"It" Does Not Come Easy

In Robert Beverly Hale’s lectures on Artistic Anatomy and Figure Drawing, that great master proves that there is art in teaching. His presentations are full of information and wit; he is the personification of wisdom as the knowledge of truth.

In his first lecture he explains the importance of understanding the underlying bone and muscle structure before an artist can successfully draw the human figure. He tells of an interesting conversation between James McNeill Whistler and a young would-be artist. Oozing the Postmodern Relativism of the time, the novice intoned, “I paint what I see.”

“Well,” replied Whistler, “you see what you paint.”

It is tragic indeed for an aspirant to art to be unable to recognize the forms before his eyes and thus incapable of portraying them. What is even more disheartening is knowing that adequate effort would allow the would-be to be. That effort is the rub, the sticking point, past which most are unwilling to go.

In Irving Stone’s, *The Agony and the Ecstasy*, we learn of the winter when Michelangelo learned the secrets of human anatomy. One passage is particularly beautiful and terrible.

“The following night he found a boy of about fifteen who showed no external evidence of disease. The pale skin, almost completely white, was soft to the touch. The eyes were blue when he raised the lids, deep in color, contrasting with the pale white of the eyelids. Even in death he was attractive.

”Surely he will wake up,” he murmured.

He saw that the boy was still without hair on his chest, and felt a pity deeper than he had known since he had viewed his first corpse.

He turned away; he’d wait until another night. Then, facing the corner of the whitewashed walls, he stopped. By the next morning this lad would be buried under four feet of earth in the Santo Spirito cemetery. He touched the boy, found him as cold as winter; beautiful, but as dead as all the others.

He made his incisions expertly now . . .”

Some years ago our school put on the musical *Working*. One line troubled me. A young man sings on the assembly line, “If Michelangelo had had to paint the Sistine Ceiling a thousand times; even his mind would have been destroyed.”

Do you see the flaw in that logic?














Michelangelo had of course done the figures on the Sistine ceiling thousands of times. Gathering the terrible knowledge that made his art possible in the frigid death house at Santo Spirito and drawing and redrawing, painting and repainting the forms that would make art, everyday of his life.

















In spite of the Postmodern rush to force it otherwise, the twentieth century produced some real artists; non greater than Norman Rockwell. Rockwell was called, even called himself, “just an illustrator”, but Rockwell knew better. One panting, The Connoisseur* says it all.



















Jackson Pollock was a fraud – incapable of art, he pushed his hoax. Rockwell knew it and in his painting proves that while Rockwell, and any “thing” that can slop paint, could paint like Pollock. Pollock had not paid the price and could not paint like Rockwell.

However, in the Relativist, postmodern world there are plenty who extol Pollock and deprecate Rockwell; many who insist that art is not the product of mastery, but simply the consensus of critics.

I watch with increasing dismay as postmodern relativists mislead the American people into defeat in the battle for their very survival. We can contrast President Bush's plan for Iraq with the book recently released by Jimmy Carter.

The President’s plan calls for hard work and for paying the real price for victory. It would seem easy to turn our back and walk away, save the struggle for another day, but like Michelangelo, the President knows that he must take up the tools and do what is difficult now to achieve real peace in the end.

Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, simply presents the easy way, and calls it truth. It would be so easy if only the whole mess was America and Israel’s fault. Then America could just dump Israel and all the evil would go away.

In his book, *A River Runs Through It*, Norman Maclean has his narrator explain, that to his father fly fishing is an art, "and art like eternal salvation, does not come easy.”

So it is with peace, peace comes only by victory, and victory – like art, does not come easy.


I add this picture as a statement of Rockwell’s opinion of himself. Note that he has pictures of Rembrandt, Durer, Van Gogh and Picasso in his own self-portrait. Some say Rockwell is claiming parity – I believe he is demonstrating something more profound. See the posts below.





















Picasso’s father was an art teacher. He knew the rules of art and taught them to many, he tried to teach them to his son, but Pablo was much more interested in prostitutes than in the elements, principals, and skills of art. This first drawing is by Picasso while in school. It is of the Torso Belvedere, and is copied from a high school drawing program by Jean-Leon Gerome. The practice pieces in this program were reproduced as lithographs by Charles Bargue. Bargue’s drawing is below. I have copied this picture, and did as well as Picasso; if I must say so myself. You can come and see my work on my classroom wall.







































The next three pictures are other class assignments by Picasso. No doubt his teacher stood over him, directing his hand, and correcting his mistakes. These student works are often sighted as proof that Picasso could do “real art” if he wanted. But to anyone who has studied art, they say just the opposite.
























































The work was too much for Picasso. His portrait of Gertrude Stine shows how well he could do without a trained artiest directing his hand. BUT HERE IS THE WONDER for Picasso. Relativists, desperate to validate their “what ever I say is, is” philosophy, saw in Picasso a chance to define art and manipulate the masses. Soon Picasso realizes that his paintings, pushed by the agenda of relativism, could sell no matter what they looked like. In fact they would sell even better if they looked worse. He proceeded to produce ridiculous farces like this next piece. Here you see his pretended application of “African” art. The Africans had every right to feel insulted.








































The next piece shows how far Picasso went to see if he could go too far, for the Relativists he could not.
















But then suddenly, after twenty years of hoaxing, Picasso tried to become a real artist. He literally went back to school and for over a year he tried desperately to master the principles he had shunned before.

The next three pieces are evidence of his best efforts. Overworked and clumsy, they attest to how miserably he failed. His discouragement and failure are represented in the atrocities that were produced throughout the rest of his life.



























































This last picture is an example, and this is not the worst of the best he could do.




















Now an interesting thing about Picasso; the man basked in fame and the accolades of the relativists, but was miserable all his life. He hated the women he bought to serve him, and they all came to hate him. He abandoned one wife to the asylum, and drove his children from him. He died famous, praised, and rich; he died a fraud, a millionaire who claimed to be a communist, (only a relativist could reason like that) a hoaxer that pretended to be an artist. What ruined his joy, what tainted his success into misery? The answer, he knew he was not what the relativists claimed, he know that for all the accolades he was not an artist.

It would be instructive to examine the life of Norman Rockwell, to compare a master who, although the critics shouted otherwise, knew he was what they said he was not, a great artist.