You enter a sleek contemporary art gallery and look around at all the abstract paintings. "What is this one supposed to be?" you wonder. You have no idea, given it looks just like a jumble of colours, 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 golden fish in a whirling tidal pool among rocks". You don't want to seem unsophisticated, but breathe a sigh of relief when you come to the photography section and see what is unmistakably a goldfish in a bowl! Seems you've just come through a clash of perception.
Realism and Abstract Art
]Visual art throughout history has usually depicted a recognizable scene, story and characters. From figures shown in ancient stained-glass windows to the 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. Given how habitual it is for us to see visual art as story-telling, we might think our task is to make something recognizable out of art that doesn't show us anything familiar.
Much Abstract art, from 20th C Modernism onward, shows us nothing commonly recognizable. 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 works that may deepen how we look and feel.
Reality: Representation and Non-Representational Art
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. The essential 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 what things are by changing how we look at the world, as Cubists did, and present visual material that invites or impels us to explore feelings and associations, as Abstract Expressionists continue to do.
Abstract or Nonrepresentational art (terms used interchangeably here) 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. Abstract painting , perhaps because it is less easily understood, may be thought to require none: "why, even a child could do that!". Perhaps, but it 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 its 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 the recognized content . A realistic portrayal of two figures looking at each other as they lean across a small table = intimacy. A battle scene with lanced soldiers riding rearing horses= action, danger. By definition, 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? Â An abstract painting does somPerhaps 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 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 resides in the substance of paints and 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. These are set into an abstract grid of varying blues (no sky looks like that, though it elicits similar associations).
Let's not take Representational art for granted, either. It is meant to depict reality. But in art, especially, there is no uniform way of looking at the world (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, a visual illusion of the real thing. As a painter, however, the realistic illusion is based on what you see, painted the way that you see it. Even Renaissance contemporaries like Da Vinci and Michelangelo viewed realism quite differently from one another. That's why we can identify individual artists and their unique manner of painting. As students, we may copy masters' paintings for insight into their vision by learning their techniques. Even if very skilled, our paintings will not be mistaken for theirs (unless we are very skilled forgers and can erase all personal marks).
How we see reality also changes with the time and context, as paintings show us. Italian Renaissance depictions of reality differ from both earlier Medieval portrayals and contemporary Northern Renaissance portrayals of the same subjects. Later Naturalist depictions of reality differ from subsequent Impressionistic views. Today's contemporary perspectives on realism range from hyper-objective Photorealistic paintings to those with to a more subjective emphasis, like Disrupted Realism. Even imagined worlds can be represented as part of the world we see and choose to depict as-if it were real.
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?
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 . 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 quality many such paintings. Similarly, education and experience in actively looking at Abstract art can open worlds to us without it having any commonly understood meaning.
This education needn't be high-brow or institutional. For Abstract art, especially, it is definitely 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. Your experience of the nonrepresentational 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.
Comments