Table, Chair, Window, Egg

This is a rendering of a portion of an old church on Melville Street, in Pittsfield, where I live. The church is about a block and a half from my studio. Incidentally, the street itself is named after Herman Melville who lived and worked about five miles from Pittsfield. My drawing of this church conforms to some very powerful rules of painting and drawing which I would like to point out. You are going to need a table and a chair, an egg and a window in order to understand these rules. I’m sorry but it has to be a brown egg, white just won’t do. I do hope you have a table and a chair. My neighbors don’t but that is neither here nor there.

Once you have all the necessary things, set the egg on the table near a window, at a time of day when there is strong sunlight. Electric light is useless, but I can’t get into that right now. Sit down in the chair and take a good hard look at the egg. Here is what you are going to see. A brown egg. But that is not all, the portion toward the window and the light is going to be very light, practically white. The portion of the egg farthest from the window is going to be in shadow and therefore a kind of dark brown. That portion of the egg in the middle is exactly egg color, in painting and drawing this is called the “Middle Tone” When we say that a thing is a certain color we are referring to this middle tone. Take a red silk scarf for example, in its middle tones it is red, in the shadow it is maroon to black, and in the light it is a pink to white. And so on with flesh colors, or any other object’s colors..

Now here is the rule I am driving at. In a painting or a drawing the majority of the image should be middle tone. Some portions, preferably receding planes, will be in the light, and some in shadow. But here is the point, the majority of the image is in the middle tone.

Now we come to my drawing which is very much like the egg on a table. Coincidentally I have stained the paper brown egg color but that is a coincidence. The majority of my forms are in the middle tone and lit by a half light, that is the incident light from all over. The direct light falls on only those forms which are turned to the right, Forms turned to the left go into shadow, just like on the egg.

If you go to a museum looking for examples to this idea you will certainly find it. The trick is rather to find an exception. It is one of those rules like The Law Of Centrifugal Force. It’s not something you decide to obey, it just takes over and operates of its own accord where ever there is movement. And so the law of the middle tone operates where ever there is painting and drawing.

I was Born in Utica

I was born in Utica, you’ve probably heard of it. It’s not a well known place but it’s an important place to me. You might hink that a city like Rome is an important city, but I’m telling you you’re wrong. I grew up in Utica so I know. Also, I’ve been to Rome several times in my life, it’s just a little suburb about ten miles from Utica. It used to have an Air Force Base there but they closed it.

Drawing of Utica as seen from the thruway exit number 31, but from my imagination. Oil paint on prepared paper. The drawing measures 6” x 8” and is signed with an R on the bottom front and a full signature and date on the back, Richard Britell, July 3, 2001.

Idealized Unknown

It was almost one year ago that I began my wallpaper collection. I started by going to paint and wallpaper stores and looking through their collections of discontinued and defunct styles and patterns and buying rolls of paper. The older rolls are really paper and not vinyl, and they appealed to me because of the oddness and naivete of the patterns, and also because they cost almost nothing.

It was my intention to do some really large canvases, cover them over with wallpaper and then, and then I don’t know what I would have done. The idea was just about scale and materials, but I didn’t actually have an idea. I liked the notion that the paintings would be like big sections of old wall from a house in the fifties. I started on one of these pieces but all at once the idea seemed idiotic and I threw the wallpaper away except for two rolls that escaped the purge and remained in my studio on a shelf.

These two rolls of paper talk to each other. One thinks that they have been saved because they are the best papers, and therefore special, and the other roll thinks that they were just overlooked and will get thrown out eventually. Both rolls are correct, they were the best two rolls and they would have been thrown if I hadn't overlooked them.

The interaction of these two papers however sets a stage for a painted drawing that I am very pleased with . I glued the green paper down to some board, and then a glued the gold paper over as a kind of frame. Next I glazed the whole thing with a thin wash of white to unify the two patterns and on top of that I painted the figure of a woman with white paint, in a silhouette style.

The effect I am after is a figure seen at a great distance, All the forms of the figure merge into one simple shape and there are no details. This is a painting of a figure that we don’t know, and who is very far away, who’s character and appearance we have idealized.

The Second Kiss

The Second Kiss

A German art historian named Arnold Hauser wrote a set of books titled “The Social History Of Art”. This work was a four volume set, and a very complicated and difficult work to read. But his basic concept is actually summed up very nicely in the title. His idea was that all art arises out of the social, political, and economic conditions of the time in which it was done. Put simply, if you were an artist in ancient Egypt, then you would be occupied doing tomb decoration. The social and economic conditions would not allow for something like impressionism, and actually, the idea of ancient Egyptians doing impressionism is sort of comic.

Several years ago, upon completion of reading Arnold Hauser’s work I came to the grand conclusion that art in our age consisted of cinema, and nothing but cinema. I conceived the notion of doing enormous paintings of images like they appear on movie screens. Imagine an oil painting thirty feet across, of the upper part of a woman's face. We see such images all the time both in the movies and on billboards and we think nothing of it. But as a painting this idea just didn’t work. It didn’t work for an unexpected reason. Someone would say to me, “Richard how is your painting coming?” And I would have to answer , “Not so good, I started the right portion of an upper lip yesterday, and I hope to be done with it tomorrow. Next week I’ll start on the lower lip.” In short, working on huge images like that, one loses all since of the reality of the object, all emotion and the tension of creation is lost and the art of painting becomes one gigantic boring tedious mechanical exercise. And for a work of art to be successful both the finished work and it’s effect on an audience, and the experience of executing the work for the artist, must be significant. Not just the one, or the other.

This drawing of a kiss however is the exact opposite of that thirty foot painting. It has it’s origin in cinema images but it is drawn at almost exactly life size, and all the forms and the color of the pencil and the paper conspire to make the drawing experience very real and alive. And so the drawing is done from beginning to end with a heightened sensitivity and awareness, because boredom is the death of all art. This is one of many explanations of why this is such a splendid and beautiful drawing.

And what is another? The choice of the color of drawing pencil, and the choice of paper which combine to give the drawing almost the glowing reality of flesh.

And what else? One of the great mysteries of drawing. The most beautiful section of this drawing is the woman’s cheek, and that part of the drawing was never touched at all by the pencil. It derives it’s effect from the way the other parts of the drawing were done.

This drawing measures 7.5” x 11.25”. It is drawn on off white cold press watercolor paper with red wax pencil. It is signed with an R on the front and full signature and date on the back Richard Britell July 29, 2001.

Corelli, Opus Six Number 8

Atget, "Organ Grinder"

My last night in Rome I was able to attend a performance of Archangelo Corelli in a church on the Via Del Corso. You cannot imagine with what pleasure I anticipated the event. Corelli has always been my favorite composer since childhood. He was a Roman, his body has the strange honor of being buried in the Pantheon. This then, to me was to be the quintessential experience of my trip to Rome.

I can hardly listen to certain passages of Corelli, when played correctly, and in the proper tempo, without weeping. My friends know this and are willing to forgive me my tears, if his music catches me unawares in a store or an elevator it can be very embarrassing. It was even worse when Pachabel’s Cannon was so popular, but fortunately, you do not hear that so much anymore.

I began to save up my tears for the occasion, and I debated with myself if I would indulge in muffled sobs, with an occasional gasp, or if I was going to go all out, and wail out loud. Obviously I would never do that, but I must admit, there have been times when I have been sorely tempted.

When we arrived at the church however I became suspicious. I felt something was amiss. It was an English Anglican Church, and Corelli was decidedly not an Anglican. He was a priest in the church of Rome. I ignored this however, as best I could. The English build great churches, and certainly Handel, and Purcell make me cry also, so all was not lost.

But the chairs were terrible and uncomfortable, in the worst way. They had an enormous overstuffed cushions on them, so that it was impossible to sit comfortably. My wife noticed this also, and commented on it.

The music began, the performance was perfect in every way. They were playing the Opus Six, Number Eight, the “Christmas Concerto.” I glanced at the program and saw that it was being performed on period instruments. My excitement began to build, and I looked forward to sobbing any instant. But my wife interrupted me to mention again that the chairs were impossible to sit on. I looked around and noticed that in sections of the church the cushions were on the floor rather than the chairs. They were not cushions for sitting on, they were for kneeling on. This broke my concentration, and I began to think about the prayer cushion. I must admit that often in a concert I start to daydream, and lose my concentration. I began to imagine that I would drop down on my knees and begin praying, instead of listening to the music. I began to debate with myself whether I would pray silently, or if I would cry out in despair to God as a voice echoing in a wilderness.

But the Corelli performance was a failure in every way. I sat on the edge of my seat, I rocked slightly back and forth, but the tears, they just wouldn’t come.

After that we rode home on the subway, and I sat next to my wife in a rather depressed state of mind. We sat across from the doors, and at a stop two people got on the train and they captured my interest at once. The two of them reminded me of some characters in “Crime and Punishment” which I just happened to be reading at the time. They were beggars, a very old man, and what must have been his daughter, an intensely beautiful black eyed, thin girl of about fourteen, with a face of sad abstraction. He had a violin, which he began to play, and a moment later she began to sing in a soft, slightly tremulous untrained voice. From the very first instant, when that bow began to scratch across a string I began to feel my heart ache, and when the child’s voice emerged, as if it had been hidden in the sound of the violin string, I suddenly felt as if I was going to pass out, so intensely did I feel the sound of her voice in the center of my heart, unexpectedly. She sang that sad American song about the leaves being brown, and the sky being gray, with those words, “It I didn’t tell him, I could leave today.”

It seemed to me that it was not a song at all, and that I could see in her sad distracted eyes, that this girl was singing about her decision to leave her old father, and cease their begging. As if she knew that he was soon to simply die of grief, and that there was not a thing that she could do about it. And in his face I though I could also see his certain knowledge of his coming abandonment and certain death. And his even more certain awareness that he could play the violin, but that she could not sing. And in that perfect balance, was the charm and substance their existence.

But that was all perhaps just a story telling daydream, and of no consequence, but the upshot of it was that, right there on the train I began to cry, and not muffled sobs, no, not by any means, but hysterics, and cries of anguish, right there in public, in front of a lot of strangers.

Imagine my embarrassment. I was convulsed with sobs. It was hysterics. Everyone in the car eyed us with mounting alarm, as if something very untoward and frightening was about to happen. I took a firm grip on my wife's arm, and indicated that we had to get off at the next stop. And what was it all about. I don’t even care for that song, and she wasn’t even singing it very well.

She was just singing those lines, “And I began to Pray”, as I rushed by her and put a bill in her cup . She broke off her singing at the very instant she saw the note, and went off to another car, without even bothering to finish the line of the song they were on.

Several people came up to me on the station platform to see if I was all right. I calmed down. I said, “My mother has recently died, that is why I am crying like this, but never mind". People seemed to accept my explanation with sympathy, and a few minutes later we boarded another train.

Later, in the hotel, I looked up the passage in "Crime and Punishment," that this incident had reminded me of. Here is what I found, on the first page of Part 2, chapter 6:

From old habit he took his usual walk in the direction of the Hay Market. A dark-haired young man with a barrel organ was standing in the road in front of a little general shop and was grinding out a very sentimental song. He was accompanying a girl of fifteen, who stood on the pavement in front of him. she was dressed up in a crinoline, a mantle and a straw hat with a flame-coloured feather in it, all very old and shabby. In a strong and rather agreeable voice, cracked and coarsened by street singing, she sang in hope of getting a copper from the shop. Raskolnikov jointed two or three listeners, took out a five copeck piece and put it in the girl’s hand. She broke off abruptly on a sentimental high note, shouted sharply to the organ grinder “Come on,” and both moved on to the next shop.

I felt strangely elated that I had seen something, for a moment, through Fyodor Mikhailovich's eye.

Richard Britell, Rome, late November 1996

Woman at the Beach, Wind in her Hair

This drawing was going to be a continuation of my discussion, started with my last two drawings, of the relationship of the texture of materials to the details in drawing. But now that entire discussion has to be put on hold because this drawing brings us accidentally to the beach, and, since we are at the beach, I want to take the opportunity to discuss some issues of perspective which can only be observed, and understood at the beach.

Every one has heard of a horizon line and a vanishing point and I am sure that most of us remember drawing in high school some odd looking buildings with the assistance of a horizon line. So we go through life imagining that above, beyond, or behind everything we see is a horizon line and we could see it if there weren't so many things blocking our view. But at the beach we can see this horizon line, now let’s consider where it is. I have drawn a standing figure and I put the horizon line level with her knees, Why did i put it there?

To understand the answer to this question you are going to have to go to the beach. Once you get there, spread out a blanket and lay down facing the water and the horizon line. Laying flat on the sand with your head six inches from the sand hold up your finger pointing level with the horizon, and observe that the horizon is level with your eyes when you are laying down. Now sit on the blanket with your head about thirty inches from the ground, and notice that the horizon line has come up to directly even with your eyes, the horizon line is now thirty inches from the ground also. Finally stand up and observe as you do, that the horizon line stands up also, persistently following the level of you eyes. Now that you are standing, jump up and down a few times, and notice that the horizon line will jump up and down with you. That horizon line watches you like a hawk, and your slightest movement up and down is echoed by a similar movement at the horizon.

Now lets return to my drawing, it is a view, seen by a person who is sitting on the beach, eye level with the woman's knees and looking up at her. If I had taken a photograph of her, the horizon line would be in the same place, but if I stood up with my camera and I was a little taller than her, the horizon line would pass over her head slightly. The horizon line is always the eye level line of the viewer.

When you get home from the beach it will be late, the moon will be out, look at it there up in the sky, notice how it glows with that strange omnipotent silver light. But now just jump up and down a few times there in the driveway and notice that the moon jumps up and down also. Why is this? How can it have time to pay so much attention to us, to know our every movement?

The Importance of Infinite Texture

With the drawing that I posted yesterday I posed the question to myself, “Richard, why do you spend so much time texturing and rusticating the paper you draw on? Why not just take a piece of paper and draw on it?” Actually there is not one, but several answers to this question and I will give here the first explanation by way of a story.

Once upon a time there was this artist who lived in a garret in Paris and he decided to do the most detailed and exact painting ever done. He said to himself, “I’ll do a still life, and not only will I paint the color of the wood, but the gloss, and the dust on the wood, and the fingerprints on the dust, and the light as it plays on the very edges of the dust! There was a cello in his painting and after three months of constant work, when he was half way done with the neck of the cello he took a break and and went to look at pictures in a picture gallery.

In the gallery he saw another still life painting, with a guitar in it and the entire guitar was quickly painted with about ten rapid strokes of a fat bristle brush, loaded with paint. It was one of those virtuoso paintings where everything is simple, quick and perfect. Our painter friend looked at it and felt himself go numb. Walking home he declared to himself, “No matter how long I spend on the details of this picture of mine, it will never be as good as that picture I have just seen which has no details at all. And meanwhile I sit holed up in my studio for months and months slaving away, and that painter dashes something off, better than I can ever do and then probably waltzes of to the cafe where he sits having coffee with his artistic friends and talks about art, It just isn’t fair!"

But there in his studio was his painting, sitting in mute judgment of him. He pondered over this problem for many days, and the question, how can a painting with no detail be better than a painting with a lot of minute detail? And then all of a sudden it hit him, the textures in the paint from the brush substitute for the details of reality, and although a painting doesn’t have infinite detail, it does have infinite texture and that is why it is visually satisfying.

And this is the reason that I paint and sandpaper my drawings, so the the image resolves itself down into a satisfying complex visual texture, a very fine grainy surface. Which is a perfect substitute for accumulated detail. Because the slow accumulation of small details is a deadening process, which leads to lifeless pictures.

For, after all, do you really want me to sit there in my studio drawing bricks all day long, and the mortar between the bricks, and the dust collecting on the mortar?

I would really rather be off someplace drinking coffee with my friends and talking about art.

This drawing is a view of buildings as seen passing through downtown Boston by car, done with charcoal on prepared paper. It measures 12.5” x 8” and is signed with an R on the front, and full signature and date on the back, Richard Britell

Driving into Boston on Storrow Drive

I was born in Utica, New York, and when I was growing up the New York State Thruway was being built. I think that my first experience of landscape, especially urban landscape comes from traveling on the thruway. The Interstate roads give us very special, unique views which I have always been very affected by. I especially like the views of older architecture, and big complex neighborhoods, when seen from an elevated highway such as this view of brownstones along Starro drive, traveling into the heart of Boston.

This drawing was done with a black wax pencil on a heavy cold press watercolor paper that was first painted brick red, then lemon yellow and then off white, or perhaps it’s the other way round..........yes,............. I’m sorry but on closer examination I see that the lemon yellow went on after the off white. When the various coats of paint were dry I sandpapered the surface so that the white breaks through the yellow all over the place and this subtle tonal variation can be seen in the scan. You might want to ask me, “Richard, why do you complicate your life and your drawings with all this technical mumbo jumbo, why not just take some ordinary paper and do a drawing?”

This is a really good question and I’m going to try and answer it when I post a drawing tomorrow on ebay. That way I’ll have time to think of a good answer.

This drawing measures 4.5” x 12” and is signed with an R on the bottom front and full signature and date on the back, Richard Britell, June 23, 2001.

The Cello and a Kind of Rapture

This is a new drawing of an old subject. The image of a woman playing the cello can be found in many old paintings, and I too have always wanted to do this subject as an oil painting. This drawing comes from some photographs I took about seven years ago. I have about six of these photos and they all deal with facial expression. The drawing shows that moment when the player begins to listen to the vibrato on a long low note. Take a look next time you see someone playing the cello and notice that during the long vibrato notes the face takes on a kind of rapture.

This is a drawing of the simplest sort. It is drawn with pencil on watercolor paper which was tinted first with a wash of reddish brown acrylic. It measures 7.75” x 11.25”. The drawing is signed and dated at the bottom right, Britell, June 18, 2001.

Table, Chair, Egg, and a Dollar Bill

By now you are familiar with my didactic method of explaining drawings . This drawing picks up where the theory of the another drawing leaves of, and like the other drawing it involves looking at an egg. So, if we put that brown egg back on the table, as before, lit by a single light source then we can observe that it is mostly “middle tone” but there is a section toward the light which is almost white, and a section of the egg away from the light, in shadow, which is a dark brown. Now I want you to consider the section of the egg that is darkest. It will be darkest in a smooth band at a certain point on the egg. To the left, and to the right of this dark band it gets lighter. Now,( this gets complicated but it is worth the effort.) If you sit down and look at the egg from any accidental angle, what are the odds that the darkest edge of shadow will fall exactly at the outer edge of the egg? Almost nil! The darker shadows on curving forms almost never coincide with the outer edge of the form. It is just against the odds. This happens so often that it creates the rule that we could call “Light in the shadow side.”

Now, for an example, look at my drawing, do you see that the round form of the building is lit from the left and goes into shadow as it turns to the right. But after the turret shape gets darkest it gets lighter again before its curve ends. So also with the chimney shape over to the left. It is lit from the left, gets darker part way around, and then gets lighter before the outside edge is reached.

Now look at the face of Washington on a dollar bill. See how there is a shadow on his chin where the form turns under. But further under, in the shadow area you can see “Light In The Shadow Side”. Where else can we find this phenomena. The cheek of the Mona Lisa, Donald Ducks neck. The fingers of a Raphael Madonna. As a matter of fact it is like “ the law of the middle tone”, this visual phenomena is everywhere and is so universal that it escapes detection. Are there any variables? Yes, the glossier the curved object the more noticeable the effect, and if a form is very rough it is hard to see the light in the shadow side.

And now a few words about this drawing. This is an absolutely great drawing, that is all I have to say about it.

Art is Capable of Redeeming the Soul of a Nation, We Need a Beuys or a Keiffer, We Have Neither

The walls of the Palazzo are painted a flat white and are equipped with a great many electrical outlet plugs of all different types which are very interesting. The old buildings are solid masonry and so it has been necessary to run a lot of the wiring on the surface of the walls. Assortments of various sorts of plugs in large flat boxes affixed to the walls were connected to each other by wiring that ran on the surface of the wall, in narrow white rectangular conduit connected along the floor mouldings. Here and there in the middle of walls at about eye-level were plastic emergency phones whose wiring entered the same type of tubing. Rome is a city absolutely full of unfinished electrical and plumbing projects. If one looks carefully at these things and also at the infinite number of masonry projects inside and outside of every building in Rome where plumbing is being worked on, one begins to understand why it has been so difficult for Italy truly to enter the 20th century, even now when it is almost over.

The finest elements of the works on the walls were fire hoses with copper nozzles in glass vitrines, looking for all the world like ancient reliquaries. Above each vitrine of a hose there was a red metal plaque with a white image of a hose. On each plaque there was a number indicating which hose one was looking at. The first hose I came across was number 24, and I began to retrace my steps in an attempt to locate all 24 of them. I was frustrated, however, in my attempt to locate them all because the search led into places which were restricted to use by the museum staff and I soon found that I was being asked in Italian if I needed any "help." But rather than attempt to explain what I was doing I said I was lost, and the guards kindly escorted me back to the exhibition space.

Just before leaving the Palazzo, I discovered there was another floor where the exhibition continued. I went down a broad flight of stairs and at the bottom encountered many more rooms full of works of art. Here also I found emergency phones, strange electric plugs, fire extinguishers and more firemen. Now I began to understand that the firemen were not there by coincidence. It was obvious by the way they were seated, sprawled out and bored, that they had been assigned to that floor and spent their entire days there. Along with the fire hoses they were, to me, the most interesting thing in the Palazzo. Looking at them and listening to their conversation, realizing to what lengths everyone was going to prevent a fire, I suddenly felt that next to me stood Nero with his violin saying, "Yes, there must never be a fire like that one again." It was as if he was standing right there, but he disappeared before I was able to ask him a question I have always wanted to ask, "Were there violins back then?"

However by now it was time to go to Termini, that famous building of ill repute, immense and repulsive, but full of life like one of the huge whores in a Fellini film. Stranger things awaited me there.

I have never seen a space quite like the third floor of the Termini building, where the exhibition was. The proportions of everything were huge. The construction was done under Mussolini and the style of the furnishings remind one of a Marks brothers film, in that they are as modern as things could be in the forties. There were endless corridors, dusty and quiet, in which one found enormous bathrooms, small libraries, and waiting rooms obviously no longer in use. These places force one to imagine important dignitaries from foreign countries coming on state visits. Yes, here they would have freshened up, and there in the paneled library they may have read a journal while they waited. A fascist daydream completely realized in stone. And so, being in the grip of my malady, I was unable to look at the art but just staggered around looking at door casings, heat vents, ashtrays, countertops and also out of windows, where one could see a panorama of yet another wing of Termini filling up the entire skyline.

I soon found myself outside the exhibition hall walking down a long corridor, but no one stopped me or turned me back. Along the corridor ran an outside covered portico. I went out on to it and found that it was a great porch of travertine marble stretching into the distance as far as I could see. I walked along this porch for a while and then I came across a man having a caffe' at a little table. It was Benito Mussolini.
As soon as I saw him sitting there I knew that it was an aberration of my illness, just a hallucination, but he seemed so real, not like an apparition at all, and his manner was so hypnotic and compelling that I walked up to him and said, "Buon giorno."
"Have you been looking at the art?" he asked me.
"Yes," I replied.
"And what did you think," he inquired.
"Well, I thought there were a few good things in the Palazzo and..." He cut me off abruptly by raising his hand up as if he did not have time to listen to half-hearted praise.
"You're from New York aren't you? Sit down and have some coffee."
The Italians always know if you are from New York. I don't know why. A chair appeared and also a cup of coffee, or perhaps they had been there all along, I don't know.

I sat down, sipped my coffee and after a moment he launched into a bit of a dissertation, which I thought he might. He said, "You New Yorkers are always disappointed by the modern art that you see here in Rome. And I know why. We have good artists; I'm sure that you can see that. But here in Rome, there is no section of the city devoted to the important art of contemporary life. We have a gallery in this part, and a gallery in that part, but it is impossible to go from one to another and "see" shows as you say.

We have no SoHo here in Rome as you do in New York. So we have no pot to cook our art in. I was pleased when they chose my Termini building for this exhibit. This building is a city in itself and you could put ten SoHo's in it with room to spare. If I were still alive it would only be a short while and then by decree you would see something really important happening here in Termini. This is what Rome needs; Rome needs a SoHo more than anything."
Here he stopped and looked at me as if he wondered what I thought of his idea, and when I didn't respond he continued.
" You know, I've heard that SoHo is becoming just shops and boutiques now, like our Spanish Steps. You think that nothing will happen here, that we Italians cannot get anything done, It takes a dictator....." all of a sudden he stopped again and looked away into the distance.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "To have been like Franco and to have just gotten through that wretched time."
"And why is it so important to you that Rome have a SoHo?" I asked. "Everyone here seems too busy to look at art."
"Because we need a Joseph Beuys, and we need an Anselm Keiffer and we have neither. Modern art in Rome is used only as the frivolous backdrop of aristocratic society events, and we have to understand that it is an activity that is capable of redeeming the soul of a nation."

"But Beuys and Keiffer did not come out of SoHo," I said.

A confused, troubled look spread across his face, but then the preposterousness of the idea that Mussolini would have such thoughts caused his image to fade gradually into nothingness. I am quite sure that if he thinks about anything, it is about mushrooms, just like the firemen. I continued sitting at the table sipping my coffee, but then a policeman came out and asked me if I needed any help. After that he escorted me back to the exhibition hall. As I was leaving, I noticed that there were a lot of those little rooms in the exhibit with the black curtains over the doors behind which you find video installations. I can never get myself to draw back those curtains. What I usually see in those little rooms is always so much less than what I imagine I am going to see. Whenever I see one of those little black curtains, I just imagine something that might be behind it, and then walk by without disturbing it.

Richard Britell, Rome, late November, 1996

That Style of Fake Illiteracy Familiar to us from Basquiat

Basquiat, "Man From Naples" 1982

But later that same day I felt that I really had to go and see the Sistine Chapel. For this there was a long line. I had to wait for two hours. In front of me in line was a great crowd of Japanese tourists all talking at once, and behind me another group of Germans talking a little louder.

I don't know what I thought about while standing in line. I thought about the second world war. I thought about how everyone is going to see the Sistine Ceiling, and Disney world. When it came time to buy my ticket, I got out of line and went away instead. I didn't see the ceiling, but lately I have been lying about it and telling people I went to see it.

I did, however, go to see both sections of the Quadriennale. One part was at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, and the other part at the Stazione Termini, which is the train station. I went to the Palazzo building first and once safely inside I turned all my attention to looking at the works of art. At the entrance, I was distracted for a moment by a homeless man who was making up a bed for himself in the porch of the Palazzo. I forced myself to ignore him and went directly into the exhibition without stopping.

I began looking at the paintings one at a time, spending about a minute on each work, going along in a pattern so that I wouldn't miss anything, but I soon began to encounter difficulties because the paintings were not hung on the walls but on strange monstrous portable walls that had been placed in the rooms in a very helter-skelter fashion. In some rooms, as many as six of these huge walls were crowded in at strange angles and there were very few works of art on the actual walls of the Palazzo.

I am a very traditional person and I like to go through a museum one room at a time and one wall at a time, and--like a mouse that runs along a wall and only changes direction when he gets to a corner--go through the space like I am sweeping it up in an orderly way. My intention of looking at everything carefully, therefore collapsed and I found myself looking at the blank walls instead of the art work. But the walls did not disappoint me. On the contrary, I have to state that I found the empty walls to hold my interest much more than the portable walls with their various paintings, but before I attempt to describe the walls I want to say something about the paintings on the portable walls.

You have already seen this kind of painting many times before. There were many large works of brooding textures and colors kind of smeared together over which some cryptic shape had been drawn in black by someone who must have gotten his or her arm broken. Also, in many paintings were unfinished words and phrases which had been smudged out in the style of fake illiteracy so familiar to us from Basquiat. There were many works which were large vague photographs of obscure subject matter, sometimes almost erotic, to which something had been done to to make them into art. Then there were an equal number of paintings in a traditional style in which some aspect of the image is meant to remind you that this is not 1496. There were unabashed attempts to do traditional Renaissance painting and sculpture that failed in all the various ways that paintings and drawings can fail, and finally there was a gondola.

The gondola spoke for itself, but the artist found it necessary to add a message to it in blue neon, but I confess that I didn't really look at these things very carefully and am probably not doing justice to them. I stood for a long time looking at the gondola, pretending to look at it because two firemen were also looking at it and were discussing something in Italian. I knew they were firemen because they were dressed up as firemen. I stood looking at the gondola because I was hoping to find out what Italian firemen think about modern art, but I was disappointed. They were discussing mushrooms, either how to find them or how to cook them, I don't know which.

Arguing With the Pope

Rome, Lateran Basilica

The presence of my symptoms of Stendhal's Syndrome existed in me in a state of incubation for some time, and would only surface when I had been looking at art for too long -- for example, after spending an entire day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One day, toward closing time in a museum, I don't recall which one, I found myself stopping exactly half- way between the paintings which were hung on a long expanse of gray velvet-covered wall. I would look at a small section of the velvet, skip past the next painting, and then proceed to another section of velvet between two other paintings. The paintings were those huge black ones in which all you can see is darkness, glare from the lights, and occasionally an elbow or knee emerging from shadows.

After looking at so many large black paintings, even the frames of which were hard work to look at, it was kind of a pleasure to look at the gray velvet. This kind of viewing was upsetting, however, to the guards who immediately became suspicious and asked politely if they could "help" me. When I replied that I didn't need any help, they would continue to eye me strangely and were only happy when I went on to another room.

At another time I could not tear myself away from watching a safe being moved by a tall crane when I was supposed to be going to the Museum of Modern Art to see an important exhibition everyone was talking about. By the time the safe was securely in place and all the people watching had satisfied themselves about which building it was intended for, the museum was closed and I was forced to return home without seeing the show.

I do not think, however, that this illness is at all unique to me. Who, for example can remember the scenes from movies we saw as children? On the contrary we remember the theatre very well but the movies hardly at all. I can't even remember the movies or the theaters. Instead I remember the sensation of emerging from the theatre and finding out that it was already completely dark outside where as when I went in it was still bright day. I would be disconcerted by the darkness. Walking home, I would be upset by disquieting thoughts. What might have happened out here during the day while I was beguiled and in a trance? Perhaps while I was watching some actor being stabbed on the screen, someone I knew and loved was dying in real life. And I would practically run home to assure myself that nothing had changed, that everything was all right.

When I arrived in Rome everything was already so strange. They have phones, but they are a different shape and color. There are taxis, subways, streetlights, and sidewalks, but all configured in such a different manner that everything seemed to be rushing toward me with a strange intensity. In many instances, I was unable to enter churches and museums because what was transpiring in front of these establishments was just too arresting. In short, there were simply too many safes being moved from one place to another for me to bring myself to enter. For example, I came across an especially large and impressive church, the Lateran Basilica, and on the steps was a person addressing a throng of people. He was talking about how the foundations of that church dated from Roman times and that it had been continuously revised and rebuilt. He explained in detail how a certain architect was asked to submit plans to the Pope for a reconstruction and that his plans were rejected. But the architect was undaunted; he so believed in his plans that he argued with the Pope. He had the audacity to argue with the Pope! He won the argument and the Pope accepted his plans.

How marvellous. I was transfixed listening to the story. I understood something important. We must all go and argue with the Pope, and we must win our argument!

I could not bring myself to enter the church; I didn't want to disturb that feeling. I walked away saying to myself, "I want to have an argument with the Pope, right away."

Stendhal's Syndrome

Giuseppe Arcimboldo circa 1550

I so much wanted to write about the Quadriennale in Rome. It is a huge show which claims to survey all the important work going on in Italy at this time, and other related movements elsewhere in the world. It is an important international exhibition. I was unable to do so, however, to the extent that I desired due to the return of a malady I've had for several years now. This illness I have is a variation of Stendhal's syndrome, that condition he described when he became delirious from looking at too much art in Florence.

I still recall the day I was exposed to this illness and the appearance of its first symptoms after a short incubation. It was ten years ago and I was assisting with the installation of a show in a gallery. A young girl came in, about ten years old; it was her habit to stop by the gallery on the way home from school. She was acquainted with every one in the gallery since she was the daughter of a well known painter. Although young, she was nevertheless very familiar with the ways of galleries and often entertained us with her art knowledgeable banter.

I was standing next to a long wooden extension ladder that was lying flat on the floor when she came up to me and asked very matter- of-factly, "Whose piece is this?" She was asking about the ladder on the floor and it immediately struck me that it was very much like a work of art in every way. It lay on the floor at just the right angle to the walls, but even more, it expressed in metaphor, my feelings about my life at that time.
She was not serious of course. She did not really think that the ladder was a piece in a show, but children of artists have a remarkable amount of disrespect for art. Sometimes they have no interest in art at all. I think it aggravates them, but they are drawn into it none the less. Who can resist such banter? She continued, "It's like something I've seen by Kounellis." I was thinking of some way to reply but she went off to talk to some one else.

This then was the beginning of my illness, a confusion of perception. It expressed itself at first as an inability to distinguish what is and what is not art: an inability to separate the art from its immediate surroundings, and everything becomes elevated to the same exact degree of importance.

To Hear You in my Mind’s Ear

“I began To See You in my Mind’s Eye, To Hear You in my Mind’s Ear.’

With each drawing that I post I like to give some specific information which only the creator of a work like this might know. With this drawing I would like to point out its color. I like to use an earth red for figure drawings, and it has been a favored color with artists for drawing the figure for hundreds of years. The red of the pencil, and the redness of blood both come from the same source, iron. So if one draws with an earth red on a slightly yellow piece of paper, once the drawing begins to develop it is exactly as if the tip of the pencil were passing back and forth over the actual figure, and not a drawing at all, it sometimes seems like a living thing.

I wanted to show a scan of the drawing and not a photograph and therefore it is only possible to present that part of the drawing that fits in my scanner. The image is larger in all directions. There is a little more space at the top, the figure ends a little below the knees and there is more space left and right. Unlike my other drawings, this drawing does not have a border line around the outside edge.

The drawing measures 18” x 11.25”, it is drawn on an off white, warm toned laid paper. It is signed and dated across the bottom left, Richard Britell, June 7, 2001.

The Inevitability of Love

There was a man who lived on the upper east side of New York, who fell in love with a woman who would walk her dog near his apartment building. Many times he would be on the verge of speaking to her but at the last moment he would turn away, or change his mind. He composed in his mind several sentences about her dog, that would start a conversation but in the end he would think to himself, “I’m not really interested in the dog and so, if I start a conversation with her in that way it will all be false.”

Such scruples were quite all right and wouldn’t have mattered except that a year and a half had gone by since he first saw her and things had reached such a point that he avoided other relationships because of the mysterious woman with her dog.

Finally he decided to do something drastic. He decided to buy a dog himself, and then start a conversation with her about the dogs. The desperate point he had reached can be seen by the extreme measure he proposed to himself. He went to the pet store and went through all the motions of buying a dog, he was even writing out the check when he turned around abruptly and walked out of the store without a word.

He went straight home, sat down next to his window and made a vow to himself to forget all about the woman with her dog, but the phone rang and it was his good friend Oscar. Oscar said, “I just this afternoon bought a dog, and now I find I have to go out West for a week, could I impose on you to watch him for me, he’s not much trouble.” What happened then you can well imagine!

The Stone Boat, A Story

This drawing of a stone boat is an illustration for a very short story of mine related to the “Three Little Pigs.” The story however is about five mice. Here it is, in much abbreviated form.

Five mice named Jason, Rason, Dason, Clayson, and Mason live on a farm where they are in constant terror of the cat. They have a meeting and decide that if they build a house in the yard then they can play outside all they want and retire to the protection of their house if the cat should appear. Like the three little pigs they first build a house of straw. The cat appears and the mice hide in the house of straw. The cat sleeps all afternoon on the stoop, and goes into the house in the evening but the wind blows the house away and the mice realize their mistake. The mice then build a house of wood which also offers them protection all day from the cat, but collapses when the dogs tail thumps against it. Finally they build a secure and permanent house of bricks and mortar, and this turns out to be the perfect reliable refuge. Their success emboldens the mice to build a boat so they can go sailing on the lake nearby. They hold a meeting and the eldest mouse, Mason, declares, “Every thing good is made out of bricks and mortar, everything else is trash.” This kind of thinking is natural coming from a mouse with a name like Mason. The mice all take his advice and build an elaborate boat of bricks, only to see it sink in a very few minutes. The stone boat floated only long enough for its picture to be drawn. The mice swim to safety and proceed to build a boat of wood. Now a boat of wood should work in theory, but mice know very little about boat building technique, they neglected to caulk the seams and the wood boat sank even faster than the stone boat. Then, for a long tome, the mice were totally perplexed but the youngest mouse, sitting by the edge of the lake happened to see some straw and string float past and thought to himself, “Nothing can sink a straw!” So, reluctantly taking the advice of the youngest mouse, Rayson, The five mice built a boat of straw tied together with string. This boat is perfect, they use it all the time, and lately they have been loaning it to the cat when they aren't using it.

This drawing was done with a red wax pencil on thick watercolor paper which was prepared in a very curious way. I painted a thick coat of white gesso onto the paper and just before it was completely dry I pressed it up against some bricks to give it a kind of masonry texture, this gave me a little bit of a head start in drawing the bricks of the boat but if you look carefully you may see some particles of brick dust stuck in the paper surface.

A Man Descending from Some Tall Stilts

In March (2000) I sold my first drawing on ebay titled, “Dark Green Man On Stilts.” That drawing depicted a man on a set of very tall stilts, so tall in fact that there was no way for him to get down. I thought that it was probably a metaphor,saying that the stilts might represent the precariousness, and difficulties of life. In the drawing the man was enjoying a cup of coffee and I concluded the narrative saying that the drawing represented our need to enjoy life regardless of its impossible difficulties.

Well that is all well and good, and the man is just a metaphor and all that, but I left him in an impossible situation, that needed some resolution. Today when I got to the studio it occurred to me, he can get to a tree and climb down from there.

So here he is at the dramatic moment of transition. He has let go of the stilts and grabbed hold of the tree, loosing his coffee cup and saucer in the process.

The point of this drawing probably is, “Don’t be afraid of change.”

Cecilia Nude, Braiding her Hair

This is my favorite model to draw from. She is especially good in that she doesn’t charge anything and is always available, since she is entirely imaginary. You may think, looking at her, that she is a little overweight, but she is not overweight at all she just appears to be that way in the drawing. Just like fashion photography requires thin models because the camera makes the figure fuller, so in drawing people always appear fuller than they actually are. Perhaps you do not believe me and think I am making this up as a jest, No I’m not, it is a scientific fact. Here, let me explain.

The body was constructed by nature to draw circles and ellipses. For example, if you hold your whole body still and just rotate one finger from the joint where it connects to the palm, it will describe a quarter circle. Or, keeping everything else still and just moving your hand back and forth from the wrist will produce a shape like a quarter circle also. Going on to the elbow joint, using just that joint your arm will automatically “draw” a half circle. The whole arm from the shoulder gives a full circle. Consequently, you can see that all the joints of the body act like compasses big and small producing various sized circles and parts of circles. No wonder it is then that artists always have there figures come out looking round. So much so that one of my drawing teachers used to say, “If your figure doesn’t look like link sausages it isn’t any good.”

So where do straight lines come from, some how it is a kind of freak of nature that arises from the interaction of two joints at the same time, for example just put your index finger against your thumb and rock them back and forth as if you were threading a needle, you get a straight line from the interaction of the two finger joints.

So you see round figures such as you find in Picasso, Ingres, Rubens and others are not an artistic style or whim, but the result of an absolute law of nature!