@@reiniergamboa educated people criticize someone's work constructively, which means to help them, and show them how the can get better and grow. As opposed to destructively, which means to harm or destroy.
That was the same thing we were told forty-five years ago. It is in a sense a script. Its taken me a lifetime to understand how all this wonderful training and traditions were destroyed in such a short time. The rise of modernism did not have to mean the destruction or near destruction of the classical tradition, but it did. Both types of art can co-exist, but the modernists were in a sense the first proponents of a sort of cancel culture, they simply espoused this notion that because its "all been done before," that there was no reason to ever draw or paint realistically again. And, its seldom challenged. The idea that painting realistically should ever be abandoned because others have painted figuratively is preposterous, the same claim could have been made in 1800 or 1700 or 1600 had someone broken the mold and come out with neo-primitivism or abstraction then. But the birth of the modern coincided with the early art history classes, with the early art critics and because they almost all came from the avant garde, their views were institutionalized. It all trickled down from the influential schools like Harvard and Yale that had these classes (Oxford did not even offer an art history degree until about forty years ago) and so the "been there, done that" attitude became universal. It didn't matter where you took Art History 101, the same "Impressionism good, Academics and tradition bad," shorthand was what you heard. And, almost no professor even knew what academic training entailed because they had no interest and almost nothing was written about it. There were a few like Albert Boime and Gerald "Jerry" Ackerman who came around to do it in the last forty years. In general if you were a more traditionally oriented painter who had no established his reputation by about 1895-1900, you were simply forgotten, not worth anything because the bulk of your career was superseded (in the art establishment's view) by modernism. The American artist Kenyon Cox was one who defended and wrote about the classical tradition, he was part of what is now described as "The American Renaissance" with artists and sculptors such as St. Gaudens and Abbott Thayer. So, the techniques of the classical school were kept alive by just a few artists in the West (classical instruction was alive in the Soviet Union in St. Petersburg and Moscow) by painters such as Theodore Lukits in California, Mrs. Simi in Florence and R.H. Ives Gammell and his students in Boston and then Minneapolis. The classical methods can be used to express anything the painter wants to express, there is no limit to an artist's imagination and of course we still listen to operas and symphonies that were composed hundreds of years ago played by artists who learned classical techniques, so painting using these tools is just as valid today as it ever was.
Thank you Cesar for the video. I think theres a movement of artist coming out against the modern art machine of junk. Theres a lot of "artist" that can't do what you do so they tried to destroy it over the years or big wigs with money but no brains that wanted to re shape the industry. When I went to school for fine art they tried making me throw crap at the canvas and couldn't teach me anything worth while so I dropped out and went into the service. I hear stories like this a lot and its sad. After 11 years I'm still trying on my own and thank the new wave of artist on youtube that make videos like yours. Better seeing your videos then wasting money at most colleges for "art"
I totally agree to everything you say there are too many toffee nosed people involved in the art world especially if you are self-taught. best of luck in your career
You're idea of art is the same idea of art back in the Renaissance. Don't be angry other individuals are trying the progress the medium while you hold onto out dated ideas and beliefs. Why is it such a big deal this individual can paint a portrait like a photo? We have cameras that can do the same thing but better. Art has no other direction but to be pushed into different boundaries and ideas. Van Gough work was scoffed at for being impression and not "life like". Now he is considered one of the most influential painters in the world. You're ideology is exactly like those who scoffed at his work. I'm glad you did drop out of art school, because judging by your opinion you didn't pay any attention and would have taken your cancerous beliefs and plague the art community with them.
Talk about triggered--this brother triggers INSPIRATION. I hope other aspiring artist find this video and are encouraged no matter what their skill level is. This video encourages one to pursue LIFE, period. Thanks Caesar
thankyou for the insight. I sometimes also felt as if I'm not being expressive enough with my art because i like to draw portraits and not abstraction/ contemporary art. I felt I am not creative enough because I don't draw "weird" things. But now I know that drawing portraits is my expression as an artist. :D
Thank you for your film, Subscribed cheers : ) I think he's correct with modern art schools today. I enjoyed my time in both further and higher art school, I had wonderful teachers My graffiti background helped me, though some tutors would try to change my natural desire to paint realism, It still screws my head I long to paint urban street culture there's a 1000 different stories each day, I also want to paint politics. I need a studio for the large canvases in oil & Spray paint mix media etc. But going back to ceasar. He's so right about how many tutors want you to basically become offspring of their art usually conceptual art. usually trying to pull you from what your own style and art. You're already paying good money to learn about how and what techniques you want to hear or be inspired to produce art., Ceasar has so much style and gift and has that rebellious nature that I think is healthy as an artist.
Cesar, Thank you.. I may be old, but there was a great deal I learned from you - you youngster. I must have viewed your first video more than 20 times. Your darling wife looked so happy in the Beginning and you painted her looking rather unhappy by the time you finished. I have just received your video on “the secrets of figure drawing.” I couldn’t see your first lines at all, so I assume that your charcoal was very hard. I am looking forward to getting into it. I really like the way you talk about and describe things.. well done
agree with the guy 100%,very well said,no need to coment his work,its great, just upload more of his way of painting here in youtube so we can see more of his layer process and maybe the old methods will get back some of the respect they lost.
I am another victim of contemporary art practices. I love classical painting too, and portraiture. And that's exactly why I've been oppressed as a contemporary art student. It's gone to the point when my art tutor called my academic portrait drawings, I quote, a "bullshit". Contemporary art teaching is fraud and you must never let those who can't draw or paint tell you what to do.
Less talented people wanted to be called artists so they invented contemporary and conceptual art forms. It can never be on par with realism and traditionalism.
Hello, you have a nice photographic approach..."I am a [hyper]camera--with a modernist 'classical' perspective...but the polished drama tends to fall a bit flat on this eye...that is, an eye with a deeper and richer sense of aesthetic consciousness. If you really wish to capture a deeply profound plastic quality that is more sublime...you will need to observe the chemistry and techniques of Raphael, Titian, Rubin, and Velasquez [etc]...how light and colours 'explode' in the imagination and on canvas/wooden panel. Or, for an even more profound mastery of universal ideas--examine the brilliant works' of Da Vinci and Bosch. Bring the image to life amigo! Many of these admirers (commenting here) are caught in the web of the photo-realist genre...which is fine...but you can do something more than this genre offers the eye. Colour and form...discover the invisible! Art: speaks through the imagination of the viewer. It's subjective. No need to peer through the gallery owner's vision of the things of the world. It's generally pretty flat. They hardly understand art...but worship money--and more often than not--pretend scholarship. (They tend to be loud-mouthed salesmen.) Art is commoditized through such commercial characters/events. Techniques: need to capture a powerful imaginative impulse. What is important in ART is to be able to render what is 'invisible' not merely reflect "or capture" of the visible world. Photo-realism is an example [facet] of naive art. Kick ass man! Cut em up...do something really interesting...collage...mixed media...experiment now to the next level. Picasso certainly managed to walk back and forth across both bridges. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy your creative exercises and photo-op-expressionist experiments.. But, I think you can reach a much higher level of symbolic expression. All art is a reflection of symbolic experiences...combining negative and positive polarities in unique meaningful ways etc. Being in Cuba...or Paris...or on a remote Arctic island, should not make a difference. Great Art lives most anywhere...in the shadows or in the light...it comes to life in each human experience from the corridors of the Unitary Reality. Art reveals the Truth of Life. Art in all its various manifestations reveals a semblance of the sublime in Nature. Anyone who does not understand this, does not really have a clear grasp of art. You do. Cheers Cesar - Mucho gusto - James /Canada/France/Mexico
i can recognize the skill involved but to me, this kind of painting does nothing for me. All the people talking down on abstraction and contemporary, why can't all art exist. Art would be so boring to me if everyone were painting this way, but then again, if everyone were, I would enjoy watching a fresh rebellion from it.
Chris Newman I agree with you. One can find in youtube a lot of very good painters and drawers with amazing technical skills but all they do is copying photos. Do not express anything personal, no communicate...
Thank you Cesar and Matthew for keeping the classical traditions alive. As a composer, I ran into the same garbage philosophy from the "academics" regarding the need to be "expressive" (i.e. modern and hard to listen to). As a result, I went in a different direction professionally and only wrote music for my own enjoyment. Cesar and Matthew were brave enough to follow their dreams into reality. Cheers!
Finally a great and talented artist who voiced just how I've felt about my art for years and I wish I would have heard him when I was younger. I used to just listen to the kind of artist you mentioned and put my art on a shelf to work at a regular job, being miserable. My love for art started when I was two years old and my parents gave me a small easel and paint set. now I'm older and my husband wants me to satisfy my desire to paint realism that I love to do. Thank you so much for putting this artist out there for us.
Wow i thought i was alone. Something similar is happening to me where professors and students always make me feel bad about my classical art ( or bullied it). by saying the same exact two words=that has been done or you need to be more expressive. i starting asking my self what was i doing wrong because proportion, perspective and color are not bad and my still life and portraits look almost realistic. They never have anything to say about all the details and how well done the artwork is, but they just ignore it or say those famous words ( it has been done and more expressive). Thank you for such inspiring documentary.
Sounds like jealously to me, I am not familiar with the ways within art school. But it sounds your doing something well, in my experience people only have something negative to say when that what they judge impressive. Think of it like this, if something is not worth talking about people usually don’t spend much time contemplating. When we as humans see something that reaches beyond our expectations, we are provoked. We realize that what is possible within the realms of art, we get anxious. Because it is one last reminder of what we could do as humans and simultaneously we remember it takes hard work an dedication. It takes energy to reach a certain level and as humans we are lazy, so instead of improving ourselves we play down other peoples work. So we feel better. So be proud, if people have opinions about you and your work you evoked their feelings.
Uhmm laptop screen tracing that's all drawing is all about nowadays what a pity. your drawings are exactly in milimiters the same as the photos, really good trace work
I was only spanked once by my biological mother's boyfriend (for drawing with crayons on the wall), and once by my adoptive father for lying about making a mess with my orange juice. I consider myself lucky. But, wait, there's more........I got spanked in every grade up to the 9th grade, except for the 6th grade.
great example of consistency ,dont b afraid of taking risks ,believe in yourself ,if u believe yourself nothing is difficult to achieve ,- very motivational documentry
his first words about people who try to put down your passions for painting in that way made me feeling better and reflect inside that I am not alone and that there is more people struggling with contemporary art issues...
12:08 that's unfortunately the legacy of the XX century: war, darkness, death & misery brought the worst to Art as well. As we are moving forward to this century, the need for beauty and amazement will continue to grow, as Cesar's Art shows.
Yaaas Kirsten! That was very enjoyable to watch. You've got them frame skills! And I see the artist captured you perfectly. That must've been such a cool experience overall.
Dude, it's great to see and hear your story. Your videos are very inspiring and it is very generous of you to share them. Thank you and God bless. Please don't stop. :-)
Interesting man. I am glad to see classic representation has a place in the world. His observation about negativity is spot on. I studied writing at the Art Institute of Chicago, and you always felt this kind of reaffirming of Post Modern pessimism coming out of the instruction. I have wicked respect for his skills and positive outlook. It's refreshing.
Ache! Orgullo Cubano! Maestro! WOW! What can I say? maybe... I don't know... I wanna be like you ...but ...I don't know... in my next life ...because in this one ... ...already half has gone!!! Thank you for sharing.
Pinta muy bien obviamente, pero parece más ARTE DECORATIVO, que arte contemporáneo... ¿Pintar personas desde una foto, qué sentido tiene? Es como hacer una FOTOCOPIA, sorry pero no me gusta 🤔
I Love this video i just feel so identified! My dream is to study at angel academy of Florence italy too! and Cesar is so pasion by his work as i do, he just inspired me! You got my admiration, muchos más éxitos mi amigo!
A real portrait is art and art to be art requires an innovation/invention, people most of the time don't know that they want a piece of artwork that includes a portrait of them and not an arts and craft exercise. The work isn't a real portrait (and you might as well just document whatever quickly with a photo/video) if it is JUST a painting of a portrait without it having a mechanism or use as a tool (though folks are looking for a tool that requires an acurate documented study of their features). Southern Women forget they are required to have that Gone With The Wind portrait over their fire place that fights the tackiness of that requirement to earn the place over their fire place. Most people thinking of themselves as artists are actually technicians/arts&crafters because they have not invented anything yet not knowing they are required to, and it only takes one heavy invention to earn the title of artist for all works created today because of the way recording works now. So the requirement has always been artwork innovation that includes a portrait and not technician/arts&craft work (keeps it from being a waste of time/money). For example [i enjoy the portraits I make to have so many uses it is a like a luxemburg Army Knife (through nazi cheese thats never been hit for some insane reason)]: the portraits I paint are 10x10 so that they fit in Orion. the work is star matrix signal structuring where you hold the canvas up to orion and your eyes observation of the cube of stars around orion naturally utilizes the quantum eraser experiment rewriting the star light waves to particles to their source through out time, so when you hold the portrait to Orion it continues to send the image to that exact location of your eyes for thousands of years. the star light sculpts the image you hold up when your eyes explore the canvas. According to the quantum eraser experiments, every time you focus on your surroundings the stars record what you are seeing. Sculpted mechanisms allow you to clear light arriving before sent. Find any thought throughout time and explore the universe to planck length in moments. folks might like delivery of the paintings to include painting underwater on top of my Jeep with interest in the delivery of the work causing the cellphone towers in the path to the location to surge points near light speed into space as if the area the delivery is passing though is a canvas which can be used to transmit whatever extremely pixelated and rotoscoped logo esque image into space. Folks might also like the delivery to include the mounting of the portraits as masks of lit roped tree form giants then adding towering voices to the giant tree movements. the images are animations containing all the frames of the animation, which is a major innovation always missed by folks painting frames of animation and when movie making they never think to have all the frames played at once which wastes misleading trailers. currently strategizing ways to ad an optical illusion activated by motion for different distances. optical illusion activated by motion from distance checkerboard closeness then upclose not a checkerboard grid line thicken might work I aim to make it look like the minds are passing in front of intricate sketches on red walls. The portraits are filtered depictions of self-immolations with the red edges of the canvas being pixelated fire containg the smeared landscape details in the flames topped with face clarity (a nice fourth wall spike of the viewer percieving illusion). the portraits in the works are absent of red and pink because that is too effeminate and aim the skin at being more pale grey and napals yellow fighting green because thats what preservation in Antarctica does to our skin while we work to immortalize existence. I'd like the sketches I painted that the portraits are in front of to involve maps of their external mind structures and paths through quantum eraser star light sculptures and are currently images of Antarctic/Arctic catacombs and our efficient productivity of our creativity in our black out sleep states the supercomputers and Ancient Flight Mainframe requires us for solving immortalizing existence components. The sketches are also sheet music and part of an infinite algorithm weighting all my actions that is a translation guide multiplying diversified production of innovation information. The sketches have variety in the forms and have more mutation of the fisheyeing perspectives with the work having the distant forms change when our eyes and visual memory travels back to them. The sketches I paint behind the portraits are double sided when made like currency supporting George Washington's Freemasons. The currency I hope to create with the sketches are maps of algorithms calibrating all our actions to our portfolios allowing us to intricately monitor our market algorithm trading. A 10x10 oil portrait can include recording of your heart beat and design for completion as a mechanism of only light focused with heat and gravity creating more heat and moving gravity (main tech of US Air Force and origin of name). oil portraits can include lucid dreams as a monitor of a non-game survival tool that protects you and your injuries while you sleep when activating the augmented reality ap using target images attached to what your protecting. for example if you have to keep something elevated attach a target image to the elevated then keep phone focused on target image, then if the elevation is compromised the phone wakes you, then you can enjoy falling back to sleep with a lucid dream guide. the lucid dreaming non-game survival tool is webgl using a visual traditional 3d experience then when going to sleep you enjoy exploring activation of lucid dream building with a sound only layer with eyes closed, you can also use the augmented reality ap to protect your injuries while you sleep. so there are 5 layers of the webgl into AR: Visual 3d, Sound, Cube Sound from 4 earbuds worn at once, Lucid Dream activated when focused on hands in your mind when waking from sleep, and Augmented Reality security sensors. oil portraits include algorithmic music translation of image, graphic design and sketches. If interested I could wear 4 earbuds at once and make some the image visualized with sound by layering the sound points, then deliver the image with underwater painting, cell tower outer space transmissions, then mount the portrait as a mask on moving lit roped tree form giants with towering voices. Voices of the giants made of tree forms wearing your portrait could be composed of your layered voice so that when slowing and increasing speed of the voice different things are spoken. oil portraits include free graphic designs and sketches of what your portrait is going to look like with out any obligations to purchase the digital files created with photoshop oil painting filter and smuge tool. background sketches and painting can be made on a midi keyboard, with each mark playing keys on a midi keyboard so that your portrait is also music with filtered stereo instructions eliminating the dense sound of spoken word. You can play an interactive album ap I design that translates mark making into music on my website and/with a personalized app I built out for you.
Good skills. Figurative realism beats contemporary minimalism any time of the day. However, I disagree with his last comment of that the relationship should be only between the painting and the viewer., and who painted it doesn't matter. So that means it doesn't matter that he painted this portraits , an ape could have done it as well 🤔. ?
Cesar, our philosophy on art is identical. I have just finished reading a book by Michelle Marder Khami called Bucking the Artworld Tide-- Reflections on Art, Pseudo Art, Art Education & Theory. It covers how the art world is dismissing academic art for contemporary abstract garbage. Excuse me, but I am not as open minded as you. I am passionate about academic realism. Thank you for teaching me how to improve my skills. At 82, I must improve fast because I am on that final glide path. God Bless you.
Cesar, you are a wise man, and what you say and do must be true for it echoes that which the Wisest of all said: “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” It is high time that what is true and beautiful captures our attention again!
If there ever is an American edition of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, I hope Cesar gets to be a judge on that show. He'd make an excellent judge. The perfect contemporary to Tai Shan Sherenberg of the British show.
there will always be value in true classical style art and your sir are an amazing artist the modern art is a way for those with no real talent to say they are artists its like the trophy for last place
