The final morning of the conference was led by two more prominent portrait artists, Daniel Greene and Nelson Shanks. Greene started off by showing slides of some of the works from his ongoing series of carnival paintings, recently on view at Gallery Henoch in NYC and also extensively covered in the art technique mags. Greene is an articulate speaker and the remaining portion of his session was devoted to Q&A, supposedly on technical issues though more of the questions went to intent and background information. I’d have liked to have gotten a question in on palette choice and color mixing, but time ran out. Interestingly, although there was almost no mention of acrylic paints at this conference and all of the principals are oil paint sticklers (with an occasional nod to pastels), Greene answered a question about acrylics giving them full-fledged status without knocking them, though he admitted it wasn’t a medium he had used extensively himself. Interestingly, Greene mentioned that he lived for a while in the 1950’s East Village and occasioned the Cedar Bar when it was the regular haunt of de Kooning, Pollock, et al., but that abstract painting wasn’t for him: he tried it but found it “too easy” and so instead he set out to continually challenge himself with representational painting.

Speaking of abstraction, the final speaker of the conference was Nelson Shanks, who can barely hide his contempt for any kind of non-representational painting (not that he tries to hide it). “Realism is the only language an artist can really use,” he said (if my notes are accurate), though “if realism is to be a valid form of art today, it needs to break barriers and not just break competence.” His talk was fascinating, though he is incredibly off-putting if you like abstraction. He slammed de Kooning and Twombly and derided Matisse as having not reached a level of artistic competence comparable to prehistoric cave paintings. Shanks is undoubtedly a very fine painter – his portraits of Lady Diana and Pope John Paul II are stunning – but I would rather spend a day looking at a room full of de Koonings or Matisses any time! (Not a big Twombly fan, myself…) He opined that in later years Renoir must have been painting mostly from the heart, without his intellect, as his later output was “pretty pathetic.” He exhorted viewers to look beyond Sargent’s brushstroke, liking brushstroke to type on a typewriter versus the words that were typed (which I think was a quote from Robert Henri). (Interestingly, as one who appreciates good graphic design and likes to learn about typeface design, I find that typeface *is* important and can make a difference in how you read the work.)

Perhaps sticking his brush in the eyes of other speakers at the conference, Shanks claimed that color is as important as value, whereas at least three other speakers had put a premium on Value, Value, Value. Shanks said that starting with a gray background is limiting and boring, perhaps needling several of the other presenters who explained that they liked to start off their paintings on a neutral gray background.

Shanks has a very high opinion of himself and claims to consider quality to be of utmost importance. Yet he didn’t give his presentation the kind of effort one would expect: his opening remarks were scribbled down at 3am and he didn’t seem to know the format of his lecture; i.e., that he would be accompanied by video to which he was supposed to be explaining his process. The introductory video was something of a barf-inducing deification of Shanks, complete with classical music and worshipful quotations from his students. Fortunately, the video showing the artist in action was much more compelling and helpful. It included a high-speed demo of the artist painting a reclining model as well as a real-time performance of Shanks painting Marisa Tomei at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The main speakers at the conference – John Howard Sanden, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Burton Silverman, Daniel Greene, Aaron Shikler, and Nelson Shanks – are all very famous names within the portrait genre of American art, or at least within the community that they themselves nurture through conferences, workshops, and magazines like International Artist and The Artists Magazine. If I didn’t subscribe to those magazines, I might not have heard of any of them (though a few of their works, such as Shikler’s JFK portrait, are iconic). With the exception of Daniel Greene, I don’t think any of these names make it to any of the same galleries I regularly visit in Chelsea, 57th Street, or the Upper East Side, so it was interesting to participate in an event from a corner of the art world that has very little intersection with my usual familiar territory.

Tags: Portrait Society of America, portraits

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.