Manual of Painting and Calligraphy Read Free

photography, which has now become an art form by means of filters and emulsions, seems to be much more successful at penetrating the surface and revealing the first inner layer of a human being. It amuses me to think that I am pursuing an extinct art, thanks to which, because of my fallibility, people believe they can capture a somewhat pleasing image of themselves, organized in terms of certainty, of an eternity which does not only begin when the portrait is finished but was there before, forever, like something that has always existed simply because it exists now, an eternity counted back to zero. In fact, if the client were able or willing to analyze the viscous and amorphous density of his emotions and then find ordinary words to clarify his thoughts and actions, we would know that for the sitter it is as if that portrait of him had always existed, another him, truer than his former self because the latter is no longer visible, whereas the portrait is. This explains why clients are often anxious to resemble the portrait, if it has captured them at a moment when they like and accept themselves. The painter exists to capture that fleeting glance, the sitter lives for that moment which will be the one and only pillar of support for the two branches of an eternity which is forever passing and which human folly (Erasmus) sometimes believes it can mark with the tiniest of knots, an outgrowth capable of scratching this gigantic finger with which time obliterates all traces. I repeat that the best portraits give the impression of always having existed, even though my common sense may tell me, as it is telling me even now, that
The Man with Gray Eyes
(Titian) is inseparable from that Titian who painted the portrait at a given moment in his own lifetime. For if there is something which participates in eternity at this moment, it is the picture rather than the painter.
    Unfortunately for the painter, or, to put it more precisely, all the worse for the painter who is trying to paint a portrait only to discover that everything is wrong, the lines are awkward, the colors wild, and the blotches on the canvas capture a likeness which may satisfy the sitter but certainly not the painter. I believe this happens in the majority of cases, but because the resemblance is flattering and justifies the fee, the client carries home that presumably ideal image of himself and the painter sighs with relief, freed from the mocking specter which has been haunting him night and day. When the finished portrait remains there, waiting to be collected, it is as if it were revolving on its vertical axis and turning accusing eyes on the painter: one might almost call it an apparition, had it not already been described as a specter. On the whole, any painter who really knows his craft recognizes that he is moving in the wrong direction right from the initial sketch. But given the difficulty of explaining his mistake to the sitter, and because most clients are pleased with what they see from the outset, afraid that another angle or perspective might show them in a less favorable light, or, on the contrary, turn them inside out, like the finger of a glove (the thing they fear most of all), the painting of the portrait goes on, increasingly superfluous. As I said earlier (in different words), it is as if the painter and his model were both intent on destroying the portrait. They have put their boots on back to front, and the path they have covered, which appears to go forward because of the footprints left on the ground, in this case the canvas, is in fact a hasty retreat after a defeat sought and accepted by the two warring factions. When death removes the painter and his model from this world, and the flames, by some happy coincidence, reduce the portrait to ashes, they will erase some of the deception and make room for some new adventure or dance, some new
pas de deux
which others will inevitably recommence.
    On starting to paint the portrait of S., I also