* * *

{JOURNAL / SKETCHBOOK.}

November 2, 2009. 12:10pm.

V. nervous to come here. I’ve seen you maybe one hundred times but this was my first intentional visit. So… who are you. Here we are… I get bits and pieces. Your fine eyebrow, your full lips, the dismal colors of the architectural wall behind you. The light changes subtly, as if the sun came out. Your jacket, your coat, is magnificent. One eye’s penetrating gaze, the other looks off, can’t be bothered, noble, elitist.

Bumble bees swarm on your hat.

I see a dark blue sash for the first time, now.

And below, what appears to be a wrinkle, a rip…

You are protected by glass and every so often, I glimpse a ghost of my own reflection. Well here’s how it will be for the next year, you and I.

I sit down on the bench, back and to the left.

Immediately the strong S shape, like this:

is more apparent. A cartoonish shape in a generally somber and regal world. Your eye catches me still, even over here.

The light changes, gets warmer, browner, you could be a comfortable painting in a comfortable study. Peachy hues warming your handsome face. Even the green background is emitting a yellow warmth.

I always thought the binding of the book was set against the table, but now I see it’s not so. It’s upright. With the sun coming through the muted skylight, your lips are the strangest shade of orange!

Impossibly orange.

It’s a detail that is so unlike the rest of the picture it threatens to take it out of its time.

As if Neo Rauch leaned over Bronzino’s shoulder just as he were choosing the paint color for the lips, and guided his hand to the Cadmium Orange. How about this, instead.

I don’t care for the gargoyles on the table and chair, although I know I’m supposed to.

I see yellow – the yellow door, wood-grain yellow, and then the edge of the book.

And of course the gold bees alighting your cap. And your sash.

There is a reprieve in all of that depressing green with the darker column to the left – it’s a blue, bluish gray, or maybe charcoal. The color of my dining room.

Everything so delicately balanced.

The way your hair tapers off by your ear, gets mussed under your hat.

It looks like there’s an eye-shape towards the bottom of your coat.

The rips and tears of your jacket are feathery,

tactile.

Will looking at you ever go beyond a series of imagined sensations?

November 2, 2009.

Crack. Hairline crack delicate fissure on wall.Doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason – not really consistent with the perspective of the door frame, looks like a decorative afterthought.

Recedes into the shadow of the door frame.

Then there’s a line about an inch above the door, and an indent to the left of your right cheek, what blemishes were original and what came with time?

There may be an earring on the gargoyle to the right.

Cracks along your pants, over your fingers bisecting each one at the joint.

I think that crack I spoke of came later – is that a highlight described in white paint or dimensionality?

2 parallel lines towards the top of the painting. Are those old ideas discarded?

I wonder how else this looked on the way to it becoming what it is. It is easy to imagine a straight trajectory from sketch to finished painting but in all likelihood, things were moved around, rearranged over and over.

Vertical aggravations on the canvas, like the beginning of cracks, before the actual split.

Left to right, 7 greens, grays, greiges:

I don’t count the door – that’s made of wood. Cracks float along the top, flit above the bees.

There’s a ghost of a shape, rounder, where the book ended up.

And what appears now as a slight bluish shadow on the top of his right hand, what was that?

I’m curious about the long gold beads on your sash/on your pants… are those to fasten it shut? As decoration, like the ones on your hat?

Things that look real:

Coat book

Collar hat

Things that look fake:

Table chair

Walls

Columns/frieze

Door

Things that look suggested:

Face

Hands

Ring

I wonder if this has been cleaned, like the Velazquez.

Names mentioned on placard:

Benedetto Varchi – historian

Laura Battiferri – poet

Among those in Bronzino’s “close circle of literary friends”

1:45pm.

November 20, 2009. 12:42pm.

Last week, I visited the restored Velazquez in Paintings Restoration several times, in order to accurately assess the color for a postcard we are working on. Velazquez Restored:

It has called into question my earlier comments abt color choices à after seeing the vast change that occurred in the Spanish painter’s portrait, I can no longer consider Bronzino to be the author of the Neo Rauch lips, but instead, time itself. Now I look at the young man and project a certain dullness to his eyes, shoddiness to his coat, a depression and murkiness that has set into the background, see a layer of varnish, a thick slab of glass, and feel I could be shocked by the potential brightness of the original. Maybe that’s overstating it, but I do think of the Sistine Chapel.

There is a small light in his eyes, but could it have been brighter before, numbed over by 400 years of waiting, patiently? Possible.

Today’s Friday, there’s a tour group looking at the Raphael, a few works down.

What do we have today… The gargoyle on the armchair looks like a delectable piece of milk chocolate. I think he’s looking off to the side, in the same direction as the gaze of our young man.

I’m noticing the wood door today for no particular reason. I don’t like it, the color (again, questionable) doesn’t fit.

There are 2 lines along the top, I noted them before. Thinking abt Effie’s thesis, the idea of process & decision-making. It might be interesting to try to make this coat. Or to silhouette the figure’s shape.

The gargoyle on the left, carved into the table, begs to be touched. It’s unreal, impossibly carved from wood; it’s not the substance or the weight of wood but carved of wax or wet paper maché. I wonder what he used to model this – as a reference, I mean – a real table, or some form carved from wax or molded frm clay? I find myself drifting between the romantic fantasy of the picture’s subject to curiosity abt the artist’s technical process.

I look for one minute.

I see the edges of the wood the picture is painted on. Just the left and right edge. It’s almost as if the frame, with its glass, has been hung over the image, but not framed within it. It seems fake somehow that way.

This black coat, with the navy blue sash, could be something. I don’t feel inspired by anything – I did before, but I find myself freezing. The colors are so dull

I’ll make a list of colors.

Olive green, charcoal gray, kind of a smoky black, peachy skin tone, pale, almost salmon-like colors, blond wood, chocolate brown, dull gold, red-brown jewel stone, sickly red-purple, Prussian blue, light gray, another kind of dull olive for the hair. This coat has slashes and cloth-covered buttons. It has a heft and a weight and a texture that would make it divine to try on. I think about what happens psychologically and emotionally when I put on a heavy coat – the safety and comfort but also a sense of pride and power. A black coat, heavy, textured, with a fine blue sash. A blue sash adorned with long gold beads.

When I move back, to the left, and have a seat on the bench, I get a better sense of depth in the painting. There is a clearer sense that the background is behind him, rather than the feeling that he has been cut and pasted onto the scene, with no depth. I didn’t realize I felt this way until I stepped back. Still, now, it’s a little crowded. He’s sort of jammed between this ridiculous ugly table and a gargoyle-capped chair poised right at his backside. No way to live. He’s put in the corner, right in the crevice where the walls meet. Why is he jammed in that way, in this magnificent coat? I feel like the more I look at it the greater the sense that the space is collapsing like my friend said the other day, folding on itself like a burrito. Table, _______, column, wall, young man wall chair door. Jam, jam, jam, jam, jam.

The greatest sense of space is between his eyes. For all of the claustrophobia in the corner he’s been stuffed into, his view, one eye facing me and one eye off to the left, must be downright expansive.

(Attempt #1, 2, 3)

(Attempt #4)

Huh. This is the closest guess but it’s totally unscientific anyways so I’m not going to do it again.

So… what do we do with this handsome young man who’s been jammed into a corner with a bunch of furniture and a fabulous coat, whose lazy eye gives us the impression of near-omniscience?

Don’t know.

Collar, coat, buttons, sash.

Collar, coat buttons – braided buttons?

Sash with beads

In January, the literalness of my experience is still felt.

These are the images I gravitate towards during this time:

November 24, 2009. 12:30pm.

I’m only going to focus on the jacket today, because now I have an idea for this project.

It’s one of those moments that I am bringing something to the picture, not looking without an agenda. Have to look at structure, details, steal ideas. This is it.

Folded & frayed

Slash fabric

then fold & gather

buttons slashes frayed edges.

Can’t make out some of the details, if it’s

a button or a slash.

I’ve got the coat

anyways. It’s too hard

To see it – to study it.

It’s just a means to an

end. All the vitality

is in his face. Looking

rosier, peachier, orangier

than usual today. For some reason his right

eye looks cat-like today

maybe it’s from seeing

that stupid vampire movie the other day.

A girl standing next to me says to her friend, “You know how when you’re in a crowd, and all of a sudden you see your friend? It’s like, Hey! I know you. That’s what it’s like.”

Can’t disagree. Yesterday I was in the Uris Center, and my young man appeared on a screen in a row of famous Met heads. There he was, same as ever, serene, knowing, handsome, intimately, immediately present and as far away as you can imagine.

I winked at him.

His face looks orange-y and his left hand, and the right, holding the book, is pale, less warm. Everyone’s left for the moment but it’s Friday, very busy, and I don’t feel fully present or able to let go. Many people stop to take photos and weirdly, take photos of the placard to the right.

The belt of the skirt will definitely not be like the gargoyle heads. I hate gargoyle heads, as a rule. The model totem pole is really what’s driving that. The gargoyles are the link, but not the form. When I look at the coat there is a certain weight, bulk, heaviness that I’d like to replicate. I imagine it to be heavy, definitely lined, and I never really thought about how it smelled. He looks clean and kempt maybe it smells like a little incense-y or smoke-heavy. I can’t conjure any kind of smell at all. Yesterday, we looked at a Native American poncho, and that definitely had liveliness to it (well, it was real, actually there in the case, not a painted representation.)

This is alive in a different way – I feel the heaviness but can’t smell a thing. I can touch the rips and frays in the fabric but can barely see the details of how it’s been structured. Just like him – immediately present and impossible to reach.

12:50pm.

November 30, 2009. 12:30pm.

Hello! You are so handsome, and a little dead-looking today. After 2 weeks of battling it out with the public, I’ve decided Mondays are best. Crowds are hell if you’re trying to have a meaningful experience.

Eyes the color of milk chocolate. Skin equally rosy and gray. I wonder if there’s texture to the gold beads on your hat, or if that’s Bronzino’s way of capturing light.

Let’s take a look at shadows and light.

Let’s not. Just had an impromptu chat with John, one of the technicians for the European Paintings Dept., who pointed out that my young man’s eye had been cut out – thus the reason he lives behind glass. The lazy eye. I didn’t know this and now, questions abound. When did this happen? What was the motivation? I mentioned I couldn’t see the cut and John said they did a great job restoring the painting. For all the serenity that my young man exudes, I can’t help but project this act of violence onto the scene.

It’s like the man who was paralyzed for 23 years, unable to communicate the fact that he was wide awake, alert, not in a coma, but unable to move or respond.

John talked about the paint as well. The technique.

I can’t remember how he expressed it, but the essence was to discuss the brushwork – invisible.

It’s true, it’s modeled beautifully.

No trace of effort or force.

So today we have a split between absolute calm, and impulsive aggression.

It seems every week I discover a new dichotomy.

It may have been shadow & light this week, if not for the anecdote about my young man’s eye.

12:48pm.

December 5, 2009. 11:44am.

This is the first entry not in front of the painting. Just had to capture something – a frustration I feel at this painting – I think specifically the lack of color, energy, aliveness. The myopic worship of this young stranger, where a world beyond is only alluded to in the props that surround

him. Why

didn’t I choose a vast colorful painting not of this world, but the world beyond – stretch myself a little? What is it about this painting that allows for new discoveries each week, even in the midst of its colorlessness, its limited subject matter, its feeling, devoid of emotion?

I have been feeling like I’m not doing enough.

I’d like my visits to be more productive, more imaginative, with bigger, more colossal breakthroughs every week. There is a sense that I’d like to solve something, or have a series of epiphanies so great & relevant to my time & demographic that they are book-worthy.

Working on research methods has clarified this for me – the why – and I keep coming back to one central idea that gets more nuanced & more developed each time I return to it – the need (is there a

need?) for self-guided aesthetic experiences.

The value, the possibilities. What I’m feeling now are also, the limitations, the frustrations. But there is a sense of being more alive, a “going out of energy” as Maxine Greene calls it, when one has a central idea to return to and with which to frame all the day’s activities around. I see this as ‘like,’ I see this ‘in counterpoint to,’ I see this ‘having a conceptual relationship with’ – the idea of processing new information through this (process of) engagement, where everything all of a sudden potentially matters, and may bring unto focus in a different way this object of my attention.

Thinking about pre-test, baselines, etc. I wonder if this rabid search for aesthetic meaning & relevance is because of this self-directed exercise, or because of the implied deadline & structure to this self-directed exercise (completing my Masters degree). This may be a limitation.

Would I be visiting my man every week if I didn’t have the specter of failure before me?

I’ve been thinking about ways to expand this process, enlarge it, make it brain-explodingly inspirational.

So far I feel my visits are dry, perfunctory. They always yield a breakthrough, as I’ve noted (somewhat surprisingly), but I want more. There is the approach of making artwork – bring art supplies instead of a journal – bound to be frustrating and awkward in a gallery – or finding ways of bringing more to the situation (comparing, considering w/ others works of art). Thinking of Research Methods final project. How can that be woven in?