After An Impression

artist Roderick MacIver

Thank you all for the nice comments on yesterday's art improvisation.

I'm deep into hauswork responsibilities so far today, preparing for an in-law dinner party, and thinking today's Halfland moment will have to settle for trying a wall panel without the cardboard and hardware cloth, just direct plaster to foam to see how that works. I'll report on how that goes later tonight. Oh boy.

In the meantime, to compensate for the wimpy art action here...

Himself sent me the interesting thoughts below that he received today from Heron Dance, an art and creativity newsletter. If we transpose the ideas from traditional painting onto animation art, the important points still stand. See what you think.

"It's all to easy to get carried away by one's own skill and forget about the picture itself. There are legions of painters who are just too talented to paint good pictures. Being able to do something is never an adequate reason for doing it."

--Gerhard Richter from The Daily Practice of Painting

"I knew men who were students at the Academie Julian in Paris, where I studied in 1888, thirteen years ago. I visited the Academie this year (1901) and found some of the same students still there, repeating the same exercises, and doing work nearly as good as they did thirteen years ago."

--Robert Henri from The Art Spirit

"A comment by an expert in art fraud has been on my mind a lot lately. I heard it on an NPR radio show, Studio 360. He is an ex-curator at a major national art museum‚ at the Whitney, I think‚ and now he rents his time out to other museums concerned that they might be exhibiting forged copies.

The comment that has been so much on my mind is that a crucial indication of a forgery is that forgeries are usually much more carefully painted, and much more technically advanced, than the original masterpiece. The forger was a good student. The original artist was after an impression, a spirit, an idea. The forger took pains over his work. The artist painted with a relaxed confidence.

Rodin created wonderful, erotic watercolors, but they were dismissed by prominent artists of the day as amateurish. The paintings communicated his love of the subject and have a wonderful freedom, but they are rough and quick, bold and beautiful."

--Roderick MacIver from Heron Dance; http://www.herondance.org/index.cfm?sid=1&