247 by Anwar M. Shaikh on 12/02/01 at 1:16 AM
Re: compositions

In Reply to: Re: compositions posted by an old fat man on 11/07/01 at 9:12 PM:

: Hi Inje, hey good question it will get people to know each other here! Im Anwar Im a recent college grad (B.F.A). Anywho Im tortured because i am stuck between my love for traditional still life painting and the newer POP grounded collage as a basis for a painting. Its really tearing me apart! Totally delaying my progress but I cant help it. I love Realist Still Life such as perhaps Chardin or more recent ones suuch as Morandi or Luciano. Oh I just melt mentioning the names! Basically it is still life painting from direct observation and the result is illusionistically realist. On the other hand Collage based paintings incorperating contemporary visual experiences such as photographs magizine pictures and consumer products is fresh and potentially optimistic in a uniquely contemporary way .....Oh man Im stuck but thats where Im at. Hey any one else come on join in!! : hi everyone,
rather than HOW you paint, i'm just wondering WHAT you paint. where do you get your composition ideas from. do you use live models/photos/drawings? do you paint figurative (ie, people). i assume most of us here would? are you imaginative/abstracted or more realistic?

just curious....

anwar, good to see that you like to discuss art and look for reactions from others. never had a formal art class, however,have been studying with a grand master for the last 6 years( i do have three degrees one b.s.and two masters only taught me how to research and study). a grand master you ask? the man was andrew mellons personal copyist in 1938. he had his own studio at the antional gallery and at the national portrait gallery. copied renoir' the party boat three times in full size. the first two times in mrs. phillips own studio on the top floor of the mansion. his copies hang at the u.s. embassey in london, mount vernon, monticello, and other locations that you would say i'm lieing about. 32 supreme court justices portraits, 3 portraits of sec. treasury from engravings, and many more all over the world. all the paintings at the truman muesum, at the willard hotel in wash. so when you ask a question and i respond its from his experience not mine that i give you an answer. you stated that katy shouldn't reinvent the wheel, so why are you. composition is fairly straight forward. many of the old masters have worked out composition problems. look at the work you like and compose your own based on theirs. they didn't have the benefit of the mediums we have today but used everything that they did have. why would you hesitate to expeiment with collage and tradional oil painting? tron paper color only for and underpainting see if your theroy holds up. don'y know what school you when to but it seems that your instruction was rather stiff. good realistic art is an abstract that nonbelievers can't see.

Hey dave, Inje,

Dave it seems odd to me that you are being taught by a "Master" of portraiture in the traditional manner who is also a copyist of Impressionist works and seem not to be familiar to the classic approach. Of underpainting in warm grey tones in a strict succession of strategic layers of fatter and brighter paint mixtures. This is basic to the oil approach, its no theory, its the approuch passed down from VanDyck from Rubens from the Venetians from Van Eyck. Of course there were (small) innovations along the way but they had reasons for them. There are other reasonably sound ways to proceed but no more solid. I personally do not think that painting is about innovation of technique. Perhaps we here in the west appreciate innovation but it does not make for a good painting perse. May I take this opportunity to remind you that when we sell paintings to patrons for thousands of dollars we must insure them that the product will survive long after our or thier demise. Permanence is required for a fine art form as a minimum. If not for permanence than what...? As for my dilemma between a collage style of painting and straight still life it has to do with marketability. I am not certain which will earn a more secure living. It takes more than a year of dedicated and focused effort to raise a world class portfolio. This would not be possible if I were to incubate back into my early experimental phase of development. On the one hand everyone and thier grandma likes my realist paintings but they can only afford a few hundred per painting and I cant live on that! Not in the city! But the collage style stuff the rich like...they appreciate Art in a way the street person cant afford. So its deeper than reluctance to experiment. Its kinda like turning my back on my own folks. I experimented emulating every historical style I felt attracted to while in Art school thats kids stuff. Briefly but yes. Now I am a semi-pro trying to balance Avant Garde concerns with my taught appreciation of academic realism with full knowledge and ability of producing world class examples of both. On the one hand I am from the middle class and have middle class values. On the other hand it costs the gallery owners five to twenty thousand dollars a month to rent thier space and they dont even think of it as alot of money. So in order to have a prayor a painter must cater to the taste of the rich or he is lost. It seems like in Art that a painter must get rich or die! I dont have a problem with catering to the rich but it doesnt satisfy me as much. Those people are kinda boring. They are all taller than me and keep thier chins in the air and older and really appreciate themselves and it seems like they do drugs because how else could someone stay in a state of euphoria for an entire evening? As for " an abstract nonbelivers cant see" I claim blindness. !!!!!!!!THANKS!!!!!!!!
Oh my I am wordy today...Actually I dont know what your talking about..and thats O.K.

: anwar: glade to see that you're not mad just confused and boy i thought that i was wordy. i am not sure who you are trying to convince that what you are doing is what you want to do, but thats ok. i don't chicken out so easy. i'll stick around till you can get it together. money is nice, but i think you underestimate the rich or maybe the rich you think you need to further you career aren't really the ones that you need to impress. the movie field of dreams is a good metafore for what you are saying. paint it and paint it well and they will come to buy. good art always sells so does bad art. its the art that you want to be known for that counts. as for theory and concept i'll save the arguments for later. as for my lame analogoy i think you may understand it more than you think. oh by the way glade to see that you really did read what i said pissed you off didn't it. talk to me some more about that collage thing! take care be safe in the city.

Davo, Anwar here. Thanks for your concerns. No thanks to pissing me off just because. Hahaha.! ....I think I agree "paint and they shall come". Ah, _#_$ maybe they wont! There is no way to tell. It sounds like what the powerful used to tell the peasants in fuedal period europe "work hard your reward is in heaven". Im thinking each painting has to sell for 3,000 each and I gotta produce 1 a week in order to survive. I mean the gallery gets 1/2 the frame shop gets 1/3 what does that leave me? Im not going to give my stuff away. Geez its hard enough to arrange for that to happen! Now that I think about it I could give away my stuff in a day or two(he said with pride). Oh by the way I was not trying to convince anyone of anything. I was just expressing my dilema. Im still stuck. on the one hand collage has in it the very sensability it takes to experience the contemporary goings on, on the other Im damn good at ordinary realist painting. One might say follow your heart (do you hear angels?) another might say make dollars now sense later (yuck?). Its like the chicken or the egg problem. Money or Love what came first? Maybe money came first I mean the human being is a material thing is it not. Well this is silly and I never wanted to go here anyway.....

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