Breaking the Surface Part 1: Exploring the History of Pictorial Space
Breaking the Surface Part 1: Exploring the History of Pictorial Space
How we create three dimensional space on a flat surface is one of the central problems of painting. This course is designed to support your studio practice by introducing you to a wide variety of ways to approach space in your work. We will work through William Dunning’s Changing Images of Pictorial Space, to explore the surprising relevance of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance painting for making contemporary art. The course sets up provocative juxtapositions between the ways traditional and modernist painters approach flatness and depth.
Each session will include a slide lecture, painting demo, and a painting project. Working from observation with a still life motif, students will explore radically different ways of setting up the depth and space of their work based on the ideas presented in class.
In Part II of the course we continue our exploration of pictorial space, bringing us from the Baroque up to the modern era.
Reading: Changing Images of Pictorial Space: A History of Spacial Illusion in Painting by William Dunning
Course Overview:
Session 1: Ancient Roman frescoes / Cezanne
Shifting perspectives, a felt sense of space
Session 2: The Middle Ages: Cimabue / De Kooning
The illusion of flatness
Session 3: Proto-Renaissance: Giotto / Morandi
Finding volume in a compressed space
Session 4: The High Renaissance: Raphael / Pollock
Creating depth: Atmospheric perspective, linear perspective, and other approaches
Materials list:
Feel free to use whatever materials you are comfortable with. I’ll be using oils but acrylics or gouache would also work well. Here are the basic materials that I am planning to use for my demos:
Panels: Aluminum composite material 12x11” ( you will want a new small panel or canvas for each week of the course.)
Glass palette or wood palette
Palette knife
Gamsol
Winsor and Newton artists painting medium
Brushes:
Signet bristle brushes (filberts) of various sizes
Princeton Dakota (flats) of various sizes
Simply Simmons synthetic sable (filberts) of various sizes
Paint:
Gamblin brand: Titanium White, Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red Light, Alizarine Crimson, Ivory black, Phthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue