All right. Hi and welcome to MoMA.
My name is Corey D'Augustine from the "IN
THE STUDIO" series.
In fact, today we're here on the 10th floor
of the tower building at MoMA.
Can't see but around us, we have the Digital
Media Department, the Graphic Design Department,
Conservation Science is just around the corner,
so a little bit of behind the scenes today.
What we'll be doing today is taking some live
questions as well as some questions that we've
gotten from previous videos in the comment
sections.
I'm just gonna dive in right here with one
of the previous ones, but start clicking away
down the comment section, and we will be responding
to live comments in real time.
First question from Chubling[SP] nice name,
Chubling.
Hi.
Hi.
Can you talk a little bit about how you became
a conservator and what path you took to get
to where you are now?
Sure, art conservation for me, a really interesting
thing about it is that it's quite interdisciplinary.
It really involves a lot of art history, a
lot of art studio techniques, painting, etc.,
and a lot of chemistry also.
And believe or not, when I was an undergrad
in college, I was studying biochemistry.
I painted on the side, I studied art history
but they were really more hobbies than anything
else.
And one day, I went to my art history advisor
and asked him, "What is this art conservation
stuff about anyway?"
It seems to be a lot of science and I actually
know something about that already.
And he looked at me with a smile and he said,
"Well, I don't really know about it but go
next door to the museum and ask my wife, she's
a conservator."
So I just happen to be in the right place
at the right time for that, and really my
career started to take off here at MoMa, where
I spent five or six years in the Conservation
Department.
So we could talk forever about that, but that'll
get us started here.
So from the Kusama video on YouTube, Carol
Blythe asks, "No need to be rude, but why
would I want to imitate someone else?"
Not rude at all, that's a really important
and really excellent question.
Well, a lot of you out there are Sunday painters.
What that means…in fact, I'm a Sunday painter
now.
What that means is painting is just a hobby.
It's something you do in your spare time,
and by all means imitating someone else can
be a whole lot of fun.
You can also learn a ton about a given painter
by trying to replicate or apply his or her
techniques, in other words, to work in his
or her style.
However, if you're a serious artist, not a
Sunday painter, but somebody who's really
trying to pursue this headlong, still working
through other artist styles is a really interesting
and really educational way, a really efficient
way to discover your own voice.
One of the greatest examples of this comes
from art history itself, and the work of Arshile
Gorky, an Armenian-born, usually abstract
painter, who spent the latter part of his
career here in New York City.
Gorky in the early days... when I say early
days, his 30s, you know, not a super young
man.
He would really be with another artist in
the way that you might be with your girlfriend
or boyfriend something like that.
And he was with Kandinsky for a number of
years.
He was with Joan Miró for a number of years.
He was with Pablo Picasso for a number of
years.
In other words, he really engaged with those
other artist works, and in painting "someone
else's style," you're never gonna copy that
painting, you're never gonna really nail a
Picasso, promise you, I've tried a couple
times.
And so what you do is you find what part of
Picasso is really important to you, or you
find what Picasso looks like through your
hand rather than Pablo's.
In other words, you're not stealing anything,
you're borrowing.
And Picasso, again, one of the great quotes
from art history is that, "Good artists borrow,
great artists steal."
So even if you are stealing, put yourself
in a pretty good category at least according
to our friend, Pablo.
Another comment from the same video, that's
the Yayoi Kusama video on YouTube, this one
comes from Olaf Bloch.
Olaf asks, "Would it be okay to attempt this
all in acrylic?"
Absolutely.
In fact, Kusama herself has executed a large
number of finished paintings of the Infinity
Net variety entirely in acrylics.
In other words, sometimes she's working in
oil, sometimes she's working in acrylic, sometimes
she's working in watercolor and gouache and
various other paint media.
But there's really no reason whatsoever why
you couldn't dabble in other materials.
The problem being once you start combining
materials, you just need to be a little bit
careful.
But absolutely, working in acrylic emulsions
and Liquitex paints and Golden paint, etc.,
no problem at all for that style.
So let's dive into our first live question
here.
This one comes from Preston Jarvis.
Preston asks, "Are there any artists working
today that can be included in the AbEx movement
or is the era over?
And if it's over, what is the current abstract
movement called?"
Hmm…Nice.
Funny you should ask, one of the artists I'm
working with a lot these days, I think you
might consider the last abstract expressionist.
Of course, she's a little bit younger than
Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko who are long
gone, but I'm talking about the artist, Pat
Steir.
Pat has been living and working here in New
York City, four decades in a large format,
aggressive gestural abstract style.
As a matter of fact, as we speak, she has
an exhibition at Lévy Gorvy Gallery, you
can Google that and find out some really new
innovative recent work by Pat.
I hope she doesn't mind me saying, I'd admired
her work for a long time before ever meeting
her, and her work is huge and powerful and
strong.
So I just assumed that she'd be a kind of
huge hulking muscular lady.
And when I went to her studio for the first
time, "Oh, hi Pat," and she's very small and
very delicate and still very tough-as-nails
woman.
At any rate, just goes to show that can't
judge a book by its cover, and you can do
a lot of different things that would be unexpected.
Pat certainly looks up to a lot of the artists
that we're talking about here.
Robert Ryman, who is often called a minimalist,
I really think that's a bad fit for his work
personally, but Ryman is also a New York school
painter for sure.
New York school abstract expressionist, these
terms that, you know, are not exactly synonymous,
but those are the two artists I think living
today, working today, both of them making
very strong work today by the way, who I think
are really the closest to these abstract expressionist
artists.
Another one back to Kusama on the video from
YouTube, Renee Jones asks, "Love the series,"
Thanks, Renee.
If using all acrylic, as we're just speaking
about, would you add different mediums as
well?
Yeah, if you want to, so clearly if you're
working with say Liquitex acrylic emulsion
paint, you're not gonna be adding linseed
oil medium directly to that.
In fact, you're gonna know that's a bad idea,
immediately it's gonna be a very unhappy,
kind of slurry, and a very strange resist
effect in your palette.
The media that you'd be adding to those acrylic
emulsion paints, well, go over to Utrecht
or Dick Blick or whatever your local art store
is, and be amazed at how many different additives
there are for acrylic emulsion paints.
In the realm of oil painting, traditional
oil painting, there are, I don't know, let's
say five or six, something like that, typical
additives.
Of course, linseed oil is the most common
one.
But in the realm of acrylic emulsion paints,
I'm not exaggerating, there are hundreds of
them, all different things to make the paint
dry faster or slower, or glossier, or more
matte, or more translucent, or a heavier body,
or something to cut the consistency and make
it flow really quickly.
So yes, absolutely, if you're working in a
Kusama-ish vein and you're working with those
acrylic paints, as many of you are, do yourself
a favor and experiment.
You know, buy the small-size vials, I have
a lot of those products, okay, they're a little
bit more expensive, buy the millimeter what
have you, but mix and match and really start
to figure out what all of them do.
They're all different kinds of acrylics but
you'll find out very quickly that they can
do some very, very different things in terms
of your working properties.
And also, they look quite different when they
dry, so a really fun and really interesting
place to do some experimenting in today's
really wide range of artist materials.
This one comes from our first Q&A session
back in May.
Monica Lynnville[SP] asks, "Something that
was shoved into my brain," sounds violent,
"when learning oil paint, is the concern about
maintaining fat over lean."
Right.
"Doesn't mixing all these various solvents
and binders create problems?"
I'm not exactly sure which artist work we're
talking about that led to this question.
But at any rate, fat over lean, as some of
you know is really the kind of golden rule
of academic painting.
Fat over lean means two things.
Well, first of all, what is fat?
Fat doesn't refer to the thickness of a paint
layer, it refers to the binder or the medium
content.
So a fat layer has a lot of extra oil mixed
into it.
A lean layer is gonna be the opposite.
It's a very dry kind of paint.
You've maybe work straight out of the tube,
you've cut it with some turpentine, but you
haven't added more medium, more linseed oil
to it.
So it's gonna be a more matte finish and more
dry kind of a paint, fat over lean.
So what is fat over lean about, is talking
about your first layer should be lean, and
then each layer successively should get fatter.
Now, there's two reasons to do this.
The first one is aesthetic.
If you're painting, if you're an academic
or an old master at painting, you're an Italian
Guild-based renaissance artist, something
like that, if you're painting flesh, the way
to do that is to start out opaque.
In other words, with a lean paint layer, and
then to progressively glaze over it, add more
and more medium as you are building in the
flesh tones.
In other words, you start out building the
value, the shadows of my nose and chin and,
you know, eyelids, etc., just in grayscale
really.
Something called a Verdaccio.
And then you begin glazing over that to get
some of the flesh tones in translucently.
So aesthetically, this is how to paint flesh
really convincingly, illusionistically.
But lucky for us, oil painters, really the
other half of that golden rule of oil painting,
fat over lean, is that's also structurally
how to build a really strong, physically I'm
speaking now, strong, durable painting.
Why?
Because those under layers, those lean layers,
they have less binder, they have less medium.
And, of course, it is the medium that is the
glue, the adhesive, the strength of the paint
film, so not that strong.
They can crack, they can be abraded very easily,
marred, etc.
But if every successive layer has additional
medium in it, every layer gets stronger and
stronger and stronger and locks in the one
underneath it.
So this is really a beautiful invention of
the European masters, this method of painting
that at the same time is designed to achieve
naturalism in aesthetics and of structurally
sound painting that's gonna last for hundreds
of years.
Lucky for those of us who love to go to the
Uffizi or the National Gallery in Washington
or London or the Metropolitan, we can appreciate
both of those factors.
So does fat over lean really apply to modern
paintings?
Well, sure it does, except naturalism is seldom
what modern and contemporary artists are going
for.
Instead, they're direct painters like Matisse
or like Picasso.
They're going right to the surface in one
shot, no opaque paint more often than not.
So you might be thinking well, doesn't that
lead to structural problems?
And you'd be on the right track here.
I think it's fair to generalize that artists
who are not working in that academic technique,
their paintings crack faster and to a greater
degree, just to generalize, than those artists
who are working in those academic manners.
Sounds bad but for me personally, I don't
mind because it keeps me in business.
A lot of contemporary artists are working
in really fascinating ways, but let's be frank.
Perhaps, some of them don't last as well as
those tried-and-true guild based and academic
traditions did.
Let's go to another live question from Olivier
Vendes here on YouTube.
I'd like to hear about the relationship between
the expressionists beginning to use bigger
formats in the architectural environments
they had access to, such as cheap loft for
studios and new galleries.
Nice.
Yeah, we could write a whole book on this.
So especially here in New York City, the abstract
expressionists, the New York school artists,
where do they live, where do they work.
Well, first down around 10th Street and 8th
Street in Greenwich Village, and they had
some pretty large spaces there.
Why did they live there?
Because it was cheap.
Good luck affording an apartment in those
neighborhoods these days.
The next generation moved down into SoHo further
south in Manhattan, there were loft spaces
and warehouse space or something you could
paint huge.
Barnett Newman had a massive gallery... sorry,
a massive studio down on Front Street which
is quite close to the World Trade Center site
now.
And Newman, who painted some of the biggest
paintings really that New York had seen, really
that the world had seen since Canaletto in
the late Italian period, Newman was quoted
as saying, "Well, we painted those paintings
so big, so that they couldn't fit into the
sons of bitches' apartments on the Upper East
Side."
I'm not sure that I totally buy that idea,
to be frank, but bigness is kind of an American
idea, and it's one of the new qualities that
those expressionist artists explored.
What I'm talking about?
Well, New York is big but in another way,
it's kind of small, a lot of Manhattan is
quite small.
As the studio spaces got bigger, artists started
to explore ideas like the Grand Canyon, right?
Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, artists who were
thinking about landscape, but not the landscape
of, you know, out the window here in Manhattan,
but the landscape of huge open vistas that
are kind of rare to find in Europe but here
in the States, not in New York City, but really
in the Midwest and places like that, the scale
of this country is massive, certainly not
the only massive country on the planet, but
these artists really were tapping into that
as they were trying to develop an American
style.
What could they do that was new and different
from those European masters who, let's face
it, they were so difficult to compete with,
the Picassos and the Miros, and the Kandinskys
of the world.
Here we have a question from the Q&A trailer,
I think that we launched last week on YouTube.
Ali Adinajade, sorry Ali if I butchered your
name there, asks how to paint like Max Ernst
such as using the grattage technique?
Also, can you do an "In The Studio" video
on that topic?
Very timely question from Ali.
As a matter of fact, today we were installing
an exhibition of Max Ernst's work, a very
exciting show on a very interesting, very
exciting artist.
I believe that exhibition will open on September
23rd if I'm not mistaken here at the Modern.
Ernst, for my money, really one of the best
surrealist painters, not one of the most famous.
Dali, Magritte, artists like that come to
mind, but Ernst was a great visionary and
technically speaking, one of the great innovators
of the 20th century.
So frottage, which means rubbing in French,
is a technique that Ernst developed really
looking at floorboards, old Parisian, you
know, who knows, 18th-century floorboards
and hardwoods that had been rubbed away over
the centuries of just walking over them.
Well, he started doing rubbings with things
like charcoal on paper to pick up these hidden
meanings, these found compositions, these
interesting patterns transferred onto paper
from these textures that no one put there.
They just kind of grew mysteriously and naturally
over the ages.
Grattage was Ernst's next innovation.
Grattage in French means scraping, and here
he would take a canvas with fresh oil paint,
in other words, wet oil paint applied to it,
and then lay it down onto some kind of an
object like a fishbone or something like that,
and then scrape the canvas on top.
Removing a lot of paint but of course, the
way that the paint would be removed has as
much to do with the tool, the palette knife
or blade that he's scraping with, as it does
to do with whatever is underneath it in contact
with that canvas, transferring bizarre versions
of whatever object or texture is underneath
the canvas onto the surface.
And then Ernst, of course, would remove the
canvas, stretch it on stretcher bars, what
have you, and then go back into it, either
wet in wet or let it dry and paint wet over
dry.
Ernst is a really, really interesting painter.
If you're in New York over the next, I don't
know two or three months, please stop by the
museum and check out that show.
I think it's a great idea.
I'd love to tackle that topic, either in the
galleries here at MoMA looking at those paintings
or perhaps in the studio.
From the Ad Reinhardt YouTube video that we
did a while back, Emily Brownhart writes,
"Sometime ago, I used to dislike modern art."
That's okay.
When I saw this video, I wouldn't think that
my whole perception of modern art was about
to change for good.
Ad Reinhardt with his brilliant work showed
me the true meaning behind modern art.
Until that day when I first saw the video,
I've been very interested in modern art, three
years ago, actually.
I just finished painting a work of my own.
Thank you so much for uploading this life-changing
video.
Nice.
Thank you for that great comment.
That makes me really happy.
It would make Reinhardt himself quite happy
as well.
Reinhardt was a really amazing painter, as
Emily describes here.
Reinhardt was a really gifted educator as
well.
He was a professor of art history and painting
at Brooklyn College for many years.
He studied art history at the graduate level,
both Western art history and eastern classicism,
Japanese, Chinese painting, etc.
And Reinhardt is someone who really purified
painting to its essence in a way, but the
point was not to make some elitist statement,
it was not to have some intellectual keep-away.
The point was to purify it, to make it concise,
to really locate the experience of modern
art in the experience of looking at one of
his paintings.
In other words, it's something that takes
time and attention and patience and focus.
And by the way, you might not have it, especially
if you're texting on your phone and something
like that.
He demands your attention and if you don't
have it, you're just gonna see a black box.
If you do, as Emily found out, it can be a
really, really enriching and really beautiful
aesthetic experience.
So I hope you might try that as well.
Monica writes from the May live Q&A that we
did a while back.
"What is the most common problem with paintings
that you're called in to work on?"
Referring to work as a conservator here, you
know, I was thinking about this.
I should have an easy answer to that one.
There's a lot of different problems that modern
paintings encounter these days.
I think probably the most typical for modern
and contemporary paintings is flaking paint.
In fact, we were talking about fat over lean
earlier and how a lot of modern contemporary
artist don't use that approach.
And sometimes, young paintings can flake,
especially if they're in rough environments,
if the humidity is going up and down, or the
temperature is fluctuating wildly.
So something called lifting or flaking, you
know, if you have a layer of an application
of paint that's cracked and is starting to
lift up, a technique that conservatives will
do is to consolidate that.
In other words, using a tiny brush with some
dilute adhesive, getting it under that flake
of paint, getting it to flow under that flake
of paint.
And then to somehow settle that down gently
with some heat, perhaps some pressure, perhaps
some solvent.
And then, let that adhesive dry under pressure
to get it back stable in a plane orientation
where it came from.
So hopefully, you don't see that crack and
more importantly that paint doesn't flake
off and become a loss in the future.
Live question here from Antonio Jose Marti.
"Hi, Corey.
I have one question for you.
Do you think gesso is enough as a primer when
painting with oils on canvas and hardboard?
If so, how many layers should I do?
Okay, first point here just to clarify our
terms here, gesso, if we're really talking
about gesso.
Gesso is rabbit-skin-glue and calcium sulfite
or chalk or gypsum something like that.
This is the material that the Italians use
on panel paintings, beautiful material for
rigid support like a canvas...sorry, like
a board, like a panel painting.
If you're working on a flexible support like
canvas, you would not wanna use rabbit-skin-glue,
although Agnes Martin did, because it cracks.
It's a rather brittle material.
So rather than using true gesso, you're probably
gonna work with an acrylic primer, and in
fact, I think that's what Antonio Jose is
talking about here probably.
The problem becomes when you buy a bucket
of acrylic primer, sometimes they write gesso
right on it.
It's not actually gesso, it's an acrylic primer.
Why is that better in some cases?
Well, it is flexible, so if you have especially
a large canvas that might flap around a little
bit, it can be less prone to cracking over
time.
So Antonio Jose writes, "Is it enough as a
primer?"
Yeah, absolutely and "If so, how many layers
should I do?"
Now, this depends on really what kind of painting
you're gonna make.
If you're gonna make a really delicate smooth
painting where you're gonna need to build
up some thickness in your gesso and then sand
it super smooth.
Why?
Because if you leave one coat or two coats
like Agnes Martin did, you're still gonna
have the warps and the wefts, the texture
in other words, the bumps in other words of
the canvas, which are gonna impede your pencil
and your brush, and it's gonna have a little
roughness.
Now maybe you like that, if you're de Kooning
and you wanna have that kind of rough texture.
Certainly, one coat is fine in many cases.
But if you're really working in a finish fetish
kind of way, if you're trying to make an alabaster-smooth
portrait or something like that, you may wanna
build up three or four or five sand between
coats with some really fine grade sandpaper
to ensure that you have a nice, almost slippery
smooth kind of surface.
From Instagram, Levy Huddleston asks, "What
process did color field abstractionist such
as Ellsworth Kelly use to prep their canvases
and create the proper viscosity of paint to
achieve such dense and crisp areas of color?"
Okay, so another question about priming.
Kelly, as far as I know, I've worked on a
couple of Kelly paintings, he just typically
used normal primer just like everybody else
did.
I've worked on a couple paintings that had
an oil-based primer, nothing wrong with that,
and then I believe more recently even working
with acrylic-based primers.
It's not so much what kind of process, it's
really how you treat that, and more importantly,
the priming is the paint itself.
So for Kelly, for a minimalist kind of painter
like that, opacity is really important.
But hold on, we know usually those opaque
paints have a lot of pigment in them.
They tend to be stiff, they tend to leave
brush strokes but if you look at Kelly's paintings,
you very seldom will see those brush strokes.
So part of the beauty of Kelly's work is really
a function of how he prepared his materials.
One of the things I hope you noticed in the
de Kooning video…videos I should say, is
that I spent a whole lot of time preparing
those paints rather meticulously because I
wanted to get some qualities that were ready
to go.
So if I had an idea at the canvas, I didn't
have to, oh, stop everything, go back to the
kitchen, and work for 20 minutes preparing
something.
No.
It's there in a bucket, in a jar, in a bowl
ready to go.
So Kelly spends a lot of time cutting the
viscosity of his paint, making sure it's flowable
so that he can brush beautifully and not leave
these brush strokes behind, but keeping a
high pigment load in his paint.
How does he do that?
With solvent, because solvent, you recall,
will temporarily cut the viscosity of your
paint to make it more brushable, flowable
but solvent evaporates.
So by the time that evaporates off of your
paint film, you're left again hopefully with
a nice opacity, working with medium and solvent.
Hmm…how much?
Time to do some experiments and find out.
For this kind of question, if you're kinda
left brained and you wanna take a practical
approach, what a lot artists do, Robert Ryman
I mentioned earlier, certainly a great purveyor
of this kind of approach, is to test these
things.
Stretch a canvas the way you do and rather
than painting the whole thing, have little
squares, little paint-outs, and label them.
This one is this color with three-parts oil
to one-part turpentine.
Okay, it looks like this.
This one is five-parts medium to one-part
turpentine and you notice, "Oh, it's glossier,
it's more translucent," etc.
So the next time you find yourself at the
easel and there's a specific quality that
you really wanna achieve, rather than, you
know, tinkering and hoping you get it right
like a cook might, go back to the recipe like
a baker might.
And say, "Oh, I know exactly what this does
here, and now I'm gonna mix this up precisely
and hit the canvas with it."
Live question from Nodia Vira.
"When you did the second part of the de Kooning
painting, how could you cover completely the
first painting?
I would not be able to do it because I would
get attached to my work."
Actually, this is a really important one.
When I was a beginning artist, I had that
same fixation.
I'll tell you a little story here, a little
digression, but I think you're gonna like
it.
I was painting in Florence in a studio painting
class in Italy, and at that time... how old
was I?
20 let's say.
I considered myself a still-life painter.
Okay, it's easy to laugh at yourself in retrospect
but I was quite serious about it at the time.
So I painted in oil and very carefully and
slowly, and I was in a painting class and
we all painted still life.
That was my wheelhouse, no problem.
So I was painting, painting, and I remember
the first critique that we had, the first
crit.
One of students said, "Wow, this painting
it's so perfect."
And I'm smiling, so proud of myself, "Yeah,
I love it."
And then when it got around to my professor,
he said, "Okay, well, I'm gonna tell you to
do something to this painting and you have
to agree to do it."
Sounds kind of scary, but you're the student,
so okay, I'm here to learn, okay tell me what
to do and I'll do it.
He said, "Flip the painting over, wash it
three times with different colors, and then
start again."
Hold on, I've been painting, you know, six
or eight hours a day for a couple weeks now,
and I really like this painting and you're
asking me to obliterate it.
But I signed on, I said I would and I did,
and what I ended up doing because I washed
with super-bright colors I never would have
used otherwise, is I ended up painting a big
banana and a big apple, and I forget what
other piece of fruit was there, in a totally
different style, looked pop actually.
I've never painted in that style since, but
I never would have without that challenge.
And actually, it freed me from a very a narrow-minded
idea of what kind of painter I wanted to be
working at a studio practice.
I thought I had figured out, when in fact
I had figured out very little.
I had the technique down but it wasn't really
open minded.
So not falling in love with your work is really,
really important.
If you fall in love with your work too much,
you will inhibit your ability to progress.
If you're always willing to gamble that, "Okay,
I like it but if I gamble it, maybe I can
do something that I love or maybe I'm gonna
ruin it."
Okay.
I have it on really good authority, Agnes
Martin, Robert Ryman to bring him up again,
both of these artists they throw away, if
I'm not mistaken, a lot of their work.
Why?
Because they're taking risks.
You know, these are artists who...in Martin's
case, she's painting into her 90s, not exaggerating,
who was still making tons of mistakes and
gambling.
She had painted for five decades, six decades
and still took risks and wanted to get better
and better and better.
And of course, some of them didn't work, hit
the trash can.
So I think it's one of the most important
things I can try to convince you of today,
is to take those risks.
And sometimes you're gonna be mad at me.
"Ah, Corey, why did you tell me to do that.
I was gonna give that to my mom for Christmas.
It was beautiful and now it's destined for
the trash."
That will happen too but you're gonna find,
if you really stick to this and you really
devote yourself to the studio, and you keep
on trying to make things better and risk things,
that you're gonna open up a whole lot of doors
that otherwise would remain closed to you.
Chris Ames from the first part of the de Kooning
video that we did a while back.
Chris writes, "Hi, Corey."
Hi, Chris.
"I love your explanation of the de Kooning
process.
I don't work in oils but I would think that
acrylics can also be used for the wet-on-wet
parts.
What do you think about Golden Open paints?
Thanks."
Sure, first point is, acrylics were invented
during the lifetimes of most of the New York
school, most of the abstract expressionist
artists.
Most of those artists experimented in acrylics.
Some of them really went headlong in that
direction, Agnes Martin.
De Kooning didn't.
I'm sure he tried them but de Kooning is an
artist who really didn't have a whole lot
of time for acrylic for two reasons.
First of all, because they dry too fast, hence
Chris's question.
Second of all, they just look and feel different.
There are natural resins versus synthetic
resins which are plastic, they just feel different,
they look different.
So part one of the answer I have for Chris
is that, yeah, if you do wanna work wet in
wet, if you wanna keep your paint open or
wet for longer, that line of paint or to add
retarders to your paint.
This is something that takes the drying time
and radically extends it.
This is the way to do it if you work with
acrylics for sure.
However, it's still going to look like an
acrylic, it's still gonna feel like an acrylic.
So if this is your wheelhouse and you're really
comfortable here, and this is what's working
for you, then absolutely the answer is yes,
that's the direction.
However, you're not really gonna make a painting
that looks like a de Kooning with acrylics
ever.
A, because of the way the paints dry, and
B, also when you scrape an acrylic paint,
you're scraping a plastic versus a hard resin
like a linseed oil, and those textures are
gonna be quite different.
Also, it's gonna skid, it's gonna smear a
little bit rather than having these kind of
glassy fractures, like an oil paint film might.
Abstractsbybrian, nice name, writes on YouTube,
from the May live Q&A session.
"At 20 minutes 12 seconds, you talked about
painting Rothko with watered-down acrylics.
Couldn't you use the Golden High Flows."
So another question about a specific brand
and actually they're both Golden brands here,
another line of paints from Golden.
These are acrylic emulsion paints, High Flows
that really have a low consistency, so they're
very brushable.
Absolutely, try it.
That specific line didn't exist in Rothko
day but certainly when Rothko did paint a
lot with acrylics at the very end of his life,
he worked with a lot of water.
He really thinned them out quite radically.
The point was to make them more translucent
and to make them more flowable.
And this line, the High Flows by Golden, that's
exactly what those are meant to do.
They're actually not quite as translucent
as the paints that Rothko often worked with.
But I probably shouldn't say that because
some of Rothko's late abstract paintings in
acrylics are quite opaque, the black and gray
paintings.
So anyway, yes, absolutely mix and match.
I guarantee you, if those paints were available
to Rothko during his time, he would have at
least dabbled with them to try to find out
if there were some new creative pathways forward
in that material form.
Let's jump back into a live question from
D Brennan here on YouTube.
"I very much like Barnett Newman's zip style.
When using a painter's tape, paint often seeps
under the tape where it looks like it's firmly
fixed to the canvas.
How can the seepage be prevented?"
All right, so if you check out the Newman
video that we did a while back here, you'll
see that in paintings like Vir Heroicus Sublimis
painting around 1950 here in New York City,
that Newman was very aware of that too.
And sometimes, Newman actually liked that,
where the paint would wick under the tape
and have this kind of almost like flame-like
edges from where literally it's seeping under
the tape before peeling it off.
At other times, Newman had a really crisp
line.
So part of D Brennan's question here, how
do you do that, is really, it's the same tape
but this is actually kind of a, you know,
super simple idea.
If you take the tape and right before you
paint it, really rub it and make sure that
adhesive tape is really, really firmly bound
to the canvas, that actually helps a lot.
Because as soon as you're done rubbing, remember
the canvas is bumpy, so it's gonna start opening
up a little bit and the paint can seep under.
So if you prime your canvas and you sand that
priming so it's not bumpy, that's gonna help
prevent that seepage.
And also, if you really maintain the adhesive
bond, that's gonna help as well.
And the paint that you apply over it, the
lower viscosity that is, the more flowable,
the more watery, the more solvent rich or
medium rich it is, the more of a tendency
to have capillary action and to seep under
that tape.
In other words, if you use a stiff paint,
a thick paint which Newman often did as well,
that has very little flowability and you just
paint over that edge of the masking tape,
it's really not gonna have a tendency to run
whatsoever.
So a couple of different approaches here and
certainly if you combine them, it's very possible
to have a super crisp line as many minimalist
artists coming after Newsman's time really
did.
Message and question from Wilbaspiny, this
comes from the Kusama video as well.
"I'm amazed in how just almost the same strokes
comes out with an amazing painting.
I like the way you talk through the process
of painting.
It is easy to understand the whole process."
Glad to hear that.
Question, "I have not yet worked with oil
but I did research and it said that it is
toxic, and that you would have to have air
flowing through your room to avoid the toxicity.
How do you work with oil when you are in a
closed area or not?"
Important question.
As a matter of fact, as we move forward in
20th and 21st centuries here in art education
and studio art education, the safety concerns
are becoming much more important.
Now in the grand scheme of things, there's
a whole lot of awful chemistry out there that
we're breathing and sometimes eating every
day.
If you're dealing with turpentine, everyone's
got different sensitivities to it but turpentine,
let's call it a medium-strength solvent, is
not one of these awful things that's out there.
But if you're exposing it to yourself day
after day after day in a closed environment,
it's a really bad idea as many older painters
can tell you, who did that for decades
So working with an open window, working in
a big room, working with a fan just to speed
the evaporation and really have more air in
the room so you're not breathing a density
of it, is a good idea.
Closing the containers, don't leave it open
for the whole time.
You need to use it, open it, close it again,
put a lid back on, is a good idea.
A better idea, I think, the one that I use...
all of those things are good ideas, but if
you're still inside even if you do have a
window and you even if you do have a fan in
the background, what have you, turpentine
although I happen to love that material and
I happen to love the smell although some people,
it drives them crazy, it's still a little
stronger than you probably need.
So I recommend odorless mineral spirits, that's
OMS.
Sometimes, you can find at a hardware store,
sometimes you need to go to paint store like
a Benjamin Moore here in the States and I'm
sure in whatever country you have something
similar.
Odorless mineral spirits is still an organic
solvent, it's still gonna dissolve oil, but
it has a very, very low toxicity, much lower
than turpentine, by the way.
Is it good for you?
Should you drink it?
No.
But relative to some of the things that are
around us every day in Manhattan, it's something
that is really quite tolerable in my opinion
anyway.
Still, a good idea to keep the container closed,
still a good idea to have the window open
and fans on etc.
The only downside to that is that because
it's a much weaker solvent than turpentine,
it's gonna dissolve your paint, it's gonna
thin your paintless effectively, more slowly.
It's gonna be a little more difficult to clean
your brushes at the end your studio session.
But for me, it's worth it.
As someone who loves painting and hopefully,
I'll be doing this my entire life, I don't
wanna be one of those aging painters who looks
back and says, "Oh man, I wish I didn't use
that material in all those decades."
So I think for most painting techniques, you
might not even notice the difference and it's
really okay, to swap, to kind of downgrade
the strength of your solvent.
Here we have another live question from Yasmin
Mackey[SP] here on YouTube.
"What draws the line between an abstract painting
and a painting that is the result of applying
color to canvas without a clear intent or
rule?"
Interesting question.
Harold Rosenberg, a great poet and art critic
here in New York City of the abstract expressionists,
worried something similar.
He worried what if these paintings are just
read as in his words, "apocalyptic wallpaper?"
Write that down, a critical phrase, apocalyptic
wallpaper, right?
In other words, what if it's just not important?
What if people don't see it?
What if this language is empty somehow and
it's just a decoration and maybe it's just
huge and apocalyptic?
Well, now we know that a large part of this
is about the artist intentions, but at least
that amount of importance has to be given
to the viewer or the reader, as many of you
have commented in some of these videos.
Of course, everyone has their own opinion
and of course, everyone has their own intentions
as an artist.
You know, the more thought that goes into
it, the more aesthetic beauty, or aesthetic
ugliness can be equally interesting, that
is achieved by the artist, the less of a concern
this can be as an artist, or as a viewer the
more you can understand these languages.
But let's be frank and I think Yasmin is probably
gonna agree with me here.
Sometimes when you come into abstract paintings
without studying them, without reading books
about them, or watching videos, they can be
a little off-putting.
What's the point here?
I just see some flat colors.
It seems random.
Is this really art?
What's so interesting about this?
And personally, I think that's a problem with
some of the artists in this movement because
it is difficult.
When you look at a Renaissance painting, almost
anyone can tell you, "Ooh, that's really good...
that looks really lifelike, that's an amazing
painting," or "Uh, that looks kind of clumsy,
look at that chin.
It's all lumpy and awkward.
Not a great painter."
Okay?
So there is something, there is a more pressing
need to understand the artist intentions or
to focus on the materiality, to focus on the
process, to understand what an artist is trying
to convey to help the reader, the viewer really
appreciate this stuff.
So what's the difference?
I turn back that question back on you, that's
really up to you.
With some education, if it's a really good
artist, I think you're gonna answer that question
yourself.
Now, maybe the artist, to be frank, isn't
that interesting, and you educate yourself
and you don't find anything interesting.
And by the way, that is absolutely your prerogative.
Perhaps, some of you felt that way about some
of the painters that we've explored in the
videos.
But really to be honest, this question is
part of the reason why I'm so excited about
making these videos because I love teaching
abstract art.
I love turning on light bulbs.
Of course, not all of them are gonna turn
on because we have different tastes.
We come from, you know, different backgrounds
and experiences but if I can help you understand
something, an artist that I think is really
important, really interesting, really beautiful
or really interestingly ugly, then as a teacher
that's something that really gets me quite
excited.
So Yasmin, I hope at least some of these artists,
you're answering that question for yourself.
From the trailer we did last week, AreaECC[SP],
I'm not sure where that is, asks, "Would you
be able to discuss personal art style and
how to fully develop one?"
Yeah, we could do an MFA on this and spend
a couple years dealing with this one.
Quick answer, let's see, I think really finding
your own voice is the most important thing.
How to do that?
Well, you already have it in there.
You just gotta pull it out.
It's not easy, right?
You know, some of these things that seem fun,
that seem easy, are actually some of the most
difficult things to do.
It seems automatic.
I have a voice, why can't I find it, right?
Well, you need to cull and you need to carve
down and you need to really pursue this with
time and effort.
And, you know, if you're just hanging in the
studio on Sunday afternoons, you're probably
not gonna get there, to be honest.
You know, for those of you out there who are
quite serious about this and who really want
to achieve something real in painting or sculpture
or whatever medium you pursue, it's hard to
do this as a hobby.
It's almost impossible to do this as a hobby.
So working with, you know, the artists that
you admire, really honing your craft about
what materials, what techniques are necessary,
what's most interesting to you and then repetition,
repetition, repetition, repetition, just like
a violin player.
A lot of artists don't do enough of that these
days, visual artists I should say.
And communication.
You know, you can't paint in a void.
Very few artists in history have been totally
isolated and really been able to maximize
their own talents.
Why?
It's the same thing I was talking about before.
It's important to criticize yourself and to
risk yourself and to jeopardize your own ideas.
This is why going to school is a good idea.
This is why taking a painting class and being
with not only a professor but other colleagues
is a really good idea, to open yourself up
to criticism.
Other ideas that you haven't thought of that
are really useful for improving your own.
I know that's only a quick answer but it's
a really big question, so it's a start anyway.
Charles Peters asks, "What should my strategy
be as a 19-year-old with an infinite ambition
and work ethic to impact the art world?"
Charles, I like you already.
Well, kind of the same or a similar question
to what we're discussing here.
Impact the art world, I assume you're talking
about, you know, changing art history.
That's what great artists want to do, right?
Of course, there's other ways to impact the
art world.
You can become a teacher, you can become a
dealer and sell paintings, or promote an artist
that you really believe in, or become an artist
historian and really write about an artist,
understand an artist in a way that hasn't
been done before.
But I think you're probably talking about,
as an artist, put the hours in, is the most
important thing.
You know, I can't quite explain this but in
today's art world, we don't really have virtuoso
painters.
There's some really good technical painters
out there but, you know, if you start thinking
about classical music, thankfully we have
scores of virtuoso pianists and violin players
and cellist, etc.
Why?
Because they practice for hours and hours
and hours a day.
If you do that as a painter, you will get
much, much better, and I'm not just talking
about your hand although, for certain kinda
paintings, that's obviously really important,
but I'm also talking about your eye and I
hope one of the things you got from the de
Kooning video is that so much of why de Kooning
paintings are great, greater than mine obviously,
is because de Kooning had a wonderful eye.
Why did he have a wonderful eye?
Okay, may be part of that he's born with,
I don't really know him, maybe no one can
really answer that question.
But de Kooning studied the hell out of art
history.
De Kooning loved European old master painting
just as much as he's loved Piet Mondriaan.
And he was a great synthesizer.
He understood all of that, and he studied
all these different art histories.
And the way that he was able to develop his
own voice is because he made art history work
for him.
He understood his own role in art history.
He understood how these different painterly
approaches and different sets of aesthetics
were connected.
This is how you become really mature as an
artist.
And if you do that, I can't think of any better
way to maximize your chances in Charles's
words here, impacting the art world or really
changing art history.
Charles, good luck to you.
Jessica Naishlinglee[SP] asks on the part
two de Kooning video.
"Love the series."
Thanks, Jessica.
As a painter focuses mainly in realism and
surrealism, I've struggled with appreciating
abstraction, particularly the post-war stuff
we learned about at art school.
Seeing it explained in this way really gives
me a much better understanding of it, really
looking forward to more."
Okay, no question, I appreciate that and,
you know, I really love hearing this stuff
because of course, not everyone is getting
this much out of the series, but I'm really
happy to know that in some cases, we're really
hitting our mark here.
And again, as I mentioned earlier, abstract
painting is challenging.
Cubism, a video that we're gonna launch pretty
soon here if I'm not mistaken, is also really
challenging.
It's difficult and probably the first time
you saw a cubist painting, you're at a loss
and you're drawing a blank.
Maybe, you still are right now.
So my goal here , of course, I'm trying to
make nice paintings too just like all of you
are, but my goal is to really open up these
paintings to your understanding and appreciation,
and it's nice to know that at least sometimes,
that's working out.
Oh, we have a live question here that I've
been neglecting.
Nicholas Nazmi writes, "I wonder if Corey's
ever considered a career in forgery?"
Well, to be frank, yes.
One of my first jobs, when I was in Italy
a long time ago, was working at a shop.
I was just making paintings and I was young
and naive and didn't know what I was doing.
And I hope that guy is not watching this video,
but I was making kind of 13th-century-looking
icon paintings.
And I loved it because I was studying art
conservation and egg tempera technique and
the right materials, and I was making these
little paintings, not really thinking about
where they were going in the world.
I think they were just sold to tourists and
I hope they were just sold to tourists.
Anyway, forgery will get you in jail pretty
quickly.
You might make a buck if you start googling
around but it's probably not a great idea.
And actually, the thought has crossed my mind,
I wonder if potential forgers are out there
watching these kind of videos, as conservators
talk more and more about how paintings get
made.
Of course, the bad guys are out there too
but it's not gonna get you far, I promise.
And anyway, I'm not gonna be one of them for
sure.
No disrespect but I think this guy has a strong
resemblance to the Drakester.
No disrespect taken, appreciate that.
Tony Yada writes, "Is it me or does he really
look like Sandor Clegane," I don't know if
that's how you say his name, "The Hound from
Game of Thrones," just different voice.
Now, I don't know who exactly that is but
people are snickering in the background here,
so I'm guessing that's not a compliment.
But I'm gonna have to google that guy when
I get home.
I'm not sure about this but Tony Yada, maybe
you're on my bad list and I'll get back to
you on that one.
Vin Diesel of the easel, now this one I can
get behind, that one I can run with, thanks.
Okay, let's move on to some of the requests
that we have here.
So the request in some of the comment sections
as well as down below, feel free to add to
it now.
Thinking about future directions for this
"In The Studio" series, there's been a lot
of great ideas and honestly, I wish I could
address all of them.
I'll just address a couple of them here.
Dojing[SP] writes, "I'm a big fan of the series,
your great art tutorial guide based on profound
art knowledge and techniques which to me is
so useful."
Really happy to hear that, thanks.
"How about Gerhard Richter next?
Gerhard Richter really one of the most important
living artist we have.
Richter would be an interesting video because
there's a lot of different Richter styles.
He makes abstract paintings, he makes figurative
paintings.
He's a self-taught, almost virtuoso oil painter.
I said there are no virtuoso painters out
there.
If I had to name one, maybe that's at the
top my list.
Richter's a really excellent technical painter.
So, hey, why don't we do three videos on Richter.
I think that'd be really interesting.
Paint like Basquiat, "You should do Basquiat."
Nice idea.
In fact, we've gotten a lot of interest in
Basquiat.
Basquiat, a really cool iconoclast artist,
really inventive, really synthetic about different
sources that he's pulling together here.
And technically, used basically everything
out there, really embraced Rauschenberg's
approach to find art anywhere and everywhere.
Basquiat started making art as a graffiti
writer, as a street artist, and then very
smoothly and really powerfully and effectively
shifted his language into easel painting convention,
but in a really unconventional way.
I think it's a great idea.
"Loving In The Studio, learning so much of
you on Klimt.
Gustav Klimt's materials and techniques would
be awesome.
I would love to learn how to achieve some
of his effects.
Klimt, going back to beginning of the 20th-century,
secessionists, really interesting, Klimt himself
dialed back to primitive European techniques
including old stuff like pastelia[SP] and
gilding techniques, scraffito scratching techniques
and really made some beautifully painted surfaces
and beautifully decorated surfaces.
I think that would be really interesting to
take on.
In fact, in doing so, you'd be learning a
lot about, you know, early Renaissance painting
as well since those are some of Klimt's most
useful sources.
"Do Hieronymus Bosch speaking of the Renaissance."
Yeah, sure, why don't we just have, you know,
a three-month-long live video and I'll just
be eating and sleeping and painting for month
after month.
I'm not sure if MoMA is gonna pay me for my
time for that one, but I'm up for it if you
are and let's do it.
"Love to see you take on Hans Hofmann, specifically
teaching his push and pull technique."
Jim Ellsbury here referring to Hans Hofmann,
one of the great educators and color theorists
of the 20th century.
Hoffman and his countryman, Yosef Albers,
both of those guys German artists and theorist,
both of them immigrated here to the United
States in the context of World War II.
Both of them, they continue to be really important
and really useful theorists, as well as painters
to painters like you, Jim Ellsbury and many
other of you I'm sure.
I think that would be a great one.
For me, personally, Hofmann is a much more
interesting thinker and seer than he is a
painter, just my two cents.
But I think in painting his style, you really
understand his aesthetics, his approach to
color and I think that continues to be really
useful for an extremely wide variety of other
painting techniques.
A bunch of Francis Bacon here, some Cy Twombly,
Basquiat again, Helen Frankenthaler.
You know, I really like a lot of these ideas,
and I hope that we can pursue a bunch of them
in the coming months.
So we're gonna wrap here.
Thanks again for your attention.
In case you have missed it, be sure to check
our last release.
That was the part two of the de Kooning video,
you can probably find it on the right of your
screen here, if I'm not mistaken.
Check back in the next couple weeks.
We will be releasing our next one.
In fact, I met one of my colleagues here and
saw some of that footage being edited.
That one, I can tell, you will be on cubism,
specifically the work of Georges Braque and
Pablo Picasso.
Some of the great innovators of the first
couple of decades of the 20th century.
That should be coming, I don't know, any way
in the next couple of weeks.
I did mention before that we'd be announcing
our next project that we're gonna start painting
but I lied actually.
We're not quite ready to do that.
The reason why is we take this really seriously
and we're doing a lot of research to make
sure that we're really making the best videos
that we can.
We almost decided on our next one but anyway,
I can tell you that by all means, all the
comments that I just mentioned and then some,
we're certainly taking into consideration,
except maybe not that Bosch one, sorry about
that.
Yeah, so if we didn't get to your question
today, sorry about that.
I will try to get to some in text.
Also, feel free to keep leaving those questions
down below and I promise I will get to them
next time we do a session like this.
So thanks for tuning in.
Keep questions coming.
If you like, click on subscribe down below
to make sure that you don't miss any of our
future releases.
And thanks, again for watching "IN THE STUDIO."
