Why I’m So Opinionated About Art

Recently I was taken to task (a bit) here on Ricochet for offering criticism of the work of the recently deceased David Hockney presented in TBA’s recent post. Just as with most everything we encounter, some works of art impress us, or confound us, or challenge us, and other works…well, not so much – whether we’re discussing movies, novels, paintings, TV shows, specific actors, what have you. Sometimes it’s a matter of taste.

Often for me it’s a preference and whether I find an image or a work of art fascinating or so dramatic that I just want to examine it and study it closely and return to it from time to time – just as there are a few films that I enjoy watching several times for the nuances of the direction, the writing, or the performances.

Probably a prime example of what I'm talking about is the painting "Breaking Home Ties" by Norman Rockwell. This is as rich and profound and beautifully painted an image as anything by the Renaissance masters. And it's uniquely American in its subject matter. With this one image, Rockwell seems to convey the shifting of America's more rural, farm and ranch-centric character of the 1930s and 40s to something more urban and urbane. He achieves this in the costuming of the two characters. The son's eager expression, looking down the train tracks for the train that will take him to college, presumably in a big city. The downward slouch of his father, a bit forlorn and clinging to both his cowboy hat and his son's hat. There is a quiet and subdued pathos in Rockwell's painting - the choice of color, the dog's sad face. And yet there are no phony, overly dramatic gestures that one would have encountered during the Romantic period of painting, particularly as exemplified by the paintings of Jacques Louis David, Gericault, and others in France in the early-to-mid 19th Century. As a chronicler of America and the transitions America went through, Rockwell wasn't merely an illustrator but an artist whose work is as important to study as the films of Frank Capra or John Ford. As an artist who knew how to pose his subjects, how to capture their expressions and emotions, Rockwell's works are as important to study as any of the paintings of any of the masters of the Renaissance, the Romantic period, the Impressionists and definitely (or perhaps) more worthy of studying than any of the surrealists or abstract expressionists. If you want to understand the American character and the American ethos, you would be well advised to study the work of Rockwell. On a side note, I was given the massive Abrams-published book of Norman Rockwell's work by my parents when I was just starting high school (if memory serves). My parents also encouraged me to develop my talent, even as years later I struggled with fine art and shifted my artistic inclinations to graphic design and then marketing.

Another important consideration for my attraction to a given work of art is noting whether the given artist’s technique is clearly masterful and unique. Take John Singer Sargent, for example. His technique in painting portraiture, anatomy, hands, faces, the texture of clothing, the texture of upholstery, to this day is unequaled. And his watercolor works are pretty darn amazing as well.

So, do I prefer traditional paintings of landscapes, still-life images, or portraiture? For the most part, yes, yes, I do. So, shoot me.

But in my defense, it’s not as though I haven’t immersed myself in the history of art, the great artists, and the great works. I was an active and sought-after cartoonist and illustrator in high school. I took painting and sculpture classes in college in San Jose, and occasionally skipped some of my more boring and tedious required classes to drive up to San Francisco to spend the afternoons haunting the galleries of the DeYoung Museum and the Palace of the Legion of Honor, where I had a membership. If you’ve seen Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the Palace of the Legion of Honor is where Scotty finds “Madeline.” I know that particular gallery shown in the film quite well, and all the other galleries in the museum and the paintings that hang there. Among other great art in the Legion of Honor, there’s a rather small painting of a solitary tree by Van Gogh that will knock your socks off with intense color and thick texture that looks still wet as though it had just been painted yesterday.

I took classes on Italian Renaissance, art history from cave paintings to modern art. I have a fairly extensive library of art books that I’ve pored over that cover the works of Leonardo, Raphael, Bonnard, Gustave Dore, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Courbet, Fragonard, Vermeer, Bouguereau, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Turner, Monet, Manet, Seurat, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Eakins, Andrew Wyeth, and more. As well as several books on some of the great illustrators of the late 19^th and early 20^th century – Heinrich Kley, M.C. Escher, Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, Maxfield Parrish; as well as more recent illustrators – Syd Mead (who created the look for Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” and who I chatted with for a few minutes while he autographed his book for me), and James Gurney who illustrated the Dinotopia books, Barry Moser, Chris Van Allsburg, Drew Struzan (who I wrote about here on Ricochet), Frank Frazetta, and cartoonists – Maurice Sendak, Winsor McKay, Hergé (the creator of Tintin)…and numerous books on Disney animation.

My painting teacher in college was a pop art surrealist who fixated on painting images of bananas. He was a dynamic and excitable personality, and although I wasn’t a fan of his work, he taught me a few things. In his class, we bought our own stretcher bars and canvas rather than purchasing cheap, ready-to-paint canvases from the nearest art supply store. There were three of us in his class who actually were accomplished draftsmen and painters. The rest well…

A couple of years later, I took a life drawing class from a very accomplished artist. He would occasionally draw along with us. I still have one of the drawings that I purchased from him for a small fee. One of my design teachers was a fairly well-known modern sculptor named Fletcher Benton who had installations in several major cities. One of my other teachers and head of the graphic design department, Sam Smidt, was a very successful graphic designer in Palo Alto.

When I left college, I ventured into graphic design and writing copy. It was very rare when did an illustration, but I did hire illustrators from time to time when I was a creative director and ran my own agency. After about three years working at UCLA as a marketing manager, I was lured away to become a creative director for a small ad agency in West Los Angeles before opening my own boutique agency with a partner in Newport Beach. After five years and during a fairly dismal recession, I split ways with my partner and ran the marketing efforts for several consumer technology companies, eventually also taking on the role of director of product development for five of those companies.

I should say that I do like the landscape paintings of the late Richard Diebenkorn (below) and the hyper-realistic sculptures of the late Duane Hanson. I had the pleasure of examining Hanson's sculptures up close at the Portland Art Museum and was taken aback by their utter realism, feeling that at any moment they would come alive and move. Amazing craftsmanship.

At the moment, the artwork (and occasional photos) on the walls of my home tend to be mine, with a few exceptions. If you're curious about my own work, you can find it here and here.

Of course, as members of Ricochet clearly know, I’m opinionated about a good many things, not just about art. I was raised in a household with two older brothers, a father who was a Fulbright scholar and philosophy major who studied international politics, a mom who was a trained classical pianist and an avid reader – where the discussions around the dinner table (when families used to eat together) were often quite lively and intense. This was also during the Vietnam War and the turmoil playing out on college campuses, the emergence of the “counter culture,” rock music, hippies, Watergate, and on and on. Suffice to say that I wasn’t inclined to be silent and learned to engage and find fault in arguments from time to time. As a result, I look at most everything with a critical eye. And for better or worse, I’m not shy about speaking my mind.