Let's Play Ball with Édouard Manet
Tomorrow is the first day of spring. I am working on a commission in a smaller size than I usually work for this type of subject matter. The subject is baseball at Fenway Park. Baseball is one of those things that you think about as the weather warms and the days get longer. I like to paint thinking about emotions and the air, the sun, the intent.
This work will be 11x14 in size, oil on panel. I found a great photograph of baseball players running out of the dugout, one of players with both feet off the ground as his team mates are in different poses waiting for their turn to step up and out onto the field. I like the idea that there is excitement in the air. The promise of something great to come.
I typically paint portraits and still life paintings in a more realistic style. That works for a lot of paintings but I didn't see how painting in my comfort zone would really exemplify the spirit of the game and movement. I started reviewing impressionist paintings that allowed the viewer feel something, a memory sensation of that moment in time, the atmosphere of movement and excitement. I want to evoke the viewer to think about comes next.
It is good for an artist to step outside their comfort zone when approaching a new painting. I used to think that you needed to have a brand, a style, a subject matter. A viewer should be able to look at a painting and recognize it as one of yours. That works for some artists. Maybe I have not really ever established my brand. At this point in my life, I don't want to be put into a box and will study the works of others to bring some of their approach into my own art. For this particular painting, I am studying the approach by Édouard Manet. Van Gogh did this too. You can see what and who was influencing him at the time with many of his paintings. You knew what was going on in his life at the time.
Impressionism can be considered the first distinctly modern movement in painting. Developing in Paris in the 1860s, its influence spread throughout Europe and eventually the United States. Its originators were artists who rejected the official, government-sanctioned exhibitions, or salons, and were consequently shunned by powerful academic art institutions. In turning away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists of their day aspired, the Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory effect of a scene - the impression objects made on the eye in a fleeting moment.
Impressionism was a style of representational art that did not necessarily rely on realistic depictions. Scientific thought at the time was beginning to recognize that what the eye perceived and what the brain understood were two different things. The Impressionists sought to capture the former - the optical effects of light - to convey the passage of time, changes in weather, and other shifts in the atmosphere in their canvases.
The Impressionists loosened their brushwork and lightened their palettes to include pure, intense colors. They abandoned traditional linear perspective and avoided the clarity of form that had previously served to distinguish the more important elements of a picture from the lesser ones. For this reason, many critics faulted Impressionist paintings for their unfinished appearance and seemingly amateurish quality.
Ok, back to Manet. Like so many great artists, Édouard Manet was born into an upper-middle class Parisian family. The stability of family allows one to move away from the basic needs hierarchy and think of other things besides where the next meal shall come and where he will lay his head at night.
And also like so many before him, Manet had a passion for art from an early age, but agreed to make his father happy. He went to the Naval Academy to appease his father. When he failed the entrance exam, he joined the Merchant Marine to gain experience as a student pilot and voyaged to Rio de Janeiro in 1849. He returned to France the following year with a portfolio of drawings and paintings from his journey, and used it to prove his talent and passion to his father, who was skeptical of Manet's ambitions.
Impressionism can be considered the first distinctly modern movement in painting. Developing in Paris in the 1860s, its influence spread throughout Europe and eventually the United States. Its originators were artists who rejected the official, government-sanctioned exhibitions, or salons, and were consequently shunned by powerful academic art institutions. In turning away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists of their day aspired, the Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory effect of a scene - the impression objects made on the eye in a fleeting moment.
Impressionism was a style of representational art that did not necessarily rely on realistic depictions. Scientific thought at the time was beginning to recognize that what the eye perceived and what the brain understood were two different things. The Impressionists sought to capture the former - the optical effects of light - to convey the passage of time, changes in weather, and other shifts in the atmosphere in their canvases.
The Impressionists loosened their brushwork and lightened their palettes to include pure, intense colors. They abandoned traditional linear perspective and avoided the clarity of form that had previously served to distinguish the more important elements of a picture from the lesser ones. For this reason, many critics faulted Impressionist paintings for their unfinished appearance and seemingly amateurish quality.
Ok, back to Manet. Like so many great artists, Édouard Manet was born into an upper-middle class Parisian family. The stability of family allows one to move away from the basic needs hierarchy and think of other things besides where the next meal shall come and where he will lay his head at night.
His father, August, was a high-ranking civil servant and his mother was the daughter of a diplomat. Along with his two younger brothers, Manet grew up in a bourgeois environment, both socially conservative and financially comfortable.
And also like so many before him, Manet had a passion for art from an early age, but agreed to make his father happy. He went to the Naval Academy to appease his father. When he failed the entrance exam, he joined the Merchant Marine to gain experience as a student pilot and voyaged to Rio de Janeiro in 1849. He returned to France the following year with a portfolio of drawings and paintings from his journey, and used it to prove his talent and passion to his father, who was skeptical of Manet's ambitions.
I am not sure if he proved his talent to his father or if he just relented and let Édouard follow his own path. As a parent that tried to guide children one way and see them go in another, it can be frustrating and at some point in their lives, you throw your hands up and let them do what they are going to do.
"You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real."
It worked out well for Édouard Manet. He was the most important and influential artist to have heeded poet Charles Baudelaire's call to artists to become painters of modern life. He has long been associated with the Impressionists. He was certainly an important influence on them and he learned much from them himself.
In recent years critics have acknowledged that he also learned from the Realism and Naturalism of his French contemporaries, and even from seventeenth century Spanish painting. This twin interest in Old Masters and contemporary Realism gave him the crucial foundation for his revolutionary approach. Finally, I understand where he is coming from. He looks at everything and pulls pieces of their techniques to fit the subject of his artistic endeavor.
"You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real."
One thing I love about art, whether I am painting, sculpting or tattooing, I have to do a lot of prep work, study the subject, plan the composition. Now it's time to play ball and get back to work creating that moment in time in the spirit of Manet. It's outside my comfort zone but sometimes, that is required?