It was very nice to attend the Copenhagen study visit 27th - 29th April for many reasons. It was a quite rare opportunity to meet other students from the OCA, also Joanne and Bryan, so we could get to know each other and discuss many aspects of our journey through our OCA course, We visited three very important museums in Copenhagen and learned a lot about art and about the OCA.
On day 1: Friday 27th April - we gathered in the Garden Café outside the Rosenborg Castle, where I was pleasantly surprised to see how many international OCA students were there - from seven different countries!
National Gallery of Denmark
After a nice lunch we went on our first guided tour to the National Gallery of Denmark's “Art in Making” which focused on artistic creativity through the ages and how the artworks were actually created. The exhibition explored the creative processes of Western European art from the fifteenth century up to the early twentieth century. (SMK: Art in Making Exhibition). Our guide focused mainly on the creation of the following -
1. Paolo Veronese, Italian, 1528 - 1588
Venus and Adonis, Oil on Canvas
It was explained how the artist started and developed his ideas in his sketches for the final piece
Veronese sketched several version of the scene, (as below), and when too many corrections became disruptive to the process he turned the sheet over, held it up to the light and traced the main lines of the scene causing it to emerge as a mirror image in simpler, cleaner strokes, which he went on to use for his main painting.
2 - Nicolai Abildgaard, Denmark 1743 - 1809
The Wounded Philoctetes,1775
Abildgaard painted the legendary hero Philoctetes who was abandoned on a Greek island during the Trojan War - a very powerful depiction of a body twisted by pain.
His used ‘The Torso Belvedere’ as a model for the upper body of his painting
Other artists have also used the torso as a reference, including Harrman Beeken, Danish 1745-1781 -
In this work a soldier and his fallen companion copy the detail in Giulio Romano’s fresco The Back of Constantine, showing how artists familiarised themselves with older art, copying or taking inspiration from them, and reproducing selected details in the development their own artistic ideas: older works emerging in new forms.
Reference www.smk.dk/en/explore-the-art/highlights/nicolai-abildgaard-the-wounded-philoctetes/
Another interesting aspect on the process of art making by many artists was the use of cartoons. Once the conceptual sketches and detailed studies had been made the artist would fuse the two in a cartoon of the same format as the final painting, gradually developing more details and more precise light and shadow. The transfer of this cartoon to make the final work was done by either pressing the contours of the cartoon or by pouncing: pricking the contours to make tiny holes and then dabbing with a bag of coal dust. The cartoons were in many cases also used as advertisements for compositions that patrons could order, to be executed in oil on canvas
3. – Peter S. Kroyer, Danish, 1852 - 1909
Portrait of the author Sophus Schandorff1895
In this section we saw how the artist created the portrait from many sketches of different poses, even making a sculpture of the head, before deciding on the final composition,
4.- Edvard Weie, Danish (1879-1943),
Faun and Nymph,1940-41
http://www.smk.dk/en/explore-the-art/highlights/edvard-weie-fain-and-nymph/.
Inspired by the Abduction by Paul Cezanne
The most interesting aspect of Weie’s work for me was his use of cut-out pieces of coloured paper as an aid to creating the pure colour harmonies of his composition before he started to paint his work. He’s thought to have been influenced by Matisse’s cut outs, and may even have collaborated with Matisse.
The exhibition was very interesting and very relevant to me as I do my first OCA course - Drawing One, because it emphasises the importance of preparatory work, of research, and of the influence of old masters on contemporary artists in developing my own voice as an artist.
During the visit we also saw contemporary work such as:
Kirstine Roepstorff, Danish, 1972
Desolation of the Beast- Collage textile
And many others interesting contemporary works of art.
In the evening we all gathered together in the Riz-Raz Restaurant for dinner to get to know each other a bit more, before setting off for our accommodations and a good rest.