Ted Seth Jacobs is in Boston doing a series of demonstration lectures. He is the teacher of my own teacher, Dennis Cheaney, who organized the series and is hosting them in his studio downtown. Ted is a remarkable painter whose career has spanned 60 years, and is one of the leading lights of realist painting. In addition, he is a born teacher; his school in rural France has attracted hundreds of students, and he's trained a whole generation of some of the best-known realist artists, such as Jacob Collins, Anthony Ryder, and Michael Grimaldi. Among realists, he seems to be the quintessential "Painter's Painter".
Although he has a very kindly and unassuming manner, I was immediately thunderstruck by both the depth and breadth of the knowledge and insight be brings to bear on the practice of painting and drawing. In the space of just a few sentences, he would touch on physics, anatomy, geometry, optics, engineering, art history, pedogogy, physiology, materials, perception, oh, and philosophy to boot. And these were not the abstracted mental meanderings of a scattered intellectual. Rather, all his comments had direct relevance to the subject at hand, which is to say aspects of drawing the human body. It was really a virtuoso performance, indicitive of a lifetime spent deeply pondering the problems of making art.
My upcoming Mexico trip prevents me from seeing all the lectures, but I will get to as many as I can.
BTW, Ted's website has a lot of images, but the reproduction quality is not generally good. The ARC pages for him have fewer paintings, but they are higher quality reproductions.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
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2 comments:
As a former student of Ted Jacobs, I can say that he is an egotistical sociopath. My year in France was ruined, by his public annoucment to his class, that he thought I was gay and that my wife was a man. He is the singal worst teacher I have had. He certainly did harm to my education and career. I regret ever committing to study with him, and I think his art is grotesque and his cult-like philosophy is great for snobby spoiled elitists. Honestly, there are greater teachers out there, Gabriel
OK, it is I Gabriel, and I apologise to Ted, and the rest of the world, for my unkind words about Ted Jacobs. He has much to offer many people, but I am not one of them. He can be a very humerous and inspiring teacher. I wish him well. It is never fun when education and friendship collapse in a dramatic implossion. I believe I will never post another negative comment again. Peace on eath, Gabriel
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