No class this week and next but I wanted to wish you a merry solstice, holiday, christmas.
I've also posted an interesting email I received from Susan Bazett, a painter who took my class for 7 years and is now attending the Museum School Boston:
Taken from a letter written by Philip Guston to Ross Feld
I am writing about the generous law that exists in art. A law which can never be given but only found anew each time in the making of the work. It is a law, too, which allows your forms (characters) to spin away, take off, as if they have their own lives to lead - unexpected, - too as if you cannot completely control it all. I wonder why we seek this generous law, as I call it. For we do not know how it governs - and under special conditions it comes into being. I don't think we are permitted to know, other then temporarily. A disappearance act. The only problem is how to keep away from the minds that close in and itch ( God knows only why) to define it.
Philip Guston speaking with Morton Feldman in an interview.
As long as you're telling stories, I have a story. Some time ago. I guess in the early fifties, I was very broke and I needed all the teaching I could get. and a psychiatrist, I mean a guy who worked in a clinic inNew Jersey , wanted to study painting with
me. The idea was, he would bring me his paintings once a week and I would
criticize them. Fr twenty-five dollars, something like that. And I said sure.
And he came and he must have brought about a hundred paintings on paper. He
filled up my whole studio with his work. He tacked it all up and I criticized
it. And he came back the next week ten paintings. And I started criticizing
them and talking about painting. Well, to make a story short, he skipped a
week, which meant I didn't get any money that week. Then he came with one
painting. And finally he stopped coming. He called me about a month later and
he said I'd made him stop painting altogether. He decided to give up painting.
You know, he thought he was ....Christ, his hand moved, he made colors, forms.
It's very dangerous to study painting, ( laughter), with me anyway. I can stop
anybody painting.
Susan Bazett
I think the act of painting is very magical, very mysterious, a life's work. I don't think you ever learn it you just begin to chuck out all the things you thought it was and what is left is just you alone putting paint on a surface. Then perhaps something called painting will begin to take its place and you will be able to follow its directions.
I am writing about the generous law that exists in art. A law which can never be given but only found anew each time in the making of the work. It is a law, too, which allows your forms (characters) to spin away, take off, as if they have their own lives to lead - unexpected, - too as if you cannot completely control it all. I wonder why we seek this generous law, as I call it. For we do not know how it governs - and under special conditions it comes into being. I don't think we are permitted to know, other then temporarily. A disappearance act. The only problem is how to keep away from the minds that close in and itch ( God knows only why) to define it.
Philip Guston speaking with Morton Feldman in an interview.
As long as you're telling stories, I have a story. Some time ago. I guess in the early fifties, I was very broke and I needed all the teaching I could get. and a psychiatrist, I mean a guy who worked in a clinic in
Susan Bazett
I think the act of painting is very magical, very mysterious, a life's work. I don't think you ever learn it you just begin to chuck out all the things you thought it was and what is left is just you alone putting paint on a surface. Then perhaps something called painting will begin to take its place and you will be able to follow its directions.
The painting at top is a small piece I did last week in class.
See you the week of Jan 7, 2013, Have fun, john.
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