john singer sargent

Friday, May 20, 2005

During my first year at NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, an art high school in new orleans... perhaps i'll go into more detail about that another time), one of our three primary instructors, the aptly namedMr. Gross, taught us American Art History. I should say right off the bat that i'm not a big fan of american art, at least not until sometime in the early mid twentieth century. But that's not what Mr. Gross was into, he was mostly into 19th century art, especially Remington.

Anyway, Sargent is one of the artists that i remember him teaching us, the painting The Daughters of Edward Boit in particular. (You have to wonder why he wouldn't have chosen something like El Jaleo, but whatever...) I think considering Sargent an American artist is somewhat of a stretch, in a sense, though he was of american descent-- an expatriate, though i can't seem to find out whether it was he or his parents that left america.

He's considered somewhat of an impressionist, though i think the impressionists debated whether or not he was one of their own. When you think impressionist, you undoubtedly think of Monet and Degas. I always associated Degas and Monet with images of beauty, in color and subject. Sargent, though, seems to be darker and deeper in some respects. This is kind of ironic, given this quote that i wanted to include:

His life, with some exceptions, was a succession of successes, and reviewers of a recent biography seem uniformly resentful of a man who made it through life as an artist without much spiritual agony or material want, and who even died, painlessly, in his sleep. Against the psychopathology of the artistic spirit as we expect it to be lived out, Sargent seems to have been too happy to have been deep.

I should remember to try to return back to this idea, as well, at some time in the future, and how it relates to the movie Pollack.

Lack of focus be damed.

Sargent was obviously interested in painting in terms of beauty, i think, but his work goes deeper into depicting life in a more real sense, capturing his subjects bring tired, being playful, being sweaty, being provacative, being bored... being themselves.