Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy

Touching up the queen.
 

Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy
Self-portrait in Light

For any artist, to be commissioned to paint a portrait of the Queen of England is pretty much the height of one's career. However, the job also carries with it a massive burden of responsibility. The National Portrait Gallery in London list 743 official images of Queen Elizabeth II, with 143 of them being paintings. I know, she's been on the throne for over fifty years, but when does the lady find time for anything besides posing? Good, bad, or ugly (and there have been all three), a painting of the queen is bound to be burdened or embellished with loads of publicity, as will the artist. One early portrait effort (painted by John Napper) was so bad it was, until recently, hidden away for some sixty years. Lucien Freud's head-only image (below, center), while a fair likeness, could hardly be considered anything but ugly in its rendering. Another, by Dan, Llywelyn Hall (below, left), was not only ugly, but inept--it wasn't even a good likeness. Fortunately, for the queen at least, most have been relatively attractive, with a few falling into the outstanding category (Jenna Phipps, below, right). Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy's 2002 portrait of Her Royal Highness falls in or near the group at the top.

Portraits of the queen--the good, the bad, the ugly (and the simply strange).

Portrait Study number one.

Chinwe was born in Nigeria in 1952, the same year Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II. In 1975, a refugee from the Biafran War, she moved to England where she received a B.A. in graphic design. It wasn't until 1988 when she was thirty-six, that she started painting professionally. Most of her work has been figurative with portraits, landscapes, and black social history making up the bulk of her efforts. In 2001, as the queen neared her Golden Jubilee celebrating fifty years on the throne, Chinwe Chukwogo-Roy was chosen from a group of five by the Commonwealth Secretariate (an intergovernmental agency and central institution of the Commonwealth of Nations) to paint their offficial portrait of the queen. Even before the first sitting with Her Majesty, Chinwe was famous--and nervous.



Portrait Study number two.

To her surprise and dismay, the press was more interested in the fact that Chinwe was African and female than they were in the portrait (after the first hundred or so, the British press has become rather jaded on the subject of royal portraits, unless they're particularly bad). The artist did her homework. She did three, preliminary, color studies in oils, (one a head and shoulders image) as well as the final full-length portrait. The one distinctive trait they all bear in common is her use of color. African painting in general has a tendency toward vivid colors and there's no missing a certain sub-continent flavor to the final portrait especially. If the painting has a fault, it might be said that the brightly rendered sunset (or sunrise) and the background, featuring landmarks from former Commonwealth colonies, competes with the image of the queen herself.

Portrait Study Number three.

The first black artist to be honored with a royal commission, Chinwe's portrait met with official Commonwealth approval marked by traditional British restraint: "We are delighted." The British press took lots of photos, but had little comment other than that regarding her race and gender. And the queen? Her Royal Highness was apparently "delighted" as well, bestowing upon Chinwe the coveted Membership in The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy died in 2012 at the age of sixty.


Diaspora III, Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy,
typical of her African roots.

HRH Elizabeth II, 2002, Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy

 

Jules Cheret

One has to wonder if we'd be raving about the Broadway production of Victor Hugo's
classic today were it not for the posters of Jules Cheret.

As flamboyant a showman as any circus
ringmaster, Jules Cheret looked as if he
might have just stepped out from one of
his posters.

One of the key factors I consider in deciding which artists to write about is that of the availability of their work. That's not the sole factor, of course. If it were, then the French artist Jules Cheret, working in Paris around the turn of the 20th century, might be considered the greatest artist of all time. Imagine, churning out thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of painted images over the course of your lifetime and having virtually every one of them preserved in their original printed format. Choosing important images to feature, or even picking favorites, becomes something of a fool's errand. (It would help if I understood more than rudimentary French.) It might be going a bit far to say Jules Cheret invented the poster, but in any case, he certainly popularized them, and collectors of such things to day love him to death.

Cheret Posters could well have been the first
realization of the old advertising rule, "sex sells."

Jules Cheret was born in Paris in 1836. He was not born to wealth but to creativity, becoming an apprentice lithographer at the age of thirteen. He studied painting at France's National School of Design then spent another seven years in London studying advanced lithography. Thus Cheret was no classically trained artist, but one who knew the rapidly developing technology of color lithography like Monet knew waterlilies. In fact, he took no small part in developing that technology. Paris then, and even now, was as famous for its posters as for its pastries. Cheret was a master at perfecting this art form, practically inventing the term "advertisement." Along with Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (with whom he often collaborated) and Czech artist, Alphonse Mucha (with whom he didn't), these three designers have sometimes been termed the "first commercial artists" and, in Cheret's case, the "Father of the Modern Poster."

Pantomime from the Salon Cheret, Jules Cheret.
Not all of Cheret's works were advertising posters

Very often outstanding success in life is a combination of being born at the right time and in the right place with the right combination of training and talent. Jules Cheret was fortunate in all these factors. He began his career in the early 1870s, during France's Third Republic and the period known as "la Belle Epoque" (the Beautiful Era). In the U.S. it was called by Mark Twain "The Gilded Age." In England it was a time when the staid Victorian Era was giving way to the dynamic Edwardian Era. All over Europe, following the Franco-Prussian War until the outbreak of WW I hostilities, it was a time of peace, prosperity, and cultural flourish unmatched since the Renaissance and until the modern Post-WW II era.



 Le Chateau d'eau and plaza, Exposition Universal, 1900, Paris, France,
was to architecture what Cheret's posters was to art.

A Cheret poster for Fairyland,
in "Gay Paree." no doubt.
My, how meanings meander.

Two world's fairs in Paris, the one in 1889 which gave birth to the Eiffel Tower, and another again in 1900, which gave birth to the gold medal on the side of Campbell's soup cans, were the extravagant essence of Jules Cheret's stylish Parisian ambiance. "Over the top" was good. "Too much is not enough," and "Catch the eye," could all have been Cheret advertising mottoes. Cheret's posters reigned supreme as the zenith of promotional style so long as the era lasted. But all good things must come to an end. Paris after the "Great War" was no longer quite so gay. After the war, Cheret took his considerable accumulated wealth and retired to the French Rivera where he died in 1932 at the age of ninety-six

Cheret's Ice Palace poster.

More than any other artist (except for the two mentioned above) Jules Cheret shaped our collective image of, not just his own time, but of Paris and the French national persona for all time. He figuratively (perhaps literally, as well) invented "Gay Paree" decades before the 1927 American film co-opted the title (The Girl from Gay Paree). His posters are long on glamorous, colorful, sensuous, even seductive imagery, short on informative text, and often wildly demonstrative as to typography. It made no difference whether Cheret was selling claret, cigarettes, chocolates, circuses, singers, nightclubs, books, or baggets, the formula was largely the same, the "look" his alone. It's little wonder, even in his own time, collectors were already tearing his posters off walls to take home and hang on their own. This may account for why we still have so many of them; but would seem to defeated their original purpose, I would think.



Today, fans of Jules Cheret posters can wear their collections. 

 

Theodore Chasseriau

Macbeth and Banquo Meeting the Witches on the Heath, 1855, Theodore Chasseriau

Theodore Chasseriau Self-portrait,
1835, age sixteen.

If you're ever strolling through a major art museum, especially in Europe, and you encounter a young nude girl with her arms lifted over her head...try not to stare. Just kidding. Assuming it's the subject of a painting, you can also pretty safely assume it's by a young French artist named Theodore Chasseriau. Not all of Chasseriau's nude female figures did he have assume that pose, but the above assumption is still apt in that he was virtually the only mid-19th century painter who did. Chasseriau is important for one major reason and a couple relatively minor ones (which we've already discussed). He was, first of all, a student of Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, which means he was an excellent draftsman. When his famed instructor left Paris to head the French Academy in Rome, Chasseriau switched to Eugene Delacroix, which means he became an expert colorist. He was thus the only major painter of that era to have studied under both these highly acclaimed artists.

 

The artist's sisters, 1843, the drawing
reflects Ingres, the colors are those of
Delacroix. No uplifted arms here.

There was a good reason for that. Switching instruction from Ingres to Delacroix would, today, be like a staff aid for President Obama, suddenly quitting and going to work for Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz (R. Texas). Six years later, in 1840, when Chasseriau journeyed to Rome to try explaining his seeming disloyalty to his former painting master, they parted no longer on speaking terms. Ingres and Delacroix were bitter rivals, artistically speaking, and hardly on speaking terms personally, which made little difference in that they seldom met. Ingres was a follower of Nicholas Poussin, who praised drawing over painting, while Delacroix was a follower of Peter Paul Rubens, a painter's painter if there ever was one. Ingres celebrated restrained color subservient to draftsmanship, while Delacroix, the leading Romanticist was also the leading colorist on the French art scene during his lifetime (he died in 1863). Their philosopical dispute split the French Academy for the better part of the 19th century.

 Esther Preparing Herself to Meet King Ahasuerus, 1841, Theodore Chasseriau

Artist's brother, Ernest, painted in
1835 at the age of 13, about the
time Chasseriau and Ingres
parted company.

The important point is that both sides had strong arguments. That is, both were right, neither were wrong. Chasseriau, whether deliberately, or by accident, thus became the benificiary of both types of painting--his work is well drawn and well colored. His 1841 Bath of Esther (arms upraised, of course) is probably his most famous and instantly recognizable work. It is also the most notable example of this synthesis of painting styles. As he grew older and more confident, Chasseriau's Macbeth and Banquo Meeting the Witches on the Heath (top) from 1855, indicates that he became more and more like Delacroix, less and less like the restrained, classical Ingres. Perhaps because of this, he became more and more successful. In fact, the young artist worked himself into an early grave. He died in 1856 at the age of thirty-seven.

 

The Bather, 1850, Theodore Chasseriau. Apparently shaven armpits were
becoming quite common in Paris, at least among Chasseriau's models.

 

Wallpaper

Is it real or is it wallpaper?

When I was growing up, every year, around late winter as I recall, there came in the mail one or more wallpaper catalogues. Sears had one, and a couple others. They had my mother pegged. She loved to redecorate, and every two or three years, whether it needed it or not, our living room got wallpapered. Cracks in the plaster? Enough layers of wallpaper disguised or obliterated them. Walls weren't too bad but ceilings! That wonderful little undertaking would test the bonds of even the strongest marriage. By the time I left home for college, I hated wallpaper. Never would I have the damned stuff in my house.



Foil wallcoverings today flash forward another thirty years from those on the
late 1970s which won me back to the art and craft of wallpapering.

Flash forward fifteen years, I'm married, college educated, a working artist, decorating a newly built home I'd designed myself from the footers to the faceplates. My wife suggested we use wallpaper on a wall in the foyer. I suggested we not. She dragged me kicking and screaming (figuratively speaking) to a wallpaper store. (They have whole stores for this sort of thing now?) Well, let's just say it was not the stuff of my mother's Sears Roebuck wallpaper catalog. By the time she got me out of there, we were not only doing the foyer, but had purchased two wallpaper murals as well. Sticking the stupid stuff to the wall was still as onerous a task as I'd recalled, though tricks and techniques I'd learned as a child came flooding back to me as we worked. The marriage survived. 



By the early 19th century, the French became quite adept at block printing
mural-like wallpaper made to look hand-painted. This one had ten panels.

When our medieval ancestors built castles of stone, they hung huge tapestries to cover the walls, and warm the place up a bit (both figratively and literally). They hired artists to design them and nuns to weave them. However, because of this, tapestries were extremely expensive. Paper was too, but not so much. Medieval interior decorators began hanging paper images (hand painted or block printed) on walls as a cheap(er) replacement. Later, they decided wheat paste was a good idea (over breakfast porridge, no doubt). Thus the wallpaper industry began. The French had a lot of castles so they, naturally, developed the first wallpaper printing presses and the delicate technical expertise to run them (below). By the 18th century, they sort of had a corner on the market. England had a lot of castles too so they imported the finely designed, finely crafted decorating commodity from their neighbors across the channel. Which was all fine and dandy until war broke out (the Seven Years War and later the little ruckus with Napoleon). The French decided the Brits could print their own damned wallpaper. 



Even as late as 1877, the French were still "hand-blocking" wallpaper
at a time when the British were printing the stuff by the mile.

British wallpaper of the Victorian
era was heavily floral. This is mild
compared to some designs.

They did, though often as not, they found it as easy to paint their images as to print them. Also they found they could import Chinese wallpaper, which was just as good as the hated French stuff and cheaper. Besides, it matched the popular Chinese Chippendale chairs. When the industrial revolution came to England during the early 19th century, it began with textiles, then quickly spread to the making of paper and printing. By the Victorian era, wallpaper was-dirt cheap and and almost literally everywhere. Rotary printing presses demanded repetition, so textile designers were called upon to do their thing on paper, which quickly became a race to see who could make the most fanciful, and convoluted, configuration of cultural constipation conceivable. The worst of it they shipped off to the former colonies where the pseudo-Victorian parlor pasters ate it up.

 

Wallpaper as I remembered it.

By the time my mother came around, American wallpaper manufacturers were taking the scraps generated by their printing processes and cutting them into squares to form the sample pages of mail order catalogs. Then came the housing boom after WW II. Wallpapering took time and no small amount of skill. Simply painting walls was quick and easy, and to my way of thinking, looked immeasurably better in any case. Moreover, in the midst of the post-war baby boom, with the exception of my mother, who had time to wallpaper? Wallpaper nosedived in popularity. Wallpaper catalogs became the stuff of children's craft projects. A new wallpaper as well as a new ways of marketing manufacturing wallpaper became necessary if the industry was to survive.



Our foyer now sports a slightly less
textured version of this extreme.
Note the door at center.

As young Benjamin Braddock in Mike Nichols', The Graduate, was informed, plastics were the way to go (or in wallpaper jargon, laminates). No more sloppy wheat paste, just peel and stick. Or, if you liked, there was polymer sticky stuff. The burgeoning chemical industry revolutionized wallcoverings. Foils were feasible. Textures were tasteful. Photo-murals were phantasmagorical. Stores were stupendous. Decorators were delerious. My wife was mollified. I was gradually converted.

 

Getting to sleep might be difficult.

Having once felt the economic distress of not changing with the times, the wallcovering industry is not going to let it happen again. Today, you can choose your wall decor online from a bewildering array of designs and images that would have made my mother's eyes pop (top); though beware of Websites featuring "wallpaper" which has come to mean the digital background of your computer desktop. Today you can purchase wallcoverings which prevent walls from collapsing during earthquakes, or conserve heat, or block wi-fi signals, or conversely, serve as computer interfaces, turning an entire wall into a giant monitor. Today the heroes and villans of computer games seem to burst forth from the walls of boys' rooms while little girls sleep amid artists' renderings of fairy tale castles...presumably hung inside with medieval tapsetries.

Children's wallcoverings are quite gender specific.

 

Children, as Seen by Artists

The Rockwell child. Was childhood ever this sweet and innocent?

It's a very old quandary among art historians--does art influence society or merely reflect it? Though often posed as an "either/or" question, it's really not. Perhaps we should ask, "Does art influence society more than merely reflecting it?" Even asked from a relative point of view, there is no easy answer, which would explain why the debate has gone on for generations. While the question may seem to be of rather esoteric, marginal importance, when we begin to look at various aspects of our social framework as related to art, the question (or some variation) keeps coming up. Today, for instance, the question is often asked, does our pop culture influence young people, or merely reflect their lifestyles? One way or another, it's still the same basic question. In looking at the way children have been depicted by artists down through the centuries we come face to face with a similar variation, was that depiction an influence or a reflection.

 

Alba Madonna (detail), 1519, Raphael--more than just two squirming children.

We could look at this from a historical perspective, hoping to gain some insight; but suffice to say that the art of virtually every historic culture has its children. Moreover, it would be largely pointless to pursue these cultural depictions simply because the "reflective" element is so obvious and the "influential" factors all but impossible to prove without a specific, historic awareness of this aspect of art and culture from the various eras. Such insightful recorded history simply doesn't exist until at least the 18th century and the gradual development of what we today term the "social sciences." Until that time, children came cheap. They were a labor commodity. The Bible portrays them as barely one notch above slaves. Raising children was considered something parents did naturally, based totally upon their own upbringing. They were loved, even adored, but barely more than "props" insofar as artists were concerned. The one major exception to this rule, had to do with just one child--Jesus.

 

The Peasant Dance, 1568, Pieter Brueghel. The children get one corner.

Boy Asleep over his Book,
1755, Jean-Baptiste Grueze

But as broadly and deeply as the boy Jesus was portrayed by artists (Raphael practically made a career of it), Jesus, from infant through adolescence, was so much the exception as to prove immaterial in studying the manner in which artists have related to children. Also, I'm not talking about portraits here. Portraits, especially those of children, are the province of the well-to-do, and in their own way, as exceptional as Jesus. Perhaps the best place to look in order to gain some insight into both the social and artistic presence of children is in the area of genre painting. And with few exceptions, genre painting, as we know it today, was a product of the 16th century, beginning with the Dutch painter, Pieter Brueghel (above), though he was mostly interested in the daily lives of adults. Children were barely more than peripheral amusements--very likely an accurate accounting of their place in the family and in the broader scheme of things at the time.

 

Boy and Girl with a Cat and Eel,
1635, Judith Leyster

A hundred years later, when Judith Leyster painted A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel (left), children had begun to take center stage (count on a woman to lead the way in this regard). The Dutch might wll be credited for discovering the "cuteness factor" in painting children. Around the same time, the gritty street urchin can be seen in the paintings of Spanish artist, Bartolome Murillo. In the 18th century, children in art took on a more or less equal role with that of family pets, again very likely an apt comparison in a broader sense. Often in such works, it's something of a toss-up whether it's the child or the animal taking on the center of interest. Jean Baptiste Greuze (above, right) seems to have had an affinity for children, painting them often and with great insight into their character and the nature of childhood.

 

Off to School, 1883, Charles Burton Barber--is it a girl with her dog or a dog with its girl?

Camille Roulin, 1888, Vincent van Gogh

In the 19th century, painters as diverse as English artist, Charles, Burton Barber (above) and Vincent van Gogh (right) became infatuated with children. American artists, especially, began to recognize children as more than "little adults." Again it was the popularity of genre painting, now having moved up from the bottom of the painters' hierarchy to at least mid-way between landscapes and portraits, which we have to thank for more than a mere glimpse into what it was like to be a child in that era. And for the first time, we begin to consider with some basis of validity that artists were starting to influence the role of children in society. Artists depicted parents reading their offspring bedtime stories. Did that influence parents or merely reflect common practice? During the latter half of the century, American artists such as Seymour Joseph Guy, John George Brown, and Abbott Fuller Graves, turned to children as the main focus of their art.

 



The Problem We All Live With, 1963, Norman Rockwell--children as a problem.

In the 20th century, there can be little doubt artists made their influence felt as they began inventing stereotypical children. Norman Rockwell (top) practically defined childhood in America for more than fifty years. During the 21st century and much of the 20th century before, no other art form has influenced the way we view children more than that of photography and motion pictures. Painting children was a long, slow, laborious process. Today, photography is practically instantaneous, both in making images and spreading them through social media. Today, for better or worse, we've come to worship childhood, cherishing it, and feverishly protecting it. There can be little doubt that art has had a major role, first in reflecting, and now in influencing the place children occupy in society (above). Art has elevated the role of children from a peripheral, cheap-labor commodity to that of idolized ideal. Moreover, children are no longer just "in" art, but are now, themselves, making it, and thus influencing art.

copyright, Jim Lane

Children in Venice at the Peggy Guggenhiem Museum roll marbles coated in tempera.
Children today begin "influencing" art as soon as they learn not to eat the paint.




 

 

Michael Ray Charles

Blackface Elvis, Michael Ray Charles

White Power, Michael Ray Charles

I don't very often write about living artists (except sometimes the barely living). And, except for the occasional child prodigy, it's even more rare for me to cover working artists young enough to have been my students. Michael Ray Charles graduated from high school in 1985. Michael Ray (no relation to his musical namesake, Ray Charles Robinson), is forty-six-year-old African-American artist. As might be expected, he is concerned with black art. In having written that line, I've also underlined what the art of Michael Ray Charles is all about--black stereotypes. That is to say, if an artist is black, so is likely to be the case with his art. At first glance, his work is jarring. It's intended to be. We're all familiar with black stereotypes, but not often do we have them blatantly propped up in our faces. And just to make sure we don't miss his point, Mr. Charles has taken up and explored all the most prominent ones--Aunt Jemima, nannies in general, Uncle Tom, Sambo, picaninnies, watermelons, minstrels, blackface, slavery, the NBA, the KKK, and dozens more of which this white guy was heretofore unaware.

Michael Ray Charles explores the origin of black stereotypes as far back as Roman art.

The fried chicken stereotype.

Sometimes Charles juxtaposes black stereotype against white stereotypes as in his black Colonel Sanders (right). Sometimes he takes on cultural stereotypes with works having to do with nannies, watermelons (above, left), and sexual elements. Some of Charles' work takes on stereotypes involving entire industries such as sports (the NBA), and entertainment (his blackface Elvis, top). Subtlety is not part of Charles' artistic vocabulary. "Scathing" is. Charles paints history as he deals with the false promises of emancipation in which blacks were freed from one kind of slavery only to be bound over to a societal enslavement enforced by a hated southern culture, Jim Crow, and the KKK.

Tommy Hilnigguh, 1999, Michael Ray Charles

Two stereotypes in one shot.

As might be expected, Charles' art often rubs people the wrong way. Even some African-Americans criticize him for preserving the very stereotypes his art rails against. Yet Charles considers his work most successful when it elicits these strong emotional responses, both pro and con. Film director, Spike Lee, calls Charles' work "cinematic"--posters for movies Hollywood would never have the nerve to make. Charles is combating the status quo. Yet before he can do so, he must first awaken the art world, then the rest of the world to the disgust felt by those of his race, not just with the negative images themselves, but with the white apathy which allows them to linger.

The dark side of the KKK





 

 

Click here for the
Michael Ray Charles Art21 Segment

How to Make a "How to" Art Video

This page is video intensive, so please allow extra time for loading.

Click "refresh" if it fails to load in a reasonable time.

This video was created in about an hour using only the equipment mentioned below.

There was a time, not all that many years ago, when if you wanted to learn about art, or even become an artist, your first stop might be your local public library (still not a bad idea). Today, however, your first stop might be YouTube. Just type "painting" into the search box. You'll get 7,190,000 results (enjoy yourself). "Art" will get you over 44-million possibilities. There was a time when, if you wanted to teach what you knew about art, you worked out a deal with some public venue having a backroom and started advertising. Or you got certified as an art instructor in the public schools. Today, you simply make a video demonstrating your art. There was a time when, if you wanted to make a demonstration video you were talking about thousands of dollars worth of cameras, video and audio recorders, and video editing equipment that looked like it came straight from the bridge of Star Trek's Enterprise. Today, all you need to teach your art via video is a camcorder, a tripod, a home computer (with video editing software), a few lights, and possibly an assistant. 



Nothing fancy, just make sure the
videoscreen rotates facing forward.

A desktop computer may also serve as 
a teleprompter during shooting if the
camera is mounted atop the screen.

Video production, a skill many
adults wish they'd learned as kids.

I made my first video production teaching a group of high school art students in 1972, before home video was even invented. We used an 8mm movie camera and a cassette recorder. A ten-minute comedy production took six weeks to plan, shoot, and edit. I decided not to compete with Steven Spielberg. A few years later, I blessed the geeks at Sony who invented Betamax. I taught a high school course in electronic arts and sciences. The "portable" recording unit weighed 20 pounds, and editing was crude, more art than science, with a good deal of luck thrown in. (I had a very cooperative school librarian.) My first "how-to" video was created out of sheer self-survival using a reel-to-reel video recorder in black and white--four chalk-board demonstrations on the mysteries of linear perspective. They saved me from having to give the same instructional performance five time a day, two days in a row for each lesson (virtually all instructional videos require the element of repetition to be effective).

 

An excellent "how to" video emphasizing the importance of expert editing.

Retirement gave me the time to experiment, learn, and produce another series of short videos on art history. The steady march of digital technology gave me the wherewithal do so on a meager budget. YouTube gave me the public forum to present them. You'll find them there bearing the title of this blog. The content is a translation of glowing words to, admittedly, less-than-glowing audio-video presentations. As I mentioned before, the competition online is overwhelming. But in teaching art via video, that one word, "content" is the number one consideration. The theme comes first, then the script (ad-libbing is okay only when demonstrating but even then, requires a good deal of deft editing). The setting, camera work, lighting, and sound are far less important than one might think. The key element in all these is experimentation. It costs virtually nothing but time and some creative effort. In any case, do NOT let this aspect overwhelm the content. It is a means, not an end. If this part fascinates you the most, skip shooting about art and make the video a work of art itself.

 

Lighting, strong on one side,
not so much on the other.

For the small, digital camcorders
today, a lightweight tripod will suffice.

Finally, the equipment--don't go overboard. The old KISS rule applies (keep it simple, stupid). Today, virtually any mid-priced camcorder will suffice. The most important part is you rather than the tools--learn to use them effectively. Don't try this without a tripod. You'll probably need a floodlight or two (the good, old-fashioned, clip-on variety will usually suffice). Your work area or den, cleared of distracting clutter, will very often look better than a makeshift production "studio." You can do it all by yourself, but an assistant makes things go more smoothly. And finally, you'll need a computer powerful enough to handle video editing software. (I use Sony's Vegas Platinum--$79.) Here is where the learning curve gets steep. Merely learning to shoot video is fun and mostly instinctive. Editing video might be some people's definition of fun, but to me, it's work. As much as the video geeks who invented the software might try to make it so, editing is not instinctive. It is highly technical. You can learn do do it yourself, but not overnight, believe me. And if you pay someone to do your editing...pay them well.

 

A good demonstration video featuring the artist as well as his work.

This production would appear to be a one-man job.

A good instructional video is made up of three elements--content, production values, and talent. YOU are the talent, and I'm not just talking about being a talented artist or expert in your field. That's assumed. In television, "talent" is shorthand for those in front of the camera. It's so important TV networks pay individuals hundreds of thousands, even millions for it. If you're an experienced teacher, you've probably developed a talent for presentation. Charisma plays a part. So does humor, personality, a clear speaking voice, and fluent speech. Speak slowly, distinctly, and with modulation in tone and volume. This takes practice, and not necessarily in front of a camera. Even a mirror will do, though a recorded video allows for repetition and self-evaluation. You won't get rich or famous on YouTube. (Justin Bieber wasn't teaching art.) But you will broaden your skills, perhaps gain a modicum of recognition, and some degree of self-satisfaction in mentioning in passing your YouTube art video. Best of all, you might inspire at least one would-be artists.

 

My most recent art history production, also my longest and least viewed.