Simplicity in Art

It is thought-provoking for every artist to see Albrecht Durer's statement that "Simplicity is the greatest adornment of art". In some ways, it is a bit ironic for Durer was perfectly capable of making complex, crowded works of art, especially his woodcuts.

Nonetheless, the image that of course comes first to mind when I read his remark is his super-famous Hands of an Apostle, a grey and white drawing on his favourite blue paper (image courtesy of Graphische Sammlung Albertina). This drawing was done in preparation for the Frankfurt church altarpiece that Jakob Heller commissioned him to paint in 1508. This is indeed a devastatingly simple drawing in one sense, but look at the rendering of the skin texture, the way Durer conveys the gentle meeting and touching of the finger tips, as well as the effort of keeping the hands together, despite their weight. The blue paper used, "carta azzurra", was a new enthusiasm for Durer; he learned about it when he went in 1507-08 to Venice. Artists in Northern Italy had been using it since 1389, and Venetian artists favoured it because it allowed them to use wonderful chiaroscuro effects.



He was using this paper again for this study of the Twelve-year Old Christ, an extraordinary, sensitive and yet very straightforward drawing (image at right courtesy of the Graphische Sammlung Albertina).



Durer continued to use this paper and took a goodly supply of it back home to Northern Europe. I remember reading somewhere that when he ran out of it, he went to great lengths to find alternative blue papers. This drawing on the left (image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art) of the Arm of Eve was again, a very simple, powerful drawing Durer did on blue paper in 1507.

I think that it is a real discipline for each of us, as an artist, to try to simplify our work, to distill it to its essence, not to dilute and maybe obscure the message. There is always the temptation to add in more detail, more complexity... When you think of it, however, that a simple study, drawn 503 years ago on a small piece of blue paper, can remain so memorable, so vivid, so powerful is a total confirmation of Durer's statement about simplicity being the greatest "adornment of art".

Artists' Antennae

While listening to the BBC World Service on the radio today, I heard an interesting interview on The Strand programme with South African composer Kevin Volans. He was discussing the multiple influences on him and sources of inspiration for his compositions.

He made the remark that a musician needs to have his ears open at all times to all the sounds around him, because he is thus "fed" and inspired - I am paraphrasing. I thought it was the perfect reminder to me, as a visual artist, that artists' antennae should be up at all times, our eyes open and registering actively and our senses receptive to the world around. No one ever really knows what will stimulate some new creative idea.. that is perhaps what makes being an artist so endlessly interesting and exciting. Volans was talking of living in South Africa and listening to Zulu being spoken on the street all around him. When he went to Germany and heard German being spoken, it made him very aware of the differences in sound and in fact, drove home to him his links to Africa.

I relate to that statement, because I grew up with melodic Kiswahili being spoken all around me, and somehow those sounds still mingle with brilliant African light and tropical colour in my mind. Antennae, for artists, don't just register visually; rather, we all should be aware of sounds, light, colour, motion or stillness... the world around us in multi-dimensional form. Sharpening one's powers of observation always brings rewards, because whatever the artist is seeking to create comes across more powerfully and authentically when there is knowledge behind the creation.

Thinking about artists' antennae being up and registering actively makes me think of those wonderful examples of Albrecht Durer's work, the watercolour studies of humble aspects of nature that became great art because of Durer's keen attentiveness. Perhaps my favourite example of this is his Great Piece of Turf, on the right (image courtesy of the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna), done in watercolour and gouache on paper. How many artists, then - in 1503 - or now - would think of painting a small sample of the grasses in a field, let alone be so aware of the exquisite details in the turf? In the same way, Durer's awareness of the beauty and intricacy of this Muzzle of a Bull is amazing. (Image courtesy of The British Museum.)

Durer painted this study in watercolour in 1523, many years after he painted the turf, but he was still looking very carefully at nature. In fact, Albrecht Durer was so noted for his studies of plants and animals that in the years after his death in 1528, those were the aspects of his art that were most admired and emulated by fellow artists and subsequent generations of artists.

Perhaps part of being an artist, in any discipline, is to have one's eyes and ears really working. Certainly all the great artists confirm the need for these well-honed antennae.

A Manifesto for Drawing

I cannot resist reverting to the wonderful book, "The Hare with Amber Eyes" by Edmund de Waal. Not only was it a delight because of the story, the history of the Ephrussi family and the netsuke that now belong to the author, but because of the comments about art in general, and about drawing in particular.

Edmund de Waal's ancestor, Charles Ephrussi, who acquired the netsuke collection in Paris, was himself an author on Albrecht Durer's artwork and a noted art connoisseur.

Charles Ephrussi's expertise in drawings led him to write about the intimate dialogue that a viewer has with them. Viewing a drawing allows us to "catch the thought of the art in all its freshness, at the very moment of manifestation, with perhaps even more truth and sincerity than in the works that require arduous hours of labour, with the defiant patience of the genius."

(The image is the famed silverpoint drawing the 13 year old Durer did of himself in 1484... silverpoint is fiendishly obdurate in not allowing changes or erasures. This makes the drawing all the more amazing for this young artist to have achieved.)

As Edmund de Waal noted, this is a marvellous "manifesto for drawing. It celebrates the moment of apprehension (my emphasis) and the fugitive moment of response - a few traces of ink or a few strokes of the pencil." As a very successful artist (potter) himself, he knows of this almost visceral moment of launching oneself onto the blank page, making marks that are instinctive, questing... without any real knowledge of what the ultimate results will be.

Edmund de Waal continued with a very important observation about Charles Ephrussi's book about Durer. He talked about this study, written at a time when the Impressionists were launching their bold new way of seeing the world pictorially, as being Charles' way to remind people that art from different times can be mutually enriching. A Durer drawing could "talk" in a very meaningful fashion to a drawing done by Edgar Degas. How true that is! Artists are constantly in conscious or subconscious dialogue with others' work; we cannot happily operate in a vacuum for too long. That is why art museums, art books, galleries and exhibitions are vital fare for us all, but especially for anyone who is a practising artist.

A final insight Edmund de Waal gives us, courtesy of Charles Ephrussi, is about Gustave Moreau's painting. He cites him as describing Moreau's work as having "the tonalities of an ideal dream" and goes on to describe such a dream as being one where "you are held in a state of weightless reverie and lose the boundaries of your self." That is the magical state that each of us can experience when, for instance, you visit a museum and see works of art that take your breath away. Suddenly the world falls away, you are captured by a multiplicity of emotions and you stand in front of a painting or drawing, oblivious of anyone or anything else. In other words, a state of grace.... in my book. These are the moments that feed one as an artist, that allow art to transcend time and place and enrich us all.

In the same way, this book, "The Hare with Amber Eyes" is enriching. It is already on my list of gifts for friends.

Lines

Lines loom large in all our lives from a very young age. Who hasn't taken a pencil, a pen, even a lipstick, and made energetic, happy scribbles on all sorts of surfaces from early childhood? Those were our drawings, and they often won praise and encouragement.

Later, lines become the underpinning for paintings, the punctuation marks for long columns of additions in arithmetic or the scaffolding for musical notes on a score. So many uses and so many meanings... But for anyone interested in art, a line becomes more and more nuanced and meaningful. Not only does one learn to use line to express oneself in silverpoint, graphite, pen, paint, charcoal or any other medium, but you also see line much more clearly all around you. For me, the contour lines traced out in grassy strips between ploughed fields to prevent erosion on our farm were some of the earliest memories of line. Even an avenue of trees is two parallel lines that speak of time, order, shade, beauty and horticultural skill - another childhood fascination.


When I draw in silverpoint, lines can whisper or speak loudly, in a metaphorical sense. Just like the lines drawn in space by a violin bow as it moves across the instrument, softly, sensuously, vigourously or hesitantly. Or like the traces of an insect when it walks on a sandy surface. I drew this set of tracks on Sapelo Island, Georgia, in the sand dunes (Sand Dune Colony, Sapelo - silverpoint ). When one looks at lines drawn by Albrecht Durer (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer) in a silverpoint drawing, such as those in his 1520-21 Diary of A Journey to the Netherlands, they run the gamut of effect and message. As he records an amazing variety of people, places and things he sees during his trip north, the silverpoint lines show his questing eye, trying to understand the anatomy of a dog, the pattern of a tiled floor, the bone structure of a woman's face... Lines in a drawing can show how the artist's eye, brain, hand and paper surface are connecting together; that is why drawings are so often considered so immediate and fresh.

Frequently lines become like a golden orb spider's magnificent web, linking together in complex fashion to become a drawing, a painting, an architect's structure. Every time we start to work with lines, something unique evolves. A simple line, short, long, interrupted or continuous, can be an amazing creation.

The Real versus the Ideal

I have been reading about the Middle Ages to remind myself about aspects of this key transitional era in our Western history. One of the delights is to have small illustrations of contemporary illuminated manuscripts by artists such as Loyset Liédet of Bruges, who did many of the illustrations for Jean Froissart's Chronicles in the text prepared for Luis de Gruthuuse, a wealthy Flemish nobleman. In these miniatures, people are the most important part of the image, and the landscape behind is purely secondary and very idealised. For instance, the painting of the Battle of Poitiers 1356, shows an idyllic backdrop of blue mountains and peaceful scenery which contrasts sharply with the battle depicted in the foreground. The same treatment was meted out to landscapes in medieval wall paintings and tapestries; they were merely the background to human activity. Battles, religious events, societal changes were worth recording. Nature was not of much importance,

This state of affairs continued for many years, with artists paying some attention to landscapes and nature - think of Leonardo da Vinci's studies of dogs, horses, water flowing or landscapes in Tuscany... or Albrecht Dürer's studies of flowers, rabbits, countrysides. But in France, the landscape did not become an independent and valid subject for artists to paint and draw until the 1620s, when it became more of a specialised subject. Claude Lorrain was one of the pioneers in landscape painting, but his works were idealised and romantic to say the least. Interest in landscapes increased gradually until artists such as Jean-Baptiste Corot became a skilled interpreter of the landscape, even if he did do many "pot-boilers" to earn his living. By his time, landscape painting was being taught in the art academies in France, although it was a genre that was ranked pretty low on their "intellectual or moral content" scale. History painting and portraiture were still far more highly esteemed. Landscape painting, which did not require knowledge of anatomy, still had to be idealised really to win respect and admiration from connoisseurs and other artists.

Then came the radical change in France. Pierre Henri de Valenciennes worked hard within the Academy to establish a Prix de Rome for "historical landscapes", advocating that artists paint a "portrait" of a landscape. His publication, Eléments de perspective pratique à l'usage des artistes, (Elements of Practical Perspective for Artists, 1799-1800), was a key influence for artists painting landscapes for decades. By the 1830s, Charles-François Daubigny was painting outdoors in the Fontainbleau region, soon joined by others, like Millet, in the Barbizon School, while another group was forming on the coast near Le Hâvre, led by Eugène Boudin. Monet joined him as a student, and the rest, as they say, is history. Pisarro, Sisley, Renoir, Van Gogh, Cézanne and even Degas on occasions - they all worked outdoors. Edouard Manet tried his hand too at plein air when he painted a small work, "Effect of Snow at Petit-Montrouge", in 1870, when he was on guard during the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War.

These artists had all completely altered the concept and quest for beautiful painted landscapes. No longer was anything idealised. Instead the 19th century French artists, and especially those who became known as the Impressionists, turned their energies and their passion towards portraying the landscape as real, as they saw it, experienced it firsthand and interpreted it. They showed not only nature's beauties but also its intricacies and vagaries. Nature had been transformed and placed centre stage, no longer subservient to any human presence in the work of art. A huge change from the careful, tiny depictions of background idealised landscapes of medieval times....

Art as diary

Picasso - amongst all the other interesting things he said - remarked that, "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." He was so right.

I have kept many drawing books, usually small so that they can be slipped into a bag as I travel, and I was going through some of them recently. As I leafed through the pages, memories came flooding back. No matter how quickly I did a drawing or painting, it still has the power to evoke. The place, of course, but the sounds, the scents, the other events surrounding my doing the art - all are connected to the art-making. I am not sure that had I only kept a written diary, I would have such vivid memories of all those trips I have made. Yes, I do keep a written journal, but I tend to record other types of things, such as names, people, events...

I think that art-making is always a record of where the artist is in terms of life and experience. Viewers may not always understand the art from the "diary" point of view, but the artist can always remember. Historically, there have been some wonderful diaries left by artists.

Two very famous ones are from Renaissance times. Albrecht Durer's 1521 diary of his trip to the Netherlands was a series of astonishing silverpoint drawings of places, people, sights that he experienced. He had kept other diaries before this one, but executing the drawings in unforgiving silverpoint is stellar work. Paper was still a precious commodity so Durer used the pages on both sides and crammed things into them.



The image reproduced was apparently done when Durer visited Brussels and went to the Coudenberg Place zoological gardens. He also drew lions there and was generally fascinated by the animals. He went to this zoo in 1520 on his way to the Netherlands, and then did these drawings when he returned in 1521, on his way home.

Another very famous diary-keeper was Leonardo da Vinci. He kept notebooks in which he drew out ideas, made notes and calculations, basically evolving as an artist. This image is courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of Leonardo's small, intense diaries, full of genius calculations, thoughts and observations.


This is a page from the Codice Atlantico, a wonderful collection of pages of Leonardo's thoughts and observations, with 1750 drawings on 1119 pages, dating from 1478 to 1518. The Codice belongs to the Ambrosiana Library in Milan and constitutes one of the most amazing diaries an artist has ever kept.

Another artist, much nearer our times, who famously kept a diary was Frida Kahlo. In effect, most of the art she produced was about herself, a form of journaling. Nonetheless she formally kept a dairy too about her Mexican world.

These are pages from her journals. They are eloquent testimony to her spirit and creativity.

Today's artists don't just confiine themselves to diary-keeping on paper - video and photography are other means to record life. Nonetheless, a small spiral or moleskin journal slips easily into a pocket and goes everywhere with you as you navigate life as an artist. Try following Picasso's advice!