Royal Society of Portrait Painters

Submitted three portraits to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Open Exhibition 2014 (London). Selection Notification: 20 February 2014. All refused!!!

Kate Middleton © Yves Messer

Emma Stace Darling © Yves Messer

 Stephen Hawking © Yves Messer

Face proportions

The proportion of the human face is about 3/5 (either male or female), an approximation of the so-called "golden section".  A 2/3 or 5/8 proportion is just as good.

As you can see the eyes are situated approximately at 1/2 of the height of a human face. We often make this mistake and it is due to deformation by the perspective, ie the angle under which we look at a face.
The common mistake is having a too short forehead (and therefore the eyes too high). This comes from the time when we were children and looked at adult faces from the lower perspective of the child we were. Since most have stopped drawing then, people tend to keep this "perspective" which is not the one as adult!
Hence this common mistake...

"Donna con cappello verde“, Woman with Green Hat By Pablo Picasso, 1939

Based on my experience as portrait painter:

1. the human head is facing us vertically to the ground (proportions change when the subject is looking upwards or downwards) *
2. the head is inscribed within a rectangle with approximate proportions of 2/3 or 3/5 (roughly those of a letterhead). I found these proportions after using many photographs of people with short hairs (or bald) to better locate the actual limit of their skull (haircuts are misleading)
   Note: when drawing a baby’s face this proportion is closer to a square’s: (roughly) 4/5.
3. the ears are OUTSIDE of the rectangle (since they are floppy and their size/shape vary)
4. the eyes are located at (roughly) 1/2  of the rectangle height (i.e. when faces are vertical to the ground)
5. the length of the nose is (roughly) the same as the distance between the center to the eye  corner : they can therefore be inscribed within a circle whose center is situated between the eyes
6. when still the mouth position can be found by drawing a circle inside the rectangle (diameter is equal to basis of the rectangle) – of course any expression (grin, sorrow etc)  will affect the size and position of the mouth…

* this explains why children (or adults who have kept this habit) tend to draw faces whose eyes are situated too high (therefore with a too short forehead):their point of view is as seen from underneath!

Based on these tips, my daughter did the following portraits of herself and her grandparents when she was 14:

 

Portrait of my parents

ZOOM HERE

What's the Time?

© Yves Messer

This post has moved to my other blog "Two Cultures?". 

ARE YOU INDIFFERENT TO “INDIFFERENCE”?

This post has moved to my other blog "Artivism, or Art with a Conscience".

"One percent" (2012) © Yves Messer

“Indifference” is originally a philosophical concept that was developped and defended by the “Stoics”.

To Louis I. Kahn, architect

"The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need.The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it."-Louis I. Kahn, Architect

Music: King Crimson - The Sheltering Sky

Louis I. Kahn was a great inspiration when I studied architecture at university in Belgium. Hence my videoclip as a "glimpse" into the "Architect's mind." I never could have met him as he died in 1974, four years before I started uni. Instead I (very briefly) met with his "European equivalent": Mario Botta in Lugano (Switzerland) in 1982 trying to explain him why I considered his architecture was consistent with the philosophy of... Plato! (He probably thought I was a lunatic) lol

Mario Botta. "Casa Rotonda", Medici House in Atabio, Switzerland, 1980-1982
Axonometric projections of the floors.

Did Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved" die?

The “Immortal Beloved” (German: Unsterbliche Geliebte) is the mysterious addressee of a love letter which Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) wrote on 6–7 July 1812. The apparently unsent letter was found in the composer's estate after his death and remains a mystery until now (a film was made after this).

The Third Letter
Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves.

But how could he call her “my Immortal Beloved”? Was she “immortal”, i.e. non-human, not made of flesh?

In contrast, French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 67) had a very different view on that question: he viewed his beloved lady as just made of flesh whose fate is all too known: decay and death, describing this with the most ghastly spectacle in his poem “Une Charogne" (A “Carcass” or “Rotting Corpse”), published in Fleurs du mal / Flowers of Evil, 1857. Here his poem starts:

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed, 

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases. 

He concludes his poem with:  

Yes! thus will you be, queen of the Graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath grass and luxuriant flowers,
To molder among the bones of the dead. 

Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will
Devour you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
Of my decomposed love!

Charles Baudelaire

How different this poem is when compared to Beethoven’s letters to his “Immortal Beloved”! In Beethoven’s mind, unlike in Baudelaire’s, she is not supposed to decay, since she is “immortal”. Is she then real? If so, where is she now as an “immortal” being?

Both artists suffered physically with poor health. Beethoven suffered from tinitus resulting in deafness by his 30th birthday High lead concentrations in Beethoven's hair were found in independent analyses. This is evidence that Beethoven had lead poisoning which may have caused his life-long illnesses, impacted his personality, and possibly contributed to his death. Later in life, possibly due to heavy drinking, he developed liver disease.

Baudelaire suffered with gonorrhea and had picked up syphilis, the disease that was probably the cause of his own death. His long-term use of laudanum (a tincture of opium), his life of stress, drink and poverty had taken a toll and Baudelaire had aged noticeably.

I cannot help but compare Baudelaire’s view with a Damien Hirst’s obsession with decaying death. His rotting sharks’ installations were entitled: “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.”

In my coming book, I so called my first chapter:  “Is something Rotten in the State of Contemporary Art?”, paraphrasing here Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Quoting myself:

It is now fair to say that anyone could be an artist. It is no longer necessary to ask whether this or that could be a work of art since the answer would always be yes. Since Marcel Duchamp's "readymades", artists are taught to believe they have now the license to call anything art, so long, and this is the "key argument", they call it "art." This is a “circular reasoning”: an "artist" is called so because s/he does "art." How do we know this is "art"? Well... because s/he says it is! This is "circular reasoning," i.e. a "logical fallacy". So since anything could now be called art, logically anyone can call him/herself an artist! Therefore if "anything" can be called "art", so "nothing is art". We are indeed witnessing an end-of-art situation. A smell of corpses, so well symbolised by Damien Hirst's rotting sharks or cows he calls "art".

Beethoven, as an artist was very different. Despite the odds, and like a Stephen Hawking but unlike a Baudelaire or a Hirst, Beethoven had a non-cynical optimistic view on human life and fate.

It is the same difference between needing to touch someone physically and touching someone‘s heart. Baudelaire was obsessed with touching his "beloved one" physically, never her cheart. He was often comparing women to prostitutes. Unsurprisingly he suffered from syphilis. Beethoven maybe never met his "Immortal Beloved" or touched her "physicially" yet he is "touching" us.
Yes his "beloved" is “immortal”, as is his art because it is still touching our hearts today.

As French poet Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-44) once wrote:

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Le Petit Prince, Chapter 21 (1943) 

I know, I am a painter...

In 1812, when Beethoven wrote his love letters to his "Immortal Beloved", he had just completed his 7th Simphony... the theme at the end of John Boorman's film "Zardoz" when "Zed" (Sean Connery) and Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) escape their "immortality" to experience a mortal life.

Beethoven on his deathbed

Rembrandt and I

Rembrandt dared painting notables, people in power as real persons. So did I with Kate Middleton.
With extracts from "Simon Schama's Power of Art" Rembrandt (TV Episode 2006).
Rembrandt was and remains my main artistic inspiration.

A sketch of Rembrandt I did in 1991.

Radio interview of Yves Messer

Interview of artist Yves Messer conducted on June 15, 2013 at "Positively Autistic: The Poetic Vision with Erik and Sandy" 

"Expectations": my portrait of Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge

"... as the Duchess of Cambridge’s first official portrait was unveiled to the public yesterday, art critics were, unusually, largely united in their condemnation.

‘Ghastly ... rotten ... an out and out disaster,’ was the view of the editor of the British Art Journal, Robin Simon. 

‘It’s only saving grace is that it’s not by Rolf Harris,’ was the best that David Lee, now editor of The Jackdaw and a former editor of Art Review, could manage.

" 

From Daily Mail 

 © Paul Emsley (2013)

This is my response to Paul Emsley (a 2007 winner of the National Portrait Gallery BP Portrait Award for portrait painting) who took three months and a half to do "this." It took me one week to do mine YET always have been refused to even be part of this National portrait gallery so-called "competition" !  

For the record: I am a Republican in the tradition of a Thomas Paine, I am not a monarchist. I therefore consider monarchy as an institution belonging to the past and should remain there. Although I disagree politically with the institution, I respect persons such as Kate Middleton.

Note: 
Few have shown some disappointment, because my portrait "doesn't look like a photograph" and that she is not "glamorous" enough, not "smiling" as she uses to, etc. (Then why a painting? What about Kate Moss by Lucian Freud?)
In my paintings I always focus on the personality of the subject and try to avoid the distraction of pomp and 'perfection' attached to an officially commissioned portrait.
My portrait's title is 'Expectations' as there are so many, and at different levels, from those of a future mother and beyond.
I therefore find painting her "branded smile" to be inappropriate, from my perspective.
Hence the title, because many "expect" so much from a portrait!
I dared painting her as a real person.
If it is a crime, I apologize.

Note:
Kate Middleton and Prince William left St Mary's Hospital on July 23 with the royal baby boy in tow. Watching live, I was amazed by how much Kate Middleton looks like the portrait I did in mid-May. I called it "Expectations" adding a sunny background since I painted with that day in mind. Yes the day the baby was born was sunny and once she appeared outside of the hospital with him, she looked so much like my painting, especially her hair (for which some harshly criticized me). I was right, my  critics were wrong. PS: I am not a psychic.

Indifference

This post has moved at my new blog "Artivism, or Art with a Conscience".

1. Stardust

“The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.”

― Neil deGrasse Tyson

We talk about the cycle of life on Earth, but it exists in the heavens as well. Stars are born, live out their existence, and then some explode when the hot Iron core of supermassive stars finally is unable to withstand the gravitational pressure and causes the star to explode and die. When they die, their outer part is driven into space, they scatter into the Universe the elements needed for planet formation and, eventually, for life to arise. 

Death of a star leads to the birth of life somewhere far away in the galaxy. As Carl Sagan was fond of saying, we are "star stuff..."  

I chose the Crab Nebula as my background, that is all the "star stuff" that remains of a tremendous stellar explosion.  The Crab Nebula has been an important part of own human history, dating back to early Chinese and Arab astronomers as early as 1054. It is such a massive explosion that the  energy radiated out in this explosion is more than the total energy emitted by our star, the Sun during its entire life time. A Supernova explosion in a galaxy is brighter than the rest of the entire galaxy! In 1054, this celestial event was so bright that it was seen in the day time. It was easily the brightest object in the sky, besides the Sun and Moon, for several  months.

Birth and Death don't they look like the two faces of the same coin? 

The death of a star leads to the birth of complex life form. Isn't this amazing? Earth, life on earth, we humans all are made up of supernova explosions such as the Crab Nebula. 

As humans, we are part of this phenomenon called "Life". Our existence  depends entirely upon our ability to reproduce ourselves, to procreate. Hence the composition of my painting; a sexual intercourse between a female and a male, both remnants of stardust acting on top of the Crab Nebula... 

This painting will be part of my exhibition on art + science "Two Cultures?".

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. – Carl Sagan 

2. "A Star is Born"

In 1995, the Hubble telescope captured a spectacular image of the Eagle Nebula. Dubbed the 'Pillars of Creation', scientists believe these images to show the birth of new stars; interstellar hydrogen gas and dust are incubators for new stars. 

This painting will be part of my upcoming exhibition on art + science "Two Cultures?".

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. – Carl Sagan 

"Stardust" (2013) © Yves Messer

Carl Sagan and his wife told their daughter:

"'You are alive right this second. That is an amazing thing,' they told me. When you consider the nearly infinite number of forks in the road that lead to any single person being born, they said, you must be grateful that you’re you at this very second. Think of the enormous number of potential alternate universes where, for example, your great-great-grandparents never meet and you never come to be. Moreover, you have the pleasure of living on a planet where you have evolved to breathe the air, drink the water, and love the warmth of the closest star. You’re connected to the generations through DNA — and, even farther back, to the universe, because every cell in your body was cooked in the hearts of stars. We are star stuff, my dad famously said, and he made me feel that way."

3. "Pillars of Creation"

"Stardust" (150 x 150 cm - 2013) 

I started it in 2010 - but was unhappy with it. See my post then. 
Still using Hubble Space Telescope's photo "Pillars of Creation" the center of the Eagle nebula. The tower of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula is approximately 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers high, depicting a large region of star formation. The view is a 360 degrees panorama, giving a sense of alleged "positive curvature" of our Universe.

This painting will be part of my upcoming exhibition on art + science "Two Cultures?".

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. – Carl Sagan 

Portrait of artist Emma Stace Darling

More HERE.

I was (partly) inspired by Sandro Botticelli's Venus (~1485)