Analysis of a Nightingale

In 1964, Hans Hoffmann presented "Song of the Nightingale", a powerful composition of rectilinear objects interacting with less formal, viscerally "expressionistic" slashes of color. Strong reds and oranges form a perfect backdrop for the carefully positioned rectangles of cadmium yellow and chartreuse. Hoffmann's use of texture completes the painting, creating a visual explosion for the senses.

To me, this painting stands as the perfect representative of the Abstract Expressionist movement. It is by far my favorite piece of this genre. So, it was only fitting that this masterwork would be the first to fall under the analytical knife, and would also begin my return to painting. It is the first painting of my series "Modernity".

Seen here to the right, "Song of the Nightingale" contains very few of what are considered "cool" colors, or those colors in the spectrum (using the Roy G Biv, or red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet model of represention) falling after Green. There are hints of blue and violet, but these act more as shadowing accessories, meant more to push the warmer tones further toward the viewer. The predominant use of orange and red is in itself an achievement, as these colors are notorious for being hard to handle when used along with more passive, cooler tones. They are so aggressive to the eye that keeping them contained in the picture plane is quite the challenge. It appears that Hoffman solved this containment issue by simply eliminating (or at least minimizing) the use of cool color. In this way, the energies of the red and orange, in a manner of speaking, keep each other in check, keep each other within the compositional framework.

Hoffmann is noted as claiming to work "from nature", or at least this is the legendary challenge tossed out in his dialogues with Jackson Pollock. At first, it's hard to find the "from nature" in Nightingale. In order not to be distracted by the powerful colorations of the piece, I employed my computer to convert the graphic to black and white. By enhancing the contrast of the black and white image, it was easier to examine the tonal masses and their relationship to each other. In searching for the "nature" within the now black and white composition, it dawned on me that what I was looking at in the final product is not necessarily where the artist began.

I'm certainly not so bold to assert that Hoffman inverted his original composition, but one cannot deny the elegance of the following proposition. By turning the composition 180 degrees, it is fairly simple to see a "natural", almost landscapian, composition. Here was the nature Hoffman was claiming to work from (to me of course). With this new perspective on the piece, it was fairly simple to imagine a painting of an old-world market place, or a Venetian canal, or even a straightforward landscape. Now the horizon is clearly delimited. Foreground and background can be intuited with little difficulty.

In order for my final product to be considered successful, this spatial arrangement must remain intact.

The intention of "Chasing Hans Hoffmann " is to use what I determine as the quintessence of a masterwork as a starting point for the piece to follow. For me, what captures the spririt of "Song of the Nightingale" was color and composition. While texture was exceptionally important to Hoffmann, for my series, it is not. This series is meant to reflect fundmentally sound spatial relationships, harmony between colors, a general morphing of one hue into another, and an interesting interplay between each of these elements. Hoffmans's Nightingale would prove to be an excellent case study and first step to the development of a new artistic style for me.

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To the right is Song of the Nightingale boiled down to six fundamental colors, rudimentary shapes, and their relationship. Now to rebuild this.

Loosely sketching shape and color relationships provided the blueprint for the final piece. Keeping the high-level balance and compositional harmony of the original intact allowed me to exchange certain choices made by Hoffmann with choices of my own. This, to me, is really the definition of Art. Art is the result of a series of conscious choices, made by the artist, that are intended to be considered aesthetically good, or true, or beautiful (I'm so Platonic), versus what should be considered not good to the end in mind. Simply put, Art is a determination made by an artist. It has little to do with the craft of making art. Sometimes much is lost moving from the image as seen within the mind of the artist, and the final artifact of canvas and paint or paper and pen.

To the right is my final interpretation of Hans Hoffmann's "Song of the Nightingale". While it only loosely resembles the original at this macroscopic level, the following paragraph should provide some interesting correlations between color, composition, and the overall success of my reinterpretation. If my rendering is successful, when we shrink both the original and my version down to the point that details are lost, implementation differences removed, the two should be strikingly similar.

I'll let the viewer be the judge.