The time is now

one or two or three

or four or five or six

or seven or eight or

nine or ten, or eleven

or twelve o’clock, 

or some minutes after

or before the numbers

mentioned

                        
January 1, 1978

Happy New Year
Year of the Horse
Ronald is a horse 

 

Party at Kim Smith’s (Kermit Smith, intern at Performing Artservices).

Gertrude Stein reading (4th annual nonstop reading of The Making of Americans at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York)

This is rather a diary
but mostly a book for
writing in.

February
I bought this book in February. On February 14th Elizabeth Dangar telephoned. I was having Joe Kanon and Robin Straus for dinner, so I asked Elizabeth too. She was our mystery guest. Jane Yockel was here and so was Nora Sayre. Elizabeth is very beautiful, smart and alert. We had a great time Thursday February 16.
 

The week before, Geri Saint (Gerarda de Orleans-Borbón) bought some paintings of mine. She actually took one, paid for two (2) (Deem bracket). Now she has Home (1977) – she owns it.  Rennie (Airth) owns Modern Vermeer Interior (1977) and both paintings are at Geri’s home on C.P.W. (Central Park West). 

Nora Sayre tells me I am very much liked at MacDowell and they want me back anytime. (George Deem was a resident Fellow at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire in December 1977 and January 1978)

February 22 
Wednesday

Got up at 7:00 AM, caught the Metroliner to Baltimore. It is so efficient, that I was not allowed to write post cards -- the movement of the train would not allow it, and the train was always in movement. No stops lasting over one minute, I felt I was in Cologne, where trains go and come on the second.

Raoul Middleman met me, took me to lunch where we met an old man artist who had blue eye shadow on his eyelids. (Raoul Middleman, Painting Department Chair at the Maryland Institute College of Art from 1974-1978)
 

The lecture I gave was “How To Paint a Masterpiece,” and it worked very well. I met the art historian and a few more of the teachers. Lovely day. Back on Metroliner at 4:30 PM.

Green on Green is Green

February 23

Geri Saint and David Vaughan came to dinner. Geri’s main reason was to see some early stages of my painting.

David signed his book for me, “Frederick Ashton and his Ballets.” David Vaughan takes ballet class three times a week.
I wanted to show Geri the impasto parts of my painting, but we found there were none, and laughed.
 

 An Artist in his Studio (Vermeer)

The Painter’s Art

The model is Clio, with emblems of her sisters: Books of Polymnia and Euterpe. Mask, Thalia.

 
Since I got my hair cut
I am taller and have a
suspicious look.

 

Said to have been painted

in 1674, when Vermeer

was 42 years old.

After this painting Vermeer began painting with veils of glaze which is seen In Allegory of Faith.

In December, while on a Fellowship at MacDowell Colony, Peterborough New Hampshire, I came upon the thought of copying Vermeer’s Artist in His Studio as perfectly as possible. I have been copying Vermeers since 1964, but since 1972 I investigated Vermeer much more closely than ever I had expected to.

I was living in Italy, in Cortona, at that time, painting and living in Tuscany quite isolated from everything. Painting pictures has been my life since 1960, when I quit all other work. This finally led me to Italy where I was able to rent a farmhouse and work for seven years. 1970 – 1977.

Italy was available, I had found a house, and decided to stay because it answered my purposes, but at first it could have been anywhere in any countryside.
 

The first Vermeer I investigated closely was a composition (Three Women) employing three of Vermeer’s paintings: Woman Weighing Gold, Woman with Pearl Necklace, and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. Woman Weighing Gold, National Gallery, Washington D.C., Woman w/ Pearl Necklace, Berlin and Woman in Blue Reading a letter, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The three paintings have one woman in each, and I arranged them to be all in one room, using the architecture of two of the above-named paintings, Woman Weighing Gold and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter.  Each figure had to be re-drawn and re-measured to fit with one another. The Woman weighing gold being the central figure, while Woman in Blue was on the left & Woman with pearl necklace on the right. The main plot behind the painting was to render it as closely as I was able, using only raw umber and burnt umber. Burnt umber, being slightly more transparent, was used mostly for the basic under-painting. I was not so interested in using Vermeer’s technique as I was interested in painting the composition I had designed in many drawings all in brown earth tones, then glazing color over, as though it was a hand-tinted photograph. 
 

With this same technique, I eventually underpainted many more compositions arbitrarily using many Vermeer figures. Now I have determined each room or part of a room that Vermeer used.
 

In 1968  (1969-70) I painted a large canvas (An American Vermeer), now in the Indianapolis Museum, in which I used three of Vermeer’s compositions, but at that time my technique was much more direct. Direct, in that I painted with pre-mixed colors achieving the images with each color mixed and tested on the palette. After each color was tested for value, I applied it directly on the canvas with a brush. This is direct painting. A more immediate approach, which follows the illustration more than the technique.

March 6

Wichita

The plane stops at Chicago before it gets to Wichita. I had a chance to get off the plane and tried to find a postcard of the Chicago (Art) Institute, but there were none available. The clerk told me I should have gotten the card while I was in Chicago.

The flight on to Wichita was good. I sat with a woman Susan Frage from Amarillo, Texas. After Wichita the plane went on to Amarillo. Susan did not know much about art, but she had a friend in Chicago who collected prints, paintings of zebras.
 

Max Schaible met me at the airport in Wichita and drove me all around the city, even though it was after dark, we saw the Indian Museum, the 4th National Bank, some outdoor sculpture. (Max Schaible, Director of the Office of Information and Public Events at Wichita State University from 1970 to 1986). Then he took me to my hotel; suite 600. A strange room that can be got to by private entrance. We had some wine, and Max gave me some material on Wichita, a Duane Hanson catalogue, and the Arts magazine that was a Wichita special issue. Next day I was taken through the Wichita Art Museum, met the director, Jan van Edelmann. I was shown around by Mary Knecht who gave me a photo of the museum. Next Ulrich Museum, where I met the director, Martin Bush who was installing a show by Alice Neel. At lunch I met Don Schule, sculptor, Michelle Amateau (a.k.a Micaela Amato), an instructor, Mira Merriman, Chairperson of the History of Art Dept., a young painting major named Bob, John Boyd. We had lunch at “The Looking Glass.” Max picked up my tab.

 

 In Artist in his Studio, Vermeer drew and painted in his composition using raw umber and white. The undercoat was carefully fully realized dominantly with raw umber. Then, when the drawing was rendered, transparent white was used to begin the modeling of the objects and human figures.  After this had dried, a fuller mixture of ultramarine blue, raw umber and white, mixed together, making a general gray. No black is used in this painting. At that time, academic painters had no black for making gray, but (used) blue, raw umber and white, which becomes a much more lively gray in which glazing transparent films of color, such as raw sienna, turn into an atmosphere of general tones representing the air of space between the surface of the canvas and the illusion of the interior space in this composition.

Even though this composition was planned before the painting was ever started, many changes occurred during the final rendering. This can be seen in the texture of the paint.

There are doubts as to when the tapestry on the left side of the painting was painted. It could have been added much later, and used to cover up doubts as to how the perspective of the floor pattern was to be concluded.  I have made drawings that measure the one-point perspective use on the floor, and it does not work out mathematically. The red chair in the foreground was also added to block out the uncertainty of the floor pattern. This is not an inadequacy on the part of Vermeer. The tapestry is an invention in the end, not to cover up unsettled problems, but a masterful solving of the composition. The reason the eye goes into the room with such ease is owed to that tapestry because it comes so far forward towards the viewer.

The plot behind this composition is not unusual. It is merely an interior with a back wall, and a black and white tiled marble floor, also typical, that is rendered in a formal perspective arrangement that easily leads the eye into the room.

The technique of defining articles and textures is the first thing that differs this interior from similar interiors in other genre paintings of this time. With the use of varnish and stand oil as a medium, Vermeer is able to form amoeboid deposits by means of a sable brush that is overloaded, so that, when the paint is deposited, a stroke of paint doesn’t show so much as an area that is free form. (This is) because the load on the sable brush is mostly a mixture of the varnish/linseed oil medium that only tints the deposit of paint.  With Vermeer’s technique, it was not necessary to limit glazing to only transparent colors. Glazing with opaque colors is not unique to only Vermeer when Rubens was already familiar with over thinned opaque paint but Rubens used this paint as a wash. He also allowed the stroke of the brush to be obvious.

Another difference between the Flemish master, Rubens, and Vermeer, a Dutch Master, is the color. Rubens used an intense illustrative color, coloring each article in his painting as though tinting a photograph, using the local color to describe any article the way it appeared to be colored.

Vermeer, although coloring using local color, was constantly aware of depicting light and light reflections on textures and articles until a clear tinting of color became obliterated due to high-key glazed areas that brought forth a three-dimensional quality over the colored tint before the colored tint can register in the eye of the observer.  Any painted article from Vermeer’s interiors became stylized so that some articles are not recognizable unless they are associated with the commonly known articles that surround them. This observation can apply to most  representational paintings, but when a test is made by (comparing?) details of paintings a different conclusion is  (arrived at?) with Vermeer. There appears a ceramic glaze quality that makes one think that these details were not done with a human hand but some sort of heat process that fused the paint until it has a quality as (if) these deposits of glaze were seeking their own level, consequently their own form. 

Color is not what comes to mind when conjuring up a painting of Vermeer. Articles, forms, and texture appear first. Color afterwards. Black and white reproductions are satisfying at times even more than color because reproduction in color can easily flaw the effect. Reproduction, when it has been perfected to describe visual material to a certain limit to (limited?) value, cannot describe surface and transparent tones. . The final results of any printed reproduction (have) difficulty with transparency.

           
The technique by which Vermeer is able to achieve this out of focus appearance employs only commonly used materials found in any painter’s studio in the 20th century. Copal varnish or Damar varnish mixed with stand-oil,  turpentine at a certain proportion can make a translucent thick medium that can be applied with a soft sable flat (GD strikethrough) brush over the painted surface. This process is applied after the painting is realized. With Vermeer, finishing the painting is much more important than starting. All of the architecture of the painting has been concluded. The skilled modeling of painted articles has already been rendered. This final process is painted over the completely dried and perfected painting. The medium can be tinted with either a glazing color or an opaque color. Vermeer liked using whites as a glaze. White is not a glazing color and makes a dull film.

Ballet is a consistent energy. Modern dance is spastic.

Louisville, June 10

Arrived at Louisville. Fred (Merida) picked me up. We went to the motel, then to the Gallery (The Merida Gallery).

At 1:00 we went to the Speed Museum to do the lecture. No technician to run slides. Someone finally came; the lecture began late.

July 8 --  Saturday, 1978

If Saturday is July 8
Friday is July 7

Thursday is July 6

Wednesday July 5

Tuesday July 4

Monday July 3

Sunday July 2

Saturday July 1

This year, 1978 July 4 started on July 1, Saturday.

Benny Andrews said that if one can get through May 31 the rest of the year is smooth sailing. I am wondering about June 30, but not since July began.

On Saturday July 1, I worked in my studio and began a drawing on illustration board of Raffaello’s “School of Athens.” I got a crow quill pen and some sepia ink and began inking the drawing in as soon as it had been plotted out in pencil. I happen to have a very fine reproduction of a Botticelli drawing and thought my drawing would look best if it were similar. Although Botticelli’s drawing seems to be in conte crayon, both drawings are brown.
Sunday, July 2

In the evening I went to Jane Yockel’s for supper: Ronald, George, Beverly Emmons and Jane. Duck with kraut was served. I had a drink of scotch first and found that if one doesn’t drink scotch, much, it isn’t very interesting. We had grappa after dinner and it was surprisingly sweet and rather comforting. Beverly is special. She dances well, dresses well, and wears contact lenses.            
Monday, July 3

The telephone didn’t ring all day and I painted and drew and had a very good day. We must walk more.

Selma (George Deem’s sister Selma Deem Schulze) thinks Jean (her daughter) is mad with Laura (another daughter) because Laura did not telephone her, Jean, early enough for Jean and Mike to get to Louisville for a visit with me.  The truth is, I discouraged Jean and Mike when I heard a disappointed tone in Jean’s voice on the telephone that dreaded the 2-hour drive to Louisville from Bowling Green. It was I who told Jean that Laura and Ajax were spending the afternoon with me at the pool of my motel in Louisville, because I was off that day from any business. Actually Laura and Ajax telephoned to tell me they could not afford the time, because they were moving Tuesday to Memphis.

             
July 4 Tuesday

Lee Guilliatt calls it Independence Day. She and Essie (Borden) invited Ronald and me, David Vaughan and Essie to pose for a painting using four figures. I wore a whitish-blue shirt & jeans. I was on the left side of the painting. David wore a very dark blue shirt and dark blue cords. Essie was in a white loose shirt. Ronald wore a brown & white striped shirt, a yellow ochre vest and yellow ochre trousers  (khaki) (George Deem’s bracket).
 

Lee began by drawing, she draws very well. Next she painted starting with ultramarine blue & raw umber mixed, making a dark gray-type basic tone. She used this to re-draw the charcoal sketch. Before very long, all four people were drawn and seated comfortably around a table. Lots of light and dark blue and some light green began to appear. Lee has a delightful quality with line. I could not stop watching the ease in which she applies paint. Likenesses were almost impossible with this session, but essence was clear. Lee has a great sense of paint application that excites me and the day was very special. We were all eating from the still life during the session. Lee got very tired by the evening & made daiquiris & served champagne. After dark we watched fire-works.

            
July 5, Wednesday

It cleared up. The sun returned. I continued working on drawing and painted on New York Vermeer (left side of the diptych, The  Artist in His Studio, 1979).

July 6  Thursday

In the afternoon Ronald & I went to Rogers Peet. He bought a white suit, then picked up his script for Richard Foreman’s movie that Ronald is in – speaking part – then we went to a porn film.

            
July 7  --  Friday

Went again to Rogers Peet sale. I bought a light jacket – wool. Ronald another suit, khaki.

            
Saturday July 8 --

I went out on the pier to get some sun. Ronald joined me for awhile. Went shopping then home for lunch; fruit salad. We wrote letters.

            
Sunday July 9

I am now working on the White Interior, which I started at MacDowell.  It is all pasty and white, I have learned to apply glaze paint. Maxfield Parrish says to apply it with a stipple brush. This makes sense because glaze has too thick a texture to be applied with a soft sable brush. I will glaze the interior now with a mixture of cobalt blue and raw sienna, which is instant atmosphere. Raw sienna is a transparent yellow and cobalt blue is transparent blue.

            
Monday July 10

What do I do with July 10. Ballet reviews of the Berlin Ballet Co. make me want to go and get under all that staged Russian weight. I want to see the mime used among the wondrous dance technique.
 
Many comments on White Interior mostly to do with how no one wants to be in that room. It was never conceived for anyone who would want to go there, but only a room with a figure (Vermeer’s) with a play of shadow on the white walls and of course my interest in the yellow drapes curtains. I still don’t know the difference between drapes and draperies. The foreground will finally be glazed in sienna, burnt sienna, or even a brighter red like English red, but English red is hard to work with in a glaze medium. Jeffrey Smart told me warm colors come forward and it’s a good idea to use warm colors to make objects come forward.

          
Tuesday July 11           
Morning – Ronald and I went to the top of the World Trade Center. Ronald loves to see where we live from other places. We saw the Soviet Union exhibition of painting. Russia is not interested in painting.

            
Evening: China – The People’s Republic of China – At the Met. Chinese colors. Don’t forget purple depends on red. Red China is Chinese Red

           
Wednesday. July 12
They’ve got razor blades that are so perfected that they stay perfectly sharp for more than anybody’s life time, but there is no reason to put them on the market because it will finally kill the razor-blade business.
 

Because warm/hot colors come forward, I’ve painted the quilt in New York Vermeer again. This time it is purple and yellow. I got the idea from David Vaughan when he showed me a very old piece of sheet music that he has. It was “Snooky Ookums” by Irving Berlin.

I still think George Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue for me.

 

Should I call the drawing with the Japanese Men “The New School?” 

 

I got a big mirror now. Lee Guilliatt gave me the frame and I bought the mirror. It is 30” x 35” and very handsome.

 

Thursday, July 13

Went to dentist and got my teeth cleaned.

 

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Violet

and sometimes white

In USA it’s Red White Blue

In France it’s Blue White Red
 

Dinner Party

 

Scotty Snyder (actress)      

 
Insalata caprese
Chicken breasts
in drawn butter and
lemon & parsley
Steamed cucumber
red white and blue dessert
watermelon, sour cream, blue berries
Cheese

I showed my painting on paper of Stuart Sherman and Benedicte suggested it be a poster. Stuart liked it.

 

Friday, July 14

I am working on the Caravaggio with graphite lead now, and it is going to work very well.

 

New York Vermeer has now a purple and yellow quilt. It is going well. I glazed the white wall in the background with a cool (blue) gray made from raw sienna and cobalt blue. Both colors are transparent glazing colors. It makes everything much more of an illusion.

 

Took a walk to Central Supply and bought canvas and stretchers and a T-square.

 

Try to avoid thought

It Is of itself to think

Thus even “Think not”

Is not to be thought.

Runaway Horses

Yukio Mishima

Saturday July 15

John MacCullan (Canadian journalist) and Gail Rutherford are coming to dinner tonight w/Jane Yockel. I am serving rice, pork chops, creamed spinach and salad – cheese with blueberries mixed w/watermelon & sour cream.

 

Spent a lot of the morning re-arranging my studio. I am planning to start the St. Matthew painting by drawing on the canvas before it is stretched, so I can then figure out how big the stretcher should be. I did this w/the Vermeer at MacDowell (right half of the diptych, TheArtist in His Studio, 1979).

 

Monday July 17

Marilene Isaacs telephoned. She will be in town until Wednesday evening.

Tuesday July 18

Painted in the morning. Marilene Isaacs visited. I met her at the (Allan Stone) Gallery, then she and I came here to Westbeth. We had a good time; she stayed for supper and read a bit of tarot card for Ronald.

Wednesday, July 19

Marilene Isaacs said that she saw a person seated in the chair in my painting New York Vermeer.

July 23, Sunday
Pat Sneed telephoned about Michael Delany (wife Colleen) of Rockford, they are very interested in buying Ingres Vermeer $4,200.00

  
August 15 Tuesday

Temple of Dawn   Yukio Mishima

Transgressions that bring about transmigration into animals are itemized in detail: the murderer of a Brahman will enter the body of a dog, pig, donkey, camel, cow, goat, sheep, deer or bird; a Brahman who steals money from another Brahman will be reborn a thousand times as a spider, snake, lizard, or aquatic animal; one who invades a bed of a noble person will be born a hundred times as grass, bush, vine, or flesh-eating animal; one who steals grain will become a rat, a honey filcher will become a horse fly; a milk thief will be born as a bird; a herb scrounger will be a dog; a meat stealer will be reborn as a condor; a thief of fat meat will become a cormorant; a salt filcher will transmigrate as a cricket; a robber of silk will be a partridge; a linen stealer will be reborn as a frog; a cotton thief will become a crane; a cow poacher will be an iguana; a filcher of incense will become a muskrat; a vegetable thief, a peacock; a stealer of fire, a heron; a furniture thief, a wasp; a horse thief, a tiger; a woman abductor, a bear; a stealer of water, a cuckoo; and a fruit poacher, a monkey.

Chapter 16

When I was at Vincennes University I took French with (another student) Mary Ann Hands. She and I became very friendly, but she suddenly got married to a student before he had to go off to the army. I thought that was alright, and continued being friendly with Mary Ann Hands. In the summer when school was out I met her on the street and she told me she was lonely without her husband, and I thought it would be nice of me to go to the movies with her that evening.

I told Aunt Rene and Aunt Rene told Aunt Stell. Aunt Stell told me I should not go to the movies with a married woman whose husband just left for the army. I did (not) know what she was talking about, but I telephoned Mary Ann Hands and cancelled the date. She didn’t seem upset and we didn’t go to the movies that night. After a while I realized what Aunt Stell meant when she asked me not to see Mary Ann Hands. The code behind getting married is being not available. (GD strikethrough).

 

I still think George Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue for me.

           
***
It is already September.

I walked east on the East Side and saw an airplane skywriting. It was strange only because the writing was backwards. This skywriting technique has nothing to do with a calligraphic pilot who has a message for the world below. It’s really pre-worded, and the pilot merely flies a plane and pushes a button which starts the writing. He just follows a flight pattern. This particular day he either pushed the wrong button or was writing a message for the heavens to read.

 

Jack Lemmon’s one-man show called Tribute is closing now on Broadway. The theatre has now scheduled Elvis Presley. This is the Palace Theatre! I find it exciting to see Jack Lemmon replaced by someone whom I don’t know but that  someone is mocking Elvis Presley.  At the Winter Garden Theatre Beatlemania is still a sell-out success and I don’t know who is playing the Beatles’ parts. At the Whitney Museum there is an exhibition of mock Vermeers, Picasso, Van Goghs and Manets and I don’t know some of the artists who are mocking them.

***

Last night, Delacorte Theatre, dance evening. Jane Yockel, Ellen Robbins, Ronald Vance, George Deem.  Andy DeGroat has no composition. Ronald Brown is a rare performer. Joffrey II neat young ballet. Mary Anthony was established before humans could fly. The company who did the Pilobolus were good because they were plastic and the lighting was important. The African Dancers were wonderful. I didn’t know that blacks want to be seen without wanting any comments.

 

Once a molise pan saw a bittle lum

Sitting on a sturbing cone chewing gubber rum

Said the molise pan won’t you sive me gome

Not by a sam dight said the bittle lum.

 

I dreamed about Paul Zimet.

I dreamed Paul Zimet looks

like the Williamsburg Bridge

and not like the Brooklyn Bridge

at all.
 

Van Gogh needs to be looked after. A Van Gogh painting is wonderful after the fact. Remembering a Van Gogh is seeing Van Gogh. Remembering a Rembrandt is missing a Rembrandt. Anyone wants to look after Van Gogh. Seeing a Van Gogh again is in keeping with Van Gogh. The Brooklyn Museum has three well-known Van Goghs.

The most memorable paintings by Van Gogh are the paintings he had to do because he was at a place. Some paintings he did not have to do but did because he painted all the time. He did not have to do some self-portraits. He did not have to do some still lifes, but he had to do the paintings he did in Arles and he had to do all the paintings he did when he was a patient in hospital. He had to do all of the figures that he did.

There are many types of paintings that Van Gogh did. An artist can see these different types. Some are self-conscious and they are not necessarily what Van Gogh had in mind. Some are what Van Gogh had in mind. The landscapes are usually what Van Gogh had in mind. The best paintings Van Gogh did were the paintings he had to do because he was a painter and had to do paintings to prove it. One of these paintings is Billiards in Arles (Night Café in the Place Lamartine in Arles), and another is the Café Exterior at Arles after dark (Café Terrace on the Place de Forum, Arles, at Night).

 

None of the three paintings of the bedroom at Arles are important Van Goghs. They were painted because he didn’t have anything else to do. Each was painted when Van Gogh was depressed. The bedroom that is at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is the most unattentive of the three. I have concluded it was the last one because repeating this exercise three times causes any painter to be less and less enthusiastic about the structure of details such as furniture.  Each of the three paintings are depressing paintings because there is no interest in any detail in the room. There is even a black and white drawing of the same composition. It is drawn with ink and brush. The wonder of these paintings is in the color and the distortion. The surprise is that each painting and the one drawing all have the same distortions.

I am repainting Van Gogh’s “Bedroom at Arles” because Van Gogh should be looked after by me. He needed some consolation then because each time he drew or painted this interior he gave no room for a being to be in the room in any way that could be manageable. Every room has a space which is the favorite spot for the room. This spot can be favorite because of comfort, because of composition, even because of practicality. The spot in this room is the area between the wall and the head of the bed. It’s the spot where Van Gogh hung his jacket, trousers, shirt and hat. There is a small area there, Van Gogh spent a lot of time in this spot. He dressed there as well as undressed. He meditated there.

 

Van Gogh painted over 200 masterpieces and this is different from those masters who painted only a few. The fact that there are many Van Gogh paintings in museums begins making a description of what a Van Gogh painting is. With Van Gogh each of his paintings are masterpieces. Van Gogh is the last master.

 

 

There is no time when

There is no plane in the sky.

 An (GD strikethrough) The Artist in His Studio

 painted in 1674 when Jan Vermeer was 42 years old. After this painting Vermeer began painting in veils of glaze as can be seen in Allegory of Faith in the Metropolitan Museum.

The Artist in His Studio is Vermeer’s most important painting where he experienced an ideal way of applying paint. The later works are only (his) ideals of what he achieved in the making of the Artist in His Studio. After this Vermeer knew he was a master painter, but during the painting of it he did not know this. He was aware of what he had done after he had done it and never during the time he worked on the painting. Today our appreciation of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon is mostly because anyone can see that Picasso did not know what he was doing while he was painting it, he only knew its importance when it was completed.

Autumn has set in and I find it is beautiful. New York is at its best during the fall. I can say now that I like this time of year when once it made me sad. I think it all has to do with getting older and understanding change.

 

 the over amount of

safety precaution

in America is dangerous.
 

I am writing all about Caravaggio in another book.
 

Thursday, October 5 at 2:00 PM I had a golden crown inserted into two of my teeth. I have never had gold in my teeth and rather distrusted the idea because my chemistry just might reject metal. Dentists have their art so well perfected that I was comfortable throughout the fitting and re-fitting of these two tiny perfectly sculptured solids that are now in my teeth. I can bite with them. The gold feels good when I put my tongue to it and I do like the tiny gold sparkle that comes when I smile.

There was a man in my hometown parish of St. Thomas who loved the idea of gold in his mouth and had all of his teeth covered with gold. He looked fine, but a bit like Tutankhamun.

 

Riddle ma riddle marie

I see something you don’t see

Say it’s a chair
 

Friday Oct. 6

I am painting Van Gogh(‘s) Bedroom at Arles, and worked on the three paintings I have decided were in this room: “Drawbridge at Arles” (Le Pont de Langlois), “L’Arlésienne” and “Self-Portrait”  (Self-Portrait against a flamboyant Background).

 

All artists go through a red and green period – the interest is in the actual mixing of these two colors and coming up with the gray problems.
 

Saturday Oct 7

 

Sunday, Oct 8

Back to red and green: the gray produced by mixing red and green is the discovery that watching red die is totally absorbing. A proud red, such as Cadmium Red Deep on to Alizarin Crimson, can be used. Any red that is strong enough to fight on through the following tests. Use a very small amount of green with red and white. Always have a dominant color in mind. If red is the dominant use very little green and very little white in order to see how the red changes.

 

Winter sky comes into mind. There are moments that one can see the sea, but the greatest moment is watching red become rose. Rose is red with a slight bit of green in it. Old rose has yellow mixed into the rose mixture. The color rose therefore has a bit of its opposite and that is what makes rose. Rose is one of the best words I know, plus it also means a flower and its meaning makes this word. One can get pricked by a rose also shows its opposite.

***
 

- Plethora – and Selma

 

Vermeer’s “Artist in His Studio” is made up of the following colors: Raw Umber, Ultramarine Blue, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, and White.

 

Selma –

We walked in rain together

Laughed at Ray Lane together

Sang love’s refrain together

and we both act like we
could ride a bike.

***

 

When I start to mix a color that has to do with a highlight I have to ask myself if things are that color? Then, are things that color in this color field I am painting? Things are usually blue/brown. I can add or take down the blue and make a more middle gray. Vermeer makes the color for things a mixture of ultramarine blue and raw sienna, and white of course. This is the highlight paint for glazing the highlight of a stool or a virginal. This is the color of the off-focus dots or the tiny lumps that can be found in highlights on the bread in Maidservant Pouring Milk.

 

 

Today on New York Vermeer I am making the tone for things from Antwerp Blue, Raw Sienna, and white. Antwerp Blue makes a New York light.

***

I am interested in painting.  I want objects to look like they are painted and not any other process. My paintings from photographs look like paintings and not like photographs. I paint better than anyone painting today. I may not see better, but I paint better.

 

Jackie Kennedy does not look like Jackie Kennedy on magazine covers. She looks like she should/would for magazine covers. Watching an old film of Lou Gehrig, I noticed that Lou and his wife couldn’t look like they should, but only like they did, because the realization of camera work was too young.

***

Photographic realism is a painting process ideal that reports visually in painting the type of ideal vision that the camera eye reports. It no longer matters if these paintings are rendered in watercolor, acrylic or oil paint as long as the visual report is accurate and looks like we think we see today.

 

 

New realism is merely painting (the) visual report accurately without an over-interpretation of color and proportion. I am involved with a new realism because I am rendering paintings and compositions that have recognizable objects.
 

1, 2, 3 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14,15.
 

There is one word for living at Westbeth, the word is, TOY

There is one word for living in Soho. DooDa 

 

Andrew Wyeth

The Virgin

Siri Erickson Collection

Brandywine River Museum

Chadds Ford

Pennsylvania

 

Photo-Realism is a process of painting from photographs showing views from a camera eye. New Realism is a process that involves details that are up to the painter’s conclusion. I am considered a new-realist. I am not involved with the camera, but with reproductions of painting and making paintings from them. I add to and re-arrange already known paintings and therefore (am) only interested in making articles look like painted articles, not like a camera’s photograph and not like the eye sees.

***
 

an A                            

a   B                           

a   C                          

a   D                          

an E                           

an F                           

a   G                                                     

an H                                                      

an I 

a   J
a   K
an L
an M
an N
an O
a   P
a   Q

an R
an S
a   T
a   U
a   V
a   W
an X
a   Y
a   Z                                                

 

 

Glaze over Mr. Bock (Boch). (George Deem’s bracket)

Pick up pillows w/white

Look closely at draw-bridge painting.

Notes for Van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles.

pick up light on Window sill

 

Dinner for Eight

You can listen then begin talking and if you want to turn away it’s alright. There is someone always listening and talking with Harry. He is Irish and looks like a seminarian though he never was. He once gave me the autobiography of Mary Astor. He claims to like Gary Crosby, but doesn’t like jazz violin. Helen is his wife. 

Harry and Helen live in southern France during the summer and know a lot about eating. In southern France food tastes best out of doors.

Helen is color among many other things. She’s the type of woman that is safe hands. I like to tell her about my painting because she listens and encourages more talk. Then I can realize that everything is in safe hands.

As for color, Helen just knows about color. She does some photography which is wonderful, but mostly teaches. It’s her appearance I like. She knows inside what color association is and insists on pigment color more than transparent color. The fabrics are color first, then texture. Her jewelry is modern college and usually solid polished stones in silver or gold.

Lately I serve wine to guests when they arrive. Scotch whisky is very good before meals, and in Italy it was sweet white vermouth with ice.

My studio gets in the way of any guests coming to dinner, but I find that’s the best. I get my painting conversations over with by the time dinner begins. It’s good to return to the studio after dinner, but this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, when I’m leading the party, I show paintings in the studio between the main (course) and salad.

A dinner party should be enjoyed because of the food then the company. In a successful party there is a time when everyone is at the same moment.  This should be after the main course. Sometimes it’s during the salad and other times during the cheese and fruit. I’ve had my highest pleasure during nuts and bananas and in Italy with fresh fava beans and fresh pecorino cheese with red wine. It’s at this time the hunger has subsided, everyone is mellow, not necessarily because of the wine, but very comfortable. So, if things don’t go quite right for the main course I can always rely on cheese and fruit or its equivalent because that category cannot be ruined.

Hilary, my cousin, is the other guest. He’s already here. He talks while he eats and squeals with the delight of food.

I’ve finished all preparations for the salad, browned the veal, the carrots are ready enough and while this was preparing I’ve washed, cut up and cooked the spinach for the soup. I don’t refrigerate all my eggs, but leave at least four out in room temperature. When I use one or two I replace them with cold eggs. Remember water glass? That strange jelly that once was used to keep eggs in? It’s always appearing in English stories.

           
We are Harry and Helen (Staley), Jane (Yockel), Jean (Rigg), Ronald, he lives here, Hilary (Otttensmeyer) and Mary Ellen (Andrews).

Mary Ellen dries her salad with a clean Turkish towel. Each leaf she sits and dries, patting them, then tears the leaves into a bowl. She’s a good cook and I like the atmosphere she creates when she’s cooking.

Everyone knows one another. But that isn’t always necessary. I no longer seat people at table. Somehow that has gone out with the feminist movement. I no longer serve women first, but give a plate of served food to the one who is farthest away, then close up the center. It is very important to have food sitting on the table in bowls and platters after the first serving. Pictures of food are plentiful, but seldom do we have a chance to see it in reality, so letcenter. It is very important to have food sitting on the table in bowls and platters after the first serving. Pictures of food are plentiful, but seldom do we have a chance to see it in reality, so let’s have food on the table all the time.

We waited a bit for Jean, so I had black olives, red radishes with wheat biscuits and sweet butter for everyone to nibble on while passing the time. Jane puts salt with her butter and radishes. When I was very young an Indiana snack for children was fresh scallions chopped and quickly fried in bacon drippings then put on toast. I was served this with tea. When I eat radishes with butter I think my liking it comes from the bacon dripping and scallion mixture. 

END