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A recent History Channel program titled Ancient Aliens suggested the Roman Catholic Church was hiding evidence in the Vatican archives that proves the visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima was not heaven-sent but a visitation of aliens from another planet. Curiously missing from the program was the miraculous visitation at Guadalupe, Mexico in which Our Lady left an image of herself on a cloak. Or was this image an alien in disguise? Art can be variously interpreted but when examined closely in real life rather than secondhand, the truth is revealed.

John Sanden claims that “a broad smile is almost always wrong in a portrait.” He gives three reasons. First, practicality. Painting from life rather than a photograph is the preferred method of professional portraiture, and it is too cumbersome for the model or subject to hold a smile for hours at a time. Second, “high art.” The standards for traditional portraiture are more “dignified” than photography and can only be represented by “gravitas,” a solemn or serious expression. Third, monetary value. If any of the great paintings by Leonardo, Rembrandt, or Sargent “featured a broad, toothy smile, the gavel price at Sotheby’s… would go down by many millions of dollars.”

Of course, the customer has the final word on how the artist is to represent the subject of a portrait. Centuries ago, it was mandatory that the artist portray the person as someone to be respected or feared, like a knight, king, or queen. Today, the artist must represent the person as likeable, a team player, or someone you would vote for. Sanden admonishes portrait artists who disregard the importance of tradition in their profession; they should not “void the timeless standards of the centuries” by bowing to the standards of photography. For Sanden, candid photographs have their place, but only on a table at the foot of the portrait painting on the wall.

First, painting solely from life is not necessary, and Sanden even recommends the use of photography in portrait painting. At a Portrait Institute convention many years ago, he demonstrated a homemade device that projected a slide of a model onto a translucent screen. The live portrait, he said, needed to sit only for getting skin tones and values correct, not the expression.

Second, “high art” is phony. The most likely reason why Sargent’s female subjects never smiled was because they were British and had bad teeth. There may have been a few with beautiful teeth, but, if the queen didn’t, the precedent was set. In America, the standard was set when George Washington didn’t smile for his portrait for fear of showing his wooden dentures. So much for historical tradition.

Third, monetary value is not necessarily the most important value. Sanden says the Mona Lisa’s smile is “enigmatic…and very hard to read.” Mysterious might be a better word, but current analysis of Lisa Gioconda’s skeletal remains might indicate otherwise, perhaps an ailment or just plain horsy teeth, a genetic characteristic which her descendants to this day retain.

A personal bond exits between artist and portrait. This bond is broken when the portrait is sold and displayed in a foreign setting. Strangers look at the portrait and react to it, some favorably and others unfavorably. If the portrait smiles, it does so for everyone. It is unchangeable, constant, and unable to react to the face of the other, a face which might even be violent. A smile is a risk that few artists are willing to take.

A smile is an expression of emotion, which is not only manifest in the mouth but all areas of the face. It is the face of joy and friendliness that is instantly understood. Research done by famed psychologist Paul Ekman defined a taxonomy of facial expressions that applies universally to all cultures and peoples. A smiling face is an indicator of a certain emotion. However, discrete smiles, like that shown on Leonardo’s famous portrait, are not readily understood. The viewer is at a loss as to what might have provoked the smile or what emotion the person might have.

We all have seen emoticons that convey emotion in electronic messages or the refrigerator magnet that lets you put a frame around the caricature you feel today. Thirty faces that display thirty human emotions. How do you feel today? Frustrated? Happy? Ashamed? Ecstatic? Bored? Impossible to say, since emotions are so transient. Thus, the portrait artist settles for a stoic face, one that is patient and enduring. However, to many viewers, such a face might easily be taken for a mug shot, which is also emotionless.

So, is a broad smile “always wrong in a portrait?” Had I painted Taipei Twins with a stoic face, she wouldn’t have conveyed the innocence and trust that I wanted to express. It’s a face that shows unqualified trust in the artist. It’s a smile that expresses the joy I felt in painting a beautiful face.

Despite what traditionalists might think, a broad smile in a portrait can be beautiful and, therefore, not always wrong.

Recently, an FAA artist from Italy won the "Mysterious Venice" contest with a painting that was nothing more than a copy of a photograph widely available on the Internet. The artist's only saving grace was that the photo was in the public domain. The painting showed little originality in composition or style, and other than some added flowers and brighter colors, it was exactly like the photo. The message it sent to other artists was simple. Copy exciting photos, because real art is not judged properly on FAA.

In light of this, I recommend that FAA adopt guidelines for judging artworks in its contests. Here are criteria used by the Central Brevard Art Association of which I am a member.

Art is subjective. Each individual will view a piece of art differently based on his or her own tastes and sensibilities. CBAA therefore suggests the following aspects be taken into consideration when selecting the pieces of art that will receive awards.

1. Originality: Is this artwork the same old scene or subject you’ve seen many times, or has the artist presented something unique?

2. Creativity: Has the artist taken a new approach, or used a new technique to present a familiar scene or subject?

3. Mastery: Does the artist appear to have mastered their medium? Have they stretched and used their medium to its greatest potential?

4. Emotional Content: Does the artwork make you “feel” something? Does it “talk” to you? Do you feel anger, calm, happiness, nostalgia, pride, curiosity, sadness, etc.? Some or all of these feelings may be evoked by viewing art. Has the artist conveyed a message to the viewer?

5. Substance: Are you drawn to the piece? Do you want to linger longer in front it?

At first this portrait looks ugly and amateurish. When you realize its size, however, you get the distinct impression that it is a very intentional work of art. One naturally asks, where is the rest of it? Only 6" x 9"? Where is her throne, her diamond necklace, her elegant dress? What you see here is all there is, a mini portrait, a pochade in terms of portraiture, not a majestic masterpiece. Having painted several portraits, I often get the urge to let the paint and brush take control. It’s a matter of freedom. Freud is showing that the Queen is no longer in charge, and he complements her by not being in charge of his brush and paint. He has said that he knows when a painting is done when it looks like it has been painted by someone else. The Queen has no real power, just as the artist defers his power to create a traditional painting. In a way it is a self-portrait, the unconscious mind of the painter taking control, the id being sublimated by the grotesque. Freud is really the court jester and, as such, can pull off such a stunt without losing his head. A perfect match between subject and artist, this is ironically a great portrait by a not-so-great artist. After all, the Queen said she liked it.
Freud: an infamous name that could not be denied, a name that lurked about the British art world with paintings bold and existential, a traitorous name seething with contempt for the unconscious and surreal, yet a name that refused to be knighted.

Hooray for its visual imagery, not its storyline. It’s typical of movie makers these days. If the plot stinks, wow them with visuals.

I detected a certain cynicism toward Indians in this movie. I haven’t read the book, but if the movie follows its plot closely, then it too is cynical. One minute the family is eating lamb curry with gusto at home, next they are vegetarians on board a Japanese freighter making enemies with the carnivorous crew.

An Indian family taking their zoo animals to Canada for sale? If they were so destitute for cash, why not sell them in India before they moved? End of plot for sure.

The ending makes one think that the genie escaped the movie sight unseen, like Ang Lee could only add a conspiracy at the end, because he hadn’t the creativity to work it into the storyline, there being too many hungry, vicious, and seasick animals in the way.

Artistically, and this is the main reason for this blog, is the sinister nature of the cinematography. It’s one thing to photograph animals and make animations of them; that’s straightforward and honest. The audience knows it’s animation. It’s another to make them look and behave in realistic ways, like the camera is doing all the work, when in fact they are not looking or behaving that way except with the aid of a computer. This is more cruelty to humans than to animals.

This is not a story that makes me believe in God, as Pi suggests. The audience is given two stories to choose from, one visual, the other verbal. We are supposed to pick the visual fantasy, for therein lies faith over the more reasonable verbal story. To be sure, faith transcends reason, but it is something that transcends stories as well. You see, Pi had many faiths at the beginning and even at the ending of the story—Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, all based on stories. But he forgot one big story—Buddhism—which originated in India but couldn’t survive there. This is the story that walked into the jungle without saying goodbye, because it didn’t acknowledge Allah. Had this story been told, Lee might have made a great movie. But who is he to step on Buddha’s toes?

AnnaJo Vahle’s painting, Splash Fishing, is a “cool capture,” even though it is not a photograph. The capturing is left to the heron, which does with its head what humans do with fancy fishing tackle. It dives headfirst into the water and goes beneath the flat surface. We see only brilliant colors, not water but paint. The artist cannot go beneath the surface and discover what the heron discovers. All she can do is live off the surface colors, which are fleeting and contradictory, colors which are either signs to the heron or obstructions to the artist.

We cannot see what the heron sees before it dives beneath the surface, because we are not in the picture; we are on the surface and detached from it, like the artist. We can only wonder how the heron can see underneath with so many swirling colors vibrating on the surface. Was the sign a swirl going in a different way, or did the heron actually see a shadow of a fish beneath the surface, the thing in-itself? And, we can only speculate whether it was successful in catching a life-sustaining fish. All we see is the moment of decision, the attack, which splashes away the colors and sends water into the air. We are left without food, without the satisfaction of knowing whether the heron was successful in its quest. This is the essence of painting and of life.

To be sure, this painting won first place at the 16th Annual Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival 2013, Titusville, Florida.

This portrait is not as subtle as the Mona Lisa, but is better than most people think. It contrasts the eyes (mental) and mouth (physical) realistically and seductively, but this makes it look overstated and not British. Great art is not as explicit and closed-minded. The blow-up seems to be a parody of Freud's mini portrait of the Queen. "Proper" portraits are always a tad smaller than life size. After all, this is the Duchess of Cambridge no less.

Art is a product of a world view. The same can be said of art appreciation. As the world changes, so does our view of the world. Art contests are a good example of this. Vote For Me was a recent FAA art contest that contained portraits which provoked emotion in the viewer. The overwhelming winner was a portrait of Abraham Lincoln titled “Lincoln’s Tear” by Cindy Anderson. If this contest were held 150 years ago, this portrait might have been laughed at. During the Civil War, Lincoln was not unanimously favored, especially by southerners and those who did business with the South. We need not be remembered that he was assassinated. Today, only the uneducated would question Lincoln’s resolve to save the Union. If there wasn’t a Civil War, there surely would have been a war between the United and Confederate States of America that might have ended differently, if the South had a few decades to fortify its independence.

"Once you vote black, you never go back." So says a 2012 Democrat campaign button. But does this mean you won't go back to white, or back to black? Whichever it may be, the slogan suggests that one should vote for the candidate who will provide the most pleasure. Reminds me of a passage from Mark Twain, "You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."

In a film titled “Richard T. Scott—Painted Philosophy,” (YouTube) Scott refers to Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave as the inspiration for this artwork. Actually, the allegory was written by Plato in Book VII of The Republic and Socrates was the imaginary narrator of the dialogue. Plato thought that art was illusory and based solely upon appearances, like the shadows on the cave wall. He wrote, “Painting works far away from truth…and makes bosom friends with that part in us which is far away from wisdom for no healthy and true end.” So why does Scott hold him in such high esteem?

Scott titles his painting “The Sophist.” If I understand him correctly, the title refers to the man standing in the middle of the canvas, a man who, because he ignores the background—the rocket launching into the sky, the impending storm on the horizon—is a sophist, a person whose ego, as expressed in rhetoric and not logic, overpowers his reason.

For the sophist, logic is true only in itself, in the mind and not in the world in which we live. It leads to metaphysical and ethical conclusions that are contradictory and not convincing. At most, we can be persuaded that something is true, not convinced that it is so. Thus, he is able to look away from the contradictory event, a rocket taking off into a tornado. Maybe he’s a reporter covering the strange event or a weatherman braving the storm. Certainly, he’s not an artist, philosopher, or scientist recording all the phenomena with which to create or theorize.

The scene is highly imaginary, for a real sophist would not be pointing toward himself to persuade his audience. He would be pointing toward the horizon and be saying, "Look, people, the rocket will be destroyed," or, "Look, people, the rocket is going to make it." He takes his chances, which are 50/50 that he will become famous. It is contradictory, though, that the sophist has an audience, which would not be paying attention to him at all in such a case.

Sophistry has a derogatory implication and maybe Scott sees a lot of it in our society. But could this painting itself be an act of sophistry? The sophist looks curiously like Scott. Is he not convinced himself?

The painting is not convincing and tries to persuade us with its dark, foreboding tones, as if to say, “Look, Rembrandt painted it. It’s got to be great.” But we as viewers see all this, which makes it an interesting work of art, unlike most.

When “Last Dim Sum in Singapore” won entry in the 2010 All Florida Competition and Exhibition, Boca Raton Museum of Art, I was completely surprised because it depicted a city halfway around the world, as far away from Florida as you could get without leaving the planet. Maybe the juror wanted to show the international flavor of the exhibition, though only Florida artists were allowed to enter.

When I returned home after delivering the painting to the museum, I felt like I had lost a brother. I had never been so fond of a painting and didn't know what it was like to part with it. I imagined it hanging on a wall in that dark museum surrounded by the strangest things. You know, artworks.

When I saw the painting hanging in the most prominent place in the gallery and a photo of it used in the brochure to accompany the juror's statement, I was excited about winning a prize. After all, the juror, Linda Norden, had written, “I’m partial to direct, clear expression--painterly, structural, but also things that are hyper-real, as in some of the realist and surreal paintings and photos submitted.... I found myself being toughest on the photography, given the preponderance of photographic imagery these days, and how easy it is to manipulate images digitally."

What better judge could a painter like me have, an artist who uses plant oils, animal-hair brushes, and rough cotton canvas, imperfect tools from his own hands, not a computer? Well, so I thought. The best of show turned out to be an odd assortment of chairs displayed in a room somewhere outside the main gallery, a room that few visitors knew existed or even saw. I could understand Norden's problem with making aesthetic judgments in an era when aesthetics is so diverse and trendy, but when she stated, "I'm also looking for work that's arousing, without relying on cheap shots," how could she have picked such a work that most art lovers would call a “cheap shot?”

"I want to be excited or surprised or moved or made to laugh," she stated. Well, I'm sure everyone who attended was just that. And I wonder where all those ugly chairs went. My Last Dim Sum is back home where it should be.

Artist statements often amuse me, especially those written with philosophical jargon. They might impress art dealers and dilettantes, but not philosophers and art historians. Deenesh Ghyczy’s intention, for example, “is to depict figures that stand beyond the cause of everyday life…to frame past, future and the acutely present on canvas…perception is in equal measure directed inwards at the mind capable of transcending linear time. Streams of consciousness appear to be channeled and frozen in the recurrent motif of fragmented, disintegrating figures.”

Given a name like Deenesh Ghyczy, I suppose one has the right to speak philosophically, but when you look at his paintings you see duplicate portraits stacked alongside one another, usually receding into space left to right (to give perspective and interest) with marked decreases in solidity (or increases in diffuseness). I do not see the past or future in any of these figures, nor a stream of consciousness in the subject’s mind or the artist’s.

Albert Einstein once said, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” It seems Ghyczy would have everything happen at once on his canvases.

These artworks mimic cinema and subvert the real meaning of painting. The challenge of two dimensional art is to capture an intriguing moment, to suspend action for an instant, to show the power of origination or accomplishment. Painting is fundamentally a static medium and is used to greatest effect when the figures or subjects in the scene are poised at some moment in time, whether anticipatory or consequential. Simply put, the past and future cannot be present in an extant canvas and neither in a single frame of a movie. Rene Magritte showed this with his profound painting “Man with Newspaper,” which depicts four identical rooms with only one difference—a man reads a newspaper in one room and only one room. Of it, he said, “Visible images conceal nothing.” There might be a parallel universe existing somewhere where the man reads a newspaper in four rooms at once on Magritte’s canvas, but never in our universe.

Philosopher and self-taught artist Georges Mathieu lived inside his art, splashed and texted color onto canvas, not on the floor, living the battle inside his art, straight up, not bent over like a drunk. His art was the text and he the context. Deconstruction twenty years before his time. Ninety-one years of life says something about his artwork, as well as the glorious medium of oil.

Yesterday, I saw his pictures in Life magazine, the same ones I saw yesterday, 1952 I think, camouflaged soldier shooting at the enemy hiding in the bush. VC or NVA or something evil like that.

Would the Twin Towers still be standing if federal air marshals were flying on September 11, 2001? Get Lost in the Blue Room and find out.

Harold Stevenson painted Sal Mineo as The New Adam in 1962. It is considered by many art critics to be the “great American nude,” even though it was born in Paris. I consider it to be the great American dinosaur.

Sal Mineo was only 24 and already descending from the height of his fame. He never became the new James Dean, just as the painting never became the new Adam. The artwork is hardly mentioned in art history books, but holds a place in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The usual interpretation is that it is a representation of homoeroticism.

It is composed of nine sections eight feet high and 39 feet long. It is impossible to view all at once, even at a distance. You can’t get far enough away from it to see it altogether. It is often shown bent in the middle at 90 degrees and covering two walls. Stevenson intended to cover all four walls of a room, leaving no exit for the viewer.

He painted The New Adam for a pop-art show at the Guggenheim in 1962, but when the curator saw it in the raw, rejected it, because it was too large and stark. To be sure, it popped as an in-your-face proclamation on gay freedom, but Stevenson didn’t know that Sal Mineo was a famous gay actor when he painted him. Mineo was supposedly a substitute for someone else who was unavailable. His hand covers his face, which might be hiding the artist’s inability to paint a good portrait, or deference to the friend he wanted to paint in the first place.

The size of the work works against itself. It shows only the torso of Mineo’s body. This suggests the freedom possessed by the new Adam, the inability to be captured totally, least of all by paint and canvas and the museum it hangs in. The main parts are there in full glory, and his all-important hands, obviously belonging to Adam himself and no one else, though the visual connection is not made. The hands are mirror images and reversals of the ones painted by Michelangelo in the Creation of Adam. This is not the instant of creation, but one of narcissism and denial, not only of the face but of the body.

Our understanding of the body as a being-in-the-world depends upon our perception of the body’s horizons, its relationship to objects around it. The philosopher Sartre posed the illustration of a baby who crawls off a plank, because he does not perceive empty space at the edge. The New Adam denies our knowledge of his body, not only because we cannot perceive and master its size, but because the body is cut off at the edges. We cannot walk to the edge of the plank and experience our being. Adam creates himself and we are not invited. “I exist my body!” (Sartre). Even inside you, I exist my body, which can never create another body.

But isn’t this true of all two-dimensional paintings on canvas, that the objects they depict cannot be perceived fully and really but only imaginatively? Yes, but this is the beauty of art, that it allows us to perceive two dimensional images as three dimensional objects. It exalts our powers of perception and understanding. Cezanne, Picasso, and Matisse made a point of showing their images fully and completely on canvas, and not hiding any aspects from the viewer. This was precisely the meaning of cubism, fauvism, surrealism, and even pop art. It can be said that multiplicity, as in the case of Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, is a greater statement of denial, for though the artist puts everything on the table, the viewer cannot really know the full measure or being of the objects that exist on it.

Enormousness is not a sign that a new Adam has been born. Dinosaurs were enormous but became extinct 65 million years ago. Five-foot-eight Sal Mineo was probably the spitting image of Adam, but Stevenson didn’t know it.

John Howard Sanden, who painted the official portrait of George W. Bush, was hardly mentioned in news coverage of the unveiling at the White House. President Obama hosted the event, and it was primarily a media show to see how the two presidents would react in the same room with one another.

The Bush family chose Sanden because he is considered by many to be the country’s most eminent portrait artist, as well as being a close associate of Billy Graham. In addition, he is very handsome, has a pleasant manner, is meticulous, works clean and orderly, and can be trusted to produce a realistic and suitable work of art. And it didn’t hurt to have a handsome portrait of Jesus in his oeuvre.

I do not think the painting is a significant work of art, even though it begs attention. One would expect a more refined expression on the face of the president, but then, Bush was difficult to characterize or pin down, being a very successful politician. A great representation of his overconfident personality appears in the portrait printed on the cover of Time magazine, December 27, 2004.

The painting depicts Bush standing in the Oval Office with his right hand on the back of an antique armchair embroidered with an official seal. He seems to reach out for help, perhaps to balance himself. Over his right shoulder hangs a 1929 western painting, A Charge to Keep, by William Koerner. This is a fitting prop, for it is Bush’s favorite painting. On his left is a bookcase with three sets of books arranged by size and color, symbolic of his lack of erudition. But the president looks as he does today, not ten years ago when he actually stood tall as Commander in Chief fighting the war on terror. Does this convey Sanden’s battle with age also, the sad things that happens to handsomeness over time, the one thing they shared in common? Bush was born in 1946, Sanden in 1935.

Notice that Bush's left eye is larger than the right and appears to be looking in a different direction. (Search Google images for larger picture.) Is this artistic license or just the result of faulty vision (artist's and/or sitter's)? I doubt that the inspiration for this was Manet's Olympia, which has an entirely different purpose and meaning. It looks weird and not appropriate for this one-dimensional man.

The painting has all the elements of portraiture that Sanden professes. The only thing that seems odd is Bush’s face. It is not fresh and Sanden’s attempt at “premier coup” failed. I do not think this was intentional, since he has never to my knowledge attempted anything other than courtly portraits. But there is a chance that he was influenced by Freud’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth. (See my blog, Portrait of Queen Elizabeth…). If the portrait is an interpersonal statement between artist and subject, as I think Freud’s is, then maybe this painting has a meaning that reaches beyond the limits of the canvas. Otherwise, it is a blunder and we citizens didn’t get our money’s worth.

It is unfortunate that after such a distinguished career, Sanden should get the most prized commission of all and be unable to meet his own standard. Maybe it’s the subject, a president who ranks lowest in public opinion, a president who deserves a portrait just like himself.

It should be interesting to see who paints Obama's presidential portrait. Probably a con artist just like himself.

Fine Art America’s voting statistics appear to be great indicators of personal preferences in art. With over sixty new contests each week, themes run from the traditional (surrealism) to the ridiculous (dodo paintings). Could the voting results actually support previous findings about what kind of art people want? Komer and Melamid found, for instance, that “Everywhere the people want outdoor scenes, with wild animals, water, trees, and some people…but in general people hate gold and orange. They all hate the sharp angles and geometric patterns.”
FAA contests are designed to promote the economic interests of its members by exposing as much art as possible to dollars. It’s the same technique used by retail stores and grocery markets—exploit grazing habits rather than promote food for health. Dangle it in front of their faces and they’re bound to nibble.
So, how does an artist measure success, by how many contests s/he can enter to lead potential buyers to his or her portfolio? The system seems to blur the distinction between the wanted and the needed. Give them what they want, not what they need. After all, they are all adults.
My recent contest, GOTV (Get Out The Vote), was unsuccessful attracting both artists and voters. The results: 10 artists, 10 artworks, 14 votes. The intent was to get artists to submit their worst work of art and to get people to vote for it, a contest that would demonstrate the artist’s marketing skills rather than artistic talent. The winners were: Homunkulus by Vsevolod Poliohin (3 votes), Witches Wash Day by Jeffrey Koss (3 votes), and Mountain Scene by Merton Allen (2 votes). Had I actually gotten out the vote, an easy task since I needed only two friends to vote, my Striptych (2 votes), shown here, might have taken first place.

Why does this painting appeal when it defies the traditional rule of composition not to center prominent objects? Portrait artists normally center one eye along the vertical axis in order to add "life" and latent movement to the subject. But here, Betty's eye is dead center. Coordinates 0, 0. Nonetheless, Betty "sees" perfectly well. Her eyes are round and defy gravity, the forces that distort her face. Turn the image sideways and the distortion becomes evident. The rich lips are reminiscent of Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring," but the composition goes one step further, giving the viewer a “dog’s perspective” so common in contemporary art.

Have you noticed that they always set up in large, up-scale malls, where space is at a premium; and they hang paintings all over the walls from floor to ceiling? Don't they know that art lovers will travel many miles to see original artworks? For example, NudeNite in Orlando is usually held in a warehouse in an industrial area, yet it is always crowded. Artworks are displayed as in a museum, eye-level, freely spaced with good lighting. Proximity to a mall or affluent neighborhoods is not necessary, drives up membership fees and operation expenses, and limits membership to retirees who have disposable income to keep it afloat. You know, retirees that love decorative watercolors of flowers and wildlife.

Though selected to show at a major art museum in the U.S., Last Dim Sum in Singapore didn't even place in the top 120 works entered in Light, Space & Time CityScapes Art Competition, Feb 2012. It seems ironic that this exhibition gives numbered places to electronic images that don't exist in real places. It hasn’t a clue as to what light, space, and time are really all about. The images are visually amusing, but that’s as far as they go. It’s as though the primary criterion for winning is whether an image would look good on the cover of a national magazine. No courage shown on the part of the curators.

“Guns Stand Your Ground” contest winner is Tommy Anderson’s photo Model 1911-A1 with six votes. Six other photos of guns came in second with 3 votes each. Model 1911-A1 depicts a Colt 45 superimposed on a U.S. flag and draped with military dog tags. Protecting Americans in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, this venerable handgun deserves recognition as a symbol of our Second Amendment right to bear arms. But the artwork does not address the issues of responsibility that are raised by this contest. The right to bear arms is indispensable, but it doesn’t give one the right to break the law. The painting “To Smuggle” by Cliff Spohn is a work of art that deserves careful attention in this regard. Guns look legitimate in the foreground, but undisclosed on the horizon they become criminal. Guns are used by criminals to attack rights, by police to defend rights, and sometimes by politicians to undermine rights, e.g., Fast and Furious operation scandal. Artists should know that aesthetics is not a sine qua non for art.

Some artists create in order to hear people say, "How did you do that?" They are in league with pastry chefs. Other artists create to hear people say, "How did you come up with that idea?" They are in league with philosophers.

Recently, FAA sold a print, which looked just like Picasso's "The Old Guitarist." I asked the artist if she had permission to paint and sell the famous artwork, and she said, "I was told that when an artist dies and you do not claim the painting as his, it is alright to do a piece and sell it." Copyright laws are complex, but death does not necessarily end the copyright on an artist's works. Picasso's estate, for instance, is very much engaged in granting permissions and in profiting from the use of the late artist's imagery. It is the artist's responsibility to obtain permission to use another artist's work if it is still under copyright. The best source to find out is the Artists Rights Society (ARS), www.arsny.com.

Pablo Picasso painted this portrait of his mistress-muse (musestress), seventeen-year-old Marie-Therese Walter in 1935. She is a "jeune fille endormie," a young girl sleeping, supposedly after being loved by him. Or was it before? Can we tell by the painting? Is this a piece of sublimated pornography, a work of art, or both? One or two faces? Sleeping eye or smiling mouth? Open eye or open ear? Is blue ambiguous and red sincere? So it seems.

Merleau-Ponty says that the “prosaic line” reappears in Matisse but it is not a problem because the colors dominate. I suggest that Matisse outlined his objects in black because he wanted to demystify their “objectness” as mysteriously present on a flat, two-dimensional surface. The line acts as a border between objects; it sets them apart, individualizes them—the necessary consequence of the flat canvas. It also enhances the contours of objects, making them more volumetric without using traditional shading. It limits the horizon. One cannot go around the object to its side. Its aspects are limited to what one sees head-on. Thus, one comes closer to realizing the wholeness of its being. This is also the reason why Paul Cezanne confined his objects to the dimensions (limits) of the canvas. Things are not cut off at the edges. Everything points inward. The eye is not directed away from it suggesting unknowable aspects of the scene. He wanted to capture what it means to be. It is a very honest approach. In later paintings (those that affected the modernists most) there comes an absence of shadow. This still life of 1893 is a good example. Impressionists liked shadows, for in them they could show colors other than gray. But Cezanne denied his paintings shadows, for they would indicate a light source outside the frame of the canvas. Having no reference to an external light source, the painting becomes more self-referential, more alive within itself.

"August 9, 2008" won Best of Show in the Central Brevard Annual Show, November 2011, Heritage Isles, Viera, Florida. I didn't expect to win, because artworks with "meaning" are usually thought of as politically motivated, too subjective, or exploitive. But the judge went by the criteria established (see my blog on FAA Contests) and made an honest choice.

The annual Nude Nite Art Show in Orlando is not very selective. Almost anyone can get invited, since there is plenty of space and artworks run the gamut from pure kitsch to meaningful art. A vast majority of the works are photographic and these sell better because of the prices. The promoters offer a lifetime ticket for buying a work of art. My painting didn't sell, though I suspect few realized that it was a statement about the show itself as well as about the nude as a work of art. Consequently, I've changed the title from "Cheater" to "Artist Protects His Model."

The Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), wrote that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult with which to come to terms, offering instead a sanitized view of the world in which "all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions." This is true of 99% of the art in America where only 1% of the important questions are answered.

THE TRUE PORTRAIT

A portrait can be either the work of a skilled artisan or the pinnacle of artistic expression. It ranges in value from a few dollars for a carnival sketch to countless millions for the work of a Great Master. Few artists ever master the human face and figure, and they often resort to abstractions in style or the employment of unusual materials to be successful, falling into the same ambiguity of aesthetics that sentenced the abstract expressionists in the 1960s.

Modernism exploited artistic freedom, but to what end? The intent was to go beyond creating a mere likeness of a person, a representation of a person’s identity, which is the person often sought by the viewer, and to search for the subject under the identity, the person within. The unfortunate result was not the revelation of the inner self but the outer self, the person for and before the image of his or her self. It was the artist’s view and this transformation alienated. The problem that these views are of the same person has plagued philosophers for two-and-a-half millennia. It is this imperious desire to let the medium dictate—as if the paint itself were painting the canvas, forsaking the in-itself for the for-itself—that allows the abstract artist to prevail.

The true portrait is more than the bravado of the artist. In place of the external appearance of the person—his or her identity—the true portrait attains an identity wholly its own. It is the guarder of the image in the absence of the person, regardless of whether this absence is from distance or death. It is the presence not of the person, but of the person’s absence, and the portrait artist has the responsibility to reproduce a resemblance, with evoking a presence, in manifesting an image in which the person’s presence is felt and maintained, even beyond death. It is not a death mask or an imprint of death, but death at the very heart of life. It is the departure of the in-itself, the person’s inner self, the person’s “soul” from the pigmented plant oils spread on weaved cotton, the painting. The true portrait clarifies the person, creates a resemblance unadulterated by chance, shock, or amorality. As such, it is an absence of secular standing, a resemblance only of itself. In the absence of the person, it withdraws into itself and creates a presence that it puts before the viewer, a presence that is capable of an interiority solely due to the challenge of its exteriority, the talent of the artist. That a viewer can become intimate with a flat surface that has no real interiority reflects not an illusion but the nature of human existence itself—sameness (I) and otherness (me) in a single consciousness.

Online Gallery "Light, Space, and Time" features a January 2012 art exhibition called Seascapes in which my oil painting "Rounding the Mark" received special recognition, despite heavy competition from many traditional watercolors. The first-place painting exemplified the true meaning of the word watercolor. Transparent kitsch! My painting "My Father's Ashes" (shown here) wasn't even recognized, while "Rounding the Mark" placed 4th of 90, which leads me to believe the gallery operates on an "elegance first" prejudice. Anything thought provoking is buried at sea.