Painters Online Logo

Login/register

Studio

Does a painting need?

Welcome to the forum.

Here you can discuss all things art with like-minded artists, join regular painting challenges, ask questions, buy and sell art materials and much more.

Make sure you sign in or register to join the discussions.

Hang on Studio Wall
Author
Message

Michael Robinson

  • New Member
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 2904
Posted
I've just come across this piece from Edgar Degas and I thought it quite apt to put it here, apologies to those who have heard it before but it is new to me:- "A painting needs as much fraudulence, trickery and deception as the perpetration of a crime" I think it's wonderful!!🙂

Adele Elgood

  • Forum Expert
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 886
Posted
No, I have never heard it either Margaret - so does that mean we are all criminals here?
michael

Michael Edwards

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 3863
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 1556
Posted
Sounds like a thumbs up for forgeries to me.

Michael Robinson

  • New Member
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 2904
Posted
Made me smile, perhaps we are all guilty of changing things here and there on a painting or using tracings or adding things or leaving things out of a painting. If that's the case I plead guilty but without the tracing bit, I haven't done that yet.:):crazy::kiss:

Peter Davison

  • Forum Expert
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 533
Posted
Quite a number of my paintings could be classified as crimes!
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 24825
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 8654
Posted
I don't know of course, and unfortunately we can't very well ask him what he meant now, but I suspect he means what an Antiques Roadshow art expert (typically, I've forgotten his name: tall chap, fair hair, 45-ish) referred to when he was examining an oil painting - those tricky bits, where the paint is applied extra thickly to catch the light; those sweeps of colour - possibly pastel in Degas' case - which look odd when examined close to, but right when seen from a distance. Rembrandt was fond of these, of course - rebuked a visitor who got too close to a picture: "and can you smell the paint, sir?", or words (in Flemish) to that effect... We all do it - bunches of leaves which just seem to hang in mid-air, but the eye fills the branches and twigs in for us (we hope), blocks of colour artfully laid down to show the line of a wall without actually drawing a line; things we're probably not even conscious of doing, because we've "cheated" so often. All art is about illusion, with a neat swig of deception if we can pull it off.... So yeah, we're probably all evil criminals: but old Edgar was being a bit romantically fanciful, bless him; I bet something like the above is what he meant, though - he just expressed it less wordily..

Adele Elgood

  • Forum Expert
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 886
Posted
I think "cheating" is too strong a word Robert - I prefer "artistic licence"!