Hotel Continental, Tangier, Morocco

The couryard of the Hotel Continental in Tangier, Morocco is wedged between the the busy harbor and the crowded medina. It is the “dream at the end of the world,” inhabited by the ghosts of the Beat expatriates.

The American Paul Bowles lived there for 52 years. He attracted his eccentric friends William Burroughs, Truman Capote, Timothy Leary, and Jack Kerouac. Their wild adventures found their way into works like America by Allen Ginsberg, Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles, Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac, and The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet.
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P.S. There's still time to guess the Mystery Artist (see post below and poll at left).

Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts has just announced the formation of the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, a reseach institution devoted to the study of the history of American Illustration.

Art Info reports that the Center will "provide stipends to scholars exploring illustration art, house a database of illustration-related materials, establish a network of like-minded institutions to share information about artists, and develop a collection of illustration art of the past 150 years."

Joyce Schiller, who served for seven years at the Delaware Art Museum as curator of American art, was named the Center's first curator. She said,

“The formation of the Rockwell Center is an exciting and extremely important development within the field of illustration art. The art of illustration has informed America’s visual culture throughout the country’s history. It’s essential to bolster research in the field, as well as preserve these fragile works of art—these cultural snapshots—for future study and appreciation."

Rockwell Museum press release, link.
Art Daily article, link.
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Photo of the museum courtesy T.S. Amarasiriwardena /Boston.com

Mystery Artist

The critics universally respected his work. One of them said: “His presence will be assured in the museums of the future.” Another called him, “One of the uncontestable masters of our epoch.”

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany called him “One of the greatest glories of the entire world.”

He was a friend of Eugene Delacroix. “All of us will be forgotten,” Delacroix said. “But he will be remembered.”

In the 1880s, when Van Gogh was secretly hoping to sell a painting for 50 francs (about the price of a three day’s stay in Paris for a tourist), our mystery artist sold a canvas for 840,000 francs. His paintings were by far the most expensive in France in the later part of the 19th century.

Who was he? Please vote in the poll at left. Answer and results on Saturday.
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Thanks, R.K., J.M. and M.C.

Google Ocean

Google has just pulled back the veil of mystery about the ocean bottom. Using the Google Earth model, you can now explore the details of the sea floor, study coastline erosion, and watch old Cousteau clips. This video talks a bit more about it.



New York Times story, link.

The Hard Road to Dreams

Arnold Böcklin (1827 - 1901), the 19th century artist famous for his canvases of centaurs and mermaids, once said,

“Nothing in art is created without effort, and the painter’s ideas don’t come to him on wings while he dreams, either. The one may be more talented than the other, of course; but without untiring diligence, single-mindedness and a combative spirit, there can’t be any good result. All this talk about ‘inspiration’ is nonsense.”

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ArnoldBocklin.com
Musee d'Orsay article about him, link.

Synthetic Flats

Synthetic-filament brushes come in a variety of shapes: flats, filberts, and rounds. Flats are especially useful for painting architecture and machines because they can lay down rectangular shapes easily. You can also turn them sideways to paint a fine line.


Here I'm using a Winsor and Newton Series 995 Golden Taklon ½ inch flat to establish the dark shape of a crypt door.

The finished watercolor painting shows the chunky half-inch stroke module in the stonework and the big shadows. I also used a #4 sable round travel brush for some of the fine line work.

You can use ¼ inch nylon flats with oil or acrylic. For opaque media they come with longer handles. They’re inexpensive, but they don’t last long. Eventually lose their chisel-sharp edge.

Premiere Pensee

The premiere pensee is a small, rapidly executed sketch, which captures the first thought of a composition. It is usually painted in oil, or the same medium as the finished work.

Here’s an example, the first idea for “Lion Hunt” by Eugene Delacroix. The swirl of strokes conjures the intertwined bodies of lions and horses.

The painted sketch was a crucial step in the French academic tradition. The goal was originality, spontaneity and sincerity. The painter Arsenne said that the painted sketch should be “the embryo of what the artist has in his mind.”

Diderot said that the premiere pensee should be “a work of fire and genius,” while the finished picture should be the result of patient study, long toil, and consummate experience.

Art historian Albert Boime argued in his landmark book “The Academy and French Painting in the 19th Century” that the aesthetics of the sketch as practiced by artists of the Ecole des Beaux Arts played a role in giving birth to the later independent painting movements, which put such a large emphasis on freedom and spontaneity.