Click on the Picture or HERE for a fascinating talk about the history and technique of Bouguereau's 1873 masterpiece, Nymphs and Satyr, which was on display at the MET, but sadly is no longer.
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I'm nearing completion on the 6th of a series of reductions and the thought crosses my mind of the musical quality of creating reductions. Reductions are smaller scale versions of a painting, usually at a reduced rate. The difficulty of them is that they can't contain any errors or, in other words, the composition must be able to be reproduced deliberately. It's intriguing to attempt reductions because the painting becomes almost akin to a piece of music. While it is impossible to copy an exact version, the general picture should be an artistic copy of the original. It's just like playing a piece of music the same exact way twice. The guide that I do have are my sketches. All my sketches are the sheet music and they tell me what colors and where to place them. It helps to have the original painting in front of you for reductions, but the sketches can suffice if you don't have the original. The fun of reductions and the difficulty is that it's like a calculated test of skill. Everything must be thought out beforehand. When I see paintings, I always ask myself, "Would this artist be able to reproduce this picture?" Because, in asking this question, it becomes clear what was an accident and what was thought out before setting brush to canvas. The Road is easily my favorite book that I've read this year and I wanted to share a scene from the book that pertains to all artistic realms. If you haven't read it, it's about a father and son walking along a road in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. They're destination in the coast and refuge. A lot of people said it was a depressing book before I read it; but, after reading it, I thought it wasn't only depressing, it's designed to make you feel every emotion. The first half of the book is very real and made me feel the real state of the Father and Son on the road, but at a certain point there's a shift and the story becomes almost like a fairy-tale. And I say fairy-tale with the original idea of a fairy-tale being a dark and depressing story meant to teach a moral lesson. This transformation happens when they meet an old man on the road who is very mysterious and doesn't even give them his real name. He's described as about 90 years old, 100 lbs, and very frail. Of course, I was thinking, "How is this old guy not dead yet in this world," a thought shared by the Father. The old man explains that he doesn't even really know how he's alive. The beauty of their interaction is what I think the point of fiction and all art is. It's to provide moments that make you think without questioning: a suspension of disbelief. The world becomes a place where a mysterious old man can walk forever down the road. The Boy encourages the Father to give the old man some food and then they part ways and the old man disappears on the road. As the reader, he'll always be walking down the road and that's the power of story-telling. When I look at painting that moves me or I watch a Miyazaki movies, it spins me into a world where incredible things can happen without disturbance. It becomes a window into that world that the author, painter, or film-maker molds builds. The artist is the world builder. |
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