“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
Edgar Degas
Art is the biggest word in the world. It has industrial meanings, legal meanings, advertising and entertainment meanings, all aside from the many kinds of visual expression it covers. Representational art is just the smallest slice -- art that lies in the tension between believably real and yet obviously made. It isn’t our eyes that decide what’s real. A lifetime of distilled experience is constantly interpreting what goes on in front of us, and representational art slips in through the back door while it’s being decided. No one reaches for a wine glass in a still life, and yet feeling the convincing presence of a wine glass broaches an age-old, inborn question, and it doesn’t go away. In the difference between the actual thing and its painted representation there’s a lot of room to get to know the artist and to listen in on a conversation that’s been going on a long time. If the artist, in person, has a sense of humor, suffers compulsions, is given to dreamy nostalgia or searing intensity, all that shows up when they paint -- a flower, a truck, or a portrait. These qualities are not consciously intended by the artist but appear automatically as they paint the world around them, and that’s how their work reads back when it becomes a part of a daily environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment