Comments on: perspectives and shadings

By: Jay Hoffman

Jay Hoffman — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:52:40 +0000

Yes June, that’s it. One could put these two side-by-side and have a merry old time discussing what’s different and what’s similar.

By: June

June — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 04:44:16 +0000

Birgit and Jay,

The Cezanne Jay was thinking of might be Still Life with Plaster Cupid (1895).
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/sl/plaster-cupid/cezanne.plaster-cupid.jpg

If you like Van Gogh’s still life perspectives, Birgit, you are ready for Cezanne. It was he who played with tilted fields and tipsy apples. Art was never the same afterward.

By: Birgit

Birgit — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:58:17 +0000

Sunil,

Rebellion sounds good. I have been highly law-abiding in spite of saying in my application for a ‘Green Card’ in 1964 that I planned to overthrow the American Government.

The nice lady at the Munich embassy told me that I must have made a mistake and should instead say that I did not intend any overthrow. I did make that correction.

I will practise ‘rebellion’ in my drawings and paintings of perspective.

By: Birgit

Birgit — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:55:09 +0000

Tree,

Thanks for taking all that trouble. I am glad to learn about the communication between van Gogh and Gauguin.

Reading A&P is like or perhaps even better (?) than taking an art class. Many instructors, not just one.

By: Tree

Tree — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:49:43 +0000

Hi Birgit, I’m not sure about the book and now I’m not so sure about the paintings! I did a quick Google and found that there are 3 versions of this painting in oil and 2 drawings. In the version you show here, the paintings are of his friends Milliet and Bloch. In another version, the paintings are a self portrait and what looks like the woman who posed for La Berceuse.
I’ll be the first to admit my memory can be shaky at times, but in a class devoted to van Gogh and Gauguin, I thought I’d been told the portraits were of Van Gogh and Gauguin and the work was sent to Gauguin before he came to Arles. I know they exchanged portraits and apparently van Gogh sent Gauguin a sketch of the room.
I’ll have to read up on this over the weekend :-)

By: Birgit

Birgit — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:48:11 +0000

David,

I am learning so much today. You are right in saying that you also establish a context, and a set of expectations that the viewer will have.

I am a fan of Hanneke’s oil paintings and I love looking at two of them that hang on my walls.

In the post, I did not explain my feelings about one of Hanneke’s grape paintings. There seemed to be something unstable in an earlier version of this painting that I found very attractive. I actually have a photograph of that earlier version. Hanneke made her photograph of it available and Steve printed and framed it for me.

I am a perspective junky!

By: David

David — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:21:16 +0000

It reminded me of someone else’s still life posted earlier on A&P that was critiqued for grapes that seemed to be sliding off an underlying cloth.

I think whenever you create something, you also establish a context, and a set of expectations that the viewer will have.

In an otherwise realistic painting of a scene (like Hanneke’s grapes), anything that is inconsistent with the perceptual realism established by the rest of the image will stick out as a flaw. On the other hand, nothing in Van Gogh’s paintings leads us to expect accurate persective and color. If anything, it is his direct emotional response to his subject matter that I think we find compelling. If you put Hanneke’s beautifully rendered vase of grapes into Van Gogh’s still life, it is the grapes that would seem incorrect.