With Gender Perspective

Esther Tauroni,

When the writer and Art Historian Esther Tauroni  asked me if she could include a chapter of my art in her new book, I couldn't deny it.

Now that I´ve read the book I feel thrilled and honored because she not only  describes  with detail my  way of painting, but also  my work as a symbol in the 21^st Century of hope for all the forgotten women artists in history.

Compiling the work and  narrating  the history of well known artists, she tells stories of those genius Tintoretto, Goya, Jacques Louis David, Degas,  Gustave Moreau and  René Magritte who  used women as models as a  simple and unique  role, although many of them were also artists but  behind husbands or besides fathers. Creating  this  dynamic and easy to read book, a well organized project in 19 chapters that go from the XVI through the  XVII, XVIII, XIX and XX  centuries to our actual moment, she metaphorically claims justice  for women "With Gender Perspective".

She mentions as an exception  the well known  20^th Century artist  Fernando Botero who as a feminist  exalts women big and fat.

The book also talks about experiences of a few well known women artists, a good example is the XIX century Maria Cosway, where she portrays  herself  with a very upset face as if complaining about the role of the "house cleaning, cooking house wife".
 

Women had to fight twice as hard as men, defying society. There is the work of Hannah Glukstein,  but then we also had Ophelia Camille Claudel,  the victim of John Everest Millais who committed suicide.

And many others..

Black Red

The pleasure of having produced something good.

Portraits are the best way to express intimate experiences of emotion and depth between two because we are in a way  related to the sitter, and hand in hand with him/her.

When painting someone else's portrait, the whole you goes into the whole him/her, capturing  narratives that  reflect  what might be happening in your life at this moment and his /her whereabouts, and inner and outer identities.

With this portrait I am not only challenging the concept of both identities, but also I want to identify  the role of a criminal mastermind, that James Spader plays in his character Raymond Reddington in "Blacklist", a Netflix series.

I´ve been fighting to produce a raw reflection of his hidden mysterious mind  within a face of a cynical impostor, who is  concerned only with  his  own interests.

Disregarding accepted standard rules, distressful of human sincerity or  even any glimpse of integrity,  believe or not, he makes himself respected.

I´ve been brutally cynical and tête à tête with him and my adrenaline, I created this portrait, finally convinced  by him that people are motivated purely by self-interest. Even myself.

 Jesse, a single face.

Historically portraits were used to show how important important persons were, in any certain period of time.

Today drama series on cable television represent  a whole reality of our actual moment.

The Netflix series “Breaking Bad” is about cooking meth. Jesse Pinkman, a drug addict who  manages to elicit sympathy  in spite of his meth activities is my favorite character.

I used photographs of Aaron Paul because in a way I wanted the portrait to look like him, although it is not a documentary portrait but more the idea that his face represents. I Just  wanted to portray Jesse’s "unrest".

A portrait full of emotional depth reflecting not only  the anguish  but the torture that Jesse is going through at that moment. His face in this portrait is the concept of a lost identity.

Although the art is concept driven, the actual similarity to the person is also important to me.

People are scared to talk about meth because it is a huge hidden problem. Jesse plays his role impeccably, a character that goes through a lot of heartache, but with a glimpse of hope on his face at the end.

Empatia

Platón decía que la mirada puede traspasar el velo de las apariencias y revelar la verdad.

Existe en el rostro algo que permanece para siempre en nuestra apariencia que ni el crecimiento ni la vejez pueden destruir, ni siquiera el "botox" actual. Es una  sensación de constancia,  es la esencia del aspecto individual y lo llamamos la expresión dominante, el aira.

Pero también existen rasgos no permanentes que son los indicadores de las emociones cambiantes . El llanto, la risa , es decir los estados de ánimo.

Nuestros detectores musculares están adaptados a responder a estas expresiones dominantes permanentes de las fisonomías humanas,  y también a las no permanentes que son las expresiones de las emociones. probablemente sean musculares, indicándonos claramente que estas reacciones  a nuestros semejantes están vinculadas con nuestra propia imagen corporal.

 Este arte de percibir la expresión dominante y la comprensión del movimiento facial de los demás  , esta respuesta simpa tética desempeña un papel considerable en la respuesta del artista para el retrato.

Esta reacción física por parte del artista  en la experiencia de la equivalencia,  tanto de rasgos permanentes como no permanentes  la denominamos  empatía. Así que el parecido  en un retrato es la equivalencia entre el aira y la expresión móvil de las emociones,  que son las que moldean el rostro.

Un buen fisonomista puede leer el carácter a partir de los rasgos no permanentes  que son las expresiones móviles de las emociones y el aira o expresión dominante. Un buen artista atraviesa la máscara. Imposible el hoy digital ya que todos son mascaras.

Francisco el Papa innovador, valiente de momentos históricos, rompedor en ideas innovadoras, vencedor  de retos y limitaciones , de los pobres ,de las sorpresas, se define a sí mismo como débil, frágil, y cobarde,  al que el dolor físico  le  aterroriza .Sin duda es un líder extraordinario y valiente que a pesar de sus miedos y debilidades "se moja" si es necesario.

Conceptual Portraits

HUMILITY

Portraiture is not only about the person and how important he/she is, it is  not only reflection of  the history narrated in the face  with its  physical changes and the  depth of emotional aspects.

Portraiture is not only about style, color , light form.

Portraiture  is also about  to explore difficult ideas,  raising issues like  authority, humility , the idea of power, political horrors, injustice, justice .

 You´ll reach all those concepts within  an ordinary face  also without  capturing the perfect likeness of a person.

P

Columbia Essays 1987 New York

Calamities NY. 1989

El Arte del Pequeño Grande

El artista expresionista  ordena archivando lo que le rodea de una forma más personal. Su ojo trata de ver las cosas como si las viera por primera vez, como las ve un niño distorsionándolas y desembarazándose de lo superfluo, para inventar algo más fácil y original.

Para mi  crear es expresar lo que uno lleva dentro ayudado de lo exterior y plasmar  ideas, sentimientos y conceptos en la tela de una forma mecánica y  simple a pesar de la destreza y conocimiento que se tenga. Ser  ingenuo siendo mayor cuesta, desembarazarse de representaciones estereotipadas mas.

Un niño egocéntrico  y no coartado expresa sus sentimientos  en dibujos expresivos de simplicidad de  formas a través del encanto y  la espontaneidad  . Totalmente  despreocupado por los detalles canta y baila mientras dibuja con desenvoltura y libertad,  para interpretar  las relaciones espaciales con un dinamismo privilegiado .

 Es  en esta etapa de transacción fácil y natural  donde el niño efectúa fáciles traducciones entre los distintos medios. Dibuja, canta y baila con desenvoltura confinándolas .

Se llama sinestesia, entre  los distintos sistemas sensoriales en el que los colores pueden evocar sonidos, y los sonidos colores. Este estallido de actividad artística , constituye el enigma central del desarrollo artístico.

Un adulto debe buscar la inocencia y  simplicidad en su rebuscada madurez llena de preocupaciones. La sensibilidad artística y percepción estética aumentan con la edad ,pero desgraciadamente  van en paralelo con la disolución del egocentrismo y perdida de originalidad.

 Una pintura vivaz, triste iracunda o potente dentro de su simplicidad puede ser una gran obra.

  Ciega de estereotipos, inventando metáforas infantiles dando rienda suelta al inconsciente,  totalmente desinhibida ,  y posiblemente bailando apareció "Self  Po rtrait with Animal and Frame .Espontanea y simple.

THe Cutest Painting Ever.

 

Antonio Leyva Sanjuan.Spanish Gallerist Madrid.

When we paint a face, we have to be aware of its characteristics. The permanent traits or the structure of the head. The changing features which depend on emotions. We emit different expressions in accordance with what we feel. The essence, or the essential. The personality, a sense of constancy which rules over a change of appearance. The personality is the tone, the way of speaking, the appearance, vivacity, tension, elasticity. T he aura.

Since we perceive all these characteristics and constant expressions at the same time, when I paint a portrait, I exaggerate it, distort and simplify it, sometimes reducing and suppressing, at other times leaving the painting deliberately incomplete because if you try to obtain a convincing physiognomy, the more you add, the more you lose the essence. 

My twenty years of exile as a Spanish artist.

From the vague idea, the work develops on its own accord under my orders. Artistic synthesis works burn from inner necessity. If anything, consciousness of the subject is disrupting and confusing, I need more concentration on the impression to intensify expression rather than on the physiognomy of the subject itself. 

Color is an independent form of expression too, needs  to work effortlessly as a  unity between color and form .

My work is about an Expression, explosion, eruption, unpredictable irresistible power, explosiveness, spiritual urgings and furious energetic attitudes  of mind more than an artistic form. I can´t stand the banal and mundane, I rather remain enthusiastic with my ego than represent objects precisely and unsentimentally in all their details.

The Way I Paint.

My very personal way.

Of course I am concerned with protest or drama, I grasp what I see or feel from the external world  of  forces  and  forms that influence me,  trying constantly to collect  new experiences,  and engage  them with my  inner world in  harmony .

 Predominantly the inner impression  is what prevails.

You need a strong and original temperament, and immense artistic sensibility, you have to be  pathologically emotional, go to  greatest happiness and deepest depressions, in order to create expressions

  free of irrelevancy, to express nothing but the essentials,  and achieve mutual interpenetration of these two kinds of experience. The inner and the external.

I have good visual memory and fast eyes, a positively hallucinatory quality, fast observation of movement, and sometimes a monumental force of expression solely by means of color.

I don´t do sketches to record my impressions. It is an original and different way to create something that can´t be taught. We need a lot of practicing , seizing things quickly, and produce lots of works from memory in bold strokes, bright pure colors, and simplified natural forms. It  is not schematics  and destructive forms with wild and uncontrolled storms of colors. It is just forms of sensitivity.

One needs to have mastery in anatomy in order to be able to invent new own beings, a system of rules of forms, which would still be natural in their effect because they are constructed in accordance with the rules of nature.

 I don´t want apathetic expressionless models, forms which represent nothing, any feminine coquetry, what I  want is  to sacrifice the power of explicit statement or to represent an idea without the object.

Art is the gift of something new, not the reproduction of something already in existence. A creator, without the needing of all the relics of tradition and the past. He must have in himself the  immediate and entire foundation on which he builds  the threatened condition of existence.

La contradicción

Lo que le da a un retrato alma y a lo mejor cierto aire de exactitud, no es la fisonomía exacta, con las partes del rostro en consonancia y perfecta disposición. Con ello sólo conseguimos un parecido real.

Cuando uno sonríe los ojos no pueden estar tristes o abiertos de sorpresa. Si los ojos están animados, no podemos poner una boca curvada apagada como de sollozo, porque entonces el retrato tendría un aire falso y no parecería natural.

Entonces, deberíamos tener presente que cuando los ojos se entornan, la actitud debería ser sonriente, las comisuras de los labios se alzarían hacia la nariz, las mejillas se rellenarían y las cejas se ensancharían.

Yo no soy una pintora lo suficientemente minuciosa como para engarzar bien las distintas partes de una cara.

En este retrato de Pepe Simarro Junior emulo la contradicción, vemos que los ojos no están para nada entornados,  para esa ligera sonrisa guasona. Sin embargo, la combinación de estos rasgos contradictorios, de una mirada seria con una sombra de sonrisa, da por resultado una inestabilidad sutil, una expresión que oscila entre lo pensativo y lo burlón, que intriga y fascina a la vez.

Soy expresionista y también trato de conseguir esa armonía y equilibrio eliminando datos que son para mí superfluos. De la forma más pura, procuro dejarlos a veces deliberadamente incompletos y así conseguir un aspecto irónico. Contradicciones intrigantes les otorga aspectos más naturales. Pero sin exagerar la nariz como en una caricatura.

Esther Tauroni. Art Critic and Historian.

Borrowing images from different angles downloaded from the internet, I can create quite accurate portraits, whilst avoiding falling into caricature.

I think a face is built over time, through all the experiences that person endures. By concentrating on the subject's features, particularly their eyes, expressions, and gestures I am capable of reproducing their aura by memory.
I believe my final touch gives the portrait something else, a certain "je ne sais quoi, de moi", just a little bit of myself that adds to the work a shared spirituality that goes beyond the boundaries of a convincing portrait.

this is what she wrote about me.
https://esthertauronibernabeu.wordpress.com/2019/08/02/el-canon-de-belleza-y-su-desmitificacion-en-la-obra-de-maria-aparici-vidal/?fbclid=IwAR0qMxUoP8bRclUNbx9zcOhzRoQx1aAAOceCvZI5YRi5Qx9SlB8I9e8-PXU

Infinidad de Retratos

Si los griegos fueron los pioneros en el arte del retrato realista  en el siglo  V a/c ,los romanos idealizaron a sus dioses enmascarándoles de falsa belleza para  individualizarlos.

Los ingleses impulsaron la  caricatura agrupando  cabezas expresivas, pulverizando la personalidad y la individualidad. Caricaturas figurativas realzan lo exagerado de  esa misma sociedad juzgada por su estatus social que se mantiene a flote a pesar de la tempestad y que antaño como hoy día permanece  y persevera.

 El realismo actual  en un periodo  de populismos pinta a una sociedad precaria y ambigua que lucha por sobrevivir a pesar de su soledad e incoherencia.

Mis retratos son democráticos, del montón, solo capto lo esencial, lo expresivo, lo fugaz y lo instantáneo de una gloria que se desvanece. Gracias al artista que  retrata conocemos la historia, catalizador de un determinado tiempo, el  retrato, lo narra sin interponer su personalidad  con el retratado , pero si consolidando su presencia.

 Mis retratos  Expresionistas  de trazo fluido y de confrontación directa  de distorsiones expresivas, representan el potencial de identidad y tienen una gran profundidad psicológica. La factura apresurada favorece a efectos turbadores, el gesto narra. Él color fuerte expresa emociones.

 Mis retratos conceptuales renuncian a la imitación, en posturas distantes se convierten en arquetipos intemporales. Un modelado tonal aporta incorporeidad inexpresividad y apariencia hermética.

Figurativos, Realistas ,Conceptuales , Expresionistas están  pintados a partir de fotografías digitales  son obras intemporales , fuera de cualquier moda  , pero si evolucionan con ella.

 

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No Sigo Tendencias

En los últimos cinco años he buscado una narrativa abstracta con connotaciones figurativas,  un dialogo de formas  , luces y sombras, transparencias y color donde la figura de una mujer desmembrada es la protagonista.

Y no porque he estado huyendo de las tendencias nuevas o  formas viejas ya establecidas del mercado,  sino porque ha sido la mejor manera  de expresar mis sentimientos a través de un lenguaje no planeado,  inventado y  ejecutado  con una libertad sin límites y sobre todo sin miedo.

La  mujer como concepto  pictórico refleja la idea fundamental de mi obra. Pinto imágenes de mujeres como un trabajo de arte en su totalidad. Mujeres notables por su veracidad , alegres ,  controvertidas , tristes.

A veces  mis  agresivas y voraces imágenes con sensualidad incluida son aullidos de protesta de mi estado interior emocional, y posiblemente mi imagen reflejada en el espejo del cuadro . Soy mi propio estimulo visual , con mi dinamismo, contraste y banalidad , identificándome con ellas , proyecto mis miedos y pasiones.

Brochazos  de mujeres asustadas,  pinto lo exterior de la mujer horrible,  de la sofisticada en poses provocativas,  de la mujer fatal y  orgullosa de serlo , pero también pinto lo interior de la mujer vulnerable, desolada, deprimida y melancólica . Pinto La parodia  de la seductora con los labios pintados de rojo y ojos  asombrados de sorpresa, y las pinto en posiciones imposibles de contorsiones del cuerpo.

Todas pululan por el cuadro seguras de sí mismas y en  realidad son  divertidas caricaturas de lo  absurdo.

A lo largo de la historia el trabajo de la mujer pintora ha sido acusado de lindezas y  cursiladas  .

 En mi obra confluyen gestos de  apuntes impulsivos  que el pincel crea en violentos brochazos y    una fuerte vitalidad femenina cargada de emoción, quiero que mi espectador  perciba todo esto,   y responda con los 5 sentidos a las emociones que emanan de mis composiciones, acumulación de excesos de  mi interior y exterior   simplificados en un cuadro ,   que el cerebro ,  transmite al ojo, y ojala al ojo del espectador y que la imagen permanezca en su memoria para siempre.

Porque Hoy es difícil recordar una imagen de tantas que nos rodean. Que la imagen de  la mujer como idea transcendental  se mantenga  y  la melancolía de mis monstruos, persevere.

Don´t Follow Trends

s?.I don´t follow trends. No matter the century.

I´ve been looking for a personal way of expression for 20 years, I´ve tried to step aside  of movements  not  trying  to avoiding them , not even resisting associations with them,  but just because  I simple wanted to have a  personal dialogue ,  my own way to express my feelings  through art .

In order to achieve it,  in  my compositions  I started observing  the world around me ,  creating amorphous figures but  without  any sense, discovering  de Kooning , for me one of the most  complex and difficult painters,  and by far my favorite I resolved the problem. .

I was going to be the model, a woman, and I had to add to the outside world that surrounded me , the opposing one found in  my inner woman´s   life.

I learned  forms based on myself, I created a dialogue based in women ´s stupidity,  both very  personal observations ,  and finally  my style neither abstract, nor figurative came out , a mix of blended  amorphous something,  abstract and figurative expressionist  figures where embedded  within tempestuous backgrounds, showing altogether  dialogue, failure , anger, drama, happiness . What an explosion.

All my contents are invented, no premeditated or planned, just observations that my memory keeps,  and my brain recycles. A marvelous process of discharging freedom without boundaries or limits, and above all  without the concern of fear.

 Because  maybe  something interesting will come out of it, or not?. But who cares?.

Sexualzation

Inner Out

There are two things that I am concerned about .

First, Should women avoid dressing  or just not dress like whores in order not to be victimized?

Second, the role of women in today´s digital age.

We  live in a society of the objectification of the self,  extremely  sexual.  Today sexualization of women in every music video is accepted.

Women without any problem  brand themselves classifying  their looks, as how tall they are and how slim and beautiful their bodies look .

High heels, a very obvious sign of sexualization, have to do with our insignia, bust size, weight and so forth.

But the media handle reality, the electronic image is manipulated and the game played on the surface at the levels of appearance only loses power the moment you see  the inner real.

Our actual moment is distorting reality, we no longer relate sensuality to intimacy,  the passion for high heels which  deform feet is a torturous nightmare .

Beauty in my paintings of women is a  deformed surface, because  the inner view,  what is inside, is vulnerable, intimacy, emotion and privacy  are avoided because they have to do with ugliness  and  weakness.

We are all shit,  and I am not interested in it anymore, what I paint is my inner imperfect introspection.

The Good Wife

The Good Wife

There are extraordinary women with privileged minds who get nowhere in life, whilst others with no mind at all reach high levels with their bodies, and also there are those few who, possessing both, sacrifice one or the other in order to reach at least half that.

We are at a historic moment for women, those of my generation demonstrate, whilst those belonging to my daughter’s generation take action because they want to be free in their decisions. 

In a wider labor market, with more opportunities and more competition finally accepted by men, women prove their courage and ability to work. 

With that, boring domestic chores, children’s education and the home nest are shared. And the man loses his bird’s freedom to lay his eggs in others’ nests.

It is certain that marriage as a religious institution is shaky and also that long-term partnerships can be boring. Perhaps now we accept more openly that infidelities can unite more than separate, and can be accepted and forgiven. 

But careful, children are a great responsibility, and from these relationships and adventures children can be born if the woman so decides. They are mean to be a shared responsibility, not soldiers combatting their step brothers or sisters.

As such, if a woman searches for equality and wants to be a single mother, she has to be sufficiently responsible to accept her maternity by herself, alone. That, yes, is freedom.