Charles Ritchie

(above) Charles Ritchie, sketch after an oil painting by Giorgio Morandi, watercolor and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, one panel from an uncatalogued accordion fold drawing dated 8 August 1987, panel size 4 x 6.”

Cadence

I admire artists like Giorgio Morandi, who draw energy from diligent, sustained questioning.  Morandi found a lifetime’s worth of investigation in a select group of motifs. His invention within the genres of still life and landscape relied on his ability to reduce subjects to an essence; engaging often incremental shifts in subject, lighting, palette, size, and format. The completion of each painting seemed to only rekindle a quest to find new ways to cultivate subtle variation and inflection.  I am reminded of poet E.E. Cummings’ quote “Always the beautiful answer that asks the more beautiful question.”

For me, it’s easy to see how Morandi could find his limitations freeing; he woke each morning prepared to paint the what, allowing him to jump ahead to the challenges of how.  Morandi’s oeuvre is filled with a cadence; a visual repetition of subjects in variation as well as the implied cadence of his own engagements. One of the most exciting images I have seen in years is from a recently published book of photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin called Giorgio Morandi’s Studio.  The book lovingly visits Morandi’s studio/quarters in exquisite black and white images.  One shot features the tabletop on which Morandi arranged his still life subjects lifted to reveal the web of traced arcs and contours representing footprints of the many subjects that the artist arranged and rearranged on that table. The artist’s hand-drawn record of locations, beyond being a beautiful abstract image on its own, conveys echoes of Morandi’s cadence.

I’m attracted to other artists whose cadence is evident.  On Kawara makes paintings that feature the date of the work’s execution in large block letters across his canvas; he commits himself to finishing the painting by day’s end.  Other serial activities by the artist include sending postcards to acquaintances noting date, location, and the time he woke up; or telegrams stating simply ”I am still alive.” In another rigorous reflection of on existence, Roman Opalka has been executing the same painting since 1965; each canvas, called a detail, continues the linear painted sequence of numbers from 1 to an implied infinity. In a parallel meditation on time and change, he photographs himself beside the canvas at the end of each day.  Or consider artist, Tehching Hsieh who executed a rigorous series of performance projects each lasting a year.  These included punching a time clock every hour on the hour, living in a cage, or tying himself to another artist for that time period.

Each of the projects I have mentioned above document the passage of time and, to my mind, extend the notion of the journal. Regardless of how one leaves the imprint of one’s cadence, our endless numbered days are passing.  How can we document them?  Perhaps, Opalka has articulated it best; “the problem is that we are, and are about not to be.”

(above) Charles Ritchie, two page spread from Book 131 featuring sketches after oil paintings by Giorgio Morandi, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper, March 2009, each page 4 x 6”.

Note: I tip my hat to several friends who have in recent months brought artists Roman Opalka and Tehching Hsieh to my attention.  My associates’ insights have informed this online journal entry.

A Hunt in the Forest

A few years ago I sifted through family photographs, hoping to find a trove of snapshots of the many houses where I lived as a child. After much searching, I was deeply disappointed; if we had taken pictures, most of them had disappeared.

Since that time, I’ve been actively collecting images that speak to me about my past, and continually surprised at how often I neglected to document key places. When every so often I uncover a snapshot as rich with connections as the one seen above, I’m thrilled. This photograph, recently pulled from a storage trunk by my wife Jenny, shows me seated at the worktable of my first real studio; the setting where my earliest successful drawings emerged.  This photo is the only one I know showing the full setting; the worktable and windows, as well as many of the reproductions of other artist’s work that I rotated across my bulletin boards; a constantly changing wall of inspirations.

The year is 1984 and the spot is a rented basement apartment in a Victorian home in upper northwest Washington, DC where I lived for several years.  My space was beautiful, a bit cavernous, but full of windows on the east side, and the view was eye level to the flower beds, I could watch up close as plants grew and the seasons changed.  A built-in table next to the windows served as a drawing station and the desk and bulletin board shone bright under makeshift lamps.  Under the table, just to my right, I can make out a few of my artist monographs, a tiny collection that has since swelled into a large library. The place was a perfect little heaven as I remember it now (see, for example, Window with Moon and Star, 1983).

It’s unclear why Jenny would have snapped the shutter while I unpacked a radio and fiddled with dials. But beyond my mundane distraction, I am surrounded by the subjects of my drawings of the period; there’s a still life with dried flowers set before a black velvet backdrop, shamrocks in flower pots; and a black ceramic teapot that predominated as a subject for a number of drawings during that period.  I look out the window, through the elaborate iron bars to see green trees of summer. Jenny and I had just married, honeymooned in England, and as we returned I began my curatorial career (see online journal entry for 15 June 2008).

The best clues to dating this photograph are in the images on the bulletin board.  I recognize some of the artists that were influencing me at the time; several Leonardo plant drawings, a Raphael figure drawing, an Albrecht Durer landscape, a Claude Lorrain pen and wash drawing; however the key reproduction for me is Paulo Uccello’s broad landscape, A Hunt in the Forest, c. 1465-70, pinned to the wall just above my head.  That large print was purchased at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England while we were traveling earlier in the summer (below, my 1984 journal sketch after A Hunt in the Forest).

I hadn’t thought about the Uccello painting in a while, so the photo motivated me to dig into my late 1984 journals where I discovered a sketch I made after the composition.  The Uccello work is a wonderful broad-format landscape and an inventive essay in linear perspective featuring hunters, horsemen, and dogs leaping across the foreground, and then shrinking in size, particularly at the center of the composition, to create the illusion of deep space.  It dawned on me that the format of the work and the focus on spatial recession relates to a drawing I was completing at the time, The Bend (below) (see also online journal entry for 17 August 2008).I now see that The Bend was probably done under the sway of Uccello. In addition, as I scrutinized my journal copy after the painting, I noticed a long format composition of my own on the facing page (below, sketch at top of sheet); presumably house lights seen through trees at night. 

This study reminded me of the long format of my Self-Portrait with Night series, drawings that would emerge in the following decade (one example from the series below).  Rediscovering A Hunt in the Forest adds another vantage point from which to view the paths I have taken.

A photograph, a remembered work of art, an image sketched and annotated, all are pieces of the puzzle; clues on the hunt for self in the forest of time and existence.

Charles Ritchie, Studies from Book32 / Winter 1984-1985, watercolor and pen and in on wove paper in bound volume, two page spread: 4 x 12″.

Charles Ritchie, three sequential states of Moon and House [work in progress], 2009, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 3 1/2 x 1 1/4″. States were imaged (left to right): 15 January, 17 January, 3 February.

Intuition and Intersection

Each November the dense foliage above our old neighborhood drops to reveal the celestial dome; as a result I’m much more likely to be in tune with the heavens in winter months. Several weeks ago I saw a waning moon hanging in twilight blue-black sky and since that moment I’ve been rolling that image around in my head, especially as I work at my studio window these early mornings. As is often the case, the memory became so persistent I began a drawing of the subject, responding not only to the image, but a casual event; as I dug through a pile of drawing paper, a very tiny piece appeared.  The sheet seemed like it was made for a tiny moon in a vertical format landscape.  Three stages of the drawing, which is still in progress, can be seen above.

It’s been said that Michelangelo studied the quarried marble, trying to see the figure to be carved in the material.  I can’t say that my discovery of the right sheet of paper for this moon image came about the same way Michelangelo recognized the stone for one of his sculptures; but I am intrigued by such mental leaps that associate image with material.  I can’t say that I understand it, but at the same time, I think that Michelangelo’s recognition of possibilities inherent in a particular stone was essential to the creation of the David; or in my own modest case, the association I made between the image I was carrying in my head with a particular size and format piece of paper.  For me, the reaction feels subconscious; I instantaneously know I’ve found a solution before I’ve thought about it consciously.

As I continued to muse on that waning moon, making sketches in my journal and sustaining a variety of drawings, I looked at my astronomical calendar and realized that my early morning drawing sessions were soon going to be joined by the red star Antares, (see my previous online journal entry for 19 January 2009); to me the star’s presence signals the impending movement towards spring.  As I waited for the moon to return to the same phase I had recorded in earlier sketches, Antares joined my morning sessions and I suddenly I realized that Antares and the moon were going to cross paths.  The moon occulted Antares on the 21st of January.  It surprised and delighted me that these subjects of my interest suddenly came together.  Somehow the event made me think more strongly than ever that alignment of certain forces and our alertness to those forces is the engine for intuition.

Charles Ritchie, page from Book 131, (lower left) sketch of Waning Moon and Antares seen on consecutive days, 20 and 21 January 2009, at 5:30 am, watercolor and graphite on Arches paper, 4 x 6″.

A few days ago I took a walk along a familiar park trail, stopping as I often do on a bridge over the creek.  Looking down into the water, I saw the reflection of a great sycamore tree hanging over the creek, its uppermost branches, inverted in the water, were bathed in the red light of sunset.  At first the image seemed like a strange deja vu, echoing how my day had been spent, drawing the branches of a large tree in one of my ongoing projects.  But then I started thinking about what this image might mean to my work, what trajectory it might take, what intersection might be ahead, and how my intuition might one day connect it to something at just the right moment.

Charles Ritchie, Copy after The Large Enclosure by Caspar David Friedrich, watercolor and graphite on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 4 x 6”.

Passage

When I copy the work of other artists in my journal, I meditate on their art in a systematic, physical way and by doing so often discover passages I might otherwise miss.

The art of Caspar David Friedrich, the great German 19th century Romantic, has long been a favorite of mine.  I find works such as The Large Enclosure spellbinding. This sublime landscape is dominated by an arc of clouds sweeping down towards an upwards bowing waterway. As a little boat approaches the center, it appears to be squeezed in a convergence of earth and sky. Sinuous networks of clouds and waterways enhance the sense of constriction.  As I made my copy, I noted a little opening between the trees that is just the shape of the boat’s sail; like an empty space calling to the piece of a puzzle that fills it.

But I sense The Large Enclosure represents passage on other levels as well. The dark trees in the middle ground block our view, creating hidden space relieved by tantalizing vistas that stretch into open landscape.  While sketching, I noted a subtler passage at the far right, deeper in the distance (see the detail on the right page of the sketchbook spread below). I had never before observed this second tree line, one that offers a solitary opening into a further realm. Perhaps this passage was a symbolic crux of the picture for Friedrich, whose Christian faith would offer a single path out of our earthly enclosure.

Several other thoughts occurred to me as I continued to sketch. The broad arcs that underpin the waterways and clouds in this work imply imaginary circles that stretch beyond the picture frame; evoking the curve of the earth and 360 degrees of sky. This thought led me to the concept of paintings as passages themselves; openings into another world; particularly when we view them as illusory windows into space in the pre-Modernist sense.*

No matter if I stand before the actual work of art or look at a reproduction, the act of copying leads me into mental and physical inquiry.  I train my eye and hand to follow passages once charted by a master. By doing so, I spark personal meditations on the creative process and uncover pathways leading into unexpected levels of myself.

Charles Ritchie, Sketches after Paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, two page spread from journal Book 130, watercolor and graphite on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 4 x 6”.  Six sketchbooks are now on view at Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania until 20 December 2008.

* With the advent of Modernism in the late 19th century, painting was no longer restricted to being an imaginary window depicting another world.  Paintings could be appreciated for their physical qualities alone, beyond convincing illusionism.