Michael Newberry: Innovation in Art

On October 6th, 2003 The Foundation for the Advancement of Art, Founder Michael Newberry, presented this conference at New York's Pierre Hotel.

Transcript via voice to text:

Outline

Art innovation and creativity with examples from living artists.

• Michael Newberry discusses innovations in art with examples from living artists.

Art styles, from realism to abstract and back, with a focus on color and light theory.

• The speaker discusses the influence of abstract art on contemporary realism, highlighting the use of triangles and rectangles in Tom Moore's painting.

• The speaker analyzes the use of color and light in Monet's painting, noting the contrast between the orange trees and blue sky, and the pinkish light in the distance.

Art, illusion, and reality through paintings.

• The speaker discusses Hieronymus Bosch's painting style as illustrative rather than surreal, highlighting the complexity of his ideas.

• The speaker compares Bryan Larsen's painting to Bosch and Magritte, noting their focus on reality and the playful tweaking of ideas.

Art techniques, color theory, and realism in various paintings and sculptures.

• The speaker discusses the use of color theory and composition in various paintings, highlighting the differences between realistic and abstract styles.

• The speaker praises Martine's sculpture for its innovative use of bold, abstract shapes while maintaining a high level of realism.

Stephen Hicks: “I have the pleasure of introducing our first speaker today. Michael Newberry is an artist, esthetic critic, and founder of the Foundation for the Advancement of Art. He has painted full-time and lived off his work since his first exhibition in Holland in 1980. He's had several exhibitions in Europe and the United States, and he has taught art at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He has written and lectured on esthetic issues, from critiquing Kant's concept of the sublime to offering radical alternatives to postmodernism. Please join me in welcoming Michael Newberry.”

Good afternoon. Pushing the envelope has fascinated original artists since the dawn of humankind. Discoveries of proportion, perspective, anatomy, color theory, and composition have inspired and excited them. They've also been excited by the content, creating god-like figures, people who are being enlightened by introspection, or inviting landscapes. Today, I'd like to show you just a few, just a couple of innovations made by living artists today. To give you a kind of guideline, I define innovation as the bridge between an artist's knowledge of earlier discoveries and the further reaches of their imagination.

This is an old master of still life by Zubaron, and it's very simple, realistically natural. One of the things to notice is that the upper half of the painting is a bit bland. We call it negative space; it's the space between the objects and the bar down below. Going across this kind of range and shooting into modern times with Mondrian, he sacrificed representationalism, or the subject matter, and focused on dividing up and composing the space of the surface of the canvas. You can see that the way he divides this up is very interesting. There's a lot of energy and movement going on across the board, from side to side, from top to bottom.

This is a contemporary painting by Tom Moore, and you can see that this is a kind of synergy of both these paintings. He's seen the influence of abstract artists and how they divide up the canvas, and he's interested also in realism. Every object in there is really deliberately placed. The side walls are very specific in their shapes. The shape of the open window, the open space where the window is pushed open, is very, very deliberate. There's a theme going on there of triangles and rectangles that are very well balanced. So, you're seeing the influence of abstract art on contemporary realism, looking at color and light theory. I'm just touching upon these very briefly, very simply, not exhaustively by any means.

This is a Vermeer painting. I'm sure it's probably in Delft. Here we've got a cold light and cold shadow. In color theory, it's very nice for creating light, very atmospheric light, but it's not very interesting as far as color goes. Then we come to a Monet, which obviously tries to create a lot more with light and color. That's coming through here with the orange trees contrasted with the blue sky, and we've got a kind of pinkish light going on in the distance. That's quite an innovation as far as daylight goes, in contrast to the Vermeer painting.

Here we come to a Rothko where what they're trying to do is, again, get rid of realism and subject matter, and focus on just, in this case, color. For many people who are sensitive, when they look at a Rothko, they'll actually feel emotions attributed by the color. By looking just at the color, they'll actually be able to sense certain feelings.

This is a contemporary Rudikowski, and he has synergized all of these paintings—the realism of the Vermeer, the color field of Rothko, the feeling of the Impressionists—to create a whole new way of looking at sky painting, landscape paintings. This is, I think, a magnificent innovation by a contemporary artist.

This one's a little harder to talk about: illustration of ideas. Some artists in the history of art are known more for their subject matter than for their ability to paint really well. I don't think Bosch is a great painter; I think he's a great illustrator of ideas. It's a little too complex to go into now, because you deal with vibration of the paint, hierarchy of lights and darks, and those kinds of things. Here you got a painting—a detail from a triptych. This is the hell version. It's chaotic, crazy, and disjointed, with a lot of fascinating things going on that represent hell. The triptych closes, and this is the front of the triptych. What's interesting is, you see the universe disclosed in a bubble.

Now, this is a great illustration in the same category as Bosch. I don't think the painting-wise it's so interesting. The color of the drapes or the color of the floor, the lighting going on doesn't seem to be particularly strong; it's very indifferent. But here, it's obviously the idea. I don't know if you all can see this, but it's an easel with a canvas on it that disappears. It's a painting he did of the landscape, and he put it in such a way that it mirrors or you see straight through, it's transparent. He's making a little game, a little inflection game: what's real—the painting or the real landscape? You can go ad nauseam back and forth over that.

This is a painting by Brian Larson, and I think it's in the same tradition of Bosch and Magritte in the sense of being illustrative. But the idea is what matters. He's interested in reality, not in tweaking it in a surreal manner. Here's a new version of a content of a woman who is obviously doing what she wants to do in life, to be an astronaut. She's floating, so she's ascending in space, but it's natural, not surrealistic or mystical because she's an astronaut in space. He's playing with the ideas of ascension, career, contemporary themes, and all these things to illustrate that.

This is a Rembrandt painting, "The Blinding of Samson." Here we have a very radical composition with a lot of diagonals. It's a very violent composition with strong diagonals and high contrast of light and dark. The subject matter under the blinding of Samson combines the technical aspects of composition and lighting. One thing here, though, is that it is kind of black and white; there's very little in terms of color theory.

Here's a Van Gogh, one of my favorite Van Goghs. He has this golden light, contrasting it with a lot more color than in the Rembrandt painting, with the blues. Everything here is inviting. It's inviting to go and take a walk out into the blue skies. It's crisp, cool, blue, brilliant. It's like you've gone for a nice walk in France, and there is this brilliantly lit cafe with these golden colors, and you want to go in there and have something like a liqueur and coffee. It's very inviting. He's using the color of gold and orange to symbolize inviting people to come in. He set it up that way.

This is one of my paintings. It's more realistic than the Van Gogh, using more the color theory of the Van Gogh than the color theory of Rembrandt. We're looking to integrate color theory with realism. This is two lovers after they made love, capturing the idea of radiance, the afterglow of making love. So, I used the light to integrate with that.

I'll pop into sculpture. This is a Henry Moore. The top one's a Henry Moore, focusing our attention less on realism and more on form. It's the same thing with compositions; they're abstracted, focusing on the abstract composition. Here he's going towards an abstraction. The next one is David Smith, going into complete abstraction. Notice how these tubes, the legs, are on diagonals, making triangular shapes. There are triangular shapes everywhere in these two paintings.

Now we come to a contemporary piece, "The Praying Mantis" by Martine Vaugel. She'll be speaking shortly. You can see the influences of those other artists trying to get really bold, abstract shapes. Martine's sculpture is much bolder and more abstract in shape than even theirs. There's a lot more play, tweaking, and movement. At the same time, it's an amazing feat in realism, integrating that with anatomy and expression. It's an extremely innovative piece in the history of art.

Coming back to the content again, I love the idea, the concept of the sublime—not Kant's, but a kind of dictionary definition. Here we have early Egyptian sculpture, very formal and impersonal. Even though she's holding him, her hands look so abstract that they don't feel like they're really touching him. This is the sublimity of duty, of formality. Life is about being formal or fulfilling obligations; it's very stiff.

The famous Pieta by Michelangelo, content-wise, deals with beauty and sorrow. It's about death, a sublime work of art, but it deals with death as the ultimate content. I'm not saying everything Michelangelo did is about death; just using that for contrast. This contemporary piece by Stuart Mark Feldman from 1992 is also a sublime work of art. It has wonderful composition and form, and it's about life. We had the Egyptians' duty, Michelangelo's piece about death, and Feldman's piece offers a radical new way of looking at humanity. That's a contemporary masterpiece.

To sum up: Innovation is the bridge between an artist's knowledge of earlier discoveries and the further reaches of their imaginations. Thank you very much.