Painting An Abstraction (1950)

Fishing boats are familiar and colorful sight along our coast and in the season there is an artist for nearly every boat and today I am among them getting ready to paint. Each artist can have many different reactions to the scene before him. When last on Cape Ann, I painted this same subject. This was the result. It attempted to give a description of boats, water and harbor with stress on reflections. Today, however, it might be interesting to take this same subject and utilize its planes and their movements. This means the distracting literal details will have to be left out. I'm able to show you now the more abstract picture that you will soon see painted. As I work, I'll try to think out loud. First of all, any painting must have height and width. These determine the shape of the picture's surface and can vary greatly as can depth, the third dimension. Depth can extend back for miles or it can be as shallow as a few feet or a few inches. Once the painter has chosen these dimensions, however, everything he paints must be contained within them. Obviously, he cannot move any object outside the lateral limits. It would be equally ridiculous to bring an object forward out of the picture box or to force one out through the back. An unbalanced placement is just as bad in depth as bad lateral arrangement. In a picture, objects themselves are usually spoken of as positive space. The intervals between them as negative space. An obvious way to get an effective distance is to make an object smaller. Again, we can achieve distance or depth by making the color of distant objects weaker and bluer. 400 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci said, "Distant things are bluer, paler, and less detailed." The background landscape of his Mona Lisa grows paler, bluer, and less detailed in a deep picture box setting. We are, in fact, so used to associating blue with distance that we will go along with Maurice Sterne, for example, when he uses a paler blue to place other elements behind a bright blue plate within the shallow depth of a still life. Another theory, Cezanne's, declared that an object which overlaps another must be in front of it, even though it be pale and blue. In Cezanne's Basket of Apples, a fold of the napkin, although it almost matches the background, comes this side of the bottle and the basket. Now, Now, us consider movement. These planes, when horizontal and parallel, or upright and parallel, are static. When they tilt, they become dynamic. A feeling of tension develops between them, which affects us as if the planes were repelling or attracting one another. It is these stresses painters speak of as movement. By folding paper, I can show you two receding planes. And now, two advancing planes. In our harbor scene, the line of the distant shore marks the intersection of two planes. These advance toward us. Moreover, they tilt to the left, giving us a feeling of instability. A feeling such as we have when we see a coffee cup on the side of its saucer. So, I use a plane suggested by the post on the left to hold back this drift to that side. This is how our first tension between planes is developed. The boat and its reflection are next put in. To be balanced later by something in the foreground. It might be a figure, a fisherman, or another painter at work. Other planes are placed, suggested by clouds, by distant boats, or buildings. In his planning, the artist keeps in mind the problem of color relationships as well as planes. He is guided by instinct rather than by any set of rules, and his only way of testing his decisions is to ask himself how he likes the final result. The boats on the right were unrequited. So, we now add the figure that balances them. Let me show you how I hope to balance the boat with this foreground figure. The clouds, distant buildings, and two distant boats bear the same relationship to the plane on the right. And because I included the wharf and buildings on the right, I need an area near the post on the left. With the sketch completed, we can now consider color relationships. The artist's taste in color is sufficient reason for him to select or change nature's colors. Since my expressed purpose does not require me to copy nature, it amuses me to paint cloud planes as floating rectangles. The extension of planes into the sky in Lyonel Feininger's Dunes at Eventide is a good example of sky treatment. The sky itself can be considered in several ways as a horizontal or as a vertical. It can be represented as a cylinder or as a dome. And all are truthful. By now, there have developed questions of balance and color areas as well as plane movements beyond the waterfront scene itself. In Gloucester Harbor View, there's a reddish building in the distance. And if you look closely, you will see two red-orange dories atop the central boat. They must be balanced by planes or spots in various parts of the picture. The figure in the foreground. Perhaps a spot there. And maybe another on the right. We enjoy color more if it is presented as just color, rather than if shown precisely as it occurs in nature. And we may use outlines to emphasize the relationships of color, as well as to make the edge of a plane advance. What we look at thus consists of spots of colors, balanced in depth and in quantity. So, in the harbor scene, nature is becoming less important and the relationships of parts of my abstraction more organized. The bluer areas or planes do not always have to be distant. The nearby dock overlaps other planes, like sky and water, and comes to the front of the picture box, even although it is blue, just as the water established the greatest depth in the picture. My earlier picture unquestionably resembled the scene more closely. It was a literary expression, and I meant it to speak of harbors, fishing boats, lapping water, the smell of the sea, and hovering gulls. But such preoccupation with subject matter would prevent you from seeing how planes may move and colors balance within the volume of the picture. And you will remember that in three dimensions was our purpose in painting this abstraction with planes.