I can understand all of the thrust to understand the masters or better old master painters and all of what they have accomplished and the ability to create appreciated paintings.
But painting like a Master is a conjured term. There is not just one process of painting though I have heard it presented this way many times. Like if you paint like the Masters it is one way to paint. Lets please try to understand this better. The Old Masters are painters from about the 1500’s – 1800’s. There are many different types of painters, nationalities and methods of painting. Some of them do not look at all alike, some have similarities.
So to say, paint this way like the Masters did is a very misleading and a publicity stunt at best. Creating schools to promote one way of painting, creating seas of individuals to perform techniques in paint does not seem like a good thing to me. Won’t this make their artwork a commodity and devalue it? Where is individual expressionism? Even Purpose?
I think there is more to be said from learning from our past, learning good foundation techniques and perception, then to move away from it. I want to see some kind of order and meaning in painting, but more I want to see and learn something new.
Oil painting came to our attention when Jan van Eyck (1390 – 1441), a Flemish painter first used oil paint. It was in Europe about 1410. He found mainly that linseed oil as a binder of mineral pigments. It is understood that Van Eyck kept his secret up to about 1440, a short time before his death.
Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and many other painters brought great creativity and technique to painting and the artist vision. All still happening in the 1500’s or so. Much of what they painted with their limited earth colors tones and limited pallets was because of the limited colors available to them. We have so many more colors, artistic resources and supplies available to us today.
Leonardo learned anatomy by cutting up cadavers. Da Vinci, an inventor, gave us those smoke shadows, Jan Vermeer used the Camera Obscura, as so many other artist did to help them understand light, shadow, perspective and foreshortening. Today we have digital cameras, Ipods, TV, motion pictures what new thing are we learning? What new visions in paint will we create? Who will teach us? Will we be open to teaching or new thought? Even the past methods where diverse and not just one way.
Why should we limit ourselves to a perspective of one painting technique when there are obviously many?
What new thing are we learning now from the Resurgence of Realism (revisiting the old way of doing things) or painting like a Master? Is it not foundational learning or academic training of the Nineteenth–Century that we can use as a springboard to go out much further with a creative painterly vision. Or is it a step back to a safe place? Imitation is never as good as the real thing.
I see painting as something that evolves. Like inventions, one invention upon another helping us to continue inventing the new based on our rise of knowledge. This inspires me.
My perspective is to learn from the past. Gain this knowledge and then move forward into the new as the Impressionist painters did. They where trained in tradition and then, in my opinion evolved to greatness.
To name a simplified few art periods, we have the Renaissance then a long time later we gained the Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Contemporary Art, Modernism and on and on. Do you see any where the Masters time period exists? Actually it is not clear. The term is regularly employed by galleries and art auctions to brand and separate the great European artists of yesteryear from the modern painters era. Modern does not mean today, it was quite awhile ago, maybe as far ago as 1800’s.
Lets not derail a whole generation of painters into thinking that if you paint like a Master, you are now a painter.
I am not putting down any artists, or educational methods, I think we can learn a lot from the videos I have placed below in this blog. Learning from our past, but lets not stop there, let’s together use it as a launch pad for new great things in the medium we all love, paint. It is up to you to decide. And please lets stop using paint like the Masters like it is some catch all phrase that means something, because it does not.
Final note: Big thank you to Jan van Eyck for giving us all such a great start. Hope we figure out where to go with it.
© 2011 Daryl Urig
PRICES UPDATED ON WEBSTORE GALLERY
Any purchase – Free shipping in continental USA
