Pastels just might be the most underrated medium in all of art
history. You rarely see them on exhibit at all, let alone as the star of
the show. So, it’s particularly special that San Francisco’s Legion of Honor has brought these works front and center in their current exhibit “Color into Line: Pastels from the Renaissance to the Present.”
Why Pastels?
There are three things that make pastels so incredibly interesting:
1. The medium itself hasn’t changed significantly in the past 500
years. It’s just pigment, filler, and binder. Therefore, when viewing
the work as it changes from exhibit room to room across the centuries,
we get the chance to see how the exact same materials are used so
uniquely depending on the artist and the era.
2. Pastel is the only medium that lets you draw a line and color the
line at the exact same time. As we see throughout the the exhibition,
you can vary this considerably depending on the pressure you use, the
form of the pastel (a pencil vs. a chalk block, for example), the
combination with different materials, etc. The artist’s choices range
from very dreamy Impressionist works,
to hyperrealistic, almost photographic, contemporary pieces.
Regardless, though, the medium lends itself really well to speed,
spontaneity, and immediacy. This, along with its portability and
affordability, makes pastels unique from other mediums.
3. Both female and male artists have long been recognized for their
work with pastels. The first room exhibiting pastel arts in “Color Into
Line” features work from women artists dating back five centuries. Women
weren’t exactly welcomed as artists at that time; they were banned from
the salons and classrooms where men studied. But pastels were
considered more of a pastime than a fine art, so women were allowed to
indulge. And they ended up, naturally, creating great works of art.
There are at least two, and often more, women artists featured in each
room of the exhibit.
Who Paints In Pastels?
Wayne Thiebaud, Pastel Scatter, 1972. Pastel. Thiebaud Family Collection. © Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
There’s something really interesting about this gender thing in
pastels, though. On the one hand, women were “allowed” to enjoy pastels,
yet pastels weren’t taken as seriously as other art forms. On the other
hand, very famous male artists also used pastels. Dating as far back as
the medium’s beginning and continuing through each room of the exhibit,
you’ll discover names that perhaps you never even associated with
pastel art. Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci
created a recipe for pastels and even invented a machine for pressing
it into sticks, though you won’t find any da Vinci works created in
pastel. However, his students did pick up the art form.
One of the women whose works you’ll find in the first room of the exhibit is Rosalba Carriera.
At the time, the Academie Royale in Paris did not admit female
students. And yet, they made an exception for her, and that exception
was based on her pastel art skills.
Throughout the rest of the rooms, some of the famous artists you might not know used pastels include: Salvador Dalí, Edgar Degas, Wayne Thiebaud,Jean-François Millet, Édouard Manet, Richard Diebenkorn, and Diego Rivera. A few of the female standout artists that you don’t want to miss include Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Eva Gonzalès. They were not simply outstanding artists but specifically did amazing work with pastels.
Why Are Pastels So Underrated?
Most people don’t think of pastels as deserving of a full exhibition.
Why is this? Well, it certainly doesn’t help that it was associated
with women's work. We haven’t historically valued women equally to men,
and therefore haven’t valued this art as equal to oil paintings and
other mediums.
Additionally, the affordability of the medium has made it accessible
to such a diverse range of artists. And in the often-snobby art world,
this means that people have given the artwork created with pastels less
value.
However, it’s not all about society looking down its nose at pastels.
A lot of it actually has to do with the fragility of the medium.
Pastels simply don’t hold up well over time. They can’t sit under museum
lights every single day for years without damage. As a result, we
simply rarely see pastels exhibited. With less exposure to them, we
aren’t educated in appreciation of them, which is what makes this
exhibition so special. The museum worked hard to combine the works in
their archives (which make up about two-thirds of the exhibit) with
borrowed works to offer us the chance to fully understand and explore
the history of the pastel medium. More than that, additional info on
signage and via QR codes gives you lots of extra knowledge about pastels
as a medium and a technique. If you’re interested in developing your
pastel art lexicon, this is the place to do it.
The Rooms of The Exhibit
The rooms of the exhibit are laid out in such a way that we get the
chance to truly see the development of pastels across time. The medium
hasn’t changed much, but we do see the subtle changes. For example, the
first room is filled with portraiture. The kind of old portraiture that
you think of when you think of people “sitting for a portrait.” Then,
room number 2 is all landscapes. Go back to room number one and you’ll
notice that there’s no green in that work. Return to that second room
and green flourishes. That’s because in the beginning, no artist could
figure out how to create green pigment. Oddly, it’s not a color that
exists in nature in a form that works for pastels. But then they figured
it out and green abounded and pastels were used to render beautiful
green landscapes.
Mary Cassatt. Sara in a Large Flowered Hat Looking Right Holding Her Dog, ca. 1902.
In the third room, we have Impressionism. Many of these works are
portraits as well, but of course, there’s a significant stylistic
difference between the earlier pieces. Compare, for example,
Jean-Etienne Liotard’s 18th-century Portrait of a Man and His Dog with Mary Cassatt’s 19th century Sara in a Large Flowered Hat, Holding Her Dog.
Both are of a single person with a dog, but Liotard is all lines; the
texture of his clothing is exquisitely done thanks to detailed precision
with the pastels. Both man and dog sit, posed for a formal painting.
Sara, on the other hand, squeezes her little dog with joy, as if unaware
that she’s the subject of a painting. Cassatt’s hand appears to move
quickly, giving us the impression of the scene without defined lines.
It’s a testament to the changing style of art over the decades, as well
as to the way that pastels can be used uniquely depending on the hands
that hold them.
Jean-Étienne Liotard. Portrait of a Man and His Dog, possibly Philippe Basset de la Marelle (1709-1779), ca. 1746–1750.
Fun Fact: This piece by Liotard is on display in this exhibit for the first time ever since its creation hundreds of years ago.
The other rooms bring us up to the 20th and 21st centuries. We get
the chance to see that some artists used pastels in sketches for
eventual works done in other mediums, whereas other artists made
large-scale art directly in pastels. Most of the pastels are done on
paper or canvas, but where it gets interesting is when we look at the
way in which artists mixed pastels with different mediums. Pay attention
and you’ll see pastel combined with graphite, charcoal, and chalk as
well as with watercolor and oil.
5 Pieces Not To Miss
Hopefully, you’ll have the opportunity to wander leisurely through
the entire exhibit. Look at the sides of the paintings where the artists
sometimes tested colors before applying them; you’ll see this in
Diebenkorn’s work. Pay attention to how the different papers (blue,
brown, gray, pink, smooth, woven) impact the appearance of the pastels
atop them. In an ideal world, you'll have lots of time to go slow and
notice all these details. If you don’t, then here are the five pieces
not to miss:
ca.
1820. Pastel on paper, 9 1/16 x 10 13/16 in. (23 x 27.5 cm.). Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Achenbach Foundation for
Graphic Arts.
She might be the world’s first known pastel landscape artist.
According to her diaries, she created more than 200 pastel landscapes,
of which only about 15 have survived. This is one of the only ones ever
shown in the United States.
2. Prosper, The Artist’s Nephew in Bed by Albert Bartholome (1882)
This portrait should dispel any misgivings that you have about
pastels as a legitimate medium for portraiture. The depth of emotion
captured in the eyes that stare out of the center of the image draw you
in.
3. Union Square, San Francisco by William Larkins (ca. 1930)
The artist used the long side of the pastel chalk in a technique
called sidestroke to quickly fill in the blocks of color that make up
the tall buildings in the city square. Combined with an unusually thin
paper choice, this piece showcases the gestural fluidity and energetic
immediacy that is unique to pastel art.
4. Central Park #1 and #2 by Joseph DiGiorgio (1984)
Other than the introduction of the color green, the only other major
change to the medium over the years came during the twentieth century.
Advances in petroleum technology made it possible to create oil pastels.
This added new depth of color, the ability to add up layers, and
opportunities for different techniques such as “scratching.” DiGiorgio’s
paintings are excellent examples of these features and techniques.
5. Dateline: (08-07) 16:22 PDT Trona, CA (AP) by Donna Anderson Kam (2020)
There’s no mistaking that this is a contemporary piece of art, since
the artist has depicted one of the people in the photo wearing a mask
and another gazing at the screen of a cell phone. It’s a portrait of
three young people in a homeless encampment. The image is rich in color,
has impressive detail in the texture of clothing and hair, and shows
off what artists are doing with pastels today.
Honestly, we could easily list another dozen must-see artworks in the
exhibit. There’s a Salvador Dali piece that you won’t believe is worked
in pastel. Morris Broderson’s eerie Lizzie Borden (1966), shown above, boldly combines pastel and watercolor. Rupert Garcia’s Calavera Cristobal (1990) cuts directly to the power of line, with a skeleton superimposed over a sketch of Christopher Columbus. Claudio Bravo’s Mystic Package (1967)
looks so realistic that you want to reach into the frame and untie the
twine to find out what’s inside. And, of course, Wayne Thiebaud’s Pastel Scatter, which is a pastel artwork depicting pastel chalks, is a quintessential piece for this exhibit.
“Color into Line: Pastels from the Renaissance to the Present” is showing at Legion of Honor through February 13, 2022.
