Raphael, Picasso lefties?
R/L Davis
How long has it been common knowledge that Raphael and Picasso were left-handed? I am quite sure they were
not, you can tell be the way they shade there drawings. (The photos of Picasso working on Gernica with his
right hand is a dead giveaway too!) I'm a leftie and a painter myself so this is not just a right-handers
biased rantings. Please, anyone?
Richard
Mauri Haikola
Interesting. I have them currently in my WWW list
(http://stekt.oulu.fi/~mjh/lefties.html) but if it turns out they're
righties, I should remove them.
I was in Madrid last year and saw Guernica, but I didn't pay enough
attention to find out about Picasso's handedness. The museum clerks
would have known, for sure. Where did you see a photo of him painting
with the right hand?
Mauri
R/L Davis
I found one of the photos in "Picasso, Artist of the Century". It is one of a series
that Dora Maar took of Picasso working on Guernica in stages. These pictures are
quite often reproduced and they should not be hard to find, as well as others I
suspect.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I feel that if an artists DRAWS or PAINTS with his or her
RIGHT hand it should not matter what else she may do with her LEFT hand (hold a
fork, throw a ball, etc) she should be considered RIGHT handed or at best
ambidextrous.
There is a strong theory about left hand/right brain and the visual arts. To my mind,
using the left hand in making the art seems most important in considering an artist
left-handed. And I am quite sure that it is possible with many artists to be 100%
certain which hand they are working with. When most artists draw a series of quick
lines, such as the common practice of shading with cross hatching, the hand makes a
characteristic curve. This curve bows away from the hand, and for a left-hander runs
from upper left to lower right, and for a right-hander from the upper right to the
lower left. A variation on this is a simple slight curve running from top to bottom,
and owing toward the left (like an opening parenthesis) for a right-hander, and
toward the right (closing parenthesis) for a left-hander. Artists such as Raphael and
Picasso have the characteristic line "signature" of right handed artists, while da
Vinci's drawings are clearly done with the left hand.
The drawings of Raphael, in particular, are clearly made with the right hand. The one
reproduction I have of a Michelangelo drawing shows that it too was clearly done with
the right hand (you have him on your lefty list as well). Picasso's drawings are
clearly done with his right hand.
Many artists while drawing have the habit of rotating the drawing to make it easier to
fill an area with a properly suggestive line, so that when the drawing is viewed right
side up it is not possible to tell with which hand the drawing was done. This is
especially true with many printing processes where the plate or block is turned so
that the lines can be carved or engraved more easily. For this reason it is more
difficult to tell which hand Durer's drawings were done with, but I suspect he too was
a righty. If one excludes the numerous, but more difficult to decipher prints and
concentrates on his drawings one can see a predominance of those "opening parenthesis"
lines of a right hander. Durer didn't use cross hatching to simply darken but more
often used line to represent the forms he was expressing, so his drawings are less
obvious than the other artists mentioned above. But, in areas where he was just
shading, his works give a strong impression of having been done with the right hand.
Richard
travi...@aol.com
In article <56spcr$e...@news.istar.ca>, R/L Davis
<dav...@tallships.istar.ca> writes:
>Perhaps I am wrong, but I feel that if an artists DRAWS or PAINTS with
his or
>her
>RIGHT hand it should not matter what else she may do with her LEFT hand
(hold
>a
>fork, throw a ball, etc) she should be considered RIGHT handed or at best
>ambidextrous.
I am new to the group so this question may have already brought up. What
was the social thought at that time about lefties? Being left handed is a
result of being right brained not the other way around. If someone taught
himself to be right so as not to be thought of poorly, would he not still
be right brained?
Travis Pitts
Alegis Systems Group
R/L Davis
I take your point. My post was essentially a question about how it has come to be
known that Picasso and Raphael were left-handed, as most of the lefty lists have
them. As I believe I mentioned in that post I am sure they both worked with their
right hands (there are photographs of Picasso working with his right hand). I have
tried to find early references to these artists being left-handed but with no success
as yet.
As to the social thought concerning left-handedness in Raphael's time, I can only say
that daVinci was of the same period and left-handed, though some suggest he may
not have had full use of his right hand.
Putting aside the question of weather these artists were left-handed or not (perhaps
we should use the term "right-brained" instead to clear up the problem of left-handers
who write or paint with their right hand), I find it very interesting how few well
known artists worked with their left hand. If their is a connection between left
hand/right brain and the visual arts, one would expect a large percentage of well
known artists would have worked with their left hand. In my own collection of art
books the only drawings I found that were clearly done with the left hand were by
daVinci and Honore' Daumier (an artist of the mid 1800's know mainly for his
drawings). (James Whistler may be a third but my examples of his work is not
conclusive. There is a self-portrait he did that, if read as a mirror image, shows
him using his left hand.) Could the social pressures of the past have made many of
these artists switch hands? Interesting to think.
rvre...@aol.com
For the record, Jacques-Louis David's self-portrait clearly shows him
painting with his left hand. I believe it's pretty well established that
Paul Klee and MC Escher were lefties also.
I'm struck by the number of prominent cartoonists that are left-handed:
Bill Mauldin, Stan Lee, Cathy Guisewhite, Berke Breathed, Matt Groening,
possibly also R Crumb are a few. If one assumes that a cartoonist
probably has the same hand preference as his main character, then anywhere
from a third to a half of cartoonist whose work appears in the papers are
left-handed.
Back to Raphael and Picasso, isn't Raphael infamous for his left-handed
Madonnas? (perhaps his mother was a lefty!). Also, I'm pretty sure there
was a photo of Picasso painting or drawing with his left hand in the Time
Magazine article on lefties a few years ago. I know photos sometimes get
reversed, but you would think Time would get it right. I think Escher
worked ambidextrously, and while he was certainly unique, it may not be an
uncommon trait among natural lefties who were forced to use their right
hand when young.
Scott A McIlravie
In article <19961203132...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
travi...@aol.com wrote:
>In article <56spcr$e...@news.istar.ca>, R/L Davis
><dav...@tallships.istar.ca> writes:
>
>>Perhaps I am wrong, but I feel that if an artists DRAWS or PAINTS with
>>his or her RIGHT hand it should not matter what else she may do with her
>>LEFT hand (hold a fork, throw a ball, etc) she should be considered RIGHT
>>handed or at best ambidextrous.
>
>I am new to the group so this question may have already brought up. What
>was the social thought at that time about lefties? Being left handed is a
>result of being right brained not the other way around. If someone taught
>himself to be right so as not to be thought of poorly, would he not still
>be right brained?
I think this might have been discussed a couple of weeks ago.
To be ambidextrous you have to be able to do ALL jobs EQUALLY well with both
hands, not some with one and some with the other. A truly ambidextrous person
shows no favour whatsoever for a particular hand.
Just because someone 'teaches' themselves to be right handed, they're still a
leftie at heart, or head.
Scott. A. McIlravie | Sailors have the best fun -
Fife, Scotland | they prefer it rough!
R/L Davis
There is a series of photographs taken by Dora Maar of Picasso working on "Guernica"
clearly showing him using his right hand, and I would guess there are many others.
And as I mentioned in an earlier post I believe you can tell that he was using his
right hand by looking at his drawings.
How do you tell if a Madonna is left-handed?
Richard
R/L Davis
rvre...@aol.com wrote:
>
> For the record, Jacques-Louis David's self-portrait clearly shows him
> painting with his left hand.
I don't believe that we can tell the handedness of an artist by a self-portrait.
There are two early Corot self-portraits, one from 1825, and the other from 1835
showing an artist using his left hand. But there is a portrait of Corot by Charles
Desavary showing Corot painting with his right hand, as well as a photograph (1873)
taken by Desavary of Corot working with his right hand. Clearly Corot must be right
handed and the self-portraits are mirror images, the image Corot saw in the mirror.
As I said in earlier posts, it is often quite easy to tell which hand an artist draws
with by the nature of the cross-hatching he uses to shade. Rembrandt's drawings are
clearly done with the right hand. But two self-portraits (both around 1660) in the
Kenwood House, London and another in the Louvre, show the artist holding the brush
in his RIGHT hand. If these are mirror images as with the Corot's, then we should
assume he was in fact left-handed. I don't think, however, that this assumption can
be made. I believe that many artists would choose to paint his own portrait as he
would appear to others, switching the hand that holds the brush in the painting.
There are two self-portrait etchings, Rembrandt and Saskia, 1636, and Rembrandt
Drawing at the Window, 1648, both showing him drawing. In one he is holding his
drawing tool in the left hand, in the other the right hand. Clearly he "corrected"
the image in one.
So, is the David self-portrait of 1794 that of a left-handed or right-handed artist?
I can't tell. If he copied the mirror image he is right-handed. If he corrected the
image so that it appears as others would see him then he is left-handed.
Richard
eva...@aol.com
The same is true even in photographs
The infamous picture of Billy the kid shows him having his gun on his
left side, but the picture is a tinitype( a picture with the emulsion on a
piece of tin. then printed onto paper kind of like an offset printing
press) which prints pictures in a mirror Image, thus taking away the myth
that billy the kid was left-handed
Anthony Cox
In article <19961204061...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, rvre...@aol.com writes:
|> For the record, Jacques-Louis David's self-portrait clearly shows him
|> painting with his left hand.
If he was producing his self portrait by looking in a mirror, that
would make him right-handed.
Richard Green
In article <19961204061...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
<rvre...@aol.com> wrote:
>I think Escher
>worked ambidextrously, and while he was certainly unique, it may not be an
>uncommon trait among natural lefties who were forced to use their right
>hand when young.
I think you'll find Escher drew and engraved with his left hand and wrote
with his right (because he said so).
rvre...@aol.com
R/L Davis <dav...@tallships.istar.ca> writes:
> ...
>How do you tell if a Madonna is left-handed?
>Richard
Right-handed mothers typically cradle their baby in the left arm;
Left-handed moms vice-versa. One of the most preposterous statements I
have heard is that left-handed mothers were therefore deficient in their
child-rearing, since the obviously the baby should be held close to her
heart!
Roger
Scott D. Rhodes
rvre...@aol.com wrote:
>I'm struck by the number of prominent cartoonists that are left-handed:
>Bill Mauldin, Stan Lee, Cathy Guisewhite, Berke Breathed, Matt Groening,
>possibly also R Crumb are a few. If one assumes that a cartoonist
>probably has the same hand preference as his main character, then anywhere
>from a third to a half of cartoonist whose work appears in the papers are
>left-handed.
The main problem with that line of reasoning is that many cartoonists
are inconsistent about that sort of thing. Many comic strip
characters have been drawn writing with each hand at some point in the
history of the strip.
coletto
R/L Davis wrote:
>
> rvre...@aol.com wrote:
> >
> > For the record, Jacques-Louis David's self-portrait clearly shows him
> > Paul Klee and MC Escher were lefties also.
> > Bill Mauldin, Stan Lee, Cathy Guisewhite, Berke Breathed, Matt Groening,
> > possibly also R Crumb are a few. If one assumes that a cartoonist
> > probably has the same hand preference as his main character, then anywhere
> > from a third to a half of cartoonist whose work appears in the papers are
> > left-handed.
> > Madonnas? (perhaps his mother was a lefty!). Also, I'm pretty sure there
> > was a photo of Picasso painting or drawing with his left hand in the Time
> > Magazine article on lefties a few years ago. I know photos sometimes get
> > worked ambidextrously, and while he was certainly unique, it may not be an
> > uncommon trait among natural lefties who were forced to use their right
> > hand when young.
>
> clearly showing him using his right hand, and I would guess there are many others.
> And as I mentioned in an earlier post I believe you can tell that he was using his
> right hand by looking at his drawings.
>
> Richard
tend to be the typical artists predominantly but this is cuz of the
structure and rules that are adhered to by many artists. and this has
nothing to do with the above mentioned post but i'm a scatter brain and
it came to mind so be it
elizabeth
> > rvre...@aol.com wrote:
> > >
> > > For the record, Jacques-Louis David's self-portrait clearly shows him
> > > painting with his left hand. I believe it's pretty well established that
> > > Paul Klee and MC Escher were lefties also.
(snip)
I always assumed that MCE was a rightie, based on his *awkward*
portrayal of the left hand drawing in the "Drawing Hands" piece, but I
just checked my MCE book and it says that he used his right hand as a
model for both hands. This makes sense since he would be drawing with
his left hand!
Wow! Another great lefty! Thanks for putting me straight!
- elizabeth, a proud southpaw
Rvredding
I have a good quote from Escher concerning lefties, which I will post as
soon as I get the book for Christmas!