Imagination

Colors. Shades of browns and oranges. Globs of black and white in start contrast sitting together on my palate. I have a brush in my hand, hovering over the vast array of colors to choose from. Where to begin? What to paint? Do I spend prep time thinking of what to paint or do I just go for it? Just put oil on canvas and let the picture emerge? So many decisions that are all up to me. The freedom I feel in this moment is unlike any other experience in the world. Pure creation is at my fingertips.

The white canvas in front of me teases my imagination. So many different options to choose from. So many different paths to take. The beauty here is that one object is so many different things to different people. A cup is only a cup if you want it to be. A cup is only a cup if you have no imagination. A cup is a vessel for liquids, solids, ideas, emotions. A cup can be broken down into simple shapes: rectangle, circle, square, trapezoid, they're all there if you're willing to see them. It only takes a little imagination.

My Job is to Challenge You

Readers, I would like to take a post or two to just describe the beauty of painting and how it feels when there’s a brush in my hand. If you’re not an artist then you don’t know or understand what painting or another form of creative release feels like. So in this post I want to enlighten those who are unaware.

White. Pure white. No blemishes or spots of color. Only white. A giant square of white just begging to be covered from top to bottom in the colors of my choosing. But it can't be done in any fashion. This is a creation. I can't just slop paint on a canvas haphazardly. This requires time. This requires thought. This requires creativity and a new world view.

I want to paint an object. Describe it in perfect detail in a way that can't be seen in real life. I want to make others think about this thing in a new light. The same old style isn't enough anymore. We can't just paint for the sake of painting.

The definition of art is expanding, and I have to find a way to accommodate that. This is a challenge. This is more than just putting colors on a canvas. This is more than just lines and shapes looking nice together. This is more than what anyone thinks it is. This is art and art is life.

To be a painter is to be more than someone who smears paint around on a canvas. To be a painter is to be someone who challenges the publics view on everything while bringing in beauty simultaneously.

We Are All Influenced

Readers, have you ever lived through a war? Have you ever lived through two wars? Have these two wars ever divided all the nations in the world to a point where almost everyone died?

I have.

It may not seem like it would influence one’s work, but it does. Other artists at the time of these wars simply continued with their lives, not concerning themselves with war.

My question, however, is how can you not concern your self with something that big on the global scale? Things like World War I and World War II literally effected everyone on the planet, whether they knew it or not. All the major artists in the world were located near or in Paris, which was a big center for war.

Most of these artists ignored the war and did their own thing. How can you do that? How can you be, quite literally, in the middle of a battlefield and not be influenced by the things that go on around you? War is not to be taken lightly. People die, cities are burned, and I’m supposed to expect anyone, let alone someone who interprets the world for a living, to just go on with their life as if nothing has changed? It’s ridiculous. It’s not possible.*

War isn't just about politics between countries. It effects everyone in so many different ways. Temperaments change based on where you live. Someone becomes your enemy just because someone with 'power' told them to.

We as artists and humans need to stop lying to ourselves about how current events influence our lives.

*Danchev, Alex. 2006. "The Strategy of Still Life, or The Politics of Georges Braque." Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 31, no. 1: 1-26.

Why You should try Cubism

Readers, have you ever felt the hypocrisy of a 2D painting? I have. I feel it constantly. Artists have spent centuries upon centuries trying to paint a 3D object on a flat picture plane. Why? Why  try to show something exactly as it is? Why are you lying? I know what a cup looks like. I know what flowers look like. I know what all of these every day objects look like. I see them every day. So why are we trying to portray them in the same boring manner? If you want to show a cup, why not make a cup? Why not make the 3D object that you’re trying to show?

What about if you painted the 3D object as a 3D object on a 2D plane? Take views from different angles. Show the tops, sides, bottoms, every angle of the object. Cut up the thing you want to paint and splice it back together. Not literally, of course. A lot of physical objects are hard to cut up. But on your picture plane. 

Dare to be different than the centuries of artists that have come before you. Why try to blend in and go with the flow? Isn't the whole idea of being an artist to do what you want and find new and creative ways to express your views? So why are we all still trying to be the same?

Dare to be different. Give Cubism a try.

Blackness

As promised, here’s my account of blindness.

I was blinded for some time. I don’t know how long specifically, and I don’t want to know. I was blind for as long as I ever wanted to be, and it was a dark time, no pun intended.

To be without sight. How to describe the indescribable. I don’t know how to start, but I’ll try my best. Here it goes.

Imagine you’re standing in a gorgeous meadow. It’s early spring and flowers are just starting to blossom, little buds peeking out of the ground. The grass is bright green beneath your feet. The sky is a perfect blue with little white, fluffy clouds breaking up the monotony. A bird soars overhead, you see the bright flash of colors as the feathers under its wing become visible.

Imagine that. Imagine seeing all the gloriousness there is.

And then imagine that it’s gone.

No warning.

Just black.

There’s a throbbing in your head. You open your eyes, but nothing.

It's jarring. Disorienting. It redefines everything you think you've ever known. To have sight one day and then to be without the next. There are no words, only emotion. Such strong emotion. All the pain and agony you've ever felt amplified when you come to the realization that your whole life is based on sight, and then your whole life is gone.

To have something that you take for granted just gone.

It sent me into a deep and spiraling depression that was only erased by the light of day which I eventually saw again.

Leading Up To Darkness

So I mentioned in my previous post that I had gone temporarily blind during World War I. In the first part of this post I’d like to elaborate on that a bit more. I realize that it doesn’t have much to do with my art, but it’s a big life event that happened, and I believe that it helped to shape my view of the world and allowed me to expand past the same things that I had been working on before hand. So, here’s my experience leading up to blindness.

Before the war, I had been working on cubist paintings with Picasso. In 1911 I got rid of color almost completely. Some could say that cubism was approaching pure abstraction.* But I didn’t want that. Neither did Picasso. We both loved our work and we loved cubism the way that we had made it. To get cubism back on track, I started introducing words to my paintings.

In 1912, I painted a piece called Guitar. This piece was the first one that I added words to. I felt that it added another level to the artwork. From here, there wasn’t much more I could do with cubism without revamping it completely. Later in 1912 I switched things up for good. I think some people even distinguish between the early cubism and the later cubism. Anyway, I started adding other materials to my canvases. I added newspaper and wallpaper and oilcloth. I had to spice up my art somehow. 

When things really started to get going in the cubism world, my time came to an end, at least for a little while. The year was 1914, and I was called up to serve for my country. Some say this is an honor, but all I wanted to do was paint. About nine months into my service is when the accident happened. I can’t recall the specifics. I only know that some people say it was just a head injury and others say that my accident was fatal. 

Stay tuned for my account of being blind.

*Lacayo, Richard. 2014. "Space Invader." Time 183, no. 7: 54.

My Life Story: What You Didn't See Last Time

Are you still here, readers? As I promised, this post is filled with more history about cubism and the rest of my life. I know my last post was a bit of a tease, but I like to keep my fans coming back for more. After all, things are hardly ever what they seem. 

So, as cubism grew, World War I quickly approached. I was called for military service in late 1914*, where I got a terrible head injury and was temporarily blinded. Those moments of darkness were unlike anything I’ve ever known. To be without my vision, it was terrible. I couldn’t see the colors and shapes that I had spent so long defining. I will never take my sight for granted again.

By 1916 I had resumed painting, though I was starting to fall away from Cubism. I still used geometric shapes in my work, but I started to use different surfaces. I used round-topped pedestal tables, mirrors, wood, anything and everything that I could get my hands on. Experimentation and thinking outside the box were key.

In 1929 I revisited places of my childhood and built a studio in Varengeville-sur-Mer. I started painting smaller landscapes again, and began using more and more color and decoration. Around 1936, I decided to focus on interior views. I never really connected with these subjects, though, and built a sculpture studio. 

World War II was approaching, and though I moved around a little in 1940, I eventually settled in Paris for more of the war. I had a year where I didn’t create anything, only observed. I started painting again in 1941. I returned to interior views, and used muted colors. 

After the war had ended, I decided to explore color lithography. It never really panned out. 1953 was a good year. I got commissioned to decorate the ceiling of a room in the Palais du Louvre. The year after that I designed stained glass windows for the church in Varengeville. In 1959 I became chronically ill, and I have yet to rally myself up enough to finish one last canvas.

*Kachur, Lewis. Braque, Georges (1882-1963), painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker. London: Oxford University Press, 1996.