Kokoschka: On Making Ugly Art

Kokoschka – Prometheus Triptych (left hand panel) - Courtauld Institute of Art

One thing’s for sure – when you walk into a room with a painting by Oskar Kokoschka in it, you may love it or hate it but you definitely can’t ignore it!

I leafed through my Kokoschka book today in my studio. It isn’t one that I look at often, but I can rely on his work to ‘shake things up’ for me visually. He never fails in this regard.

Today, the question he kept asking me is “do you dare to paint ugly?”

I don’t mean that his work is ugly, but it definitely is unsettling and there is a brutality about it.

So, I buckled down to explore ugliness in painting. I found it quite challenging! In fact, my mind couldn’t even get a handle on what is ugly – what colors, what shapes, what brushstrokes would I use?

Nothing worked – as I used each one, I fell in love with it and it was transformed and no longer ugly … however, it always remained different and jarring.

Now that got me to thinking … if ugly = different, then does beauty = sameness?

And what is sameness?

Boring!! Yes! Now this I understand!! This is something I can paint!

But, Kokoschka took me aside and said “No! It’s been done before”.


Gail Sauter - Journal: A Painter On Painting

Wyeth: Wonderful Wyeth

Wyeth – Wind From The Sea – private collection

Andrew Wyeth passed away yesterday but the vitality of his work remains with us.

What I so admire about his work is the majesty he brings to everyday life. He found drama in a blowing curtain, and managed to conjure up the very breeze itself and the feel of the air as it sweeps in from the sea. Can’t you smell the salt air and hear a seagull in the distance? That is Wyeth’s magic. But, it’s not what he painted that holds us spellbound, it’s how he painted it.

His care and technical mastery are so flawless as to be transparent, never intruding or interrupting. He pares everything down to the essentials – subject matter, color, brushstrokes. He is a magician conjuring up a world for us as if by slight of hand, allowing nothing to distract us from the tale he wants to tell.

He begins "Once upon a time, a curtain was blowing" … but the rest is up to us…and the story isn’t over yet. Andrew Wyeth 1917 - 2009

Gail Sauter - Journal: A Painter On Painting

Caillebotte: Compositional Merry-Go-Round

Caillebotte - Les Raboteurs des Parquet - Musee D'Orsay

This is such a simple and straight forward presentation of life – you can almost smell the varnish remover and the sweat of these guys working!

Although this painting looks like it could be found in a gallery today, it was actually done in 1875. Caillebotte was a member of the French impressionists. In fact, he funded some of their exhibitions and his purchasing of their work kept many of them afloat financially in the early days.

What I so love about his work is his daring compositions. This painting is a good example of his subtle mastery. The figure on the right directs his gaze (and therefore ours) to the center figure which is linked to the farthest left figure by a pile of shavings on the floor. Above him there is an amazing vertical stripe of turquoise blue and the bright window full of sunshine streaming into the room which leads us down to the strips of scraped floor, or we move on across to the blue wall which leads to some rubble and further on to the wine bottle - but eventually, no matter where you look, you end up with the figures again … and around and around we go.

Upcoming Exhibition
Caillebotte: From Paris to the Sea - March 27 - July 25 - Brookly Museum

Gail Sauter - Journal: A Painter On Painting

Matisse: What is art?

Matisse - Vase of Sunflowers - The Hermitage Museum

What is art? Now there’s a question worth chewing on! Personally, I think that art is what happens when a painting etc reaches beyond its frame to live in your memory. If you don’t remember it – it ain’t art! No matter who created it. Art invites the viewer to join with it in creating their own punch line for the story. In other words, not all paintings are art, they may simply be paintings...and the viewer gets to decide which is which.

I choose this particular painting today because I keep revisiting it in my mind’s eye. It’s certainly not one of Matisse’s most famous paintings – so what is it that is entrancing, mysterious, and enticing to me? In searching for the answer to this question I seek to clarify ‘what is art’. As an artist, it seems like an important question to grapple with. After all, I wouldn’t go to a dentist who didn’t understand teeth, and, perhaps most important of all, be able to talk with me about them!

So, what gives this painting its power? For starters, I love the perfectly balanced transitions within the piece – from top to bottom and side to side. Matisse has modulated the background from light to dark, his brushwork moves from active to passive, his colors move from warm to cool. It seems to be filled with color but is very restrained in the range of hues he’s selected – it has a wonderful light-filled glow and that always captivates me.

I see this painting as a precursor for his later works where the environment is of equal importance with the ‘subject’. There is just a small a hint of the patterning that will be such a strong element in his later work. His brushwork has suffused the room surrounding those flowers with ‘personality’ and is as lovingly painted and as alive as are the flowers themselves! It is more than a portrait of sunflowers, it is a portrait of a moment – and that moment is something that I can share with Matisse. It is ‘ours’ – no longer only his, not only mine…and that combination is what makes it art.

Gail Sauter - Journal: A Painter On Painting