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.