A discussion of my drawings and paintings
by Francesco del Drago
Abstract - The author discusses his artistic
development and, in particular, the formation of his objectives
in drawing and in painting. As a young artist, he noted that plastic
art had been dissected and he concluded that it was necessary
to reunite the parts. He set as one of his objectives the surpassing
of individual style. He discusses certain elements of his work
that have been of special concern to him during the past few years.
- The first concerns the representation of reality by drawing and
watercolor painting where shapes relate only partly to preconceived
structures.
- The second concerns his style where he requires equal weight be
given to different forms and to different colors in a picture.
- The third and fourth relate to art materials he uses and to the
vibrant color combinations in his paintings.
- The fifth centers on his interest for variability, which he obtains
by providing transformable arrays of painted panels.
I. INTRODUCTION
A young artist (if he is neither young nor an artist, it is useless
to give him advice) once came to my Paris studio to ask how to
make drawings such as mine.
I answered: ''Each year you must buy two trunks in which to store
your drawings and then at the end of a year take them to the forest
of Fontainebleau.
There, in the middle of the forest (such a beautiful place), you
will find a clearing where, under the surveillance of a guard,
you can burn things.
Each year go and burn the one or two thousand drawings that you've
done. I guarantee your drawings will show progress.I have been
using this method for twenty-five years''.
I am convinced that this is how one makes progress in drawing
and I believe drawing is an essential technique for an artist
who paints or sculpts. Nowadays, I find that many who invade the
field of the plastic arts confuse progress with gadgets and style
with originality. Like fashion, such originality is a whimsical
buffoon[1].
II. OBJECTIVES OF MY WORK
My objectives have changed with age. When I was a child, I had
a great passion for drawing and painting. I had natural talent
but it did me little good. The main problem was to possess myself
of technique.
In 1933, when I was thirteen, my parents sent me to Professor
Rosa, whose books are still considered the best modern Italian
treatises on the technique of classical painting.
After World War II, I attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
At the same time, I was copying pictures at the Borghese Gallery
and became a friend of Severini Morandi, Guttuso and Birolli.
These were reverent friendships of a youth. During my conversations
with them, I listened but believed only a little. I noticed that
each artist saw reality quite differently and that each was right
in his own way.
During the 1950's, I spent my time copying paintings by impressionists
and cubists in French museums, for I believe that there is no
other way to understand pictures. The exercise showed me that
much of what I had read on the two schools of painting was part
of pretty, critic-invented fairy tales.
Painting was a completely different thing. My talks, in the presence
of their works, with Manessier, Estéve, Pignon, Herbin, Léger,
Dawasne, Picasso and Matta led me to two conclusions:
(a) art had been dissected;
(b) it was necessary to reunite the parts.
To answer why, how and when art began to be dissected is the study
of aestheticians. Artists see things from the inside. An artist
simultaneously takes account of Pop, Op, minimal and conceptual
art, artepovera and the other art forms; that multiply in the
water of the three sources: figurative, surrealist and non-figurative
or abstract art. I believe it is necessary to reunite the different
ways of art without making a mishmash of the purposes of art [2].
When Cézanne objected to impressionism because it decomposed the
image, he was reacting against a mentality more than a technique.
To restore the unity of the plastic arts will be no easy task,
since its fragmentation is strongly entrenched in museums, galleries,
art studies and publications. Perhaps, as a consequence of the
above conclusions, I set as one of my objectives the surpassing
of individual style, the romantic expression of one's ego. I believe
a contemporary artist should make a sort of synthesis of collective
experience and thus become anonymous, as were artists in ancient
times. In my figurative works, I have thus tried to express through
my emotions the emotions of others.
Since I was young, I have wanted to make a beautiful thing. Cave
paintings are a result of such a craving, I am sure, and their
implied magic purpose is an historic lie, an embezzlement of art
by the sacred. I accept the idea that the origin of art is the
will to make beauty.
I recognize an object as a work of art when:
(1) an artist has infused his work with his precise intention
and
(2) his work has the special mark of originality.
Obviously, intention alone does not produce art. Conceptual art,
by definition, is not art, for where there is no work or artifact,
there is no art.
Fig. 1. 'Spiaggia libera', enamel on canvas, 60x73cm, 1966
Fig. 2. 'Estate', enamel on canvas, 114x146cm, 1966 (Durso
Collection)
Fig. 3. 'Fiumicino', enamel on canvas, 60x73cm, 1968
Fig. 4. 'Metamorfosi', enamel on canvas, 60x40cm, 1968
III. MY MODES OF WORK AND RESULTS
o separate modes of work from the results seems to me fairly difficult
in art. I will, therefore, consider these two things together.
A painter's results are his pictures. I have chosen those shown
in Figs. 1 to 6 because
they have certain elements or deal with certain ideas that have
been of special concern to me during the past few years. I shall
discuss them in the following order:
1. Representation of reality
2. Antimonumentalism
3. Materials
4. Vibrant colors
5. Variability
Fig. 5. 'Variable N°1(detail)', acrylic on canvas, 365x240cm,
1971(Collection of Galleria Russo, Rome)
1. Representation of reality
How can one express reality in a work of art? With paint and paper
as tools, an artist channels his observations, feelings and thoughts
into a picture. He may not succeed. In order that I might successfully
represent reality, I attempt to include three elements in my work:
(1) real life, (2) automatism of fancy and (3) concepts of 'objective'
structures.
Fig. 6. 'Drawing of a girl', ink on paper, 28x42cm, 1971
1. Real life.
I make about sixty watercolors and between one and two thousand
drawings a year.
I do the watercolors in the country or at the seaside on crowded
beaches. I never draw forms but rather I paint colored areas.
Then I use a fine brush to paint lines and designs totally unassociated
with colored areas. The first to use such a method of dissociation
was Raoul Dufy. For watercolor paintings, he used absorbent lithograph
paper. He worked with watercolor and tempera simultaneously. I
have also used both. But I now prefer watercolor alone. Paper
and pigments are of much importance.
On the basis of my experience, I prefer the paper made by Fabriano,
a hand-made product from rags, and English watercolors because
of their transparency and strength. Once the watercolor technique
has been learned, no other will permit go quick an expression
of luminosity and the numerous nuances of color. Another means
for capturing an aspect of reality is drawing. I draw every day,
choosing freely among the many subjects that come to my attention.
Fig. 7. Preparatory design showing the 'objective' structure.
Picasso has made entire notebooks of drawings in preparation for
a single painting. In the summertime, Pignon used to visit me
in Italy. During the harvest, we would draw the peasants at their
work. There is a fundamental difference between lines and designs.
Lines are the elements from which designs are constructed. I believe
that when one looks at a drawing one first sees lines, then designs
and, finally, both the form as a whole and the relation between
its elements (cf. Fig. 6).
The gestalt theory in psychology states that the totality of a
work is not the simple sum of its individual parts. The artist,
in his slightly confused fashion, has always known this today,
even more clearly, There is also a kind of drawing that presents
a form as a whole divorced from the lines and designs used in
its construction. Such drawings are characterized by great simplicity,
yet deep meaning.
The Platonic forms, primogenitors now forgotten, have been used
for centuries by artists (the forms used by Michelangelo and Raphael
are classic examples). Today, we are no longer satisfied with
them. Tradition provides experience from the past that we must
now enrich through drawing. But only the artist who has learned
to draw may disregard the conventional rules.
I am often asked if modern drawing has shown progress. When I
think of the high quality of past works, I hesitate, but do end
up in answering in the affirmative. Yes, drawing has shown progress
recently because the artist is able to work without the constraints
of convention. He was a slave, now he is a free man. In this sense,
our present period began with the departure of Degas. Picasso
and Matisse helped to carry the development of drawing further.
Drawing has become characterized by interlocking lines, designs
and forms. There are now innumerable possibilities for us to pursue.
In addition to their being finished works, watercolors and drawings
furnish me with material for my subsequent paintings.
2. The automatism of fancy.
The fault in the work of most surrealists, I find, is in the subject
and its portrayal. The subject is often disturbing and the painting
stereotyped or academic. The important aspect about surrealistic
painting is automatism. Automatism applies to the making of drawings
without the control of reason, such as a rapidly made line. The
vitality of this sort of drawing increased in intensity from Picasso
to Pollock. By 1955, I decided to dominate this vitality. My drawings
have been categorized as slow automatism. I try to make spontaneous
forms very slowly without rational intervention. Perhaps this
is one way to program the expression of fancy.
3. Concept of 'objective' structures.
The cubists were the first to go beyond 'window' pictures (quadro-finestra)
of the Italian Renaissance perspective. They, it seems, went to
the opposite extreme. Instead of hollowing out a space that would
appear to continue beyond the canvas, they distorted objects so
as to present additional views of them on one delimited plane.
As a result, cubistic pictures are more 'objective' than those
put into perspective.
The objectivity of the artistic work then became confused with
that of the collage, the source of Pop art. Apart from the objectivity
that applies to the visual illusion of perspective and to the
cubistic piling-up and the insertion of ready-made objects in
pictures, there is a twodimensional 'objectivity' that characterizes
my pictures (cf. Figs. 1-4).
In these pictures, I consider that the structure is objective
because it is related solely to the dimensions of the painting
surface (cf. Fig. 7).
The trap into which nearly all artists making minimal art have
fallen (even Vasarely) is to become a prisoner of pattern. In
my work, the geometric structures do not support the forms rigidly;
only segments of the forms coincide with the structures (cf.
Fig. 8).
Fig. 8. Preparatory design showing partal support of the forms
by the structures.
2. Antimonumentalism
The love of the monumental is, I believe, a metaphysical-religious
residue. It arose from the desire to make the gods and pharaohs
infinite. This desire has survived to the present day. In particular,
it is manifested by contrasts between the large and the small
within a work. It is present in works by Cézanne, Léger and Picasso
and in works of large dimension by contemporary American artists.
Although less apparent, it is present in works of the colorists.
A little bit of intense blue counterbalances a big patch of lighter
blue, which functions practically as an echo. In the same way,
a dab of bright yellow sings out in a field of yellow ochre.
Thus, a little bit of bright red helped Rubens make a big patch
of pink carnations become alive. Impressionistic paintings show
no exceptions to this rule; neither do those succeeding them.
Matisse reversed perspective and used color differently: big forms
behind little ones; big bright reds in the place of rosy-pinks.
But even reversed, the contrasting relationships remain. I think
monumentalism should be abandoned, both in forms and in colors.
Each color and each form should be given the same weight. Along
these lines, we have had the innovations by Klee. Vasarely in
all his writings has not touched upon this subject.
3. Materials
In the recent search for luminosity, notable success has been
achieved by Malina [3], Calos [4]
and other artists of kinetic art by transmitting light through
transparent colors. My discourse, however, is limited to paints
on an opaque surface and, hence, to color reflected from them.
In this case again, experience is the mother of certitude. Chemistry
and technology have helped a great deal. When I arrived in Paris
in 1950, I was still using oil paints, even though I was rather
dissatisfied with them.
In 1952, Jean Dewasne, to whom I owe a great deal, suggested I
use Chrysochrome paints (product of Usine de la Pastorine. Draved,
Seine et Oise, France), which have good strength and luminosity.
They have a glycerine resin base. Unfortunately, they leave a
smooth, enamel-like surface so that a yellow when it reflects
a blue appears green. Goodbye to the desired purity! What has
been gained on the one hand has been lost on the other. At present,
I use acrylic paints. The acrylic paint films I obtain have less
surface reflection and are very durable. Considerable experience
is required in using these paints because they dry quickly and,
when superimposed, their tones change. The blues, however are
too transparent. Still, acrylic paints are the best available
today for artists.
4. Vibrant colors
I have often been asked how I came to use vibrant colors. This
aspect of my work has received considerable attention even though
it accounts for only a small and hardly the most important part
of my pursuits. By vibrant colors I mean colors that when placed
side by side produce a strong vibrant effect. This occurs, for
example, when orange and green of the same brightness (artists
usually say 'tone') or blue and red of the same brightness are
placed side by side. Drawings and paintings can contain elements
that produce afterimages or give an illusion of motion.
These effects have been used by Vasarely [5]
and by Riley [6]. Gropius, Klee, Kandinsky and
Moholy-Nagy taught and partly applied these effects but their
effects were never strong. I believe the credit for this goes
to Vasarely, He not only cast off the idea of a background but
by means of appropriately arranged shapes gave an illusion of
movement. Riley accomplishes a similar effect by placing undulating
lines very close to each other. I use color to give a feeling
of motion just as Vasarely and Riley use shapes or lineal designs.
A statement concerning color is necessary. Having a reasonable
knowledge of colorimetry, Ishould liketoexplainto one who has
little scientific knowledge and to one who has little artistic
knowledge certain phenomena that are not generally understood.
Artists and scientists generally see color from two different
points of view. Since the time of Newton, physicists and psychologists
have studied the phenomenon of visual perception. They have observed
the breaking of white light into a spectrum of colors, studied
the retinal tissue and investigated how it transmits messages
to the brain. Of this last and most important phase, science has
thus far revealed relatively little. We have hypotheses of Young,
Helmholtz, Hering and MacNichol but they remain unconlirmed [7].
Those engaged in colorimetry and, in general, persons who produce
colors by mixing colored light beams employ blue, green and red
as the primary colors. These have been selected because they provide
the greatest color gamut in mixtures of projected light [8].
For the same reason, but operating on the principle of selective
light absorption, the primary colors for artists' pigment strictly
are blue-green (commonly called blue), magenta (commonly called
red) and yellow.
A substitution of light cadmium red for magenta would simply narrow
the possible color gamut. When combined, yellow and blue pigments
produce green hues because each absorbs selectively all colors
except green from the impinginglight. In painting, unlike in the
projection of colored light where colors are mixed by superposition
on a surface, it is impossible to obtain yellow by mixing green
and red. In practice, the artist's yellows are those commercially
available. Attempting to apply color theory to painting, Seurat
obtained disappointing results; with his pointillist technique,
he only weakened the coloration.
In my work, I have taken advantage of the optical effect produced
by contiguous reds and blues and between greens and oranges. For
the effect to occur, the colors should have approximately equal
brightness and relatively high purity, obviously excluding the
Earth colors (for example, yellow ochre, raw and burnt sienna,
raw and burnt umber, terre verte and terra rosa). These two are
not easy to obtain.
Since some colors lighten and others darken in drying, it is necessary
to make certain tests before preparing a paint mixture for use
in a picture. The light source may also be crucial and should
be considered in advance. A color that is vibrant in electric
light will not necessarily be so in sunlight. A deep red in north
light may appear pale in direct sunlight. To circumvent this problem,
I have at times used alternating dark and pale colors so as to
have vibrant effects both in sunlight and under incandescent lamp
illumination.
Another difficult task was to find a contrasting color for pale
yellow, since the colors of most other unmixed pigments are deeper.
I resolved this by using white acrylic paint tinted with Hyplar
Mars violet, thin violet or cobalt blue (products of M. Grumbacher
Co., New York, U.S.A.). My attempts with other colors failed.
To what are vibrant color effects due? I feel that it is impossible
to transmit simultaneously from the retina to the brain two different
colors of the same brightness.
This notion is only partially in conformity with Hering's theory.
Apparently, the eye's chromatic receivers are sensitive only to
black and white and the message to the brain is in a blackand-white
code. According to Hering's theory, a green signal cannot be transmitted
unless it eliminates a red one. Artistic experience, however,
shows that one can receive red and green at the same time, provided
they are of different brightness. Evidently, Hering is wrong on
this point.
The deciphering, I suppose, must occur after and not before transmission,
that is to say, not at the retinal but at the cerebral level.
This supposition seems to explain why colors that have the same
brightness cannot be received simultaneously. Undoubtedly, some
day the precise mechanism involved in the mysterious retinal-cerebral
communication will be found. It is enough for me to exploit '
for artistic purposes, this ocular incapacity so as to utilize
the potential vitality and efficiency of pigments.
5. Variability
Monet was the first to exhibit a series of pictures having related
subjects (Paris 1877). Since that time, many artists have continued
to produce their works in series. Matisse's series seem to succeed
one another, 'une démarche de 1'esprit', as he called them. Picasso,
in his own way, does basically the same thing. Today, serial painting
[9] coincides to a great extent with minimal
art [10].
But the serial works of Warhol, Kelly, Reinhardt, Noland and Stella
are much like those of Monet. They are variations on a theme,
as are the works of Jawlensky, Mondrian and Albers. I have posed
for myself a different problem. It is not a matter of varying
a theme, painting the same objects with different colors or varying
the objects having the same color. Variability is like a delirium
organized for others.
The twenty pictures which make up my 'Variable No. 1' (cf.
Fig. 5) can be rearranged to group different or like colors.
This is somewhat analogous, for example, to Stockhausen's musical
composition, 'Les Permutations' and Michel Butor's text, Mobile
[11], written to be read on parts of different
pages. Each viewer can form what he chooses. Each is invited to
deviate from his preferences. Each change affects the general
meaning.
A fixed artist's conception is no longer imposed on the viewer
but rather the viewer is encouraged to adapt the work to his liking.
Free is he who can choose. Against the lethal tolls of no-art,
arte povera, art engagé, negative art and conceptual art, I try
to counterpoise the luminous colors of an art destined for all.
Francesco del Drago
Extract of "Leonardo" Art review - Pergamon Press -
1971
REFERENCES
[1] L. Alcopley, On Art, Fashions and the Artist's Preoccupation
with Science, Leonardo 2, 161 (1969); Letters, ibid. 2, 328 (1969).
[2] F. Del Drago, Dialogo tra un critico e un pittore, Diogene
No. 54 (1967) and Improvisare mi è impossibile, Carte Segreto
No. 12 (1969) p. 157.
[3] F. J. Malina, Kinetic Painting: The Lumidyne System, Leonardo
1, 25 (1968).
[4] N. Calos, Electricité et mouvement physique dans mes oeuvres,
Leonardo 1, 415 (1968).
[5] V. Vasarely, PlasticW (Tournai (Belgium): Casterman, 1970).
[6] Catalog (Venice: Biennial, 1968).
[7] C. G. Mueller, M. Rudolph, L'oeil et la lumière (Paris: Time
Inc., 1967).
[8] Color, Encyclopedia Britanica (Chicago: William Benton, 1962)
Vol. 6, p. 59.
[9] J. Coplans, Serial Imagery, Catalog (Pasadena, Calif. Pasadena
Art Museum, 1968).
[10] G. Battcock (ed.), Minimal Art, A Critical Anthology (New
York: E.P. Dutton, 1968).
[11] M. Buttor - Mobile (Paris: Gallimard, 1962).
