Guest post by Deirdre M. FolleyWhat Christmas gift to get for the winningest football coach in Harvard college history? What if that man is your dad, marking his 25th season and having just enjoyed an exciting win against the prime rival (Yale) at no other location than Fenway park? This question is what led Molly Murphy to get in touch with us and inquire about commissioning John to produce a painting for her father. The timeline was tight, as Christmas was only a matter of weeks away. But I knew that John - a dedicated football fan - would absolutely love to take this painting on. We decided he could squeeze it into his studio schedule before the holiday.  Molly provided John with an inspiration photo and some other resources (including this video which gives a flavor of that gameday). She and her siblings were requesting a painting that would capture the drama of the football game at Fenway park as well as the details of their father, Coach Tim Murphy, working from the sidelines with his players around him. They decided on a custom size that would fit handsomely above a mantlepiece. John provided Molly a concept sketch (above) for her approval, and then it was full steam ahead on the canvas.  Work in progress John on his creative process: "I was really excited by this commission, both as a football fan and as an artist. I loved the pictures from the game and the great accomplishment that it represented, but as I was thinking through the composition I knew I wanted to have the painting be more dramatic and more active than any of the photos that I had access to. I altered the perspective and composition to give more of that epic and immersive feel that I was looking for. There is nothing quite like being at a football game live and going to college games with my father has been a very special part of my life since childhood. I wanted this painting to embody that excitement and energy." Although time was tight, John worked quickly to complete the painting and had it framed and ready to hang, available for pick-up, just before the family went away to celebrate Christmas together. Early in the new year, I had a chance to talk to Molly about how the gift had gone over. She had these kind words to share about the experience: I was absolutely blown away by my experience working with John and Deirdre. The whole process was so easy, it was so pleasant to communicate with them, and the sketches were so helpful... John's work is just stunning and I couldn't have imagined it going better, from start to finish. My dad doesn't get emotional easily, but he was so moved when we presented the painting to him on Christmas morning. He could not believe it. It's the best gift we've ever given him. We would definitely reach out again on another occasion. I think that this is such a meaningful purchase and overall it was an amazing experience! What a thoughtful gift idea on the part of Molly and her siblings! It was clear to us that they love their dad and are extremely proud of him. We’re so delighted that Coach Murphy was pleased with his Christmas morning surprise and that he is currently enjoying the painting in his office. John had a fantastic time with this commission and was honored to have a part in celebrating and commemorating a great moment in college sports.  'Harvard beats Yale at Fenway' 14x28" oil on canvas
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Guest post by Deirdre M. Folley Usually, I have the pleasure of being the one to make the behind-the-scenes arrangements for John's painting commissions. This time around, I had the experience of sitting for John and getting the formal portrait treatment. Since I've been working with John on this kind of thing for years, I knew basically what to expect. But for many people, this process is shrouded in mystery. I decided to go ahead and let you in on the experience. For those young adult or adult patrons who are up for the full experience, the portrait process will be mostly in-studio and will involve several sittings. For these, John relies in part on photos for reference, but the bulk of the work on the portrait is done from life. This yields the best results: the colors will be most accurate and alive; the shapes, form, and proportions will be more clear and present to John; and, perhaps most importantly, the subject's personality and likeness come through the most clearly when the painting is done from life in the actual presence of the person. This does require a time commitment (several sittings of a few hours each) -- and the subject (that is, the person who's sitting) has to be up for sitting still! (With breaks, of course!) In the case of child portraits and for the purposes of this post, however, we're discussing one photoshoot from which a portrait will be painted. Without further ado... Professional Insights Or, what to expect when you go to John's studio for a photoshoot for your painted portrait:  1) The process is fluid. A patron may expect to walk in, have the artist line up three shots systematically, execute according to a clear set of rules, and then wash hands and send the client home. What you need to keep in mind is that John is an artist by trade, not a surgeon. He doesn't know in advance exactly how it will go, how many photos he'll shoot, or exactly what colors he'll use; the process is intuitive and depends on variables like the light and the mood. While there are certain things you can expect, not every aspect is predictable. By trying different poses and draping and by working with the natural light, John will gradually hone in on the shot or shots that seem to capture the subject handsomely and achieve the desired goals for the painting. 2) The photoshoot takes some time. Because, as we've noted, the process is a gradual one, it's best not to rush it. John will want some great pictures to work with at the end of the session. So he'll want to ensure that he's explored different options and that he's caught you from your best angle and you're looking and feeling comfortable. For this to happen, expect that two hours will fly by. (We were a little pressed for time when we did the photoshoot for my portrait, but we enjoyed it nonetheless and got some good results!) 3) Sitting for your formal portrait painting is not intimidating. You don't have to be an experienced model (or anything closet to it) in order to do this! While having your portrait painted is a very exciting event and the result can be very formal, the process doesn't have to be. With John, you can expect a quiet studio atmosphere and his typical laid-back manner. Some drinks and snacks will be provided so you can stay comfortable while you hang out. You'll be encouraged to bring a friend along with you to help you feel at ease. For child portraits, one or both parents will be present throughout the session. Depending on my schedule, I'll be available as well as John's assistant in making you feel comfortable and look your best.  Some outtakes from a fun time in the studio. Some tips for getting the most out of your portrait painting photoshoot:
{Curious about the photoshoot of the little girl, above? See the finished product on John's portraiture page. } {And if you can see yourself giving a portrait as a gift this Christmas, don't wait too long! The lead time from scheduling a sitting to receiving a finished painting is a matter of months!} Usually we hear from parents who are interested in having a portrait of their child or children. I'm curious: if you could commission one portrait painting of someone in your life, who would you want it to be? Can you imagine where it would hang? Guest post by Deirdre M. Folley, John and I were so excited when we received an inquiry late last year from a potential patron with a vision. The email was from Britt, who was finalizing plans for the renovation of her new home with her interior designer and needed just the right piece for the focal point of the dining room/living room area. Because the piece she had in mind was inspired by Masters like Caravaggio and de Ring, she needed someone with expertise in classical painting; and with a whole list of sacramental symbols in mind as subjects for the painting, she needed someone with an understanding of and appreciation for Christian imagery. Britt had heard about John from a mutual friend. For an artist, there's nothing like getting a request for exactly the type of material he'd love to be doing in his own time! In a recent newsletter, respondents let us know you'd like to hear more about John's commissioned work. So here's an insider's account of the process behind this painting:  I connected with Britt over the phone and we discussed the size, the budget for the painting, general expectations about the timing of the project, and how John's process works. She told me that she and her husband wanted a painting that would be a beautiful feature for their living space and also an image that would foster reflection and provoke conversation about the beauty of their Christian faith. Clearly, this was going to be a great fit! We agreed that he would work closely with Britt to determine the composition and that he'd put a still life arrangement together for her approval. After a few phone calls and email exchanges, the process was underway! Early in the new year, John got to meet Britt and her husband Noah at Noah's corporate opening event for which they hired him to do Live Painting. Soon after that, the hunt was on in earnest for just the right components of the composition. John worked closely with Britt to hone in the objects that were going to come together to harmonize into the perfect arrangement for this still life. John took a long list of ideas (broken bread, a goblet of wine, grapes, nails, certain types of wood, a fish, coins, olives, a shell... among many other potential items) and scouted out various resources, primarily local antique stores, to find the right items. He had to balance having the particulars that were so meaningful to Britt and her family with also gathering certain key visual elements that were going to give the composition structure and unity. Since Britt was communicating from Southwest Florida, all of the collaboration on this happened at a distance. The two worked patiently together to come up with a final selection, which John then arranged. After discussing photos of that arrangement with Britt and Noah, they were able to pare down to the most beautiful and essential elements. As part of John's process in laying out the still life, he completed a brown paper sketch to consider the values:  By late winter, John's patrons had moved into their new home and, with developments from the interior designer, we finalized the exact size of the painting: a grand, 33x39" masterpiece to hang in the living room. John ordered his canvas and stretchers and finally got to dig in on the actual painting process. This has been the main focus of his in-studio work for the past few months and we're finally on the home stretch of the commission. One note of interest is that the arrangement features a few food items, which had to be real to get the right visual quality. Working with real food adds an element of logistics to the careful planning of the painting. Can you identify the items and guess about the process?  The final painting is just a matter of weeks away, and we can't wait to see it settled in Britt & Noah's home.
We're happy to answer questions about the process, below! Stay tuned for the final product! Roger Kimball's book The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art was a fun, quick read from cover to cover. If you have ever been subjected to recent art criticism, this book provides catharsis. With humor and wit, Kimball confronts the obfuscating rhetoric that clothes political agendas -- not with his own competing rhetoric and agenda but by trying to let the artwork speak for itself. Whereas so-called art critics, bedecked as they are with prestige, institutional backing, and economic privilege, tend to flabbergast, intimidate, and discourage, Kimball encourages his readers to take a step back, have a good laugh at what currently passes for academic art insight, and counter it with a good dose of common sense. He often quotes artists themselves, as well as their contemporaries, to provide a clearer view of how they understood each artwork under discussion.  Kimball considers a number of cases of art criticism that he assures us are representative of the current practices in the field (rather than outliers or exceptions), systematically exposing them and de-jargonizing them while diagnosing the intellectual diseases at work in each case. Having been through a number of college art history courses at a prestigious university, I can attest that his selection of texts certainly is representative of the fare foisted upon my classmates and I. One of my favorite instances here is a perfectly ridiculous text on "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit," a beautiful group portrait by John Singer Sargent. The art historian who penned the text, one Professor Lubin, wanders so far afield that he starts reading perverse sexual meaning into words that don't even appear in the painting or in the title of the painting, but only in the pun on the title that the author admits to fabricating himself and that would have never occurred to the artist or the patron. It is in this bizarre way that he purports to "find" the meaning inherent in the artwork. From the book: "Professor Lubin's first point is that the French word for box, boîte, is only one letter and an accent mark away from the surname of the painting's subject: "Boit." "The Boit Children makes a visual-verbal pun by translating into Les Enfants de (la)Boît(e): the children of Boit and the children of the box." In fact, it is not the painting that makes the pun - and a silly enough pun it is - but Professor Lubin. And that's just the beginning of the charade.... "Professor Lubin readily admits that "It far oversteps the bounds of credibility to think that Sargent had any of this in mind before, during, or after he painted the painting." "For this relief, much thanks"! (Hamlet I:1) But then he cheerfully tells us that, notwithstanding what Sargent thought, we shouldn't be surprised "if somehow a psychic transfer or transmutation occurs between the verbal part of the creative mind... and the visual part." Psychic transfer? Transmutation? What is this, Shirley MacLaine meets art history?" Kimball quotes Lubin at length as the latter goes on (and on) about vagaries of the significant connections between certain - ahem - anatomical parts and the uppercase and lowercase of the letter 'e' (because -- don't forget! -- the letter 'e' is conspicuously absent from the name in the title of this painting! Following this?). All he has to do here to reveal Lubin's absurdity to the sound-minded is simply to quote him! In short, Kimball has done a wonderful service: He selects representative tests of art criticism, translates them for his reader in the context of the real work, the practices of the artist, and his times, and calls them out for what they are: self-serving academic and political garble dressed up in very fancy pseudo-psychology, pseudo-philosopy, and, most of all, just words, words, words... Words that ultimately obscure the paintings they purport to describe. Kimball continues on more witty and enlightening jaunts with paintings by Courbet, Rubens, Winslow Homer, and van Gough and their critical aggressors, valiantly defending the honor of the masters along the way.  Sargent's group portrait. Photo courtesy of www.MFA.org While he does a delightful job of pointing out the ridiculous aspects of the current state of art criticism and the intellectual rot that has for a long time posed as learning, I do dock Kimball a few points for trying to enlist to his aid a number of artists and critics who are complicit in this decay. For example, Kimball amusingly rips apart a piece of art criticism or two dealing with the canvases of Marc Rothko, but not before a few pages of dedicated to apparently serious appreciation of that painter. He seems to accept, if not validate, Rothko's place in the canon of Western Art as written by the very critics and academics he is lampooning. Rothko's current prestige and place in the art world relies almost solely on the basis of the ridiculous climate of the arts made possible by the decay of common sense and the love of beauty. The only way Rothko can be so highly revered as he currently stands is through the rejection of beauty and the acceptance in its place of fatuous theory and political jockeying.
Kimball also tries to enlist Clement Greenberg as an ally in his interpretation of Paul Gauguin without putting Greenberg in his proper context as one of the primary founders of the strains of art history attempting to do away with beauty as a central theme in understanding art. In fact, Greenberg himself was one of the first critics to reject the beautiful representation of volumetric form in paintings as meritorious and in its stead have a theory of art that valued "flatness" per se. This of course flies in the face of the tradition of Western painting which, from the time of Leonardo and even before, considered the beautiful and accurate rendering of three dimensional form one of the key marks of beauty and indicators of the accomplishment of an artist. For readers interested in the subject of art history and those looking for further entertainment along these lines, I recommend Tom Wolf's The Painted Word to understand the earlier stages of the sickness of the art world and gain a broader critique of certain facts that Kimball either takes for granted or doesn't recognize as part of the problem. Overall The Rape of the Masters proves clarifying, fun, and refreshing. I would heartily recommend it to anyone, especially those who deal with art critics or interact with the art world establishment in any way. From the author himself: "... I hope that The Rape of the Masters will provide some inoculation against academic intimidation. The claims made by the critical marauders I discuss in this book are so outlandish, and they are typically expressed in language that is so rebarbative, that many people are stunned into acquiescence or at least into silence. It pleases me to think that The Rape of the Masters will help counteract that anesthesia, prompting more people to object to the objectionable." I think that Kimball's book will bear out these hopes admirably. Students in particular, approaching the discussion of art within mainstream academia or other art criticism circles, will do well to arm themselves with this work before undergoing the mental assault typical of the field. I wish I had been thus armed myself. What do you think? Does art criticism intimidate you? Do you have a hard time with interpretations of paintings that seem to be irrelevant to what's actually on the canvas? |
AuthorHello there, I'm John H. Folley. Thanks for visiting the Beauty Advocacy Blog, where it's my job to help you become a more discerning art appreciator. 
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