Painting and the Personal EquationPainting and the Personal Equation by Charles Herbert Woodbury, first published in 1919, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it. |
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ęsthetic artistic Barbizon Beauty beginning belong better blue canvas center of interest CHARLES H choice common conscious conscious mind consider Cubist Dangerous ground dealer definite detail direction ditions doubt drawing elements erally expression eyes facts feel force forget Futurist gestion give happen happy day human ical imply importance impulse individual instinctive intention knowledge light limits live local color look matter means medium ment mental mind minor motion Nature neutral never object one's ourselves paint painter pass perhaps personal equation picture pigment question reason relation result rock rule seems sensation shadow sketch spot subconscious subconscious mind suggestion surface taste technique tell things thought tion tone train of thought trees trouble truth unim unless ural vaguely wave WOODBURY yond
Popular passages
Page 102 - ... emphasize especially one's own preparation as a leader thru doing. Many of us read about art in books, we travel and visit museums, and some of us possess beautiful things; but each of us can choose and create, if we wish to, and that is the surest and quickest road to art-appreciation. There is the person who says, "I know nothing about art, but I know what I like when I see it.
Page 69 - One of the characteristics of American landscape is that it has a virility that you do not find in Europe. The American people are full of life, and their natural expression is force. We are not slow in action and we are quick-minded. We go to extremes easily, but we are not soft, not dreamers only. The art that will come from America will be virile like our air, which has the clearness of crystal.
Page 11 - She took it as criticism of her eyesight, since it purported to be a sketch of things as they were. Even the painters themselves have not always been clear on this point. We have had realism based on making things like, though the term itself was originally intended to distinguish a more direct form of work from the classic and romantic of other days. Generally, to see...
Page 8 - Probably the cave man who drew a picture on a bone of his favorite mastodon found at first that his friends considered the time wasted which might have been better employed in clubbing his neighbors. He was unpractical, and idealistic, but in the end their own interest in the graphic arts was awakened, and they helped him out with his chores that he might have more time to devote to his art and make their cave the home beautiful.
Page 63 - You will find that a flat tone often looks dull, lacking the life and intensity that you see in Nature. This is not necessarily because your color is wrong, but for a totally different reason. All life is change, and where there is no change, in the end, consciousness leaves. Press your finger on the table and you will soon forget where that finger is unless you press again.
Page 6 - We paint the pictures and hope to sell them, for we have to be supplied with money as well as the rest of the world, but we do them primarily because we want to put into visible form some thought or feeling we have in the presence of our subject. As a commercial proposition we are wrong from the start, for you cannot place a money value on a sensation.
Page 11 - But when a human hand takes part the conclusion is drawn, not by reason of the imitative power of the instrument, but because of the selective quality of the mind. That is to say, we see according as we are, and our facts vary with our perceptions. One can sympathize with the old lady who said of a lively sketch, " I have lived in this place for thirty years, but I have n't seen no blood-red rocks here.
Page 113 - We see a red cap, an arm, and a flashing skirt. We may know very well all that is there, but to paint it would be to arrest the motion, for we would be giving facts that belong to immobility. While it is necessary that we should be in possession of all the facts so that what we use may be consistent, our expression of the motion depends quite as much on what we leave out as on what we •put in— -CHARLES H.
Page 14 - ... with his hands. In fact, probably the majority of painters think only of the technical side of their work as they do it, carrying the thought of the subject subconsciously even to the point sometimes of denying its existence, as with those who claim to paint only literally what they see. Therefore, a painter's criticism of another's work, as well as his pleasure in it, is likely to be a technical one, and overbalanced on that side.
Page 10 - ... portrait, which has a different use, enabling one to do something personal for one's descendants. But in the end time judges, for the portrait of the king of finance becomes an example of the painter's work, and the king is not mentioned. To the majority of people a picture is an imitation of Nature, and they anticipate gloomy times for the painter when photography or other mechanical processes shall be so perfected as to reproduce things "just as they are.