Lennart Anderson Slide Talk Video

Lennart Anderson, “Self Portrait with Hammer and Nails”, 1986

 

“All things are understood by means of comparison. For in comparison, there lies the power that states that which is more, that which is less and that which is equivalent”

Lennart Anderson from his Painting from Nature essay

 

“Lennart Anderson is not only a preeminent figurative painter for our time, he is among the remaining few who embody the nobility, humility and grace that is at the origins of our craft’s core. This is a painter who has been endowed with prodigious gifts: an exquisite fluid draughtsmanship, an esemplastic painterly virtuosity that can elicit from viewers manifold sensations of tactile wonder, and an eloquent and poetic sensibility that evokes in us a deep empathy with the subject, the empathy he himself felt in painting it. And in bringing all these endowments to a lifetime of work, Lennart has always and with great dignity stayed the course above the exploitations that virtuosity often licenses: facile emotionalisms, gushing sublimes and a straining after effects that do nothing but defeat their own object. Lennart Anderson’s hold on formal restraints and that finely tempered pictorial intellect he placed in the way of his prodigious gifts brought forth moving works of art only a true master is able bring.”

Israel Hershberg
Artistic Director & Founder, Jerusalem Studio School

 

Painting Perceptions is pleased to present a new video of Lennart Anderson, A leading figurative painter and teacher at the Brooklyn College, giving a slide talk in Italy at the 2010 Jerusalem Studio School’s summer program at the Certosa di Pontignano in Siena. There is an introduction by Israel Hershberg – Artistic Director & Founder, Jerusalem Studio School. Many thanks to Alex Goldberg for his iPhone video footage and photos and also to Yehuda Armoni for his magnificent photographs of the Certosa program.

Lennart Anderson is not only an important master artist but also a great teacher who has taught and influenced many excellent painters, many whose works have been discussed on this blog, such as Lucy Barber, Diana Horowitz, Tina Ingraham, Eve Mansdorf, Michael Kareken and Langdon Quinn.

In this slide talk he discusses his work made since the 1950’s. The video is broken up into 8 sections due to its length and YouTube limitations. The entire length is slightly less than 2 hours. The video footage was taken on an iPhone and my camera so the video and sound quality sufffer in places. However I replaced the slide images when possible with higher resolution images. When no higher resolution images were available I tried to enhance the video image of the slide (removing camera perspective distortions, etc.) To help with the audio issues in the introduction talk I provided the text of Israel Hershberg’s speech in the beginning of this article as well as the video itself.

You can see many higher resolution images of his work at David Marshall’s excellent Lennart Anderson Web Museum, also essays and interviews section is a great resource (note there are also a couple of great new video there with him talking about his work) Many thanks to David Marshall for making this great resource available to the public. Also thanks to Israel Hershberg and the Jerusalem Studio School for his assistance in putting this video together and making the talk possible.

Part One – Introduction

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight