Plan Ahead

Check this out: Why the Nude? at the Art Students League of New York.

I found this while looking through my collected papers and postcards from Chelsea a couple of weeks ago, and I saw this image of Reclining Nude by Sharon Sprung. Compare and contrast to my painting, I Live Next to an Endless Party. The two paintings are almost exactly the same size (mine's a bit larger).

I don't want to say her painting's better, exactly, but it's certainly more. More what? Academic, traditional, technically accomplished, I guess. I want to say all these things without implying that there's anything inherently derogatory about them -- or anything inherently complimentary. Her painting is what I would have liked to paint, if I could have, which I can't, because I don't have the academic background. That said, I've transformed -- through a complex internal alchemical process -- my naivete into a virtue. My painting is more realistic, I think, in that it shows what's actually there, what you actually see, instead of the academic illusion we've all come to accept as "realistic" painting. The fact is, no human being has ever been as perfectly lit and posed as depicted in Sharon's work.

Of course, I'm wrong. Sort of. I mean, in the end, my naivete is not a virtue. I simply haven't had the training. I don't know if I want the training. When I start painting I'm aiming for that academic look, but I don't get there, and I'm not sure how much is because I don't want to and how much is because I just can't. And I don't know if I could, even if I did take the classes.

Anyway: The show and symposium sound really interesting. Why the nude? I ask myself that. A gallerist I showed my drawings to said they really loved my lines, and would like to see my lines applied to a different subject. I've given this a lot of thought and I still can't think of anything I'd rather draw than naked people. What should I draw? Fruit baskets? Sides of beef? Trees? To me, finally, all art is about human beings.