_It's funny how things change.

In the early 2000's, I acquired a painting from a dealer in the Netherlands. If memory serves it was the Netherlands, or thereabouts. There are records somewhere.

As a painter, I am satisfactorily able to decorate my own walls. As an art commentator and student of art history, art theory, philosophy and science, I have an evolving philosophy about the creation of art objects.
As a collector, I've collected only a small amount of other peoples art.

When I do acquire a piece, it's mostly because something catches my attention in an unusually stubborn way. It calls to me for reasons that at the time I do not fully understand. I don't give much thought to future value. It just becomes something I "must" have. This was such a painting, and a slice of it can be seen above.
It is a portrait.

Before purchase, I asked the dealer about the painting. I inquired about provenance, age, etc. The dealers information was sparse, but so was the price. The dealer did tell me the painting was on a panel, and they believed it was early 20th century because of the style of the panel and frame. They told me it needed a coat of varnish, and they could do that for me for a small additional fee. I gave them the go ahead. This was a decision I would later come to regret.

When the painting arrived, I was surprised by a few characteristics it contained. The style and construction of the painting was surely Flemish technique. I had already observed this when considering the purchase and this was part of it's charm and attraction. I had assumed though, that because of the subject matter and a few specific passages in the painting, that it had probably been made as a master copy from a museum piece by a painter of limited skill. These passages had seemed rather raw and flat to me. But when I first held the painting in my hands, it looked of a much higher degree of unified quality than I had originally thought.

The painting was executed with perfect glazes and light opaque paint over a soft pink colored ground. The ground showed through in various spots and was utilized in an expert fashion to create the vibrant jewel like effect prominent in Flemish painting. There appeared no significant over-painting nor restoration to my eye, save perhaps the gown/trim, but I was not sure. The painting had a web of craquelure. Because the painting was in such excellent condition, I suspiciously inspected the cracking to see if it was an aging "effect" recently applied. It seemed to be authentic craquelure, as the painting was cracking at different rates in different passages much as you would expect it to based on the thinness or thickness of paint, or the chemical variance in pigment qualities. The area with the most cracking, the flesh tones, was rougher.

The moulding frame holding the painting did not fit it and was a recent piece of work as the dealer surmised, but the panel was another matter. While the cradle that was attached to the back of the panel was newer wood, the panel itself seemed much older. The panel appeared radial cut with beveled edges and with a dark golden glow. The surface on the front was uneven. The grain, corners, and various nicks and gouges observable on the back had been worn smooth and hard with time and handling. A newer nick in the wood revealed it to be much lighter under it's surface. My initial guess was that it might be oak.

Perhaps most important, there was a certain feeling I had about the painting. There was a "weight" to it in my hands. A certain perfection of form. The renowned Thomas Hoving, former Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and author of the book "False Impressions"(1996, Simon and Schuster) describes it this way.
"The fakebusters I know all describe a mental rush, a flurry of visual facts flooding their minds when looking at a work of art. One fakebuster described the experience as if his eyes and senses were a flock of hummingbirds popping in and out of dozens of way stations." He describes this gut reaction, this connoisseurship, as a key ability to determine a fake from an original work of art. There is a sense of a spirit of authenticity born of unity and perfection contained in a genuine artifact. Nothing seems "clunky". An ability to recognize this fluidity of perfection and unity, or any alarming and fraudulent odd quirk, might in part be cultivated through massive immersion and repeated exposure to authentic forms.

I am not an expert on Early Netherlandish art. I have not been immersed in that particular time and place in art history or exposed consistently to those pieces in person. I do have a general understanding of the time and it's contributions and a few of the works, and a few of it's stars such as van Eyck and Memling, but my interest lies more specifically and deeply with the Baroque and 20th Century painters. But I am a painter. I do know paint. I know line, value, color, form and various techniques of paint application. I've also seen my share of antique wooden objects. Something seemed odd to me about this painting. On one hand, it seemed to have a "feel" to it, a unity, an authenticity. But it seemed in too fine a condition to be incredibly old. I decided  it surely must be a master copy of some known earlier work, and from the panels look and the craquelure probably made earlier than 20th century, perhaps even early 19th or maybe even 18th century.

I searched books and the internet for a few weeks trying to locate a copy of what I had assumed would be the original image of the painting in my possession. I was unsuccessful in locating the image in books or online. It remained a mystery to me. I hung the painting in my bedroom among other paintings. When I changed homes it moved with me. Over time I forgot my mental note. Sometimes, I would observe the painting and remember, "I must look into that."

At the time all this occurred, I lived in Beverly Hills. Because I could not identify the painting, I gave her the name "Beverly". The painting continued to be admired and enjoyed, the only disappointment being that the varnish the dealer applied had begun to "bloom". While the painting had arrived to me clear, the beginning of "bloom" started to appear indicating an inept varnishing job had been done. This bloom has grown, and the painting today displays some patchy greyish white patches on the surface. It should be an easy matter for a restorer to remove the varnish. I even thought at one point about trying this myself to practice the technique. I've decided to not do that yet, for reasons I'm about to share.

Facebook is an interesting place for painters and art lovers. For many of us it is a modern watering hole where we meet to discuss technique, share philosophy, enjoy jokes and other conversation. We enjoy each others paintings, and the paintings of others we share. A Facebook friend of mine, the painter Linda Crank (her blog) likes to post a lot of portrait paintings she admires. Recently, posting comments about one painting in her folder, I quickly scanned the rest within. Suddenly, there was my mystery painting!
"THERE she is!", I thought.  Below is the image I saw in Linda's folder:
 

Seeing the image for the first time this week, I jumped into research. I was surprised to learn the painting represented by the photos above is this very moment hanging in Berlin at the Gemäldegalerie and is attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. I had heard of Christus before and am familiar with a few of his paintings, but it has been a decade or so since I've paid much attention to that period and Christus is not one who appears frequently in art history books. I had never seen this image before, other than as the version of the painting I own.

Christus has been increasingly recognized as an important painter and link in the story of painting for some specific reasons I will outline in a moment. Because of these reasons, and as I'm learning additional facts about Christus and Flemish Primitive painting, I am experiencing an elevated mystery surrounding the version of "Portrait of a Young Girl" that is in my possession. Let me introduce you to the version I own:

Here are the two paintings side by side.

As with color, it is often quite difficult to compare photos of paintings online with their real life sources. Unless the photo is taken perfectly straight on, the image will be distorted. A slight turn of the camera will skew the shape or outline of the image. Below, I've tried to size the faces of the two different images as nearly exact as possible, and I've drawn straight white lines to orient various elements of the face. These horizontal and vertical comparisons give at least an idea for how the drawings actually line up. A real life measurement and comparison would be preferable, but this will provide an idea for now.

Horizontal comparison

Vertical comparison

Now that you've seen the two paintings, to avoid confusion for the rest of this article I'll refer to the painting hanging in the Gemäldegalerie as the "Berlin" Version, and my painting as the "Beverly" Version.

Following are select pertinent facts about the Flemish Primitives, Petrus Christus, and the painting itself, along with links to the source websites. The details of these facts raise interesting questions about the Beverly Version of the painting in comparison to the Berlin Version. Specific facts I find of particular importance to this conversation are highlighted in bold text and simply scanning that text will give a feel for the problem.

Flemish Primitive Painting 

From the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
"The period from about 1420 to 1550 was one of astonishing and almost uninterrupted artistic achievement in the Burgundian Netherlands (Low Countries). Taking "all-bearing nature" as their guide, early Netherlandish artists extended the boundaries of painting until they seemed as limitless as the blue-tinged mountains of the distant horizons in their pictures. Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden became the most renowned painters in Europe, van Eyck acquiring legendary status as the purported inventor of oil painting (33.92ab). Works by these masters were sought by princes and merchants throughout Europe, who prized them for their remarkable qualities of verisimilitude, their technical and coloristic virtuosity, and their heightened expressive power.

"Early Netherlandish painting was nourished by a vibrant national economy and international trade. Bruges was the favored residence of the dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth century, and Antwerp was the commercial hub of Europe in the sixteenth. The majority of the Museum's holdings in this area originated in these two cities. Modern-day princes of industry in America rediscovered the glories of early Netherlandish painting and helped to form the collections at the Metropolitan."

"Early Netherlandish portraiture spans the sacred and secular worlds. Donor portraits appear in altarpieces and are essential parts of devotional diptychs and triptychs; in these smaller works used for worship in the home, a single sitter, a husband and wife, or a donor and his patron saint face a devotional image, such as the Virgin and Child, in an attitude of prayer. There also existed a strong tradition for independent portraiture, reflecting a society that became increasingly secularized in the sixteenth century."

The expressive character of each work depended to a great degree on its intended context, as well as on the artist's sensibility. The portrait might suggest authority or aristocratic refinement (as in Rogier's portrait of Francesco d'Este, 32.100.43), or spirituality (as seen in Hugo van der Goes's Benedictine monk, for example, 22.60.53), while Memling's sitters seem to attain an areligious serenity (14.40.626-27). From the beginning, early Netherlandish artists experimented with compositional devices that might enhance the immediacy of their portraits: the corner space, the sill, the trompe-l'oeil frame. All these inventions define the sitters' space in relation to ours and make their presence more vivid. In later pictures, some of the men and women who are portrayed address us through their quality of psychological immediacy, or with a bold glance or a gesture that reaches into our space. In these ways, early Netherlandish artists pioneered the modern idea of portraiture as the record of an individual's character as well as his or her appearance, and it is small wonder that their work was admired and emulated throughout Europe."

From Wikipedia
"The artists produced mostly panel paintings, although illuminated manuscripts and sculptures were also common, especially at the higher end of the market. The paintings may comprise single panels or more complex altarpieces, usually in the form of hinged triptychs or polyptychs. The major artists include van Eyck, Campin,[3] Dieric Bouts, Rogier van der Weyden, Petrus Christus, Simon Marmion, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes, Geertgen tot Sint Jans, David, Hieronymus Bosch and Breugel.[4]"

"The Early Netherlandish period coincides with the height of Burgundian influence across Europe. The Low Countries became a political and economic centre, noted for their crafts and the production of luxury goods. Driven by the success of the Burgundian empire, the region enjoyed a period of financial prosperity and became an area of intellectual and artistic free thought. The paintings of the Netherlandish masters were often exported for German and Italian merchants and bankers. Aided by the workshop system, high-end panels were mass produced both for sale on the open market (usually through market stalls at fairs) and on commission. The period corresponds to the early and high Italian Renaissance but is seen as an independent artistic culture, separate from the Renaissance humanism that characterised developments in central Italy.[5] Because these painters represent the culmination of the northern European Mediaeval artistic heritage and incorporate Renaissance ideals, their art is categorised as belonging to both the Early Renaissance and the Late Gothic."

"With the advent of Mannerism, from the mid 1600s the work of the Early Netherlandish painters fell out of favour, and little is known of them due to paucity of surviving documentation in the official record; very little is known about even the most significant artists. Attribution is especially difficult; a problem compounded by the workshop system, which often produced multiple versions of a single work of its master. "

"In the workshop system, the master would often be responsible for painting the focal or important portions of the work, such as the face or fingers (especially in single panel portraits) of the figures, the fingers, richly embroidered clothing. The more prosaic sections would be left to the assistants, and in many works it is possible to discern abrupt shifts in style which reveal which areas were worked on by the master and which by his workshop. If the master was secure enough financially, as van Eyck was, he could dedicate his workshop to the production of copies of his commercially successful works, or on new compositions in his style.[33] In this case, the master would usually produce the underdrawing or design. Because of this practice many surviving works are today attributed to "The workshop of..." The mid-1400s saw a huge increase in demand for art works, which were sold either from the workshop or at market stalls specializing in luxury goods. The period saw the rise of art dealers; some masters acted as dealers, attending fairs where they could also buy frames, panels and pigments.[32]"

"The majority of the works were painted on wood rather than the less-expensive canvas.[47] The wood was usually oak, a fact that has greatly aided dendrochronological dating, while the type of oak gives clues as to the artist's location.[48] The boards were generally cut radially so as to avoid warp, then the oak was drained of sapwood and well seasoned before being put to use. Typically the panels themselves show a very high degree of craftsmanship; Lorne Campbell notes that most are "beautifully made and finished objects. It can be extremely difficult to find the joins."[49]"

"The Netherlandish artists replaced the traditional profile view, popular since Roman coinage and medals, with the three-quarters pose. In this angle, more than one side of the face is visible as the sitters body is—almost but not quite—directly facing the viewer, while the far ear is generally not visible. The three-quarters pose allows a better view of the shape and features of the head and allows the sitter to look out directly at the viewer. van Eyck's 1433 Portrait of a Man is an early example of the method, and is all the more notable as it its likely van Eyck himself who stares out at us.[60] Yet the gaze of the sitter rarely engages the viewer. Although there is direct eye contact between subject and viewer, normally the look is detached, aloof and uncommunicative, perhaps to reflect the subject's high social position. There are exceptions, typically in bridal portraits or in the case of potential betrothals where the object of the works is to make the sitter as attractive as possible to the intended assessors. In these cases the sitter was often shown smiling, with an engaging, fresh and radiant expression designed to appeal to her intended.[61]

Martin Schongauer, Portrait of a Young Woman, c. 1478. Sammlung Heinz Kisters, Kreuzlingen (Schweiz) Although van Eyck was the innovator in the new approach to portraiture, Rogier van der Weyden developed the technique and was arguably more influential on the following generations of painters. Rather than follow van Eyck's meticulous attention to detail, van der Weyden's focus was on providing a more abstract and sensual representation. He was highly sought after as a portraitist, there is a noticeable similarity in his portraits, likely because, as a labour-saving device, he used and reused the same underdrawings, that met a common ideal of rank and piety, for his works. He would then add finishing touches to highlight the facial expressions of the particular sitter.[62] Following van der Weyden's death, Petrus Christus was the first to set his figures against naturalistic as opposed to flat featureless backgrounds.[63]"

Petrus Christus

From Flemish Primitives
"Petrus Christus is the only Bruges painter from the period between Van Eyck and Memling of whose oeuvre anything is known. The painter arrived in Bruges three years after Van Eyck's death and filled the artistic void that was left by his death. His artistic career lasted three decades in Bruges, and from this period there were thirty paintings, five drawings and one page from a manuscript attributed to Petrus Christus. Nine of these paintings are signed and dated (all between 1446 and 1457) in a style that refers to Jan van Eyck. Just as Jan van Eyck, he signed his works on the register. Seven of these signed works can be connected with other trustworthy documents. In this way they serve as the basis for the attributions of the non-signed works. Petrus Christus's painting style is eclectic. He blends influences--as well as motifs and work procedures--of Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and the art of miniatures into a distinct style. His works hold a crucial place in the complex development of the 15th-century Flemish painting. Christus introduced the interior portrait in which he exchanged the neutral background with the interior of a room. In addition to commissions from Bruges families such as de Adornes, he received many assignments from businessmen from Spain and Italy."

From Wikipedia

"Christus was born in Baarle, near Antwerp and Breda. Long considered a student of and successor to Jan van Eyck, his paintings have sometimes been confused with those of Van Eyck. At the death of Van Eyck in 1441, it was reasoned, Christus took over his master's workshop. In fact, Christus purchased his Bruges citizenship in 1444, three years after Van Eyck's death. Had he been an active pupil in Van Eyck's Bruges workshop in 1441, he would have received his citizenship automatically after the customary period of one year and one day. In other words, Christus may be Van Eyck's successor in the Bruges school, but he was by no means his pupil. In fact, recent research reveals that Christus, long seen only in his great predecessor's light, was an independent painter whose work shows just as much influence from, among others, Dirk Bouts, Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden."

"It is unknown whether Christus visited Italy, and brought style and technical accomplishments of the greatest Northern European painters directly to Antonello da Messina and other Italian artists, or whether his paintings were purchased by Italians. A document testifying to the presence of a "Piero da Bruggia" (Petrus from Bruges?) in Milan may suggest that he visited that city at the same time as Antonello, and the two artists may even have met. This might account for the remarkable similarities between the Portrait of a Man attributed to Christus in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and many of Antonello's portraits, including the supposed self-portrait in the National Gallery in London. It would also be a convenient means of explaining how Italian painters learned about oil painting and how Northern painters learned about linear perspective. Antonello, along with Giovanni Bellini, was one of the first Italian painters to use oil paint like his Netherlandish contemporaries. And Christus' Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Francis and Jerome in Frankfurt, seemingly dated 1457 (the third digit is illegible), is the first known Northern picture to demonstrate accurate linear perspective. The composition of a Lamentation, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, seems so closely inspired a marble relief by Antonello Gagini in the cathedral at Palermo that it has been suggested that the picture may have been painted for an Italian client.[1]"

"Portrait of a Young Girl, circa 1470. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. A late work, the reserved Portrait of a Young Girl belongs among the masterworks of Flemish painting, marking a new development in Netherlandish portraiture. It no longer shows the sitter in front of a neutral background, but in a concrete space defined by the wall panels. Christus had already perfected this format in his two portraits of 1446. The unknown woman, whose exquisite clothing suggests that she might come from France, radiates an aura of discretion and of nobility, while appearing slightly unreal in the elegant stylization of her form."

From the Heilbrunn Timelineof Art History

"When Christus's oeuvre was rediscovered in the nineteenth century, it was rather pejoratively assessed as eclectic and largely derivative of Jan van Eyck. More recent scholarship, while acknowledging van Eyck's influence, has focused on Christus's inventive approach to accommodating the wishes of his patrons in Bruges, as the artist adjusted his style to suit their tastes. His meticulous technique is related to that of manuscript illumination; he was most assured working on a diminutive scale, but became increasingly adept at volumetric description in larger works."

"Five of Christus's thirty surviving paintings are housed at the Metropolitan Museum, providing a core group for the study of this artist. Modern scientific investigation has played a significant part in the reassessment of Christus's oeuvre. Technical examination—including X-radiography, infrared reflectography, and dendochronological analysis--reveals an increasingly sophisticated working technique for Christus's paintings that can be seen in the stylistic evolution of his underdrawings and his progressively more advanced employment of a perspective system. This has helped to resolve some issues of chronology and dating. Infrared reflectography has, for example, supported a date of about 1450 for the Museum's Lamentation (91.26.12) which, because of distinct stylistic differences from thematically similar works, such as the monumental Lamentation in Brussels (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts), has been variously dated to the 1440s, 1450s, and 1460s. Additionally, comparing the underdrawings of authenticated works with those of paintings of uncertain authorship—such as the jewel-like fragment depicting the Annunciation (32.100.35)—often allows for a more conclusive attribution. Christus's authorship of a small group of extant drawings, likewise, has gained greater clarity through the possibility to compare them with the underdrawings in his paintings."

"An early work of about 1445, the Head of Christ (60.71.1) illustrates Christus's ability to assimilate features from an earlier model while altering others, thus creating a new kind of image. Based on a lost picture of the Holy Face by van Eyck (now known through copies in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Groeningemuseum, Bruges, and formerly J. C. Swinburne collection, Newcastle-upon-Tyne), this small painting was created for private use and should be understood in the context of the rise of devotional piety—spurred by mystical movements such as the Devotio Moderna— that occurred in the Netherlands during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This development led to the production of images whose specific purpose was to stimulate emotional and compassionate responses by evoking the sympathy of the viewer. The Christus Head of Christ is similar to its Eyckian forerunner in that the head, though planned according to a strict canon of proportions, is rendered as a volumetric portrait of a living being, while the fictive marble frame and floriated nimbus emphasize the subject's closeness to the picture plane and to the viewer just beyond it. Here, however, Christus fuses the Holy Face type (which derives from the supposed imprint of Christ's face on Veronica's Veil) with that of the Ecce Homo, depicting Christ in the midst of his suffering—robed in purple, a crown of thorns piercing his furrowed brow. The refinement of this image makes it more comparable with Christus's portraits than with the somewhat formulaic heads in his religious paintings."

"The Museum's collection includes one such portrait of 1446 (49.7.19), arguably Christus's finest and the earliest of his signed and dated works, depicting a lay brother of the Carthusian order. In certain ways, it represents an homage to the lifelike portraits of Jan van Eyck in its three-quarter bust-length view, and the attention lavished upon the depiction of textures and of the changing quality of light on surfaces. Here, Christus also implemented van Eyck's use of a trompe-l'oeil frame as a window between sitter and viewer, extending the illusion of the space from one side to the other. The ways in which the Portrait of a Carthusian differs from van Eyck's representations show the innovations Christus brought to Flemish portraiture. Instead of employing a uniformly dark, anonymous setting, Christus set off the white-robed figure with a warm red, ambiguous background. Here he also introduced a new concept in panel painting: the corner-space portrait. The sitter is anchored obliquely in a narrow cell-like space defined by two sources of light: an intense raking light issuing from the right and a softer glow illuminating the back left corner. Christus may have borrowed the notion of a diagonal point of view into an interior corner from pre-Eyckian manuscript illuminations such as those by the Limbourg brothers. Further eliminating the barrier between sitter and viewer, Christus added the ingenious device of the trompe-l'oeil fly, momentarily perched just above the artist's name on the windowsill. In later portraits, he discarded the ambiguous lighting and complex spatial description seen here, favoring a compositional balance of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines to anchor the sitter in a dynamic geometrical construct, as in the Portrait of a Young Woman of about 1470 (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin)."

Portrait of a Young Girl

From Wikipedia
"Portrait of a Young Girl (or Portrait of a Young Lady), now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, is one of the last[1] paintings completed by Netherlandish artist Petrus Christus. Executed in oil on oak panel after 1460, likely c. 1470,[2] the small portrait marks a stylistic advance in the both Christus's work and the development of Netherlandish portraiture. The sitter is no longer set against a neutral flat background, but placed in a three-dimensional, realistic setting.[3] Moreover, the girl is not passive; she looks directly at the viewer in an almost petulant manner, although much is held back in her reserved gaze.[4]Portrait of a Young Girl is a further development from the portraits of Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden, and has been highly influential. In part its appeal is in the sly expression of the sitter, which is accentuated by the fact of her eyes not quite being aligned.

It was purchased by the Medici family and recorded in their inventory as "a small panel painted with the head of a French lady, coloured in oil, the work of Pietro Cresci from Bruges". Their record does not address the matter of the girl's identity, indicating that their interest was more in the painting's aesthetic rather than historical value.[5] It entered the Prussian royal collection with the purchase in 1821 of the Edward Solly collection.[6]"

"Christus frames the girl in an almost architectural manner which is both rigid and balanced. She is placed in a narrow horizontal triangular space. The wall behind her is largely flat, although the image is divided by the right angle joining the inverted triangle formed by her dress, and the horizontal linear description of her neck, face and headdress. The rendering of the background departs somewhat from the then conventions in portraiture; Christus sets her against a parallel wall which is defined both in terms of material (the lower half is a wooden dado), and by its shadow, its distance from the girl. Here the model is set in a recognisable interior, naturalistic enough to be within her own home.[8]"

Some Of My Observations And Questions:

• The dimensions of the panel for the Beverly Version are slightly smaller than the Berlin Version and it measures 9 6/16 inches x 7 13/16 inches. The panel appears to be radial cut, with beveled edges, finely crafted, and in solid condition. It is a dark brown/gold hue, with a nick showing lighter color beneath the surface. Various nicks and the grain and corners are worn considerably smooth.
  
• The ground covering the panel is a soft pink hue and is assumed to be traditional chalk/gesso.
  
• The painting is assumed to be in oil and executed in the Flemish technique, and utilizes the ground in select places to create a jewel-like effect and other light effects in the background. 
• The craquelure is widespread, though very, very fine, almost unnoticeable in many places unless held at an angle to the light. It is most pronounced in the fleshtones. It is tinier in size in the background, and wider in size in the black passages. It seems to exhibit the same pattern and shapes of craquelure in like panels of the Flemish Primitive period, although it seems to be much finer than in the Berlin Version photos.
• The painting itself is executed in a very high quality Flemish style, with similarities to the photos observable online of the Berlin copy. It is interesting however, that in certain stylistic aspects, the Beverly Version seems to have more in common with earlier paintings attributed to Christus. For example the shading over the right eye and the side of the nose seem more akin to St. Elegius than the Berlin version, which seems executed with a more sfumato-like quality. (at least as appears in the photos).
• The drawing in the Beverly Version appears impeccable and a direct match to the drawing in the Berlin Version with some slight exceptions, one being the bottom curve of the veil extending from the truncated hennin. In the Berlin Version this veil has more differentiation in the line. Another difference is found in the number of beads in the necklace. There are other slight differences in ornamentation.
  
• The color of the dress in the Berlin is blue, in the Beverly it is red.
• Famously, the Berlin Version places the figure of the girl in an interior space. In the Beverly version, the girl appears with the earlier convention of a solid background, and also with the earlier convention of an installed SILL. These two significant differences between the two paintings raise important questions.

• Petrus Christus is known for explorations in constructing space; corner devices, utilizing sills, purportedly creating the first painting in the North to use a rational, geometrically constructed single point perspective, and also with placing the first portrait ever in an interior. If the Beverly Version is a later master copy of the Berlin version, why would someone change these elements? 
• If it is a contemporary copy coming just after the Berlin version, why would the painting go "backwards" in executing the earlier convention of a solid background and installing a sill? Also, I've read that the truncated hennin is reported to have been the height of Burgundy fashion in the 1460's. The Berlin Version is said to be made c. 1470. For all these reasons, is it possible the Beverly Version could predate the Berlin Version?
• Given the provenance of the Berlin Version, if the Beverly Version is from a much later era, how was it made? And why was the painting changed to install earlier conventions that the Berlin version is not known for?   
• The drawing of the face, and the general outline with a few minor exceptions appears in the photos as identical. It seems the underdrawing would have to come from the same source. It seems unlikely the Beverly Version could have been made through a sight size study or even a grid transfer. It seems there must be some common source for the drawing for both paintings, if not one a copy of the other.
• Multiple contemporary copies of the same image were commonly manufactured in Bruges in Christus time. Are the Berlin and Beverly Versions contemporaries? Are there any other contemporary paintings of the Berlin copy known? Are there any other known identical images to the Berlin copy in any medium?
• Why does the form modeling in the face of the Beverly Version seem closer to earlier Christus paintings than it does in the Berlin Version? Is this just a deception to my eye from the online photos, or is it a real life difference?

_At this point, I really do not know what I have on my hands. Is the painting in my possession an authentic Flemish Primitive portrait by Petrus Christus? Is it a contemporary portrait? Were they made from the same drawing? There are even two visible reasons to speculate and ask if the Beverly Version might predate the Berlin Version itself!

Or is the Beverly Version a master copy of the painting in Berlin, made in a later century? Is it even some type of art reproduction from some defunct company? Surely, there are multiple holes in my knowledge about this painting and the questions I have about it that beg resolution. So, I am selectively reaching out to experts who can assist in this matter. Will it be resolved? How? And how long will it take?

A week ago, the extent of my knowledge had me feeling the odds of this painting being any older than the 19th or 18th centuries, were slight. It seemed to be in too fine condition. If this painting were a contemporary of the one in Berlin, it would predate the Mona Lisa and I thought it would have had to be a bit more ragged. However, I have since been told that many of the Flemish Primitive paintings ARE in excellent condition. It simply depends on how they were kept and treated over the years. So, I just don't know. I've taken the thing out of my home and popped it into a safe deposit box. Just in case. Reality has changed.

If scholars and experts decide the questions I have are valid and necessitate further exploration, scientific testing and expert examination will be required for a conclusion. That, and more time. And as more time passes, what will this painting, this object, become? Will it be decided to be of immense value both historically and monetarily? Will it simply return to my wall with my newly acquired understanding for what it really is?
Or, will I just give up and turn it into a mousepad?

Yes, it's funny how things change.

Art transcends form. Great Art transcends form greatly. If “significant form” indeed exists perhaps it exists as a perfect essence through which Art reveals itself when informed intent is conveyed perfectly through skilled expression. The “skilled” part found not only in technique, but in the perfect realization of all choices that move toward the desired and finally expressed concept.

Cesar Santos creates images that at once delight the visual mind as they give form to vibrant questions. Are these images an insult hurled at modern and contemporary art by a master of traditional painting technique? Are they a painter’s biting inside joke? Or, are they perhaps secret homage to the imaginings and explorations of the 20th century? Do these images, through inclusion, further immortalize the work of the 20th Century artists that many figurative painters in 2011 wish had never been made at all?

Considered inspection of his body of work reveals that no branded artist labeled “traditional” or “modern” is spared conscription into Cesar’s world. From Rembrandt to Calder, Velazquez to Bacon, Santos conjures the imagery of these iconic personalities and casts them as 21st century celebrities in his own showpieces. Not merely a realist transcription of nature, these pieces tantalize as complex and compelling narratives, pulling you into this painter’s story and the questions he is asking himself and us.   

For centuries philosophy has exerted profound influence on visual art. Art and Artifice is inextricably tied to the production of meaning. In the early/mid 20th century, some philosophers explored the mutability of meaning, the limitations of linguistics, and the empty illusions of mass culture. The French philosophers of the mid/late 20th century such as Baudrillard, Lyotard and Deleuze, in extension of such ideas, explored thinking and concepts that still echo and influence today's 21st century art scene as they are even now being digested and understood. Sometimes it is said that within this current art scene "nihilism" abounds, and irony rules the day. Some believe that modernist and post-modernist philosophers sought to prove there is no real meaning, no real truth. Perhaps, but if 20th century philosophers showed that there is no real consistent meaning or truth because context changes, then they also showed that though the content of meaning changes and shifts, the container, the essence, the ideal form of meaning itself always continues to exist, in one form or another. That in itself seems a consistent truth. 

One important element postmodern philosophy explores is "difference as a means of production”, and is an idea appearing in the writings of Giles Deleuze. This concept suggests that “difference” is not a means of negation, but a productive mechanism unto itself. In his Difference and Repetition (1968, English 1984) Deleuze critiques our faculty of representation. As noted art theorist Robert Williams explains Deleuze thinking, "The emphasis that representation puts upon the principles of identity, resemblance, opposition and analogy works to suppress the real role of repetition and difference in the subjective constitution of reality. For Deleuze, difference is the basic condition of being, and repetition is an effect of it's 'productive power.'" Unlike the “Hegelian Dialectic” that requires two different forces to be in opposition, Deleuze sees that any two combining forces merely need be “different”, and opposition is not a requirement for a new meaning, or reality, to be born. This idea is not unlike the more ancient concept of "Syncretism" that is the blending of two or more belief systems, cultures or religions to form a new synthesized reality. These discrete elements need not be in opposition, merely different. 

Irrespective of Cesar Santos specific intent for each painting and whether or not his sensibility fully acquiesces to the syncretistic position his current efforts hold, it is clear he is an artist who embodies the most relevant avant-garde state of the continuum of visual art. A student of modern and contemporary art for almost eight years, as well as a student of the grand masters and classical painting technique in Florence Italy, Santos cannot help but be a product of his experiences and passions. From his visual mind, all he has absorbed and considered about visual artistic culture is brought to us through his brush, for our consideration. 

Alone, the exquisite poetry and craftsmanship of these paintings may guarantee their position as timeless art able to survive the coming centuries. Equally important, as a specific reflective snapshot of the broad artistic synthesis currently underway that is uniquely and immediately relevant to this early 21st Century, these images will most surely be considered as important works and assure their valued inspection for generations to come.

M.C. Guilmet
New Mexico
October, 2011

IN the lecture which it is my privilege to deliver before you tonight I do not desire to give you any abstract definition of beauty at all. For we who are working in art cannot accept any theory of beauty in exchange for beauty itself, and, so far from desiring to isolate it in a formula appealing to the intellect, we, on the contrary, seek to materialise it in a form that gives joy to the soul through the senses. We want to create it, not to define it. The definition should follow the work: the work should not adapt itself to the definition.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art.

While, then, on the one hand I do not desire to give you any philosophy of beauty - for, what I want to-night is to investigate how we can create art, not how we can talk of it - on the other hand, I do not wish to deal with anything like a history of English art.

To begin with, such an expression as English art is a meaningless expression. One might just as well talk of English mathematics. Art is the science of beauty, and Mathematics the science of truth: there is no national school of either. Indeed, a national school is a provincial school, merely. Nor is there any such thing as a
school of art even. There are merely artists, that is all.

And as regards histories of art, they are quite valueless to you unless you are seeking the ostentatious oblivion of an art professorship. It is of no use to you to know the date of Perugino or the birthplace of Salvator Rosa: all that you should learn about art is to know a good picture when you see it, and a bad
picture when you see it. As regards the date of the artist, all good work looks perfectly modern: a piece of Greek sculpture, a portrait of Velasquez - they are always modern, always of our
time. And as regards the nationality of the artist, art is not national but universal. As regards archaeology, then, avoid it altogether: archaeology is merely the science of making excuses for bad art; it is the rock on which many a young artist founders and shipwrecks; it is the abyss from which no artist, old or young,
ever returns. Or, if he does return, he is so covered with the dust of ages and the mildew of time, that he is quite unrecognisable as an artist, and has to conceal himself for the rest of his days under the cap of a professor, or as a mere illustrator of ancient history. How worthless archaeology is in art you can estimate by the fact of its being so popular. Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art.
Whatever is popular is wrong.

As I am not going to talk to you, then, about the philosophy of the beautiful, or the history of art, you will ask me what I am going to talk about. The subject of my lecture to-night is what makes an artist and what does the artist make; what are the relations of the artist to his surroundings, what is the education the artist should get, and what is the quality of a good work of art.

Now, as regards the relations of the artist to his surroundings, by which I mean the age and country in which he is born. All good art, as I said before, has nothing to do with any particular century; but this universality is the quality of the work of art; the conditions that produce that quality are different. And what, I think, you should do is to realise completely your age in order completely to abstract yourself from it; remembering that if you are an artist at all, you will be not the mouthpiece of a century, but the master of eternity, that all art rests on a principle, and that mere temporal considerations are no principle at all; and that those who advise you to make your art representative of the nineteenth century are advising you to produce an art which your
children, when you have them, will think old-fashioned. But you will tell me this is an inartistic age, and we are an inartistic people, and the artist suffers much in this nineteenth century of ours.

Of course he does. I, of all men, am not going to deny that. But remember that there never has been an artistic age, or an artistic people, since the beginning of the world. The artist has always been, and will always be, an exquisite exception. There is no golden age of art; only artists who have produced what is more golden than gold.

WHAT, you will say to me, the Greeks? were not they an artistic people?

Well, the Greeks certainly not, but, perhaps, you mean the Athenians, the citizens of one out of a thousand cities.

Do you think that they were an artistic people? Take them even at the time of their highest artistic
development, the latter part of the fifth century before Christ, when they had the greatest poets and the greatest artists of the antique world, when the Parthenon rose in loveliness at the bidding of a Phidias, and the philosopher spake of wisdom in the shadow of the painted portico, and tragedy swept in the perfection of pageant and pathos across the marble of the stage. Were they an artistic people then? Not a bit of it.
What is an artistic people but a people who love their artists and understand their art? The Athenians could do neither.

How did they treat Phidias? To Phidias we owe the great era, not merely in Greek, but in all art - I mean of the introduction of the use of the living model.

And what would you say if all the English bishops, backed by the English people, came down from Exeter Hall to the Royal Academy one day and took off Sir Frederick Leighton in a prison van to Newgate on the charge of having allowed you to make use of the living model in your designs for sacred pictures?

Would you not cry out against the barbarism and the Puritanism of such an idea? Would you not explain to them that the worst way to honour God is to dishonour man who is made in His image, and is the
work of His hands; and, that if one wants to paint Christ one must take the most Christlike person one can find, and if one wants to paint the Madonna, the purest girl one knows?

Would you not rush off and burn down Newgate, if necessary, and say that such a thing was without parallel in history?

Without parallel? Well, that is exactly what the Athenians did.

In the room of the Parthenon marbles, in the British Museum, you will see a marble shield on the wall. On it there are two figures; one of a man whose face is half hidden, the other of a man with the godlike lineaments of Pericles. For having done this, for having introduced into a bas relief, taken from Greek sacred history, the
image of the great statesman who was ruling Athens at the time, Phidias was flung into prison and there, in the common gaol of Athens, died, the supreme artist of the old world.

And do you think that this was an exceptional case? The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art, and this cry was raised by the Athenian people against every great poet and thinker of their day - AEschylus, Euripides, Socrates. It was the same with Florence in the thirteenth century. Good handicrafts are
due to guilds, not to the people. The moment the guilds lost their power and the people rushed in, beauty and honesty of work died.

And so, never talk of an artistic people; there never has been such a thing.

But, perhaps, you will tell me that the external beauty of the world has almost entirely passed away from us, that the artist dwells no longer in the midst of the lovely surroundings which, in ages past, were the natural inheritance of every one, and that art is very difficult in this unlovely town of ours, where, as you go to your work in the morning, or return from it at eventide, you have to pass through street after street of the most foolish and stupid architecture that the world has ever seen; architecture, where every lovely Greek form is desecrated and defiled, and every lovely Gothic form defiled and desecrated, reducing three-fourths of the London houses to being, merely, like square boxes of the vilest proportions, as gaunt as they are grimy, and as poor as they are pretentious - the hall door always of the wrong colour, and the windows of the wrong size, and where, even when wearied of the houses you turn to contemplate the street itself, you have nothing to look at but chimney-pot hats, men with sandwich boards, vermilion letter-boxes, and do that even at the risk of being run over by an emerald-green omnibus.

Is not art difficult, you will say to me, in such surroundings as these? Of course it is difficult, but then art was never easy; you yourselves would not wish it to be easy; and, besides, nothing is worth doing except what the world says is impossible.

Still, you do not care to be answered merely by a paradox. What are the relations of the artist to the external world, and what is the result of the loss of beautiful surroundings to you, is one of the most important questions of modern art; and there is no point on which Mr. Ruskin so insists as that the decadence of art has
come from the decadence of beautiful things; and that when the artist cannot feed his eye on beauty, beauty goes from his work.

I remember in one of his lectures, after describing the sordid aspect of a great English city, he draws for us a picture of what were the artistic surroundings long ago.

Think, he says, in words of perfect and picturesque imagery, whose beauty I can but feebly echo, think of what was the scene which presented itself, in his afternoon walk, to a designer of the Gothic school of Pisa - Nino Pisano or any of his men (22):

On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with deep red porphyry, and with serpentine; along the quays before their gates were riding troops of knights, noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield; horse and man one labyrinth of quaint colour and gleaming
light - the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes flowing over the strong limbs and clashing mall, like sea-waves over rocks at sunset. Opening on each side from the river were gardens, courts, and cloisters; long successions of white pillars among wreaths of vine; leaping of fountains through buds of pomegranate and orange: and still along the garden-paths, and under and through the crimson of the pomegranate shadows, moving slowly, groups of the fairest women that Italy ever saw - fairest, because purest and thoughtfullest; trained in all high knowledge, as in all courteous art - in dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learning, in
loftier courage, in loftiest love - able alike to cheer, to enchant, or save, the souls of men. Above all this scenery of perfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with white alabaster and gold: beyond dome and bell-tower the slopes of mighty hills hoary with olive; far in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of solemn Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mountains sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit into amber sky; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the Gorgonian isles; and over all these, ever present, near or far - seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with all its march of clouds in the Arno's stream, or set with its depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning cheek of lady and knight, - that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world; - a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed from the throne of God.

What think you of that for a school of design?

And then look at the depressing, monotonous appearance of any modern city, the sombre dress of men and women, the meaningless and barren architecture, the colourless and dreadful surroundings. Without a beautiful national life, not sculpture merely, but all the arts will die.

Well, as regards the religious feeling of the close of the passage, I do not think I need speak about that. Religion springs from religious feeling, art from artistic feeling: you never get one from the other; unless you have the right root you will not get the right flower; and, if a man sees in a cloud the chariot of an angel, he will probably paint it very unlike a cloud.

But, as regards the general idea of the early part of that lovely bit of prose, is it really true that beautiful surroundings are necessary for the artist? I think not; I am sure not. Indeed, to me the most inartistic thing in this age of ours is not the indifference of the public to beautiful things, but the indifference of the artist to the things that are called ugly. For, to the real artist, nothing is beautiful or ugly in itself at all. With the facts of the object he has nothing to do, but with its appearance only, and appearance is a matter of light and shade,
of masses, of position, and of value.

Appearance is, in fact, a matter of effect merely, and it is with the effects of nature that you have to deal, not with the real condition of the object. What you, as painters, have to paint is not things as they are but things as they seem to be, not things as they are but things as they are not.

No object is so ugly that, under certain conditions of light and shade, or proximity to other things, it will not look beautiful; no object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. I believe that in every twenty-four hours what is beautiful looks ugly, and what is ugly looks beautiful, once.

And, the commonplace character of so much of our English painting seems to me due to the fact that so many of our young artists look merely at what we may call 'ready-made beauty,' whereas you exist
as artists not to copy beauty but to create it in your art, to wait and watch for it in nature.

What would you say of a dramatist who would take nobody but virtuous people as characters in his play? Would you not say he was missing half of life? Well, of the young artist who paints nothing but beautiful things, I say he misses one half of the world.

Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under picturesque conditions. These conditions you can create for yourself in your studio, for they are merely conditions of light. In nature, you must wait for them, watch for them, choose them; and, if you wait and watch, come they will.

In Gower Street at night you may see a letter-box that is picturesque: on the Thames Embankment you may see picturesque policemen. Even Venice is not always beautiful, nor France.

To paint what you see is a good rule in art, but to see what is worth painting is better. See life under pictorial conditions. It is better to live in a city of changeable weather than in a city of
lovely surroundings.

Now, having seen what makes the artist, and what the artist makes, who is the artist? There is a man living amongst us who unites in himself all the qualities of the noblest art, whose work is a joy for all time, who is, himself, a master of all time. That man is Mr. Whistler.

* * * * * * * *

But, you will say, modern dress, that is bad. If you cannot paint black cloth you could not have painted silken doublet. Ugly dress is better for art - facts of vision, not of the object.

What is a picture? Primarily, a picture is a beautifully coloured surface, merely, with no more spiritual message or meaning for you than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass or a blue tile from the wall of Damascus. It is, primarily, a purely decorative thing, a delight to look at.

All archaeological pictures that make you say 'How curious!' all sentimental pictures that make you say, 'How sad!' all historical pictures that make you say 'How interesting!' all pictures that do not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you say 'How beautiful!' are bad pictures.

* * * * * * * *

We never know what an artist is going to do. Of course not. The artist is not a specialist. All such divisions as animal painters, landscape painters, painters of Scotch cattle in an English mist, painters of English cattle in a Scotch mist, racehorse painters, bull-terrier painters, all are shallow. If a man is an artist he can paint everything.

The object of art is to stir the most divine and remote of the chords which make music in our soul; and colour is indeed, of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a kind of sentinel.

Am I pleading, then, for mere technique? No. As long as there are any signs of technique at all, the picture is unfinished. What is finish? A picture is finished when all traces of work, and of the means employed to bring about the result, have disappeared.

In the case of handicraftsmen - the weaver, the potter, the smith -on their work are the traces of their hand. But it is not so with the painter; it is not so with the artist.

Art should have no sentiment about it but its beauty, no technique except what you cannot observe. One should be able to say of a picture not that it is 'well painted,' but that it is 'not painted.'

What is the difference between absolutely decorative art and a painting? Decorative art emphasises its material: imaginative art annihilates it. Tapestry shows its threads as part of its beauty: a picture annihilates its canvas: it shows nothing of it. Porcelain emphasises its glaze: water-colours reject the paper.

A picture has no meaning but its beauty, no message but its joy. That is the first truth about art that you must never lose sight of. A picture is a purely decorative thing.
 

-END-

When is a cow, not a cow? When one has never learned, through visual perception, what a cow is.

Almost from birth, a human being begins to acquire visual information and process this information into abstract concepts of people, places, things, situations. Fully 25% of the brain is dedicated to acquiring knowledge through visual perception, and it is the most efficient manner in which knowledge is acquired. There are approximately 30 different cortical areas of our brain that handle a different aspect of visual processing such as for "line" or "color" or "movement". The visual brain continually acquires information, discarding some of it, searching for constancy, retaining essential information and comparing that to stored records of all prior knowledge obtained. Plato theorized that particulars were formed from ideals. Our brains work in opposite, ideal concepts are abstracted from particulars.
 
Consider for a moment the cow in the upper right corner. If a human being is born blind and stays blind they will never understand the reality of what a cow is in the same way that a seeing person understands that reality. Assume this person blind from birth is now 10 years of age, and their sight is suddenly restored. What will they see if they immediately look at this cow upon gaining their vision? Not a cow. Only patchwork shapes. They will have no knowledge of what it is, as there is absolutely no "truth" or "meaning" of a cow for them in visual perception. Same for a real cow standing out in a field. The cow, and everything in the field, will appear as so many lines splotches and blobs. There is no innate common knowledge of a cow. In human knowledge, a cow does not exist outside a human brain's acquired knowledge of it. The form and meaning of the cow is learned in our brain. The "essence" of a cow, is acquired. In 2011, it is a neurobiological doctrine that "ideal forms" do not exist without a brain. "So what?", you may ask.
 
The fact I can state the above reflects a new understanding for an important and long argued philosophical question about the nature of human knowledge, and therefore "truth" and "meaning". 
Prior to the 21st century, this question was an unanswered riddle whose outcome carried the "proof" for one or the other of two opposing views of epistemology. 

In 1688, the philosopher John Locke received a letter from one William Molyneux, a scientist and politician, in which a question was put to Locke regarding a very specific problem. This question became an important thought experiment in philosophy, engendering much debate through the years. It spoke directly to Platonic ideal form, the nature of reality, and the nature of knowledge and understanding.

William Molyneux's wife became blind not long after they were married. His scientific work was involved with optics, and he wrote a treatise on optics and the psychology of vision called Dioptrica Nova (New optics) (1692). A few problems in optics at the time surrounded reconciling theories about light and actual perception.  Optics showed the inversion of the retinal image, but we perceive it right side up, why?  The retinal image is flat, but we perceive distance and depth, why? Problems like that. Earlier theories, such as with Descartes, had suggested that the answer to these problems was some innate mechanism in which the ‘soul’ turns the image right side up, and that unconscious ‘natural geometry’ accounts for depth. Apparently Molyneux was not satisfied with these Cartesian or Rationalist answers.

Likely while writing Dioptrica Nova, Molyneux read an essay by the philosopher John Locke, published in 1688 called “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In this essay Locke had theorized that someone who did not possess a particular sense could never in any way be familiar with the ideas, or “realities”, associated with that sense.  Ideas acquired by a singular modality, would not be the same as ideas acquired by multiple modalities.  Color is one example. Without the sense of sight, a blind person would never be able to understand the idea or meaning of color, even with all other senses intact. Molyneux sent Locke a letter in which he asked:
“A Man, being born blind, and having a Globe and a Cube, nigh of the same bignes, Committed into his Hands, and being taught or Told, which is Called the Globe, and which the Cube, so as easily to distinguish them by his Touch or Feeling; Then both being taken from Him, and Laid on a Table, Let us Suppose his Sight Restored to Him; Whether he Could, by his Sight, and before he touch them, know which is the Globe and which the Cube? Or Whether he Could know by his Sight, before he stretch'd out his Hand, whether he Could not Reach them, tho they were Removed 20 or 1000 feet from Him?”

Simply put, the question posed to Locke asked that if a person who had been born blind and had learned to distinguish physical form such as cubes and spheres only by touch and name, were suddenly to regain their eyesight and SEE, would they be able to immediately recognize these familiar objects and distinguish these objects by sight alone?  Here is where things become interesting, for the answer to this problem carries tremendous weight.

John Locke was an Empiricist. In its most extreme view, Empiricism believes that when you are born the brain is a “tabula rasa”, a blank slate. The empiricist takes a position that there is no such thing as a common rational idea or intention that exists as innate “human nature” and that all knowledge and understanding is primarily acquired through the senses.  Locke believed that we could not know the essence of things beyond the boundary of sense data, or the causal basis for the data we perceive. Locke offered that there is “simple knowledge”, that is knowledge acquired directly from experience in the world and knowledge that is “simple” is itself irreducible, such as the properties of “round”, “hard”, “and shiny”.  He believed that all complex knowledge was then constructed, or abstracted, from the particular concepts of simple knowledge into increasingly complex concepts of contingent particulars. Generally put, Empiricists believe that any knowledge acquired is done so only through our senses and that experience acquired thus is the ultimate primary source of all concepts and knowledge. Any belief outside this as to causation, is "super added". Even "belief" in any expectation for causation(as in God) was theorized to be learned from experiential genesis. 
“Herein therefore is founded the reality of our Knowledge concerning Substances, that all our complex Ideas of them must be such, and such only, as are made up of such simple ones, as have been discovered to co-exist in Nature. And our Ideas being thus true, though not, perhaps, very exact Copies, are yet the Subjects of real (as far as we have any) Knowledge of them.”
 
The predominately accepted theory of knowledge in Locke's time was Rationalism. There are a few flavors of Rationalism, but at the extreme polarized view to Empiricism, Rationalism supports the belief that knowledge is realized by means other than sensory experience. Rationalism believes that we are born with innate concepts and knowledge that are part of our nature or given to us by God, and that sensory experience only realizes these innate truths, it does not provide them. If a cube and sphere are innate objective concepts independent of sensory learning, a person should be able to tell the difference upon seeing them without learning them.
 
So you can imagine the impact an answer would have provided to the course of philosophy had Locke been able to produce an actual experiment with a human being, to answer Molyneux. The predominant problem in realizing an actual answer to Molyneux's question was a lack of subjects. It's been estimated that in one thousand years less than twenty persons blind from birth have had their eyesight restored. 

Until now.

In 2003 MIT Professor Pawan Sinha initiated a program for children in India who suffered from curable congenital blindness. These patients, upon having their sight restored, could not immediately identify objects through the sense of vision. The forms these objects represented, did not exist to them.
 

Here is a video featuring Pawan Sinah explaining how brains learn to see.

 

 

Here is an article about Pawan Sinha and Molyneux.

 

If it is not obvious by now, this post is also speaking to the topic of the "subjective" and "objective" in Art.
On one end of the spectrum we have artists who believe that all meaning derived from Art is subjective and there are no real meanings beyond subjective contextual interpretation, and so there are no rules to art, only individual experiential meaning. On the other end of the spectrum we have artists who believe that Art represents or is derived from objective truth and meaning, and if there is truth, there must be rules or principles associated with that objective truth. New and advanced revelations from brain science studies  have been creeping into the broader academic arena this last decade. A review of the American Society for Aesthetics articles will show a few articles concerning brain science and aesthetics. Professor Pawan Sinha's work is only one example for how brain science will likely have a profound effect on the humanities and the teaching of art theory and aesthetics this coming century. While most artists I know seem pretty comfortable with their own current belief in the subjective/objective qualities of Art, it's possible that our understanding of what is subjective, and what is objective, might soon again be reordered.

So who wins, the Empiricist or the Rationalist viewpoint? In practice, many philosophers take one or both of the positions depending on the issue discussed. Immanuel Kant in "Critique of Pure Reason" synthesized a position inclusive of both Empiricist and Rationalist ideas called  Transcendental Idealism. It's been suggested that while theorizing about the "mind" Kant, then later Hegel, developed some conclusions that reflect how our brains actually work, according to our current understanding of the brain. For instance, Kant surmised in his "Transcendental Aesthetic" that space and time are empirically real, and that we gain an understanding of objects through sensory input such as the visual observation of those objects in space and time. Spatial, temporal; motion. Keep this in mind watching Sinha's video.  

While it seems that visual knowledge and meaning is not innate and is learned, acquired through the abstraction of particulars into ideal concepts, it also seems that certain specific capabilities for that learning may indeed be innate. Pattern recognition, place and face recognition, the process of "abstraction" itself, etc. Here again is a link to an important paper by Professor Semir Zeki called "Art and the Brain" which discusses some of the findings of brain science in conjunction with commonly understood Art Theory and philosophy that has influenced Art. 
 
Last, a few weeks ago I introduced the Charlie Rose Brain series. Below is link to the MIT website where you can view episode two from the Charlie Rose series related to visual perception. 
It is a round-table discussion featuring some of our most knowledgeable experts (including Pawan Sinha and this topic) studying visual perception. If you are a visual artist, there are other ideas being discussed in the video below as important as Molyneux's problem, and this video is worth your time. 
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/4618-charlie-rose-the-perceiving-brain-sight-and-visual-perception-with-scientists-tony-movshon-nancy-kanw 

 

 

 

On June 6, 2011, I posted the above question on my Facebook wall. I invited painters from different parts of the world to share their thoughts about this question. One hundred and forty four painters posted an answer. I've asked this question of different painters in the past, and a common theme seems to emerge that suggests some "compelling" urge or "search" of some kind. Some desire that must be met. This is important as it seems to be a very inward, self directed event, not an outwardly directed or altruistic effort, although those elements might contribute.

Also often mentioned is a sense of "timelessness" or state of meditative "bliss" that is reached somehow. We won't explore the "timeless" nature of art making in this post as I have a great deal of information to share, but you can read something here related to this plasticity of time.

I have never had the opportunity to ask this question simultaneously to so many painters in so many different locations, and of so many different backgrounds. It was interesting to see the same theme emerging broadly in the answers. I have posted each and every answer here where you can read through and gain a sense for any core sentiment running through the thread. (For privacy, I've removed the painters names, "likes", and other Facebook information. It seems this was a very personal question for some who decided to answer by private message rather than in public. I did not share those private answers in this post, but not surprisingly many were of similar content to what the others shared.)

For centuries, the intent of Art has been debated and pulled like taffy in many directions. Some candidates for the purpose of Art have included mimesis, idealized beauty, communication, expression, social commentary, cultural reflection and other ideas, recently Darwinism has been suggested. Philosophy, Theology, Psychology and the Sciences both directly and indirectly through their molding of culture have had a continued impact on how Art is considered, valued, and made. 

The thinking from names like Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Baudelaire, Fry, Bell, Beardsley, Greenberg, Derrida, Heidegger and others have all had an impact on the world of Art. Artists themselves such as Vasari, Le Brun, Reynolds, Whistler, Cox, Duchamp, Newman and others have contributed various points of view or Art theory. Religion, war, socioeconomic shifts, invention, discovery, politics and profits have all hammered away to shape how we think of Art today.
 
In 2011, the self-interest of the fractured and disparate groups of all genres and all styles who are vying to be seen and heard can make the conversation "what is Art" difficult and unwieldy. Yet, through all of the nuanced debate or convoluted experimental directions, one thing has remained constant: Art is made.

Art makers make Art. The consideration of Art, and it's assigned valuations all come after that fact. Art consideration and Art valuation are "effect". Art making, is "cause". In a circular fashion the valuation and consideration of Art do influence it's making, but always and again, Art making takes other directions. 

If the continuum of Art production itself is the primary "cause" for the existence of the Art world, a singular question seems of most importance to me: what is the cause of Art making itself?  This seems the likeliest place where the truest purpose and intent of Art can be found, and in discovering those answers we might newly consider Art, and ultimately, it's valuation.

In order to keep transparent an attempt for the discovery and understanding of the cause of Art making, it is necessary to divide the conversation and cull out Art consideration and Art valuation influences. In this approach, non-maker self-interest can better be nullified from the discussion.

So in order to begin this exploration for the cause of Art making itself, I reached out and asked Art makers why they make Art. Other people in other fields have been asking some related questions.
 

Today in the early part of the 21st century, we have the benefit of some of the most exciting and enlightening discoveries that might actually begin to answer some of the important questions that philosophy, psychology and other fields have been seeking to answer for years. In the last few years, neuroscience has discovered more about the human brain than in all of human history combined. The importance of the discoveries being made about our emotional apparatus, visual perception, intelligence, creativity and so many other workings of our brain cannot be overemphasized.

The range of exploration and specialized focus on our brain is astonishing. Neuroscience, philosophy and psychology has been and is undergoing a process of unprecedented convergence in efforts to discover answers about questions ranging from mental illness, drug addiction and disease to 'what is consciousness?", and "how does the brain view Art?". For centuries philosophy, and then psychology, had the most profound impact on the humanities. Right now, the discoveries being made in brain science may affect the humanities in ways never imagined for the course of this century 

When I talk with artists, I'll often hear facts quoted from old Art instruction books, Art theory books and other sources that in 2011 we've acquired some better information about. For example, a better understanding of visual perception, it's mechanics and it's ultimate function, as well as a better understanding of our emotional apparatus is available to us and can inform our artistic efforts. One approachable source for artists seeking to better understand some core mechanics behind their craft, and that can provide an overview and introduction to brain science and art making, is the Charlie Rose show. Charlie Rose has for some years now explored these topics in different episodes, but of particular value is the twelve part 'Brain Series" on his website. I've spent the last year watching these and related episodes countless times, and each time have picked up a new thread to explore. At the least, I encourage you to watch this first episode to better understand the immense overall impact brain science will likely have on visual Art this century.

Often when the brain is introduced into conversation, there is an immediate suspicion that an argument for pure subjectivity or a materialist/reductionist position will be introduced. I know that some of my friends reading this are people of strong religious faith and conviction, and who create from that position of faith. I don’t believe that any of the information I’ll share here poses a challenge to faith of any kind. God, or your personal concept of a Higher Power, can always seem to take one step back from these discoveries and if God remains the source for your understanding of these workings, there is not necessarily a conflict here. 

This information need not be viewed as a materialist/reductionist argument. There is a great deal unknown. 
It can be said that since the discoveries of quantum physics science has moved from a more deterministic outlook to one of probabilities. The enormous amount of what we do not know seems to grow larger with every scientific discovery, the Hubble Deep Field Survey being one example. 

It is not incontrovertibly decided what parts of reality are ontologically objective or subjective.  Brain science can be said to be conducting an epistemically objective search for what is ontologically objective or subjective. There are interesting developments, such as regarding emotion itself.  While feeling states may be ontologically subjective, the emotional apparatus that all humans share, and even share with animals is universal. As brain science is understanding "components", some are suspected to be "universal" and "hardwired" at birth, but how all these components work together is unknown; there is still no overall "theory of the brain". 

The problem of consciousness has not been unraveled. One influential philosopher who seems to be a materialist, but not a reductionist, makes the argument that consciousness itself is irreducible. In my opinion, until the problem of consciousness is solved, if ever, and possibly even then, God remains as valid a possibility to the question of Meaning and Being as any other.

Still, we do not need all of the answers to these deep mysteries in order to acquire what could possibly be a better understanding of the nature and purpose of Art best described to date.  Many of the recent discoveries of brain science can already contribute to our considering an answer for our starting question 'Why do you paint?". To continue this I now turn to an expert for some information about human function, and what Art making might very well all be about. 

I am pleased to take this opportunity to introduce you to a special person you may not have heard of, Professor Semir Zeki.  Professor Zeki is a professor of Neuroesthetics with the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. You may also never have heard of a Professor of Neuroesthetics. This is because it is a new field of inquiry, the first of it's kind. Rather than attempt an explanation myself, following is Professor Zeki's own Statement about the work he and his colleagues are doing:

Professor Zeki has graciously given me permission to share with you here two papers that can help provide some insight to the questions that are the title to this post.

The first paper is titled "Art and the Brain" in which the question is asked, "Why do we see at all?"

The second paper is titled "Neural Concept Formation and Art: Dante, Michelangelo, Wagner"

If you have read this far, I applaud you! I realize this post is lengthy and information heavy. I promised readers of this post some special information. The special information is a possible "secret" to the successful longevity of some cherished works of Art you will all recognize. The discussion of that possible "secret" for a masterpiece is found in one of the papers above.

Thank you again to all the painters who contributed answers to the question, and a special thank you to Professor Semir Zeki.

http://profzeki.blogspot.com/
http://neuroesthetics.org/index.php

(Oh yes, my own answer: I paint to learn, to master the challenge, to be excellent, to stamp out my own final piece of frozen information, and to be lost in time.)

Not too very far from where I'm writing this, William Bonney aka Billy the Kid once wreaked havoc and secured a place in infamy, some of the first rocket engine experiments were conducted, and aliens may or may not have crash-landed. Sitting in my new cowboy-industrial-secret-studio in the corner of a New Mexican ranch, I wonder what adventures I will encounter, and what surprises my work will reveal for me. As I ponder this, one thing is for certain: I'm not in Los Angeles any more.

My first real studio in LA was a select piece of real estate located directly between my workbench and my weight bench in the coveted garage-district of my home. While not large, it served it's purpose and was a pleasant place for sight size drawing and long closed palette mixing exercises. While it was in the garage, and was small, it was in Beverly Hills and a garage in Beverly Hills is still better than a lot of other places I could have been painting, so my complaints were few. 

When we moved to our next house, a few of my paintings had made their way into other peoples homes, so I was deemed serious enough in my pursuit to warrant a first floor room in the main part of our building. This was a more luxurious affair than the garage, and had lighting I was better able to adjust... and a fireplace! Many wonderful hours were passed there, and it is a studio I will always remember. However, all things must pass and once again I find myself in transition, and recently relocated.

When first painting here in New Mexico, I decided to do as much plein air painting as possible. This was due in part because my studio and workshop equipment is packed safely in storage until we decide on our next home. Thinking this would be a perfect catalyst to spend every day outdoors painting, I jumped feet first into that mission. This approach was undoubtedly a mistake. I had not prepared very properly for the harsh landscape of New Mexico and suffered everything from sun-burnt feet to insanely fast wind and dust storms, falls on hard stream-bed rocks, and a few other indignities. I do understand that this was not the landscapes fault, but very much my own. Over those weeks I managed to paint a dozen oil sketches of which I wiped out eight and kept four. It's been a learning experience and I've resolved to continue painting outdoors but I also realized I missed my studio and needed one to journey out from for those plein air disasters, er, adventures.

I've been able to negotiate space in an outbuilding in a quiet(VERY quiet) corner of a dusty ranch. It can be pretty hot inside when the temperature tops one hundred degrees, but it is spacious and the paint dries quickly. Not wanting to duplicate my stored studio equipment, I've been able to acquire pretty much everything I need to set up a drawing station, still life area, and a model platform through a few trips to Home Depot and a local hobby store. Total cost less than $250.00 including an easel. You can't do that in LA.

And if I carry my easel thirty feet outside I have some nice shapes to paint, and a whole lot of sky.

tap, tap tap....this thing on? ok ok ok ok...
Rene Descartes walks into a bar and orders a beer....
When he's finished, the bartender asks him, "have another?"
Descartes replies, "ahhhh, I think not..." and
poof*...he disappears. 

ba-da-boom.
If you didn't get the joke, don't worry, ingest this post and you soon will.

Being that it is Friday the 13th, and also being that I feel a moral imperative to "lighten up" now and again(OK, someone told me to lighten up, but still), I thought for a change from my usual musings I'd have a little fun with, that's right, philosophy!

Philosophy has influenced and shaped the development of Western Art and culture and the acquisition of knowledge, so some quick bits from influential philosophers might prove an interesting ride for us to take.
In order to provide you only the highest quality, most accurate information, I've turned to one of the most useful and trusted sources available today: YouTube, of course. 

We begin with some philosophers featured in the Three Minute Philosophy series, followed by a few rather odd, but still strangely fitting quick minute summaries of Western Philosophy. Last, we end with a very famous late philosopher of the 20th Century who is a personal favorite. Feel free to jump around! There are no rules.

Oh yes, AHEM.....***LANGUAGE*** WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE is used in many of these videos. It's no worse than an HBO Comedy Special, but, no better either. You've been appropriately notified. Have fun!

MR. WHISTLERS TEN O'CLOCK

BY MR. OSCAR WILDE

"RENGAINES!"
                                                                                                                   Pall Mall Gazette, February 21, 1885 

Last night, at Prince's Hall, Mr. Whistler made his first public appearance as a lecturer on art, and spoke for more than an hour with really marvellous eloquence on the absolute uselessness of all lectures of the kind. Mr. Whistler began his lecture with a very pretty aria on prehistoric history, describing how in earlier times hunter and warrior would go forth to chase and foray, while the artist sat at home making cup and bowl for their service. Rude imitations of nature they were first, like the gourd bottle, till the sense of beauty and form developed and, in all its exquisite proportions, the first vase was fashioned. Then came a higher civilisation of architecture and armchairs, and with exquisite design, and dainty diaper, the useful things of life were made lovely; and the hunter and the warrior lay on the couch when they were tired, and, when they were thirsty, drank from the bowl, and never cared to lose the exquisite proportion of the one, or the delightful ornament of the other; and this attitude of the primitive anthropophagous Philistine formed the text of the lecture and was the attitude which Mr. Whistler entreated his audience to adopt towards art. Remembering, no doubt, many charming invitations to wonderful private views, this fashionable assemblage seemed somewhat aghast, and not a little amused, at being told that the slightest appearance among a civilised people of any joy in beautiful things is a grave impertinence to all painters; but Mr. Whistler was relentless, and, with charming ease and much grace of manner, explained to the public that the only thing they should cultivate was ugliness, and that on their permanent stupidity rested all the hopes of art in the future.

The scene was in every way delightful; he stood there, a miniature Mephistopheles, mocking the majority!
He was like a brilliant surgeon lecturing to a class composed of subjects destined ultimately for dissection,and solemnly assuring them how valuable to science their maladies were, and how absolutely uninteresting the slightest symptoms of health on their part would be. In fairness to the audience, however, I must say that they seemed extremely gratified at being rid of the dreadful responsibility of admiring anything, and nothing could have exceeded their enthusiasm when they were told by Mr. Whistler that no matter how vulgar their dresses were, or how hideous their surroundings at home, still it was possible that a great painter, if there was such a thing, could, by contemplating them in the twilight and half closing his eyes, see them under really picturesque conditions, and produce a picture which they were not to attempt to understand, much less dare to enjoy. Then there were some arrows, barbed and brilliant, shot off, with all the speed and splendour of fireworks, and the archaeologists, who spend their lives in verifying the birthplaces of nobodies, and estimate the value of a work of art by its date or its decay; at the art critics who always treat a picture as if it were a novel, and try and find out the plot; at dilettanti in general and amateurs in particular; and (O mea culpa!) at dress reformers most of all. 'Did not Velasquez paint crinolines? What more do you want?'

Having thus made a holocaust of humanity, Mr. Whistler turned to nature, and in a few moments convicted her of the Crystal Palace, Bank holidays, and a general overcrowding of detail, both in omnibuses and in landscapes, and then, in a passage of singular beauty, not unlike one that occurs in Corot's letters, spoke of the artistic value of dim dawns and dusks, when the mean facts of life are lost in exquisite and evanescent effects, when common things are touched with mystery and transfigured with beauty, when the warehouses become as palaces and the tall chimneys of the factory seem like campaniles in the silver air.

Finally, after making a strong protest against anybody but a painter judging of painting, and a pathetic appeal to the audience not to be lured by the aesthetic movement into having beautiful things about them, Mr. Whistler concluded his lecture with a pretty passage about Fusiyama on a fan, and made his bow to an audience which he had succeeded in completely fascinating by his wit, his brilliant paradoxes, and, at times, his real eloquence. Of course, with regard to the value of beautiful surroundings I differ entirely from Mr. Whistler. An artist is not an isolated fact; he is the resultant of a certain milieu and a certain entourage, and can no more be born of a nation that is devoid of any sense of beauty than a fig can grow from a thorn or a rose blossom from a thistle. That an artist will find beauty in ugliness, le beau dans l'horrible, is now a commonplace of the schools, the argot of the atelier, but I strongly deny that charming people should be condemned to live with magenta ottomans and Albert-blue curtains in their rooms in order that some painter may observe the side-lights on the one and the values of the other. Nor do I accept the dictum that only a painter is a judge of painting. I say that only an artist is a judge of art; there is a wide difference. As long as a painter is a painter merely, he should not be allowed to talk of anything but mediums and megilp, and on those subjects should be compelled to hold his tongue; it is only when he becomes an artist that the secret laws of artistic creation are revealed to him. For there are not many arts, but one art merely--poem, picture and Parthenon, sonnet and statue--all are in their essence the same, and he who knows one knows all.

But the poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts; and so to the poet beyond all others are these mysteries known; to Edgar Allan Poe and to Baudelaire, not to Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche. However, I should not enjoy anybody else's lectures unless in a few points I disagreed with them, and Mr. Whistler's lecture last night was, like everything that he does, a masterpiece. Not merely for its clever satire and amusing jests will it be remembered, but for the pure and perfect beauty of many of its passages--passages delivered with an earnestness which seemed to amaze those who had looked on Mr. Whistler as a master of persiflage merely, and had not known him as we do, as a master of painting also. For that he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting is my opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr. Whistler himself entirely concurs.  
                                                                                                                    OSCAR WILDE.
Whistlers entire lecture itself can be read here

 

Honoré Daumier, 1855, "Dual of the Academician and the Realist".

Painting in New Mexico last week, I was asked if I consider myself a "traditional" or a "contemporary" artist. 

Perhaps labels to describe art are best assigned posthumously, but sometimes people need a word to better understand what something or someone is all about and this is not the first time this question has come up. There is "art making", and there is "art industry". The necessity for labels to describe art making mostly belongs to the latter.

In the past, people have interpreted my artwork as "traditional" because of some paintings they viewed, and would later be interested to see different pieces demonstrating more contemporary ideas and form. One of my paintings will hang in a very traditional environment, while another hangs in a decidedly contemporary space. This transitional variety has not necessarily been by design, but reflects how I am approaching art making. 

While I study to assimilate technical painting knowledge(technique, theory and influence), I am doing so with my feet and mind planted in the 21st Century. I have a long held interest in aesthetic theory, art history and various art-influ encing fields and am fascinated by multiple periods of art, artists, and the cultural forces that shaped their choices. Personal favorites are the Early Modern period (particularly Baroque) and the early 20th century, but I avoid prejudiced selection for acquiring information about art production from the ancient to the present, including the explorations of the entire 20th century in which I was born and shaped.

I am contemporary. I cannot help but be so, and you are too. I am a contemporary American, understanding the present world and it's history through my contemporary American mind. The major auction houses vary in assigning periods for Modern and Contemporary Art, but generally speaking the art industry defines contemporary art as being post-WWII. Using this period-based definition, I affirm that I enjoy and study contemporary art and artists particularly in areas of aesthetic theory, but also for painting style and language. If I want to borrow from abstract expressionism, minimalism, or neo-dadaism(or any ism) to craft a piece, I do. If I want to dive neck deep into studying intentionalist, instrumentalist, or post-modern theory I do. As one painter I admire likes to repeat, "All knowledge is useful." I agree. However, and very problematically, "contemporary art" as an allegiance occupies a limited and narrow space in time. While I study the 20th century I also look much farther back for echoes that influence, technical knowledge, and for theory that will help me express what I have to say about life in this 21st century. I am assuredly a contemporary person, but because the definition of contemporary art retroactively abandons me at WWII there is no choice but to reject a defining label of "contemporary artist" to describe my work. It just leaves too much on the table. 

I also reject the label of "traditional artist" to describe what I have decided to pursue. The word "traditional" as used today very often connotes an odd nonsensical definition from an art-historical perspective. In many descriptions and manifestos it has come to simply mean ''looks like something". Often "beauty" is invoked as a newly purposed platform, yet, the rich history of variation within objective painting itself shows the range of expression beauty can occupy. What is this limited notion that beauty is allowed to morph and move but only within the confines of objective form, and that the boundary for beauty stops at the point recognizable objects vanish? For centuries there have been numerous opposing art philosophies, styles and painting schools that pursued art making quite differently, but now today are generically blended lump-sum under an all encompassing "realist" or "traditional" label and so are viewed singularly as such by the masses. The form and content driven by philosophical and socioeconomic influences in Classicism was very different from that in Romanticism was different from Realism was different from Impressionism was different from, etc. 
Painters have argued and debated these ideas for centuries, but for most of the pre-20th century continuum these debates in art making and art industry were contained within a walled spectrum of figurative/objective painting simply because nothing else existed. No matter how loose or tight or idealized or gritty, no matter the narrative or style or genre, there was still a semblance of objective form and so today this singular commonality is what "traditional" painting has evolved to mean en masse. 

The fact that great Art can exist in music, painting, sculpture, literature, cinema and dance summarily proves that the form she inhabits is flexible. We have enough evidence outside of painting to understand that Art will show herself in many forms. I am more interested in discovering what secret fold Art hides herself within, and how her quality can be invoked at will. I suspect the answer lies beyond form and content alone.

I am a painter pursuing Art in the stumbling infancy of the 21st century. It does not serve me to dismiss wholesale any period in the continuum of art making that has come before my time. Better for me to learn all I can and utilize the knowledge for my own pursuit of Art here and now. I do not reject the labels of "contemporary artist" or "traditional artist" because of any element they both offer me for knowledge, I embrace the knowledge in both. I reject allegiance to either court because they vehemently reject each other.
Should I poke out my left eye or my right?

I cannot call myself a "traditional artist" and subscribe to a limited aesthetic pursuit that ends at mimesis of nature and ignores Art outside objective form, or the possibility of Art as the mimesis of creation itself. I cannot call myself a "contemporary artist" and reject pre-20th century humankind's vast store of knowledge, artifacts and enriching philosophical journeys.  I do not place ideation over skilled expression, or vice versa.  They are both inseparable synergistic components of a larger emergent system where transition reigns supreme. I seek to understand them both fully so I can employ them for my own art making in the 21st century. I profit not from wholesale exclusion, but only from analytic inclusion, and I can weed out the abominations in the entire continuum piece by piece. Most people can. They are self evident.

My idea of "transitional painting" is not a painting style, genre or a movement. It is a personal philosophy of aesthetics that in part describes the process of creation itself. It does not mean to bounce around, but to grow; to acquire as much knowledge as I can that will feed and expand my imagination and knowledge that will expand my ability to execute my ideas. Visual Art in the early 21st century is in an interesting time and space, a place of synthesis. We are spinning off a century of broad if not circular explorations in extreme ideation. We have seen the rapid decline of traditional painting craftsmanship only to be witnessing its resurgence. What will we do with both?

I don't see the 20th century as some "disruption in the understanding of art production" that worsened humankind any more than the automobile as some unwelcome disruption in grass-fed transportation.
I don't see the long historical path of technical painting craftsmanship, art theory and expressed objective form as any more "irrelevant" than the Sun is for human enrichment. These are arguments of art industry, not art making. Art is in transition. The universe is in transition. I am in transition. I will continue to explore the entire continuum of Art, tasting and relishing the entire feast, her flirtations and life-enriching revelations, her bounty, as I pursue her. 

I am an American Transitional Painter.