Introduction
Neil Welliver was a distinguished artist and teacher. He taught at Yale University from 1956
to 1966 and at the University of Pennsylvania from 1966 until his retirement from teaching in 1989.
He was provocative both as a painter and as a teacher.
As a painter, he broke with the dominant trends in painting in the 1950's
and 1960's, painting large, realistic landscapes and figure paintings which infuriated the abstractionists
who had declared that figuaration was dead. His work was also rejected by the bulk of traditional
landsacpe artists who could not accept his rejection of the cubist-influenced pictorial space which had
dominated both figurative and abstract painting up until the 1950's, nor the intense, synthetic palette
which he used to render naturalistic subjects. With reference to the neo-realist painters who dominated
the art world's attention in the early 70's, Neil said, "They use something natural to create something
synthetic. I use something synthetic to create something natural." While superficially seeming
to reject the dominant trend of the 1950's - Abstract Expressionism - he actually embraced it deeply
and fully, painting realistic paintings with a Pollock-like pictorial space. He thus acheived his stated
goal which was "to do deKooning over after nature." For those with no art historical background, this is
a direct reference to Cezanne's stated goal of "doing Poussin over after nature."
Jackson Pollock and
Willem deKooning were the two dominant painters of the Abstract Expressionist movement.
Neil was equally provocative as a teacher. He made it clear that he was not in the business of massaging
peoples' egos. Many young figurative painters who studied with him found not the kindred spirit they
expected, but rather a critic who seemed to tear apart the foundations of their art.
Neil was born in 1929 and died in April of 2005.
Memories
I first studied with Neil Welliver as a sophomore architecture major at Penn in 1966. The course was
Architecture 200 - freehand drawing in pen and ink - a required course for architecture majors. I had
never had any formal art training of any kind. Neil's crystal clear elucidation of basic concepts of
seeing and art left an indelible imprint on my mind and formed a bedrock of common sense objectivity
under the shifting sands of my future creative efforts. I still go out today with a fountain pen and
pad, drawing mostly trees and streams, often repeating to myself as I draw, things that he said.
Recently it has come to mind that he told us that in order to draw trees we had to "go to forestry
school". I thought it was a little extreme at the time. But I find myself today walking through the
woods with a copy of Peterson's Eastern Trees, trying to determine the differences between shagbark
hickories and shellbark hickories and to reflect such specificities in my drawings. Below are a few of
the more memorable quotes from the Architecture 200 class by our outspoken master.
"I'm not teaching you how to draw, I'm teaching you how to see. If you want to learn how to draw, go
to some place like the Pennsylvania Academy, God forbid!"
While doing a group crit of some students' work, one student said something to the effect of, "Beauty
is in the eye of the beholder." Neil looked down and paused thoughtfully, then looked up directly in
the student's eyes and said, "That's the biggest piece of Judeo-Christian bull shit of all time. It's
out there!"
Neil sometimes made references to the war in Viet Nam in his criticisms of student drawings, such as
referring to a chaotic section of one drawing as like "the demilitarized zone between North and South
Viet Nam." One day at the beginning of the class, before starting on the group crit, Neil said this:
"Some students have come to me after class accusing me of making veiled comments criticizing the war
in Viet Nam. Let me say this. I'm not trying to hide anything. I stand absolutely opposed to the war
in Viet Nam."
When it came to drawing cars, students were advised to draw Italian sports cars, not to draw VW Beetles
which were "Nazi cars".
There had been a major flood in Florence, Italy. A student approached Neil after class and asked him
to donate a painting to a show raising money to salvage Florentine art. Neil's immediate reply was,
"I don't give a damn about Italian art!" He subsequently softened and said that all his work was handled
by his gallery, but that he would write a check for the cause.
I proceeded into the Graduate School of Fine Arts at Penn as a painting major, largely on the advice
of Rackstraw Downes, who thought I was good enough to apply. The formality of applying to the school was
limited to simply talking to the chairman of the department, Tom Godfrey, who referred the question to
Neil, who immediately replied, “I know his work. I’ll take him on.” One could not accuse Neil of having
any problem making decisions.
Neil’s weekly crits of my work were brief and to the point. Often he would say, “I don’t have anything
to say. I’ll see you next week.”
I remember one week during which several critics, Paul Georges, Rosemarie Beck and perhaps Savelli had
come into my studio and talked at length about my paintings. They went over every aspect of the
paintings with a fine-toothed comb. At the end of the week Neil made his brief appearance. “In each of
these paintings, the subject is in the center of the painting”, he said. He was right. In one it was
a car, in another a motorcycle, in another a tree, or whatever. He made his point and left. “What a
dumb way of looking at things”, I thought to myself. I also wondered how all the other critics could
miss something so obvious. Conclusion: Neil was a genius. What’s my definition of a genius? Someone
who can see the obvious!
The above story also illustrates one of Neil’s basic tenets: “The cardinal sin is over-teaching.
If you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything!” He certainly followed this rule in his own
approach to teaching.
After studying in the graduate school for about one year, Neil said to me, “I’ve taught you all I can
teach you. I suggest that you go up to New York and hang around with some hard-nosed young painters.”
This was a total shocker. I had lived most of my life within the comfortable confines of an academic
institution. I wasn’t prepared to go out and face the nitty-gritty, struggling-artist-on-the-streets
routine. Yet it awakened me to the fact that the life I was living within an institution was temporary.
Speaking of “shockers”, I will relate a conversation overheard from an adjoining studio. The student
in the studio had amassed a huge number of Philadelphia parking tickets and, facing the prospect of
going to jail if unable to pay up, asked Neil if the school could lend money for this purpose. Neil’s
response was, “No, we don’t have any money for this purpose! I suggest that you go to jail. I think
it would be good for you right now!” A deafening silence followed.
The following story was told to me by one of the office personnel about a luncheon conversation. The
question being discussed was whether it would be possible to get deKooning to come to the school and
look at student work. Neil reportedly said, “I could get deKooning to come here. What I would do is
go up and spend the weekend at deKooning’s place, and Monday morning I would say, ‘Bill, why don’t we
go down to the school and look at some students’ work?’ But I wouldn’t do it. Because it’s humiliating.
Because I’m a better painter than he is!” Nothing more need be said about Neil’s formidable ego.
One of my favorite quotes from Neil was related to me by a fellow student: “Your paintings are like your
footprints in the snow.” If anyone out there should undertake the task of writing a biography of Neil
Welliver, I would recommend this as the title – Footprints in the Snow.
Postscript
I've lately asked myself, "What were the basics of Neil's approach to teaching painting? How did it
differ from other approaches?" The answer to this is not entirely clear to me, having studied mainly
under him and others at least somewhat akin to his approach. Nevertheless, I would sum it up as follows.
The primary concept, the basic building block, of painting for Neil was "the stroke." An artist finding
his stroke was like a baby learning to walk or a bird learning to fly. The concept of stroke is
that there is, for each artist, a certain natural brush stroke - a combination of one's personal physiology
and personal psyche - which, when discovered, is the key unifying element in his work. Robin Roberts,
the Philadelphia Phillies baseball pitching great, describes a time in his minor league career when
he found his natural pitching motion. After that he could really pop the ball with ease of motion.
Someone told him, "No one throws as hard as easy as you do, kid." The concept of stroke is similar.
For Welliver it seemed to be the key to unlocking one's inner strength as a artist.
Another thing of significance, as I look back, is the absence of the teaching of formal composition. I
think this was, to some extent, a reaction to the cubist-derived spatial concepts which dominated
painting for the first half of the twentieth century. I do not think that Neil conceived of the canvas
as a finite amount of real estate which had to be sub-divided into smaller sections. Rather he conceived
of a pictorial space that expands and contracts forward and backward from the picture plane, as well
perhaps laterally beyond the edge of the canvas. This is in keeping with his embrace of Abstract
Expressionist pictorial space.
What was taught, was idea and point of view. There had to be an idea behind a painting - some reason for
painting it - something one was excited about. Painting was not just an exercise. Painting would become
nothing more than an exercise in virtuosity if one did not have an intensely personal reason for
pursuing a certain subject or certain idea. The subject was all important. Painting trees one day, apples
the next and a nude the third, just wouldn't make it. Personal obesessions, such as mine with the ocean,
were highly valued. Likewise, point of view. Did one see the ocean from behind a dune, head on with a
wave breaking in one's face? Or from a boat, or from the bottom looking up? It seemed that if one
could combine one's personal stroke with one's persoal perspective on the world, that good composition
would somehow fall into place.