Artist research

Assignment 5 suffered from having to fight for my attention with a period of study for my day job. I wasn't surprised that my tutor complained about my lack of research into the work of other artists in his feedback. My work related studies have returned to a more manageable level so I now have time retrospectively to do the work that I should have done earlier.
On his recommendation  I looked at the drawings of Rubens (also here). His preparatory sketches are simple lines to rough out an idea. They feel very modern with their economy of line. The more finished drawings cleverly use light and dark to make them look three dimensional. His paintings are very busy with figures intertwined and lots of action to tell their story. He does capture the potential for movement very well, even though the figures are painted or drawn in a static realistic way they look like action photos where a representative moment has been sampled. He fills the page, whether he is drawing or painting, there is hardly any blank space. Was this because paper/canvas was so expensive at the time? My drawings contrast in that I always have space around my figures. Is this because I was encouraged in school to make my drawings and diagrams clear and easy to understand? For me paper is relatively inexpensive so I can afford not to fill it up.

Tim Stoner has three distinct styles of paintings, some of his earlier works look like woodcuts. Of his "middle period" I particularly like Anglia, 2009-11 More recent work is very static, has he got fed up with trying to convey movement? (which is probably impossible) Freedom is similar to what I have been trying to do with my drawings of ice skaters. Interestingly the figure is placed centrally and there is only a suggestion of the background.

My tutor suggested that I look at the work of the Futurists, a movement that has managed to pass me by although I am rather fond of Giacomo Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912). I found this article about female futurists in the Telegraph, I wish that I had seen the exhibition that prompted it. I particularly like this sketch which looks like the preparatory study for Natalia Goncharova's The Cyclist although it appears to have been signed by Umberto Boccioni. This is just the sort of thing I'm trying to do. Boccioni seems to have experimented with a variety of styles and media. In pictures I have seen, the diagonal lines in his abstract States of Mind: Those Who Go and the repeated figures in The Charge Of The Lancers give a great feel of movement. Gino Severini used a similar style of fractured images to make his paintings more alive Le Boulevard is like looking through a prism. I assume they were influenced by the photographic techniques of Étienne-Jules Marey. I was familiar with the work of Eadweard Muybridge but didn't realise that Marey was first, what an amazing man. He may have been primarily a scientist but his work is much more artistic than Muybridge's photos, (take a look at the Flight Of A Seagull) although both are fascinating. I think Giacomo Balla is my favourite Futurist, during my research I discovered The Hand Of The Violinist which combines diagonal lines and repeated images to represent a very simple range of movement in a brilliant way.

As part of my studies for my day job I was lucky to go to Washington and visited the National Gallery of Art where I saw some Degas sculptures of dancers.

Spanish Dance

 This interesting way of supporting a delicately balanced sculpture.

A woman drying herself which captures the feeling of motion in progress but stopped still for just a moment.

and a woman in a bath, The Tub

There were a number of Rodin sculptures. I've loved Rodin since I stumbled upon the Gates of Hell in the Musee D'Orsay and I was fascinated by the Evil Spirits.There is a video on You Tube here which focuses too much on the feet but does give you a better ideas of the three dimensional form.

I also went to an exhibition in the Library of Congress which had this lovely reportage drawing by Franklin Mc Mahon of a group of African Americans gathering to register to vote in Dallas.

 Also this drawing by Howard Brodie who was a courtroom illustrator. The crowd look like they will take flight at any moment.

Pencil captures the tension of movement well, the slanted lines in this drawing make it lively.

Consistently the pictures that interest me generally have very little background and lots of focus on the action of the figures in the foreground (The Degas dancers and Franklin Mc Mahon's picture above don't conform to this "rule" but there have to be exceptions) They also are generally drawn in pencil or ink and look as though they have been dashed off on site whilst the action went on around them. The picture is placed quite centrally and the view is as though the scene is being observed through a window. Maybe I need to expand my horizons.