Brueghel exhibition report

I had returned from the big exhibition of Bruegel the Elder at the Vienna art history museum.

They've shown, besides their own collection (they have a whole room of Bruegel, including The Tower of Babel, The Massacre of the Innocents and the Seasons series) works from Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Vienna Albertina and so on. A roomful and a half of drawings and woodcuts, five rooms of paintings, a little historical context and thematic exhibitions on Bruegel's painting techniques and restoration. 

Overall impression was great: not just the pictures, but there also was an educational component. Some paintings were exhibited in multiple versions: e.g., two variants of The Massacre of the Innocents and both Towers of Babel - their own and the Rotterdam one. There were no Blind Leading the Blind, but they brought the newly (and excellently) restored Mad Meg (Dulle Griet) and two of the three Adorations of the Magi. That was easily two thirds of Bruegel's known paintings.

Of drawings and prints there were the Sins and Virtues series, early studies, miscellany, and the wonderful Artist and Connoisseur drawing from Albertina. Especially nice was hanging many of the woodcuts next to the preliminary drawings they were made from. There were also several preparatory drawings for elements used in paintings.

Overall, everything was picked and presented very well. My favorites are still the Babel Tower and especially The Hunters in the Snow, but Mad Meg is also great, and the Swiss variant of Adoration of the Magi with the snow and The Triumph of Death. Bruegel was clearly a forerunner of the zombie apocalypse genre.

More impressions:

Bruegel, in places, is quite a Bosch. They both must have gotten some of their weed from the same vendor.

The younger Bruegels were for the most part pathetic imitators.

Some minuses: the descriptions would have been better placed to the side of each painting, not in front: in such dense crowd the readers had been causing unnecessary jams. The audioguide must die especially; I do understand it is extra profit for the museum, but it makes four or five m...useum-goers stand before each painting listening to their paddles and block the access. But overall the museum handled such heavy crowd well; it was much worse in Albertina in every regard. The hardcover catalog was available only in German; would it have killed them to make some in other languages?

To the Hunters, the Tower and the Artist and Connoisseur I treated myself twice.

Bruegel was wise but terribly sarcastic. To the level of truly poisonous caricature. And not just in his treatment of the characters; in the middle of the Procession to Calvary painting, which features hundreds of figures in furious action (Bruegel the dad was certainly not lazy), one suddenly notices a white horse with a rider standing still, staring directly with a viewer with an awfully cynical grin. A real troll.

Bruegel's drawing is plain, almost medieval, none of the Italian prettifying, and his painting is likewise simple, done in clean spots, early Renaissance wise; but his color and atmosphere sing like few painters could ever manage. He obviously loved to paint tiny detail, with all the hair-thin branches and matchstick-tall soldiers, but it never turns into noisiness. Everything done masterfully, freshly, appropriately.

It was good.

Legend of the One cover process

I have painted the cover for Elena Kasyan's ☞ The Legend of the One, and it is published!

Subscribe to my Patreon ☞ or my Facebook page ☞!

I have also painted both endpapers, and also did the typesetting, assembly and most of preprint.

Watching paint dry

Whoever uses the expression "as boring as watching paint dry" has never tried painting in watercolor.

Print testing

New prints in making. Strips of test printout laid over originals (and in a couple cases, previously calibrated printouts) for color matching by eye.

There is no other way to achieve color fidelity. No matter how good the hardware is, in the end you have to test the actual printout - and tweak, tweak, tweak. You can see my notes on the test strips, specifying what needs to be done to the spot colors and the source images overall.

Old books: Manual of Graphic Techniques

I have a number of old (and sometimes odd) books in my library.

Now, my library is heavily skewed towards books on art, picture books for children, art manuals and reference material. And I love used book shops, so I have accumulated a few old and mostly forgotten specimens of treatises on how to make art.

One of these is the Manual of Graphic Techniques for Architects, Graphic Designers, and Artists by Tom Porter, Bob Greenstreet and Sue Goodman. I had first encountered it in a friend's collection, and knew I had to find one of my own.

The Manual is not a single book, but rather a set of four numbered volumes. It was published in 1978.

This is probably the single most disorganized art manual I had ever seen. Its volumes are not thematic; it jumps from topic to topic like a wild antelope, covering bits and pieces on everything from what kinds of pen nibs there are and how to construct the quick-and-dirty perspective plots from an elevation to fine points of silk-screen printing and mixing plaster of Paris. Then it starts all over again, discussing other ways to do perspective plots, page layout for print, using a modelscope and ways to simulate halftone in ink drawings. And so on. Some topics (like silkscreening) are presented only once, but some (like perspective) get sections in several volumes. It is organized somewhat thematically (most of presentation technique is concentrated toward the end, most of the drawing toward the beginning), but is still haphazard enough to make finding something for quick reference a bit difficult.

But what it lacks in organization of material, it makes up in thoroughness.  It covers topics from abstract composition and type design to marbling paper, etching glass and tips on working with glue when making models.

There is little wonder that the contents are heavily leaning towards architect's interests - I was not able to locate Tom Porter with certainty, but Robert Greenstreet teaches at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of the University of Wisconsin. But there is a lot of general drawing, plotting and presentation techniques. Not everything here is of use to an artist, but nearly every artist could find something of interest in this book.
Speaking of presentation, the book itself is beautifully designed. It forgoes long text for short, clear snippets with relevant illustrations, arranged in almost comic-book panel layout. The graphics are more reminiscent of technical manuals than of art books, all crisp black and white, relenting for only a few pages to color. Even the typeface the text is set in is reminiscent of a typewriter: each page feels like an architect's presentation. And the condensed but very readable layout matches the very practical content. This is not a theoretical book; it is hands-on and focused on you getting the job done.

Of course, any art manual dating from before the personal computer revolution inevitably reads a little like a history of forgotten techniques. There are a lot of pages in the Manual dedicated to methods which are no longer used or fallen into disfavor. But for me, it only adds to the charm. And just like knowing how to do calculations in one's head or on paper is slower than using an electronic calculator, but gives you a ground on which to base your intuitive grasp of arithmetic and predictive skill, knowing how to plot a perspective by hand greatly enhances your intuitive grasp of its laws. History is not dead; the past still influences the present with tradition, terminology, context.

That's why I love old books.