Visual art is not about thinking. Thinking about art is possible but thoughts are made of words and we’ll call that form ‘literature,’ criticism or commentary, poems or jokes, doesn’t matter. Visual art is about perception and attention and it enters the brain on its own channel and is interpreted in its own set of circuits. In a fundamental way art conveys information directly into the mind of the viewer without using words, without verbal thinking.
This is very difficult concept for writers about art to grasp. Their business is primarily selling their own words and they look for action metaphors and clever associations no one else has considered, and even come to think of themselves as full partners with artists. They don’t really see the art because they don’t know how to look, so they make up stories. Recently there’s been renewed interest in Edward Hopper for all the right reasons but it’s significance is missed by the literary crew. They’ve been happy to relate the solitude of his subject matter to the pandemic, a clever and superficial reading of his recent popularity. Odd isn’t it that the mexican muralists are also being rediscovered, and this shifting of public taste toward representational art could be bigger and more lasting than a disease.
The quality that made Hopper perhaps the premier painter of the twentieth century with ultimately the greatest influence on the future of art wasn’t in the lady looking out a window, a few patrons at a diner or a lady sipping tea. Anyone could make those paintings and they do, closets full of them, but those are ideas in words and they weren’t his secret. Sad to say the essence of his greatness is mostly lost in reproduction, and in a magazine or on a screen you see just a schematic of the actual art. In a museum his paintings seem to generate their own light and are alive with detail from across the room. He’s not particularly interested in the people, their rivers of internal angst or even their motive for being there. For him figures were static props put there to demonstrate his main concern. He wanted to start with the same paint box everyone uses and pull from it a totally uncanny representation of afternoon light streaming in a hotel window, the descent of evening in empty city streets. These are the very same things everyone else has seen themselves, yet depicted with an immediacy and tangibility that both enhances the flavor of the viewer’s own experience and suggests seeing the very same things more deeply.
I can say this with some authority because I read what he said about his art and I believed him, while critics and commentators invested in abstraction have no ears for the qualities of representational painting and never see beyond subject content. Representational art is about seeing the world through the eyes of others, and if you have the opportunity to see original work from the hand of Van Gogh, or Ed Hopper, or any painter who made it into the museum you can compare it to what you see back home. It’s not wrong to think about art, but learn to pay attention to your own responses because visual art enters the mind without climbing the stairs, while all that witty prose about it never makes it past the ground floor.
This is very difficult concept for writers about art to grasp. Their business is primarily selling their own words and they look for action metaphors and clever associations no one else has considered, and even come to think of themselves as full partners with artists. They don’t really see the art because they don’t know how to look, so they make up stories. Recently there’s been renewed interest in Edward Hopper for all the right reasons but it’s significance is missed by the literary crew. They’ve been happy to relate the solitude of his subject matter to the pandemic, a clever and superficial reading of his recent popularity. Odd isn’t it that the mexican muralists are also being rediscovered, and this shifting of public taste toward representational art could be bigger and more lasting than a disease.
The quality that made Hopper perhaps the premier painter of the twentieth century with ultimately the greatest influence on the future of art wasn’t in the lady looking out a window, a few patrons at a diner or a lady sipping tea. Anyone could make those paintings and they do, closets full of them, but those are ideas in words and they weren’t his secret. Sad to say the essence of his greatness is mostly lost in reproduction, and in a magazine or on a screen you see just a schematic of the actual art. In a museum his paintings seem to generate their own light and are alive with detail from across the room. He’s not particularly interested in the people, their rivers of internal angst or even their motive for being there. For him figures were static props put there to demonstrate his main concern. He wanted to start with the same paint box everyone uses and pull from it a totally uncanny representation of afternoon light streaming in a hotel window, the descent of evening in empty city streets. These are the very same things everyone else has seen themselves, yet depicted with an immediacy and tangibility that both enhances the flavor of the viewer’s own experience and suggests seeing the very same things more deeply.
I can say this with some authority because I read what he said about his art and I believed him, while critics and commentators invested in abstraction have no ears for the qualities of representational painting and never see beyond subject content. Representational art is about seeing the world through the eyes of others, and if you have the opportunity to see original work from the hand of Van Gogh, or Ed Hopper, or any painter who made it into the museum you can compare it to what you see back home. It’s not wrong to think about art, but learn to pay attention to your own responses because visual art enters the mind without climbing the stairs, while all that witty prose about it never makes it past the ground floor.
2 comments:
Visual art may not be about thinking, but I hope it provokes some thinking! Good column, my friend. I struggled over the years - 27 years now as a full time art maker - with the idea that I had to be able to talk about my art - that it was a skill every serious artist had to develop. An academic kind of concept, it seems to me now. Many times (!) I stumbled my way through interviews and artist statements, mostly making an ass of myself and saying nothing meaningful. My initial realization was that talking about it messed with the mystery and wonder of it - a similar thing had happened to me dissecting poetry in poetry class - it ruined it for me. What I didn't realize at the time was that you can't talk about it, it's not about words - and it leaves out such an important aspect - the viewer's reaction, the connection with the viewer. And of course, later, through a realization over the long haul, plus discovering Hopper's bit of wisdom (and I might be paraphrasing), "If I could say it in words, I wouldn't need to paint", the light bulb came on, and years of guilt and self recrimination began to fade!
For all the upgrades to this platform it still doesn't notify me when there's a comment and I have to stumble on them.
This hasn't been a particular problem for me since I'm seldom asked to explain anything. Visual images are used to sell things, illustrate stories and causes, but rarely seen to stand alone. I saw an NC Wyeth exhibit at the taft museum in cincy just before the pandemic and had resolved to go back and look again, some were illustrations but to overcome the commercial label he decided to show some muscle. I won't bother to try to describe it. Pleased you're reading.
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