Russian Landscape Artist Konstantin Kryzhitsky and Knowing the Artist

James Gurney, who writes the great art blog Gurney Journey, asks what a painting can tells us about an artist.  Speculating from the painting Peyzazh 1895 (below) by the Russian painter Konstantin Kryzhitsky,  of whom gurney was unaware (me to), Gurney asserts Kryzhitsky "had a deep soul, a love of mystery, melancholy, and music, and a keen sense of nature's moods that must have come from long walks through the countryside. This painting couldn't have been done by a flippant, urbane, or shallow person."

I'm not sure that so much about an artist can be gleaned from a single painting.  I certainly have my doubts that Kryzhitsky was not urbane.  Assuming the artist is not attempting to mislead about herself or himself -- and is, of course, not a forger or a machine -- still we may know very little of an artist from a work or series of works.  Of course, it depends on the work.  I could say very little about Ellsworth Kelly, for instance, just knowing some of his work.  As to Kryzhitsky, taking the assumption that he puts himself genuinely into his work, and looking at many of his landscapes, I see someone awed by nature both as to its beauty and scale, someone who wanted to show humankind as small in relation to that vastness, someone who had trained as an academic painter and had extraordinary technical skill, and someone who very sensitive and smart.

Peyzazh 1895 is, to my lights, a fantastic painting: from the illusion of smoke from the break in the trees, from the juxtaposition of built and natural world, to the question it raises of whether one is entering or leaving the estate, to the feeling of coldness and sense of place so real (but not slavishly realistic) that I can feel being there.  This last point flows readily across many of his works -- below the break a sample (and final comment):

So what is wrong from speculating about what Kryzhitsky (or anybody, for that matter) is like? Kryzhitsky is dead; where's the harm?  Speculating is fun; imagination is wonderful.

The problem is that people often forget it's rank speculation; they take it as real, as a substitute for a more careful discerning look; and too often it devolves to slander or over generalization.

I am mindful, too, that there are quite a few who would be disingenuous.  Think, for instance, of Thomas Kinkade "Painter of Light"  whose schmaltzy work Kinkade massed produced with anonymous artists painting details on prints.  The impression I have (and many others had too) of Kinkade is that he saw art as a racket; that he found masses of people ready to be exploited by getting them to invest in ready made "art" of dubious value and quality; that his paintings were comic parodies of naturalism.  The comic nature of Kinkade's work is easily borne out by comparing it to Kryzhitsky's, above.

Gurney, as it happens, was a friend of Kinkade's -- Kinkade died in 2012 -- they worked together on the Ralph Bakshi/Frank Frazetta film Fire and Ice, among other things -- thus, I suspect that Gurney knew Kinkade pretty well.  I wonder if Gurney would agree with the impression many of us have of Kinkade. Gurney, no doubt, has a more nuanced view.  I respect that; indeed, I would defer to Gurney who knew the complex person.

So if you would speculate, own it as speculation only.  Delight in the fact that our world is complex, and that speculation should only be a doorway in to looking more closely.