A RAKE’S PROGRESS Chapter 3: Stravinsky, Auden, Hockney

ABOVE: William Hogarth / PLATE 1 from A RAKE’S PROGRESS: “The Heir”  [See Wikipedia for all eight of the engravings.]

BELOW: Igor Stravinsky

In the 1975 the artist David Hockney created the costumes and set designs for Igor Stravinsky’s opera of “A Rake’s Progress.” Stravinsky had seen Hogarth’s engravings in 1947 and was inspired by them to create an opera. The libretto was written by W. H. Auden and his partner Chester Kallman, and the opera was first performed in 1951.

Hockney’s designs can be found at www.hockneypictures.com.

Richard Pratt

POST ORIGINATED November 6, 2010

A RAKE’S PROGRESS Chapter 2: Hogarth & Me

I’ve completed some research on William Hogarth’s paintings and engravings entitled “A Rake’s Progress.” To my knowledge the series was not based on a specific literary work but instead on Hogarth’s own narrative  ideas with verses for the engraved series penned by his friend John Hoadly. Hogarth was also greatly influenced by his contemporary Jonathan Swift. The series depicts the failings of a protagonist called Tom Rakewell who through his own passivity is repeatedly seduced by those around him, makes bad decisions, and ultimately ends his days in a madhouse.

The intention behind my paintings isn’t so much to narrate a story line through them, but to think of ways in which my pictures may form an abstract parallel to the original Hogarths. For that reason I will base each painting on the titles used to describe each of the engravings: “The Heir,” “The Levee,” “The Orgy,” etc.

These paintings will be an exercise in musing, not unlike the way in which a gardener might mull over ideas while raking leaves. There isn’t a real story to be found in his fallen leaves, but the man who handles the rake is thinking.

The British artist WILLIAM HOGARTH lived from 1697 to 1764

I recommend this biography:

HOGARTH by Jenny Uglow [1997]

Wikipedia offers extensive information and illustrations as well.

Richard Pratt

POST ORIGINATED October 16, 2010

A RAKE’S PROGRESS Chapter 1: A New Series

I started the first painting in a new series of paintings this week. The canvas is 48 inches tall by 48 inches wide and I have decided that each of the subsequent pictures in the series will be that size. This time I want to create a roomful of related paintings that will hang at the same level, their top and bottom edges running in an even horizontal line around the room, creating movement from image to image.

The title of the series will be “A Rake’s Progress,” not only as a pun on prior works of art and literature, but as the premise for the imagery itself, for each of the paintings will depict leaves strewn on a lawn viewed from above, hence “A [Garden] Rake’s Progress.” Whereas the original story of “A Rake’s Progress” centers on one man’s dissolution through personal debauchery, my series will emphasize the futility of imposing order where natural forces are oppositional to it.

Each painting will make use of one or more repeated leaf shapes cut from stiff paper and used as a stencil. The shapes will be simple abstractions of leaves without stems or veins. Some of these shapes may become more geometrical and unrecognizable as the series progresses, but as I said, there will only be one shape per painting.

There will be one or more vertical lines in each painting dividing the image into unequal parts and suggesting the movement of the rake down or across the canvas. These lines may come to indicate a change in surface texture as well.

All of these ideas are a refinement of some things that happened in a previous painting of mine, “Street Trees II” of 2009, in which the shadows of leaves float across the surface of a wall. These random diamond shapes suggest the presence of a tree without depicting its trunk or branches. They are also very close in color to the color of the wall, and these two factors create a subtlety that I am hoping to expand upon in this series.

Richard Pratt

POST ORIGINATED October 9, 2010

A PAINTER’S PROGRESS

RICHARD PRATT Artist Statement 2009

I find the process of translating the idea of an image into an object fascinating and challenging.

For the last few years my ideas have come directly from nature. The process is subtle and involves simply noticing rather than closely observing the world around me. The posture of a tree, the intrusion of a fence line, or the contortion of a vine are enough to suggest a simple compositional beginning for a painting.

Each painting is usually part of a series of three to five paintings. Working in series allows me to exhaust my ideas about a subject without trying to squeeze all of my thoughts into one painting. Above all I want to keep the imagery simple. Painting in series frees me to develop ideas and allows them to mutate over time. The result of the process is a small group of paintings that relate to each other through a family resemblance, but are in no way carbon copies of one another. A viewer appreciates each painting individually, but enjoys the meta-image of the group as well.

Many of these individual paintings are comprised of two or more panels of canvas. This division of an image into more than one panel is usually part of my original conception for a painting, but at other times the division may result from a desire to expand an image while working on it. There is a physical practicality to working with smaller, separate components in a studio, but from an aesthetic standpoint, these composite images emphasize the vulnerability of the finished painting as an object, raise questions as to the relative merits of each canvas as an individual work of art, and direct the viewer’s eye in a programmatic way from one panel to the next and back again.

My paintings are not painterly. They show a preference for flat areas of color separated by the outlines of their shapes. There is a steady build-up of paint layers where earlier applications of color hover around the gaps between shapes. These shapes find their most exuberant manifestation in my use of pattern. Pattern allows me to elaborate one area of an image and to add something to the overall composition without destroying the original simplicity of the painting.

Although the primary medium for all of my paintings is acrylic paint, there is a second, less obvious, yet equally important medium involved: Time. Each of my paintings requires at least six weeks of work. The slow process of being a maker and a viewer, a judge and a decision-maker, chooser and changer leads to an end. There is less of a mind-body duality in operation here than a mind-painting duality. At some ultimate point, the mind becomes detached, the brush and hand rest, and the painting becomes a real object.

Contradictions, dualities and tensions are part of my work. How can a painting be calm and bold at the same time, representational and abstract, awkward and graceful all at once? If self-contradiction in an individual’s personality makes that person somewhat puzzling, then tension within a painting can also add to one’s interest in it.

So where is the meaning in it all? My intentions, working thoughts, and conclusions lead to each painting going on to live a life inhabiting other spaces, other minds.

Richard Pratt

POST ORIGINATED October 1, 2010