North of town on the old highway a derelict truckstop has recently been reopened by an in-town restaurant with essentially the same menu but with rural accents, liberal use of corrugated galvanized, such as that. There’s a fair amount of animal art, mostly whimsical and good-natured, baby pigs racing, kid’s book cows. One piece is framed and under glass, a historic reproduction of a bovine in a barnyard, but the depiction is grossly distorted and strange. I’ve seen paintings of cows like this before.
More peculiar than bug-eyed aliens, the portraits farmers commission of their prize animals present an odd view of reality, realism with certain biases baked in. This particular cow has an almost pearlescent luster, satiny and underexposed, lumpy and bulging. Four little spindles support its great bulk, while the head is impossibly small, like a doorknob on a suitcase. The farmer, you see, doesn’t care about the head or the legs, but lives by producing beef, rectangular and ready to ship as a boxcar. Did the itinerant painter of bygone year learn by trial and error what would look real to a wealthy farmer, somehow even 'realer than real' to his inner heart of hearts? Maybe.
Cows don’t look that way on a holiday drive in the country to people with no personal interest in the cattle industry. They see everything proportional, you know, real. Horses, bred as pets of the aristocracy, have been idealized on canvas around here from time to time, and no one seems to notice. The tiny muzzle, the dreamy eyes, the great arched neck of the painted arabian would be impractical out in the barn, but convention allows it, all romance with blood untainted. Seems safe to say what’s painted is never really ‘there,‘ and the notion of ‘realism‘ is a myth. Even the painting made directly from a photograph, sector by sector, still yields a product more revealing of the artist and their thought process than whatever was in the picture.
Painting is full of mystery, representing a mental code beyond language, creating images that are open and inviting to some, while opaque and unseen by others. A word of caution -- original art contains elements discernible directly that are simply lost in reproduction. Look at all original art, since somewhere an artist is bending what they see to fit your sight too, a friendly warm feeling when you find it, realer than real.
More peculiar than bug-eyed aliens, the portraits farmers commission of their prize animals present an odd view of reality, realism with certain biases baked in. This particular cow has an almost pearlescent luster, satiny and underexposed, lumpy and bulging. Four little spindles support its great bulk, while the head is impossibly small, like a doorknob on a suitcase. The farmer, you see, doesn’t care about the head or the legs, but lives by producing beef, rectangular and ready to ship as a boxcar. Did the itinerant painter of bygone year learn by trial and error what would look real to a wealthy farmer, somehow even 'realer than real' to his inner heart of hearts? Maybe.
Cows don’t look that way on a holiday drive in the country to people with no personal interest in the cattle industry. They see everything proportional, you know, real. Horses, bred as pets of the aristocracy, have been idealized on canvas around here from time to time, and no one seems to notice. The tiny muzzle, the dreamy eyes, the great arched neck of the painted arabian would be impractical out in the barn, but convention allows it, all romance with blood untainted. Seems safe to say what’s painted is never really ‘there,‘ and the notion of ‘realism‘ is a myth. Even the painting made directly from a photograph, sector by sector, still yields a product more revealing of the artist and their thought process than whatever was in the picture.
Painting is full of mystery, representing a mental code beyond language, creating images that are open and inviting to some, while opaque and unseen by others. A word of caution -- original art contains elements discernible directly that are simply lost in reproduction. Look at all original art, since somewhere an artist is bending what they see to fit your sight too, a friendly warm feeling when you find it, realer than real.
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