I decided to take seriously my annoyance expressed in the last post, and I contacted the Pastel Society. They will be looking into it.
I am amazed constantly by the relative lack of interest in and respect for pastels as a medium. Certainly I don’t work only in this medium, but I have to say that it is my preferred medium. There is a possibility of enormous versatility here, both from a technical and an expressive point of view. For some reason I can never fathom, however, pastels appear to have become associated with amateurism and with mere “sketching”. I for one, however, am not prepared to dismiss so lightly a figure such as Edgar Degas! If pastels were good enough for him they are OK by me. Come to think of it, what about Paula Rego? Now there is an artist for you, and she often works with pastel.
The idea that there is a hierarchy of value in different ways of working, or different subject-matter, in art is absurd, and needs to be challenged whenever it appears. I am reminded of the old notion of a hierarchy of subject-matter, which afflicted art a couple of centuries ago. Before John Constable hit the scene for some reason or another landscape painting was regarded with little respect, whereas “history painting” was at the top of the ladder. We do seem to have grown out of that nonsense these days but can still be sniffy about particular media.
I met an art teacher not long ago who was emphatic about the need to ban the pencil from his classes. I didn’t actually take the opportunity to ask for his opinion of Ingres, but I wish that I had now.