Lessons from Glenn Gould

 

Journalist: "Do you think you are really evolving into a teacher?"

Glenn Gould: "I like to think of myself in that role."  

(from a 1962 interview by B. Lee)

Here are some of my sketches with a small selection of things I learned from the pianist-philosopher.

For me an important lesson from Gould was "the notion of ecstasy as the only proper quest for the artist" that "assumes competence as an inclusive component" as he formulates in an article against music competitions.  

You have probably heard about the elusive state of "flow", the holy grail of all creative people. Gould's flow is special in that he takes it into the realm of trance-like ecstasy, and makes it look so explicitly delicious (watch his Eroica Variations videos on youtube) that you find yourself wanting to try what he's having, enticing you into any kind of creative process of your own.

I am an atheist, and I have often thought of art as an alternative to religion, but only in theory.  Gould converted me into art as religion, and with his own example showed the use of art-making as a spiritual practice. And for darker days, one can learn how to get drunk with art as a way to escape from problems or pain directly into paradise.

Confidence in art creates its own truth, and to me Gould is a perfect example of that that both in his art and his career.  He joked: "I’ve always been repulsively sure of myself,”  but as a result of this assuredness and not caring what the critics said, he dared to create such original and interesting versions of most of the repertoire he played, and make numerous technical and artistic innovations in the media of recording and radio.  

Gould's playing style explodes with this confidence: every sound, every musical decision feels like the final statement on the subject, and his are the most definitive silences I have heard. It reminds me of the art of Rubens, who often painted bodies with "wrong" anatomy, that were perfectly convincing and correct artistically because of the dazzling assuredness with which they were painted - confidence can create art more convincing than life itself.

 

 

The third important lesson was about being inspired in spite of, and even because of being surrounded by mediocrity.  Gould was cultured, well-read and well-travelled, an intellectual and musical genius, and yet he loved grey suburbs, grey people, grey days, and the colour grey.   

In his humourous 1966 self-interview he said that he would like to try his hand at being a prisoner because  "to be incarcerated would be the perfect test of one's inner mobility and of the strength which would enable one to opt creatively out of the human situation."  

Seeing a bland environment as a stimulant for creativity for such a giant made my life in a mediocre suburb of Los Angeles more bearable.

 

Finally here are my favourite quotes from Gould's 1964 essay "Advice to a Graduation", where he creates gangly, beautifully constructed explanations of the relationship of imagination, perception, craft and art in the quest of the artist and art teacher. The essay is one of the best ways I've stumbled upon to help get out of the rut as an artist and see beyond one's own nose.

"You should never cease to be aware that all aspects of the learning you have acquired, and will acquire, are possible because of their relationship with negation – with that which is not, or which appears not to be."

"When people who practice an art like music become captives of those positive assumptions of system, <...> and when they become disrespectful of the immensity of negation compared to system – then they put themselves out of reach of that replenishment of invention upon which creative ideas depend, because invention is, in fact, a cautious dipping into the negation that lies outside system from a position firmly ensconced in system."

 "What [imagination] can do is to serve as a sort of no man's land between that foreground of system and dogma, of positive action, for which you have been trained, and that vast background of immense possibility, of negation, which you must constantly examine, and to which you must never forget to pay homage as the source from which all creative ideas come.”

 

Gould's advice to graduating musicians, which applies to all artists who have craft as a necessary constituent of their art, as concert pianists and representational artists do. Reading it two years ago overwhelmed me because I knew Gould's musical recordings, but was not aware of his ideas on art and creativity, which he defines here. I find his definitions both inspiring and alarming, because according to these, very few artists can consider themselves as fulfilling their role, I definitely am not among those who do. Gould, on the other hand, fulfills this role perfectly, and his recordings are an illustration of his written ideas in action. 

 

 

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The Muse

Glenn Gould

 

Two months ago a problem I had all my adult life - a feeling of meaninglessness of art and a regret of being an artist, came to a crisis.  Despite of having a lot of orders I couldn't make myself work.  

Luckily at the same time I was exploring the oeuvre of a favourite pianist, Glenn Gould, who I listened to on and off most of my life, and only knew for his Bach. This time I heard his Beethoven, his moving and wise "contrapuntal radio" - modernist operas about the meaning of life, read many of his articles and interviews, and carefully watched his performances.

The unexpected result was the discovery of myself, a flinging open of inner doors to the source of art, that were shut since my teens, and an avalanche of inspiration that swept all the crises away as I welcomed my new muse.

Today on September 25, 2022 Glenn Gould would have turned 90, and I wanted to celebrate the great musician-thinker with some art and thoughts in this post and possibly some future ones

Gould playing Beethoven

 

 Glenn Gould was a utopian – to him art was a moral undertaking, and he spoke against such evils as professional sport, music competitions, applause, live concerts, and even professional art as a whole, as in his utopian future every human would become a non-competitive, nonviolent artist. His alternative to the sin of competition was the virtue of communication. I believe these ideas created the magic effects of his music-making. The sublime talking piano, the gestures and groans of a religious trance, the creaking chair, the stomping feet communicate the creative experience to your own mind and body, and convert you into art by revealing your own often long-forgotten path to artistic ecstasy, if you only care to follow.

 

 Glenn Gould - a 17mm blue chalcedony intaglio carving

 Here is Gould's own writing on the purpose of art, from the article "Let's Ban Applause":
"…the justification of art is in the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity. Through the ministrations of radio and the phonograph, we are rapidly and quite properly learning to appreciate the elements of aesthetic narcissism - and I use that word in its best sense - and are awakening to the challenge that each man contemplatively create his own divinity."

 

A compilation of my drawings and carvings dancing to the Goldberg Variations for Glenn Gould's birthday

 

Ancient chain weaves

The favourite chain weave of all ancient European civilizations was the so-called loop-in-loop pattern.  It has been used in jewellery from Ancient Sumer through most of Ancient Europe and Middle East, including Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and Byzantium.  It disappeared in Medieval times only to be revived in the 1800s with all other things "Etruscan" and ancient.

Because of my anachronistic tendencies, I have always wanted to possess and wear necklaces of this type. In 2014 I got a chance to learn how to make them, and so far I have made six of three different weaves and four different alloys of gold and silver.  My technique is based partly on the one described in the well-illustrated and practical book “Classical Loop-in-Loop Chains” by J. Reist Stark and J. Reist Smith, partly on the experience and advice of jewellers I consulted, and on my own personal trials and errors.

The wire was made by a professional jeweller (assisted and photographed by me as you can see below).  The chains themselves were fused and woven by me. 

MAKING WIRE 

In ancient times wire was made by rolling twisted metal strips between two heavy slabs of stone or metal creating a characteristic spiral seam. From Medieval times jewellers started using drawn wire, pulling metal rods through a series of holes gradually diminishing in size. This is the method I watched and photographed at a jewellery studio:

1.

First the 24k gold grains are weighed in correct proportion to the grains of silver and copper. The mould is then prepared by rubbing it with machine oil and warming it up.

Reist Stark and Reist Smith in their book suggest a recipe for 22k gold with a high proportion of silver for ease of fusing (the so-called eutectic gold: 91.6% Au, 6.3% Ag and 2.1% Cu). In my experience, the standard 22k gold alloy (91.6% gold with the remainder evenly split between silver and copper) was easier to fuse.

The authors also state that their 22k alloy is close to that used in Greek and Roman chains, but from what I read in other sources, the alloys used in antiquity were extremely varied, from under 18k to nearly 24k, and seem to have been around 23k most of the time.  The conservation journals and books I read did not have specific results for chains, so I still don't know what the typical alloy for chain wire was in the Antiquity.

2.

The gold silver and copper shot is then melted in a crucible while being stirred with a graphite rod (graphite is used because it doesn't transmit heat). The liquid metal is then poured into the mould. The clamps are released, and the resulting 22k ingot is removed.

3.

This ingot was then rolled on a rolling mill to reduce its thickness to 1.5 mm at which point the draw plates could be used to reduce the diameter of the wire even further. The wire was annealed when it got too work-hardened by these manipulations.

After the final annealing, the jeweller rolled the resulting wire into coils on a lathe (not shown), and from that point I took over.

WEAVING THE CHAIN 

1.

First I cut the springy gold wire coils into links. Then I butted the link ends together and made sure there is tension between them to keep the gap small. I laid out the links on a piece of charcoal, and fused them with a small and very convenient micro-torch (ES-1000) using a small and “bushy” reducing (low-oxygen) flame.

The hardest part of the process is fusing the links: any blinking or breathing at the wrong time can make you miss the split second in which the link melts and turns into a cute but useless little torque with shiny beaded ends.  Part of the links always get spoiled this way, especially if they are silver, but the process itself is not difficult to understand.  It took me only about thirty minutes to learn how to consistently produce viable fused links.

After fusing, links need to be tested by pulling them into ovals with round-nosed pliers.  As the links are stretched, the badly-fused ones break, ricochet on all available objects, and fly to the far corners of the room. Despite precautions, some of my chain-making time was spent on the floor sourcing scrap metal.
The links that passed the test are pinched in the middle and curved into a butterfly-like shape. After the butterflies are annealed, the weaving can begin.

2.

The only tool needed for weaving a standard chain is an awl to open spaces between the links and to pull on the open ends of each freshly inserted link to tighten the chain. The first chain I made (a commission for a client) was a thick “double loop-in-loop” (still oxidised and unpickled on my neck in the central picture, pickled and shiny to the right).  For weave comparison, the silver chain section on the top right is the “single loop-in-loop” weave, the simplest of all, where each link is connected to only two other links instead of four.

I later made another chain from 24k gold (seen in the picture second from the top), and it came out looking more irregular and loose because the links were softer and stretched more during the weaving process. I did enjoy the gleaming polished gold look as it came out untarnished from the flame.

My favourite alloy to work with was the standard half-copper half-silver 22k gold. It was easier to fuse, slightly harder to weave but produced a very strong, even-looking chain:

Fine silver, on the other hand, was the hardest material to work with. I used it to create the more difficult “two way” double loop-in-loop chain for myself, and had to constantly fight links not fusing well and breaking.  In the process of weaving, a two-way double chain looks like a cute little monster with its mouth open:

3.

After the chains are woven they need to be annealed, pickled, tamped with a hammer or pulled through a wooden draw-plate to make them more dense and uniform. After such treatment they become stiff like sticks, and need to be massaged and bent in all directions until they become flexible and sensuously serpentine. I found that my fingernails suited that purpose best, and additionally the procedure gave them this cool look:

To conclude, the process of ancient chain-weaving demands a lot of concentration and patience, even if you start with ready-made wire. The beautiful results make up for the effort completely and are definitely worth it, especially for those who enjoy wearing and touching history like I do.

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Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action. An Artist's Review

One of the best exhibitions I have seen, "Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action" is, at the moment of this writing, travelling from the Getty Museum to the Frick Collection where it opens on October 5 for the lucky viewers there.  

While star paintings are always on display in museums, drawings, no matter how beautiful, are hidden away in the vaults because of their sensitivity to light. This fact makes this show is a unique opportunity to see this rarely exhibited Renaissance master's most rarely exhibited works from world collections.  For an art historian or any educated artist these drawings are so iconic and familiar from reproductions that it is a dream-like experience to see them "live" all in front of you together with several of his magnificent paintings. It took me a bit of time before my head stopped spinning from being surrounded by such celebrities, and I could concentrate on studying in those magical rooms.

I'm very grateful for the inspiration and schooling this incredible show provided me with. Below are some of the copies and reconstructions I made at the show or inspired by it.

To learn, an artist in the "classical" representational tradition has to copy. When you copy from a colour print or a computer screen, you cannot compare the two drawings well because of size and medium differences.  But when you are standing in one room with the original drawing, and you have a piece of genuine red chalk or a substitute and some paper in your hands, it's a learning experience like no other.

Technical information:

For the copies appearing below genuine red chalk (Elba, sold by Zecchi) and genuine black chalk (France, sold by Kremer Pigments).  For some drawings I used the substitutes as noted.  For paper I used the Fabriano Ingres laid as well as Strathmore "toned tan" (which is sadly smooth but has a beautiful irregular colour), both not authentic, but then authentic paper is not to be found anywhere.

The chalk comes in chunks that I then saw into thin sticks.  Considering some of the filigree lines on del Sarto drawings he must have sharpened his chalks very well for certain passages.

Red chalk - the lighter one is from Russia the darker from Elba
and some tools to saw it into sections

What I also noticed is that del Sarto (as well as Rubens and many others from 1500-1600s used a harder red chalk than is available now.  The closest ones in hardness (though still not hard enough) are modern artificial waxy pencils such as Pitt oil base, Cretacolor oil and Koh-I-Noor Gioconda, but they don't work well because they are nearly impossible to smudge.

Original on the left, Genuine red chalk copy in the middle, Cretacolor "oil" pencil on right

Copy after del Sarto 

Pitt pastel pencil - maybe a little softer or as soft as genuine red chalk

Red chalk from Elba on Fabriano Ingres

Genuine black chalk on Strathmore toned tan

Study of the Head of a Young Woman, about 1523,
Elba sanguine on Fabriano Ingres paper

Red chalk from Russia. Beautiful colour, but too soft.
(this drawing wasn't in the show,
but I stumbled upon a very good quality image...)

Intaglio gem carving

(Updates: for the newest Lala gems you can follow me HERE

 

And please see Lala Ragimov's Intaglio Gems page with photos and ordering information)

My copy after a circa 300 BC intaglio gem from 

Ionic Greece (Hermitage). March 2016

Here are my first experiments in gem engraving. Ancient carvers worked with a simple machine using oil and emery powder slurry to carve the gems (mostly chalcedony and agate):  

I made my intaglios using a binocular microscope and an electric rotary tool with sintered diamond bits and a continuous water supply.

Here are my results so far:

My first intaglio, Pegasus (agate).

Omphale, carnelian.

This was a freehand copy after a larger Roman gem.

A cupid riding a panther, carnelian intaglio





An engagement ring commission on chrysoprase in 2015




Head of Zeus Olympios intaglio on carnelian and impression,
in progress March 2016

More photos of the process:

Once the gem was on the dop stick, I sketched the design using diamond point and silverpoint and blocked the main shapes in with large round diamond bits.  

Further work was done using smaller round, wheel- and cone-shaped bits.

The biggest difficulty was not being able to see well because water obscures the view as you carve, though not as much as the thick oil and abrasive slurry, which I will try using later.  Another difficulty is learning to control the rotating tool especially when making curved lines.

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In parallel I have also tried my hand at caving miniature black coral sculptures using the rotary tool with steel burs, abrasive wheels, nylon brushes, and polishing wheels and compounds.  This was my first time sculpting in the round. 

Cat and rabbit miniature sculptures in black coral

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