Instruments with painted decorations

[romberg flat]

Since obviously there is no consensus about nature of violin, and whether paint it or not, remains only to paint nature with violin…   

 

[Ben Hebbert]

Stephen, you clearly misread me - what else could have inspired your rather depressing comment? 

 

First, if you are going to think about painting a violin and maintaining artistic integrity in doing so, I think it's worth asking yourself why thousands of people in the last 500 years have been reluctant to do it. If you start with that praxis, then maybe you will be able to create modern art that is worthy of "mass appeal". The fact that I think that Arman's 24 Caprices de Paganini is an extremely crass and facile piece of work does not in any way mean that I am a hater of modern art. It means that I think that this particular use of a violin in the artistic creative process is an extraordinarily low point in art. If, on the other hand, you want to tell us why in your opinion, it is a great piece - you are welcome to. However, in the main, my comments address the general reluctance for violin makers to paint their works, for artists to paint violins, for musicians to ask for their violins to be painted and for patrons/buyers/etc, to drive a market for these sorts of things.

 

I also agree with you that the widely published and broadly read philosophical musings that obsessed every aspect of Renaissance artistic thought are barely relevant as time progresses. But they undeniably create a set of ground rules that are pertinent to instruments made in their own time and why makers made them and society treated them in a manner particular to their original context, which has some resonance to later generations even if they don't need to be aware of the ground rules and are simply following in a tradition. That's fine. Neither side has more validity than the other, but applying 21st century assumptions to something made in the 16th century without concern for the thinking process of the time is a problematic way of looking at things. It seems to me that there are two profoundly different questions here, depending on the period you are looking at. 

 

Your observations on harpsichords are not completely satisfactory. Italian makers in particular did actually appear to go for a wooden appearance, going to tremendous levels to veneer the case sides with exotic hardwoods, but long before the end of the sixteenth-century this aesthetic seems to have moved on and you find them in heavily decorated outer cases from which they were played. The best expression of "artifice" comes from the Flemish tradition, where harpsichord makers took to creating artificial triumphs over nature by painting the cases to imitate marble and stone. You can follow the literature of this style of decoration all the way back to Ancient Greece through all the Renaissance texts and the use of the same painting styles in other areas of architecture and decorative art - the specific aim of artifice, i.e. man triumphing over nature is well understood. 

 

However, I would simply question your logic - if as you put it, harpsichord makers could command a higher price for a finely decorated instrument, it follows that violin makers would have got wise to the same trick, unless there was something fundamental that prevented them from doing so. Why are there no Flemish violins painted with a marbled finish analogous to harpsichords of the same period? 

 

Irrespective of my personal taste, I am aware that painted violins simply fail to find "mass appeal", and so - for whatever reason - this has thus far failed to be a compelling art project. Roger Hargrave's comments about applying any design to a fundamentally 16th century format (I'm paraphrasing, I know) deserve some consideration. I think you've lighted on one of those brilliant "simple questions" that reveals an intractably difficult problem to find an answer for. I think the more views from the greater number of perspectives (including modern art haters) the better if you want to find your own conclusions!

 

Best of luck!  

[Michael Appleman]

I think Arman must have had a particularly nasty violin teacher...

[DonLeister]

This is a fiddle belongs to a friend, mostly inlaid work. Nothing valuabe but I find it interesting. I admire any one that decides to tackle making a violin and takes such care.

[violins88]

Maybe I should start a separate thread on this, but I intend to ask my 12 year old artistic granddaughter to decorate my next violin. I assume I will put on the ground. Make it matte with fine sandpaper and then she will use paint. But what kind of paint? Acrylic? Watercolor? some modern concoction?  I don't think oil will work.

 

Advice? Suggestions?

[Ben Hebbert]

I think Arman must have had a particularly nasty violin teacher...

 

 

Actually, if you put it that way, Arman reminds me of William Addison, a London viol maker of the 1670s. The head of the attached instrument is quite clearly Heracles, wearing the pelt of the Nemian lion, which gave him invincibility.. so... what connection has Heracles with music? Virtually none, except that he was so enraged with Linus, his music teacher, that he beat him to death with his lyre..

 

I wonder if this was a particularly pointed parting gift between a pupil and a particularly reviled teacher!

[Bruce Carlson]

Nobody has yet mentioned the fact that some painting has been added to conceal defects in the instrument or alterations, such as modifications to dimensions. Even an impressive wax seal over a badly repaired back button does wonders.

 

Bruce

[Javaca]

To me the gamba's of Gesina Liedmeier directly come to mind. Beside her wonderful head carving she sometimes makes paintings on the soundboards of her instruments.

http://www.liedmeier.nl/ENG/fotogallery

[Javaca]

Do painted instrument cases count?

Beside two Stradivari guitars (after the surviving forms and templates, rather than a shortened version of the Hill guitar) I reconstructed two cases after the one that was preserved with the "Giustiniani" guitar.

The original case was made in poplar, covered with gesso and painted with tempera.

The "IL CANINO" painting was my own addition. I took the dog from an ivory inlay on a 17th century Italian flint look pistol in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

[jezzupe]

Maybe I should start a separate thread on this, but I intend to ask my 12 year old artistic granddaughter to decorate my next violin. I assume I will put on the ground. Make it matte with fine sandpaper and then she will use paint. But what kind of paint? Acrylic? Watercolor? some modern concoction?  I don't think oil will work.

 

Advice? Suggestions?

Liquitex acrylics thinned work very well, the paint must be 100% dry prior to top coating. Wax free shellac at abut 1.25 lb cut works well ontop. DO NOT do any inner coat abrasion until at least 2 clear coats have been applied, even then it must be done very carefully with either rottenstone or 1500, elsewise you can burn through your color.

 

I think the answer to the query, as with most things with "why things are the way they are" has much more to do with the influence of group think psychology related to monetary gain or loss coupled with the reality of visual confusion, which to a certain extent is "group think" based, as is money.

 

Meaning; I am going to make a violin, from the get go, barring my first practice ones, I am programmed to use flamed maple, by making this choice I have chosen a piece of "paper" that is stripped and makes for a "confusing" background. This right off the bat deters "success" when doing anything other than letting the "natural beauty" shine through. As the background has a established pattern, only strong painted patternes that have the ability to "overpower" the natural patterns will work. But then visual conflicts are always competing.

 

So, then, I the "painter" will say to myself, hmm, well then I must choose a more homogeneous piece of wood, and immediately the "group think" programing kicks in "ah cheap wood" ...words like "cheap, inexpensive, not that good, bland, on and on starts to come to mind"....and of course if we follow this path, it leads to ....money....no one wants to buy a violin made from "cheap" wood, "heck, look at that, he was trying to cover up that cheap wood with a fancy paint job, why it's a pig with lipstick".

 

Most people now, as then, did things to earn a living. Once an established proven "method" "look" "tradition" was established, well it was "established" and by golly if you were going to "do it" you were going to get paid, and your not going to get paid making things that are not like what everyone else who is getting paid does.

 

And so it generally takes people doing something because they "want to" not because of money to attempt such things, and generally the results of outside of the norm endeavors end up as one would expect "ya that's nice, but I'm not buying it" very few attempts at such things happen and this is why we don't see it much. And frankly most people don't have, or would not take the time, to spend their lives experimenting away, putting hard time and labor into endeavors that will yield no fruit, because of course, for most people "fruit" is money.

 

One person see's a path and follows it, generally speaking, and generally they get where they want to go as others did before them, it is safe and it is logical. Very few people have the insanity, stupidity, bravery whatever you want to call it, to choose an area that has no path, to march forth and leave a trail behind not knowing where it will lead, hoping against all hope that it will yield something unique that may someday be an established path, a trail that others will follow.

 

Most times, your that one penguin heading off to the hills while the others go to fish, your probably gonna die, but at least you did it your way.

 

To want to do different things than what we are used to in artistic endeavors takes a certain amount of bravery mixed with blind faith and stupidity and most times it doesn't pay off, but, thank god not everyone is not motivated by money. Some times the results stink, but hey, at least they tried, but every once in awhile something comes along that works, painted violins doesn't seem to be one of them.

[David Beard]

Great posts, Ben.

I think it works best when the art is either merely decorative, or if the art is well subordinated to the violin by using themes that tie into the nature of violins, or the origin of that particular violin; maker, first owner, commission, etc.

Great strong art tends toward the particular; a subject, a place, a character. This conflicts with a great violin's nature to give voice to a boundless range of expression and characters.

Also, who really believes that they can pick a tattoo that three centuries of owners will be happy to live with?

Of course, none of this applies when a throw away children's violin is made brighter and more cheerful with some innocent painting.

In most cases however, when violins are painted, the results lean toward the kitsch and the naive.

[BassClef]

Here's a cool one - a cello from the MET museum's collection. I couldn't find any other images online, I'm probably searching wrong:

William Forster II, 1782

More Photos Here

[Stephen Faulk]

Ben, 

 

 The reason I groan about "modern art haters" is because I continually have been backed into corners here when I reference modern works of art in conversations, so forgive me if I characterized you as a hater.  First off I don't think Arman is a particularly good, important or even influential modern artist, but if that sliced violin sculpture illustrates a point, fine. I can't get too deep into what that work is referring to in terms of why period violins had decorations. In fact, Arman is an artist I can't stand myself because he has made work that operates on a lot of the cliche's of contemporary art, while others who were less known during his heyday were much better artists. I'll see your Arman and raise you a healthy dose of Italian Arte' Povera, Joseph Beuys or even some good Pop Art from the same time. Usually people who hate modern art don't have much knowledge of it, which I find frustrating. 

 

Respectfully, I continue to disagree with the direct contrast of harpsicords with painted bowed instruments and based on reasons of a philosophical ground and, and that you tried to pull the table cloth off my table with the old "they thought differently in those times" view of history. That argument is a two way street. The reason is because you were not there, so parsing together a read on history predicated on what they were thinking about is tricky. If you can find substantive relationships between certain objects and a particular philosophy or text it often works. But you intellectually crafted together a nice Latin saying, about the nature of wood, 'when I was alive I was beautiful to look at and in death I sing'. That is intellectually stunning really,  but I have to ask how much of the connection for the reverence of natural wood in a violin, ( which by the way is a highly engineered object) and the Latin saying is connected because you have a modern perspective on history and many resources available to you at the touch of a cursor? It's difficult for me to think that that Latin saying was engraved on the lintel of a violinmakers door to remind them not to paint the violin. But it is plausible for me to connect the latin to the reverence for nature. Here I leave off to go research this, because you have given some food for thought. I think today we sometimes forget that during the Renaissance there may or may not have been the cohesiveness of philosophies we so strongly identify with that period today; I often consider, or factor in when thinking about historical problems, how much is what  cobbled together because of our advantage of pure hindsight with all the texts at our fingertips? It is an intellectually seductive time to live. 

 

I'm not saying that as a put down to you, but a comment on my own intellectual caution to buy anything put before me without scrutinizing it. While I think this over perhaps you could assuage my fears about humanity hating modern art by telling me of your favorites? Or take me on a mind tour of the Tate Modern. Your thoughts on Howard Hodgkin or Lucian Freud..or?? 

[David in NC]

Here's a 1800 workshop of Didier Nicholas back side   Don't know what it is, can't really make it out.  The auction house Christies said it depicted Hercules wrestling the Cretan Bull"

 

Is it possible Amati knew the violin would outlast the nobility he made it for, having applied the paint over the varnish, so the instrument outlasts the artwork.  

 

[jezzupe]

Do painted instrument cases count?

Beside two Stradivari guitars (after the surviving forms and templates, rather than a shortened version of the Hill guitar) I reconstructed two cases after the one that was preserved with the "Giustiniani" guitar.

The original case was made in poplar, covered with gesso and painted with tempera.

The "IL CANINO" painting was my own addition. I took the dog from an ivory inlay on a 17th century Italian flint look pistol in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

cool stuff

[jezzupe]

It certainly seems that instruments that have been painted have had wood and varnish treatments that have been chosen to either go with or fade into the back ground and let the paint job show up. Good bad or ugly there is a certain skill to that.

[Craig Tucker]

To me the gamba's of Gesina Liedmeier directly come to mind. Beside her wonderful head carving she sometimes makes paintings on the soundboards of her instruments.

http://www.liedmeier.nl/ENG/fotogallery

 

Well OK Javaca,

 

You've given us a great example of one of the things I have been meaning to mention here, but haven't had the time, or the opportunity to yet.

There is a great difference between an artist's attempt to decorate a stringed instrument, and the result when craftsmen, even very accomplished craftsmen usually attempts to do such a thing.

To me the differences are obvious - even thought I still rather prefer unadorned instruments.

This girl is an artist, and her accomplishments go far beyond the usual "craft-ish" decorative, even more distracting, results...

(Oh wait I forgot to say, 'in my opinion!')

Thanks for this link, Javaca, I love these designs and her carving - in particular that rams head....

[Craig Tucker]

Oops, sorry, those are carved decorations, not painted...

 

Correct thread here, or not?

[Craig Tucker]

Here's a 1800 workshop of Didier Nicholas back side   Don't know what it is, can't really make it out.  The auction house Christies said it depicted Hercules wrestling the Cretan Bull"

 

Is it possible Amati knew the violin would outlast the nobility he made it for, having applied the paint over the varnish, so the instrument outlasts the artwork.  

 

 

Nice david.

I also would like to see a better example of this, but I can see that the illustration has favored the space and the material well.

Thanks for posting this.

I'm off (on the internet that is) to see if I can get a better illustration of this particular back -

[Ben Hebbert]

Ben, 

 

 The reason I groan about "modern art haters" is because I continually have been backed into corners here when I reference modern works of art in conversations, so forgive me if I characterized you as a hater.  First off I don't think Arman is a particularly good, important or even influential modern artist, but if that sliced violin sculpture illustrates a point, fine. I can't get too deep into what that work is referring to in terms of why period violins had decorations. In fact, Arman is an artist I can't stand myself because he has made work that operates on a lot of the cliche's of contemporary art, while others who were less known during his heyday were much better artists. I'll see your Arman and raise you a healthy dose of Italian Arte' Povera, Joseph Beuys or even some good Pop Art from the same time. Usually people who hate modern art don't have much knowledge of it, which I find frustrating. 

 

Respectfully, I continue to disagree with the direct contrast of harpsicords with painted bowed instruments and based on reasons of a philosophical ground and, and that you tried to pull the table cloth off my table with the old "they thought differently in those times" view of history. That argument is a two way street. The reason is because you were not there, so parsing together a read on history predicated on what they were thinking about is tricky. If you can find substantive relationships between certain objects and a particular philosophy or text it often works. But you intellectually crafted together a nice Latin saying, about the nature of wood, 'when I was alive I was beautiful to look at and in death I sing'. That is intellectually stunning really,  but I have to ask how much of the connection for the reverence of natural wood in a violin, ( which by the way is a highly engineered object) and the Latin saying is connected because you have a modern perspective on history and many resources available to you at the touch of a cursor? It's difficult for me to think that that Latin saying was engraved on the lintel of a violinmakers door to remind them not to paint the violin. But it is plausible for me to connect the latin to the reverence for nature. Here I leave off to go research this, because you have given some food for thought. I think today we sometimes forget that during the Renaissance there may or may not have been the cohesiveness of philosophies we so strongly identify with that period today; I often consider, or factor in when thinking about historical problems, how much is what  cobbled together because of our advantage of pure hindsight with all the texts at our fingertips? It is an intellectually seductive time to live. 

 

I'm not saying that as a put down to you, but a comment on my own intellectual caution to buy anything put before me without scrutinizing it. While I think this over perhaps you could assuage my fears about humanity hating modern art by telling me of your favorites? Or take me on a mind tour of the Tate Modern. Your thoughts on Howard Hodgkin or Lucian Freud..or?? 

 

Stephen,

 

I really like your post - and sorry of the curmudgeon in me was a bit active - for everything you can say, I think this has the hallmarks of a really good debate and I think it's healthy that these things are talked about. As to my latin quotation, its attributed to Antonio Bononiensis (of Bologna) from 1560 and the full elegaic couplet is as follows:

 

Viva fui in silvis,

sim dura occisa securi.

Dum vixi tacui,

mortua dulce cano.

 

I was alive in wood

I was cut down by the cruel ace

In life I was silent

In death I sing.

 

It would be too much to ask if this was the same Antonio Brensi (label: "Antonius Brensius Bonon OR Antonius Bononiensis") who was an instrument maker at the same time, but I'll put that out there for fun! Irrespective of which, it the second couplet appears on Flemish harpsichords (a kick in the back of the head for my thesis, I know) by the end of the sixteenth-century, and problematically appears on the ribs of several 19th-century fake early instruments, especially the Duiffprougcar copies by Vuillaume and Derazey - had they seen a real instrument from the 16th century to support this? Therefore, whilst I'd love to take credit for brilliance, I think actually my original statement failed to clarify the source of this epigram.

 

As it happens the "they thought differently in those times" is something that I am as averse to as you are. I think it's normally a pretty shitty (sorry, language, but I don't think there's a better word) way of putting people down without actually having a scrap of evidence. Certain baroque players seem to use this rhetoric quite a bit.

 

On the other hand, that is completely different from a responsible engagement in history. I've spent an awful lot of years studying the primary sources for these sorts of things, and I'm interested in finding the general themes that are universally picked up by many authors and other sources in order to try to construct - as best I can - an underlying ideology. It's always up for debate - in fact most of the sources from the period wind themselves up with debate - so I hope that it is possible to support any statement about the past with an array of primary sources to prove it, rather than using that horribly self-rightous Orwellian mantra of "they thought differently in those times" [therefore I am right and beyond question, you are wrong and ignorant].

 

What do I like? Here, for a start is Gerhard Richter's "For Johann Joseph Fuxs", an installation piece (I suppose) from 1983 that I had the pleasure of working with during the process of seeing it bequeathed to the Art Gallery of Ontario. So, having done in depth examination of it for conservation purposes, I've spent a delightful amount of time with a piece of modern art that I can always come back to - the pictures don't do it justice, and it only looks as it's intended in a great expansive space (a church or an art gallery - who cares). I think Richter did well by thinking of it as a homage to a particular set of music by a specific composer, finding a way to express what he heard in the decoration of the instrument. The downside, is that it seems that the integrity of the work would be questioned if you played anything other than Fux's Harpsichord Suite on it. However, as a silent instrument I think that the image of what the sound "must" be makes it a great work of art. I also wonder if he really needed to paint a harpsichord to put his point across or if he could have been just as compelling in his view with a flat piece of canvas (he is yet to do another work like this)... So it isn't without its paradoxes.

 

 

[romberg flat]

I simply had to post this: 

 

 

And this:

 

 

No intention to interfere in debate more. That’s the promise. 

[Rue]

Are those piano and cello pillows?

[romberg flat]

Are those piano and cello pillows?

 

From Wikipedia:

 

"Infiltration Homogen for Piano"

 

In 1966 Beuys presented with piece as a performance. He had made one object, a piano covered entirely in felt with a red cross on its side. The piano could not be played and no sound would ever be heard from beneath the felt. Beuys remarks that the piano will always hold the potential for sound. The red cross is a symbol for the danger that people face when we remain silent. When he presented this work he also used a black board to draw and write on. Beuys often uses this medium to create discussion and memory. When he presented this work he also used a black board to draw and write on. Beuys often uses this medium to create discussion and memory.

What is not often included in the documentation of this piece is the subtitle that Beuys included: “The Greatest Composer here is the Thalidomide Child.^[16] Thalidomide was a sleep aid introduced in the 1950s to Germany and then across the west. It was soon found that it aided in morning sickness and was prescribed in unlimited doses to pregnant women. It was quickly apparent that Thalidomide was causing deformities in the children of mothers who had taken the drug. It was on the market for less than four years. In Germany around 2,500 children were affected. During his performance Beuys held a discussion about the Thalidomide child as the greatest composer and the division of the cross.

 

I broke a promise, but this is last time. Promise!

[Rue]

Thanks! Not as cuddly as they look then! I must just be really tired and looking for a napping companion.

But bringing attention to thalidomide is a wonderful thing!

[Bruce Carlson]

Hi All,

 

On the subject of decoration. It's not clear to me if this is Pluto (Hades) and Persephone or is it Apollo and Daphne? Perhaps neither. The sides of the violin are also decorated with vegetation or floral arabesque which made me think of Persephone (goddess of vegetation or of the harvest). Decorated with brush and pen using either brown varnish or ink, then covered with a protective coat of varnish. Violin dated 1926 Italian.

 

Bruce