TONY RYDER

Anthony (Tony) Ryder teaches art at his studio in Santa Fe, and is an internationally prominent realist painter and teacher. He talks like a writer in that he makes his points through analogy like good descriptive writers.

Today he’s critiquing Tina and talking about “posters,” little light studies done with oil paint preliminary to the final painting: “You have to take a ‘snapshot’ of Trevor and match it with your poster.” Or, “You can take a snapshot of your poster and compare it with a snapshot of Trevor. The two must look pretty much alike.” His exposition is so clear that I can visualize what he wants the poster to look like.

The brush must be just hard enough not to smoosh the paint around. The paint must be applied in well organized chunks. Highlights must be put on, with just the right value and hue, over “form light.” The forehead slants toward the light, and is more strongly lit than its first cousin, the cheeks, which slant a little toward the light, but not as much. The average of the values in the beard is closer than you might think to that of the cheeks, although the hue is different. Somewhat like a vase, the nose goes from broad at the nostrils to narrow at the bridge where is flanges into a base above the eyes. The highlight on its tip is brighter than the one on the bridge. But the average of the nose’s values and hues is not unlike the cheeks’.

Tony is more at peace, more fluid, more lucid than any of the hundreds of art teachers I’ve come across. He is as gentle as Josef Albers was sadistic. “A good teacher is a sadist,” Albers would say, and his disciple Sy Sillman strove mightily to emulate the master; many a student left his class in tears. On the other hand, Tony’s students come from all over the world, and never want to leave.

JOHN REGER

My first impression of John’s painting-in-progress was one of clarity. I looked at it the day before the end of term, and my take then was that it resembled a carving out of stone or marble. Some brush strokes were still exploratory, with hard edges that might have made me think of stone fragments. The brushstrokes in the blue backdrop, the white fabric and the floor – those section would not be finished -- had the look of chisel marks in rock.

As I thought then, the figure and surroundings resembled a rock quarry strongly lit by the sun. The drawing is so rigorously correct that it appears to have been chiseled out of a rock, where, like the figures of Michelangelo, it had “preexisted” in perfect form. Muscles flow most convincingly and as if smoothed out with a chisel. The model finds symbiosis with the lighting. His white skin glows like a lamp The clarity of the light is further accentuated by the contrasting softness and shadowiness of the face and shoulder area. The strength of the body that the muscles depict matches perfectly the strength of the rendering.

Then John emailed me the final work, which I saw differently. The figure appeared softer, more warmly colored, and more like flesh. My earlier sense of a rock quarry had largely, but not entirely, to do with the white fabric behind Adam and the white patches on the floor.

I’ve always been impressed by John’s feeling for human anatomy, a bit reminiscent of the passionate, “near sighted” nude explorations of Phillip Perlstein (especially in regard to the warm and cool “jingle” of color in the legs, in this case). Unlike Perlstein, however, John is a classical realist, despite how much of the thoroughness and tactility in his personality gets conveyed in his paintings.

BIRD

Bird is her name, and I have yet to discover the reason why. Is she named Bird after Charlie Parker? Does she like to chase birds? I’ll try to find out before my work stint is over.

Bird is a boxer mix, honey-brown, with short hair. She’s powerfully built, but with surprisingly narrow hips. She walks stiff-legged and not fast. You’d think she’d want to show off those strong muscles doing athletic things, but she’s very laid back instead.

Her right arm below the knee is pure white, while the left is white only on the toes. Her underside looks as if somebody poured milk on it from front to back so that puddles oozed out to the sides. From her eyes to her nose, however, is very dark…like those people who trim their beards close to the skin, while leaving the dark stubble.

She wanders around the studio, seemingly bored. She’s what Caesar Milan would term calm and submissive. She’s almost somnolent calm.

I gave her a tiny piece of pizza once, and she came up to the podium where I sat, hoping in vain for more. Today, she came up again, smelling my lunch, which contained nothing savory, and was mostly fruit. When asked if she ate papaya, her owner confirmed that “she doesn’t do fruit.” So what the heck?

Bird knows that she’s not permitted to lie on the couch, which is behind the artists. Only I see her ease into it smooth like butter. When I smile at the spectacle, she’s quickly and effortlessly dispatched by her human, Jacob.

A DREAM OF OBAMA

A DREAM OF OBAMA (PART I)

I had a dream about Obama. Until very recently, when he won the presidency, we were living as part of an extended family within the same house. Now he’s here again, but not with any sort of presidential pomp. He’s just like a family member visiting. He’s here for dinner, and I’m somehow accountable for having things go smoothly.

He’s wearing short sleeves, and at one point I clutch the smooth brown skin of his elbow, earnestly congratulating him on his amazing accomplishment. But either then, or later, I get a strong feeling that I badly overstepped my bounds.

The scene changes, and I’m vaguely presenting to children, as during my substitute teaching days. The children get too unruly and I shout at them. I do that only due to desperation that I am making a bad impression at a bad time. I’m quite aware in my dream that I have learned the hard way how to control a group of kids if I choose to. (Had I been more interested in the task, I would have been properly prepared and the kids well behaved. The problem was that I didn’t consider teaching kids to be important for me to do. It couldn’t make a difference on the scale, or with the urgency, that I considered worthy of my involvement.)

Obama is not impressed. It seems that he considers teaching any group of kids under any circumstances to be a sacred duty that should take precedence over others. I consider him frighteningly priggish, cold and remote.

Next, the long table is being set for dinner. Michelle is involved with straightening up the mess. At least one chair is missing, making for possible elimination of one of the kids. I ask Michelle why her husband has not taken a seat but appears to be scrutinizing objects on the wall instead. “He’s very sensitive,” she replies. I conclude that he’s not sitting because he wants everybody else to be seated first. Unbeknownst to me, he’s been quietly taking in the mayhem (including the lack of oranges that are required for desert). Again, I’ve let myself down in front of this pillar of virtue.


A DREAM OF OBAMA (PART II)

Aubrey was my brother-in-law, the younger brother of my ex-wife, who was exactly my age. Through ups and downs, recrimination and divorce he remained my steadfast and loyal friend. He was, arguably, the best adult friend I ever had. About seven years ago, he suffered a massive stroke and subsequent complications that ended his life. In life he was thin and reedy, not unlike Obama in complexion and stature, though less tall.

In one scene of my dream, Obama instantly solves a computational problem in his head, the answer he gives being one three-hundredth, which we all take to be gospel. Aubrey, who was a math genius in life, appears in the dream, and I hope he can rescue my tarnished reputation by also solving the problem, showing that my close buddy has equal computational skills to Obama. Aubrey, who had always been light-hearted and good nature, is, however, completely silent. He runs toward a river or pond or lake, smiling like a happy, goofy child.

When I awake, it seems that the one three-hundredth answer was absurd, that Aubrey was perhaps demonstrating the pointlessness of the subject, and that a river and grass, shrubs and trees in the bright sunlight were much better things to focus on than trying to impress people, who didn't know what they were saying anyway.

Nations in the Global Eara

During the heady late ‘60s, I was convinced that the “system” was about to crumble. Within two years, I and other rebels thought. Time went by. The ‘70s coopted the ‘60s. Then Reagan came, swallowed the two decades, and chucked up morning in America, faux 1950s.

So we got the timing wrong. But 40 years later, (and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of Apartheid showed that unbelievable change could occur). there was a meltdown in the economic system of the corporate beast. And that meltdown shows that the system is unstable.

So what about nationalism? There IS nationalism, and I don’t pretend to know when or how completely it will go away. But there are some unprecedented portends of change:

1) An unimaginably large population (tripled in growth since 1950, and the result of the dominant economic system) that is projected to level off around 10 billion
2) It will require 4 Earth-type planets to sustain the above projected population living the lifestyle determined by civilization . Believing that some new technology will preclude this is fantasy.
3) Climate change, already well advanced, will worsen as scenario 2 unfolds.
4) The sense of otherness, that rich nations can exploit poor ones with impunity has come home to roost in the form of international terrorism.

Where does great-nationhood fit into this picture? We have evolved into a global species.

5) There is no great nation, which doesn’t address the global phenomenon of climate change.
6) There is no great nation, which doesn’t address the need for international equity.
7) There will no doubt be powerful forces advocating draconian, unjust means for dealing with environmental, economic and social global crises, but those are not the mark of great nations, only stupid ones.
8) For a nation in the global era to assert its self interest at the expense of “less great” ones is like an organ of the body aggregating health unto itself at the expense of other organs.
9) The only viable goal of “greatness” is global wholeness.
10) The notion of great nationhood as history has bequeathed it is inconsistent with the reality of a newly globalized species facing the crises that it does.
11) The only reasonable course for a great nation is to remove the particularity that separates (and alienates) it from common purpose with every other nation.
12) Removing the particularity, and recognizing common purpose with every other nation, can be summed up by the metaphor that a great nation would be invisible, if it could be said to “exist” at all.