Francis Cunningham

Set-up, Color-spots, Clean-up with Francis Cunningham (Video)

2011-08-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

Francis Cunningham is in the country, in his summer studio, painting while vacationing. Before he left we recorded some footage for the third in a series of video about the painting process. I've edited it into a new, hypnotic video. Hopefully it'll be as pleasant to watch Francis in his studio silently preparing for a short quite theoretical session of painting and at the end revealing some behind the scenes - cleaning-up, as it was recording and editing it. Here is the link to the whole series and below is the most recent video.

The Canvas and the Easel with Francis Cunningham

2011-06-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

Today we're posting the second installment in the series about the painting process with Francis Cunningham. This video is about setting up the canvas on the easel and positioning the easel.

Mixing Color with Francis Cunningham

2011-06-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago we started a new video series in which Francis Cunningham will introduce technical basics of painting. Our first installment was on mixing color.

Spring in the Berkshires by Francis Cunningham

2011-05-25T14:48:00.001-07:00

In this slideshow Francis Cunningham returns to the summer house and barn and what surrounds them in the Berkshires. It's interesting to see how he returns with a fresh photographer's eye to the same subjects we know so well from his paintings. But, the spring green is so different from his usual oil palette. Like the apple blossoms, it will last only for a few days.

Early Spring in NYC by Francis Cunningham

2011-05-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

Late Fall in the City: photography by Francis Cunningham

2011-05-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

After making several videos in a row, we're not quite ready for a new one. Therefore, we're returning to featuring photography by Francis Cunningham which he started just about one year ago. He uses a simple point-and-shoot Lumix DMC-FP1. Here are some of the backlog photos from NYC's Upper West Side Riverside Park, Fall 2010.

Perceptual Painting and Larry Groff art blogs discovery.

2011-05-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

Last week this entry http://franciscunningham.blogspot.com/2011/04/inventory-learning-to-paint-nude.html#comments on our blog got a comment from Larry Groff who thanked us for putting together a great blog for painters. We were especially pleased to learn that he likes our videos.

He left us a link to his own blog http://paintingperceptions.com/ where he interviews and posts extensively about what he calls perceptual painting. Many of the painters discussed on the blog are Francis Cunningham's peers such as Israel Hershberg, a former student and teachers such as Robert Beverly Hale, to mention two.

Larry Groff is an avid art blogger, both blogging about perceptual painting in general at http://paintingperceptions.com/ and about his own work on his own website and blog http://larrygroff.com/blog/.

His blog is a goldmine including lots of great links to other art bloggers and blogging painters as well as original writing.

Looking at Simon Dinnerstein's work with Francis Cunningham.

2011-05-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

If you've been following this blog from the beginning, you know that we've been covering mostly Francis Cunningham studio work and exhibitions in our videos. However, recently we've ventured out to cover more. We started with a group exhibition at Westbeth, Grid/ Off the Grid in this video and this blog entry. We liked our readers' and viewers' reactions as well as enjoyed expanding our repertoire to covering painters Francis Cunningham enjoys. We've been inspired to do this by the tireless efforts of James Kalm aka Lornen Munk to cover NY gallery scene in video reports. You can find his ouvre as a "reporter on a bike" here and here. We can only dream to be as prolific as him, and while we can't do that, we can cover more of the unchartered territory of more traditional painting, which James Kalm sometimes covers himself.

Here is Francis Cunningham at Tenri Gallery walking through the exhibition of Simon Dinnerstein, a gifted draftsman/ painter, discussing his large scale paintings and drawings. Before you look at the video, here is his website. And below is our video report. Don't be deceived by the video's top image of Paulus Potter's painting, which is going to change in the next 24 hours, it's all about Dinnerstein!

Francis Cunningham: One Year in Painting (Full Video)

2011-05-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

Today, we are catching up with our blogging, having recently completed a couple of videos. Weeks ago, we gave you a preview of a longer video we were working on, which was a video about the development of Francis Cunningham's large three figure piece (2009-2011). In the video Francis Cunningham talks about all the stages of the painting's development, ending with how to look at painting. His model makes a brief appearance, too.

Inventory - Learning to Paint the Nude

2011-04-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

Grid/ Off the Grid Walk-through with Francis Cunningham (Video)

2011-04-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

Francis Cunningham is in a group show, "Grid/ Off the Grid" at Westbeth focusing on the use of the grid in landscape. Most of the artists in the show, Violet Baxter, Bill Kennon, Simon Carr, Valerie Mendelson, Robert Feinland, Robert Ludwig, Francis Cunningham and Peter Colquhoun, live at Westbeth. We decided to do something new for our YouTube channel and cover the show with a long walk-through. The video is quite long, but with 60 or so paintings by eight artists, it was only fair to spend a long time with them in the great exhibition space Westbeth Gallery is.

More details on NY Art Beat http://www.nyartbeat.com/event/2011/672D
Note, the exhibition ends on Sunday, April 17, 2011.

Francis Cunningham: Over the Years (Paintings from 1962-2011)

2011-04-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

Since March 19th about two dozen paintings, large and small: still lifes, premier coup, landscapes, portraits and a major landscape, which were completed between 1962 and 2011 have been hanging on the walls of the Laurel Tracey Gallery in NJ. If have not seen that show, which is due to come down on April 9, or would like to have a walk through with the artist, we have a video report narrated by Francis Cunningham ready. Take a walk through the gallery and through the years of his painting.

New Three Figure Piece Opening Sequence (Video)

2011-04-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

Francis Cunningham has just recently completed a major figure piece, which he's worked on with a model from December 2009. We announced it here and reported on the process here. We've been documenting the process, between the painting sessions, on video and today we have the opening sequence of our 40 minutes video ready to share on YouTube. Like a true painter's video, it'll be worked on for a while, but today, it wants to get out, at least in a small part.

Tour of the Italian Renaissance in the Metropolitan Museum with Francis Cunningham.

2011-03-16T14:22:00.000-07:00

Today instead of meeting in the studio for a session of video editing and blogging, Francis Cunningham invited me to the Metropolitan Museum for a tour of some of his favorite Renaissance paintings. In addition, he pointed out a few relevant pieces. We also looked at a group of Venetian works, which were on my mind, since I'm now reading Berenson's Italian Painters Of The Renaissance, the section on Venetian painters.

For a warm up, we started with an ancient Greek sculpture of Diadoumenos, originaly cast in bronze: a Roman copy from 1st or 2nd century A.D. and a modern cast with only the feet and fragments in the shoulders from an ancient copy. Francis pointed out the enormous gap separating what appears at first glance to be identical sculptures. The Roman copy has life - movement and tactile values, which are absent in the modern cast figure. "The harmony in the proportions of the parts of the body and the overall movement of the body are clearly visible in the Roman copy, but inarticulate, as if they had been "smudged," in the modern cast. Consequently, what matters does not come across."

Roman marble copy statue of Diadoumenos, 1st-2nd century A.D.

Modern cast of the Diadoumenos, copy of Greek bronze statue of ca. 430 B.C. by Polykleitos.

Detail of the modern cast of the Diadoumenos.

Detail of the Roman copy of the Diadoumenos

After spending 15 minutes with the Diadoumenos going back and forth between the statues, comparing them, we headed to the Italian section.

Francis Cunningham in the room with the early Italian Renaissance paintings.

Sasetta, Italian Sienese, active by 1423, dies 1450. The Journey of Magi. Tempera and gold on wood.

One of the Metropolitan Museum's treasures, but difficult to photograph behind glass.

Giovanni di Paolo, Italian Sienese, 1398-1483. Madonna and Child with Saints. Tempera on wood, gold ground.

The Greek and Roman sculptures still fresh in mind, Francis pointed out the movement in the figures and the linear paths the artist created throughout the painting.


Giovanni di Paolo's Paradise.

Giovanni Bellini, Italian Venetian, active by 1459, died 1516. Madonna Adoring the Sleeping Child. Tempera on wood.

This early Bellini masterpiece was followed by one of Francis' favorites.

A later, Giovanni Bellini, Italian Venetian, active by 1459, died 1516. Madonna and Child. Oil on Wood.

Francis pointed out the background and the mastery of light: "One of the most beautiful expressions of the poetry of light of any painting I know."

Andrea Mantegna, Italian Paduan, born no later than 1430.The Adoration of the Shepherds. Tempera on canvas, transferred from wood.

Another masterpiece, we looked at "the space and the crystaline character of the forms."

Vittore Carpaccio, Italian Venetian, born about 1455, died 1523/26. The Meditation on the Passion.
Oil and tempera on wood.

Here the point of particular interest was the storytelling.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Italian Florence, 1448/49-1494 Florence. Saint Christopher and the Infant Christ. Fresco.

From far away this has great energy, three-dimensional form and space.

Perugino, Italian Umbrian, active by 1469, died 1523. The Resurrection. Tempera on Wood.

This was our main destination and if I remember correctly, if Francis had only one choice of all works at the Met, he might choose this Perugino for the sensations of space in the landscape.

Francis Cunningham looking at Perugino.

Perugino, Italian Citta della Pieve, active by 1469-died 1523. Saint John the Baptist, Saint Lucy. Oil on wood.

In contrast with the previous work, Perugino's Resurrection, and his admiration of its landscape space, Francis was critical of these figures. "They lack clarity of form and understanding of how one part of the body works with the others, in comparison to what we've already seen in the Diadoumenos sculpture and the Ghirlandaio fresco." This was also our transition to Luca Signorelli.

Luca Signorelli, Italian Cortona, active 1470-died 1523. Cortona, Madona and Child. Oil and gold on wood.

The decorative flatness of the figures in the background makes the Madonna and Child jump out. We powerfully respond to the plastic form.

Fra Carnevale, Italian, active by 1445, died 1484, The Birth of the Virgin.

In passing we noted the wonderful use of perspective in the placement of the figures in architectural space.

Raphael, Italian, Marchgian, 1483-1520, The Agony in the Garden.

In contrast to the structured, angular architecture and the figures in Fra Carnevale this small work feels real in its softness and roundness and it feels somehow contemporary in its storytelling.

Raphael, Italian 1483-1520, c.1504, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints.

In this large scale, early altarpiece by one of the great masters of storytelling and space composition, whose early training was under Perugino, we admired the composition of the figures in space.

Bronzino, Italian, 1503-1572, Portrait of a Young Man.

We made a chronological jump to this superb Bronzino, noting it as being a portrait of a historical man rather than a religious or mythical subject.

Finally, after Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio, earlier, we returned to later Venetian painting: Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. All three below are more opulent than anything we have seen in depicting mythological and religious stories. The Tintoretto is almost Baroque in the choreography of its composition.

Titian, Italian Venetian, died 1576, Venus and Adonis.

Paulo Veronese, Italian Venetian, Mars and Venus United by Love.

Tintoretto, Italian Venetian, 1518-1594, The Miracle of Loaves and Fishes.

Paolo Veronese, Italian Venetian, 1528-1588, Saint Catherine of Alexandrian in Prison, ca.1590

Like the above Tinoretto, which feels as though it could be an exquisite picnic in contemporary Venetian dress, this Veronese has a religious subject, a saint, but she can hardly pass for one. The figure feels like a contemporary (to Veronese) portrait commission, with the most gorgeous gown showing the subject's status.

Three Figure Piece Finished & Jerry Saltz's Abstract Manifesto

2011-02-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

Since December 2009 Francis Cunningham has been working on a large, three-figure painting and today was the day he reached the final stage. Today was also the day his model, who modeled for two of the three figures, was here probably for the last time.

I've been documenting the painting process in photographs and video, staying away from the studio, having Francis talk about the painting when the model was not here. Today we added a major amount of footage and the editing will begin very soon.

Some of the issues I've heard about from Francis that related to the just finished work as well as his life work in general was "abstraction" as a tool in representational painting. Color spots technique, the use of limited and specific palet are just the most immediately striking "abstract" tools in my view in the case of Francis Cunningham works. He's some more to say about it in the long video we're making. Visit his YouTube channel here, to watch the growing collection of video commentaries by Francis Cunningham.

Aching to make a blog entry after a long hiatus here, I'd inadvertently brought it about by showing Francis, related to our talks about abstraction, “The Jerry Saltz Abstract Manifesto, in Twenty Parts." This telling manifesto, which struck a chord with Francis Cunningham, is an answer to a seemingly simple question, posed by a reader of Jerry Saltz's art column in New York Magazine. The manifesto has been circulating Facebook, Twitter and art blogs. You can read it in the magazine here along with two other another questions and answers, or below:

Dear Jerry,

Over the past few years, I've noticed a lot more abstract art being made, and I often find myself stymied by something a little bit embarrassing. Jerry, is abstract art for real? I mean, I often don't really get it. Isn't it just smudges and stripes and squares and stuff?

—Embarrassed

Dear Embarrassed,

You are not alone. I too have heretical thoughts like yours. It can also take 30 years to understand why an all-white painting by Robert Ryman or a pencil grid on canvas by Agnes Martin is art.

I can't tell you what abstraction is, but I can tell you a number of things that I think that it allows artists to do. What I say about abstract art could also be applied to representational art. With that in mind here's “The Jerry Saltz Abstract Manifesto, in Twenty Parts."

1. Abstraction is one of the greatest visionary tools ever invented by human beings to imagine, decipher, and depict the world.

2. Abstraction is staggeringly radical, circumvents language, and sidesteps naming or mere description. It disenchants, re-enchants, detoxifies, destabilizes, resists closure, slows perception, and increases our grasp of the world.

3. Abstraction not only explores consciousness — it changes it.

4. All art is abstract. A painting of a person or a still-life is a two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional reality and therefore infinitely abstract. Whenever an artist sets out to make something it turns into something else that he or she could never have imagined or predicted.

5. Think of an abstract painting as very, very low relief — a thing, not a picture.

6. Abstraction exists in the interstices between the ideal and the real, symbol and substance, the optic and the haptic, imagination and observation.

7. Abstraction brings the world into more complex, variable relations; it can extract beauty, alternative topographies, ugliness, and intense actualities from seeming nothingness.

8. Abstraction, like ideas, intuitions, feelings, and life, is not mimetic.

9. Abstraction is as old as we are. It has existed for millennia outside the West. It is present on cave walls, in Egyptian and Cypriot Greek art, Chinese scholar rocks, all Islamic and Jewish art — both of which forbid representation. Abstraction is only new in the West.

10. Abstraction gained ground in Western art after centuries of more perfected systems of representation. By the mid-nineteenth century, representation felt like a trap, and seemed empty, false, or limiting. A similar situation existed in the early aughts, after artists of the nineties re-deployed realisms in numerous ways. The field appeared closed off for younger artists. That’s why contemporary artists have not only begun to reexplore the possibilities of abstraction, they’re shedding much of the Greenbergian cant and academic-formalist dogma that attached themselves to it over the last 50 years. Abstraction is breaking free again.

11. Abstraction offers ways around what Beckett called “the neatness of identification.”

12. Rothko’s glowing floating rectangles of color are more than abstract patterns. They are Buddhist TVs or what Keats called “good oblivion. One sees what nothing looks like in them. They make you ask, “What light through yonder painting breaks?” (Now do you see how full emptiness and abstraction can be?)

13. Abstraction is just a tool. It is no less “real” than philosophy or music.

14. Abstraction is something outside of life that allows us to be present at our own absence or alternatively absent in our own presence.

15. Abstraction creates patterns of meaning and its own extremely flexible intricate syntax. It is astral synthesis.

16. Abstraction teeters on making empty gestures while also making deep statements.

17. The camera was supposed to supplant painting but didn't. Instead, painting — ever the sponge, always elastic — absorbed it and discovered new realms.

18. Abstraction may speak in a sort of intra-species visual-electronic-chemical-pheromonal code, creating optical-cerebral networks and wormholes, organic maps of unknown yet familiar territories, may have a kind of plant intelligence that allows it to grow, proliferate, flower, change directions, and survive relentless aesthetic predation from a lay public.

19. Abstraction contains multitudes.

20. I’ve left out No. 20, because I want to hear your opinion: What else does abstraction do that’s special? Comments are open below.
By Jerry Saltz

Francis Cunningham has yet to add #20 as invited by the author above.

In Plain Sight - Francis Cunningham Exhibition Video Walk-Through

2010-12-19T17:43:00.000-08:00

Francis Cunningham exhibition of paintings and drawings is currently on display in Midtown. Today we're bringing you a video walk-through with the artist. It was recorded one day after the show opened last week.

Studio Matters Reviews Francis Cunningham's Jerusalem Exhibiton

2010-11-24T09:57:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago we wrote about the Jerusalem's Barbur Gallery showing In the Finest of Company, an exhibition including works by Francis Cunningham in "the finest company" of students, teachers, friends: Pesach Slabosky, Nomi Bruckmann, Avi Sabah, Masha Zusman, Yanai Segal, George Grosz.

Francis Cunningham could not attend the show, so we were happy to find a blog entry on Studio Matters, maintained by Maureen Mullarkey, reviewing the Jerusalem show. The review by the guest blogger, Heddy Breuer Abramowitz, details the reasons for bringing all the artists together, which are personal and professional. Heddy Breuer Abramowitz starts off by pointing out a view of "disdain towards teaching that reduces those who shape future generations to ones that haven’t made the grade." The rest of the review clearly questions such a view.

Here are two installation photos giving some idea about how the show is organized. We are hoping to see and post here some more images of the works by all the artists, side-by-side.

Francis Cunningham's paintng of Pesach Slabosky and Pesach Slabosky's drawing of Francis Cunningham.

Pesach Slabosky's painting and one of the student works hanged between the main works.

New three-figure piece, progress report in pictures.

2010-11-10T11:56:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a year since Dick started the most recent figure piece. We've been trying to document it at various stages. Below we go chronologically to show the process in a few images.

As always for a large work, Dick starts with a map.

The map. December 2009

The map is transferred to the canvas and followed by an under-painting.

Partial underpainting. December 2009

Here are the first color spots.

First spot. December 2009

Color-value relationships (color spots) are abstracted directly from the appearance of nature. Every edge is defined by color-value on either side of the edge. Three-dimensional form and space are produced by these visually observed relationships.

3.31.2010

Israel Hershberg remarked on how abstract the process is.

10.28.2010

Many sessions later, the painting is still in progress.

Vilhelm Hammershoi Exhibition Catalog

2010-11-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

Today I'm posting a video, which we hope will be the beginning of a new series of video art books and catalogs reviews by Francis Cunningham. We used Dick's no longer brand new, still digital camera.
This series was inspired by a magazine review series by graphic designer Michael Bojkowski in London called Reading List.

So here is the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi's 1997 Copenhagen, Ordrupgaard
Museum and Musee d'Orsay exhibition catalog review.

An invitation to a show in Jerusalem

2010-10-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

The following invitation, including the text, recently arrived at Francis Cunningham's studio. Alas, Dick will not be able to attend.

The image in the invitation is a portrait of Pesach Slabosky by Francis Cunningham. The text explains it and the origins of the exhibition.

בחברה הכי יפה

In the Finest Company

פראנסיס קנינגהאם, פסח סלבוסקי, נעמי בריקמן, אבי סבח, מאשה זוסמן, ינאי סגל, ג'אורג' גרוס

Francis Cunningham, Pesach Slabosky, Nomi Bruckmann, Avi Sabah, Masha Zusman, Yanai Segal, George Grosz

     When we both were younger, Francis (Dick) Cunningham was my teacher at the Brooklyn Museum Art School (of blessed memory*). We have been close friends ever since. Dick has made five trips to Israel, where he has traveled and painted. He has given workshops at Bezalel, and his work was exhibited in the exhibit, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 1909-1999, Contemporary Views,   [תל אביב-יפו 1909-1999 נופים עכשיויים] at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, in 1999.
     The name of the exhibit, In the Finest Company, is meant to express my pleasure in friendship and collegiality towards me on the part of the participants, over long and shorter periods of time. The name and conceptualizing of the exhibition are mine, but Cunningham has the credit for the fact that there is an exhibition. His desire that he and I should have an exhibit together in Israel was what made me want to do it.
    These are the artists. Dick and myself. Nomi Bruckmann, who is my wife. Nomi was not formally Dick’s student, but she has maintained her own close relationship with him since the days when we three met at the Brooklyn Museum. The members of Barbur: Avi Sabah, Yanai Segal, and Masha Zusman. I thank them for not just hosting the exhibition, but also for agreeing to respond to the works of Dick, Nomi, and myself, with their own works. We are fortunate, too, to have available a work by George Grosz, the German master. Cunningham studied with Grosz in New York and remembers him fondly. His principal teacher, according to him, was the American painter, Edwin Dickinson. (There is a painting by Dickinson in the collection of the Israel Museum, which I have been told has never been exhibited.)
    Most unfortunately, despite Cunningham’s desire to be present, he was not able to make the trip. We shall be raising a glass to him.

Pesach Slabosky
*This is a story in itself. Since the 1970’s, The Borough of Brooklyn, in New York, has had a monumental upgrading, in which The Brooklyn Museum has taken part. From being a little-visited site, it has become a major New York art venue. As part of making that happen, the museum closed the art school, which had operated for more than fifty years, and was making a profit, to make more exhibition space.

Image: Nomi Bruckmann

Image: Francis Cunningham "Pesach Slabosky"

Image: Pesach Slabosky "Francis Cunningham"

Sheffield in the Autumn by Francis Cunningham

2010-10-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

This is the final installment of Francis Cunningham photography from the country in the late summer and early fall 2010. See individual photographs here.

Sheffield in the Summer by Francis Cunningham

2010-10-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

Here is another set of photographs taken by Francis Cunningham in the summer. See the slideshow below as individual photos here.

Looking back. Summer in Maine II.

2010-10-20T07:50:00.000-07:00

All photographs in this slideshow, but one, were taken by Francis Cunningham.
You can view them individually here.

This Summer Francis Cunningham Takes Photos

2010-08-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry for taking too long to post this wonderful set of photos Dick handed over to me when he visited NYC a few weeks ago. The story goes, with the camera he had gotten before going away to the country for the summer, he's been doing photography. Here is a beautiful, unedited set from a trip he took further north-east from the Berkshires, to Maine.
It's a very long post, so keep scrolling. The images are the classic Dick Cunningham, figurative painter, but here are a few unexpected close-ups of car wheels and such that recall some more abstract works my him. They really surprised me - the subject and composition. I can't wait to see more.
--perke

25 videos on YouTube

2010-06-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

We've just realized that we've reached 25 video uploads on YouTube.

It's time to organize a bit.

Here is how we suggest to navigate Francis Cunningham YouTube channel.
Start with the top page http://www.youtube.com/user/franciscunningham where on the right hand side you'll find a series of playlists.

1) Saints Exhibition
This was our first video project in March 2009, recorded during Dick's exhibition at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY.
Click here for "Saints Exhibition" playlist.

2) Still Life
This list includes videos analyzing still life paintings, from subject matter, composition and color to the viewers' reception. We've covered, so far, Dick's Summer 2009 still life from the Berkshires "Studio Interior," and an earlier painting from 1967 "Still Life with Basket, Gourds and Oranges." We also made a very short video about "Chime Knife and the Barking Spud" (1970) regarding the choice of subject matter.
Click here for "Stil Life" playlist.

3) Portraits
In this series Dick talks about some of his models, introducing them one by one and analyzing the life-sized figures.
Click here for Portraits playlist.

4) Composition
This is the first of the general topics on painting, where Dick talks about the designs within the design, the finder and the first four lines (edges of the painting) of the composition.
Click here for Composition playlist.

5) Commentary
This is intended to contain videos on variety of topic. So far we've done a commentary on the torn Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum, focusing on restoration.
Click here for Commentary playlist.

"Peter - Reaching": the Four Edges

2010-06-03T06:26:00.000-07:00

Missed Exhibitions. Some Reviewed too Little or Late.

2010-05-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

Today Dick told me about the exhibition I regret I missed at the Met, the Mourners. He only managed to see it on the last week through word of mouth, from fellow painter Ephraim Rubenstein. So, we decided to focus on three shows Dick thinks and I agree could have received major reviews and more attention, but did not.

First, the Boldini exhibition, Giovanni Boldini in Impressionist Paris which Dick saw thanks to another fellow painter, John Leavey, in the Clark Institute, Williamstown.

The Clark Institute has a fine collection, including superb Renoir.
"Boldini is an exceptional and neglected painter whose work is rarely seen today and the show should have been seen by many more people and certainly by artists." FC

There was a good preview of the show in the NYT, but no review.
Here are good examples of the range of Boldini's works:


Giovanni Boldini "Two White Horses"


Giovanni Boldini "Highway of Combes la Ville"

Giovanni Boldini "James McNeill Whistler"

The Mourners, the exhibition that's just ended on Sunday was reviewed by Ken Johnson in the Times very late, in the last chance section.


“The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures From the Court of Burgundy” is a solemn processional of alabaster figures of monks and clerics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.(NYT)

The figures, each approximately 16 in. high, explore expressions of mourning in individual postures, which suit the age and character of each particular mourner. They do so without exaggeration and without Gothic distortions of proportion or linear rhythm in the draperies. The naturalism never becomes caricature. The collective expression of humanity in these figures is overwhelmingly powerful. They will travel to various American cities before going back to Dijon and their architectural setting.
"The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy" Exhibition
Venue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Schedule: From 2010-03-02 To 2010-05-23

Finishing on June 13 at the Met, The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry presents the unbound manuscript from The Cloisters collection. Dick saw it at the Getty Museum about two years ago, spent time with magnifying glass (provided by the museum), examining the many pages. The show is not to be missed.

Here is a short review in the New Yorker and a longer one in the NYT.

Designs Within the Design

2010-05-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

Back in January we made twi video titled "Designs Within Design" and "Designs Within Design Cont." illustrated with a small landscape and a three figure painting Dick was working on at the time and is still working on. Today Dick returns to the subject of designs within design, taking as an example a nude he did in the 1990s, "Peter--Reaching" (1994-96) oil on linen 72'' x 48''.

Arthur Cohen & Francis Cunningham Exhibition, May 2010 in Red Bank NJ

2010-05-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

Those who could not make it to Francis Cunningham and Arthur Cohen "The Landscape Cape Code and the Berkshires" show's opening reception at Laurel Tracey Gallery last weekend, we managed to glean some images from the gallery and a guest and bring your a slideshow. Click here for the slideshow. You can also see the exhibition at the gallery until May 20, 2010.

Laurel Tracey, Francis Cunnigham, Arthur Cohen, Kitty Cunningham before the show in the gallery.

edit

Arthur Cohen, who is showing Provincetown Harbor paintings in the exhibition, just like Francis Cunningham studied with Edwin Dickinson, although at an earlier time. Laurel Tracey Gallery page says the following about Arthur Cohen, his style and technique:

Cohen's sweeping panoramas of Provincetown Harbor are developed from storied layering and scraping - thin levels of paint build up over a day. week, or even over several years, referred to by Cohen as the "ghost" in his painting. It is this "buried" sense of time and continuity that evokes a sense of timelessness and spatial infinity. Working with a focused palette of blues and grays, occasionally some pink and green, Cohen repeatedly brings the viewer a synthesis of light from different moments;

Keeping in mind the common denominator, it is interesting to see the difference and similarities between the two painters' work in this exhibition.

Dick got a point-and-shoot camera

2010-05-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

Encouraged by Temi Rose and with the help of perke, Dick bought a camera last week. He spent a short weekend, May 1 and 2 in the Berkshires. He played hookie and played with the camera instead of painting. Here are some pictures.

Online Exhibition: Francis Cunningham "Male Nude"

2010-04-28T14:54:00.000-07:00

This entry idea began with perke's brainstorm for Francis Cunningham's participation in a planned exhibition of four figure painters of the nude at Westbeth in 2011. Having just posted the entry on the consequences of showing the life-sized painting of Patrick (1973-75) at a New York gallery in 1975, perke suggested that the next show including any nudes might best consist of all male nudes in order to see what the response will be 35 years later to the life-sized male nude.
No decision has yet been made about what will be shown, so we're bringing the nudes from the last several decades together in chronological order for an impromptu online show.

We think the selection of these life-sized male nudes should best be viewed live, but until we have them hanging in a gallery together, we can only indicate the paintings' scale by giving the dimensions.

To paraphrase the Guerrilla Girls, "Do Men have to clothed to enter a gallery?"

To answer to the statistics in the poster by the Guerrilla Girls, yes, Francis Cunningham is a man, but his nudes are equally distributed between the sexes. Please see more on the institutional critique of the Guerrilla Girls on the Brooklyn Museum site here.

See more variety of subjects in human figure category on Francis Cunningham website here.

Patrick (1973-75)
oil on linen
80'' x 44''

Stephen (1983)
oil on linen
60" x 56"

Jeff (with skull) (1985)
oil on linen
66'' x 58''

Tom at Umpachenee Falls (1988)
oil on linen
68" x 84"

In the Woods - Tom Johnson (1988-93)
oil on linen
87'' x 101''

Reaching-Peter (1994-96)
oil on linen
72'' x 48''

On the Beach Tom Johnson (1997)
oil on linen
55" x 70"

Man Walking (1999)
oil on linen
72" x 36"

Resurrection (1999-02)
oil on linen
80'' x 43''

Ramon (2003-04)
oil on linen
105" x 48"

Francis Cunningham - May Exhibition at the Laurel Tracey Gallery in Red Bank NJ

2010-04-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

I'd like to invite you to the opening of the artists show I'm part of at the Laurel Tracey Gallery in Red Bank, NJ. The show will open on May 8th with the reception 6:30-8:30pm. I'll be present at the opening. We'll be showing recent small works. If you're in the New York, New Jersey area and can plan a Saturday trip to Red Bank, please do. Please check for the details below.

Francis Cunningham, May Apple Blossoms, oil on linen. 15 x 20.

Save the date

Saturday, May 8th

recent paintings

Arthur Cohen
Francis Cunningham

the Landscape
Cape Cod and the Berkshires

please join us!
Opening reception Saturday May 8th
6:30 to 8:30 PM

10 White Street
Red Bank NJ 07701
732 224 0760
ltg@laureltraceygallery.com

Gallery Hours
Tue 1-5 PM, Wed - Sat 12-5 PM

It's 1975. "Patrick" and the New York scene.

2010-04-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

Today we have a story from 1975, of course from the New York art scene involving Dick's exhibition. In order to set it against the historical background we go to Wikipedia where we find this handy chart about art movements from the 1950s to 2000s.

We look in the column devoted to the 1970s and find a handy list of hot movements of the time, but not what else artists are doing. Our blog entry halts and we have to find a better source of information on the period. We're interested in the stable of the Castelli Gallery as it is a good measure of what is going on in New York major galleries in that decade than the rather new movements listed on Wikipeidia, and we find the exhibition history on the gallery website. Here is how 1975 looks at Leo Castelli.

In short, Castelli is showing abstraction and pop art. That leads us to assume, perhaps too soon, but our time is limited today, that there is little coverage of the kind of representational painting Dick does. We make a short stop at Allan Frumkin Gallery, today know as George Adams which is known for representing figurative artists such as Jack Beal and Philip Pearlstein. Here is a statement from their website.

"REALIST AND FIGURATIVE ART The gallery has long been known for representing Realist and Figurative artists such as Jack Beal and James Valerio as well as handling works by Alfred Leslie and Philip Pearlstein."

We don't find anything on what the gallery is showing in the 1970s and we move on to the generals.

Another element to the backdrop of what Dick is doing at the time is the photorealist movement beginning late 1960s and early 1970s, a reaction to Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. While the Abstract Expressionists, Minimalists and Photorealists are fighting it out, from what Dick tells us, Philip Pearlstein and Lennart Anderson are painting nudes and showing in New York galleries.

In 1975 Dick has a show in New York which features life-sized figures, including nudes such as "Patrick."

"Patrick" is in the European tradition of the idealized nude- three-dimensional and standing in space- except that he's a particular human being.

Here is the story;

"This painting of "Patrick" was taken down from the walls of a prestigious New York gallery without my knowledge and put in a back room. It was 1975 and the occasion was my third one-man show which, in addition to still-life and landscape, included four life-sized clothed figures and four life-siize nudes.

That Saturday opening I bounded up the stairs to the main second floor gallery to be congratulated, coming down, by the man who had introduced me to the gallery. He never spoke to me again. On the following Tuesday my sister-in-law saw the show and called, saying that she had seen a man waving a catalogue and wondering where the painting of "Patrick" was? A gallery attendant then ushered him in to a back room, and she followed.

At the age 44 and in full stride I was still an innocent about the art world. I called Walter Terry, dean of American dance critics and a friend of my wife's and also myself, and I said, "Walter, what do I do"? The reply came without hesitation- "go to the gallery and them them either it goes up or the whole show goes down."

I did that. Well, I brought out the sweat on the gallery owner's upper lip. Not a good sign. He said the head of a company was coming in to buy a large, million dollar unfinished sketch by Claude Monet of his house-boat, and that the man's wife had died of cancer and that he'd be upset. The conversation continued on until I said, "Look. When he comes in, detain him on the first floor, take the painting down, and put it up when he leaves." "Hooray," the dealer said, "Cunningham has got the answer." A few weeks later the letter came, saying I'd never have a one-man show there again.

When the head of the Brooklyn Museum Art School, where I would teach for 18 years, Augustus Peck, heard about this he said, "You'll get a gallery in New York, but you'll never get a good one." Gus Peck was wrong on one count; I have had no gallery in New York, good or bad.

Why were the powers-that-be-disturbed by a particular, male, human being, nude? Why are some people still disturbed? Is it the male nude? Is it the particularity?

Today is not 1975. We have had far more exposure to the body through television, movies and the performing arts. We have now reality TV and "The Biggest Looser," where we see 350 or 400 pound bodies, but I suspect we're as much voyeurs now as we were then- afraid of our own bodies, looking at them with something between shame and distrust.

Let's look at "Patrick" as being ahead of its time in taking up the nude in the classical art form but with the subject, a particular human being.

-Francis Cunningham"

Still Life with Basket Gourds and Oranges (1967)

2010-04-01T07:44:00.000-07:00

From the figure we're turning to still life, in particular to Still Life with Basket Gourds and Oranges (1967) oil on linen 34 x 40 in.
In part one of the video Dick talks about the root of painting being a lived experience.

In part two we take up composition on the flat surface and in depth.

In part three we consider light, flatness and space.

...and all of it with a dash of Cezanne and a few others.

Francis Cunningham has a Fan Page

2010-03-10T13:26:00.000-08:00

Please join us on Facebook, if you're using it. We'll be re-posting our blog and video entries there as we produce them, and more.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Francis-Cunningham/359488671282

Further Thoughts on the Nude: The Relationship of the Contemporary to the Classical (Part 3/3)

2010-03-05T12:32:00.000-08:00

Continues from part 2

Francis Cunningham On the Beach, Tom Johnson (1997) oil on linen 55 x 70 in.

Francis Cunningham Man Walking (1999) oil on linen 72 x 36 in. Private Collection.

In being open to the particular model one opens up the entire range of human expression through the body. When the model is nude one experiences this directly, unencumbered by baggage. It is shown by the small patterns within the larger movements. These are the adjustments, the little give-aways that a Nureyev, Baryshnikov or any great dancer or actor will show you and which will pass by you in a flash. They color the movement. They are expressed in painting and sculpture by what I call the designs within the design. But unlike acting, dance, movies or video, in painting and sculpture one has the opportunity to explore these designs at leisure, to meditate, examine and ponder.

Francis Cunningham Two Figures, Red Background (1992) oil on linen 78 x 52 in.

I am also suggesting the reintroduction of reason and science into the artistic process – not in the sense of technology as in video and computer art, but science taken as the rational and experimental study of a subject, here the nude. We have gone past the anatomy of Leonardo and Michelangelo, codified in the 16^th century by Vesalius. As expressions of their world they are, in a sense, as out-of-date as are the politics of the 16^th century Italian city-states. But, and it is a large “but,” the raw information that Leonardo and others developed and that Vesalius formulated is still valid and the mass concepts and form theory developed and practiced in the Renaissance are as valid today as they were then. So also is the classical attitude towards humanity in so far as it is civilizing and humane. It is just that we have broadened the scope of anatomy, movement, gesture and our attitude toward the human being.

In taking on the particular individual nude as subject for painting and sculpture I am not advocating license, crassness or whatever may be demeaning.

Philip Pearlstein Male and Female Models With Balloon Chair and Old African Drum (2000) Courtesy Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York

Odd Nerdrum Iron Law (1984) 115 x 82.7 in.

Lucian Freud Lying by the Rags (1989-1990)

The body is magnificent in how it functions, noble and as intrinsically beautiful in its daily self as anything depicted in classical art.

How you view the world will determine what you see.
*****************

Addendum

December 26, 2009

and

February 24, 2010

Polykleitos Doryphoros ca. 450-40 B.C. from Pompeii, marble, 212 cm. Naples, Museo Archaeologico

Why the anatomically functional figure? I regard myself as a classicist. I go back to Greece, to my experience of Polykleitos and Phidias in Naples, the real presence of the human being in art, not just the human body. If the Greeks in fact confined the human being to a few poses and to one or two points of view – station points from which to view the work – their figures feel real, existing as real presences.

Francis Cunningham Regina Standing Side View ('07-08) oil on linen 80 x 36 in.
With the anatomically functional figure the figure feels real from many points of view, because it is not confined to its position on the canvas or as sculpture, but communicates its capacity to move about and take other positions. Furthermore, expressively, it is not confined to a few poses and to those proportions which are defined as beautiful, but it opens up the whole range of expression through the unrestricted range of the body’s positions.

Francis Cunningham Reaching - Regina ('93-96) oil on linen 72 x 48 in. Private Collection.

Francis Cunningham Reaching-Peter (1994-96) oil on linen 72 x 48 in.
For the Greek artist, the body and spirit are one. So they are with me, and what I have sought to do is to bring the intellect, emotion and spirit back into the body.
In comparison, the “New Realism,” as Philip Pearlstein embodied it, intentionally avoids narrative and the intellectual, spiritual and emotional life of the subject. The press release for “Pearlstein/Held: Five Decades” at Betty Cuningham gallery, November 19, 2009 – February 13, 2010, comments that, “By the late 1960’s Pearlstein had committed to the ‘New Realism,’ as stated in John Perrault’s manifesto:
No stories; no allegories; no symbols.
No hidden meanings; no obvious meanings.
No philosophy, religion, or psychology.
No jokes.
No political content.
No illustration.”

Philip Pearlstein Two Nudes in Studio (1965) Oil on canvas 24 x 18 in. Westheimer Family Collection © Philip Pearlstein

We had to have Pearlstein – we are lucky to have him – because, as he has said, “I rescued the human figure from its tormented, agonized condition given it by the expressionistic artists and the cubist dissectors and distorters of the figure, and at the other extreme I have rescued it from the pornographers, and their easy exploitations of the figure for its sexual implications.” This quote, from Irving Sandler’s essay for the Betty Cuningham show, is followed by, “Unlike painters of the nude in the past, Pearlstein continues to portray what he sees without interpretation.”
Likewise, I portray what I see without interpretation. I do not interpret, I present. Pearlstein had to strip away all the barren and sterile expressionist, cubist and neo-classical baggage that hung around the human figure. He cleared the decks. It was a prodigious achievement. It makes possible tearing down the barrier Kenneth Clark describes between the naked individual and the nude.

   Francis Cunningham Three Figures (1993-99) oil on linen 72 x 96 in.

What I “see,” and this is tightly bound to the color-spots and the specific individual human being, has been described by Martin Sheen, the actor: “If you don’t leave home with the true sanctity of being, you won’t see that sanctity in anyone else.” I see that sanctity in every person I have painted, nude or clothed, not because I approach them from a theologically intellectualized point of view but because I am convinced and awed by the universals of geometry, arcs and angles, and the staggering uniqueness of the color-values seen from my station point, unrepeated and unrepeatable.
      A friend, author and educator, on seeing the figure of Genay Sundra in Three Figures remarked, “She is a goddess.” For me, the gods and goddesses of antiquity and idealized form are as dead as they are to Pearlstein and other figure painters of today, but I have found also that they are not truly dead; they have simply moved into individual human beings. I say this not because I “think” this or would like to believe it, but because this is what I see.

Further Thoughts on the Nude: The Relationship of the Contemporary to the Classical (Part 2/3)

2010-03-05T12:03:00.000-08:00

Continues from part 1

Francis Cunningham Mimi Scherb (1971) oil on linen 50 x 32 in.

Returning to what is necessary in the making of an anatomically functional nude, you will need not one station-point, as with the conventional camera, but many, as in motion pictures or video. The difference is that in painting and sculpture multiple station-points are incorp

orated in one image in which the eye of the viewer does the moving whereas in motion photography multiple station-points occur by means of many images over time. In painting the life-sized figure, John Singer Sargent said you must draw it as if it were a mile away and paint it as if you were on top of it. That is because seen from a mile away (infinite distance) the parts of the body appear in their actual proportional relationships without visual distortion, whereas the color-value relationships that express the body’s forms only can be seen from close up.

Francis Cunningham Dancer - Regina (2003-04) oil on linen 77 x 54 in.

The way the artist overcomes this apparent incongruity – the body viewed simultaneously from a mile away and close up – is by employing multiple station-points in drawing or sculpting the figure. This is done by changing horizon lines and moving to the left or right of the principal vertical axis, so as to communicate the actual proportional relationships of the parts of the body one to another. It is a process that cannot be accomplished by measurement alone; it requires from the artist in addition to seeing, knowledge, and above all, empathy. The body has to feel right, and if it feels right it is right.

Francis Cunningham Jeff (with skull) (1985) oil on linen 66 x 58 in. Private Collection

Francis Cunningham Sharon (with pelvis) (1986) oil on linen 76 x 56 in.

With measurement – the pencil held at arm’s length or the caliper – as with every other aspect of painting or sculpture, if you look uncomprehendingly at nature to provide answers to the questions you pose you will not find them. The process of transcribing and presenting multi-dimensional experience onto a flat surface or into a block of stone, plaster or bronze is man-made and has no counterpart in nature.

What Sargent did not have in his painting vocabulary was the complete abandonment to visually observed color-value developed by Charles Hawthorne (1872-1930) and taught by Edwin Dickinson (1891-1978) to all of us who studied with him.

Charles Hawthorne The Italian Girl (1910) 20 x 16 in.

Edwin Walter Dickinson Sheldrake Winter (1929) 29.9 x 25 in.

Within this training, what continues to be the subject of discovery and exploration for me is the fact that observed color-spots will create tangible sensations of three-dimensional form and space. The reason for this, I believe, is not difficult to discern. Our eyes are extraordinarily sensitive in discriminating among the differences in tone, both far away and close up.

Looking out over a valley several miles away we can tell the difference in greens between a stand of pine and a stand of hemlock, a stand of white ash and a stand of maple. In nature the color-spots which the artist will abstract, appear to lie in space. They are waiting to be seen, their relationships to be abstracted and, as color-spots, placed on the flat surface of the canvas. Through these observed color-values space is described and we are drawn into that space.

Francis Cunningham Limestone Farm, Sheffield (1973) 32 x 50 in.

On the other side of the coin, close up, the perceived color-spots appear to lie on three-dimensional forms. Onto the flat surface of the canvas the artist abstracts the relationship of these color notes, duplicating in painting the information the eye needs to perceive three-dimensional form.

Francis Cunningham (work in progress March 2010)
Like black magic, these perceived color-spot relationships on the canvas communicate sensations of sculptural form. Bernard Berenson referred to such ideated sensations of form as tactile values, considering them along with movement and space composition, to be at the forefront of qualities essential to the figure arts.

We have today a tool for creating sensations of form and space that has hitherto only been hinted at in Western painting. To be sure, working with the changing light of out-of-doors makes the painting process more complex in landscape than in the studio, but not impossible.

Sheridan Lord Landscape, Autumn (1974) 40 x 70 in. The Parrish Art Museum, Bequest of Joseph Fox

Compare distant space in a contemporary painting with how space is achieved in the Mona Lisa, in which it is suggested by conventional means – darker and clearer in the foreground, atmospherically more blue-gray and lighter as the distance recedes. Space is not continuous – there are in Renaissance art, zones of space – foreground, middle ground, background.

Raphael, Alba Madonna, oil on panel transferred to canvas, c. 1510 (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.)
You are looking through a window. From the Venetian painters through the 19^th century, with occasional passages of what might be called color-spot painting in the precursor plein-air painters including Corot and the Impressionists, the means for creating sensations of space have been primarily conceptual and a matter of convention – perspective, scale, overlapping planes, contrasting masses of tone – not observed color-value. Observation, with the Impressionists, passed through the prism of a particular way of representing the effects of light, as conventional in its own way as is the perspectival space of the Renaissance.

Francis Cunningham Chime Knife and Barking Spud (1970) oil on linen 28 x 44 in.
Let us not forget that space is a property of nature which we all experience and which is there to be dealt with, deep or shallow. With still life the actual depth of space may be no more than two feet.

Francis Cunningham Highwood (1985) 50 x 86 in. Private Collection.

I have discovered empirically that one can read space in a color-spot landscape or still life at a greater distance from the painting than in European paintings of the past. I have been a hundred yards from a large landscape canvas, still able to comprehend its space, whereas at this distance a painting in earlier techniques would read as a piece of colored cloth.

Francis Cunningham Moment (1989 and 2004) oil on linen 108 x 78 in.

With the nude it is the same. One can be at a distance of one hundred feet and more and the forms of the life-sized nude will read like sculpture. At this distance the sculptural qualities of an actual human being would not be apparent for they are dependent on perceptible halftones which in nature are confused or lost at such a distance. In the nature, the figure would appear to the eye as blobs of color, as in an Impressionist painting. What is the significance of this? We may be reminded that the distance from floor to ceiling in the Sistine Chapel is 65 feet and that to make his figures intelligible, Michelangelo had to enlarge them in scale, using Florentine methods of coloration then current in order to make his shapes discernable.

There are occasionally passages of what constitutes color-spot observation in Velasquez and Eakins, but as with the plein-air landscapists these are incidents within a conventionalized whole. With Velasquez, granted the acuity and detachment of his observation, the conventions he uses are those of Baroque painting.

Velazquez Luis de Gongora y Argote (1622)

With Eakins one may say much the same; his conventions are those of Gérôme’s studio.

Any and all of these assertions should be tested empirically, as I have done with my own life-sized nudes, landscape and still life, and to a lesser extent with those of others. Specifically, I have placed my work alongside several American 19^th century landscape paintings as well as portraits by Chester Harding, examining viewing distances with regards to the intelligibility of form and space. But most convincingly, in a lifetime of teaching I have watched the values of form and space emerge from the color-spot paintings of beginners.

Francis Cunningham Karen (1972-73) oil on linen 60 x 26 in. Private Collection.
Next Part 3 of 3

Portraits: Genay Sundra

2010-02-24T15:14:00.000-08:00

Here we continue the portrait subject with Genay Sundra.

Portraits: Fay

2010-02-24T15:13:00.000-08:00

Further Thoughts on the Nude: The Relationship of the Contemporary to the Classical (Part 1/3)

2010-02-24T13:31:00.000-08:00

Francis Cunningham
December 28, 2006

Lysippos The Athlete Scraping (Apoxyomenos) after the original late 4BC in the Vatican Museum

I am a classicist, that is to say a lover of the classical nude. But I have on occasion argued against the classical nude in order to free the model as subject – the “daily” nude, specific, naked and individual – so that I might discover the classical nude within the daily. How have I done this? By accepting the how-high-for-how-wide of the individual person’s proportions, the particularity of the arcs and angles that constitute his or her body’s shapes, and the particular color-value relationships that describe these shapes.

Francis Cunningham Patrick (1973-75), oil on linen, 80 x 44 in.

What appears on my canvas is not the result of copying nature. It is the product of a painterly process of decision-making, one that abstracts from the visual appearance of the figure and coordinates this information with the actual proportional relationships of the anatomical parts of the model’s body.
What our eyes see and what is actually there are not at all the same. Your eye may tell you that the hand coming toward you is larger than the head behind it – the camera gives proof – but your mind knows that the hand is smaller, and by how much.
The model in front of you may be lit by more than a single light source, perhaps by as many as four or five, but if you want the body’s forms to read as three-dimensional you will select a single light source and you will then light the geometrical form-concepts that mass the model’s anatomical parts by means of this single light source. All of this is knowledge, conceptual and generalized information which the artist brings to bear on the appearance of the particular model. What we “see” is a combination of seeing and knowing.
In taking up the nude today, what is the difference between now and what was done in the past? The short answer is a world. The disappearance of the classical world view has opened up for us a new world of possibilities in terms of the ways in which a human being moves and the meaning of gestures, and also in the means for creating three-dimensional form and space.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres La Grande Odalisque (1814), 35 x 64 in.

Classical art from antiquity through the 19th century was concerned primarily with ideal or idealized proportions, rhythms, pictorial organization and also with generalized color. The figures work as art, but how many classical or classicized figures do you know that can actually take a pose other than the one in which they are positioned? You may ask why would anyone want a painted or sculpted figure to be in any other position than the one they are in? Why should a painted or sculpted figure be anatomically functional and able to move about, change positions and take other poses? The answer to this is that in accepting the model as a functioning human being rather than just a painted or sculpted depiction, a whole new set of possibilities for understanding the human being, physically, mentally and spiritually, opens up – possibilities that were closed to the classical outlook.

Francis Cunningham Regina Reclining (2003-05), oil on linen, 32 x 65 in.

Francis Cunningham Genay Sundra Reclining (1997-99), oil on linen, 40 x 72 in.

How many depictions in classical painting and sculpture are other than theatrical, operatic statements of the “mad, sad, glad” of human emotions, as the chorographer Alwin Nikolais called them? Piero della Francesca’s silence is no less ideal in its effect – a theater of the ineloquent.

Piero della Francesca St. John the Evangelist (1454-1469), tempera on poplar panel, 52 3/4 x 24 1/2 in. The Frick Collection.

As an experiment, take Raphael’s Entombment and examine it for probability and expenditure of effort in relationship to the movement and gestures required by the action.

Raphael The Entombment (1507), oil on panel, 184 × 176 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Take each pose for yourself. You will not be able to. [I have had students prove this to themselves.] With this exercise in hand, examine the Sistine Ceiling and the Last Judgment of Michelangelo, the figures in Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus and Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa, with its Michelangeloesque poses in a carefully composed pyramid.

Michelangelo The Sistine Ceiling; Cumaean Sibyl (detail).

Michelangelo The Last Judgment; St. Bartholomew (detail).

Delacroix Death of Sardanapalus (1827); detail.

Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa; detail.

It’s not an accident that beginning with Praxiteles’ Aphrodite in the 4th century, classical antiquity developed only seven basic poses with minor variants for the goddess of love. Can we today imagine confining the expression of love to seven poses?

Praxiteles Aphrodite

Francis Cunningham Regina (2005-2006), oil on linen 80 x 36 in.

The classical mindset from antiquity through the 19th century limited the possibilities of the nude to a small number of gestures and poses – these poses constitute the classical nude, as Kenneth Clark has described them in The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form.

Continues in part 2/3

Philip Pearlstein/ Al Held Show's Belated NYT Review

2010-02-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

In November we made a blog entry on the early reception of Philip Pearlstein/ Al Held "PEARLSTEIN/HELD: Five Decades" exhibition at Betty Cuningham Gallery, which was at the time on Dick's want-to-see list and also triggered my interest because of the video report by one of my favorite NY art voices, James Kalm. That was soon after show's opening, which Dick missed, but saw the show several weeks later. Here is the link to our original blog entry.

After time passed we thought that this exhibition might not be covered by the NYT. To our surprise, just three days before the scheduled closing a review by Roberta Smith made it to the Wednesday cover of the Arts as "last chance" here.

Some points of interest to Dick made by the reviewer were the way the two artist make three dimensional space on the flat surface of the canvas. Abstract and figurative art have been seen to be at war by misconceptions of how paintings are made and how they can create sensations of three dimensional space.

Dick goes into the subject of abstraction, form and space in his paintings in all of our videos on YouTube, but particularly in Designs within Design.

Pearlstein/ Held exhibition bridges the gap between figurative and abstract painting, well expressed by the reviewer, says Dick.

Portraits: Backgrounds

2010-02-10T10:58:00.000-08:00

The father of Dick's current model, Stephanie, remarked on the variety of backgrounds for Dick's figures,

which often contrast the realism of the bodies. This remark made Dick think about the various abstract

and figurative backgrounds he's used. The following video shows examples of those backgrounds,

how they came to be used and how they work with the figure.

Portraits: Tom Johnson

2010-02-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

Today we're posting another portrait. This time it's a model, Tom Johnson, whom Dick painted in four major works. The video tells the story of Tom, as Dick knew him, from before they met until Tom's death.

Design Within Design Cont.

2010-02-02T10:53:00.000-08:00

About a week ago, we posted on Designs within Design and we heard from many of you. Dick realized that there is more to say on the subject of designs within the design as well as framing and composition and we made this follow up video.

Video Tips on Fixing a Torn Picasso or Others

2010-01-29T11:36:00.000-08:00

Few days ago a brief news story by Carol Vogel about an accident involving a woman falling accidentally into “The Actor”(1905), "a rare Rose Period Picasso" and damaging it last Friday at the Metroplitan Museum of Art appeared in the NY Times. It was later followed by a longer piece explaining how the small tear will be dealt with.
This somewhat sensational story was of course picked up on twitter and in the general and art news media around the world. Knowing that, I had Dick quickly read the longer story on my iphone and I asked him to tell me about his view on the accident and about his experience with torn canvases. This led us to make a short video below about art restoration.
Make sure to also look at the funny, cruel, cynical and pointed comments in this original blog entry on the NYT Artsbeat.

Designs within Design

2010-01-23T07:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was supposed be our video editing day- finish another portrait- but we started late and decided to make a short pretty unedited video about the concept of "designs within the design." The idea of the designs with design define quite well, although not completely, Dick's painting process.
So, for the video, using one of his older, small, premiere coup landscapes, which he had used to create a background for a large nude of Tom Johnson- whose video portrait is coming soon- Dick illustrates how a viewer's eyes enter the painting through the edges of the painting. He flips the painting to its sides and upside down to analyze the framing, a great, simple tool in painting, photography and critical tradition, to get a better sense of space and the painting's compositional organization.
He then moves to another painting, the work in progress, the three figure piece, and reveals a stages in his color-spot process and the way he arrives at designs within the design of the picture as a whole.

Returning to the studio and another video shoot.

2010-01-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

If you were wondering where are our emails and blog posts, Dick and I each each took a short vacation which together added up to 3 weeks. I'm back from a trip to Japan where I visited relatives and friends, ate great New Year dishes, photographed and videoed. We tried making a post last friday, a day after my return to NYC, but we ended up just making plans for our full work day here today. So today we did some shifting around of the paintings which were blocking the way to the paintings we where shooting.

Here are some images and now back to editing. Another portrait, Tom Johnson, coming soon, followed by a video on the related subject of surrounding space.

After moving everything around and shooting a video, we placed the paintings back where they belong and then had lunch.

Portraits: Rev. W. B. Wright

2010-01-20T11:53:00.000-08:00

Before the Christmas/New Year break Dick and I rushed and filmed as much as we could for our video series on Dick's models. We had a long holiday break ahead of us, so we worked on editing yet another video. We accomplished it and the result is "Portraits: Rev. W. B. Wright" We had mentioned and linked W.B.Wright video in our most recent e-mail, but here it comes to the blog.

Holiday Special: Lunch Time at the Cunningham Studio

2009-12-21T15:20:00.000-08:00

I've been taking photos around Dick's studio, kitchen and apartment in general continuously. Most of them are food related, as I have a habit of documenting my plates and cups, and their contents. Images have accumulated and since the holiday season is about sharing, among other things, food, I've decided in that spirit to put together a slideshow of lunches, teas and cookies, and scotches I've shared with Dick recently.

The image above is from a Chinese restaurant downtown I went to during the weekend. The table there has a holiday look all year long. The empty bowl once had a delicious soup.

Now, lunch break at the Cunningham studio is the time Dick and I move over piles of documents, books and other objects on the table and set our plates generally piled with sandwiches or other delicious concoctions we created or Kitty supplied. While eating we plot the next edit in the video or skim through a book Dick recommends, or plan the next blog entry.
Please enjoy the photos as a set here and as a slideshow here.

Enjoy the holidays.

The End Game Never Ends, and Self-Portrait

2009-12-18T10:59:00.000-08:00

While I'm editing portraits, Dick is among other projects working on the three figure painting, which yesterday got its first spots of color. He's also touching up some nudes that we'll video very soon.

And then the most novel and fun for me at the moment, Dick has been pulling out various paintings from years ago which exhibit such variety of style. One of such paintings is a self-portrait as a "married buck right out of art school" with some early painting in the background done from the head, not nature.

Portraits: Floyd Woodbeck

2009-12-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

Our second video, Portraits: Floyd Woodbeck, in the series about the models Dick has worked with and painted over the years, is ready. Floyd was Dick's neighbor, friend and he helped maintaining the Berkshires summer house, studio barn and land. If you want to watch or re-watch other portraits(one other at the moment), here is the playlist for the series on YouTube.

December 2-16, 2009: Progress on the "three figure painting"

2009-12-17T13:42:00.000-08:00

Dick is beginning with the oils today on his new painting of three figures.
We've been documenting the progress and here are the stages from December 2-16, 2009.
From the map,

through the underpainting,

and more underpainting,

to the finished underpainting,

Portraits: Mimi Scherb

2009-12-14T06:27:00.000-08:00

The video introduction to our new video project, Portraits, received a bit more feedback from you than our previews videos. Thank you. We tried to cover more in each of the previews video and they took longer to produce and put up on YouTube. So, this time we're trying something different, shorter, rougher- more frequent, more focused videos. This time the subject is the models Dick has worked with over the years. First, Mimi with whom Dick worked from early in his career and whom he painted many times.

Your thoughts and reactions are as always welcome. Comment here, email or even snail mail. Watch for more videos here and on our YouTube Portraits playlist and Dick's YouTube channel.

New Painting and Portraits-Video in Progess

2009-12-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

We are starting another project. Dick is painting every day; his model is here four days a week and I'm here shooting video, editing and writing the blog once a week. Hopefully we'll have more to show by the new year.
In the mean time we're posting two images of the new painting showing work in progress and a rough cut of the introduction for our new video.

[Images from December 2 and December 9, 2009]

Studio Interior Sheffield (2009) Still Life Videos: Berkshires, Golden Section, End Game

2009-12-02T09:43:00.000-08:00

This is our final word on the "Studio Interior Sheffield"(2009) painting and videos, the three videos have been so far called Summer '09 Still Life. See our entry on how it all started in the summer in Sheffield.

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Summer '09 Still Life: Studio in NYC. The What It Is, End Game.

2009-12-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

Final, part three of Summer '09 Still Life is up on YouTube. I'd had some trouble uploading the big file, higher quality video, so I decided to lower the quality just a bit. You probably can't tell, except in a few places where the camera moves too fast, when painstakingly following Dick dancing around "the stage" in front of the paining, explaining "the what it is" and the "end game" of the painting process in general and particular.

"New Realism" and Philip Pearlstein & Al Held Exhibition

2009-11-20T14:25:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: See the James Kalm video from the opening reception of Philip Pearlstein & Al Held Exhibition here.

I've just added Al Held and Philip Pearlstein "PEARLSTEIN/HELD: Five Decades" now on show at Betty Cuningham Gallery to Dick's "want to see" and "recommended" lists, found here Dick mentioned the show to me the day before it opened and my appetite was whetted further when I saw James Kalm's short interview with Philip Pearlstein at the opening, found on Facebook and hopefully also coming to James Kalm YouTube channel. Dick has not yet seen the show after his successful cataract operation left him a bit disoriented for "more than" a few days.

In September/October 1997, Dick worked with Philip Pearlstein, George Nick and John Moore in Israel on series of paintings for an exhibition in 1999 in Tel Aviv Museum entitled "90th Anniversary of Tel Aviv; Contemporary City Scapes; Israeli and American Artists."

Al Held and Philip Pearlstein "PEARLSTEIN/HELD: Five Decades" at Betty Cuningham Gallery compares careers of two artists, as explained in the press release, "born in the mid – 1920’s: Pearlstein in 1924 and Held in 1928. The artists arrived in the center of the “art scene” in the late 1940’s at the time of the birth of Abstract Expressionism. Both tried their hand in Abstract Expressionism in the 1950’s, but by 1960, both had left Abstract Expressionism behind. Philip Pearlstein chose the route of representation – particularly of the female nude, a classic subject throughout art history. Al Held moved toward clear abstraction. Both shared the position that “Expressionism” would be dropped from their paintings. By the late 1960’s Pearlstein had committed to the “New Realism”, as stated in John Perrault’s manifesto:
No stories; no allegories; no symbols.
No hidden meanings; no obvious meanings.
No philosophy, religion, or psychology.
No jokes.
No political content.
No illustration.
No fantasy or imagination; no dreams; no poetry."

Of the two artists, in my opinion, Pearlstein is more relevant to what Dick's practice is, so I'll just talk about him.
Dick considers Philip Pearlstein revolutionary for figure painting. One of their common subject matters is the nude.
Our conversation today ended up on the issue of breaking tradition in art, and “New Realism,” which Dick lived through, but was not swept away by, holding to the humanity of the subject and its emotional and intellectual manifestations as well as the physical.
Dick says that he's greatly indebted to Pearlstein. "Philip broke with the Western tradition of the idealized nude and freed artists to look at the nude with their own eyes, fresh."
Dick is also "preplexed by why it's not generally seen that Pearlstein is cut out of the same cloth as Signorelli and Michelangelo in his sense of form and space," which I find interesting as an issue in art history and tradition to bring up in this context.

[Image: Francis Cunningham "Reaching"]
-perke

Buy Francis Cunningham Paintings Online + Group Show This Weekend

2009-11-18T14:09:00.000-08:00

Dick's small premier coup will be in a group show of small paintings at Laurel Tracey Gallery in Red Bank, NJ. The show is inaugurating Laurel Tracey Online gallery and will be up until December 31. Please join Dick at the gallery for the the opening reception this Saturday November 21, 6:30 - 8:30pm. You can see and buy Dick's works on at Laurel Tracey Online starting Thursday. There are six works to buy online and many others are available in the gallery in Red Bank to see.

Introducing Laurel Tracey Online

Opening Reception
Saturday, November 21st 6:30 - 8:30 PM

Please join us for an opening reception featuring
recent works by our gallery artists
and...
to celebrate the launch of our new online website

www.laureltraceyonline.com

small paintings, custom framed
available to buy online starting Thursday, November 19th, 2009

10 White Street
Red Bank NJ 07701
732 224 0760
ltg@laureltraceygallery.com

Gallery Hours
Tue 1-5 PM, Wed - Sat 11-5 PM

Summer '09 Still Life: Studio in NYC. On the Golden Section Ratio

2009-11-18T09:23:00.000-08:00

I originally planned two short videos on Dick's summer-long project, still life done in the Berkshires, but it ended up being three videos because of the amount of great material Dick discussed on camera. So, below is the video, part 2, recorded in Dick's NYC studio in which he discusses and explains his use of the golden section ratio in "organizing the surface of the canvas and its relationship to the space in the painting." If you have not yet seen part here it is on YouTube and here is our blog entry on it.

John Leavey: History, Artist and Model (Subject)

2009-11-11T15:01:00.000-08:00

Today Dick and I worked on the rest of the summer still life video and manged to finish it. It's ready for somewhat time consuming compression process to be viewed on YouTube in a few days. It's just like "varnishing" a painting before getting it out to the world.
At one point Dick and I talked about the distance between the painter and his subject, which brought us to the recent studio visit of one of Dick's long time friends from the Art Students League, John Leavey, or as Dick calls him, Jack.

Jack attended the Art Students League, where Dick met him in Robert Beverly Hale's class. Later they went to Edwin Dickinson's class. Jack won a Prix de Rome and spent seven years in Italy. At one point he painted stage sets. He's painted and drawn continuously and now lives in Bennington, Vermont.
So, now you have an idea about Jack.

When at Dick's studio, Jack made this drawing of triangles about HISTORY, ARTIST and MODEL. I like how it illustrates the disappearance of distance between history and the artist. For simplification, I think we can assume that the distance between the artist and the model remains the same.

At the top Jacques-Louis David looks at a 50 year old male model while he paints a "historical" figure, such as a Roman soldier. As painting in the 19th century moves towards realism, the line of the triangle illustrated here, between the artist and history, gets shorter and shorter. Courbet (Realism), Manet, Degas and we wind up in Jack's diagram with Toulouse-Lautrec. Lautrec draws a 50 year old man who is no more or less, a 50 year old man. In Jack diagram photography is a straight line between the artist and the model, as there is no longer history. (We find this problematic.)

Now, the question is what is the distance between Dick and his new piece, he's just started, here at the map stage, or his subjects in general?

-perke and Dick

Still Life Summer 09 and Artist's Studio

2009-10-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

In August I spent a weekend in the Berkshires as of previews entry here. At that time Dick and I worked one day on a video, which I managed to finally edit with helpful insights from Dick after his return to the NYC studio. Part one of two of this project introduces Dick's studio in the country and the still life in the middle of being work on. Enjoy the cliff hanger ending. Part 2 and more coming soon.

About New Still Life Video & My Lunch with Dick and Michelangelo on the Tea Cup

2009-10-22T03:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my first full day working from Francis Cunningham studio and I spent most of the day editing video about his summer'09 sill life. I made a solid rough cut of part one and am up very early this morning getting the first sequence re-done. I'll just add that the October mosquitoes in my house were a big "help" getting me out of bed 6am. Anyone else has mosquitoes in Manhattan?

Today is Dick's check up day at the doctor's, and the pre-exam dietary restrictions prevented him from sharing this lunch with me yesterday. But, he had yogurt, other goodies and tea from Michelangelo cup.

Next week, perhaps Dick will share the recipe for his famous sandwich when we start on part two of the video about the big still life.

First Class Paintings and Drawings: October '09 Exhibitions Recommendations

2009-10-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

Dick fresh back from the woods in Western Massachusetts while still searching for ticks in his clothes is making a list of the must see and recommended exhibitions, most of which he's not seen yet himself.
I've made him a MyNYAB account on NY Art Beat to bookmark his favorites, so they are handy and sharable here.
The list currently includes lots of 18th century, mainly drawings and some paintings from France, and it starts with Dicks favorite space, the Frick Collection followed by the Met, through the Morgan library, ending with the MoMA.

The Frick Collection has an exhibitions on of French 18th and 19th century drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection.
"Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection" Exhibition
Venue: The Frick Collection
Schedule: From 2009-10-06 To 2010-01-10

At the Metropolitan Watteau's show of paintings which take on the theme of music and theater contemporary to the artist is the destination.
"Watteau, Music, and Theater" Exhibition
Venue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Schedule: From 2009-09-22 To 2009-11-29

The lower key, but highly valued Watteau show is followed by a minor blockbuster: Vermeer's "Milkmaid," which also include the Met's collection's Vermeers. Even is crowded, it's a must see.
"Vermeer's Masterpiece The Milkmaid" Exhibition
Venue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Schedule: From 2009-09-10 To 2009-11-29

There are more drawings at the Morgan Library, again including Wateau and more 18th century French drawings.
"Rococo and Revolution: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings" Exhibition
Venue: The Morgan Library & Museum
Schedule: From 2009-10-02 To 2010-01-03

"William Blake's World: 'A New Heaven Is Begun'" makes Dick's list for now.
"William Blake's World: 'A New Heaven Is Begun'" Exhibition
Venue: The Morgan Library & Museum
Schedule: From 2009-09-11 To 2010-01-03

Finally, something I brought up, since I already saw it, the Monet’s Water Lilies at the MoMA. Unlike the other blockbuster, Vermeer at the Met, the Monet room at the MoMA had ample room to enjoy the huge paintings and smaller work.
"Monet’s Water Lilies" Exhibition
Venue: The Museum of Modern Art
Schedule: From 2009-09-13 To 2010-04-12

Take Home a Nude/ Figurative Painting / Sotheby's/ Gagosian

2009-10-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

Dick is finishing his summer painting season in the country, while in NYC...

[Image: JENNY SAVILLE Mother and Child (After the Leonardo Cartoon), 2008 Charcoal on watercolor paper 59 x 47 inches (149.9 x 119.4 cm)]

The 18th Annual Take Home a Nude® Art Auction & Party Honoring John Currin took place Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at Sotheby's.

"Take Home a Nude" is a clever title ~~and connected to Art Students League~~, so I thought it belongs on this blog.

"This year the New York Academy of Art holds its 18th Annual Take Home a Nude Event. Celebrities and prominent members of the New York art community always attend this showing of some of the city's finest figurative work. As with last year's auction, there is a wide variety of work, and artists will be showing off their skills, showcasing their techniques and walking those interested through the process of creating figurative art. The 2009 Event will be held Wednesday, October 7, 2009.

View the auction preview here

Israel Hershberg Exhibition at Marlborough Gallery - Jerusalem Studio School

2009-09-29T14:24:00.000-07:00

Dick is back in New York for a few days and we're meeting at his studio to shoot the rest of the video about the studio interior painting he's been working on in the country and which he finally completed.

But it's not the first time we meet in NY this late summer. We met a few weeks back in Chelsea, when Dick came to the city for the opening of the exhibition of Israel Hershberg at Marlborough Gallery.

Israel Hershberg "From Afar"
Venue: Marlborough Chelsea
Schedule: From 2009-09-10 To 2009-10-10

Israel Hershberg was one of the students picked by Dick for High School honors class at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1966. Israel went to study at Pratt and teach at various US institutions. Dick and Israel have stayed in touch and remained friends.
Israel eventually moved to Israel, where he founded and continues to direct the Jerusalem Studio School.
Dick says that Jerusalem Studio School is the only institution he knows where Dickinson's way of looking and principles are still central today.
Israel took from Dick's teaching Dickinson's tonal work: color spots, plumb line and the finder. He used those tools to develop his own form of realism and teaches them the Jerusalem Studio School.

Dick Cooking Sheffield Corn Video

2009-09-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

On my personal blog on NY Art Wine I made an entry about the corn and wine I had with Dick. Somehow I omitted the best part, the video of Dick cooking Sheffield corn for our last Sheffield lunch. But, it now has been corrected and the entry includes the video of Dick demonstrating how to cook perfect corn. I'm also posting the clip here, since I did not include it in any of my preview entries.

Weekend of August 22nd: Perke and Dick in the Berkshires

2009-09-01T15:57:00.000-07:00

Despite the "micro burst" storm that tore through the Berkshires area and despite merciless mosquitoes, we managed to do quite a lot of work with Dick. I took scores of photos of the barn, of the outside and inside, but especially the studio. Here is the set and here the slideshow, to see almost all of the work and fun in photos an videos. Not yet ready is a longer video, which I'm beginning to edit now.
Talking with Dick about the still life he's currently working on demystified a lot of painting process for me and I hope to show Dick elaborating on it in our video.
This is part of the still life set up, of which only a fragment is visible on the canvas and on the "map."

The rest of the set-up. The dried fruit is a beauty.

Finally, an attempt by me to capture the whole of the setup with my still camera, as it is on Dick's canvas.

Something, I'd not known about Dick's painting process is "the map." He starts his longer projects with a map like this, transfers it to a canvas and then begins his "color spot" painting process. (The many maps that got saved would look great strangely as a B&W graphic novel, in my opinion.) The "color spot" process that Dick uses justly attracted attention of my companion to the Berkshires, partner at NY Art Beat and husband, Kosuke who brought attention to it on his Japanese blog. He touched upon the subject of the technique and wrote in general about our trip and some of the anecdotes that Dick is so good at telling.

Here is the yet unfinished still life on canvas.

When not working on our video and photos, or enjoying a few meals prepared by Kitty, Dick showed us around the area where he's been coming to paint every summer since the 60s. So, here is Perke and Dick by one of the pear trees.

I'm taking the the pear to the barn and then to NY. It was good after a few days of sitting on my fridge.

Walking through the swampy area in the back, from which we had to eventually withdraw, because my shoes were not ready for such an adventure and mosquitoes were biting strong.

At the falls, which Dick claims he used to run to daily after a day of work to cool off. We drove, due to the unstable weather and the mosquitoes.

Saturday afternoon in the barn- resting with tea before Kosuke and my leaving for NY- after a lunch of Sheffield corn, sandwiches and some wine which we'd bought for early Friday dinner in the barn. The dinner was supposed to be followed by Dick and Kitty's trip to a ballet by Ulysses_Dove. All of it was literally cut short by the storm. With the power and telephone out, we made the most of the evening by driving to the nearest restaurant for a good meal and plenty of anecdotes.

Model Arrested at the Met. Dick Without Phone this Week.

2009-08-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

Today a twitter friend tweeted the following "aaaah USA http://bit.ly/7qtS6", link leading to a Guardian story "Model arrested for posing nude at New York museum."
Next in the story, "Kathleen Neill charged with public lewdness after posing for a photographer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." I thought Dick would be interested in this story, having himself had some of his nudes taken off the walls of a gallery in NY, in the 70s, if I recall right.

The show of photographs of the above mentioned nude model in public spaces will be closing, in a few days, August 30 at Chair and Maiden in NY.

"aaaah USA http://bit.ly/7qtS6", and I can only add, why in chains right away?

Dick might not be in touch or reading this until later in the week, as I believe he's still disconnected, due to the storm a week ago ripping out some trees near his barn and breaking some telephone poles and wires, which are probably still being fixed. Here is how it looked from the cottage where I was staying last weekend, right after the storm hit. Watch my short clip to the end and listen...

More images coming to my photo set(UPDATE now already there) from the Berkshires trip here.

Check out the "lewd" show if you're in NY before it closes.

Zach Hyman "Decent Exposures"
Venue: Chair and the Maiden
Schedule: From 2009-08-20 To 2009-08-30
Address: 19 Christopher St., New York, NY 10014
Phone: 212-255-0562 Fax: 212-675-6330

Tools: Art and Labor. Photography: Malcolm and Szarkowski

2009-08-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

Today, I finally found some time to work on Dick's website, rearrange chronologically the still lifes, adding a few in the process.
Since I'll be heading out to Dick's studio in the country to do a little photo and video shoot, and to breath in some fresh country air, I'm especially taken by the newly added paintings of tools of all sorts associated with art and labor.
Industry (1967) oil on linen 40'' x 50''

Chime Knife and Barking Spud (1970) oil on linen 28'' x 44''

Forest Tools (1985) oil on linen 72'' x 46''

Harvest Tools (1987) oil on linen 36'' x 48'' Andso on.

And of course the studio table...Studio Table (1996-97) oil on linen 36'' x 48''

Blogging-wise, I don't think we're ready to move on from the current topics of the nude and photography that are on Dick's mind and in his writings. Conveniently, Dick stays on the subjects in his phone calls too. I listened to a voice mail(thank you google voice!) Dick left me the other day, where he mentions another two photo related books and authors, Janet Malcolm and John Szarkowski.

I let the Wikipedia entry on Janet Malcolm be an introduction to this staff writer for the New Yorker.

John Szarkowski was best know to me as the author of several books on photography and a MoMA curator.

I'm sure Dick would have a few words to add here on both authors and their photography ideas.

Again on the Nude and Mapplethorpe Photography

2009-08-11T07:46:00.000-07:00

Whenever the human body appears, in life or art, clothed or unclothed, there is an erotic potential. In art, whenever the erotic goes beyond potential to become itself the subject one may cross the line between art and pornography.

In art, the nude body is neutral. Sexual differentiation is a fact.
Unless the artist has gone intentionally past the line, whatever happens beyond the artist’s intent lies in the eye, or rather the mind, of the beholder.

For myself, the subjects of the nudes are the particular individuals, male and female, which I have painted. They have 3-dimensional form, in the painting as in life; they are capable of movement and in their postures express the connection between their inner self and its physical manifestation.

In the “Art of Painting: Reflections on Edwin Dickinson and Representation” (unpublished) I have written, “A great photographer of the nude such as Robert Mapplethorpe in his straightforward studies has understood light on form and the way the parts of the body move into each other in a dynamic relationship better than most painters, present or past...” I am interested in these nudes, not his homoerotic images or for that matter, his still lifes.

Francis Cunningham 8/6/09 (UPDATED 8/10/09)

On Mapplethorpe

2009-08-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Dick found some mistakes in my transcription of his voice mail and I corrected it.

Note the new addition on the side bar, on the right hand side, the widget with Dick's book recommendations. To start with, it contains books, which Dick either mentioned to me in our conversations or handed me to peruse. The first was Kenneth Clark's "The Nude."

It was not the first time that I came across it. In my own research on the body in the films of Claire Denis I came across this title. It's interesting how such a "classic text" can be used even for contemporary film analysis, the text I have to admit I did not use to its full potential.

Later, Dick surprised me a bit, but not really, mentioning The Black Book. I think it's a natural due to Dick's interest in the nude. Here is what he told me he came up with before breakfast, "when often interesting thoughts occur," today and left it on my voice mail, to clarify the reasons behind his interest in Mapplethorpe's photography and in particular in his nudes.

"Whenever the human body appears in life or art, clothed or unclothed, there is an erotic potential. In art, whenever the erotic goes beyond potential to become itself the subject one may easily cross the line between art and pornography.
In art, the nude body is neutral. Sexual differentiation is a fact. Unless the artist has intended the erotic to be the subject, whatever further happens lies in the eye or rather the mind of the beholder.
For myself, the subjects of the nudes are the particular individuals, which I have painted, male and female, having 3 dimensional form in the painting as well as in life, capable of movement, and in their posture expressing the connection between their inner self and its physical manifestation.
I am interested in Mapplethorpe's straightforward nudes, not his homoerotic images or for that matter, his still lifes." Francis Cunningham 8/6/09

Finally, a title that Dick refers to in his writing a lot, but was cautious when mentioning to me for material for the blog. But I think Italian Painters of the Renaissance is a wonderful inspiration.

When on the Renaissance, there was a great show at the Met "Art and Love in Renaissance Italy", which I was lucky to see earlier this year and found it great and on top of that packed with visitors of all ages.

A quick final note to close the circle, Kenneth Clark was a great British historian, but also a TV personality, here is a DVD title, a series that covers a big chunk of European art history.
I understand the show was a hit when it was running.

All nudes are up and a welcome to the new readers.

2009-08-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

Image: On the Beach Tom Johnson (1997) oil on linen 55" x 70

Really hot day in New York, with Dick away, in the barn - as he'd probably say, I worked from home on adding a few remaining nudes to the website. It's great to see them all together, but they look so much grander human size and in relation to objects around them and to each other.
Image: Francis Cunningham with "Stephen Ringold" (1983) by Francis Cunningham oil on linen 60" x 56"

We've finally informed Dick's friends via email about this blog and invited them to follow us here.
So, Welcome! Drop us a comment, so we know that you're watching.

New Text: A Vision of the Nude (Abridged for Linea)

2009-07-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

We've decided to delete one of our earlier entries containing the essay A Vision of the Nude by Francis Cunningham, because it's too difficult to read as one block of text. At the same time Dick has recently ironed out a more readable version of A Vision of the Nude (Abridged for Linea), which I put up on his website in place of the older version. Enjoy the read. Let us know if you have questions or comments. Dick will try to respond in some form.

"The lack of rigorous training directed toward a specific visual goal – the nude – combined with a view of humanity that saw the model as more than a studio prop for learning to draw, paint and sculpt, led my sculptor colleague, Barney Hodes, and myself to develop new approaches. By focusing on the model, we were working on a nude that was neither idealized and classical nor modernist and anti-classical. It wasn’t a nude people expected or could readily categorize – a Venus or Apollo, say, or a Picasso or a Modigliani. It would be a different nude, and when we founded the New Brooklyn School of Life Drawing, Painting & Sculpture, Inc. (1979-82), we were on our way to articulating what that nude could be." -Francis Cunningham
excerpt from A Vision of the Nude (Abridged for Linea)

Another reason (a less important detail) to remove that previews version of A Vision of the Nude from this blog was the confusion about the authorship of the essay, due to an image of the bust of Francis Cunningham by Barney Hodes, which I'd originally used to break up the text.
Dick still thinks that the bust is a good illustration to his text.

"Francis Cunningham" by Barney Hodes

Here is another bust by the same hand of Barney Hodes:

"Mason Harding" by Barney Hodes. Photograph: by Christopher Wood

About this blog and its bloggers.

2009-07-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

This blog idea came about after Dick and I, Aneta aka perke, made a short YouTube video on the occasion of his show "Saints" at St. Francis College, few months back in March 2009. We did not know how to best incorporate the video and the new essays that Dick worked on recently, so we started blogging them.
That was the beginning, but now we're hoping to record more than that.
From now on, assisted by Dick, I'll be writing casual entries, accompanied by images, in an attempt to record current developments in Dick's painting studio and country barn, on his website and more.

Another Few Nudes

2009-07-17T10:20:00.000-07:00

We've put up another few nudes on Dick's website. As we're putting them up, we're arranging them in chronological order.
We're referring to the originals around the studio to get the colors right on the website.

Dick tells me that the image that years ago got him "in trouble" was the frontal nude of Patrick Brown (1973-75)

There is a story here to be told. It'll come soon.

New nudes, portraits and more on my website.

2009-07-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

Summer. Normally, you'd expect Dick away from NYC in his cabin in Sheffield Mass. Today however he's back in the city to run a few errands till the end of the week. We're taking the opportunity to finally put his website in shape. It'll take some time before we have all the representative images on the site and have them arrange chronologically. Yes, we finally decided that chronology is the best guide to his work.

We've added and re-arrange chronologically some landscapes and portraits and saints, and premier coup and of course nudes that we'll work a lot more on.

Here is Dick in his studio.

Here is the living room we worked from most of the day.

While not painting around his barn in western Massachusetts, Dick is re-working his paper "The Art of Painting: Reflections on Edwin Dickinson and Representation."

Francis Cunningham exhibiton "Saints"/ St. Francis College

2009-05-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

The models were Norman Ader and Katharine Cunningham.
This interview was made by Aneta Glinkowska at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, New York, where Francis Cunningham exhibition "Saints" was held.

More images of saints and clothed figures on my website here.

OPENING RECEPTION:
Thursday, March 12th 5:00 - 7:30 PM
On view:
March 5, 2009 through March 26, 2009

The full interview (in two parts):
Part 1
Part 2

Interview with Francis Cunningham Part 2/2

2009-05-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

More images of saints and clothed figures on my website here.

Interview with Francis Cunningham Part 1/2

2009-05-26T13:18:00.000-07:00

More images of saints and clothed figures on my website here.