Rackstraw Downes: Some Painters | "Exclusive" | Art21

Episode #166: Filmed in Presidio, Texas in late 2010, painter Rackstraw Downes describes why he views the work of some long-deceased painters to be relevant to his own contemporary practice. Paintings by such artists are shown including Claude Lorrain's "Sunrise" (1646-47), Jacob van Ruisdael's "Wheat Fields" (1670), and J.M.W. Turner's "The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons" (1834-35). Despite not using the same techniques as these painters, Downes seeks out their work because he considers it "useful," "provocative," and "like challenges."

Rackstraw Downes views the act of seeing and the art of representation as culturally taught, with different cultures accepting alternative delineations of the world as realistic. Often painted in a panoramic format, Downes's images evince careful attention to details as well as to broad expanses of their surroundings. Created plein air in locations as diverse as metropolitan New York, rural Maine, and coastal and inland Texas—without resorting to the use of photography—his compositions feature horizons that bend according to the way the eye naturally perceives.

Learn more about the artist at: http://www.art21.org/artists/rackstraw-downes

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Ray Day. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Rackstraw Downes, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Theme Music: Peter Foley.

IMAGES FEATURED:
"Sunrise" (1646-47) by Claude Lorrain courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/110000340

"Wheat Fields" (1670) by Jacob van Ruisdael courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110002002

"The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons" (1834-35) by J.M.W. Turner courtesy the Philadelphia Museum of Art
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/103831.html

I have had enormous enthusiasm for particular artists, certainly.

And in many cases, they have been artists who lived in a completely different century from me.

I like what Picasso said one day. He said,

"Some young people seem to me older than some artists who've been dead for several centuries."

[Laughs] That was very good.

Some of these artists who've been dead for several centuries, their work seems

Entirely apropos to your own concerns right now. And so you seek them out.

You seek their work out. And I have traveled very long distances to see exhibitions by Claude Lorrain,

Or by Jacob Van Ruisdael, and Constable, and various people.

Turner, I sort of avoided, didn't think he was any good at all,

Then, one day I was trying to paint smoke and steam coming out of a factory in Pittsburg.

And I thought, "Oh my god, that guy Turner was an absolute master of these vapors, vapor."

Constable said that there were some beautiful Turners and they looked like they were

Made of tinted steam, that's just right. That's exactly right.

I don't know the techniques of the Ruisdael painting.

I could no more paint a Ruisdael painting than a man on the moon.

I know nothing about glazing, I don't use glazing at all.

I am what I call a direct painter - I put lumps of paint straight down on the canvas.

If they don't work, I take it off and I try a different lump.

I don't let it dry and put another layer over, and let that dry, and then another layer.

You know, I don't work that way.

So, I don't have any sentimentality about those painters, I don't think.

It's that they would seem useful to me, and provocative to me.

They were like challenges to me. Can you, can you do this that well?

So, I can't access those painters technically,

But I can access them through various things that their paintings do.