Art and Artist

By Rico Lebrun

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1956.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520347618

Rico Lebrun

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ART AND ARTIST

ART &

ARTIST

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley and Los Angeles

1956

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS London, England

Copyright, 1956, by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 56-8104

Designed by Rita Carroll

Manufactured in the United States of America

One evening in San Miguel de Allende, Rico Lebrun began to talk about the need for a medium that would give artists an opportunity to tell in their own words what they feel about their work. Although the artist’s intent is expressed through the shaping of materials, sounds, colors, and words, his innovations in style, his experiments with new media, and his views of life and nature may sometimes be clarified in words. The social problem of the artist is in many ways similar to that which confronts people in all walks of life: to find understanding among his fellowmen, and if understanding is not immediate, at least to elicit tolerance, consideration, and respect for his views and ways of expression.

Most of us prefer to hear and see things that are familiar to us. We do not want the unknown or the strange to intrude upon our peace of mind. Generally, works of art are accepted if they fit into prevailing popular concepts. But, if they emphasize different aspects and enter the realm of the unfamiliar, rejection frequently is their fate. The farther away from the familiar the artist goes and the more he arouses anxiety, the more the initial doubts, questions, and apprehensions of the audience may change into a defensive hostility which will override the acceptance and enjoyment of the emotional impact.

As a result of this tension, the artist in our society is considered the odd man, the element which does not quite fit into our practical world. He lives in the present but thinks intuitively of the future and when he introduces new ideas into music, painting, or architecture, he makes demands that lay a heavy burden on his audience. If the initial shock is to be utilized constructively the work of art must be examined with an open mind and with a willingness to respect the amount of newness and strangeness that attends the creative process—no newer and no stranger than the scientific changes we accept so readily. Only then can we be ready to evaluate the experience, to accept it or dismiss it.

What the artist really wants to know from his audience is whether he has struck a chord which keeps ringing. Mere applause or logical criticism cannot help the artist in his work and does not guide him in distinguishing between shallow production or effective creativeness. The responsible man in the audience is willing to fulfill this function and to communicate to the artist the impact the creative work has had upon him.

This volume, then, is presented in the hope that it may serve to clarify and strengthen communication between the artist and his audience and among artists, themselves.

The initial suggestion for this volume was made by Rico Lebrun. This suggestion was clarified and developed by five people: Alfred Frankenstein, Ernest Mundt, Michel Loeve, August Frugé, and Rita Carroll. We are indebted to many others who joined us in informal discussions about possible contributors and who, in many instances, took time to see and talk to the artist. For the articles that appear here in translation we particularly wish to thank Professors Rudolf Arnheim and Warren Ramsey, Lucie E. N. Dobbie, Ernest Mundt, and Max E. Knight.

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

RUTH ARMER, PAINTER

SELECTED LETTERS

THE MASTERING OF CREATIVE ANXIETY

MY HOUSE

AN ENCOUNTER WITH PAUL KLEE

MEXICAN JOURNAL

NEW SOUND TECHNIQUES IN MUSIC

KING AND QUEEN

SCULPTURE FOR A PUBLIC BUILDING

INTERVIEW WITH JEAN RENOIR

KINETIC SCULPTURE

THE PAINTINGS OF GIACOMETTI

PICTURE IN PROCESS

WALK TO PARADISE

NOTES ON STRUCTURAL EXPRESSION

ENCOUNTER WITH VAN GOGH

RUTH ARMER, PAINTER

I began by painting landscapes. I do not know that I ever accomplished this, but when I painted nature—trees, houses, groups of people—I tried to convey the entity of the scene, the integrity of the objects, and the relationships that existed between them, rather than the literal likeness of a particular view. I have never been interested, consciously at least, in self-expression or in critical comments on the things I was depicting. The heat of the sun on the sand, the richness of the healthy golden grass, the strength or delicacy of a tree, the relations existing between the rocks and the growths of a wooded hillside were what I tried to record. Feelings that nature impressed upon me were my theme.

An accident interrupted this direct contact with nature and, while recuperating, I listened to a great deal of recorded music. Never before had I connected the qualities I had been painting with anything but visual sources, but now it occurred to me that music was similarly suggestive. I found myself receiving pictorial impressions from its emotions and from its form. Listening to Wagner, Mozart, or Schönberg I tried to re-create this experience in my own medium of line and color. Later, to my surprise, a musician actually named the composers whose work had suggested the painting.

These drawings inspired by music contained no realistic forms. I used rhythmically ordered shapes, lines, and color to describe my impression. What bothered me was that all these paintings had no spatial depth but appeared as flat patterns. I thought it might be the lack of nature forms in these drawings that kept them from having spatial dimensions. This was the one time in my life when I made a self-conscious effort to correct myself in terms of what was then current art: I tried to work realistic forms of nature into these musical compositions. It was a failure. Even human anatomy could not be adapted to the flow of rhythm that I felt I had to produce. Although the effort to combine abstraction and realism did not work, I did discover what was to be of the greatest importance to me. I found that the kind of forms and relations first suggested by music came to me without that stimulation, and that these forms began to demand free movement in space. To provide them with the opportunity for movement in deep space became my main concern. It has been the subject matter for most of my present work.

When I speak here of forms and space, or forms in space, I should explain that the word form has two different meanings for me. Form is the shape of threedimensional things, and form is an over-all meaningful organization: objects have form in the one sense, music has form in the other sense. Perhaps one could say that in painting I start with shapes and work toward form. Relationships are what I am painting. I am not speaking of forms as seen against a background. I do not see background because, when I begin a new canvas, space itself, to me, is an object as is the form. The space and the forms disintegrate themselves and build themselves up until every part of the canvas relates itself to all other parts.

The forms I paint are not realistic objects of nature, although they seem, sometimes, to relate distantly to inorganic or organic matter and even take on the illusion of being alive. If a form begins to look like a real object, it jumps out of context and I change it.

The forms I paint are neither shapes nor symbols. I know nothing of symbolism and am always distressed when someone discovers a shape that suggests an object to him, such as a fish or a face that, to me, has absolutely no meaning other than its necessary relation to the total form. I was pleased recently when a woman who had owned one of my paintings for quite some time asked me whether I would mind if she turned it upside down. She wanted to efface the image of an umbrella that had suddenly formed itself in her mind. Perhaps the minds of most people work that way, at least with paintings. They are not happy until they have recognized something.

The forms I paint are created out of space itself, like a fluid that, on occasion, solidifies or crystallizes and takes on visible dimension. These solidifications, sometimes influenced by the force of gravity and sometimes free from it, cause and reflect other such formations in the surrounding space. They influence this space, intensifying it or lightening it, and they themselves are influenced in return, becoming heavier or lighter, larger or smaller, more opaque or transparent, grayer or more brilliant in color, until an order seems to be established, an over-all harmony, a free, unhindered movement. The paths suggested by these attractions and repulsions need not be confined to just the limited area of the canvas. There may be implications of extension in all directions, especially when a painting tends to become part of a field of energy without matter, consisting only of its own tensions.

Description in words distorts what painting means to me. It leaves out the emotional and spiritual necessity under which I work to compose a rhythm of forms. What I paint is really an emotion, and I am most interested in the emotional response. Analysis of how form develops offers no explanation that could help the observer to understand what has been done, or why. It might possibly be of interest to some, but the emotional impact communicated is what counts. There is one thing that always surprises me. Some people say: I just love your work, but I don’t understand it. I love the color; I love the movement; of course I can follow the rhythm, but I just can’t understand it. I think they do. If they can follow that far, they have understood all that really concerns me. What I want to create is a milieu wherein one can flow with bits and pieces of a luminous universe. Tensions are introduced not to balance a composition, but to resolve their discords in the tranquility of harmonious coexistence with all the elements in the painting. This tranquil harmony of successfully resolved strains which is so important to me has no static position. Most of my forms are not fully crystallized, and their position and movement in the picture depend on the path of the observer’s approach to them. If they are seen before or after looking at some darker or lighter mass, they may move toward a forward or backward position in space. It is this very activity of seeing that keeps the organization alive and moving.

As an illustration I have included a drawing made on scratchboard rather than an oil painting, because the original is in black and white it loses little in reproduction. In my oils I work only with the palette knife after a few brush strokes have established the first directions. These paintings show areas of gradually changing colors and textures that might not explain themselves so clearly in reproduction as they do on canvas, and so not fully illustrate the story. Occasionally I work on scratchboard. This is, of course, a more limited medium than oil painting, because all I can do is to take the black surface for deep space and build it up by means of lines into forms that stand out in white. This simplicity may be helpful here in showing what I have tried to describe.

This scratchboard drawing also illustrates the development of a composition better than a finished oil painting. In a painting an area may have been painted over several times and completely lose its original identity, something that cannot be done with the white lines of the scratchboard that are all there to stay. So the whole process of working remains here graphically recorded as a progression from the simple black to the complex grays and whites created by the scratches of the tool. Perhaps it can be read back to some extent from the finished drawing.

I am often asked how I begin a painting. Usually when I approach a new canvas I find that after a short time some form suggests itself. I do not know just what brings this about. Perhaps it is the naturally uneven lighting of the surface, some stray reflection from outside the window that starts to jell. I am quite passive in following these suggestions, real or imagined. As soon as one brush stroke has been put on the white ground, the rest of the painting is, in principle, committed, since any area of the canvas so established determines all others. Working out these many relations is a lengthy process. Very rarely do I see the complete composition at the beginning. Usually it is the first shape that suggests the nature of its vicinity. This may later turn out to be a very minor event in a distant area of space. It may also suggest a formation at the other end of the canvas. These areas and forms together determine the next thing that happens, and so gradually the painting unfolds.

I am not certain of the colors at the beginning and start with a rather neutral palette. As the areas and forms start to react on one another and the organization takes shape, color emerges with it. A dominant form demands a dominant color, a blue here will demand a red there, and a pink, a yellow, a green in other places. What determines a particular final color scheme I do not know. Generally, there seems to be a swing to opposites. After a gentle and cool painting there often follows a vigorous and more colorful one, but it also sometimes happens that a whole series will be related in color and emotional suggestion.

While painting I am without objective criticism. I am unaware of past paintings or the paintings of others. I am completely one with the canvas and with its suggestions, developing what is trying to emerge. When my concentration dims or the suggestions fade I put the canvas aside. The next morning, I may know how to proceed, or I may see that the statement is complete or that the whole thing is no good and lost. I may find that more has to be done without knowing just what it should be. In that case I may leave the canvas for days, weeks, or months —and often that means going over the whole painting again because any change in one place may influence every shape and hue in the whole field. Frequently the work ends up in the fireplace because some area has become cramped and nothing will free it, or because the physical ridges and textures of the paint block the adjustments that have turned out to be necessary.

While working on a painting, its forms and the shapes of its areas stay so clearly imprinted in my mind that it is sometimes hard for me to be sure that the canvas says what I think it says, for the image could exist just in my imagination. It is not until I put a painting aside long enough for this image to fade from my memory that I can hope to look at it objectively. Only when I do this, when I see my painting as I see others, can I hope to know if I have done what I intended and if the painting is finished.

There are actually two kinds of critical attitudes involved in the way I work. While I paint, I am concerned with the immediate context of each form, area, or space configuration, and am critically aware of the harmonious distribution of the tensions they suggest, or, rather, on which they insist. Later, when I am able to see what I have painted, I criticize it from the outside.

My own personal problems never seem to influence my work. I may be upset, or tired, or preoccupied, but all this does is make me produce less. It might be said that my preoccupation to provide the forms I paint with the utmost freedom and harmony they demand indicates a central problem of my own, although why it should be only mine I do not know. Possibly, it is a problem shared by every one in the world today. Trying to solve it through painting is, to me, a spiritual necessity.

Notes of an interview with the artist by Ernest Mundt.

ERNST BARLACH

Bom in Wedel, Holstein, in 1870, Barlach grew up on his father’s farm. He studied in Hamburg, Dresden, Paris, and Berlin and traveled in Russia and Italy. In 1938 his works were officially condemned by the Nazis who considered his sculpture and painting degenerate. He was labeled a culture denier, and 380 pieces of his sculpture were destroyed or displaced. He died in 1938.

SELECTED LETTERS

To Friedrich Düsel Hamburg

June 15, 1889

Of the three ways in which the life and activities of man are reproduced—sculpture, painting and drawing, and story telling—the first is naturally the most familiar and the dearest to me, the sculptor. I observe keenly, continuously—front and back, left and right—keeping my eyes on my work and creating with hand and tool what the eye, simultaneously, judges and measures. I do not represent what I, myself, see from this or that angle, but rather, what is the Real and True; this I have to extract from what I see before me. I accord this mode of representation an absolute preference over drawing, for sculpture is not an artificial art; rather, it is a healthy art, a free art, unencumbered with such necessary evils as perspective, foreshortening, lengthening, and other tricks. For this reason I am also opposed to reliefs which, doubtless, permit greater freedom in composition and a wider scope of ideas but which lap over into the area of painting.

I am not entirely satisfied with sculpture alone, so I draw, but since I am not quite satisfied with that either, I write. I had an urge to write even when I was a child who, happily, had learned to read and write. I used to read all the time acting out in play what I had read in stories and then in my own scriblings varying what I had read. Today, I have learned to observe. I am busy with large sketches for sculptures, and, at the same time, I paint the small world in which I move—the world that my eyes and spirit see.

What I have written so far are merely fragments, attempts to portray a few people. In doing this I have discovered that I have inside me, like everyone, an inexhaustible reservoir of sterling substances, and I merely have to draw from this reservoir and fill the proper vessels. Life is so infinitely abundant. Every glance from my window into the schoolyard where youngsters romp during recess; every glance into the street is a rewarding excursion; walking through the streets, merely tarrying in a restaurant, awakens my consciousness to a great variety of delightful scenes.

I am planning to buy a paint box. Do you know what it is like to see a maiden with eyes afire and hot breath toe the very line between yielding and resisting; then, how you