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| Kunisada - Scenes from Kabuki Plays - 1856 |
Mea culpa! A few weeks ago, a friend brought to my attention that he had attempted to comment on my blog but wasn't permitted to. Nothing frustrates me more than when I take the time to perform some lengthy function on an internet site only, upon nearing the end of the process, to discover that I don't have rights or that my credit card number is required. I've adjusted my Blogger settings accordingly, tested the results and can state with a modicum of confidence that your comments will be posted. My apologies.
For the last month or so, I’ve been working on a project
inspired by the fact that we ended up with a lot of recyclable bricks after
having some work done on our property.
Ever thrifty, my wife and I tossed about some ideas of what we could
make out of the old bricks, finally settling on a fire pit of my own design, a
low half circle of brick backed by a wall of about hip height. Nothing extravagant, just a warm place to sit
at on cool evenings, enjoy a glass of wine and watch the sunset.
I’ve never done brickwork before, but, being ever the
optimist when tackling some household project, I thought to myself: how hard
can this be? I mean you’re basically
piling up a bunch of bricks and slapping some mortar in between. So, while the masons were at the house, I
spent about ten minutes watching them at work and attempted to glean a few tips
from them on technique. I learned that
masons are not very talkative.
Undaunted, I performed the obligatory internet search and watched a
couple of videos on the art of bricklaying, some of which were informative, a
bit anally so, and some chaotic and slipshod.
I was ready to begin.
The first day, I worked eight hours straight and
accomplished very little. I put down my
initial row of bricks and removed it twice before finally settling on my third
attempt. My guide line shifted with the
slightest breeze. The finicky bubble in
my level verified that my ankle-high wall was already neither level nor
plumb. Mortar oozed out between bricks
and ran down the face of the wall. At
the end of the day, I came into the house like a zombie, muscles I didn’t even
know I had aching and throbbing painfully.
I forced myself to eat before hitting the carpet and falling
asleep. It was literally days before I
could walk normally.
I had found a new respect for masons.
Over the next couple of weekends, I continued to work on the
fire pit, never devoting an eight hour stretch to the job again. With time and experience, I learned to keep
my mortar at the right consistency, to control the amount of mortar that got
placed between bricks and to make my wall a little more level and plumb. I ended up spending about five times the
hours that an experienced mason would have needed to complete the job, and,
even then, the results were disappointing.
The outer rim of the pit dips noticeably on one side, and the rear wall
wavers and juts in several places. The
finished product has an Antoni Gaudí feel to it, unfortunately, not
deliberately so.
Lest someone with a kind heart should look at the preceding
photo and assert consolingly that my creation looks pretty damn good, I include
below documentation of the professionals’ labor.
And here’s my point: it takes years of education and practice
to attain true craftsmanship. Recently,
there was a period in the art world when craftsmanship was disparaged and
experimentation was promoted excessively, much to the profit of conservators
and restorers. I’m not disputing the
value of innovation. Experimentation is
essential to art, both technically and intellectually. It breathes life into stale tradition and
opens up new means to address imagery and form.
It permits each generation to believe itself uniquely enlightened and at
war with the canons established by the old guard. But I believe it would be preferable to seek
a balance between craftsmanship and experimentation. For instance, if Leonardo da Vinci hadn’t
employed experimental techniques when painting The Last Supper, the work would not have become compromised within
just decades after its completion. Albert
Pinkham Ryder’s experimentation with pigments and binders led to his work’s
rapid deterioration, pigments congealing and layers sloughing off with gravity,
painting surfaces revealing severe cracking.
And, of course, aiming to make art less of a commodity, less precious,
many modernists deliberately utilized materials and techniques that they knew
would lead quickly to deterioration.
Hopefully, today, “craftsmanship” is no longer such a dirty word. Craftsmanship permits an artist to control
his results, to achieve desired effects consistently and efficiently, to create
works that will endure for generations to come.
What better introduction could there be to the work of
Antonio López García than an endorsement of craftsmanship? I was unfamiliar with the work of this
talented Spaniard until my wife bought me a monograph on him about a year
ago. Flipping through the plates in the
book, I was immediately impressed with his skill and virtuosity, how his
relatively loose and varied brushwork could impart a convincing illusion of
visual reality and how he habitually tackled subject matter so complex and
detailed that most artists would shy away from it. Not only were his paintings magnificent, but
his bas reliefs and sculpture were very accomplished as well.
I couldn’t find a lot of biographical information about
López García. It seems that his life has
been fairly uneventful, no clashes with popes, no murders committed from which
to flee, never cut off any body parts, never urinated in Peggy Guggenheim’s
fireplace. López García was born in
Tomelloso, Cíudad Real in Spain Madrid
to prepare for his entrance examination to the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando Italy
López García is a founding member of a group of
artists known as the “Madrid Realists”.
Unlike the American photorealists who generally copied photographs using
a mechanized means of enlargement and painting with airbrushes, López García
works from life employing traditional techniques.
López García’s technique is deceiving. From a distance, his paintings give the
impression that they are incredibly detailed and illusionistic, with
transitions between pigments carefully blended.
In truth, his work is very painterly, immediate and intuitive, relying
on the viewer’s eye to translate his markings into recognizable form.
López Garcia - Skinned Rabbit - 1972
López Garcia - Skinned Rabbit (detail) - 1972
The label “realist” has been applied to artists as diverse
as Gustave Courbet, Otto Dix, Paul Cadmus, Richard Estes and Lucian Freud,
artists whose means and goals vary greatly.
At this time, in the art world, the term “realism” has lost all meaning
except to define work that results from a vague desire to represent form in an
identifiable fashion. Categorizing López
García as a “realist” really does very little to help us better understand his
work. Let’s see what I can come up with.
I want to focus for the moment on López García’s
series of bathroom paintings, the work I personally most admire in his
oeuvre. He repeatedly chose to depict
this unusual subject matter from the mid-1960’s through the early 70’s.
López Garcia - Toilet - 1966
López Garcia - Sink and Mirror - 1967
López Garcia - Toilet and Window - 1968 to 71
I can’t help but wonder why López García became fixated on
the bathroom. Of course, for an artist
seeking to accurately record external reality, the bathroom provides the ideal
subject matter. There are so many
challenges to address there: mirrors, intricately patterned tiles, dully
polished porcelain, gleaming chrome and translucent windows. And opting to paint an interior space would
permit López García to work continuously for months without being interrupted
by inclement weather or having to address radically changing light. But I believe López García’s interest in his
subject matter had to go further.
Outside of the kitchen, there is probably no room in the home which is
more utilitarian than the bathroom. To
perform its multiple functions, the bathroom relies on a number of technologies
that have evolved over time: sinks, tubs, toilets, faucets, drains, lighting,
waterproofing and heating. Hidden from
view, the walls and floors conceal working systems: plumbing, wiring,
ventilation, heating pipes and ducts. In
many ways, the room resembles the human body with its vast array of organs and
systems. López García presents us with a
functioning bathroom equipped with a host of grooming, medicinal and hygienic
supplies. And, lastly, the artist
records the deterioration, the rust, the mildew and staining that inevitably
results from habitual use. In these
works, López García is painstakingly documenting a microcosm, a terrarium of
sorts, with its working systems, private dramas and cycles of growth and decay.
“Trying to understand the physical world was, to put it
simply, what led many to modernity and abstraction. It led me, specifically, to pursue a form of
realism that made sense.” - Antonio López García
López García approaches all his subject matter with a
similar objective, to attain a more comprehensive understanding of its
functions and workings. When painting a
view of a city, he documents the street grid, the traffic signals, dividers and
lane markings; private houses, apartment complexes, commercial buildings with
cooling towers, advertising signs and tiers of windows; parks, squares and
clusters of trees. His skinned rabbit
gives the appearance of having undergone dissection, muscles, sheathing, fatty
deposits, veins, sinews and organs exposed for our examination.
López Garcia - Gran Via - 1974 to 81
López Garcia - Madrid visto desde Torres Blancas - 1976 to 82
López García is also a very accomplished sculptor. As with his painting, his technique is
deceptively utilitarian, the surfaces of his work being pitted, clotted and
scored, reminiscent of the sculpture of Auguste Rodin and Aristide
Maillol. I say “deceptively” because the
overall effect suggests careful examination and precise documentation.
López Garcia - Man and Woman - 1968 to 94
López García’s Man and
Woman, contrary to its title, does not present us with prototypes of the
male and female human form, does not idealize the features, figures and
proportions of its two subjects. López
García depicts two specific individuals: the man bald and standing
contrapposto; the woman poses soberly, her hairstyle dated, her body short and
high-waisted, her toes pointing outward.
They are a strangely mismatched pairing, presenting precisely the kind
of visual anomaly that results from real life couplings and groupings. The sculptures, placed frontally side-by-side
and separated by a few feet, establish an uncanny presence that the viewer
cannot help but acknowledge. By
documenting these two figures so convincingly, López García plays the role of
Pygmalion, bringing inert material to life.
López Garcia - Night - 2008
López Garcia - La Mujer de Coslada - 2010
López García has been commissioned to execute a number of
public works, outdoor sculptures located throughout Madrid
López García is not
a young man. He is an established
artist, whose best known work was produced in the 1960’s and 70’s. He is represented by the prestigious Marlborough
Gallery, and, in 2008, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts presented a solo show of
his work. And yet, in this country his
work is relatively unknown. It’s about
time that his work should enjoy wider consideration. Besides the handful of images that I’ve
presented here, you can find plenty of others on the internet. Take a look.
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