easily put together an instructional book based on your course that is illustrated and sums up the contents of your program for students. You can actually prepare for your workshop or course within the book publishing program and then push publish at the end. If you’ve done an OK job there is a good chance your students will buy a reasonably priced product at the end.
I’m almost old enough to remember the airship, so the world we live in now often amazes me.
Speaking of airships, I have become the prosaic equivalent of a Zeppelin sized windbag…
Say hi to Lisa. I just saw a beautiful portrait of Lisa, who as you know has done a fair bit of modelling, painted by a Karen Martin Sampson who lives just north of here.
Hi Clive. Apologies for not replying to your comment earlier. (The class starts back next week) I think you’re right to say that there is an interest, possibly a huge but dormant one in art of a figurative kind that isn’t being catered for. Just recently in Bristol we had an exhibition of work by Graffitti artist Banksy(who I’m assuming needs no introduction but google Banksy versus Bristol if you’re not sure.) and the queues were about four hours long, apparently about the same as there were for the Ufitzi in Florence. I had so many people in my classes asking what I thought about it and really I was so ambivalent I’m kind of glad now that it’s over that I don’t have to bother having an opinion about it any more On the one hand I actually quite enjoyed it, although admittedly this was more for the animated mannequins rather than the paintings although even the paintings were better than I thought they’d be. . On the other hand people seemed to be inflating him (there’s that description again!) into some kind of major talent out of all proportion to what he actually does. I felt like somebody carping on about Elvis in the 50s just because he’d taken a load of blues and hillbilly music and repackaged it for a mass audience. Even more annoyingly he donated a load of memorabilia to the Oxfam shop at the top of Park Street near the museum which they got something like £20,000 for so he’s a top man into the bargain and really almost impossible to criticise
I take your point about the number of artist’s coming out of art school and “flooding the market”. There was, however, a huge drop out rate when I graduated however of something like 90% of graduates giving up art alltogether after 1 year of leaving college and I would imagine it’s even worse now. The people I know who are artists now are all people who’ve taken it up relatively recently, after a series of evening classes for example and have a bit of a financial cushion behind them. Which seems to pretty much tally with what you were saying earlier. Lets hope they don’t have a cull though! I’d be a bit worried about young baby artist’s being clubbed to death by nasty men in big anoraks.
Very impressed by the turnout you get for your life class and in such a small village too.
Well, I’m impressed with Bristol; there seems to be a heck of a lot going on there, not least a visit by Banksy to donate to the Oxfam shop at the top of the street. And have an exhibit. Hmmm, all very interesting, thanks the long reply to my overly long reply and best for the coming term.
You too Clive!
Always interesting to discover the plethera of notes and jots of drawings an artist does may actually be considered their own pieces some day.
You know, I keep hanging onto mine for just that reason! Sadly I think I’m probably wasting my time but there you go. Thanks for the comment.