Clash of Perception: Realism and Abstract Art

You enter a sleek contemporary gallery and look around at all the abstract paintings. "What's this one supposed to be?" you wonder. You have no idea, given it looks like just a jumble of splashed shapes, and lines. No one is going to test you, but you're a bit upset that you can't pin down an answer, like "Oh, it's sort of like maybe a flower, or fish in a whirling pool among rocks". You don't want to seem unsophisticated, but breathe a sigh of relief when you come to a room showing realistic photographs of what is unmistakably a goldfish in a pond. Seems you've just come through a clash of perception.

Fantasia 1 painting by Janet Strayer

Realism and Abstract Art

Visual art throughout history has depicted a recognizable scene, story and characters. From figures shown in ancient stained-glass windows to images in children's picture books, we're used to visual art representing the recognizable. How well this is done is one measure of the art's merit. It's habitual for us to see visual art as story-telling, so we think it's our task to make something recognizable out of art that doesn't look like anything familiar.

Much Abstract art, from 20th century Modernism onward, shows us nothing commonly recognizable. If we can't get a story out of it, what meaning does it have? Abstract art that expresses just colours, shapes, and movement of paints across a surface is more about evoking feelings, moods, and sensory experience than it is about a commonly recognizable story. We can react to such a painting with personal associations and meanings, but these needn't be common ones.

Of course, we each have our preferences in food, people, and art. Our preferences become part of what is most familiar to us. Yet, a goal of creative art is to turn the familiar into the unexpected or to present us with the unfamiliar in ways that may deepen how we look and feel.

Reality: Representation and Non-Representational Art

Examples of Realism and Abstract: The White Vase and Crescendo (paintings by Janet Strayer)

Realism in art "re-presents" something out there. It present us with a visual illusion of something in, or based upon, the real world out there. Representational art accords with what we generally see on the outside. The key difference for Abstract art is that it is non-representational. It exists on its own terms as a matter of lines, shapes, colours, textures and marks interacting in ways integral to its composition. It needn't be "about" anything other than that. It can still challenge our perception and prompt us to question and possibly add to or change how we how we look at the world. The Cubists did this when they fractured familiar objects into parts seen from different perspectives. Abstract Expressionists continue to do this when their works impel us react with feelings and associations rather than any agreed-upon story. Our internal realities (the life we live inside as memories, sensations, reactions, and ideas) is as or more important to such artists as is external reality.

Artistic Skill?

Abstract or Nonrepresentational art (terms used here interchangeably) occupies a huge space in the visual art world. Despite this, many people are dismissive of the skills it requires. We prize the technical skill required in painting realistically. "Oh, that painted flower look like I can reach out and touch it" is a compliment. Abstract painting , perhaps because it is less appreciated, may be thought to require little or no skill: "why, even a child could do that!". Perhaps so, but abstract art requires a good deal of skill in adults and certainly has its own technical challenges.

I suggest that the more we are open to looking at different kinds of artworks, the more we learn and the wider our appreciation of art's diversity. That's why I write about art and that's why I paint. Art focuses, expands and enriches whatever world we live in.

Art, Freedom, and the Search for Meaning

Like any form of art, both Abstract and Realistic paintings can be meaningful, intriguing, beautiful ... or not. Judgements of beauty rest in the eye of the beholder. As for meaning, Realistic art conveys it via visual narrative in a recognized content . A portrayal of two figures looking at each other as they lean together across a small table = intimacy. A battle scene with lanced soldiers riding rearing horses = action, danger. Realistic art makes it easy to tell the story. Abstract art portrays no recognizable content. So how can it be meaningful? The key question for abstract art is "What does it DO" rather than "What IS it?  An abstract painting does something. Perhaps that makes Abstract art more challenging to look at because its meaning (if any) depends upon the individual looking at and reacting (or not) to it. Abstract art depends more upon the interaction between the artist's expressive intent and the viewer's reactions.

abstract painting Forever Young by Janet Strayer

Viewer Participation: Freedom or Anxiety?

Abstract art may require more viewer participation than does Realism, more willingness to look actively, making the viewer part of the creative process. That's because we can't be sure of seeing in it anything familiar or intended to represent something. The content of abstract art is subjective, so the journey required of both the artist and the viewer is more personal than general: What do those big clashing lines or this sudden bit of bright red amidst dull colours make me feel, experience or think about? Each of us is free to think, interpret, feel whatever in response to the painting's sensory and perceptual effects. That freedom is either liberating or anxiety-provoking, for some painters and viewers alike.

Given that Abstract painting is not about re-presenting reality, its impact relies on the paints and materials as well as the painter's intentions when applying them (an "angry versus calm" brushstroke). For example, The painting below might be categorized as semi-abstract because the foreground shapes are intended and recognized as stylistic symbols of birds. They are set into an abstract grid of varying blues: no sky looks like that, though it it was intended to elicit such associations.

semi-abstract painting Four and Twenty by Janet Strayer

Let's not take Representational art for granted, either. While intended to depict reality, there is no uniform way of looking at the world in artistic work (another reason it opens our eyes). When asking what reality looks like, we're talking about perception, how we see things. We are not simply cameras. Our perception isn't just a copy of what is in front of our eyes, but selectively chooses and interprets. Perception is affected by many variables besides optics. Our scattered or focused attention, mood or state of mind, and the demands of our personal, as well as external, world all affect how we select, ignore, differentiate, and see reality.

What Does Reality Look Like: How to Represent the World We See

According to the school of Classical Realism, an artwork should look like something seen out there and if painted in the classical manner, appear as a visual illusion of the real thing made ideal. Painting realistically is painting what you see out there in the world. But it's based on what you see, painted the way that you see it. Even Renaissance contemporaries like Da Vinci and Michelangelo viewed and painted realism quite differently from one another. That's how we can identify individual artists and their unique manner of painting. As students, we may copy masters' paintings for insight into their vision and their techniques. Even when very skilled, our copies will not be mistaken for theirs (unless we are very skilled forgers and can erase all personal marks).

Lady in Wimple (homage to Robert Campin) by Janet Strayer

How we see reality also changes with the time and context, as paintings show us. Italian Renaissance paintings differ from earlier medieval paintings of the same subjects, as well as from their contemporary painters in northern Europe. Later Naturalist depictions of reality differ from subsequent Impressionistic views. Today's contemporary perspectives on realism range from Hyper-objective Photorealism, to a more subjective realities and imaginings in Disrupted Realism and Surrealism, to thoroughly Abstract Conceptual and Abstract Expressionist art. Imagined worlds can be represented as part of the world we see and choose to depict as-if it were real (Surrealism) or as non-representation Abstractions expressing ideas and feelings.

The reality represented can be an imagined world:Mending the Universe by Janet Strayer

But is it GOOD? Education and Enlightenment

What is the basis for judging an artwork as good or bad? Not the representational or abstract category it falls into. Art in both categories can reveal or create something extraordinary. And both can present us with works that are dull, repetitive, meaningless, or so obscure it's hardly worth our effort. Both can have a nice design, but so can wallpaper. Both can shock us, but is that enough to stay with a painting?

Enchanged by Janet Strayer

The lasting impact of a painting rests, I think, in how repeatedly it can interest us, how much we can see in it, our experiences in viewing it repeatedly. Education and experience in the art of looking helps us appreciate all kinds of art. We don't need to understand it all. We can be ignorant of the symbolic meanings in Renaissance art or in modern Surrealism (all those drooping clocks) and still appreciate the qualities reaching us in many paintings. Similarly, just a little knowledge and more experience in actively looking at Abstract art can open worlds to us. Art doesn't have to have any commonly understood meaning to be meaningful.

Education does help, but it needn't be high-brow or institutional. For Abstract art, especially, it definitely is not about accepting the received interpretations of meaning. The education I'm talking about can be achieved by looking at paintings for oneself, sticking with them and following the visual shapes, colours, or contrasts that grab your attention, stepping into the painting and noting your reactions to it, positive and negative.  Talking about your impressions and reactions, and listening to others helps educate us if we're open-minded. Your experience of art is your interpretation of it. If nothing happens, then it's nothing to you. If something happens, stay with it: it leads to the painting's meaning... for you. There is so much art in the world to experience. The more, varieties of experience we have, the more we learn and understand of life and meaning.

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