2776.
But a great many people want that person to sit down in a chair from
morning till night and paint one strand of hair after another, a process
that would be as deadly as knitting a hooked rug in hell for all
eternity.
2777.
Even though I say it is not possible to paint all the hairs on the head
of a figure, or all the fur on a dog, I am sure there are knowledgeable
people out there, people who have spent time in the famous museums of
Europe and America who are right now shaking their heads in disgust at
what I have been saying about painting hair and the one hair brush, and I
am sure it they had a chance they would instantly reduce my ideas and
observations to cinders.
2778.
They would reduce my observations to ashes by pointing to Jan Van
Eyck’s little dog in the painting “The Arnolfini portrait,” and after
that they would dig out one of those Holbein portraits that people know
from the life of Henry the Eighth. Then they might spend some time
projecting slides of Durer’s paintings, blowing them up in an enlarger
and pointing to the individual hairs of his painting of a rabbit.
2779. Also, anticipating that I will counter with the argument that all of those artists were Northern European or even German, and that those cold Northern climates did produce odd temperaments willing to torture themselves in that tedious way, seeing that I might say something like that they probably will proceed to mention Caravaggio.
No comments:
Post a Comment