Chairman’s Letter
Writing articles does not come easy for me. I struggle to get my thoughts organized and then shaped into something resembling a readable form that, hopefully, is both clear and concise. Being an accomplished procrastinator doesn’t help one bit. I can easily waver on facing up to the task at hand or caving to the Siren’s bewitching song of any of my current studio art projects. However, when the subject is an issue that I am passionate about and has concerned me for years, and in listening to the complaints of college art school students I mentor has unfortunately not improved, I find the task at hand flows easily.
I have listened to story after story of university art school instructors pushing the importance of the intellectual content
Chairman’s Letter
of the student’s work while totally neglecting teaching artistic technique or skill development. Students are taught to think like art critics but are not given the fundamental tools to becoming productive artists! While attending art school 47 years ago, I had this very experience, and unfortunately, I am still hearing these same stories of ideology of theory over skill.
Each year at the annual conference, we host a special event called 6x9 Mystery Art Sale: Limited Size, Unlimited Talent. Leading artists, past award winners and faculty create small works— 6 by 9 inches. These works are signed on the back only, mounted on large panels, and on Friday evening in the Grand Ballroom, we unveil them. Attendees vie for the chance to purchase their favorite panel at a fixed price of $250 each. The energy in the room is palpable as the names of the artists that created the works are revealed. All is for a good cause as the proceeds of this event fund our scholarship program, which awards tuition waivers to students to attend the conference.
This year at the conference, I met a student who was attending a university art program in her senior year. We had provided her a conference tuition waiver. She raised travel funds, and her father accompanied her as she drove from Florida to Washington, D.C.
After the conference she wrote, “I cannot begin to express how thankful I am for the Portrait Society’s generosity. What a gift. At 20 years old, I have so much to learn when it comes
to my art career, being immersed in a weekend so rich with information and artists that are so willing to share their knowledge inspires me to make this passion my life’s mission.”
Since the conference we have stayed in touch, and I have been mentoring her as she prepares to graduate and completes the work for her exit show. Last week in the studio,
I was talking with her about the importance of small value studies in black and white, to make sure she is massing her values and that the background is in balance with the main subjects of the paintings. I then suggested that she do a full-scale cartoon so that she could easily see problems with proportion, perspective or imbalance of shapes within the composition. She then said to me, “I’ve never heard of doing either a value study or a fullscale line drawing.”
I have dedicated myself to mentoring one to two university art school students a year, and this is not the first time I have heard these types of comments. In fact, one student, as I was demonstrating mixing a secondary palette for flesh tones, commented, “I’ve never been taught to mix or mute down colors, but rather to embrace the intensity of the color right out of the tube as it gives you more of a visual impact and heightens the emotional content.”
My disdain for this situation is only compounded when I learn of the extreme debt some students are taking on in the belief that they should receive the training to prepare them for an art career. This really seems quite disingenuous and even fraudulent to me. I can say this with authority of experience as I have made my living as a productive artist for what will soon be 50 years. How did we get to the point where aesthetic theory holds preference over development of fundamental artistic skills?
The answer can be found in the brilliant work of a “Master of Writing,” Tom Wolfe, and specifically to his book, The Painted Word. With wit and insight, Wolfe reveals a 20th-century art world that grows ever more obsessed with pursuit of what may become the next fashionable trend to sweep through the galleries and reliant upon the positive support and interpretation of the new arbiters of taste, the art critic. It makes for an interesting dance between the art news publications, art critics
and the galleries that will come together to judge if an artist’s work has value.
And as the critical conversations grow ever more and more esoteric, then the balance of communication of the art shifts more to the criticism and less to the work itself. The visual experience now requires an interpreter, a Cliffsnotes for the collectors.
Wolfe’s book is a quick read of about 150 pages, and though first published 43 years ago, it still is a valuable piece of social criticism that lays bare the how and why of an art world radically swinging from one extreme to the next, each time getting further and further away from being only a purely visual experience.
On a personal note, I read Wolfe’s The Painted Word when it was first released and found the work so refreshingly truthful that I have recommended it to every student I have mentored or advised. The list of Tom Wolfe’s other books— From Bauhaus to Our House, Radical Chic, The Right Stuff, The Kandy-kolored Tangerine-flake Streamline Baby, A Man in Full— are but a few of this genuinely talented author’s works. At the Portrait Society’s annual conference in 2000, our fledgling organization was given a tremendous boost when Wolfe agreed to be our keynote speaker. Well received and spot- on in his delivered speech, he brought the audience to their feet in a standing ovation.
Unfortunately, Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. passed away in Manhattan, New York on May 14 of this year after a full life of enriching so many with his writings. I will remember
him as he was always splendidly attired in his signature three-piece white suit, white tie, white Homburg hat and two-tone shoes, looking every inch the southern gentleman from Richmond, Virginia.
All is not completely lost, however, as there are pockets of people all over trying to turn the tide. In the last twenty years we have seen individual artists start their own atelier, and one by one they are providing a skill-based education for aspiring artists. In fact, Studio Incamminati School for Contemporary Realist Art and the Florence Academy of Art, both founded by individual artists in the atelier style, have now become accredited art schools. Also, there are many art professors at certain universities that have held the line.
It is my personal goal, central to the mission of the Portrait Society of America, to see balance restored to the teaching of art criticism along with the technical and aesthetic skills required to become practicing, independent artists successful in their own studio.