Robert Genn runs an interesting blog called “The Painter’s Keys”. This week he wrote an article about Claude Lévi-Strauss and his theories on individuality in art The artifacts of our cultures. It was Lévi-Strauss’s contention that originality is only a requirement of recent Western culture. In other societies (not just “primitive” ones) the role of the artist has been to study the forms and styles of the past masters and reproduce them as closely as possible. Innovation is something that merely evolves over time and is often accidental. Our current obsession with originality is quite new and is not actually considered necessary in all art forms. Musicians still seem to consider it quite all right to spend their lives studying and performing the creations of others and even amongst composers and popular song-writers it is OK, in fact expected, to borrow styles from the past.

Mr. Genn says:

Now something about us. If we enter our studios with the idea that we are simply going to dip once more into the pot, our little egos may just float off into Neverland. Work might become the simple honouring of past myths and current genres. While that thought may be upsetting for some, this approach kind of makes you feel good. It may even promote a new freedom of expression, and unburden the artist from a stifling egocentricity. Taking part in a great and noble tradition, we might take the pressure off.

Thank you Jonathan Jones, I couldn’t have said it better. Not that I am claiming my scribblings to be “Art”. I have long maintained that I am merely a painter, not an “Artist” and I would rather be compared to a good illustrator or graphic artist than someone who claims to make “Art”.

I have written about this sort of thing before, I have spent my life fighting against the idea of there being any kind of meaning in my paintings. I was steered away from a career in art by a high school teacher who felt that my ability to draw was of no account because my paintings didn’t “say” anything.

I also find it rather sad that so many Canadians don’t bother to change the default US dictionary when they install software programs. A whole generation is growing up assuming that the only correct way to spell colour is “color”, centre is “center” and honour is “honor”.

I suppose that distinctive Canadian spelling may have reached the end of its usefulness, but there will always be a need to distinguish between pictures and pitchers. On Halloween it’s a good idea, when looking at two small crones, to know which witch is yours even when they’re the same size and their costumes are similar too.

Secret Knowledge

Contrary to the accusations of his opponents he doesn’t suggest that all, or even most, artists were copying projected images. These critics hotly deny that the “Old Masters” would have needed any assistance and were more than capable of drawing realistically without optical aids but I don’t think that is his point. Although it is in fact perfectly possible (though darned difficult) to create photo-realistic images by eye alone, nobody actually did so until the Dutch introduced a startlingly different style of painting, quite suddenly, in the early 15th century.

Starting with van Eyck, the style of rendering, especially the human figure, but also still life, changed within a remarkably short span of years. It wouldn’t have been necessary for all artists to be using lenses and mirrors as artists have always learned by copying their masters. When the masters learned by copying a two dimensional projected image, a whole new style of drawing was born and this style would have been copied by those who came after.

His thesis fascinates me despite the fact that it is often dismissed as a crackpot theory and he is in fact vilified by some of his detractors. It is obviously a very emotional issue for some people who find it necessary to make highly personal attacks on Mr. Hockney in order to refute his theories. Actually I got the impression that some of his critics had not in fact read the book, or only skimmed it very superficially. This is unfortunate because it isn’t actually very long. I have always been attracted to controversial theories and I think that Mr. Hockney makes some excellent points. This book is definitely worth a read and it is so lushly illustrated that I felt the need to add it to my collection.

Who says you can’t grow paperwhites outside in Ontario? They look like paperwhites, they smell like paperwhites, I think they are paperwhites. I must have planted them by accident last year, there were a bunch of left-over bulbs in the shed that I thought I might as well throw in somewhere, and look what I got.