Cameron Bennett
In my last essay “Organic Self-Sufficiency in Contemporary Painting,” I adopted an extreme stance on the practice of painting which is this: that painters should never use photography as an aid to their painting. In that essay, my main purpose was to try to explain what I believe is lost when painters rely on photography. In this essay, operating from the same premise, I hope to give clearer examples of the actual awareness contemporary realist painters have about the complexities of this issue, and how they choose to deal, or not deal with it. This is done for the purpose of better discovering my own place in contemporary realistic painting.
A painting which is very telling about the state of contemporary realist painting is Burton Silverman’s “Reflections”. In it, he depicts himself, camera in hand, as a reflection in a glass door, dissolving into the partly visible interior of his painting studio. His figure blends into his easel, which is, figuratively, a part of him. Silverman is part photographer, part painter. What I find telling about this painting is that Silverman, unlike many realist painters, by the inclusion of the camera, is honest about his use of photography in the practice of his painting.
In the monograph on Silverman, “Sight and Insight,” Robert McGrath writes: “Purportedly the result of a photograph, the work of art is palpably not the product of mechanical duplication. Employing a deliberately ‘painterly’ facture…the painter/photographer develops his composition in a visibly brushy manner….the marks of the painter…what the critic Arthur Danto has called ‘protective pigmentation’ are everywhere invoked as a bulwark against the look of photography…it is clearly the painter’s brush and not the camera’s lens that has shaped the finished work of art.” He also writes: “…the artist’s refusal to look through the viewfinder, to instantiate, as it were, the intervention of the camera’s lens between himself and his subject, would seem to assert the priority of individual perception and the primacy of painting over photography.” What I find strange about this is that a painting which wishes to place painting over photography should be one which simultaneously confesses a reliance on photography for its own creation, and then does so much to conceal that fact with abundant painterly facture. Further, contrary to McGrath, I assert that it is, in fact, the camera which is the primary shaper of this particular image, and that the brush’s role is secondary. Also, I insist that painters like Silverman, even in admitting openly their use of photography, are unaware of the extent to which they do rely on it for the creation of their paintings (almost completely).
Honest as the painting is about its use of photography, it is that very relation to photography which could cause it to be marginalized by contemporary art critics, to be considered pastiche, still caught up in what Andre Bazin calls the “Resemblance Complex.” According to Bazin, all realistic painting produced in the age of photography is still struggling with this complex. Bazin’s main argument is that painting should strive mainly for aesthetic quality and not attempt to compete with the camera for realism, which always outperforms the painter in that enterprise. We can assume that Bazin has abstract painting in mind as the remaining choice for painters. Bazin, however, in his essay “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” never acknowledges that realism in painting can be aesthetic.
Good realist painting, whether done from life or from photographs, ought to transform the visual reference into something artistic. I merely argue here that that act of transformation is not sufficient to make the act of painting from photographs justifiable: the transformation then becomes a disguising of the reliance on the photograph, a hiding of its photo-look, which is what Silverman does in his work. But, even if I have shown that realistic painting can be aesthetic, is this sufficient to establish its primacy over photography as an art form? If photography were merely taxonomic, then yes. What Bazin also does not explore in his essay, however, is not only the aesthetics of realistic painting, but also the aesthetic potential of photography. Photographs can be artistically manipulated, transformed, just in the way that realistic paintings can manipulate and transform, aestheticize the visual world.
So where does this leave us? Perhaps back at the argument that anything painters can do, the camera can do better. Or perhaps now, we have merely established equal footing for both disciplines, each now having aesthetic potential.
Silverman is open about his use of photography, but never seems to address whether he should or should not use it. For me, this question continues to be a complex and confusing one. I do not believe for one moment that I am the only painter who agonizes over the issue of whether or not to use photos in the production of his or her paintings. Time and again, realists hide the extent to which they rely on the camera, which would seem to indicate that there exists with them a discomfort surrounding this issue. Those who are honest about their use of photography, like Silverman and renowned portrait painter John Howard Sanden, adopt an “ends justify the means” attitude, which would seem to indicate that they are philosophically comfortable using photography. Sanden writes: “What matters is the result.” I do not believe that they are genuinely comfortable with their use of the camera, however, and here is why: their actions seem to reveal their very insecurities about it.
Sanden is a golden example of this, and he is especially schizophrenic about his own approach to portrait painting. In his books, articles and videos he enthusiastically proclaims the bold, direct, premier coup methods of his heroes in art (the main one being John Singer Sargent, whose ouvre of portraits is well known to have been produced entirely from life) while simultaneously teaching a technique for his own paintings which is very indirect, very careful, and relies almost entirely on photographs. To his credit, Sanden is capable of impressive life sketches in oil, made quickly from the live sitter. But! Sanden falls far short of his own inspirational hype about working directly, in premier coup. The premier coup method he employs for his head studies is never used in his finished paintings. Here is Sanden’s predicament: he knows how deeply he is indebted to the camera and feels uneasy about it, hence his need to create for himself the persona of the bravura, alla prima painter who works from life, however disingenuous that persona may be.
Incredibly, he lays himself bare to this accusation in magazine articles, books, and videos time and time again, yet I never hear of or have never read any criticism like the one I am delivering here. Each of his demonstrations commences with a preamble on the benefits of working like Sargent, (alla prima, from life) and then comically, proceeds to a demonstration of painting in which he tediously works from a photograph, beginning with a tight, complete drawing in line, to which he then adds color and value, from the darkest shadows up to the lights and so on. Are the paintings done in this way good? Yes, they are very skillful, but they look like photographs. His life sketches, to my eye, have a joy and spontaneity about them which is lacking in the finished works.
Silverman, like Sanden, does more-than-adequate work from life. He is well known for his drawings. He even, on occasion, will do a painting from a life-drawing, as in his portrait of his dying mother, or the gentleman in “Trattoria.”
The lesson here is, I think, that each artist works sufficiently well enough without the use of photos to put the camera away permanently. Of the two artists, I argue, Silverman’s paintings, when done from photos, have less of a photo look to them. Sanden, when working from photos, seems to only be able to copy the photo as closely as he can, and then only afterwards add flashy touches of paint. The result is that his paintings look much more like photographs, which for me, is an undesirable and unfortunate effect, one which gives them a kitschy quality.
The bottom line, however, is this: each of these artists attempts to simultaneously hide and reveal the contribution photography makes in his painting. Each does this, I argue, because he is uncomfortable with the role the photograph plays in his art, and he is aware of the shaky philosophical ground he is left on. I share this state of unease in my own art, as do, apparently, many contemporary realist painters. How simple the equation would be if painters left the camera behind and worked self-sufficiently, using only their own organic powers of draftsmanship, memory, and imagination, which many artists have, like Silverman, but seem to not have sufficient faith in. I, for now, at least, am attempting to push myself in this direction, am working from the figure, and have put the camera down.
Bibliography:
Bazin, Andre. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” What is Cinema? University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967, 9-16
McGrath, Robert L. “Sight & Insight: The Radical Realism of Burton Silverman,” Sight & Insight: The Art of Burton Silverman, Madison Square Press, New York, 1998, 13-23
Sanden, John Howard. Portraits From Life in 29 Steps, North Light Books, Ohio, 1999
Sanden, John Howard. International Artist, Oct/Nov 2001: 39-45
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