Ronald Flexner’s portrait of a man, depicted below on the right, owes much to Seurat’s techniques in creating value but departs from Seurat in its thematic qualities of the depiction of time, the monumental scale on the page, and the level of intimacy. This brief commentary reviews Flexner’s piece in terms of its thematic principles and visual style with a particular emphasis on its comparison to Seurat.
Flexner’s portrait clearly borrows from the visual style of Seurat but varies significantly from Seurat in its depiction of time. The extremely granular nature of the drawing gives the viewer a sense of a seemingly infinite number of points of light, and any linear elements to the composition are lost in their accumulation. While this approach readily falls into Seurat’s school of pointalism from purely analytical perspective, placing Flexner’s portrait side by side with an early sketch from Seurat like the one below makes the “point” even clearer.
Pointalistic Sketches: Seurat’s Seated Nude and Flexner’s portrait both rely on the variations of small points of light and dark to create value and form in their drawings.
Despite the similarities in visual affect, the two drawings vary considerably in how they depict time. Seurat’s figure is still, almost sullen, perhaps having waited too long. Although the image might seem to capture an instant in time, the figure seems as if it could have been in this same pose for hours or even days. Even the lighting around the figure echoes its form, as if the air has settled in for the wait as well. Flexner’s figure, on the other hand seems to have been caught in the moment. Perhaps sleeping but about to turn over, perhaps breathing in or accepting a kind caress, the figure is still yet about to move, captured the very moment between poses. The drawing seems more reminiscent of a grainy photograph taking in a mere instant than the patient, thoughtful drawing by Seurat on the left.
Also different from Seurat, Flexner’s portrait seeks to monumentalize in exquisite detail an ephemeral moment in time as completely as possible in a number of ways. The portrait zooms in on the figure’s head such that it does not even fit on the entire page, creating a dramatic scene of an otherwise perhaps ordinary moment. Flexner uses graphite as his medium, creating an extremely granular quality to the portrait and a sense that nearly every pore has been attended to. This granularity extends to the entirety of the drawing, creating an almost tactile visual effect to the very air depicted around the figure. Flexner is so effective in the depiction of a singular moment in time that the figure seems nearly to be breathing inward at the very moment portrayed in the drawing.
Despite the monumental scale of the head on the page, the granularity of the sketch lends itself to a intimacy that is carried out in other ways as well. The sense that the viewer is sharing this moment in such specific detail with the subject of the portrait even as the subject seems unaware of the viewer’s gaze creates a remarkable intimacy to the portrait. This intimacy combines with the monumentality of the portrait to relay a certain sensuality: the eye is drawn to the curve of the neck, the cheek that recedes into darkness on the lefthand side, the chin that softly lies across the center of the drawing. The portrait could have been monumental in an imposing way, but Flexner keeps the harsh angles of the face off to the side so they are not the focal point of the drawing. Instead, the portrait monumentalizes a sensual moment that engages not only the eye but nearly the viewer’s senses of touch and smell.
I must confess my interest in Flexner’s drawing was not deeply considered: his drawing jumped out at me, and I decided I’d think about the appeal later in writing this commentary. It was actually through my master sketches of Seurat that I came to truly appreciate Flexner’s drawing. I tend to rely heavily on line accumulation to create value, which leads to a somewhat dynamic, shifting form on the page. Seurat and Flexner are both using media that rely on line accumulation but their attention to detail is so fine that the lines are completely lost in favor of the soft focus on varying points of light and dark across the page. They are able to achieve a level of stillness and intimacy that is usually absent from my own drawings but through media I feel comfortable using and can fully appreciate. Hopefully, I will be able to take these observations and execute them in my own drawings in the future.
