How Maurice Utrillo pushed me into a modern painting

VART2026  In the Footsteps of the Impressionists

"I got it into my head that only plaster – real plaster – would give

 marvellous results.  But it cracked, cracked too quickly.

  I had such a search for truth that I wanted to stick real things

 to my picture, like the leaves of a tree.”

Maurice Utrillo, 1914

 

 I started 2014 with a standard and acceptable History of Art course and followed that up with a unit called In the Footsteps of the Impressionists.  This was a two-week study tour actually in Paris.  I spent hours in the Louvre as well as chasing after Impressionist painters. I spent some time experimenting with pen and wash.

Le Dome Café

Pont Neuf

 pl Charles Dullin

Monet's Waterlillies

Montmartre Cemetery

 

I actually did the first pen and wash on an  afternoon in Montmartre when, exhausted, I sank onto a café chair and did my first pen and wash, just  the scene in front of me:

The next day in the Musée de l’Orangerie I discovered a painting of the exact same scene.  It was made by Maurice Utrillo one hundred years before:

Utrillo said of his work,  “I got it into my head that only plaster – real plaster – would give marvellous results.  But it cracked, cracked too quickly.  I had such a search for truth that I wanted to stick real things to my picture, like the leaves of a tree.”  In 1914 that wouldn’t have been considered extremely avant garde, but in 2014 it's quite old hat.   So, for the tour exhibition, I produced another interpretation of Saint Pierre de Montmartre and the Sacred Heart. I tested plaster-of-Paris, sand, leaves, shells, sticks and natural pigments: with PVA glue to stop it all cracking:

 I decided to simplify my composition and started with lots of small thumbnail drawings:

 I tried a larger version of the coloured one with oil pastels:

 Then I took to acrylics I and changed it a bit a bit; the three green circles on the left were cut-outs I used to experiment wit bushes:

I asked friends for feedback and one supplied me with a simplification, which I liked.  I cropped it down to a small area in the centre:

                  

 I did another acrylic study, which I rather wish I'd kept:

I finally picked up my "real" materials  and produced a textured version with plaster and dried leaves as Utrillo wanted.  I used sand, shells and coffee grounds to vary the textures when I found I couldn't move the plaster into the brush rhythms of the acrylic version:

Going through this process taught me a lot about developing an artwork rather than just jumping in.  I wonder what Utrillo would have thought of my version.  I'm sure he would have been happy about the plaster-of-Paris and real leaves.

Printmaking Without a Press, a Book without Covers

VSW11 Printmaking: Materials and Methods

I chose to study printmaking only to avoid doing sculpture.  What a rollercoaster!  Equipped with a Study Guide that said there were some very good videos on YouTube, I found myself googling how to make a linocut and new things like monotype and collograph.  This was definitely new territory.

My Homemade Foot Press

We had to choose a single theme and stick with it for twelve weeks.  I decided to respond to the decay process of a mallard duck that had the misfortune to die in my garden.  

Monoprint: Live Duck

Monoprint: Dead Duck

Linocut: Duck

 By the end of the unit the concept had to be presented in the form of a non-conventional artist book.  I pushed my response to the decaying duck to reflect on the inevitability of death.

Collograph

Collograph

Finally I printed the motifs I'd been working with onto strings of prayer flags and installed them in a star formation over the duck's resting place.

Prayer Flags

Prayer Flags

I began documenting the decay of the flags, which echoed that of the duck as vegetation grew over them all.

Prayer Flag Remains

It was an unconventional introduction to printing perhaps, but it enthused me to the extent that I have replaced my original foot press with a real one.