more cubist action

here’s my sketch of picasso’s trois femmes or three women 1907/08

fascinating to see how cubism evolved… the beginning of le mademoiselle de avignon?

a lil less conversation, lil more action pls

recent drawings - of picasso’s early paintings, the saltimbanques and his blue period, (studies of the poor and the desperate)… i really really love his etching, the frugal repast, drawing it made me see that this wasn’t only abt desperation, but also playful resignation and intimacy.

from the top:

two saltimbanques 1907                           

the frugal repast 1904

the visit 1904  

celestine or woman with a cast 1904

why is the sky blue?

from a bk The Beginner’s Guide to Colour Psychology (Angela Wright) a bit more abt colours – basic terms

1. hue – the attribute of colour which enables an observer to classify it as red, blue etc (collins dict)
2. tint – a hue with white added
3. shade – a hue with black added
4. tone – a hue with grey added
5. value – the lightness or darkness of a colour – light colours are ‘high in value and dark colours ‘low in value’
6. chroma – the presence of colour
7. chromatic intensity/saturation – percentage of colour present
8. monochromatic – containing shades, tones and tints of only one colour
9. achromatic – containing no colour – i.e. black, white or pure grey
10. complementary colours – colours opposite each other on the colour wheel

the complementary colours are:

• red and green (blue + yellow)
• blue and orange (red + yellow)
• yellow and violet (blue + red)

other interesting facts:

there are rod receptors in our eye that enables us to see colour.  apparently goethe did experiments that proved that when we look into darkness, the first colour to appear will be blue, and when we look towards sunlight, the first colour to appear is yellow.  our peripheral vision/night vision is most sensitive to blue, looking towards light, the first colour we see is yellow.  hence our perceptions of sunlight as yellow and the sky as blue.  therefore, the primary colours are really white, black, yellow and blue. 

so we can answer the question, ‘why is the sky blue?’… it’s not blue, our rod receptors register it as blue… duh.

yellow cow/franz marc

art lessons – forgot to add that i’ve also applied a first layer of paint to ‘yellow cow’ today!  here it is (to compare with the original, check category yellow cow)

technically, what i learned today:

• should have applied a foundation layer of paint… think it would have made the colours look richer… as it is, the colours look too ‘light’, the cow looks as if it can be blown away by the wind… noticed this with the previous lempicka… oh well, will apply at least 1-2 more layers of paint next few weeks.
• SE used her fingers (five!) to add shadows and movement to the painting.  she showed me which side of the finger to use for straight lines and round shapes.  also, she mentioned that cos of the angles, we can use all 10 fingers! if we want.  heh.  what abt toes? 
• i think i’m going through some long overdue cubist obsession now.  the previous lempicka was definitely cubist, so is this.  all my classmates are painting landscapes, but i’m fixated, stuck in the late 20th century.  also, i just fell in love with the colours of ‘yellow cow’… apparently, franz marc believed that colours had a spiritual value… i wasn’t surprised to learn that he formed a collective with kandinsky (another one of my fav artists!) and he also admired matisse’s works, both renowned colourists.  kandinsky wrote a famous article on the spiritual value of colours too. 

a lil more abt franz marc the original painter of yellow cow -

this is copied from the guggenheim museum’s website.  interesting chap, crazy abt animals.  but boy, can be paint! 

b. 1880, Munich; d. 1916, Verdun Franz Marc was born February 8, 1880, in Munich. The son of a landscape painter, he decided to become an artist after a year of military service interrupted his plans to study philology. From 1900 to 1902, he studied at the Kunstakademie in Munich with Gabriel Hackl and Wilhelm von Diez. The following year during a visit to France, he was introduced to Japanese woodcuts and the work of the Impressionists in Paris.

Marc suffered from severe depressions from 1904 to 1907.  In 1907, he went again to Paris, where he responded enthusiastically to the work of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, the Cubists, and the Expressionists; later, he was impressed by the Henri Matisse exhibition in Munich in 1910. During this period, he received steady income from the animal-anatomy lessons he gave to artists.

In 1910, Marc’s first solo show was held at Kunsthandlung Brackl, Munich, and he met August Macke and the collector Bernhard Koehler. He publicly defended the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) and was formally
welcomed into the group early in 1911, when he met Vasily Kandinsky. After internal dissension split the NKVM, he and Kandinsky formed Der Blaue Reiter, whose first exhibition took place in December 1911 at Heinrich
Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie, Munich. Marc invited members of the Berlin Brücke group to participate in the second Blaue Reiter show two months later at the Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich. Der Blaue Reiter Almanac was published
with lead articles by Marc in May 1912. When World War I broke out in August 1914, Marc immediately enlisted. He was deeply troubled by Macke’s death in action shortly thereafter; during the war, he produced his Sketchbook
from the Field. Marc died March 4, 1916, near Verdun-sur-Meuse, France.

telok kurau artists

so here’s what happened in art class today:

SE spent abt an 1 1/2 hr pointing out the various Telok Kurau artists (from an old poster hanging on her wall) and showing me samples of their work… interesting! 

 she gave me a few brochures (2000-2002) of their past works + a book on sg artists.  i wrote down as many names as she could recall.  here they are and their primary mediums, in no particular order of importance.

Amanda Heng (installation)

Baet Yeok Kuan (sculpture)

Chieu Shuey Fook (mixed media, metal)

Chew Piak San (watercolour)

Chua Ek Kay (Chinese painting)

Chua Say Hua (Abstract oil/Chinese/contemporary art)

Goh Beng Kwan (collage – recent exhibition at the Tyler Print Inst)

Goo Chuen Hang (Oil/Pastels – realist)

Hong Sek Chern, HOD at NAFA, wife of Chua Say Hua (chinese ink)

Lee Boon Wang (Oil/watercolour)

Lim Leong Seng (sculpture/oil/acrylic)

Lim Poh Teck (won Young Artist award)

Lim Yew Kuan, son of Lim Hak Tai – founder of NAFA – is this cool or what?! (Oil/Acrylic/Sculpture/ realist)

Loy Chye Chuan (watercolour)

Ong Kim Seng (watercolour)

Ng Siew Eng (Oil/specialises in the human body, actual interest in landscapes)

Tan Swie Hian (Oil/Chinese paintings)

Raymond Lau (Oil/Acrylic)

San See Piau (Pottery/Ceramics/Chinese ink)

Sim Lian Huat (Sculpture/installation/Oil)

Tan Kian Por (Chinese painting)

Tang Mun Kit (installation)

Teng Nee Cheong (Oil/Acrylic/human bodies/installation/peranakan culture)

Teo Eng Seng (installation/paper mache/acrylic/sculpture/mixed media)

Victor Tan Wee Tar (sculpture)

Vincent Leow (installation)

Chng Seok Tin (printmaking/sculpture)

Ho Yue Weng (digital art/multimedia)

Leong Kee Tong (oil/acrylic/abstract worked in community club)

Chern Lian San (sculpture)

there are several cultural medallion winners in this group, check out www.answers.com/topic/cultural-medallion for the full list (inaugurated since 1979).  as you can see, the artists listed above are probably some of the best in sg… 

SE’s teacher is Choo Keng Kwang, another illustrious name in sg art.  her next door neighbours are cultural medallion winner Tan Kian Por and NAFA founder’s son, Lim Yew Kuan… and today, i saw Swie Hian walking to his car in the carpark!  Vincent Tan and Seok Tin are blind, so they work with their hands (sculpture) now.  Raymond Lau suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, so we can usually hear him when he’s around.  i wonder how he manages to paint… i feel humbled and inspired when i go there, there are sgs who create despite many formidable obstacles.

i really have a lot to do and read up on these artists… 24 hrs a day is not enuf!

nanyang style part 2

nanyang style contd – some notes from yesterday’s research

where to find info: yesterday i went to the Lee Kong Chian reference library (national library) for info on the ‘nanyang style’.  on the 11th flr (southeast asian collection, not to be confused with the 8th flr collection of art), there is a shelf of books on sg art/artists.  not much info, but enuf to get started somewhere.  it confirms what i wrote abt the nanyang style (evolving from political concern in china).  will elaborate as and when i get more material.  i guess the logical choice to get more material will be to contact NAFA too.

here are two recommended books: The Evolution of the Nanyang Style: A Study in the Search for an Artistic Identity in Singapore 1930-1960 (Tan Meng Kiat) and Channels and Confluences (Kwok Kian Chow)  kian chow is the director of the sg art museum.

the six notable artists of this period: Liu Kang 1911-2004, Cheong Soo Pieng (Zhong Sibin) 1917-1943, Chen Chong Swee (Chen Zhonghui) 1910-1985, Chen Wen Hsi (Chen Wenxi) 1906-1991, Georgette Chen (Chen Liying) 1907-1993and Lim Hak Tai (Lin Xuedi) 1893-1963.  georgette chen is an anomaly.

georgette – ‘europeanized’, she was raised in paris and largely influenced by what was happening there, so her art is not motivated by mainland politics, although she was involved in a search for id in sg.  odd, considering that her father was a chinese patriot who supported sun yat sen.

hak tai – the administrator/organizer, the ‘pivotal man’ in the nanyang style, also the founder (cool!) of sg’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA)

chong swee, wen hsi, soo pieng and liu kang were alumni of the Shanghai Art Academy and Xinhua Art Academy.  they chose to be western-trained cos they wanted to modernize chinese art by blending the two traditions.

subject matter of the nanyang style: sg’s various ethnic races (chinese, malay, indian and others), seascapes, fishing villages & tropical fruits (durians, rambutans, mangoes, mangosteens etc) 

Style: loose, informal, not conscious/deliberate, open to different influences (i think artists like chong swee painted in a realist style, whereas artists like chen wen hsi kept close to the chinese traditions of ink painting.

Time period of the style: some researchers (like meng kiat) put it from 1930s – 1960s.  others around 1950s-1960s.  what is not in dispute is that this style emerged after an exhibition by 4 artists in 1952, after a trip to bali. apparently, it suffered a stagnation during the japanese occupation during 1942-25.  if artists today care to study it, it might serve as a “basecamp” of sorts.

judging from the livespans of these artists, i think it’s fair to say the search for an id is still relevant, although whether you can call the current diverse styles/subject matters the nanyang style anymore is highly debatable.  

not to find excuses for the artists, but i think you gotta be fair and say that the pace of development and change in sg is so rapid that it compounds the problems in our search for an id.  modernity is complex and to represent it and the issues that emerges from it is visually very challenging.

for example, regarding subject matter, sg then was largely undeveloped, so we had the ‘kampongs’ or villages until as recently as the 1950s/1960s.  since the 1980s, the majority of sgs live in housing board flats (HDB), so that’s one huge change in just one freaking generation.  visually, although we can paint the various ethnic races living in flats now, yet that’s still not enough, cos we have yet to explore the impact of this change to modernity visually.  put simply, what the hell does living in a hdb mean for sgs now?

now the logical question to ask is, doesn’t such rapid change affect the artists who are trying to take our quest for a national id to another level?  

the recent retrospective of wen hsi’s works is probably a reflection of this quandry of grappling with such changes in sg.

the sg art museum (SAM) categorised his works in four parts: tradition, life, explorations and synthesis.  (interestingly, he did not consider the nanyang style an important part of his development – that’s the ‘life’ part).  i’m fascinated by part 3: explorations, there is an rojak of different styles/mediums/experimentations.  this occured sometime in the 1960s-1970s, and i suspect it had something to do with grappling with the changes in sg then.  with regards to his last part, synthesis, he went back to chinese ink and painted cranes from his imagination.  personally, it reminded me of picasso in his last years before death, when he relied on his imagination… quite self-indulgent recycling, so the synthesis did not really work well.  wen hsi was much more balanced than picasso tho.

reflections:

well, there’s lots more to learn abt this style.  first thing is, if the nanyang style is so loose, why are these 6 artists ‘canonized’?  is there some common thread in their works that link them all?  what is is?  their works are quite individualistic and develop in various ways.  the challenge is to find a discernable ‘common thread’ through all these 6 artists, perhaps i can then build from there.  no point wasting my life threading the same path only to end up where they did.
 

Fishing in fishhead beehoon

i will be amiss if I did not record last thur’s lunch conversation with TH.  TH is a playwright, former journalist and researcher with deep interests in the arts/media/cultural scene in sg.  Here are the salient points: 

• Our derivative art – our confused id
• Who’s there to critique, to nurture a community, a distinctive idiom?
• Not the govt… yet?… they just don’t get it do they?
• Censorship? – we are free, but the imagined community is imagining fear or hallucinating irrelevant things.

Our derivative art/confused id 

state of the arts in sg – no surprise that we are still struggling to find an ‘idiom’, a recognizable national language, not only in the visual arts, but also the other arts (e.g. performing arts).  Most of our art is derivative (just look at mine stuff).  I suspect the problem for most budding artist or any existing arts practioner in sg is that we mostly start from ground zero most of the time. 

Our art education is primitive, no, we are at the amoeba stage.  We do not know how or where to begin learning our craft, which medium to pick, who to learn from, who to bounce ideas off, much less evolve to another level except for the main schools.  it’s mostly a trial-by-error, lonely and unconscious process (ok, at least the path of an artist is haphazardly documented), and the process of learning our craft often involves a profound and prolonged re-evaluation of our id and place in the world.  No sane person can live with this level of ambiguity for so long.  And pple wonder why van gogh cut his ear off.

A simple example: doing sketches of western masterpieces always makes me feel like I’m trying out Italian/Spanish/dutch/ clothes all the time, they all look nice, but they don’t fit and I still feel naked in a horrible way, like a limb is grotesquely misshapen and everyone can SEE it)

Picasso prepared 809 sketches alone for le mademoiselle de
Avignon. Can you imagine the incredible amt of work you need to do just to go through both eastern and western art, and THEN synthesize it into something original?  This is one of several personal everests for each artist in sg.  No wonder we are still struggling cos we have no method, no base camps to jumpstart the process like the Europeans/Chinese with their different movements and styles.  our closest approximation is the ‘nanyang style’, but more abt it later.

To paraphrase SE, “we are not European and we are not mainland Chinese”… although we might use oils/Chinese ink, we cannot authentically claim their traditions because we lack their cycles/long history, collective memory, and it is futile to even think abt superceding either.    (I must qualify this statement by stating that sg is a multi-racial community, so Chinese art is not the only art that influences us, and as I’m not familiar with art made by Malays/Indians/other races so this is a comment that applies to the Chinese majority in sg, + multi-racialism is a problematic concept in our quest for a national id and idiom).  

I think any artist (whatever the medium) in sg has to grapple with this fundamental split, heal this innate crisis in our national psyche and come up with some sort of synthesis, even if it is rather idiosyncratic (say, like Tan Swee Hian’s works?).  In an odd way, Swee Hian’s works embody the east-west tension very well because they defy easy categorization.  there is much promise in this dynamic ambiguity.  The problem again, is that it is idiosyncratic and highly individualistic, and we need a serious and committed group of artists and intellectuals to study Swee Hian’s works and philosophy in a coherent manner to sustain and develop a promising approach into any sort of national idiom.  Almost impossible when you think abt how artists are such individualists.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the point above is to use two other examples.  with regards to painting, the recent revival in peranakan culture and the older ‘nanyang style’ (see http://www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/post/singapore/arts/painters/channel/7.html) are two clear, but limited attempts at creating something unique and distinctive in sg. 

before I launch into a critique, I must say I’m sympathetic to these attempts, and it is especially important to encourage any such attempts, even if they are flawed because they at least mark our approach to art and our socio-political history.

Some points on peranankan culture:

1) this recent revival in interest seems like an uncritical nostalgic throwback.  why NOW, WHAT FOR and FOR WHOM?  Are we grasping at straws in forging an authentic id?  Is something ‘exotic’ necessarily ‘authentic’?  who’s the intended audience?  The govt? foreigners?  Cos 2) peranakans were always, and are a tiny minority and a dying breed in sg, so peranankan culture is de facto, a subculture.  most sgs might not be able to relate to it and as a distinctive style, it serves as a small buoy, not a big anchor in our cultural landscape.  

On the bright side, this engagement with peranakan culture is one of the few times when personally, as a singaporean and a peranakan, I feel genuine affection as a response to the artworks (ok, I’m vaguely familiar with Desmond Sim’s works).  Sort of like “hey, i know whatcha ‘talking’ abt!” 

Perhaps the personal response is really a big psychological step, considering that most singaporeans probably do not even have that sort of personal connection to the local art works that hang in our museums or galleries.  I imagine most sgs who go to museums/galleries probably go, “hmmm, I like that painting, cos it’s good technically and the concept is familiar, and cos the critics say so, but there’s no deep emotional resonance personally”. 

Right?  ok, maybe I’m just a philistine. 

As for the ‘nanyang style’ – as the name implies, it refers to the wider region of southeast asia, not sg per se, so much for national id.  secondly, this style is tied to the politics of that time and that in itself has (on hindsight), introduced limitations to its development as an idiom that is still fresh and relevant today.  The original proponents of this style were overseas Chinese artists who identified strongly with
China’s struggle against the Japanese and other colonial powers and sought to express solidarity through art.  This style therefore, justly or unjustly, is associated with Chinese pride and perhaps racial chauvinism in sg.  this political sensitivity has perhaps hindered some artists in exploring/reclaiming this period in our art?

The other problem is one of time and gradual estrangement.  The chinese in sg have evolved a separate id from their chinese counterparts in china.  For nation-building, this is one positive result, but it also explains why most contemporary sg artists are not drawn towards exploring or developing this style anymore.

Ok, this is a really short and not very deep analysis, but in a nutshell, I guess the reason why our art is derivative and our id confused is cos we have to constantly reinvent the wheel.   

As for the govt and censorship, I’ll leave it for another post.  TH def has more to say abt that than me.

Moooooo….

just came back from art lessons.  after a quick shower and dinner, it’s nearly 1am.  am freaking tired.  nobody turned up today except me, so besides sketching my next painting in oil! (virgin moment!), SE spent some time talking about how some paintings have a certain ‘authenticity’ and ‘authority’.  these words are in quotation marks as it’s difficult to translate the Mandarin terms into English.  Half the time, i struggle to understand the exact nuance when SE explains certain concepts too.  [i often wish that our mandarin were up to scratch (all her students are more comfortable with english!), we could dig deeper into the techniques/concepts and have a richer understanding].  PITY.  oh well, it’s quite funny sometimes when we launch into an impromptu language class, and C will whip out her ever ready eng-man digital dict to try to bridge our gap.  lol.

back to the lesson… SE took three paintings as an example, and asked me to imagine them as people in a tour group i’d just met and ascribe them personal characteristics.  she posed a question, “if you had to give your passport to one of them for safe-keeping, which one would you choose instinctively?”  we agreed that one of the paintings was the obvious choice.  the answer led us to examine that painting more closely. 

 first we stepped back a couple of metres to take in a bird’s eye view, the standout points from this angle were the perspective, the strong focal point and the sense of movement.  next we examined the painting at close quarters and saw that this sense of movement, which gave it a certain dynamism, was really made up of different brushstrokes, use of different tools (palette knife, paintbrush) and texture (thin and thicker layers of oil). 

 the impt thing though, is that although all these techniques can be easily learned, the issue is whether the artist has the innate ability/intuitive sense to apply them appropriately at any given instant.  this is what differentiates a good painter from a mediocre one, and gives a painting that sense of ‘authority’ and ‘authenticity’.  also, according to SE, that painting’s author had a good grasp of grey.

“Grey?”  i queried. 

 ”Yes, because oil painting is often concerned with shades of grey and the relationship between them.  That is why oil paintings of apples look really old and unattractive, while advertisements/graphic designers will use bright, primary colours to make an apple enticing and crunchy.  the two mediums have such different results because their aims are different”.

 Wow.  that’s something i didn’t think abt until today!  the wonders of grey! so that’s why still lifes always look so dodgy… haha…. but then again, caravaggio’s still lifes look extremely scrumptious…. hmmmm….

although i didn’t do much today, the talk was a welcome break from just painting all the time in class, and hearing someone much more accomplished ruminate and reflect on painting is also illuminating.  quite enjoyed this session cos there’s so much food for thought. 

anyway, here is the current painting yellow cow (Franz Marc) i’m attempting… basically, the technical thing i picked up today is to ‘zoom out’ and take a larger view.  when sketching, it’s impt to block the shapes (like in the oil sketch), rather than be concerned with the undulating details (like in the pencil sketch) and to find the lines connecting the shapes.  ok, it’s difficult to understand what i mean in an abstract fashion, so just refer to the sketches below and hopefully it will make sense. 

       

original                          oil sketch                    pencil sketch

before i left, SE urged me to draw/sketch more again.  she told me that my last painting (dear blondie!) was good, and that although she doesn’t set homework for her students, she advised me to sketch more frequently, and to use oil to sketch, preferably on canvas too.  i think she wants to train me to be more confident and relaxed, and less self-conscious and tense.  i know i’m very tentative, cos painting (not to mention oil painting!), is so freaking new and i’m completely clueless even abt basic techniques like how to hold the brush when sketching vis-a-vis when painting, what brushes to use, what sizes, whether to sit or stand and how far back to evaluate yr painting etc. 

painting is very much like a subtle physical and emotional dance.  however, you’d only know whether it was a polka or waltz after the session has ended.  sometimes it’s a breakdance with bruises to show!

also, the funny thing with drawing, is that i’m really am at the mercy of the moment and i HATE feeling so vulnerable.  i guess it’s similar to being a medium waiting to go into a trance, you don’t know what to expect, can’t predict if the ending is going to be good or bad, and worse, can’t stop the process until it’s done.  3/4 of the time, i’m just so bloody relieved mickey mouse didn’t emerge and the results looks plausible, 1/4 of the time, i’m either elated cos it turned out much better than expected or just pissed off cos donald duck visited instead. 

well, at least the canvas i made was ok for use today.  heh.  my first hand-made canvas!  so proud of myself.  i applied the gesso too!  and today, i used turpentine for the first time (another virgin moment!) to dilute the oil for sketching purposes!  can’t wait to start using linseed oil too!  wonder when tho’… i LOVE its smell.  used it to varnish my easel TWICE.  ha.

ok, it seems a bit silly to be so happy abt small things like that, but well, everyone gets off on different things.   

more ghosts from the past…

Man on the ground (charcoal 2004)

Woman standing 2003

some life drawings in charcoal…

as for why they don’t look asian… that’s cos they ain’t asian darling.

apparently it’s difficult and expensive to get asians to model in the nude in sg (according to SE).  poor SE, cos she paints portraits and human figs too, so it’s hard for her to develop without affordable models.  thank god i had the sense to do these in melb.  some of the models even do this for a living there…  imagine the reaction you get in sg, if ever there was such a full-time occupation!!!!  

all the stereotypes ad nauseum. 

under the influence

a ghost from the past, think this was done in 2003/4.

i LOvE gouache.  its colours are so intense.  what you are seeing is abit faded.  anyone who knows how to preserve the intensity, the freshness of the colours (besides using varnish) pls e-mail!  if you are wondering why this painting turned out like that…  it was a response to reading francoise gilot’s autobio then… (one of picasso’s mistress)

weird… ain’t the stance of this painting similar to blondie (below)?!