Robert Francis James

“In art it is hard to say anything as good as saying nothing.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein People who speak harshly of painters, but don’t themselves paint, irk me. Even when they speak harshly of mediocre painters. Compared to these critics, painters—even masterful ones—are always more congenial. That’s true in all the arts. Hollywood producer Tim Van Patten once described Martin Scorsese’s congeniality toward his fellow filmmakers. “He never puts down a film. He’ll find something positive about everything, Van Patten said. “We were watching this one movie called Pete Kelly’s Blues , directed by Jack Webb, star of the ’60s cop series Dragnet . After, Marty says, ‘Well, this is not Jack Webb’s best work,’ and I’m thinking, Jack Webb? Really? Does Jack Webb even have best work?’ But that’s the way he is.” Scorsese’s forbearance is less about following mom’s advice (“If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all”) than about art’s basic ineffability —something many critics ca...

Painting a “picture” is meaningless. One paints beauty. — David Leffel In perhaps my favorite semester of college, I took a philosophy course on beauty. Philosophers call the study of beauty “ aesthetics ” and for 2,500 years have  argued over aesthetics questions like “does a painting actually exist?” and “is beauty objective?” Until the Enlightenment, most philosophers believed that beauty is objective . It emanates from beautiful objects. Following Plato, for example, St. Augustine asked “is an object beautiful because it delights?” or “does an object delight because it’s beautiful?” His answer was: an object delights because it’s beautiful, not because we consider it so. With the Enlightenment, philosophers did a 180. They believed that beauty is subjective . Hume, for example, said, “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” In short, beauty’s in the eye of the beholder...

Whatever the objects of his attention, the painter will not make them say what they are without thereby learning what he is. — Jean-Paul Sartre Just when I think I’ve about had it with party strife, microbes, blizzards, intolerance and inequality, painting comes along to pick me up. Still-life painting helps you concentrate all your attention on what’s real (as opposed to what’s not) and the way in which the real presents itself to your eye and mind. A lemon, a  napkin and a pen, for example. Contentment and self-satisfaction then come to you in proportion to the degree to which you can reproduce those two things (the real and its manner of presentation) through your choices of values, colors, and brushstrokes. Painting insentient objects lets them speak and, as Sartre points out, helps you discover some rather intimate aspects of yourself. Why do you believe those particular objects wish to speak? Why speak to you and not someone else? Who taught you their language? You...

Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him. — Lord Chesterfield Originally, “slow food” founder Carlo Petrini didn’t mean to start a global movement 3o years ago. He merely wanted Europeans to preserve local cuisines. But Petrini’s “ Slow Food Manifesto ” spoke to Epicureans everywhere. “Against the universal madness of the fast life,” he wrote, “we need to choose the defense of tranquil material pleasure. “Against those—and there are many of them—who confuse efficiency with frenzy, we propose the vaccine of a sufficient portion of assured sensual pleasure, to be practiced in slow and prolonged enjoyment.” That same sentiment informs my still lifes—or, better, “life stills.” Jug and Friends. Oil on canvas board. 8 x 10 inches. Manet once called the still life (from the Dutch word s tilleven ) the “touchstone of painting.” Characterized by a focus on the insentient, still-life painting is known in France as nature morte . But I’m a little le...

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. — Shakespeare According to medieval folklore, women should rise early on February 14th—the day the birds mate—because a gentleman always weds the first lady he runs into. Valentine’s Day was first celebrated in Ancient Rome as the bacchanalian fertility fest Lupercalia . Its celebration was continued in the Mediaeval Age, but in a sanitized version the Catholic Church decided would commemorate the martyr St. Valentine . By romanticizing St. Valentine’s Day, Shakespeare popularized the holiday during the Renaissance. Inspired by mentions of Valentine’s Day in Hamlet and  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, gentlemen were soon giving flowers, candy, and handmade cards to their wives and lovers. Today, those romantic gift-giving traditions continue, in the US alone producing over $22 billion in retail sales. But why be a slave to tradition? While cards, chocolates, w...

The world is divided into two classes—invalids and nurses. — James Abbott McNeill Whistler My troublesome, months-long recovery from a broken ankle would be much more vexing were it not for my wife’s ministrations. If I’m able to paint and write while being laid up, it’s all her doing. I’m an invalid. The Cobbler. James Whistler. 1855. That means I’m deadweight. Useless, demanding, disheveled, lethargic, timorous, sullen, burdensome and routinely irritable. In short, a charmer. While I loll on the sofa most of the day, my wife cooks and cleans and counts out my pills. When I set up in my studio to work, she fetches the canvases, paints, brushes, knives, solvents and paper towels; adjusts all the furniture and electronics; brings me my coffee; and later helps with the cleanup. The British painter Walter Sickert once described his teacher James Whistler as a nurse —a description a  careless writer transmogrified into an apocryphal Whistler saying . As Sickert des...

Creativity takes what it needs from the person who possesses it and discards the rest. — Peter Schjeldah l New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldah l once observed that, for viewers, subject and medium always transcend a painter’s thoughts and feelings. I think that’s why, after just a few weeks, I don’t recognize my own paintings as mine and can’t help but think the Muse must have created them. But no. Given we get the word museum from Muse , it’s ironic the Ancient Greeks didn’t have a Muse for painters. The  nine sisters instead drove performers (oracles, bards, storytellers, songwriters, musicians, dancers, actors, comedians, and mimes). Henri Martin, The Painter’s Muse And while other creatives had divine help (sculptors, for example, could count on the god Hephaestus ), painters lacked an Olympian guide. They were on their own. That lack could explain why painting is so exhausting. After three, four or five hours at the easel—the time it takes me to finish an a...