Painting

I took this course with Joan during my first semester at Barnard. It was fairly large for a painting class (maybe 18?) but a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere. That said--I'm not sure Joan learned more than one or two students' names during the entire semester. She definitely didn't know mine. She must have given every person in that class an A, though, because I got one and there's no way she could distinguish me from anyone else on paper. A nice enough woman, but she really didn't seem to care much for us beginning students.

Hands down, Sissel Kardel is the best! Her passion for painting is infectious. The task is deceptively simple (learn to paint as you see), yet Sissel shows us that there's always something new to learn. She also has high expectations, which can be met with hard effort: we seriously copied Rembrandts within a month! Thoroughly introducing us to the art world, Sissel brought us to museums, galleries, and artists' studios. I can't think of a finer beginning experience with oil painting.

I took his Painting 1 class and I basically found it to be like a high school painting class -- that is, still life in the middle of the room, which the class paints for six hours in silence. His teaching style does not foster class taking interest in one another's work, and the class was little more than an opportunity to "keep one's chops up," which (don't get me wrong) is valuable. His method is to put up a still life and then show the class paintings by masters from this century -- Matisse, Max Beckman, Edward Hopper--and talk to us about utilizing flat planes and patterns one week, using value and light to create space the next, etc. Nothing i hadn't heard before, but useful... I do mean "useful," though, and not "revelation-inducing." He does have one lecture, however, that he gives every semester which is very eye-opening. I think it is the method he uses in his own paintings (which are decently respected, even famous in certain circles). The idea has to do with time of day in a painting. He talks about how we are taught to organize color in terms of complimentary, primary, secondary, etc. He organizes them in terms of whether they are "natural", "pastel", "artificial," and demonstrates how certain combinations create a certain time of day. I had never heard anything like this before, it is his "thing," and gave me a lot to think about. He is a nice, charismatic guy, but nothing too spectacular (in other words, he's no Archie Rand!)