Blake Gopnik trashes official portraits and oil painting in Washington Post article
 

For some reason, the Washington Post employs a guy as their top art critic who thinks that painting is dead. He is enamored with photography and video mostly and is very intolerant of other art forms. The article ostensibly concerns itself with "official portraits" but he really says that anyone who would be foolish enough to work in oil on canvas nowadays isn't really an artist.

Most artists don't go out of their way to bash another art form. Most people just go there own way and if they don't have something good to say, they shut up. As a critic he felt compelled to criticize the art, artists and patrons of official portraiture in Washington rather than write an article on the positive qualities of his favorite type of artists.

I know it's a downer to read this junk because we are in a positive and happy business. The good news is that it is rare and that few people in the public really care what he thinks. It is healthy though for everybody in the portrait world to know what is sometimes said so that we can be better ambassadors of our art form and speak up for it when appropriate.

The reason I was even aware of the article was that they requested a photo of my painting without telling me what a hatchet job they intended to do on traditional oil portraiture. The author didn't have the artistic curiosity or journalistic integrity to even call me before making false assumptions about my painting.

In order to attack "the current crop" of official portraits, he reached back to a painting I did five years ago of the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. One can be forgiven for smelling a political angle in this choice.

The article "Portrait Capital" was in Sunday May 29th edition of Washington Post. It's on-line. The photos aren't shown.

Here is a Link with passwords to enter WashingPost.com
 

Tom,

Here is the link to the article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...48.html?sub=AR

The Wasington Post will require a log-in and password to view the entire article.

Plug these two login passwords to obtain entrance to the WashingtonPost.com site (thanks to Bugmenot.com):
1. Email password: [email protected]
2. Password: rathered

Regards,

Edgar

Thanks for posting this here, Tom. Since I am about to begin painting an official gubernatorial portrait myself, I was particularly interested in reading this author's take on the current state of governmental portraiture.

The author, Blake Gopnik, misses the overwhelming irony in this statement he made, on the third page of the article: He is referring, of course, to the official portraits that he spends the rest of the article deriding but I can't help but think of the millions of dollars of taxpayer money going into often outrageously silly (if not downright offensive) contemporary public "art" that is heavily funded and displayed throughout the country.

At least the curator of the Hirshhorn, Kerry Brougher, understands the real situation regarding the traditional portraiture we create: I don't think any of us practicing this profession even want to be "where contemporary art is right now", and neither do our clients. What we do is so very different from the performance art/video art/installation art that, by its attention-grabbing sheer shock value, gathers up so much of the public funding for the visual arts these days.

Exactly.

Gopnik is biting into an apple and expecting it to taste like an orange. The traditional portraiture we do is not part of what is commonly thought of as today's "contemporary art" -- and pretty adamantly doesn't want to be.

I'm saddened that he attacked your work, Tom, and the methodology used by that other charming and gracious artist, Simmie Knox. It's too bad he had to assail your reputations in trying to make his point.

Nicely argued, Michele.

I have a museum curator aquaintance who once confessed to me that she regarded herself as having extraordinary artistic Taste and that if she could find the time and inclination to be an artist, she would be an extraordinary one. There are a lot of pundits in academia, the media, galleries and the art world who feel the same way. The truth of the matter is that being an artist takes as much guts as it does in having the talent, taste, stamina, and whatever else is necessary to rise to the top.

Most critics are under enormous pressure, both external and internal, to appear trendy and "original" and of course the irony is that they end up as advocates of the multi-million dollar Establishment art marketing machine we see operating today.

Personally, like many artists, I would love to see a little shaking up of the "man in the suit" look, but Washington officlal portraitdom is probably not the place where this will happen.

Never let anyone get your goat. Go Tom!

This Blake Goblin is just mad because nobody wants to portray him.

It's a long article and is clearly written with a simple agenda but that agenda is not to educate the readers about official portraiture today or even the state of traditional painting today. Gopnik is simply a fan of another area of the art world and wishes "his guys" could get in on the official portrait business.

What has evolved to be called art in the last hundred years is so diverse that the term "art" becomes pretty meaningless unless qualified. Even "apples and oranges" falls one complete produce section of the grocery store short of describing the current options within this "big basket" of what could be termed some form of art.

I personally have found some "installations" and video loop and other types of art that are very different from our own to at times be fascinating. I have never felt threatened by the fact that they are made or questioned the validity of the artists who did them or their right to do so.

Most artists working hard at their craft in whatever media it is will recognize honest effort and creativity in others even when the tools and materials and even the goals are different from their own,

It seems that sometimes the champions of what is broadly referred to as "contemporary art" that aren't actually in the arena, aren't actually artists, are the ones most guilty of bashing those artists who do not conform to their vision of what an artist is and should be doing.

I would not encourage my fellow traditional painters to waste their time talking about what they "don't' do" or "don't like". This seems to be a common theme among much of so called "contemporary" art. The descriptions ones reads of why an artist did something often begin, "I didn't want to do------- or "i wasn't' interested in merely........... . The better contemporary artists have more of a reason to get up in the morning than simple " to NOT do something.

At the root of this is a fear (and a mistaken one) that somehow life is "a zero sum game". That is, that someone has to lose in order for someone to win and that there is "only so much to go around", so if you are not getting everything that you want, it must be because someone else got it instead.

Blake Gopnik clearly feels that if only those stodgy old congressmen were as enlightened as he was, that they would all run right out and commission video installations or manipulated photos for the walls of the Capitol rather than painted portraits. His strategy to achieve that is to belittle the traditional work and those that would patronize it. He is very lacking when it comes to explaining the reasons that his "product" would serve anyone any better.

No one lives or dies by whether or not they get a commission for a high profile public portrait. These are plums and we consider ourselves lucky when one falls our way. In thirty five years I have one painting in the U.S. Capitol. Gopnik knows that even if the official world of portraiture were to take a whole different view and suddenly hire his guys, the number of pieces commissioned would not feed all those that practice that art. The irony is that what he is really begging for is "acceptance" and recognition within the very world he is attacking.

Since I spend my time focusing mostly on my specialty, I was not familiar with Gopnik or the "experts" he brought in to help him write his article. Unfortunately for him and them both, today with a simple Google, we can get up to speed and easily expose what their personal agendas and biases actually are.

Kerry Brougher from the Hirshhorn is clearly just another photo as art enthusiast if you see the books he has for sale under his name. Had Gopnik had a sincere desire to write an informative article on the good, bad and ugly in official portraiture today (and it could be written) he would have turned to someone who could help shore up his own considerable shortcomings when it comes to knowledge of traditional painting.


There is much more that could be said on this article and this subject. I'll be back!.

Perhaps a rebuttal to the editors of the Washington Post might be worthwhile.

Every writer has an angle
 

It seems to me that Gopnik's attack was more on the clients who commission the artwork, rather than the artists who give them what they want. It's unfortunate that he chose to use Tom's fine painting as an example of what he considers to be the bad side of official portraiture, but I think it's pretty clear to anyone who paints portraits for a living that you can't pay a lot of bills by painting people with "warts and all."

As a personal aside to Thomas, a similiar thing happened to me a couple of years ago when Texas Monthly called and asked if they could do a story on me after a piano competition in Las Vegas. (They had gotten a press release about the competition.) When the article came out, I was listed among the 100 most bizzare things that happened in the last year. I was mad at first, but I gotta say in hindsight that the article was the best thing that ever happened to me. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

Robert

Everybody puts on a clean shirt and brushes their teeth in the morning before they go out and face the world. No one should feel they have to apologize for wanting to look their best if they are to be painted and seen for hundreds of years.

I have always been a strong defender not only of what we do but of those that ask us to do it. Our clients appreciate portrait painting and make it possible for us to do what we love. We should be as staunch in our support of their right and motivations to commission a portrait as we are about our right to paint them.

I have found that the majority of portraits I am hired to paint are simply because someone wanted to celebrate and remember someone that they love, admire or wish to honor in some lasting way. Most portraits are initiated by someone other than the subject.

There are clients who make it clear they are concerned about how they will look, but ironically Newt Gingrich was not one of those. In all my years of portraiture I have never had a subject who was less preoccupied with his appearance. He is more into ideas. I could've painted a montage of the Contract with America he is holding and some other symbols of things he is interested in and left him out of the painting altogether and I don't think he would've cared.

I have written a response to the WP but I have no confidence they would print it. The article was nearly 3000 words long but you are only allowed a maximum of 700 words to respond.

Sorry for the intrusion, this has not much to do with official portraiture but there is a figurative painter among the finalists of the Turner Price, the most important art prize in UK, the one who was won a couple of years ago by an empty room with the light going on and off, by the amazing title of on/off.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main...ixartleft.html

Painting is not that dead, after all
Ilaria

From the Gopnik article:

"Official portraitists don't share many of the tools, techniques and materials used by the contemporary artists whose work ends up in art museums -- they hardly even seem to share the same appetites. Recording a face for posterity and making it look fine and noble barely registers as something worth attempting in contemporary art, especially given how well it's been achieved before. What artist could hope to make a mark as a second Gilbert Stuart when there's hardly an American museum that doesn't already have a picture by the first ? When it comes to working in oil paint, the past's great portraitists have left so little breathing room that most artistically ambitious painters are likely to try their luck elsewhere."

Wow.

This is so patently ridiculous it's laughable.

The old "it's been done before" argument!
 

Yeah, pretty funny isn't it? It kinda shows how much Gopnik is stuck in the confused 1970's or 80's art world mind set, far from being the "cutting edge" expert he would like us to think he is.

I think this concept has been pretty well debunked a long time ago. I addressed it in my response to the W. Post, we'll see if they print it.

He praised Gilbert Stuart for being an "important" artist of his day and never suggested that he should have been pursuing something "more cutting edge". Gopnik, (who has gotten his art history wrong in the past) seems to have forgotten that portraiture already had a strong tradition and the bar had been raised pretty high when Stuart decided to take a shot at it.

Many thought (and still do) that Anthony Van Dyck had taken portrait painting as far as it could go. Van Dyck had been dead 114 years when Stuart was born. Had Stuart been the more "artistically ambitious artist" that Gopnik envisions, and been afraid to even try to paint portraits, the folks lining up today at the National Gallery to see his work would be in for a big disappointment. Fortunately for everybody, Stuart didn't have access to Gopnik's wise council.

Gopnik has no problem labeling Sargent as an example of an "artist who mattered most" , despite the fact that by the time he took up the art form, BOTH Van Dyck and Stuart had already "left little breathing room". Fortunately Sargent didn't buy into Gopniks silly notion either. Aren't we all glad that our Mr. Sargent at least "gave it a try"?

Like you said, laughable.

Tom, I'd be very interested to read what you wrote to the Washington Post, and I'm sure others would also. Could you post it here?

Photos of portrait procedure
 

Gopnik never interviewed me before critiquing my painting of the Speaker of the House.

If he had he wouldn't have made his silly claim that it "looks like it was done from a photograph". There's nothing wrong with using photos, but this was one painting where I used more artists license than usual. Newt actually posed in my studio in Georgia because the sun would not hit his face the way I wanted when he stood with his back to the Mall. The sun would have had to shine through the solid building to hit like it does in my painting. Apparently this critic was completely fooled by my ability to make this scene up.

Newt sat while I did color studies of the general light effect.

I will try to post some pictures. The first will show me with my pochade box. You can also see a small oil color study I did of the Mall. It's laying on the table.
I will add more eventually.

I fabricated a life sized column in my Georgia studio
 

I used a big light fixture to emulate the sun. It doesn't show in the picture but you can see the light pole. The north window light is too soft to get the effect I needed for this painting. I don't always do things the same way. I do what I have to do once I design the painting in my head.

Thanks for showing us parts of your process. It's fascinating!

The Portrait is 48 x36 inches
 

This will give you some idea of what the painting looks like.

Where I was standing
 

This gives you some reference point for the scale of things. My wife took this picture from down in front of the Capitol while I painted the colors of the Mall. Most people don't see the bird net from a distance, but it is a big distraction when you are right behind it trying to look out at the Mall.

Pochade Box
 

My wife snapped this wide angled picture when I was in the very early stages of trying to get familiar with the Mall and capture it's colors. In the three days I spent there I found I liked it better when the sun was shining more clearly. I was already pretty sure I wanted to paint the column on the right side of the painting but it didn't line up the way I needed, in order to see both it and the view of the Washington Monument at the angle I wanted.

I sometimes keep my brushes behind the painting where you might otherwise store another canvas. I have a box for wet canvases. You can see the brush tops sticking up. It's divided into three parts so that the brushes don't all run together if they have wet paint on them. The middle is not as deep so I can put short brushes there and they don't fall down. I wasn't using any real short handled brushes at this early stage. The canvas is toned grey. I sometimes work on toned, sometimes on white. I used a bit of charcoal to rough it in. There's not much to see of the painting, just thought some people might find the set up interesting.

Sketching and "figuring"
 

One of my biggest challenges was that the positions of the various elements did not cooperate to make the painting I envisioned in my head. The Washington Monument for one thing, is a very tall and insistent structure that would've been too much of a distraction had I not "worked with it a bit". Have you ever painted someone who owned a really large dog and tried to find a way to not have it hog the picture?

The pattern of the railing didn't line up in an interesting way and the height of the top bar and the way it would intersect the view down below was unfortunate. I could write a book on the artifice and liberties employed to make the painting that the W.P. critic was certain was just a copy of a photo.

Here I'm just sketching and figuring, trying to find a way to make my idea work out. The easel is one of those light weight aluminum ones with the telescoping legs.

But wait there's more!
 

I will have to scan some other things to show you more. There is a pattern that runs through the painting that echoes a diagram the Speaker used to illustrate a point in a paper he wrote about the future. I will share that with you when I can.

What a gorgeous portrait!

I love how you combined outdoor light with natural looking color and light on the figure -- very hard to do. I see what you mean about how you had to position him facing the Mall to get the light the way you wanted on his figure, then put him in a place where the light was really only coming from behind. I never would have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out.

I also like how you lined up the pattern of the railing with the center line of the Mall. Beautifully designed.

Too bad they wouldn't reposition the Washington Monument for you, or put a smaller one in its place for a day or so....!

By the way, are you always able to do at least one color study from life with the model?

At least one session painting their head from life is pretty much the minimum. I always try for as much time with the subject as I can get.

Some paintings require more live sittings than others. Many official portraits like this one are not commissioned until the subject leaves office. Had he still been the House Speaker I don't think I could've gotten the several sittings that I did.

Even with the sittings (standings) I spent more time composing the picture and working out the perspective and other aspects than I did painting the head and hands.

There is always a lot the artist can do "from life" which does not require the subject to be there. I paint backgrounds, clothes (on manikins) and lots of elements without the subject being present. It's been done that way for centuries.
An aspect of realistic painting that is not often discussed is just how much is actually made up. The more one knows about light and shade, color and form, the more they know what they "can get away with" and still have it ring true as an illusion that is feasible.

I try to get my set up as close to what I want the painting to look like as possible. Working from your imagination is as tricky as trying to use photographs. It's always easier to have the real thing in front of you. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. You might notice the yellow/orange cloth hanging to Newt's left. That was to reflect some warm light back towards him to help me envision what might happen with the sun bouncing off the Capitol. It's not real evident in the reproduction posted. It affected the shadow on his collar and the back of his hand that is raised but the rest is more subtle.

I try to understand what the light is doing in every painting situation Then I can pick and choose what I want to use.

I designed the painting to echo a diagram Newt used in his writings.
 

While doing my homework before starting this painting I ran across Newt's paper on "The Age of Transitions" It contained a diagram with three overlapping S curves that describe the evolution of technological change. We are now living in a period with the two overlapping S curves of the information age and Nano technology. They form a box. I knew that this is something that interested the Speaker very much so I tried to find a way to incorporate it into his portrait. This is the diagram itself.

Newt's Diagram overlaid on the finished painting
 

The old iron railing corresponds well with the earliest flat part of the industrial revolution S curve. The other parts are not so content related as they run up his arm and shoulder. The future part trails off into the clouds, a customary symbol of "the future". I had to make up the sky and clouds to conform to my idea without it appearing that I had forced some unnatural shape into the sky.

I put he Speaker's head is smack in the middle of the box because it is his concept and he is very much "into it".

Isn't it interesting that paintings (yours included) often have little hidden secrets that are of importance to the subject or the patrons. In Nelson Shanks' portrait of the brother of Princess Diana, he's holding a paper with notes about what he planned to say at her funeral.

Not that I'm at all in the same league as you or Nelson Shanks (not even on the same planet!) in my upcoming portrait of the Governor there will be 21 brass nail heads going up the side of the leather chair -- since he was the 21st Governor. The tour guides at the State Capitol love that sort of stuff, apparently.

It's true this type of thing is partly done for fun. In some ways I'm guilty of doing what Tom Wolfe rightly mocked thirty years ago in "The Painted Word", art that requires an explanation in order to make any sense of it.

If it was the only redeeming quality of the painting that would be one thing. I figure as long as it doesn't compromise the more important aspects of the work; if you can pull it off in a natural way it's "all good".

I mentioned this pattern to the audience at the unveiling in the Capitol five years ago. Since then I've pretty much kept it to myself.

Obviously I looked at this element of the painting as a "bonus". I think it is a healthy habit artistically to try to think innovatively on every level.

One reason I bring it up now is that I found it ironic that the W.P. critic selected my painting to illustrate his distaste for official painted portraits. He feels there is no more room for innovation in traditional oil painting. I think he is wrong and also he chose a bad example to pick on if I do say so myself. Of course since he never bothered to call me, he didn't know what he didn't know.

It was so nice of the clouds and everything to align themselves so I could just "slavishly copy them". NOT.

I already declared that I'm a fan of your work and I reaffirm it now.
I would like to see more of your procedure in portraying here.
Hope it will possible someday.

A client in DC sent me the article about a week ago.

What is glaringly evident from the beginning is that no curators or critical supporters of traditional art forms were interviewed in an attempt to balance the point of view. The thrust of the article is that "everyone I talked to said this kind of art is dead." And it's a LONG article to make no more point than that.

Anyone taking a true art historian's view of the last 35 years or so can't possibly miss the resurgence of realist art in all media. And what fuels this resurgence is that the public at large for the most part prefers it.

Again, read "The Painted Word." The point that Tom Wolfe makes is that abstract art in the mid-20th Century was the invention of a handful of critics and painters in NYC, and that the whole movement was basically propped up in the critical press in spite of huge indifference on the part of the public. Duh. Today, it's the same dynamic, only the styles and content have changed.

For another really interesting and insightful piece by Wolfe on the traditional/contemporary art battle, find his article on sculptor Frederick Hart in the New York Times Sunday Magazine from a few years back.

The problem with critique is that you are making your living commenting on and interpreting the work of others that you can't do yourself. As a result, you don't have a true understanding of the process and technique, yet you have to appear to be an "expert." So a common thread in a lot of critique is a "build up/tear down" model. You claim that you were the first to "discover" an artist/musician/actor or whatever, and then subsequently you claim you're the first to know when they're "washed up." The artist can't survive on such a rollercoaster, yet many manage to anyway, because the best art survives and endures on its own merit.

Nothing will be any different here. Hang in there, everyone. This article is already lining birdcages. Our paintings will be here a hundred years from now (or more) if we make them as good as we possibly can. And Tom Nash knows this, thank God.

Best--TE

Amen!

It's truly amazing how many lives (directly and indirectly, so many years later) that Clement Greenberg was able to impact.

Very well said Tom
 

"This article is already lining birdcages. "

Almost makes me wish I owned a bird. I do have a neighbor who is trying to train a new puppy though! There is a use for everything,

More photos from portrait sessions now on my site
 

I finally put some photos taken during my sessions with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, on my web site. Many of them are the ones already posted here but some are different.

Because of the W.P. article I chose this portrait to feature as the first in a new section I call "Making the Portrait". The link is:
http://www.thomasnash.com/making.html or just go to www.thomasnash.com. Cynthia also has me linked here.

I am just starting to develop the site, it will change greatly in the next few weeks.

Dear Thomas,
 

I've read the whole story with great interest, and intensifying disgust of critics. I have been an international opera singer for more then twenty five years, and have naturally had to endure the ups and downs of these persons that usually have no clue about whatever they are criticizing. The key word here being "criticizing", not "reviewing" as it should be. In music I found that that a constructive critique was so seldom that I sometimes had the urge to clip it out and post it somewhere.
Anyway, it seems absolutely clear to me, that this man has no idea whatsoever of what he is talking, and I wish that the demonstration of professionalism and method that you put on display for us here in the forum, would be something that he could see and hopefully blush in shame over.

We have a saying in the music world that goes: don't worry about it, tomorrow they will wrap fish in it!

Or as my fellow Dane Hans Christian Andersen once said when given one of many harsh critiques: "One would only wish that it was written on softer paper more suitable for the destination of it!"

All the best and God bless

Mikael

Thanks for posting this, Tom.

Looking at your paintings again, I'm particularly struck by how well done the hands are!

Thanks Mikael,

I've been admiring your work. It's seems that the artists, dancers, and actors you have painted made interesting subjects and you have done a great job of painting them. I particularly like the one of artist Tage Anderson and the colorful portrait of actress Ghita Norby.

Thank you too Michele, I do try to put almost as much care into the posing and painting of the hands as I do the head. They may not always be an important focal point, but if they're bad, they can spoil the rest of the painting.

Dear Thomas,
 

Thanks. It makes for good portrait when you have the help of big and interesting personalties to paint. At least one will not have that excuse to fail. I have yet to paint any politicians, but I'm curious to See whether my general mistrust of them will come out in the portrait when I do.

All the best

Mikael

Tom,

It is appalling what that buffoon, Gopnik, has wrought! I was so furious when I read your post today. You see, Blake Gopnik's ignorance of art was for a long time, infecting Canada's "The Globe and Mail" newspaper. Then, a few years ago he was lured away by the, apparently, even more culturally simple-minded, "Washington Post". I am sorry that you in the US will now have to bear his peurile, irrelevant rantings. He had a habit, which seems to persist, to say almost anything at all, so long as it hasn't an iota of solid knowledge about the thing he derides. For example, he once criticised a painter here in Toronto, who had been living and studying Old Masters in Germany for a few years, for not showing us "innovative new brush techniques" in his latest work. I was given to wonder if Mr. Gopnik could explain such an asinine phrase. I mean, are there even any innovative new brush techniques after some 5000+ years of trying? If so, who would care? It's absurd, but it's just the sort of meaningless artspeak that is his stock-and-trade. I'm glad that you brought that article to our attention, though, but as you and others have pointed out, what he says doesn't really affect you or your profession. It will all fade away in a heartbeat.

All the best.

Juan

Tom,

I have just visited your site's "The Making of Newt Gingrich's Portrait."

What a fabulous description of the various and thoughtful elements in this painting. I appreciate this excellent portrait even more so, having some insight into all that you put into it.

I can see you at the bottom!

I have just visited your website and it's very, very beautiful!
The portrait of Jenny is simply wonderful! I loved teh pose, lighting, background, everything!