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Our guest this evening is Panos GEKAS a painter and instructor at the Boston Museum School. Our topic this evening will be changing techniques and materials for painting on the panel are the Leeward and Berg account executive sage advertising. Edward Moats assistant professor at Massachusetts College of Art. When we talk about painting Panos Where is a convenient place to start. Where do we. We start thinking of man's efforts to paint and form formulate paintings. Well because in my own course of the school I usually start with 14th century Italy. And why 14th century. Well I feel that as especially in school for a basis for teaching techniques and materials I think the 14th century was probably a very crucial time in painting and especially temperate painting which I usually begin with preparation of
panels and. Just so the preparation of the pic with the grinding up of color the mocking up of color. Is this where we might say that a name modern type of painting starts. Well I think all this is relevant to a contemporary painting because if one gets this kind of training or study at that time of beginning at that time I think it relates to contemporary painting because the medium which was egg tempera is really in the way the plastics of today. So what you're getting is training in the use of a water medium which applies to the synthetics that we use today so I think that this sort of background is as a very important one for the student in school. Have the pigments changed considerably from the
14th century. Well I think they have we are preparing now pigments of course chemically as opposed to the earth colors the colors that we got from precious stones as you write Malakai. And it's an entirely different type of color that we get today as opposed to the skulls has just been invented during this event in your view. Well I think in some ways it's an advantage in some ways and disadvantage I think that the the advantage is prevented as I think the blues that we use at that. And as you write were of a purity I don't think we can manage to get most of those lappie lazuli and I have to say my piece last July was a house for his great kind of life as last July was one. And you're right.
Actually one of the same thing lapis lazuli but the purity of it of the middle of the of the stone and the color itself. We get another kind of color that in us we get a blue which is chemically produced. It has another quality but there's something lacking I think and that is why it's very hard to express. I think it's a kind of color that we probably will not be able to imitate successfully but I think the colors that are produced today of course are very fine. I still am a firm believer in preparing your own colors as opposed to buying them in the shop. Why should someone prepare their own. Well I feel that you know what you'll put into the color if you mop up in your own studio as a pure let's say cadmium red which of course is very expensive.
Do you Panos speakers have the time or the energy in to spend mulling your own colors in our studio. I do you do that about once every two three years so it isn't a monthly or our weekly chore. Well we have a technique search using tempera. This isn't something that you prepare ahead of time is it. You prepare your calls ahead of time and jot them and want to you mull them up in a paste and then jar them up. And with Dallas I presume people. With great length of time I have a tendency to get moldy and of course the dollars I presume prevents that. So that I think that not only economically speaking but an advantage of knowing what you have in your color as opposed to buying a color let's say in the shop collection which may have a filler and actually is and is extended therefore loses its intensity and purity.
How do you go about painting and they can prepare me. Well we have the movie Macy and green ingredients we already well the paint mixed up with with the water your paint your paint is already pretty mixed of course with. I'm talking about the true color having mulled it up and water into a kind of paste you put that of course into your porcelain tray palette and about. Equal parts of it to your color. It's always advisable to add a little more egg because the amount of absorption of the egg and the color varies in its color. That's not whole egg is it no use the yolk of the egg you separate the yolk from the white and use the yolk and you see I'm trying to connect this with contemporary you know this is the yolk that is used as a binder in contemporary painting we're using let's say the
acrylics the polymer the plastics like with the new one loose and he looks like you know and copartners and Liam Oliver and so forth the motion in margins you see which bind is and do the same thing with the collar but in a different way you see your egg gives it a kind of a waxy sort of semi gloss quality and you're going to use the word no masters. You may you know masters that as an advertisement but no masters give you a kind of a matte quality or gloss quality. It acts differently. The new master so the new resident are acrylic polymers pigments flatten out. They lie down flat on the panel as opposed to your temper which builds up slope. So therefore you are working with a new medium but with a different experience. As far as pain is concerned I think at least I
believe this. Well there's a Comparing of course takes over Does this require a different type of painting take me in terms of applying the plain paint to the canvas who to the panel. Well not necessarily not necessarily I don't think it does I think you can use it using the mediums. The new residence pretty much the same but I think that it's like playing an old violin and playing Also a new one that has just been constructed so within two weeks there's a different sound that comes through that I think it comes through. In the painting in tempera as opposed to the dry looking acrylics NOT need not necessarily be dry looking but I get this feeling that I have always. I still recognise when I paint with the new system.
There is that difference and that's just to say it's like playing the old violin and the new violin one brings out a beautiful tone and a kind of mellow quality the other doesn't bring out anything but a kind of a reproduction of a song you see which is what I don't favor in the new media. This dry pigment quality men that you talk about I've always looked at looked at it as a rather positive virtue and I think it's rather interesting that most of us here looks at my paintings and he said oh they fit that paint you know it's so dry looking doesn't have that rich lush quality that he sees in the museum you can't get it interesting here because I like it I like it very much and. And look for something else in the ME I'd love it. The few times that I had an experience with a temper this is back as a student. I found it rather limp
limiting extremely limiting in that it had to be built up with very very small strokes very small repetitive brush strokes and that the look to the painting. In most almost all cases had a kind of linear cross-hatching quality. The the the new plastic paints much more like oil paint and I think I would disagree with you when it when you say that the plastic panes have this flat quality. You can get it if you want it but if you don't want to you can get As. As plastic are mushy our few wish as greasy look as you want depending on how much of the medium is put into it. But the temper always was very restrictive restricted as a medium restrictive in terms of the hours that it takes you know
anything at anything before you can really see it. And the nice virtue of the oil painting were some of the new plastic things is that you can start working and very quickly get something working in front of you. The temperature took such I should I think that when oil painting was invented all of those egg temper arrests probably must of must have flipped because here was he it was the possibilities of doing things rapidly and getting effects that went far beyond the the sort of dry and brittle look of pure egg tempera all behold but they sneered that that greasy oil that his left eye has done oil painting a lot and probably talked about techniques moving too rapidly for the artist. If you like but it surely was already giving his brain as a kind of a greasy look at where he was using figures came from the fig tree and he was using that to make the pigment go a little easier flow a little bit easier
but I think as far as the greasy look of oil painting is concerned I think that of course naturally came in time and I think that the temper of painters naturally abdicated. I mean they became oil painters as well as matter of fact pianists didn't he. When when when we were painting first developed wasn't as a so-called eggs hamper under painting or prepare a Tory painting with oil glazes In other words the oil paint wasn't really used as as a thicker plastic medium but rather it was used to put a kind of transparency coloration over a preparatory drawing of egg tempera. Well my thesis is that I want to try to prove that egg tempera has been the basis for all this other kind of pain I think that egg tempera was also under a temper underpinning was the basis for a lot of it. Rembrandt's paintings Rubens in Toronto were Naisi El Greco. I think all these men were in France in some way by the temperature. That's where I'm from.
I'm not trying to relate or trying to say what is the medium or law of all time but I think that it does relate through the ages and I think it comes up to the present and the word memory do you think the people who have been experimenting with the new plastic paints have actually tried to duplicate the qualities of the egg tempera In other words it's quite possible it might be able to be done but they haven't tried to because they are trying to create a new medium with competitive qualities. Rather are let's say complimentary qualities rather than competitive quality. So if you want to use one you use one if you want to use the other use the other. As to I don't think that it has any new mediums or any relation to it. You know as a competitor of work I'm proud of thing I think that they're entirely new and in their own stand on their own in their own right but I think that I'm not just saying that as a training. I was speaking of speaking of this business as a training basis
this is probably one of the best ways of training a student to cope with all media to the present which of course I think I'm much simpler to use. But adult you know not as complicated or as tedious. I know that in going through the museum you watch painters has a look at the old masters they have a tendency to examine the surface of the painting rather carefully and when you go through the Museum of Modern Art or the Whitney you see very little of this close examination of the techniques employed is that because the techniques have been become so simplified that they are not there are no interest or just passing interest. Well I saw I've seen an exhibit recently and I think probably you have to at the Museum of the work of Kenneth Nolan Lidsky and Frank Stella. Well of course painting these no resonance they work doesn't need
any close inspection. One isn't expected to go very close to it looks at first glance like large linens that have been stained or died almost like a fabric that has been diagram of the pain it causes of this is a new painting of today we are not painting with a brush necessarily or using a squeegee or using. Roller techniques as I say this was like if I thought they dusting their rollers was against the painters union they had to use a brush. They probably could. Well you know just recently there was an exhibition wasn't there at the Institute of Contemporary Art painting without a brush and we have the paintings on exhibition were all done in techniques other than brush rolling spattering dripping
staining squeegee driving driving over the canvas right with them with the wheel and so forth. Now where the Mach was put down without without the traditional technique of Bristol brush. What do we do we lose something in terms of the and the appreciation of the work this way unless it's very hard so I still feel pain. So an intimate thing and I think traditional techniques. So the cards that I think of contemporary techniques make it an impersonal almost mechanical thing that one doesn't have to even relate to and that way I just look at and be astonished of stun. Oh how I would come to see issues that had molded modern art goes back to the Impressionists known 1840 in the
Impressionist technique. How well they started out possibly with the traditional approach of so-called under painting over painting in premature around the painting of a painting in the early France's early morning as you see in traditional approach they drop this for a direct painting approach we have by the paint was put on in. Little flicks of color seems to me that the technique of painting changes with the demands of the time on the artist in other words the ideas that he gets from living in a particular time demand a particular way of being said. Technically the art technique grows out of the need of the artist meant you find that with the early masters of Modern Art you find concern for the method of Apple application you can still look at the surface of an impressionist painting and see it in terms of its technique. As you can with the imposed impressionists and the
early cubist I will then know you could probably say that the. The expressionist movement in the early 20s just after the First World War as well as with the Dada paint was a was almost a revulsion against the so-called French aesthetic. We have by the surface is beautifully tickled and I should imagine that the Expressionist paint as a German expressionists who has something tremendously emotional and vital to say and which had to be said spontaneously and immediately on the Sessa he had to develop a technique which which by comparison to the early Picasso's on the Matisse is certainly have a. A rough spontaneous at times aggressive and possibly to many people repulsive surface. And then of course the dot up paint is
revolted even more strongly and ended up using mud in cinders. Probably the pity me of that is in. Do you face paintings where he use the stuff you find in you know the junk yard. Coal cinders the most. You know what. What years ago would have been the most repulsive surface and which today is except that you know is just accepted as his perfectly legitimate. I wonder if in observing and being both day that you don't spend some time looking at the way the painting was done I'm sure you do. So will you do so that the concern for the technical application is still there. This seems to be very strong in most European painters. Well how do you say strong and European painters and yet it's not just the American abstract expressionists who took this this kind of use of
you know this this swinging slinging paint application and it's almost as though they redevelop the French. I think they sort of redevelop the French aesthetic. You go over to the De Kooning exhibition at MIT at the moment in the library and you look at these paintings and they have been applied very rapidly and spontaneously with a full swing of the eyes. And yet boy that paint is laid on just so beautifully. You know I mean the stuff itself you can see that the man has a marvelous feeling for for the material and even though it was put on violently it still has a real beautiful quality to it. Let's get back to our camp. Yes you are yeah yeah and then we think are you going. To. Have our first night. You know very much like this concern for the painterly quality of life. Well OK I'm not I don't know this.
Let's go this way. Maybe you know maybe the coning maybe de Kooning doesn't have the the word concerned might be a bad word because that implies a very strong consciousness of the technique. The fact that a person can manipulate paint as a second nature and do it beautifully doesn't necessarily mean that when he's painting he is conscious primarily of the technique. It happens that he knows how to handle pain. If he's a painter it's second nature to him he doesn't think about it anymore. Well I wonder whether the 14th century Italian and a temper a painter sat there thinking only in terms of the technique. Oh I doubt that very much whether the take me was really second nature but still an appreciation for that paint quality was still there. I'm sure of that I doubt that Jocko because you know we're all in their prime we're concerned with technique the technique was like you know. Like their own handwriting I'm sure there was no concern no real conscious concern we might just for a
moment juxtapose Kline's painting with sludge. I think the forum is not dissimilar. And yet the paint quality is very different and in the salon as I think you find some of this concern for Forth techniques and I talked about earlier and that you find so deeply embedded in so many of the European painters and it is apparent in American painting. Definitely but in a different and different way. Yeah I would agree with you on trying to remember the sense of the grand style. Yeah it is and there's a touch in the paintings. Of course he's French isn't it. There is a kind of touch to the application of paint and even though it seems appears to have been put on very very rapidly with a single broad stroke there is a kind of refinement and sophistication as a code as opposed to a Klein which has a kind almost are almost a
studied this interest in what the paint quality might look like is a great deal more dripping in accident and spatter. You know. Panos Well I think a man like Klein actually in his early training was almost French. I think you had a kind of appreciation for technique and for pain handling as as in the later years of course he had a tendency to disregard it but I think was always there you know an old big black brush pictures I think it was always something of a mark over my to it was that as a we were generalization the idea that. Each artist or even each athlete is concerned with the detail of the technique of what he is doing probably can't be disputed. When Mickey Mantle swings are bad he's got an awful lot of careful
control behind it that has become second nature that makes the tremendous difference between the thousandth of an inch and the timing and all that sort of thing that's involved if you will. These are expressions expressing expressionist patter. You know whatever is involved any anything that involves physical control of any medium almost requires that I think the problem comes about when we try to understand that path by which we get to the very best of artistic expression. In order to react to something well and create something which is worth in my opinion you have to go through a long process in which you have first reacted to something in life and then have proceeded to examine it or tear it down and find out what makes it tick and what its components are and
what is involved in it. And then you from that tear torn down state you then begin to rebuild back to where you were originally. The problem then is to be able to at that time with new technique and new understanding to be able to recreate that original free reaction. And if you can do that then I think you're a master. And I think our problem is that very often we get involved with people who are just at the very very first stage who have done no examining who are just intuitively reacting and therefore don't know any techniques have never gotten involved in tearing down what they were doing into its components and it's the techniques involved. And I think therefore that everyone who goes through that process eventually reaches that final stage where he is using techniques that came out of this tearing down and rebuilding and the better he is the more truly they are and is a part of him that he is not too conscious of.
One of the things that I thought particularly disturbing in terms of painting techniques and this is primarily in the area of that that new plastic temporary medium. There are a number on the market. And the thing with which I find inside liking it with most people who use them I say most because there may be someone that I don't know about who is using it then does not fit this generalization. There seems to be a lack of any tradition of take me and therefore even through an intuitive process they can't can't pick it up. And when you when you sit down and you say well I'm taking a course I have to study egg tempera painting is a great wealth of material in terms of technical understanding that you know and study and understand. So there's kind of there's no breaking down process. This is a complete construction process the paint handles differently it looks differently
and you're not tearing anything apart. You got to start from nowhere and go someplace with it. And I find that as a general criticism that there are the painters who are using these materials. Are not terribly interested in the technical aspects of what they're doing or how how it can be used. They just use it in offhanded way. I know that. Panos in your painting this is not the case I guess there is an exception because when you're not conscious of the material that you use you know you look at the painting and you can wonder how how it gets there. You know and this is obviously a concern of yours and you get this feeling does it disturb you. Well I think that I view some of these new plastics and I find that they do things that well I don't like
them they bleed sometimes. You get brushing effects that you probably don't want. And I think it does take almost entirely a new kind of training I think you sort of get used to it doing things that you don't want to do. And that isn't what I would go to venerate I think a lot of the new people people like Norman and others that are happy with it because they get accidents from it that they like reading of people out there and he that doesn't do things that you don't want a little bit. I think that the traditional mediums sometimes you do get an effect that you may not have probably planned but an awful lot of it is is planned. You don't get happy accidents as you do let's say a watercolor painting or in some of these. When the material is restrictive and the
plan is pretty well laid out that if you don't work this way you're going to get into trouble. Or if you do this or don't do that you'll get into trouble that you have to be concerned over the material when you when you have a material that when you sit down and you start working you say this will do anything and everything there. And he said there the possibilities are so limited less that you don't even impose a limitation on you don't even think in terms of well this is what I want to do. You just let it happen what he does that's when you realize opposite sides of the fence. You're saying you want some limitation in the material because then with the same imposed rules of the game so to speak with these imposed rules of the game. Coming from the medium you will then be able to create better work toward something that you
want rejects something that you don't want you know the rules of the game. Whereas if it were the medium will do anything you want you're uncomfortable it can do anything you. You don't feel that you can do what you really want to do. It seems like a strange thing to say but I think I understand you on the other hand Panos you're saying the opposite you want something that you can do whatever you want to do with it. Is that right. I don't know what I'm saying the opposite. I think that I don't want to see limitations in the material I was talking about. The new mediums say the presence of the plastics which you can pour on a piece of on size cotton and the paint soaking into the cotton will do all sorts of things. Well there are many people who would rather control that pain as it goes on a piece of cotton therefore the mediums that are probably better controlled would be used U.S. But I think that I don't think that we're on the opposite.
Well as you know I'm not sure I think that it does as I state in this I probably I stated an attitude which I don't consider to be to be right. I think that there are many limitations inherent limitations and qualities in a plastic paint as there are and egg tempera. Why are oil painting or the. The oil tempera medium but because we believe that these new materials are a great panacea that they will do anything and everything. We don't stop to find out what it is best suited for and therefore there is a lack of technical data being built up in terms of how this material can be used less. Well you know more have to haul a camper or an oil paints have been around than have been used and investigated for what 400 years. And the plastic paints have been on the market as oil 500 and the plastic paints may have been on the market for 10 or 20 years at the most.
And each of these of course each of these paints has has its limitation you can't. And then most people who use plastic paints now realize after a while anyhow that you cannot use the plastic paints like oils because they are not oils. They are quite different from oil paints. We know what oil paints will do because they have been thoroughly investigated. He was probably first painter in oil the first painter in oil. What it was is that the Flemish like brothers. Yeah although although I understand that there were others who came who sort of laid down the groundwork for all their discoveries and the point that I'm trying to make a point at in point that I want to deal with you as they sit around and say well we don't have a tradition of five or six hundred years behind us. Didn't they do things with oil paint that were properly done with oil paint that that particular. Well there are people working with the plastic medio who are doing what is proper and right with plastic media. After all the plastic media today does
give you the advantage of drawing almost immediately which oil paint certainly doesn't as well as the fact that the plastic media can be put layer upon layer upon layer thick upon thin and thin upon thick and vice versa without any adverse effects as far as we know. And I think that technically these new plastic paints have been quite quite thoroughly researched as as far as modern technical side you know technical paint research can go. And so granted the plastic paints are not oil paints. They don't have the mellowness of oil paints they have the real bright. You know they don't have that kind of of. Subtlety but because of this they will suit a different kind of need a more spontaneous need or need to do things and have it done right away. They're flexible which oil paints are not you can beat them paint the canvas with them and run rich and then in 15 minutes roll the canvas up put it
in your closet take it out in three four five six weeks a couple of months unroll it and there really is no cracks. Nothing but with an oil painting it is very dangerous to do so. I think that granted oil paints you know they're the greatest thing and I think that anybody wants to investigate plastic paints has to fool around with them there is a period of finding out what they'll do for your individual personality. Our ideas our needs. Well I was going to come in and talk about plastic pants the advantages of it of course as the instant drying piling up of the pigment and all sorts of variations thin and thick and finally rolling it up which we did. I must confess recently my mural in the Connecticut for a bank. My wife painted it and the new masters.
And I don't advertise well but we did complete it in two weeks and then rolled it up immediately dried instantly rolled it up got it down to Connecticut and rolled out an old time paper hanger to work on it. You put it on the wall within a half hour. Just the old fashioned wallpaper paste as flat as flat as can be no bubbles no cracking no nothing so there are advantages to the medium I must confess. It did look like it didn't look like oil. It didn't look like a wash it looks something between. If you can use the word temper jar colors that they produce commercially had a kind of an opaque dry quality. It handled differently but it suited the purpose very well so I think that I don't think the arguments against the mediums they were I guess were only I think were were proving that. That kind of training based on the old
medium or the old techniques sort of prepares you for this new stuff. You know yes you know this is this is something that I'd like to discuss. The idea that here we are in the middle of the 20th century. And a great many a great many things have happened in the art field in modern not. We've we've seen we've seen painting go from from the classical approach of let's say an egg tempera technique through the development of oil painting and then all of the various uses of oil paint by the old masters each one using a different way but but but you but using the same kind of sequence you're building up of layers of paint. And we saw the rejection of this in the Impressionists and then further on the use of direct painting as found in a Van Gogh or any of the German expressionist and then the rejection of that in the Dada paint is.
So the question then is in an art school where do you start you know where do you start. When you when you teach students technique do you start in the 15th century or wouldn't it be educationally and you know educationally philosophically correct to start in the 20th century somewhere. Well I have and I don't know. This is a problem that you know that I'm all over to become I teaching painting it's sometimes you said yourself boy. How can I teach these how can I teach these kids a technique that goes all the way back that's based in the 15th century when here we are with everything that's happened in the 20th century. Well I have tried both. I tried teaching the new techniques the new mediums and I've discovered that by teaching. Let's say polymer the polymer emulsion painting the kids feel that this is a sort of a permissive
kind of painting attitude they just take and splash it around have a good time and I think my God we can do anything with this with this kind of medium there's no restriction. It's wonderful. But the discipline goes out the window and I think this one's a very important part of painting and kind of painting and I think that you get it best by studying the 15th century. Yeah but there are two kinds of discipline there's a discipline imposed by the instructor who says you will now paint in this technique in this approach. And then there is also a discipline that is self-imposed In other words. Is it bad that these kids have a good time splashing around. Possibly after 15 or 20 or 30 paintings or splashing around this self-imposed discipline begins to to appear because they realize that that what they are going to do with it comes from inside themselves primarily. I don't feel that if we're talking about teaching students I think any student today wants to go through any of this.
I think that he's looking for the quick solution the quick success. He's looking for the medium which will give him that immediately. And he would just assume get out as quickly as possible in school. I don't think that you can say oh these people want to self-importance when very few students do. I think you have to teach it. And I think the best way to teach it is work with a medium that you know very well. At least it is known very well and I think that the old traditional mediums are the best. And that sense I think the new ones are still experimental. We don't know too much about it we can set up an experimental experimental laboratory in the classroom which I think is a wonderful idea. Have the kids fool around with these little things along with the old. I think this will be wonderful. I envision a kind of laboratory kind of classroom with one half traditional and one half contemporary and modern If you want to use the word they will be doing things and mixing and modeling up color and using it with the new residents and so forth and then comparing the results and then probably as a result of all this go on further.
It seems to me that some of this I would question I would question the value of of these of this sort of exercise. And I especially would take issue on what you said a few minutes ago about the idea of self-discipline it seems to me that that is the appearance of self-discipline that outside of the instructor's influence it is the appearance of self discipline in the student that separates the potentially the potential painters the real artist are the real painters from those students who will be only mediocre. Well can't you make the mistake of indicating to a young painter that the discipline is not necessarily something which he imposes on on himself and think that isn't really necessary. By being too permissive. Well I suppose that depends on the individual instructor instructor just as to a student block you've got you've got your paints from the school store and now you're in the classroom. Paint.
I certainly believe that instructor has to set up problems and situations which will lead the student to some kind of eventual conclusion. He has to struggle with some solution to a problem. I wonder if he would also being in studying the history of art or the history of literature or any history at all. Because this is really what you're doing when you when you teach a class in painting take means you're dealing with the history of the technical aspect of painting. Well maybe maybe not it all depends on your point of view. You could teach a. You could teach a technical course from a historical point of view or you could again teach a technical course or an art history course from the point of view that what is happening today is really most pertinent father student. And therefore instead of studying our history back in Paleolithic times and working up to Martin you start with
Martin and eventually you go back to behavior with it no matter which way you're going if you're finding a value in in the historical approach. As well particularly in our history yes and see if not necessarily in in the technical aspects not another selling technique. If you start a start a young painter and you say look here's a new paint was formulated last year. We don't know too much about it. Go to work experiment with it. What type of experimenting can he actually do with absolutely no background. Well I don't think I don't I don't think in the painting course you could start off like that. I mean you might you might you think that you might have and you might have him in the very beginning do a few exercises to get an idea of what the paint will do you know how what happens when you brush it thin what happens when you brush it heavily what happens when you use a painting knife and then the problems instead of being necessarily technique oriented might be form
oriented so that as he struggles with a problem of form he is also struggling with a technique you can't really separate one from the other. No other words to achieve to achieve a painting of this table in the new plastic media you cannot separate technique from how you go about representing the objects on the table. It appears to me and my my memory serves me correct my a little earlier you were talking about techniques being second nature. Yes to second nature to OK but when I say you were in a tree to experience pain to an experience pain. Well how do you know that it's morally it's been either you or you how do you become experienced painter by 10 to 15 years a painting that's how you become an experience painter not necessarily in the three or four years of an art school. You see I don't I don't necessarily want to confine myself to an art school with my what I think is as important here is the understanding of what it is that you're working with and how to how do you gain that understanding. Is it
helpful to realize that there is a relationship between the form and the material in the 14th century and that as the materials change and allowed for for different types of modulation of color and of form and I add that I was a Russian J I was certain I would certainly agree that there is a great deal to be gained by studying history along with the technical changes that accompany it. You know certainly I don't say that this is wrong. I am merely trying to present present arguments of possibilities to to the contrary. No I think you really do not have the you know the law seriously I see the validity in it. And very frankly at at school I teach an approach to painting to freshman which is really based on the IM premature on the painting over painting technique which is 40 to 50 cent.
But there is still something and I haven't broken away from this. But there is still something about it that irks me because here we are in 1965 and we still have to depend on this approach. Let me say I am right. I am still depending on an approach which has been dead for 500 years. Well maybe not 500 for at least a hundred because it ended with the Impressionist if you want us. It's time to see there's a dichotomy there somewhere. As far as I'm concerned. Well how can you do anything different or in terms of techniques or approach unless you know all of the things that have been done. As you may be doing something that's already been done well I think that there is a school of thought an argument that that you know our way with the way with the old forget the old was not the futurists the Futurist painters you know burned all the stuff in the museums don't let us look at it we want to experience the
immediate instant and react to it the way that we can. You know it sounds like a redevelopment concept. Well they were very nice and they were very actually sounds like a student we heard about recently who would not look at paintings in. The Rose Art Museum if I remember correctly because she didn't want in any way to be influenced by the past. So it's not an uncommon idea I think all the subjects have the same educational problem. Shall we start with the past and show how it led to the present or shall we start with the present and show how it was led to by the past. And in a way it's a matter of educational technique and relates very much to the make up of the teacher himself and to how the whole curriculum has been established it can work both ways. Some people like it deductive some people like it inductive. It depends a great deal and I don't think it is that is as much a significant argument as whether there is any argument here
about the fact that the past is to be ignored. If you say the past is to be ignored then you're not choosing between those two arguments you're choosing about a third which says the contemporary lives all alone and it should be completely unaffected by the past. I don't think anybody here is supporting that argument. Am I right. I used to be one of them. Do you think the contemporary Is it than it should have been. There should be no relation from past. Well let me give you a possible example of what it was let's say you expose a kid to a brazing technique. OK brazing you know where you take a blowtorch and you and you hold wired together by brazing and you show that you did this technique. Now you say look I can take this y out and I can take this Sautter all silver solder and by applying a torch I can hold these wires together and the kid sees possibilities in this and he builds this beautiful piece of wire sculpture. Now he may have it
first of all the why a sculpture because of its very nature doesn't have much connection to the solid bronze pieces of Leonardo da Vinci are Donna Tello you see. Granted if the kid studied he would have a rich background. Not necessarily however to draw from. Because here he is working with a completely contemporary materials and allowing these materials to suggest forms which are strictly contemporary because the materials at contemporary. Does that make any sense. Yes it does except that why why do you have to rule out the study of. I am not ruling it out I am merely as I am merely trying to point out that that this problem does exist. The ignoring of the past and I think it's becoming possibly more and more prevalent. The fact that the past yes it's studied but it is more and more ignore something to be ignored is that good or bad. I haven't the slightest idea. I'm frightened by it. That's right I am too and I guess I don't see why you I don't that's why I said before that I
don't see I don't think that anyone at this table is supporting that point of view that we should ignore the past. Well it seems to me odd that let me take the point of view then it seems to me that if you if you study the past it is possible you probably heard the expression painters we had that we had where where was this pink painters and I have to carry an enormous amount of baggage on their backs. If they when they when they continually look back to the past they have the whole weight of 500 years of painting tradition on their backs. And it seems to me that the whole practically the whole of I've heard of that and a whole lot more not the whole of modern not has been an attempt to drop all this baggage. You know just leave it back there somewhere and to move on and try to work on encumbered by all of this so-called heritage. But that happens all the time every every movement was a revolution against the previous movement a way of dumping that baggage and
going on to something that well but I think in Aki I think it's possible that in art you have the effect I think maybe even more devastating in other areas because because of the I think the other people just because of the so-called you know the the representation of nature all of what we see we recognize things. I think the effect is much more devastating when there is a total lack of discipline in this I will not argue that we are not discussing this of the moment. I agree with you in that there is no pain no good painter has a total good total lack of discipline. There is no psych how can he have the discipline he don't happen to have discipline unless he knows his materials and how many know his materials unless he is studying He knows his materials by using them. That in a sense is studying through experience through experience or to them exactly. Do you see so. So so we just did a very good argument because you can you can work with material for for months and years and whatnot nothing.
Oh Grant Granted you can struggle a struggle and someone comes along and says look has never has anybody ever shown you this and this is the solution. That's all we have to that's why art school that's why our schools were born I'm sure to make it easier now we close the circle again and therefore he's here for you. Therefore he needs some formal training with respect to the characteristics in the dress and it's rather interesting that most of the important painters although I won't say most I'll even backtrack a little. A great many of the most important painters of the modern movement left at school they didn't even complete their training. They left it they couldn't stand it. Thomas I hear this as I move there without school I think of the genius type. There is such a thing you know. Usually leave school I can cite some of the most outstanding avant garde painters in New York now are former students of the Museum School of six months standing. Larry pomes ever edition a few of these guys have hit the
New York scene with a rush. They've thrown aside all the old training or they might have picked up at the school and picked up new mediums and they're doing them very well points for one is using the liquid techs. I think Jim Dunn is using all this sort of thing. Yeah but it's also very interesting to bring that up that another alumni of the museum school with his name just plain shapes us with killing Ellsworth Kelly he went through school for years and as a matter of fact when he graduated he was doing very representationalism paintings. I remember the well if you want to take that up also Miss Bridget Riley was painless arrived just a few months ago and is now paying those black and white variations of the article up the whole shapes and colors. So I think that I think is the argument that these people have some of these opinions with a genius type the genius that moves away from the sort of thing. If there is such a such a type.
And I just take it absorb it fast and drop it. There's the point that's what I was waiting to hear if you would say they have absorbed it fast. They haven't been unexposed to it they probably learned somehow. Real quickly and then went off. So they did have it in their bag. Yeah yeah. Actually you know I happen to be an alumni of the museum school. But you have graduated. Yes. So that's me I want you right I want to go and you know it was I did. I did a copy of the Rubens Rubens painter and I did a copy of a little Hans Memling painting in temper and oil glazes. And which is matta fact somebody walked off as it was that's my sole job. Now I also have a copy of the of the Duke Show triptych at the Museum of Fine Arts and I enjoyed this immensely.
I enjoyed the technical exercise at the time. You know it was a lot of fun. And and I certainly learned a great deal. Do you think the new medium permits you to paint with subtlety. Oh yeah absolutely fantastic. Why do you want he wants that. Because you have a feeling that it wouldn't allow you to know I was going back to his remark about how the permits you so much freedom that very often people feel that they then can immediately create what appears to be you know the least pseudo kind of contemporary abstraction that well could or can't buy that. By the same token the oil painting is even more versatile than plastic paint and would allow you even greater freedom. And yet you have a range in oil painting from the from the from the most you know most violent use of splashing down to the most minute
hair you know Tiny here brush line painting. Well if you're if you're not careful with oil paint you know the get into an awful lot of trouble with it and that there are limitations which are which are imposed upon you. Yeah yeah we've got Molly. Probably more than any other medium. Every person out the paint can be adapted to every personality. Well this is also true of the plastic. I suppose it's just some of the technical problems that develop in oil painting where the paintings just won't survive if you're not careful. Just don't exist in plan. Well Thomas knows more about it don't you think we all sing. I feel the plastics have the advantage that you can be a little bit sloppy or. Careless and you don't have to suffer the consequences worse and to reduce the the. Subtlety of the general run of paintings. I think it does. I think it has in fact I think painting is no longer painting as far as I'm concerned.
In that sense I mean it's too many accidents in it so not only accidents I think that there's less regard for the small amount of space covered as opposed to the 12 foot by 6 foot space that you cover with a squeegee or roller and then get a few accidents on the way this is the general large visual impression and there's a whole concept of visual theory that has been developed along with this. Which I think you're saying is not too genuine in that it has evolved after the fact that having had the big thing up there then you more or less justified. I think that you are you have to go through a process of turning out let's say 15 or 20 of these huge mammoth dyed cotton abstractions if you want to use the word and then step back and look at them in another 15 or 20 feet or 100 feet and say well those are the ones that were successful because it's a new dimension painting
as it has. It has reached a new dimension. This is Arthur Homer with studio talk. Our guest this evening is panelist Akiko us painter and instructor at the Boston Museum School on the panel. He worked in very amateur aesthetician and Edward most of its painter.
Series
Studio Talk
Episode
Changing Techniques and Materials for Painting
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-47rn91zg
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Description
Series Description
Studio Talk is a talk show featuring conversations on a variety of topics related to the visual arts.
Created Date
1965-05-20
Genres
Talk Show
Topics
Fine Arts
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:58:46
Embed Code
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 65-0021-05-20-001 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
Duration: 00:59:30
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Citations
Chicago: “Studio Talk; Changing Techniques and Materials for Painting,” 1965-05-20, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-47rn91zg.
MLA: “Studio Talk; Changing Techniques and Materials for Painting.” 1965-05-20. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-47rn91zg>.
APA: Studio Talk; Changing Techniques and Materials for Painting. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-47rn91zg