Austin Briggs on Style and Trends

Professor Martin Salisbury of the Cambridge School of Art recently found a nice quote from the great mid-century modern illustrator, Austin Briggs. A founder of The Famous Artists School – a popular illustration correspondence school, Briggs would get inquiries from his students. In the 1961 issue of Commercial Art (now CA) he shared some thoughts on “style”.

Almost every month we have a comment from someone on the (current) “trend.” A trend is almost always a stream of imitation.

The manner should be an integral part of the message the artist delivers – and an imitation of a manner (on the plea that one is being contemporary) is a superficiality imposed upon a picture without enhancing its capacity to communicate. It is a cord around the neck with strangles the voice.

Working Isn’t Lonely

“When you’re working very hard you’re not lonely; you are the whole damn world.”

—Shelby Foote (1915-2005) writer

Writing with Pictures: Poetic Advice

  

Stanly Kunitz, in the August 1988 issue of The  Paris Review, described well the process of getting art from the head to the page. As a believer that illustration is “writing with pictures,” I often find advice from writers to be particularly use in my teaching and professional practice.

“The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance starts when you try to convert it into language. Language itself is a kind of resistance to the pure flow of self. The solution is to become one’s language. You cannot write a poem until you hit upon its rhythm. That rhythm not only belongs to the subject matter, it belongs to your interior world, and the moment they hook up there’s a quantum leap of energy. You can ride on that rhythm, it will carry you somewhere strange. The next morning you look at the page and wonder how it all happened. You have to triumph over all your diurnal glibness and cheapness and defensiveness.”

Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006) won many awards for his writing including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Pize. He was the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2000.

Art and Reality

by Saul Steinberg

Art is not the reflection of reality

It is the reality of that reflection.

Jean-Luc Godard (French-Swiss film director)

Hockney on Drawing and Seeing

“Drawing makes you see things clearer,

and clearer and clearer still,

until your eyes ache.”

-David Hockney

 

Ruskin On Style: Go Your Own Way

In 1857 the opinioned and influencial British critic, artist, writer and educator John Ruskin put out a beginner’s drawing book in which he laid down the laws of that he believed on the subject. While there’s plenty to disagree with in his heavy-handed tract, I found it enjoyable and enlightening to read. Here’s my favorite screed from the book in which he encourages artists to push towards individuality in their work and against the forces of  assimilation, which exist in every age.

“And herein the great masters separate themselves finally from the inferior ones; for if the men of inferior genius ever express law at all, it is by the sacrifice of individuality.

Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of the sweep of foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, has great feeling for masses of form and harmony of color; but in the detail gives nothing but meaningless touches; not even so much as the species of tree, much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernible. Now, although both these expressions of government and individuality are essential to masterly work, the individuality is the more essential, and the more difficult of attainment; and, therefore, that attainment separates the great masters finally from the inferior ones. It is the more essential, because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in visible things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is a lamentable and unnatural thing to “see a number of men subject to no government, actuated by no ruling principle, and associated by no common affection: but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it possible, to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to have no more any individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a society in which no man could help another, since none would be feebler than himself; no man admire another, since none would be stronger than himself; no man be grateful to another, since by none he could be relieved; no man reverence another, since by none he could be instructed; a society in which every soul would be as the syllable of a stammerer instead of the word aof a speaker, in which every man would walk as in a frightful dream, seeing specters of himself, in everlasting multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness.

Therefore it is that perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of form are more essential to them even than their being subdued by some great gathering law: the law is needful to them for their perfection and their power, but the difference is needful to them for their life.”

-from The Elements of Drawing, 1857, by John Ruskin (1819-1900)

 

 

Lessons: Be a Stove, Not a Refrigerator

Words of wisdom, which I’ll use often, as a mantra for my students, my classroom, my school and for myself – from an article about professional photographers who use Instagram as a vehicle for artistic exploration: Be a Stove, Not a Refrigerator. Cook up new things, don’t just preserve old ones.

“…even within the parameters of a style, (Gueorgui) Pinkhassov’s images are charged with a perpetual element of surprise – he says he’d rather be a “stove” than a “refrigerator,” would rather cook than keep. The effect of seeing a new picture by him, as you scroll down the instagram feed, is often a jolt of wonder and gratitude.”

– On Photography, “Instagram – Free, Chaotic and Immediate – Has Become a Place to Watch Great Photographers Work Out Their Obsessions” by Taju Cole, New York Times Magazine, 12/13/15

Audubon: Drawing Blood

“Audubon,” Frederick says, “was an American. Walked the swamps and woods for years, back when that whole country was just swamps and woods. He’d spend all day watching one individual bird. Then knew more than any birder before or since. He’d eat most of the birds after after he painted them. Can you imagine?” Frederick’s voice trembles with ardency. Gazing up. “Those bright mists and your gun on your shoulder and your eyes set firmly in your head.

Werner tries to see what Frederick sees: a time before photograph, before binoculars. And here was someone willing to tramp out into a book not so much full of birds as full of evanescence, of blue winged, trumpeting mysteries.”

from All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doer, 2014, p. 220.

 

Teaching: It’s Not (Just) the Critic Who Counts

The Critics, 1862, by Honore Daumier

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

 

Every day of teaching, for me, is a risky day – a careful day. That’s probably true of all teachers.

As for me, I lead critiques, which can be so helpful, yet so dangerous. Students put their homework on the wall – their personal creations – their own ideas- and face public scutiny.  My job is to take it from there.

I’ve said many times that “crit” is not short for “criticism” – it’s short for “critique”. A crit should always be a learning excercise -a practice through which students learn how their work is seen through discussion with others. It’s where they learn of the infinite possibilities through observation of what everyone else created. And it’s where they learn how to improve through instruction and suggestion. I should add that it’s where students learn about accountability too – integrity.

But, day after day, I’m reminded that critiques can be risky. Students can feel judged – and can take things personally. Or, students can be defensive or closed to new possibilities.

It’s a tightrope we walk in critiques. But if student is as enthusiastic as in the quote above: “face marred by dust, sweat and blood,” then the focus goes to the maker. They have faced the blank page.

It’s easy to criticize, but it’s trickier to critique. And the difference is everything. It’s education.

 

Further Observation

Educators: remember not to monkey around with critiques. Get to the point. Say what needs to be said. Being useful demands courage. The courage of walking that tightrope.

The Experts, 1837, by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps

Ronald Searle: Sketchbook Practice

Ronald Searle, the late, great British illustrator, was often referred to as the best draftsman of his generation. To what did he attribute his fluency of drawing? His sketchbook practice, particularly when he was young.

“My…work was a logical continuation of sketchbook practice. At the Cambridge School of Art it was drummed into us that we should not move, eat, drink or sleep without a sketchbook in hand. Consequently the habit of looking and drawing became as natural as breathing. It served its purpose not only by bringing one a feeling of freedom in drawing but also to store up a massive collection of detail in my head.” -The Association of Illustration Newsletter January-February 1977