Art – The Public View

Not necessarily. An artist might be technically brilliant and able to depict, for example, a person’s face with amazing accuracy, but is that all we want? We can admire the skill, but is the artist telling us anything about the person. If he isn’t then we are left with only the skill to admire and little else. We will probably pass the painting by and soon forget it. Like photography, too much emphasis on the technical aspects rather than the emotional, passionate and incisive insights can lead to a bland piece of work.

We need look no further than the marvellous portraits of Rembrandt van Rijn to see an artist who combines wonderful technical skill with the ability to capture emotion, feeling and pathos. This comes through because of his interaction with, and knowledge of the sitter, plus the ability to let these abstract concepts flow through his brush onto the canvas.

The technical skill argument is one that exercises most people who find modern art difficult to understand. This comes about primarily because they only use one means of judging the art, namely that the work has to look like something seen to be understood. By implication if the painting does not look ‘real’ the artist is dismissed as talentless or lacking in skill. Leonardo da Vinci could draw, using lots of lines, a naked woman with phenomenal accuracy and detail, where as Henri Matisse would often use just a few sweeping curves. Both are great draughtsmen, Leonardo’s work shows us the structure of the body of a woman with its accuracy, but Matisse shows us the sensuousness of the woman with his flowing lines.

Leonardo’s drawings could be described crudely as being as accurate as a photograph, whereas the Matisse is definitely not, yet they both give us insights into what it is that we understand by the concept woman.

Just to explain a little further, technical skill refers to the ability and mastery to create art using subject matter, mediums and technique. Whereas conceptual/abstract artists use paint or other materials to communicate ideas through their artworks. Their aim is to communicate ideas through the use of the right tools for their chosen medium such as paint, metal, etc. They don’t necessarily need technical skills in order to produce beautiful pieces of work.

It’s important to note that technical skill can be taught and learnt; however, artistic talent tends to come from within the individual—and that means it’s not something you can learn or be taught unless you have some innate ability.

Put certain individuals in front of a painting by Jackson Pollock or Paul Klee and they will almost certainly utter the above phrase, or something very similar. But this says more about our own expectations and understanding of art than it does about the artist. Most of us expect to see objects we have seen before and can understand. When we are not given things we recognise we feel cheated and trapped, mired in our own tunnel vision, so we blame the messenger, the artist.

If we look at figurative art (art which represents nature or recognisable objects) it is superficially easy to make judgements based on comparisons with what we know, understand or have seen. When confronted with abstract art works we have no reference points on which to base our judgements. We are left with lines, colours and shapes ironically the very elements that figurative art depends on. The tendency is to dismiss the artwork because we cannot understand it in the way we think we can understand figurative art. Yet the most ‘realistic’ painting is no more than a series of colours, lines and shapes arranged on a flat surface, in a certain order, that happens to look like something we recognise.

What is really important is the artist’s ability to use colour, line, shape and texture in a meaningful way. Let’s see how this works. If we look at John Constable’s landscapes we admire them for their brilliant depictions of our natural world. This is because he uses colour, lines and shapes in a way that captures the essence of what nature is about. Similarly, certain abstract painters use colour, line and shape to appeal to our emotions and feelings, concepts we cannot see the way we see nature. They can be seen as creating a visual equivalent of an emotion or feeling, just as the naturalistic painter creates a visual equivalent of nature. It requires a greater effort on the part of the viewer to make the leap from the realism of the seen to the abstraction of inner feelings if a non- representational painting is to be comprehended.

We have seen that some abstract artists try to paint the visual equivalent of abstract concepts such as, balance, space, and floating for example. Imagine an artist trying to paint ‘love’ – remember we cannot see love, or touch it in a physical sense, but we can feel it. The artist might use certain colours and flowing shapes to represent visually the essence of what being in love might feel like. If on the other hand a representational artist chose to paint two people embracing and kissing each other this could imply love, but could also imply something quite different, like a farewell for instance. By using abstract means the artist tries to get to the essence of what love is rather than merely representing its manifestations. Which could be misinterpreted. Ah, I here you cry, the colours and shapes could also be misinterpreted. True, but isn’t that a true reflection of the abstract concept we refer to as love?