Robert Henri on working from memory, technique, simplicity in art, self-education, the ability to see, and the joy of creative work.
A brief overview of Robert Henri before delving into his own words:
| Who (Identity) | An American painter and influential teacher, celebrated for his role in the Ashcan School of American realism. |
| What (Contributions) | Known for vibrant, realistic depictions of everyday life and urban scenes, and profound impact on art education through teachings and writings, notably in “The Art Spirit”. |
| When (Period of Influence) | Active as an artist and teacher from the late 19th to early 20th century, with significant contributions in the early 1900s; lived from 1865 to 1929. |
| Where (Geographic Focus) | Primarily worked in the United States, especially in New York City, the center of his artistic and teaching endeavors, and studied in Paris at the Académie Julian. |
| Why (Artistic Philosophy) | Believed in art as a vehicle for personal expression and capturing raw, everyday experiences; advocated for a democratic approach to art, making it accessible and relevant to all. |
| How (Technique and Style) | Employed loose brushwork, a rich palette, and direct painting onto canvas, emphasizing the capture of essence and spirit over meticulous detailing for a more immediate, emotional style. |
The following section is a selection of excerpts from the book ‘The Art Spirit’ 1 by Robert Henri, used for education purposes.
Studying The Masters
Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. They can help you. All the past can help you.
Work Fast
Paint in one sitting if you can. In one minute if you can. There is no virtue in delaying.
Thirty minutes of high-pitch mentality and spirit is worth more than a whole week below par.
If you do not act on a suggestion at first, you grow dull to its message.
Working From Memory
The kind of seeing and the kind of thinking done by one who works with the model always before him is entirely different from the kind of seeing and thinking done by one who is about to lose the presence of the model and will have to continue his work from the knowledge he gained in the intimate presence.
The latter type of worker generally manifests a mental activity of much higher order than his apparently safe and secure confrère. He must know and he must know that he knows before the model is snatched away from him. He studies for information.
I have often thought of an art school where the model might hold the pose in one room and the work might be done in another.
The development of an ability to work from memory, to select factors, to take things of certain constructive values and build with them a special thing, your unique vision of nature, the thing you caught in an instant look of a face or the formations of a moment in the sky, will make it possible to state not only that face, that landscape, but make your statement of them as they were when they were most beautiful to you.
The development of the power of seeing and the power to retain in the memory that which is essential and to make record and thus test out how true the seeing and the memory have been is the way to happiness.
Relative Value Of Things
When we know the relative value of things we can do anything with them. We can build with them without destroying them. Under such conditions they are enhanced by coming into contact with each other.
The study of art is the study of the relative value of things. The factors of a work of art cannot be used constructively until their relative values are known.
No feature should be drawn except in its relation to the others. There is a dominating movement through all the features. There is sequence in their relationship.
To study art is to study order, relative values, to get at fundamental constructive principles.
A curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line.
Simplicity
I believe the great artists of the future will use fewer words, copy fewer things, essays will be shorter in words and longer in meaning. There will be a battle against obscurity.
By this means we will enter into the real mystery. There will be fewer things said and done, but each thing will be fuller and will receive fuller consideration.
I am not interested in technical stunts, in bravura. I am interested in simple expression. Not interested in painting the surface of things. Paint must be so simply managed that it will carry understanding past the material fact.
Technique is to me merely a language, and as I see life more and more clearly, growing older, I have but one intention and that is to make my language as clear and simple and sincere as is humanly possible. I believe one should study ways and means all the while to express one’s idea of life more clearly.
The easiest thing is the hardest. It is harder to be simple than it is to be complex.
Try to reduce everything you see to the utmost simplicity. That is, let nothing but the things which are of the utmost importance to you have any place. The more simply you see, the more simply you will render. People see too much, scatteringly.
Painting Of Light
In the painting of light, in modeling form, keep as deep down in color as you can. It is color that makes the sensation of light. Play from warm to cold, not from white to black.
The tendency to put in more and more white is so usual that it would be well to restrict the white. Keep it off the palette.
The Real Study Of An Art Student
The real study of an art student is more a development of that sensitive nature and appreciative imagination with which he was so fully endowed when a child, and which, unfortunately in almost all cases, the contact with the grown-ups shames out of him before he has passed into what is understood as real life.
The art student that should be, and is so rare, is the one whose life is spent in the love and the culture of his personal sensations, the cherishing of his emotions, never undervaluing them, the pleasure of exclaiming them to others, and an eager search for their clearest expression. He never studies drawing because it will come in useful later when he is an artist. He has not time for that. He is an artist in the beginning and is busy finding the lines and forms to express the pleasures and emotions with which nature has already charged him.
Prolonged Work & Concentration
The habit of digression—lack of continued interest—want of fixed purpose, is an almost general failing. It is too easy to drift and the habit of letting oneself drift begets drifting. The power of concentration is rare and must be sought and cultivated, and prolonged work on one subject must not be mistaken for concentration. Prolonged work on one subject may be simply prolonged digression, which is a useless effort, as it is to no end.
Painting As Self-Expression
A “still life” in great art is a living thing. The objects are painted for what they suggest, and their presentation has no excuse if it is not to carry to the mind of the observer the fancy they aroused in the artist. If they do not do this and are but simply wonderfully well copied, then there is no communication between the artist and the observer, and the latter gets no more than he would if he were to see the same things in nature.
The great artist has not reproduced nature, but has expressed by his extract the most choice sensation it has made upon him.
A work of art is not a copy of things. It is inspired by nature but must not be a copying of the surface. Therefore what is commonly called “finish” may not be finish at all. You have to make your statement of what is essential to you—an innate reality, not a surface reality. You handle surface appearances as compositional factors to express a reality that is beyond superficial appearances. You choose things seen and use them to phrase your statement.
Those who express even a little of themselves never become old-fashioned. The only true modern movement is a frank expression of self.
The model is not to be copied, but to be realized. The painting is the result of the effect of the model on the artist. It is not the model we need but the vision.
Think of a mother’s love for her child while you paint that subject, that is, think of the idea you want to give while you are painting.
Don’t try to paint good landscapes. Try to paint canvases that will show how interesting landscape looks to you—your pleasure in the thing.
To start with a deep impression, the best, the most interesting, the deepest you can have of the model [a person used for portrait paintings]; to preserve this vision throughout the work; to see nothing else; to admit of no digression from it; choosing only from the model the signs of it; will lead to an organic work.
For an artist to be interesting to us he must have been interesting to himself. He must have been capable of intense feeling, and capable of profound contemplation.
The Ability To See
It is harder to see than it is to express.
The whole value of art rests in the artist’s ability to see well into what is before him.
A genius is one who can see. The others can often “draw” remarkably well. Their kind of drawing, however, is not very difficult. They can change about. They can make their sight fit the easiest way for their drawing. As their seeing is not particular it does not matter. With the seer it is different. Nothing will do but the most precise statement. He must not only bend technique to his will, but he must invent technique that will especially fit his need.
There are many ways of seeing things. When you saw the thing and it looked beautiful to you, you saw it beautifully. Paint it as it looked then.
Like any hunter he hits or misses. He is looking for what he loves, he tries to capture it. It’s found anywhere, everywhere. Those who are not hunters do not see these things. The hunter is learning to see and to understand—to enjoy.
Technique
The same technique must never be used again. Each time it must be made new and fresh. A stock of set phrases won’t do.
An artist’s warehouse, full of experience, is not a store of successful phrases ready for use, but is a store of raw material. The successful phrases are there, but they have been broken down to be made over into new form. Those who have the will to create do not care to use old phrases. There is a great pleasure in the effort to invent the exact thing which is needed.
Don’t belong to any school. Don’t tie up to any technique.
The technique learned without a purpose is a formula which when used, knocks the life out of any ideas to which it is applied.
Technique can only be used properly by those who have definite purpose in what they do, and it is only they who invent technique. Otherwise it is the work of parrots.
The most beautiful art is the art which is freest from the demands of convention, which has a law to itself, which as technique is a creation of a special need.
It is useless to study technique in advance of having a motive. Instead of establishing a vast stock of technical tricks, it would be far wiser to develop creative power by constant search for means particular to a motive already in mind, by studying and developing just that technique which you feel the immediate need of, and which alone will serve you for the idea or the emotion which has moved you to expression. You will not only develop your power to see the means, but you will acquire power to organize the means to a purpose.
The real study of technique is not the acquirement of a vast stock of pat phrases, but rather the avoidance of such, and the creation of a phrase special to the idea.
One must first have the idea and then active inventive wit to make the specifying phrase. This places the idea prior to the technique as a cause for the latter, contrary to the academic idea, which is the reverse.
Recording Your Experiences And Growth
A useful artist is one who studies his own life and records his experiences; in this way he gives evidence. If a man has something to say he will find a way of saying it.
If anything can be done to bring the public to a greater consciousness of the relation between art and life, of the part each person plays by exercising and developing his own personal taste and judgment and not depending on outside “authority,” it would be well.
Art is the inevitable consequence of growth and is the manifestation of the principles of its origin. The work of art is a result; is the output of a progress in development and stands as a record and marks the degree of development. It is not an end in itself, but the work indicates the course taken and the progress made. The work is not a finality.
Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong. Be always looking for the thing you like and not afraid of overstating it.
Recognising Individuality
Every individual should study his own individuality to the end of knowing his tastes. Should cultivate the pleasures so discovered and find the most direct means of expressing those pleasures to others, thereby enjoying them over again.
It seems to me that before a man tries to express anything to the world he must recognize in himself an individual, a new one, very distinct from others.
The one great cry of Walt Whitman was for a man to find himself, to understand the fine thing he really is if liberated. Most people, either by training or inheritance, count themselves at the start as “no good,” or “second rate” or “just like anyone else,” whereas in everyone there is the great mystery; every single person in the world has evidence to give of his own individuality, providing he has acquired the full power to make clear this evidence.
The thing to do is for each individual to wake up, to discover himself as a human being, with needs of his own. To look about, learn from all sources, look within, and find if he can invent for himself a vehicle for his self-expression.
A school where individuality of thought and individuality of expression is encouraged.
The undercurrent and motive of all art is an individual man’s idea. From each we expect what he has to give. We desire it. It is absolutely necessary for him to give it out.
Education
Art has relations to science, religions and philosophies. The artist must be a student.
No matter how good the school is, his education is in his own hands. All education must be self-education.
A school should be an offering of opportunity, not a direction, and the student should know that the school will be good for him only to the degree that he makes it good.
An artist must educate himself, he cannot be educated, he must test things out as they apply to himself; his life is one long investigation of things and his own reaction to them. If he is to be interesting to us it is because he renders a very personal account.
Those meek students, plodding away, afraid to use their intelligence lest they make mistakes, have a faith that after so much virtuous humble tint and line copying, years of it, the gift of imagination, the power to say things the world is in need of hearing for profit or pleasure and the special management of the medium, will be handed to them as a diploma is handed to a graduate.
Creating For Yourself
If our attempt to help young artists is to be by giving them prizes which we award, we demand of them that they please us—whether they please themselves or not. Let the work they do get its honor in being what it is.
We must realize that artists are not in competition with each other.
There are two classes of human beings. One has ideas, which it believes in fully, perhaps, but modifies to bring about “success.” The other class has ideas which it believes in and must carry out absolutely; success or no success. The first class has a tremendous majority, and they are all slaves. The second class are the only free people in the world.
Don’t worry about the rejections. Everybody that’s good has gone through it. Don’t let it matter if your works are not “accepted” at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance. Just remember that the object of painting pictures is not simply to get them in exhibitions. It is all very fine to have your pictures hung, but you are painting for yourself, not for the jury.
He can work in any medium. He simply has to find the gain in the work itself, not outside it.
Create More Than You Study
If you are studying art and not making compositions, my advice is to begin immediately. You study from the model mainly to get experience. Your composition is the expression of your interests and in making your compositions you apply what you learn when working from the model.
It is not desirable to devote all your time to an appreciation of art. Art should drive you forth. It should be an incentive to life. The greatest value of art to the appreciator is in that it stimulates to personal activity.
Many men who have read everything, have what is called a perfect education, and who while knowing everything know little of the essential qualities, or the possibilities, through organization, of anything.
The Joy Of Work
I think the real artists are too busy with just being and growing and acting (on canvas or however) like themselves to worry about the end. The end will be what it will be. The object is intense living, fulfillment; the great happiness in creation. People sometimes phrase about the joy of work. It is only in creative work that joy may be found.
Be a warhorse for work, and enjoy even the struggle against defeat. Keep painting, it’s the best thing in the world to do. Learn that there are different views and that it is up to you to make your own judgments. See the value in compositional work and don’t be a life-class hack. Don’t believe that sitting in an art school and patiently patting paint on canvases will eventually make you an artist. There is more than that. If a new movement in art comes along be awake to it, study it, but don’t belong to it.
Go On Anyway
Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.
No Work Of Art Is Finished
No work of art is really ever finished. They only stop at good places.
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References and Related Resources
- The Art Spirit by Robert Henri, 1923
- The Art Spirit by Robert Henri, 1923. Public Library.