The Drawn and Painted Human Form

It's usually movies or music that bring me to tears. I can't remember any of the words though, not the lyrics or the lines. The rhythm stays instead, ... some feeling. Something about visual, non-moving images,... particularly drawings and paintings stop me in my tracks, hold me as I hold them, stay with me.

It is my intent that you find something beautiful and satisfying here, rounded and sculptural, conveying time and a rich history of observing life while creating something memorable within the viewer.

Steve Assael:

Durer:

Paul Cadmus:

Katherine Doyle:

Lucian Freud:

Giny Grayson:

Susan Hauptman:

Farrar:

I cannot remember ever crying in front of a painting or drawing, but I've held my breath without realizing it, and I've gasped for more air because imagery that does not move has enormous power to stop me from moving. I've looked so long and lingeringly that I could tell you the placement and shape, the color and light of each edge, long enough to memorize the things that bore it into existence in a way that stays, that becomes part of who I am. It is a lot to look at, but who could stop looking?

Guilio:

Nicolas Uribe:

Jerome Witkin:

Raphael:

Michelangelo:

Prudhon:

Steve Assael:

Domenic Cretara:

Jenny Saville:

Jenny Scobel:

Sigmund Abeles:

Majumadar:

This is what drives me and perhaps other artists who choose to paint and draw, this combination of immediate response with searching, lingering, memory, as if what each of us has made, could somehow become part of you.

Patricia Schappler:

More Faces

To look at a broad range of artists working from the human form from the particular perspective that time and culture has allowed and insisted on to a certain extent, seems purposeful for understanding what you're seeing and in building your own forms. How the artists use their tools, their value range within and through the pressure of their hand, the directional pull of their lines, their choices of neutral, colored, or hand toned grounds, and how the tools sit in those various spaces of decision making, engage both the viewer and the maker.

Max Beckmann:

I believe when you see something that pulls you it is because you are somehow mirrored in the image and that your voice and the voices of the artists you love are connected.

R.B. Kitaj:

I haven't included scale although I think it pertains directly to the emotional and psychological pull of any and all images, so if you find something you respond to, search the piece further...it may give you a broader feeling for the collection of ideas and belief systems held by the artist.

Jim Dine said:
For me at this point in time, the depiction of the human face is at the top of the hierarchy of subject matter - -because it is the depiction of ourselves. ...Human activity is charged, charged with subject matter, charged with connotations, with so much more than just a wrench and a nutcracker, no matter what the setting.

Perhaps it's that imperative of the figure that makes me return again and again to the human face and all its recollection.

Frank Auerbach:

Isabel Bishop:

Battista Piazetti:

Rembrandt:

Baccio Bandinelle:

Vincent Capraro:

I'll leave you with a snarling image by Alice Neel and wish you sweet dreams.

Faces, The drawn, painted, photographed portrait

This is a quick and particular idea where students have been asked to address the portrait structurally and evocatively. The attempt here is to answer what that may mean through visuals which I see as both solid mass, ... beautiful, engaged form, and also, the human hand with its tactility, lushness, and profound experience.

Van Eyck:

Kathe Kollwitz:

These images appear as both material and flesh, surface handling combined with the human spirit. They are not necessarily all drawn and although some may seem like old friends, others are not well known. They each invite interpretation.
Here are a few, I'll aim to bring you more over the next couple of days.

Giacometti:

Alison Lambert:

Verrocchio:

Bronzino:

They are rich, complex drawings at the exact moment they amount to and surpass observed representations of space through the means of the portrait. They are both externally and internally driven and extend the viewer's experience.

Sophie Jodoin:

Gerard Richter:

Jon de Martin:

Ginny Grayson:

From the most delicate, lacy of strokes to the hammered and slashed, the driven and poked, these faces call to the viewer:

Gerard Richter:

Jenny Saville:

Rembrandt:

Hyman Bloom:

They desire your response, ask you to see, and share their journey. Making exists to be communicated, to connect, to draw the outsider in.