The Colorist

There has been a strong case put forth against excellence in art. The whole Postmodern Art movement declares that "dominant paradigms" need upturning, like beauty and skill.

My contemporary hero, Wolf Kahn, wrote that he regrets his latter-day skills in technique, because formerly, without his expertise as an oil painter, he was freer to "overwork" his images. Our current subject, Henri Matisse, worked years to undo his formal art training in order to create his Modern Art statement of pure, "over-wrought" and sensational color.

Because of Wolf Kahn's influence, I frequently take a pastel work and bring it well past any coherent finished point. I literally ruin the artwork, over-filling the tooth of the paper and muddying the colors. In the process, many wonderful discoveries occur! New color combinations and compositions come about. New possibilities with the medium are revealed.

In the dock for excellence, one can argue that the very definition of the word "artist" includes the idea of skill. And as my prime exhibit, I refer you to the high quality of current art. Evidence of Postmodernism's faults is everywhere present.

How to reconcile my personal beliefs about rudimentary values in art versus excellent technique? Maybe there doesn't need to be a reconciliation when one considers that there is a continuity to the artist's progress from his early to his late works. The unity of an artist's corpus is undeniable in the fact that both his early works and his later works are created by the same hand.

I feel that many more paintings await me with greater powers as a pastelist. I'll be thinking about the finer use of my medium as my studio life progresses this year.

As often happens, I find that the Wikipedia entry for Degas is the best overview I've read.
His art was produced with planning and slow deliberation. He seems quite the opposite of van Gogh, who worked (although with direction and forethought) very quickly.
Degas' freshness of color I attribute to his masterful use of the pastel medium. Many aren't aware that he worked in pastel, given the popularity of oil paint among the Impressionists. As a matter of fact, Degas was very progressive in his use of media. He painted in oil and pastel, was a sculptor, a printmaker, and was an early practitioner of photography.
Pastel, however, is the hallmark media of Degas' legacy. He is considered to be the greatest figure in pastel's pantheon of artists, given his advancement of the medium at an historical turning point in art history.
A born Parisienne, Degas studied art in France, but also made a pilgrimage to Italy for study in classical principles of art. He is also noted for having traveled to New Orleans, in the U.S.
Additionally, the great artist lived 83 years, and never married. It is sad to read of his eyesight degeneration, and to imagine how he was supposed to have wandered, near his death, aimlessly on the streets of Paris.
Degas was part of a movement of artists who spanned the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, and whose vision would replace allegory and morality in artistic subject, with modernist realism and what has been described as artistic "looking" at man.
Towards the latter part of his long career, he did loosen up his sense of detail, and began to value the abstract qualities of his paintings a little more. He was a studio artist, preferring to work from studies and memory.
Degas had his fair share of difficulty dealing with his public. "Why do you paint women so ugly, Monsieur Degas?" he was once asked by a hostess. "Parce que la femme en general est laide, madame, " came the reply. "Because, madam, women in general are ugly."
And to print this on International Women's Day! He had his uncouth way of acting, as many life-long bachelors do. In point of fact, his female nudes and figures did not suffer from sympathy or idealization. To his credit, he created new and fresh figurative works that respect the actual forms, presence and gestures of mankind. And he did it in a colorist fashion, as the incredible The Green Singer, demonstrates.
I like the idea that he did not destroy the past, in the so-called avant-garde way, but rather built upon it.
I recommend Expo-Degas for an online collection of his art.
I very much recommend the following article by Robert Hughes, for a highly opinionated criticism of the artist's life and work.
The only book I own about the paragon of pastel is: Degas by Himself, Richard Kendall. Does anyone out there recommend a good monograph of Degas?

Vincent was denied a church funeral because of his suicide. Those were the days when it was considered a sin.
VVG had plenty of that. Sin.
His mother wished him dead well before his actual demise, and his father disowned him.
In the list of shared background that I have with VVG, there is the matter that I have my BA in the Bible and theology. One of the things in the van Gogh story that has been bugging me is the art critics who write the histories of the old boy have him renouncing his Christian faith.
I find no evidence of that. Yes, he most definitely strayed "off the reservation", and had unkind things to say about the church. He cohabits with, and consorts with, prostitutes. Then again, Hosea the prophet (remember, he has a whole book of the Bible) was married to one of those, you may remember.
But I see no renunciation of Christ. In fact, I see evidence to the contrary. Unlike myself, the old boy was a Calvinist. Strictly speaking, these guys think that one is "Once Saved, Always Saved". Which means, once you have been compelled, via Holy Election, to accept Christ, you will not stray, in spite of any evidence to the contrary. For you non-theologically minded, let's put it this way: if you were VG's father, a Calvinist minister, you would believe in the secure salvation of Vincent, no matter what he did after accepting Christ.
His parent's ungracious behavior towards him was understandable, in sociological terms. The first people you lose when you leave behind your sanity are your family. Turns out, more tragically, that many of Vincent's immediate family had dementia in their final days, due to the ravages of syphilis.
Of course, van Gogh is a father of Modernism. Yes, he exalted self, art, and nature. Certainly these things may crowd out the heart's room for God. I see nothing in that, however, to irrevocably overcome his place in the eternal. God knows, not I.
For the irreligious this may be a painful and seemingly unnecessary post. But I don't know how, without bald redaction, one can study the artist van Gogh without his faith, or art history (western) without Christ. It would seem to be impossible.
Certainly, it needs to be said, that the trend among VG's historians to strip him of his salvation is probably ill-informed, at best. I don't think I would be too surprised, standing on the other side, that I should meet the great artist, Vincent van Gogh.

It appears that others have covered this same ground, and agree with my thesis.
See:
This article by Cliff Edwards on VG's faith.
Also:
"Few images in modern art have so captured the attention of the public as Van Gogh's Starry Night, a painting that reveals all the light and glory hidden in an ordinary evening sky. In this very readable study of Van Gogh, essentially a spiritual biography, Kathleen Erickson explores the intense spirituality of the painter, from his early religious training and evangelical missionary work to the crisis that occurred when the church rejected his more radical way of following Christ. Erickson argues (against many Van Gogh scholars) that the artist's mature work reflects not a rejection of Christ so much as a rejection of a dogmatic church, seeing instead in the famous images of his art a profound connection to Christian symbols. Throughout, she helps us to discover the source of the power in Van Gogh's stars and sunflowers." --Doug Thorpe in this review of At Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vision of Vincent van Gogh.
From Publisher's Weekly:
"Erickson's account of the spiritual dimensions of van Gogh's work is an important corrective to two widespread assumptions: first, that his background was theologically Calvinist; second, that he abandoned religion when he began his professional career as an artist. Drawing extensively on van Gogh's correspondence, Erickson argues convincingly that the so-called Groningen school?(sic) more Arminian than Calvinist?was the foundation for van Gogh's religious outlook and that his abandonment of institutional Christianity (precipitated by disillusionment with his uncle and theological mentor, Johannes Paulus Stricker) was not so much an abandonment of religion as a move to synthesize Christianity and modernity via mysticism. Her discussion of van Gogh's late work is particularly compelling in this regard. Erickson's diagnostic discussion of van Gogh's mental illness is intriguing, though such extended discussion of whether he was epileptic, bipolar, schizophrenic or a combination is more of a distraction than a contribution to artistic or religious appreciation of his work. This work is a lucid and accessible contribution to understanding the religious character of van Gogh's artistic vision."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. (Pasted from Amazon)
I won't argue the Arminian vs. Calvinist parts, here.

Note: now I still need to post regarding the lessons I learned by "seeing" VG's art, and producing a work after him.