Recipe: David Smith’s ink drawings

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Karen Schneider

David Smith. Untitled, 1959. Black egg ink on paper. The Phillips Collection, gift of Linda Lichtenberg Kaplan, 2004. © Estate of David Smith/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

David Smith often used his drawings, paintings, and photography as a counterpoint to the relatively slow, laborious process of making welded sculpture. After a full day of sculpting at his studio near Lake George, New York, he would relax by taking a shower and spend the evening drawing; in the 1950s, he was making between 300 and 400 drawings a year. In an article in Arts Magazine in 1960, Smith wrote about the joy of making a drawing each day. He made the following annotations on a photograph of his living room floor filled with ink drawings: “Sometimes I draw for days I like it and it’s a balance with the labor of sculpture…to average a drawing for every day I live some form of identity.”

Intrigued by reading that David Smith had invented his own medium by adding an egg yolk to ink, I decided to try it myself. I put an egg yolk in a plastic container and mixed it with black Chinese ink. When I dipped a brush into the mixture, it was thick and creamy. The oil in the egg yolk added a surprising amount of density to the ink and a slight gloss. I experimented with five drawings on watercolor paper, adding white gouache on top of the black ink in a few of the pieces.

Two works by Librarian Karen Schneider using egg yolk mixed with Chinese ink, with other media, on watercolor paper.

The egg ink had a sensuous quality and flowed easily from the brush onto textured watercolor paper. To use it as David Smith did in his large, calligraphic drawings required decisiveness and a bold physicality. I came away from the experiment with a new appreciation of what it took to create Smith’s powerful drawings, informed by daily practice that led to a seemingly effortless fluidity of expression.

Karen Schneider, Librarian

Hodgkin and Holi: An Unmistakable Connection

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Karen Schneider

This work from the collection of the Freer Sackler Galleries illustrates the tradition of Holi. A Holi festival. 19th century. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper. H: 28.9 W: 19.2 cm India. Gift of Charles Lang Freer F1907.25.

As I was giving a recent tour of Howard Hodgkin’s monumental prints As Time Goes By, a docent at the Freer Sackler Galleries pointed out the possible relationship between the prints, which are characterized by exuberant areas of intense color that appear to be thrown onto the surface, and the holiday of Holi, the festival of colors, which takes place throughout India and other South Asian countries in early spring. Holi was originally celebrated by farming communities as a ritual expression of hope for a good harvest and a collective rejoicing in the spring.

Holi is also thought to have had various mythological beginnings whose narratives usually have a moral. One originates in the boyhood of Krishna, considered one of the most human of the gods. When Krishna was playing with Radha, a girl in his village, he noticed that her skin was fair and his was dark. When he complained to his mother, she suggested that he throw color on Radha’s face so that the difference could be erased.

During Holi, participants, who dress in white, throw colored pigment and water on each other. According to the myth, people do so with the aim of erasing differences of color, creed and religion, hoping to create a truly equal society. Hodgkin has traveled extensively in India and collects Indian art.

Watch the videos below for a glimpse of the modern celebration of Holi.

Karen Schneider, Librarian

Philip Guston’s Moral Courage

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Karen Schneider

Philip Guston. Untitled, 1971. Oil on paper mounted on canvas. Private Collection, Woodstock, NY. © Estate of Philip Guston; image courtesy McKee Gallery, New York, NY.

Would you risk a highly successful career, replete with public recognition, to pursue a line of creative inquiry that was tacitly forbidden? That is exactly what Philip Guston did. Virtually self-taught, Guston’s early social realist works showed the influence of Picasso, Piero della Francesca, and Mexican mural painting. His abstract expressionist works were widely admired for their refined, elegant handling. In 1970, Guston exhibited his work at the prestigious Marlborough Gallery in New York. Prepared to embrace Guston one of America’s leading proponents of abstraction, critics were shocked to see paintings that showed hooded Klan-like figures and other politically charged imagery depicted in a deliberately clumsy, cartoon-like manner. Critics such as Hilton Kramer of The New York Times reacted with disbelief and derision.

What made Guston change his style? The news in the late 1960s was about Vietnam, anti-war demonstrations, and the violence at the Democratic National Convention. Guston felt that he could no longer justify the luxury of adjusting a red to a blue in his abstract painting when the world was in turmoil. Looking back, he recalled, “I was sick and tired of all that purity. I wanted to tell stories again.”

Guston wanted to invent a new visual language that reflected what was going on in the world. Continue reading →