R. GRODEN STUDIO
What is a wall?
by R. Groden
What is a wall? It is a shelter from the wind and the rain, a curtain to pull around you for privacy, a flat upright slab to cut the dining room off from the living room. It is there and is taken for granted unless, of course, you look it full in the face and are shaken by the blank stare it returns. This unsettling experience set cavemen to daubing by the light of torches and drives most of us to hang pictures.
Every child knows what pictures can do. A bare wall, he understands, is an intolerable thing, and he or she joyfully undertakes to set matters right with crayons, pencils, fingerpaints, or their mother's lipsticks in a passion of creation that no remembered threats can dim. In fact, even discipline will not convince them that their parents are on the right track. Yet in time they accede and walls become upholders of doors, which are for slamming and finally for pin-up boards for clippings of football heroes, posters, and party favors. The wall becomes purely utilitarian again.
When the child grows older, he or she is led by the hand into museums where, confusingly, walls are for pictures, first, last and all the time. This could be fun - and proves what they always knew-- if their parents and teachers did not associate art with "learning something". Looking at walls of their home, they are aware of pictures there too, unchanged year after year,as routine and as dull as pot roast every Sunday.
Most of us take pride in our ancestors, but not many of us can take pride in paintings of them. Few of us were fortunate enough to eat our corn flakes opposite a painting by Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley or Thomas Sully.
Grandmother's parlor may be remembered for its huge Hudson River Landscapes in their ornate frames or for canvases by some obscure painters; but let's face it, most of us remember Grandmother's pre-Raphaelite or Maxfield Parish reproductions or those of the American School: Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood and John Stuart Curry. I do not mean to demean these three artists; they do have their place in the history of American painting, but they certainly were over reproduced.
Other paintings, such as anemic landscapes and dull still lifes, faded into the background and were never consciously looked at after they were hung.
When we have our own home, it becomes a different place. After the rice has been thrown and the honeymoon is over, the groom and his bride stand at the threshold admiring rugs laid on shining floors and wedding presents, from dishes to coffee makers, bestowed on occasional tables. It is all wonderful and new and surrounded by four bare walls in every room.
The walls seem the size of a warehouse. This is definitely not a happy couple; yet people the world over fortunate enough not to live in tents are faced with the dilemma of what to put on their walls. Clearly they have to do something, but what? Which pictures do they want? Where will they find them? How much will they cost?
Today, the answer to these questions are found all around us for we live in a period more favorable to the Arts than any other period in our country. Collecting works of art, once the province of Popes, Kings, and Queens, has become in our twentieth century the prerogative of anyone with the passion and the wherewithal to purchase an original $500. painting.
Artists' Studios
There are many artist studios, that are open to the public by appointment. Going directly to an artist's studio to purchase works of Art can be interesting and rewarding, but the experience can also end in an embarrassing situation.
Many artists have no other way to show their work than by exhibiting in traveling exhibitions and by inviting people to their studios. Some collectors seek the artist in their studio even though the artist may have a dealer. They hope in this way to bypass the commission the dealer should receive. They go after a bargain at the expense of the artist who usually needs rent money and at the expense of their own dignity. This type of collector is so graceless that he brags about his coup. Others go to the artist's studio in the hope of seeing more of a selection than in a gallery. The really pure of heart go because in owning and loving their painting they want to know the artist who painted it but the man or woman as well, so as to understand their work better.
Fine friendships have been formed in this way between artists and collectors/patrons. The artist, of all people, unless they are self mesmerized into thinking there is no style of painting but their own, can aid the collector in finding his or her way among the various and subtle media of the painting world, and in educating them in a way that reading cannot.
R. Groden ©
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