Episode 26: Art Doesn’t Need to be Perfect

Recently, I reviewed “The Grande Odalisque.” In preparing to do a podcast version of the review, I found myself down one of those classic internet rabbit holes where I wound up reading far more about the topic than I expected. In this case, it was all about a tangent in the original review: the painted Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who did the painting, “Le Grande Odalisque.” I wanted to be able to speak about the painting, itself, but mostly point out that he’s another famous Augie in history.

Then I read about his career and how he came up in a very strict, anatomically-correct art school, only to break from it a little bit to present his fantasy view of the world. He learned to draw all the muscles and proportions technically correct, but his most famous painting features a woman whose leg can’t possible connect to her hip, and who famously has a back with at least three extra vertebra.

And that’s OK.

Even better, this brought to mind so many discussions about comics art we’ve had over the years, between the cartoon fans and the ultra-realistic fans, but also from people who don’t like art that isn’t anatomically perfect versus those who like the pure energy and spectacle fo an artist who draws what they believe looks good instead. Here’s something from exactly 200 years ago that inspired those same thoughts.

In this podcast, using some history from Khan Academy, I go over the history of the painting and what its style tells us about comic book artists today.

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“La Grande Odalisque” is an imperfect painting. Borne of a school of technical art that strongly believed in perfect anatomical representation, its painter, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres chose instead to emphasize beauty over perfection. He screwed up the anatomy to make a painting that he thought was better.

This got me to thinking about how comic art is filled with purposeful imperfection, how well that might work, and why it’s not such a bad thing. In other words, are J. Scott Campbell’s women “bad art” or just a series of conscious choices to create a specific look that amounts to his style? Is “perfect anatomy” the be all and end all of art? Should comic book artists not be judged so harshly on whether they get it “right”?

My review of “The Grande Odalisque” v1

Khan Academy lessons on the painting

A real human in the same pose for anatomical reference.

The Louvre’s page dedicated to the painting.