Radiating Intensity : Yellow to Blue-Violet

It is important as a painter to set tasks for oneself that sharpen one’s skills, one’s eye or one’s understanding of visual phenomena. Sometimes I take a on a challenge found in the work of a non-artist, such as the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. An example taken from his, “Remarks on Colour”:

“Someone who is familiar with reddish-green should be in a position to produce a colour series which starts with red and ends with green and which perhaps even for us constitutes a continuous transition between the two. We would then discover that at the point where we always see the same shade, e.g. of brown, this person sometimes sees brown and sometimes reddish-green. It may be, for example, that he can differentiate between the colours of two chemical compounds that seem to us to be the same colour and he calls one brown and the other reddish-green” (Wittgenstein, “Remarks on Colour”, p. 3-4)

Do I have the visual subtelty in my color to differentiate and explore the variables that occur between red and green, marking differences in color and intensity as well as value?

Most times, I take a challenge from an artist, like Robert Henri who was such a great teacher in his own day as well as today. Years ago, I spent much time in the archive of Henri housed at Yale Universities’ Bienekie Manuscript Library. I took meticulous notes over those years. Now, I spend much time evaluating and experimenting with the many theories regarding color that Henri explored directly or just touched upon in the hope of one day getting back to that idea.

One such idea that Henri experimented with later in his life was something he termed, “varying intensities” (this is not the Winter palette of the early years which also did account for intensity). He would take a color such as yellow and place it in a central position in a composition. Then, he would take that color and slowly decrease its intensity, moving away from the point of focus (within the composition) until he reached a near neutral color. (Although it would be interesting if he had passed the point of reaching a neutral and further expand from that neutral to its near complement at the other end- expanding on Wittgenstein’s remark). This gave the composition an immediate sense of focus because one’s eye is drawn to the area of greater intensity.

Henri used this technique in his backgrounds, especially of portraits, to give a heightened sense of emotion and intensity. One is drawn to the focal point of the face. He was also able to achieve a greater sense of spatial depth immediately behind the head creating an open and movable space. In my own experiments, I have tried to give a feeling of the light radiating from the figure (hence I refer to my own method as radiating intensities) – a sense of emanation that slowly loses intensity as it approaches the perimeter of the canvas. This technique creates an inherent magnetism to the figure. My attempts in this have been more subtle, whereas, Henri exaggerated  the effect, at times, to see how far he could take it and still achieve a sense of realism.

Wittgenstein’s quote has made me consider different possibilities as I have suggested in parenthesis. He indicates achieving that middle neutral using the complement, which is the more common method to render this effect. Henri, on the other hand, hardly ever used the direct complement. In most cases, he would use a near-complement. This allowed for each color to maintain a certain identity as it approached the neutral. An example of a near-complement would be yellow – blue/violet. As these colors approach a neutral, one can still sense their components within the neutral. One would not achieve a perfect brown/ or gray and , in a sense, this appears more vital than a perfect neutral. The colors are never entirely obliterated.

I have used this technique almost entirely in backgrounds- like Henri- but it would be interesting to experiment with a still-life, wherein one could direct the viewers attention compositionally by varying the intensity of a central color- shared by several objects. One could guide the viewer visually among the objects, directing them along a certain path of exploration through the strict use of intensity. Just a random thought. I’ll have to put this on my list of winter experiments.

Plattekill Falls

In one’s attempt to identify a concept or a phenomena, one always begins with one’s own experience. One, in a way, starts at the periphery and slowly begins to move toward the center, attempting to eventually hit the mark or at least come as close as possible to reaching an understanding. In the past month, I have dwelt on Bachelard’s concept of the open imagination. This week I direct my attention on the object of the artist’s contemplation. John Newton, in his essay“A Speculation about Landscape,” brings up another dimension to an artist’s observation of the landscape,

“…He (the artist) attends with passionate interest to particular features (in the landscape) that are really there. But as he does so, is he at the same time unconsciously seeking some more general perception and understanding of life and, in that, finding more of himself? [...] When he is thoroughly drawn out of himself, to attend to what is really there, the artist can hardly be fully conscious of why this is happening, and nor can we recognize at all promptly why we are attracted by the work he then creates…The more secret appeal is made when a landscape is speaking to something deeper and more permanent than an emotion, giving us knowledge not of a state of feeling but of a state of being.”

When I reflect on my own experience of reverie before a landscape, one that appeals to me on a deep level, I find that I am, in a way, appealing to the landscape before me- reaching out to meet it. In a sense, my interior state seems to be presented before me because I acknowledge a deep connection to what I see. Unconsciously, I seem to recognize the mystery and broader reality before me. When I paint, this is the aspect that holds my attention. It is not just the hills or fields that carry the imagination, but the immensity of the spectacle. I say it is unconscious because one can only judge a landscape by its ability to inspire.

Although, I am in an active state (of seeing and painting), I am also passive to a certain degree. This passivity is marked by an openness to what is before me and allowing it to leave its residue, its impression upon me. This complete openness allows this “state of being” to manifest itself. And consequently,there is a feeling of relatedness, connectedness to the world. Reverie allows for a conversation to take place between the world and the deepest part of our being. Paul Davies in his book,“Romanticism and Esoteric Tradition”, describes this conversation as,”… a meeting with oneself, on a higher level than that normally suggested by the word self-consciousness. And it is as if the world of nature, of landscape,… is functioning as a mirror…”

Samuel Coleridge, in Anima Poetae, touches upon a similar feeling,

“In looking at objects of nature while I am thinking,… I seem rather to be seeking,as it were asking for, a symbolic language for something within me that already and forever exists, than observing anything new.”

This threshold that the artist crosses by reaching out with openness to what lies before him, allows something to return to him that is both familiar and profound. Nature, in a sense, re-represents through a symbolic language the inner workings of the soul and reflects them back upon the viewer. This act of “crossing”, in a sense of self-knowledge, allows the artist to come in contact with the world of images that speak to a greater sense of being, an altered awareness. Charles Baudelaire explored this level of engagement of the artist in his poems, “An Invitation to a Voyage” and “Correspondences”.The first stanza of “Correspondences” begins,

Nature is a temple whose living colonnades
Breath forth a mystic speech in fitful sighs;
Man wanders among symbols in those glades
Where all things watch him with familiar eyes.

This new place of discovery, where the artist provides the invitation to a voyage, lies right before one’s eyes and it is through reverie that one can enter into this “other” world. There one can come to understand this new language that brings power and efficacy to the artistic vision.

Last week, I traveled to a part of the Catskill mountains near the high peaks. It is a dramatic and beautiful place with many hidden waterfalls and distant views of the mountains. It is a wonderful place to paint in complete solitude. This landscape speaks to me in many ways because of its epic quality. It seems to touch something within my being. There is an intuitive correspondence between myself and this particular landscape. Bachelard states a similar feeling,

“We dream before contemplating. Any landscape is a oneiric experience before becoming a conscious spectacle. We look with aesthetic passion only at those landscapes which we have first seen in dreams.” (Bachelard, On Poetic Imagination and Reverie, p.36)

Over the past several weeks, I have spent time meditating on something Bachelard calls an open imagination. When painting in the field all of my senses are entirely consumed in the moment. There is the sound of the water, the wind and the birds. My eyes are taken in completely by what lies before them. And my mind is occupied by my craft. There is an all-consuming, vibration of the senses. It feels that this “rational derangement of the senses” is what Rimbaud sought  in order to tap into a new kind of visionary poetry. By rational, I believe that Rimbaud meant  he sought it  by a  conscious effort or will. Although, I am not altogether convinced that it is entirely in the hands of the ego.

In the beginning, this type of painting I found very exhausting. Now, it is incredibly invigorating and leaves me entirely refreshed in spirit. In such a space, I find there is a fluid relationship between the observed world and what lies within myself. And I feel more receptive and open to wonder as to what lies hidden beneath the world of appearances. The “moment” takes on a peculiar significance that I am only aware of when I am in this particular space.

I often see writers in urban areas working in cafes and I think it has a similar effect on the senses. There is this ongoing surge of activity on which the writer’s senses are occupied and within that activity he finds a similar space that allows him complete absorption in his craft. The stimulation of the senses is like the sea- it is in constant flux and motion- but a motion with an underlying rhythm. And the writer or artist, when in this peculiar state of reverie, rises up like a bird above the sea, periodically reflecting upon the ocean but consumed with his own contemplation. The vertical axis can also reach down below the surface, and that bird can penetrate the depths as well. Charles Olsen often referred to himself as a cormorant- the bird that finds its food in the depths of the sea.

This vertical axis above and below our everyday consciousness is where creativity finds freedom and the artist can tap into the dwelling place of images. There is a fundamental force to an image that comes from this place of reverie. It is like a dream, but rarely hindered by our own inherent inabilities. It is a purer place of renewal and vitality opening oneself up to an unknown, a visionary possibility. These are the images that take on an imaginary radiance and lyricism.

“The imagination will see only if it has visions. And it will have visions if it is educated through reveries before being educated by experience, if experience follows as confirmation of its reveries.” ( Ibid.,p.16)

(More images from Summer Catskills Painting Retreat 2010 with Jan and Whit Prentice)

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the open experience where when engaged in an activity such as painting one’s mind is easily carried into a state of reverie where one can experience the world and images that spring from reverie simultaneously. In this state one feels the unity and the wholeness within oneself and the world. This week I want to focus on how in the creative act, images appear before our eyes, called forth by reverie, and these images are open-ended allowing for the creativity of the individual to find meaning and the inherent emotion contained within the image. Gaston Bachelard states,

“The fundamental word corresponding to imagination is not image, but imaginary. The value of an image is measured by the extent of its imaginary radiance. Thanks to the imaginary, the imagination is essentially open and evasive. In the human psyche, it is the very experience of openness and newness… As Blake proclaims, ‘The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.’ ” (Bachelard, On Poetic Imagination and Reverie, p.19)

When one is truly in a state of reverie, there is a continuous passage between the real and the imaginary. (Ibid,p.22) One finds oneself in an in-between where the imagination takes precedence and allows images to emerge that are seeking form and voice. These images rise and fall within the imagination- they go beyond thought by presenting themselves as independent and fluid entities. As an artist, one desires to spend time in this state to come to know what is within and without that is seeking form. In regards to active imagination as presented from the Jungian perspective- it is allowing those inner emotions and images to transform our very being, bringing us to a position of wholeness psychologically. But the artist’s goal is to be open to the “moment”, tapping into images that take on a more universal force in the world. These images become conductors of transformation. We can all recall a painting or sculpture that has had that transformative effect on our being- Van Gogh’s, Starry Night or Rodin’s, Gates of Hell.

The poet, Arthur Rimbaud makes a point to find this space of open imagination, “The poet makes himself a seer by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses” ( Letter to Paul Demeny, May 15, 1871). Rimbaud “unbridled the intelligence” in order to journey into the unknown. And from this unknown realm to bring back a new consciousness through poetry that would go beyond the present forms and present the reader with a powerful voice that achieved a complete absorption of all of the senses. Baudelaire states it well,

“Who among us has not dreamed…of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhythm or rhyme, supple enough and harsh enough to adjust to the lyric movements of the soul, to the undulations of reverie, to the sudden starts of consciousness?” ( Baudelaire, Preface to Prose Poems)

This is not only the goal of poetry but of painting as well. To a painter, it is presenting a balance of color, value, light, rhythm, beauty and emotional impact and binding this to an image that speaks to one’s own soul as well as to the soul of the world. One cannot rationally come to this.  One has to let go and yet be attentive because that image can only be glimpsed, for it passes in a flash.

Eurydice

I often tell my students to push themselves beyond what they think they are capable of. We all like to lie secure in the harbor and tackle only those things within our own abilities. But one needs to push oneself where failure is a real possibility and more than a possibility- in a way seems inevitable. Oftentimes, it is only when we fail do we come to see new possibilities that before we were unaware of. All profound things lie hidden and only when we change our perspective through an experience like failure do we come to ascertain what lies hidden before us.

One of my favorite myths is the tale of Orpheus. Orpheus is a poet and musician who was well known among the people for his gift of words. On the day in which he is to be married to Eurydice, his wife to be is bitten by an adder and is sent to the underworld. Orpheus pleads to Hades to let him enter the underworld in search of Eurydice. This he is allowed to do and while in the underworld, Orpheus sings a lament of his dead brides death and all who hear it begin to weep. Even Hades himself weeps and relents. He allows Eurydice her freedom, but only if Orpheus has faith and proceeds to the upper world without looking back to see if Eurydice is following him. Orpheus fails this task and Eurydice returns to the underworld. He calls to Hades once again to let him return for her, but he refuses and Orpheus laments on the shores of Styx alone.

Orpheus, with all his great gifts, succeeds where no one thought possible- his song of lament releases Eurydice from death and she is given a second life. But Orpheus also fails. His lack of faith seals Eurydice’s fate. But only in his failure does Orpheus find his ability to speak in a profound way has been amplified. Now when he sings of the beauty of the world a forests springs up where only a desert had been before. Rivers begin to flow and animals wander in a place that was formerly barren. His failure and the emotional experience of that failure has utterly transformed him. He not only creates beautiful poems and songs but these things transform the very world in which he lives. This is Ovid’s testament to the power of art.

All great work is drawn from the wells of the unknown. Failure puts us on that plane. It places one before the unknown because we have ventured beyond what is recognizable and comfortable. It allows one to be open to a paradigm shift. From this new perspective, a more profound engagement with the world is possible. It opens a door for the imagination to find the forms necessary for this new shift in perspective. It is fertile ground for new work.

Before I begin a painting, I look at this broad new canvas as yet unmarred before me. The whiteness of it is profound and it almost takes my breath away. It is a an unknown land wishing to be discovered like a new continent. It is a new Mount Analogue, upon entering its space, one knows not where one will end up- it could be failure or a new experience to embrace.

Hilltop

One thing that I truly enjoy about the summer is outdoor plein-aire landscape painting. It gets me out of the studio and into a new environment and experience. There is time set apart for true reverie. The product becomes not the painting itself but the internal experience of dwelling in the world. I use to think landscape painting wasn’t personal enough. That it depicted so much of the visual quality of space and time with not enough of the internal experience exposed on the canvas. But recently, I have found it to be otherwise. I have always thought of my figures as a representative of an imaginative journey that takes place within the artist and these figures when viewed together represented in a concrete form the internal development of the creative individual. They linked the internal imaginative reverie with the experience of painting a live figure in the studio. And hence an image is born that straddles both worlds giving a timeless quality to figurative work.

Recently, I have found a type of landscape painting that touches upon this feeling as well. When I am out in the early morning in the freshness of a new day, I find I am constantly compelled to day dream. As I set out to paint my chosen location, I find reverie an integral part of the whole experience- that my mind and heart are carried away to see what is before me and also that of which it suggests. This combined experience creates a state of being in which I feel complete and whole. There is a unity between all things that is acutely experienced in such a state. When one stands before a beautiful scene, one is apt to wonder in a state of reverie, carried away not by an “idea” but by the sheer pleasure of the observation combined with the experience of dwelling in quietude. This allows for an “open experience”- fertile ground for reverie and an active imagination in the “moment”. This living in the moment activates the mind and heart and allows the imagination to wander freely in the landscape. This free movement is a generative and renewing force. In such a state an image that is seeking form can find a lacuna in which to present itself before the artist. Ibn Arabi related this experience to an isthmus or bridge to another world where the imagination is given power and free rein.

When I create images for the studio, much of my reverie comes before the actual painting process. I spend time in reverie, allowing the image to manifest itself. The “idea” behind the image guides me in the actual reverie. But this part of the experience comes prior to my actual working with the model. The image is developed through reverie and when I am painting I am trying to manifest this earlier experience more completely. I am also able to find in the model the “living” aspect of the image. It is a triad of the artist, the model and the image. This triad becomes the fertile ground for the creative act.

But what I enjoy about landscape painting is that there is no delay in the experience. Reverie is manifest with a sense of immediacy in the moment. It is the very moment that is seeking form. It cannot be re-experienced at a later date. Now is the time and this experience is fleeting- the day will change the clouds will move in and another time has taken possession of the moment. Although, I will always be a figurative painter, I find the restlessness of the landscape refreshing and renewing.

untitled

July Morning

“…beauty is not the result of incomparable technique alone. It rises from the feeling of balance and equilibrium in all these moving surfaces, from the knowledge that all these moments of  motion originate and come to an end in the thing itself.” (  Rainer Maria Rilke, Rodin, p.20)

Here Rilke attempts to describe Rodin’s, Man with a Broken Nose. This sculpture leads him to contemplate how a work of art functions- how its meaning, its very sense of life, must find its origin and completion within the work itself. The work must find its inherent meaning without having a direct reference to anything beyond its immediate scope. It must unfold like a world revealed. “However great the movement of a sculpture may be, though it spring out of infinite distances, even from the depths of the sky, it must return to itself, the great circle must complete itself, the circle of solitude that encloses a work of art.” ( Ibid.,p.21)

This complete self-absorption allows a work to convey a sense of ” living in the moment”, giving the work a “presence”- a powerful undertow. It becomes a direct reflection, as in a mirror, of our own fleeting nature. Except, that in a work of art, it takes on a quality of timelessness as well. When one contemplates a river where the water is in a state of constant flow one senses a “living” moment, transitory and immediate. But when one spends an extended time observing this river one also comes away with a timeless feeling, that this river has flowed and existed in a sense, forever. This duality embraces our own struggle to understand the world and is directly reflected in a work of art. The “living” quality of the work springs from this duality and allows the work to take on an identity independent of the creator.  The image “lives” and sings of a world that we long to know. We are drawn into this  self- enclosed world and- “… to this bending inward, to this intense listening too one’s own depth.” (Ibid.p.25)

This “self-absorption” does not mean that the work is strictly self- referential. Although it is an intimate world revealed, it must also carry an attachment to a more universal depth that is seeking form. When one dreams, one knows that it is his or her dream alone. No one else is having this dream. But one also realizes that there is a larger purpose at work in the dream. It is identifying something that needs our attention. A work of art must carry a sense of completion and must also act as a conduit between itself and the world. As Lorca would say it must have duende- a hunger, a longing, a depth that draws one inward to a recognition of the desires of one’s heart. Without duende the work will not “live”.

Periodically, I visit a studio of a fellow artist and as to be expected it is set up in a way to satisfy his artistic needs. There is a series of sky lights facing northeast and a large window east, south-east. The set-up for the model is quite simple but the dual direction of the light sources is difficult. I struggle in my drawings or paintings  with maintaining a sense of a directional light source. Many times, on sunny days, both sources have an equal intensity. Most times, I have chosen one source or the other as the dominant point of light. Another added difficulty is the color temperature of the two light sources- one being more direct and therefore warmer and the other more indirect and therefore cooler (although, this changes as well with the seasons as the sun moves its position in the sky).

I decided to tackle this problem straight on and deal with both light sources equally and study the color temperature differences that occur. This sunny June day found the light as such: The sky lights had a warm directional light because the sun was coming in at an oblique angle directly and this light was to one side of the model and slightly behind; on the other hand the large window was receiving indirect light but was directly opposite the figure creating a definitive coolness on one side of the model. As the model was placed in the space, one side was receiving the warm light from the sky light and the other side was receiving the cool light from the window. Both sources were opposing one another with the core shadow and darker shadow edge running through the middle of the figure. This was really the best position to study these opposing color temperatures.

I began by choosing a gray sheet of Borden Riley charcoal paper of a middle value. I intended to leave the cool gray of the paper as an indication of the cool light source. I sketched the figure with medium vine charcoal, building the armature, making comparisons of relationships and of proportions and drawing the revisions. Next, I built the forms keeping in mind the anatomical landmarks and allowing the rhythm of the forms to relate to the over-all rhythm of the figure as a whole. After completing this first stage of the drawing, I started to plan the pattern of light and shadow and the differences of color temperature between them.

Since the warm light was more direct, I chose this source as the dominant point of light- this would be the light side of the figure. And since the cool light was indirect and not as intense, I chose this secondary light for the shadow side. The division between the two, which was darker, would indicate the core shadow as well as the shadow edge. This is where I began- in the interior of the figure looking carefully at the specific shape of the shadow edge. This created the necessary division between the warm light source and the cool reflected light on the shadow side of the figure.

Next, I chose three pastels to work the light side of the model- a cool white, a warmer white and a warm mid-tone flesh color for the half-tones. I began with the warmer white and used it to indicate the general source of the light- reducing its application as I approached the half-tones, leaving some cool of the paper to show through. Next, I indicated the warmer half-tones near the shadow edge that were of a lower value than the general light. These did not touch the shadow edge, leaving the gray tone of the paper to abut the shadow. Lastly, I applied the cooler white for the highlights.

Next, I worked the shadow side of the figure allowing the cool gray tone of the paper to act as the cool reflected light within the shadow. I did not use any pastel on this cool side. I used the charcoal in varying degrees to indicate the value changes occurring and left the coolness of the paper in areas with a stronger, more intense reflected light. Next, I added dark accents as well as lost and found edges. And lastly, I felt I needed some tone in the hair to off-set it against the flesh and added a warm dark in its mid-tones.

This study allowed me to solve many of the issues I faced in this particular situation and will assist me in future projects there. But, it also showed me how important color temperature is to achieving a sense of form. Robert Henri believed that, “Form can be modeled in black and white, but there are infinitely greater possibilities in modeling through the warmth and coolness of color.” (Henri, The Art Spirit, p.62) Through this experiment, I found that even more true than I first realized.

"Duende"

As an artist, I am familiar with that nagging question that every artist must ask themselves- what is the purpose of my art and why do I do it? Many writers have probed this question- Tolstoy wrote a book called, What is the meaning of Art ?; Emerson dealt with it in his essay on Nature; Solzhenitsyn confronted it in his Nobel Prize essay, A World Split Apart; Dostoevsky touched upon it in his address before the Pushkin Memorial; Gaston Bachelard touches upon it when he explores the phenomenology of the imagination; and it shows up in countless other works by Baudelaire, Delacroix, Robert Creeley, Walt Whitman and Rainer Marie Rilke. It is entirely unavoidable. One is compelled to ask this question. In a sense a painter or visual artist works this out by what they choose to depict and the method used. Monet was intrigued by the momentary flashes of life that came before his eyes. He chose to paint landscapes with a broken sense of color and lack of outline to convey this feeling of transience.  Much hinges on finding the inherent meaning of one’s work and committing oneself to it- letting it become the raison d’être of one’s being.

Rainer Marie Rilke explores the purpose of poetry as well as art. I first fell in love with his writing through his biography of Augustus Rodin. It took me years to find an English translation in a used bookstore. In Rodin, who was working on the Gates of Hell at the time, he found the perfect counterpart to himself- both tireless craftsmen seeking to transform the living vitality of existence into works of art.  In Rodin, Rilke describes Rodin’s Balzac, Victor Hugo and The Burgers of Calais as work “…not to beautify or give characteristic expression, but to separate the lasting from the transitory, to sit in judgement, to be just.”  The process of transformation from the visible to its inner equivalents was the greatest thing this world had to offer (Lemont) and Rilke observed it quite clearly in the work of Rodin.

In Rilke’s, Elegies, he expresses the purpose of his work, “… Everywhere transience is plunging into the depths of Being… It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again, “invisibly”, inside us.” Again he says,” … oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves ever dreamed of existing.” ( Elegies) To take the visible world and allow it to dwell inside of us and then to transform that world and those things in the most intense way and re-imagine them again is the work of the artist. The image becomes the process whereby the visible world finds its equivalent within our being. In this way the transient visible world is re-imagined through the artist and becomes a transformative force. Rilke, like Emerson, expresses the transcendent nature of all things. Emerson in his essay Nature states the purpose of, “… visual art: striking the viewer so deeply, with such authority, the merely personal is obliterated. Something like an archetypal self is evoked.”

It is easy to ignore the incredible Beauty of all things. “The purpose of art is to express the good, the true and the beautiful” as Dostoevsky expressed it. But Solzhenitsyn believed that possibly only beauty will remain.  The artist’s job is to praise and declare again the inherent value of all things and to say it again with intensity.

“O tell us, Poet, what you do? – I praise.

But the dark, the deadly, the desperate ways,

How do you endure them- how bear them?-

I praise.

Padraic Colum, Rilke, 1945

Finding the Verticals

There are many tools available to the artist to aid him. But one needs to find the tools that really fit one’s way of working- tools that aid and intensify one’s ideas. These tools must remain what they truly are- aids that assist the artist’s creative process. One compositional method that I use pretty consistently is rabatment. It was used broadly in the 19th century by many artist out of the Paris ateliers as well as the academy. You see it in Delacroix, Ingres, David, Degas as well as in the American artists who studied in Paris- Sargent, Henri, Cassatt, Beaux and Thayer. It was later adopted by American students of those that went to Paris- Sloan, Bellows etc.

Rabatment consists of creating a relationship between what lies within the canvas to the proportion of the sides. These two aspects create an interdependent-relationship. The sides of the canvas themselves need not be in any set proportion.  The golden section works the same way, but the sides must be related in a specific proportion regardless of what lies within the canvas. I have always found rabatment a much easier tool to use because of its relative simplicity as well as its flexibility.

Rabatment consists of taking the short side of the rectangle and placing it against the long side (rotate), creating points along the edge that can be connected directly across the canvas as well as a diagonal from these points to the corners. When beginning this process it will appear to be two overlapping squares. David used these verticals to give his compositions a formal look, ie. how he envisioned the classical model of the Greeks. But what I like about this method is that one can achieve an underlying structure of diagonals. Delacroix, who was enthralled with Rubens sweeping curves and diagonals, found this method satisfied all his needs.

The best demonstration I have seen for its use, I found in Charles Bouleau’s book, “The Painter’s Secret Geometry”. He shows a sketch by Gericault for the Raft of the Medusa. It is an initial sketch of his working idea. It is evocative in its own right but not as powerful as after he applies rabatment to the composition. It no longer becomes a historical painting but a painting of man in all his longing and desperation. It reveals his eternal sense of hope. Rabatment takes his idea and gives it force and emotional impact. It transforms the piece through an emphasis on an underlying framework, that is not readily noticed, providing the image with a monumental capacity both emotionally as well visually.

I like to refer to rabatment as the structure of a tree with all its summer foliage. We know that under the leaves there is a trunk that tapers to the top and that there are branches that grow at specific intervals as the tree ascends. And that each of these branches again tappers till it reaches its furthest end. Rabatment is this aspect of the tree. But when we observe it in all its summer fullness we cannot see these underlying things. We only sense them as we observe the leaves. Rabatment should be used as such, as an underlying structure that can be felt but remains unseen. It should only be used after the creative idea is formed. The idea/ image and the inspiration that gave it form should preceed any use of a compositional system. And that any structure must conform to fact and visual phenomena. Theory must be of secondary importance.

Finding the Diagonals

Most times, I use this system to decide the proportions of my canvas and how my figure will appear within it. I manipulate the size of the edges so that my figure falls within a diagonal relationship to the outside edge. I often radiate diagonals from these points of rabatment to achieve a more forceful composition. In a more subtle way, I also include the direction of the gaze of the figure- that this too falls in the proper relationship of diagonals. I also find it useful to break up a large relatively empty space within the background- using it to vary color temperature or value to create a more dynamic sense of space. And lastly, it can act as a tool for giving the color composition its proper relationship and balance- that the most intense colors fall on these lines.

Rabatment has given me another tool for my toolbox. But I am always conscious not to let it enslave me. That would certainly take the “life”out of my work. It is always a temptation to hand over the inherent freedom that lies in the creative act- it would be much easier that way because the journey is difficult. Use only what is necessary for each image and let any system that you use be subservient to the whole.