Monthly Archives: October 2014

Research into collage and painting

This research point hid inside the first exercise of this project and was comprised of two parts: Firstly, looking at two Cubist collages and making notes, and secondly, expanding the research into paper collage combined with painting by looking at two or more additional artists.

Two cubist paper collages

My research led me to a highly interesting press article published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the occasion of a Cubist collection gift. It was donated by Leonard A. Lauder and consisted in 78 works by the most known Cubist artists Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger. And what’s best about it, the collection will be shown at the museum in an exhibition that is about to open on October 20th. I was over the moon to be able to see all these works in real.

The article mentions Georges Braque’s “Fruit Dish and Glass” (1912) as the first paper collage ever created. It’s included in the collection and I selected it as my first image. As my second, I chose Pablo Picasso’s “Siphon, Glass, Newspaper, and Violin” (1912 or later), which is not part of the collection but located at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. I chose these two because they are so similar and I think they reflect the close friendship and collaboration between Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso at the time.

Both works are drawings combined with collage. Braques (left image) used wood-textured wallpaper, and Picasso (right image) included wood-textured materials and printed newspaper as well. Both lack painted colours, they are based on coloured shapes and lines and include typographic elements. Both use a white background which makes them resemble tryout compositions pinned to a wall, rather than 3-dimensional illusions of space.

Both use tonality to some degree, Braque more than Picasso, but the effects are flat, not 3-dimensional. Both are based on simple shapes and lines characteristic for Cubism. Braques’ composition is somewhat denser, whereas I find more recognizable objects in Picasso’s collage (the bottle, a musical instrument). These images are very graphical and “clean” and not at all painterly in overall expression.

More research into collage and painting

The course brief pointed to United States and Britain in the 1960s and Germany and Russia in the 1920s. I looked up art history timelines online for the kind of art movements that came up in these countries at the indicated time. After some digging I found Robert Rauschenberg as a major proponent of Pop-Art in the United States in the 1960s, and the German artist Kurt Schwitters as a contemporary of the Constructivist and Dadaist movements in the 1920s.

Robert Rauschenberg worked in a variety of different media. The first work I found that combined collage and paper was from the series of his Black Paintings, “Untitled” (1951), of which I selected a photo showing just a detail. It shows layers of torn paper painted entirely with black paint. It mainly works on the haptic effects of the layered surface. There are no figurative pictorial elements, only the shapes created through the edges of the torn paper. This was not quite what I expected! I went on searching and found a painting from 1963, titled “Estate”. It combines photographs and paints to create a dense and colourful urban scene. It’s obviously New York and I can identify the energy the city conveys.

Finding an example for paper collage with painting from the 1920s in Germany or Russia was difficult. There were Constructivist and Dadaist movements and I found quite a few paper collages, but none combining collage and painting beyond just colouring the background a bit. I finally came across Kurt Schwitters which I knew by name but had never actually looked closer at his works. I was surprised to find abstract works with subtle tonal qualities and inventive use of materials in collage. The painting I selected for a closer look is entitled “Merz Picture 32 A. The Cherry Picture”, after the printed cherrie in its center.

In this collage, Schwitters uses paint to integrate some of the paper pieces into the background. This breaks up the composition into clean edges and softer blendings which resembles cubist painting techniques.

Concluding remarks

I was glad about the pointers in the course materials, because they helped me to find relevant periods in art history and interesting artworks. By contrast, a naive Google search for “collage with painting” brought up very mediocre results of contemporary experimentation and youtube tutorial videos. Art history writing emphasises the enormous impact of cubism and collage onto contemporary art, but I don’t know where examples of this may be hidden in contemporary art movements. Maybe they can easier be located through a search for mixed media paintings.

For my own practice, I found this research quite inspirational and providing me with some ideas how to approach the associated collage exercise. Maybe it would have been interesting to do the exercise before the research just to see what I’d make of the instructions, before looking at how other artists used the collage technique. Sometimes I feel that beginning a new technique by looking at other artists has a somewhat limiting effect because it frames the approach to take and it might create a barrier for more innovative ideas.

Research point: Pure watercolours vs mixed media

Think about the differences between using pure watercolour and mixed media. If you can, visit a gallery or galleries with both kinds of painting on show and make comparative notes on the differences between the two.

My own experiences during this project

From my own experiences, working purely with watercolour was very different from using mixed media. I had trouble integrating other media at first, because I did not want them to dominate the painting. With some practice, I began to welcome the additional possibilities and even felt that including other media helped to emphasize the particular character of watercolours. I think this was because opaque media like gouache and oil pastels emphasized the transparency and lightness of watercolours. I also enjoyed the contrast between the fine dark ink lines and textures versus the bright colours in the mixed media flower bouquet (second large study with dark background).

In a way, using mixed media is one solution to overcoming limitations of pure watercolour. For example if one wants to paint light colours agains a dark background, this can be achieved using opaque media. It relieves the necessity of meticulous planning of tonal areas and in my case, it helped me to produce more energetic and spontaneous paintings.

Starting from initial dislike and reservations against mixing watercolours with other media, the experience has changed my views. I highly appreciate this!

Looking at other artists

I did a Google search for artists who employ both pure watercolours and mixed media approaches, but did not get very far. There were a few contemporary artists and hobby painters, of which I chose three for a closer look. What I saw was quite in line with how I assessed what I produced in this part – additional media can add an element of interest, for example giving structure by adding linear marks over areas of colour. There’s always a risk of becoming too blunt or illustrative, but of course this is also a matter of taste. I saw quite energetic paintings but this may have been a selection bias and just be the result of what by chance turned up in my Google result list.

Karen Dawson (United states, contemporary)

Karen Dawson seems to always work in mixed media, I found no pure watercolours. I selected two paintings of a series in yellow oil pastel with watercolours.

Street game: This is a nice scene and I think it’s a powerful subject, but I think the painting is somewhat underdeveloped. It is energetic but maybe lacks colour intensity. I guess I’m realizing it because it is something I recognize in some of my own paintings. For example my pineapple painting is similar in this “lack of intensity”. I think my pineapple is more varied with textures than Karen Dawson’s painting, but it also lacks some depth and intensity.

Random: Works with the colour effect of opaque yellow lines against the flowing effect of watercolours. It has more of the qualities I appreciate in watercolours, in particular colour intensity.

Kathy Wariner (United States, contemporary, trained artist)

Again I found no pure watercolours, instead quite energetic watercolour paintings with linear elements that are probably underdrawings executed with charcoal or graphite. I imagine how the paintings would lack structure without the linear elements. The lines have a double effect – they tame the flowing colours, but they are also energetic in themselves. I think lines and washes work very well together here.

This is something quite inspirational for my own paintings, because so far, I have made underdrawings in hard pencil and lost track of them as I added layers of watercolour. I might be more courageous with integrating my underdrawings in the final painting.

– Daisy and red clover
– Flowers
– Still life with bananas

Edith Dora Rey (Swiss/Canadian, contemporary, trained artist)

The two paintings I selected are very similar in colour and composition, but only the second one has some linear elements. It’s nice to see how this changes the overall effect into something more edgy. I admire the simplicity of shapes and the intensity of colours. I’d like to have more of this in my own paintings.

– Gravy jug: Pure watercolour
– Salt shaker: Watercolours with line

For now, I will leave my research at that, but I’m definitely sensitized to application of mixed media with watercolours. With more time, I guess I’ll come across a broader variety of mixed media works and get a more comprehensive understanding of the effects and differences compared to pure watercolour paintings.

References

Karen Dawson http://www.karendawson.com/mixed.htm and http://arugulayumyum.wordpress.com

Kathy Wariner http://kathywariner.wordpress.com/ and http://www.roundaboutmadison.com/InsidePages/ArchivedArticles/2005/0905HCArstCraftsGuild.html

Edith Dora Rey: http://doreyme.blogs.com/

Using resists experimentally

This was quite an exciting exercise. I think I could use this technique again later on. I still had difficulties finding a single subject to explore, and so tried out different ideas.

I started with abstract experimentation using light and dark green oil pastels and then applied an indigo wash from very light to quite dark values. The oil pastel was used both linearly and as broader textures. I wanted to have a mixture of effects of light over light, light over dark, dark over light and dark over dark tones. I think the result looks interesting (ca. A3 size).

Then I used wax resist for a bouquet of flowers, with an alizarin crimson red first wash on top. Afterwards I applied more washes, more wax, oil pastels and gouache to work out the flowers, and a wash with Payne’s grey to darken the background. (48 x 38 cm)

I proceeded with a self portraits in transparent wax resist on white paper. I destroyed the first one because I had added so much additional media that nothing of the original effects remained and I did not like the result at all. I made two more self portraits in wax and laid light washes over it, but then wasn’t courageous enough to apply additional media. Self portraits seem to have a dark magic to them and I wasn’t ready for further experimentation with abstraction on this subject. (ca A3 size)

Instead, I made another attempt with a different subject and chose a pineapple. Again starting with a transparent wax drawing on white paper, then adding light washes in yellow, red and green. Then some linear elements using coloured pencils, and intensifying the yellow and orange tones with oil pastel marks. Finally I added shadows with a watercolour wash. (ca. A3 size)

Guided reflections

Describe your experience of working ‘invisibly’

Working invisibly was very strange at first, because there was hardly any visual control over the marks placed on the paper. Laying a wash on top revealed surprising results. I left the two self-portraits as they were to remind me of the pure effect. Over the three different subjects (flowers, self portrait, pineapple) I began to feel a little more confident and began to appreciate the looseness of the approach.

What have you learned in this exercise about new approaches?

I think I learned that it takes me some time to tune into a new technique and that changing subjects seem to help exploring a technique’s potential, for example by inspiring me to make different kinds of marks. In particular for the transparent resist approach, I found that it works best with a rather loose style of washes and other media.

Can you see how you could apply what you have learned in future?

Working transparently is a nice way of introducing an element of chance and unpredictability into a watercolour painting. It works very much in contrast to the classical, very analytical approach. I could apply this approach when I want to create paintings that have a more spontaneous and experimental feel to them.

What is your assessment of what you have produced?

I think I’ve made an interesting start into the new technique and I liked how it resulted in quite expressive paintings. This is remarkably different from some of the very controlled and worked out paintings I produced in parts 3 and 4. These experimental paintings also work nicely as mixed media images, because the additional media take up a more prominent role without overpowering the watercolour effects.