Saul Chernick, An Autumn Ride, 2008, Ink on Paper, 20 x 32 inches (click on the above image to supersize)
Brian Sherwin interviews Art Fag City IMG MGMT artist Saul Chernick, and through the course of the conversation, the artist discusses the relationship of cinema to his work. While I don’t have much to add to this, I found this passage of particular interest;
I think of many of my drawings as period pieces in a way. In film, the production crew may take great pains to simulate the past as accurately as possible but the lens through which we see it is inextricably tethered to moment of its creation. A film about the Renaissance from the 70’s inevitably looks like a 70’s version of the Renaissance. A present day film on that same period might appear more authentic but as it recedes into the past it will begin looking increasingly of its particular moment. In this way my drawings never attempt to slavishly imitate the past, nor are they nostalgic, in fact they are just as much about the present as they are about the past. It will take the distance of time passing to truly see what this means.
In some respects I’m trying to see what happens when an older model of drawing is infused with contemporary ideas. In An Autumn Ride, [above] the proportions of the paper are the same as a flat screen TV. This creates a visual tension because the artists who developed and practiced the graphic style I use would never have composed images to work with these dimensions. I had to use many of the conventions of cinematography to make it work. The tree bisecting the horse is influenced in equal measures by photography and Modern painting like Barnett Newman’s zips. The narrative is similarly altered—it doesn’t quite hit the same notes a typical demon slaying might.
