Message in a Bottle
"Mostly painting is like putting a message in a bottle and flinging it into the sea" said Howard Hodgkin in 2001. What other comments on art are found over the centuries?
The proverbial advice "Not a day without a line" is attributed to the Greek artist Apelles in the 4th century BC. Perhaps following it allowed the medieval Italian painter Giotto to produce "Giotto's O", the perfect circle which he is supposed to have drawn freehand. Industry (and a sense of modest achievement) is also suggested by a comment of Michelangelo's in a letter to his father, written in 1512 on completing the ceiling of the Sistine chapel: "I've finished that chapel I was painting. The Pope is quite satisfied."
Portrait painters may face particular difficulties, since not all subjects take the "warts and all" approach of Oliver Cromwell. (He ordered the painter Lely, "Remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me; otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.") The American painter John Singer Sargent is said to have commented, "Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend."
There have of course always been different views on what makes an artist. "A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great", said Joshua Reynolds in 1770, but in 1821 John Constable reflected, "The sound of water escaping from mill-dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork...those scenes made me a painter and I am grateful." The French painter Ingres thought that "Drawing is the true test of art."
Techniques, however, change, and new tools may be adopted. In the late 20th century, Damien Hirst reflected, "It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-level art, twisted imagination and a chainsaw."
06/08/2003
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