Rhythm, Tension, Energy, and Beauty

OFA figure drawing instructor emphasizes perception and abstraction

Jon Imber has taught figure drawing to undergraduates and graduate students since 1986 through the Office for the Arts. He has been a afull-time painter for more than 20 years and has also taught at, among others, the Boston Museum School, Massachusetts College of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts. He has upcoming solo shows at the Nielson Gallery in Stonington, the Firehouse Gallery in Damariscotta, and the Portland biennial. His work was profiled in the Autumn 2002 issue of “The Gettysburg Review.” He talked with Cathleen McCormick, Director of Programs at the Office for the Arts at Harvard.

CM: Since you began with the Office for the Arts, you’ve taught about 500 Harvard students. What is your collective impression of those taking your class?

JI: The attitude is great. There have been unbelievably talented students and others who work really hard. They are often very goal and accomplishment oriented – determined to do well and make the most of the course. I get a few Visual and Environmental Studies concentrators.

CM: What are your thoughts about the relevance of drawing from the figure to visual education?

JI: For art that is oriented to image, it’s essential. From drawing one learns about rhythm, tension, energy, and beauty. It does not seem, however, directly applicable to much of what is going on in the visual arts today, which is not driven by classical tenets and aesthetics.

CM: And how do you suppose it relates to the liberal arts education?

JI: I think a lot of students come to my class at first to have fun. They think it’s going to be a release from term papers and lab projects. But then they see that learning how to draw is a real challenge.

A specific issue is that most of my Harvard students believe that you can master a subject. But in drawing you can’t just study a lot and get an A. The way you master drawing is different than, say, history. In the arts, you can work and work and you only get to a certain point. This is frustrating for these students.

The route to becoming a good artist is through having lots of failure, making a mess, and going into territory that is unknown and taking risks. Underneath that there are skills to learn. This is not a realm that my Harvard students are very familiar with, but this different type of learning experience will probably benefit them. On the other hand, it can be a pleasurable trip of mucking around in aesthetics. It can be ratifying even for the beginners, who sometimes make terrific drawings if they really dig in. They often inadvertently express themselves, which is a tangible reward, even if the proportions are way off.

CM: Harvard is an environment in which students can take art classes for credit at VES or co-curricularly in the student Houses or through the Office for the Arts. How does this mixed array of educational opportunities strike you?

JI: There seems to be a tremendous interest in painting and drawing. Each term we turn away around 30 students from my drawing class.

CM: A student mentioned tat you first emphasize getting the composition right.

JI: the order of priorities evolves for me each year. I like to keep it fluid. Right at the beginning this year I talked about composition and different types of lines – it’s pretty traditional. Perhaps in VES classes you could spend weeks on one formal facet but I must do it in one night since we meet only once a week. Composition doesn’t necessarily involve mastery of proportion. An awareness of composition helps them get very quickly to something that can have some real tension. Most of the student seem to realize that leaning how to draw is a lot about making parts in correct proportion to one another. Making lines come alive is another challenge.

CM: What else are you after in the classroom?

JI: I also begin with the notion that learning to draw is half learning to look and half ho to think. One has to simplify, create a system of abstraction. Start by thinking of the whole, seeing the parts, and being aware of how they relate to one another before getting into details. This requires students to think conceptually – you’re looking to sharpen your vision, but one has to think abstractly so as to not get lost in the details. It’s about perception and conception.

I bring in art historical references, from the Renaissance to DeKooning and Guston, but my class isn’t about learning theory. What I teach is part 19th century – seeing carefully and trying to reproduce with your hand what you see – and part 20th century – Matisse, Cezanne, thinking about creating tension, energy, beauty and power through line, form, space, etc., as much as capturing what you see. This seems to be my departure point – looking and organization, always letting oneself be inspired by the real world, the model in this case, but at the same time creating a parallel, re-ordered world on the canvas or paper. I don’t know if I am doing anything yet that is unique to the 21st century.

CM: Does working in paint sometimes seem archaic given all the technology available?

JI: We need images; they play an important role in our life. The power and importance of the hand-make image has lasted from 30,000 years ago, from the Lascaux cave paintings to the present. Things really haven’t changed. If you were an art student in 1500 you would study Giotto. Likewise 1700, 1800, 1900, and now. Why should our urges, needs, and dreams be different just because there is new technology? Art students should still study Giotto. His work is clear, moving, lyrical, passionate and powerful. We’re in the modern world but Giotto’s power to move us has not gone away. Literature students of course still study Shakespeare. So making drawings is not that much different now from the caveman who needed to draw a bull on the wall. It’s a primitive, yet timeless, urge to make images.

CM: What are you thinking about in your own work at the moment?

JI: I continue to discover new and surprising ways of putting down the paint. Also, I continue to invent and find my own vocabulary of images. I’m still as excited as ever about paint and color, shape and line. For the last few years I’ve found landscapes to be the most successful vehicle of my expression.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]