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What should a Plein Air Painting Be?

Or...

Is there a right way or a wrong way to think about Plein Air?  

By John Morra 

 

 

   "Hey! What do you mean, 'SHOULD' anyway? It can be anything you want it to be.”

 

All right. Fair enough. Of course artists are free to construct their own realities,  decide what subjects are worthy , and to make their own rules. This way of thinking about art is the accepted orthodoxy of our time, and has long enjoyed an unassailable stature that resembles a law of physics.  

 

 So it’s hard to imagine a time when  the general consensus was the opposite of this kind of thinking:  art once had rules. When one reads criticism from 200 years ago, it’s immediately obvious that rules were something of a given. There were certain standards that everyone knew about, even if they were not completely spelled-out. And when they were spelled out, as in the Hierarchy of Genres in the academies, everyone more or less accepted them, even if there were the usual odd dissenters. 

 

 Nowadays, we find ourselves as realist painters ( or, traditional painters, etc) in an interesting situation. We are less uncomfortable with standards of excellence, but we still don’t like things too precisely defined. But I am about to try out some of that old-fashioned precise definition, just to see if I can bring some clarity to a word/activity that is growing in popularity every day — Plein Air painting. 

 

 

I started to think about this a while ago, when I had a  little encounter with a gallery owner.

 

At The Refusés Salon Gallery in Juneau, Alaska ( not its real name), I was admiring a big, brushy  still-life of sunflowers and shiny glass things. It had saturated colors, a broken-up background, and almost no fine detail. I admired it, and wondered if I might be better off by tossing my small brushes and earth colors.  

 

"Brunhilda (not her real name) is one of our best-selling artists," said the  gallery owner, who appeared from around the corner.

 

"  Please ask if you have any questions about her work.  I love her paintings.  She is becoming known as one of today's leading plein air painters." 

 

Now I felt even worse about my own paintings. "Gosh!" I said. "You mean she painted this outside?" I had tried on a number of occasions to paint a still-life outdoors. I knew how  hard it was compared to controlled studio lighting. 

 

"Well, no," she replied, " but it is the plein air style."

 

So there it was -- plein air, which meant , "painted in open air," or "painted outdoors" now seemed to mean, "visible brush marks  and saturated colors all over the place. " It had become, to this merchant anyway, a style.

 

I began to wonder: What does plein air mean? Can it mean anything you want it to mean?  Is it a style, an adjective? Or is it really more of a verb— something you do? What are its chief characteristics, and where does a plein air picture succeed or fail ? What should a plein air painting be, if anything? 

 

Before I give my list of what I think, first let me say that I freely acknowledge that language, like an idea , is a fluid thing. Definitions change. There can be rapid changes (like Ms.) and others that can take a while ( my favorite, the word  gentleman).  But I don’t think it’s profitable to  be sloppy with our words right now, as  we are in the midst of a bustling plein air revival;  from what I understand, Plein Air Magazine is the biggest art magazine of its kind today.  And everywhere you go, you see groups of painters outdoors with their tripods and umbrellas. Innumerable paintings are being made, and this means  painting contests,  salons with big prizes,  and judges who must pick the best pictures.  There's too many real, concrete things going on that are beyond changes in language.  So, then, I feel compelled to ask: what makes plein air…. Plein Air?  

 

Here are my answers, for now, anyway:

 

 

Sargent, out having a great time in the great outdoors. 

 

1) Plein Air is done from life.

 

There will  always  be arguments about photographs and their use in painting, and if you are reading this, you have probably made up your mind on what all that means, having argued about it for years. But for now, I think it is safe to say that there is an inevitable,  self-evident admiration for any painting that is built "from the ground up," that is, completely hand-made. This does not mean that the final result of non-photo-using painting is thus automatically superior artistically; it only means that people do admire unaided raw skill, especially when it is successful.

 

 One of the reasons we are so consistently baffled by the painting of the past (until the 19th century) is because we know that they had no “reference material” (unless you include engravings) ; compared to now, they had nothing to fire their  artistic furnaces except their own knowledge and experience. 

 

     We have all seen  the workshop  situation where the  teacher shows students how to paint waves on the coast of Monterey by painting them from a gigantic computer monitor.  If students of waves are unable to go to  Monterey, teachers should do this, as it is profitable and de-mystifying. In fact, the unique problems of painting water and waves can be readily grasped by studying photographs, just as Muybridges’ photos of  running horses opened new doors of  knowledge  for animal painters.  

 

   But painting from a monitor, reasonable activity it might be, is not Plein Air painting, no matter how one tries by wiggling the brush around.  It may very well be landscape painting, and it may even end up as Art (whatever that is). But while a painting made from a monitor (or a photograph) may display the artist's distinctive mark-making and ability to edit and select, it is done in a condition that is utterly unlike the battlefield that is the usual day outside. When painting outdoors in the full brilliance of nature’s light, a massive  translation of values and colors must be made from Nature to inert pigment, and it must be done quickly and accurately, as there is little time. Such knowledge is on full display in a picture that is painted completely from life. When you paint from life,  there is truly nowhere to hide.

 

And then there’s all the other little things. On a monitor, there are no bugs. There is no sunscreen. There is no hiking. There are no baffling questions from spectators. There is no threat of  a sublime, Turneresque  storm blowing in (which  happened to me recently); there is no real urgency to capture any fleeting effects, as they will be there on the screen tomorrow or next week if you wish; and there is little chance that you won't at least "get something," as your picture on the monitor is already arranged, enhanced and cropped.  Its  immutable colors are right under your nose, so in this sense, your picture is already half- done-- and looks pretty awesome at that.

 

   Painting outside, on the other hand, is often a disaster. Your attempts  may or may not turn into something, and that is why it is so infuriating, fun and rewarding. I am not saying that there is virtue in suffering, and that painting outdoors is always miserable. It isn't. However, when someone is able to perfectly express, in paint, the uniqueness of a given moment outdoors,  it is something of a miracle. Such a wonder is by definition impossible  inside the studio monastery, and certainly not from monitors or photographs. 

 

(I must mention here that I am not saying anything against studio landscapes — only that they stay in the studio.  In fact, I am hoping that the current army of outdoor painters will turn to the glories of  studio painting in addition to their plein air activities. We probably need studio landscapes  more now than ever). 

 

    I remember hearing about a  two-day Plein Air contest where someone took their painting home after day one, burned midnight oil, and on the next day,  presented a near-Van Ruysdael  to be judged as a plein air painting. He/she did not win, as the wise judges declared this as "non-plein air." From that point on, anyone entering this contest will be unable to do this again, as  the  artists must now have their canvas  stamped on the back with a seal of authenticity, and then left over night in an artist-proof room. Bravo. 

 

2) A Plein Air painting should be truthful.

 

   Oh dear. "Do you mean that we gotta put in EVERYTHING that is there? Aren't we supposed to be editors , who distill all of the junk out there into an orderly world on the  canvas?"  

 

My short answer: you should put everything in. I think there is way too much editing going on.   But some qualification is needed. 

 

Everyone edits. Tree lines get adjusted, clouds get arranged into patterns that make sense, and cars get relocated.  But if painting could be made into a kind of spectrum, with Pontormo on the left side, (representing the ideal, the stylized, etc) and Velazquez on the right (the more natural, the unadorned), then Plein Air is clearly over to the right side. It is most successful when it really "nails" unique, specific light effects and colors of a given scene. When you see someone really pull this off when painting from life, it can make you wonder if ideal art is even necessary at all — and this also applies to painting anything— figures, portraits, still life and so on.

 

    But not for long!  I think we need ideal (classical) art more than ever, but I think its proper arena is the studio. Poussin is one of my favorite landscape painters, but his kind of picture-making belongs indoors.  I was  once painting with a plein air artist who was making his sky look like a Frederick Church Sunset, all while the subject in front of him was clear, sunny and  four in the afternoon. I asked him why he was doing this, and he said, "I only use what is in front of me to say what I want to say HERE," pointing to his canvas.   But, timid person I am, thought, "Then stay home. Why bring your bag of tricks out into a unique situation, which will never happen again, so you can make what’s in front of you into something it is not?”

 

     When I say “truthful,” I do not necessarily mean painting everything, or every detail or leaf.  but I do mean a kind of stance, where you at least TRY to express  the qualities of what is there - and not what you want it to look like. 

 

As an example from still-life, I know that if I am attempting  a “stance” of objectivity when painting a flower, I know my picture will have believability. Everyone knows how agonizing flower painting can be, especially when you compare  your clunky picture to the delicacy of the real thing — sometimes I  lament that my paint thickness exceeds the  actual thickness of the petals! But after the flowers are dead and you look at your picture, its intrinsic truthfulness will shine, because you tried to be honest about what was there, as opposed to whipping out decorative flower-painting formulas (“Paint a Rose In Three Easy Steps!).

 

 Similarly , if painting a portrait, this applies to the strangeness of your sitter’s nose, their faint eyelashes, or the beginning of a double chin. When someone is truly “captured” in a portrait,  a major part of that “capturing” is the stubborn honesty of the  painter. And using this unflinching way of looking while painting a plein air landscape is the best way of assuring that same quality.   Truthfulness— I think it is the very soul of plein air painting. I call it the glory of forgetting one's tidy formulas, one's desires for what a picture ought to look like, and instead, losing  oneself in open, almost passive receptivity to the stuff in front of you. 

 

 Does this sound like turning artists into cameras?

 

 

                                                                               By Leighton… a great example of an “objective stance.”        

 

 

 Basically, yes. 

 

Someone will guffaw as I say that, and will  remember their  tough old art teacher telling them to not be a “copier”  —to refrain from being an old lady and  making things look realistic. Not long ago in art circles,  “literal,” and “literalism” were  the worst insults. Their usage today  still carries negativity;  whenever an educated person wants to insult someone they consider unsophisticated, they will  often call their opponent’s  views ( be it politics, religion or literature) “literalism.”

 

   But remember, we have been conditioned for at least two hundred years to think that an attempt to be objective is somehow un-artistic. And yet,  when reading descriptions of pictures from centuries ago,  one is struck by how often fidelity to appearances was considered a great virtue — almost a moral virtue.  As an example, we turn again to Velazquez and his portrait of Juan De Pareja,  in the Metropolitan Museum. According to one of his biographers, the painting was immediately praised by all who saw it, and when it was compared to other pictures of the time, it was said that Velazquez’s painting stood alone as “truth,” whereas the rest were merely in the camp of “painting.”

 

  But what about personal expression, and huge, visionary paintings? I say yes to all of it, but NOT in front of nature. Plein air should  begin with an over-all “stance” of truthfulness,  an attempt to get the heart of things as perfectly and truthfully as possible. Sure, you might change some stuff, but not much. Why would you, anyway?

 

Because of the truthfulness virtue,  I have another sub-rule for myself and anyone else willing to listen — do NOT  work on your plein air paintings away from the subject. If you want to do something to an unfinished picture you began outdoors, make another version of the same picture,  and change THAT one. Or, if you cannot make it back to Tuscany next week, and have to go home and “finish” from photographs, do NOT work on the painting you started while there. Start a new one, same size.  Why?

 

1) Because of the uniqueness of that experience outside, and also, because your photograph, with its own value/color structure,  will tempt you like a siren to copy it and completely alter  whatever you observed first-hand;

 

2)Because making replica version is easy and fun, and it is instructive to show people the original versus the studio version, and hear which one they like better and why. I  like to put a piece of clear acetate over the original painting, and match precisely what I did outdoors by placing color mixtures directly onto  the acetate. Then, in the  second version, one can add more paint, include  more detail, or gradate/alter colors, increase or decrease contrast — or anything. But disturb not that original source, as  you can't go there again.

 

[As an aside on studio painting, Corot’s paintings provide a marvelous spectrum of “ways of working.” He made countless little paintings outside that have an unmistakable “plein air” feel; he made medium-sized paintings outside that were somewhere in between his studio pictures and plein air; and finally, he made his large, misty pictures completely in the studio. He called his big ones  souvenirs because  he saw them as a recollection of something he experienced in nature ( Souvenir : In French, “memory” “to remember.” ).  This  method of what he called “nature as seen through a sentiment” was similar to William Wordsworth’s way of writing poems — it was in the recollection of the experience that true artistic vision took place, as the memory became as a kind of editor that would prune away a poem — or a painting — down to its essence. But Before Corot could do such a glorious studio picture, he had already logged in countless hours before nature itself, and  while doing that, his main goal was truthfulness. It’s as if the sentiments and memories of the studio pictures could only happen by means of the other, more objective activity. ]

 

 

3) A  Plein Air painting  should be painted quickly.

 

 

 

  Consider Antonio Lopez Garcia’s,  great, brilliant, splendidly  detailed picture of Madrid. It is certainly painted from life, and it is as truthful as can be — almost alarmingly so. I think it took him several years to paint.  But is it a plein air painting,  properly speaking? I don’t think it is. It is more of a studio-plein air hybrid. This in no way means it is lesser; but it does put it into a different category .

 

 Is there something wrong with precise, minute detail? Certainly not! I love painting  detail myself, and wish there were more of it in general. But Plein Air paintings exhibit their greatest power from their general expression of light —as if one were glancing at the motif instead of staring at it.

   To stare is to slow down, see detail and multiplicity; to glance is to see a subject’s essence.  For this reason, Plein air painting should be more about simple, precise color , and these  general effects of light/color are best grasped rapidly — thus with fewer sittings. 

 

    But what if someone plopped down their easel and made a Kenset-style picture in record time, right in front of the motif? I would be mightily impressed if someone could do that, if it is even possible. But if someone did this,  it would be more in the spirit of the Antonio  Lopez Garcia, and would thus not be a plein air painting either. 

 

4) Plein air  paintings  are usually of modest size.

 

 This is all for the same reasons as number three, and then some — huge paintings are like portals into alternate realities or worlds, where one could step inside and have a walk around;  small pictures are intimate. You get up close to them and can easily imagine them being executed at arms’s length. Additionally, the use of  the sight-size method  conveys an even more powerful feeling of “I was there and saw this.” In this sense , the “I “of the painting becomes as much a part of the painting as the things depicted. A small picture is thus obviously “hand-built” by one person; the artist’s  presence behind the manual controls is clearly felt. 

 

Or put it another way — one easily imagine a factory of assistants working on a big Rubens picture— less so on a small one. 

 

   Or, with a the small picture , one can imagine  a painter holding a frame at arm’s length, and recording  exactly what this small window reveals. How big of a frame? How big of a picture? Hard to say exactly, but one of the shocking realizations about Corot and his early colleagues  is this — their pictures were tiny. They probably knew that even in the consistent light of Italy, it would be easier to be truthful if the paintings were smaller, as the sheer amount of material required on a larger canvas might make such honesty difficult. But I think they also knew that the feeling of the “I saw this”  would have been diminished by increasing the scale. 

 

5) A Plein Air painting should express light.

 

All right, but what kind of light?  I do not mean one kind of light at one time of the day, Nor do I mean saturated colors. I mean that particular delight the viewer has when a small, simply painted sketch somehow does not look like paint, but like light, air, and objects receiving their effects.  It can mean a backlit scene at dawn, or the harsh shadows of mid-day, or the classic five PM Tuscan gold light. Or it can mean the  all-pervading light of overcast days, or the strange patchwork of the ground that blinks off and on from flying clouds on a windy day. It can mean the strange, purple haze of smoke, fog or smog in Los Angeles. It can mean the dark light of the northern hemisphere in wintertime. 

     These are just a few examples of light. There are  many others I have never seen, and are yet to be translated into paint.

 

 

 

 By Marc Dalessio. Mid-day sun, and yet somehow he pulled it off. One of the finest plein air painters, ever.

 

 

6)  A Plein Air painting’s subjects  should be fresh.

 

Here I close with the most controversial idea of all — that of taste in what you decide to paint.  This  becomes as loaded as discussions of religion or politics ; they may in the end  be arguments about whether we should aspire for a world as it really is,  or for a world as it ought to be. The usual objection goes like this: “ No one has any right to say that anything is more artistic, apt or  appropriate than the next thing, because we are all different, have different  inclinations, and are not bound by fixed standards.”  

 

   While enforcing taste rules would  be undesirable, I think that most people would agree that there is such a thing as art, and there is also such a thing as great art  —and great art has the power to cut across centuries of opinions, tastes, and trends.  While there are some exceptions, the usual lists of great artists have gone largely unchanged for 500 years — and this fact should be pondered whenever the subjectivity monster attempts to end the conversation.   What should amaze  is not the complete anarchy of opinions on beauty — but the unanimity of opinion.  Peculiarities of taste over the centuries is just that — a tiny minority of ideas  that are visible only in light of universally acknowledged ones.  

 

     So then, how could this  influence what one decides to paint?  If there is great art, and great painters, do they also give us, by example, specific tips on taste or appropriateness? I think they do.  For starters, I think that some paintings may give us a cue what not to paint.

I have a great fondness for any art that tries — even if it is unsuccessful - to transport its viewers into an intense emotional experience. In this sense we are still in the Romantic age, and many of us remain devoted to the idea that art pertains to the heart before the mind, and that too much reason is not just the wrong spice ; it is seen as a contaminant.

 

 But is the pursuit of intense emotions  the best mode for the plein air painter?   I don’t think it is. I think  the emotional sensibility appropriate for plein air painting  can be summed up this way : More Corot than Bierstahdt.; more Constable than Turner; more Wordsworth than Byron. 

 

           A magnificent painting by Bierstahdt; please try this one at home.     

 

 

   By Corot. Plein Air painting at its best. 

 

    Corot is a good example because of his truthfulness, but also because of his ability to take subjects that are unassuming  — even ordinary or drab — and transform them via truthfulness into art. It is here that the very definition of freshness of subject is found: A fresh subject is one that is ignored by all, until it is truthfully and lovingly revealed by an artist.  Have you ever made fun of a friend's choice of subject while outside painting, and then, later on when the painting is done,  say, "boy was I wrong -- what a surprise!" But would you be "surprised" by a bombastic storm blowing in over the mountains and threatening to end the world,  a la Bierstahdt? No surprises there -- who wouldn't be blown over?

 

 Corot is thus from the same  spiritual family of still-life painters who took ordinary kitchen utensils,  and from them made great art. Plein air painting has that power as well, which is why it is  sometimes hard for painters to visit  a famously beautiful place like Tuscany: there is too much there  that already looks like a painting, and as such it can be hard to discover something new. 

 

  But unlike  the almost automatic beauty of Tuscany, or the  lamp-lit streets of Paris ,  the surprise of unassuming subjects is one of the greatest things about plein air painting, as painting the unexpected can uncover the ordinary and reveal it as  — fresh…not just fresh in its brushwork , but fresh in vision. So Bierstahdt’s spirit, and the whole of romanticism, is probably not the best route to go while painting outside, as it's  not about about uncovering the ordinary — it's  about overwhelming the viewer. 

 

 

 One of my favorite pictures by David (perhaps the least plein air artist in history) is a charming little sketch of a back yard — similar to a view by Velazquez  from the previous century. It is in some ways a “boring” subject — and yet I sense a certain tenderness in this work. I suspect that David  may have painted it out of boredom, and then much to his surprise, ended up loving what was in front of him. 

 

 

 

  

 

     Velazquez                           …By David, of all people! 

 

      Therein may lie the secret to freshness of subject matter— being open to the unexpected.  Plein air is almost designed for this, and can lead not only to a life of finding new subjects, but potentially opening the artist’s eyes to a world of the overlooked — people, friendships, ideas —  maybe even goodness itself.