A Dummy created guide for dummies on Painting aprreciation

(Much before I write a word in this blog, I need to say, I don’t know much about paintings. This is my effort to understand and appreciate paintings. Whatever I write is assimilation of things I read or saw and some appreciation of the same that my mind could capture. )

Recently I have developed some interest in history of European painting and how society impacted art. In that context of art I want to write a small piece about the idea of "rebellion" here. We have a benefit of hindsight, and in hindsight everything looks logical. The rise of new forms of art if we look closely is one such premise. It changed and on hindsight it was all required and it was all necessary.

Let me first start with presenting you with 6 paintings. Let us not even get into the names and sequence and try to see if we can point out any difference.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Painting 1

I am not a Chritstian and I havent read bible, but if I see the first pic, it immediately tells me that the painter has very faithfully painted a scene from the religious book. The painter doesnt give minute details of the exact anatomy of the characters in "last supper" and he paints it with an opaque hallow and what a filmmaker would have said equally managed "depth of focus" throughout the canvas.

Every religion in this world was started as guidelines to follow a path of faith and choose a style of life. But as years passes, guidelines becomes rule and rules become law and laws become social customs. And then whatever one does, has to comply with his religion and hence for most of the work that one does one attributes it to its religion. Painters of 11th - 13th century were in a similar point in time and hence most of the paintings that was made during that period of time were as per the strict representation of bible (like the one here in pic 1 by Giotto) .

Sample one more "Madonna and child" from one of the Early Gothic Painters of that time - Duccio. (Of course there is a history of Baroque painters and classical painters before them which I don't know about and hence would not include here)

Painting 2

For every rule that you make, you will find one day a rebellion whose self-righteousness would be higher than the stringent rules of morality that you have built.

"Religion does not lie just in the name of God. Beauty does not lie just in painting the events that we preach. Development would not come with tradition but with science. There needs to be a reformation of thoughts."

The idea itself would have been rebellious and unacceptable initially. With broadening the minds, the people of this time, explored the world outside, read different books, met different people from other faith. Unflinching Christian beliefs met the Pagan painters, and hence came a revolution. A renaissance. Renaissance period saw some of the greatest artists (read Micheangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael) of all time breaking tradition and creating a form of art out of it that represented them.

Now look at Painting 2, the very famous Monalisa by Leonardo Da Vinci, and compare it to the first one.

Ah! there we notice, the focus is on the central figure, there are no boundaries at points were boundaries are not needed. You don't see the well defined corners of eyes and edges of smile. It turns enigmatic when you keep looking at her closely. Eyes look real, staring right through you to a point beyond and the supremacy of her being is felt as you see her smile along with. Perfection of her anatomy and detailing of her structure makes Monalisa intriguing. She is no fairy or God, she is someone we know. And that I believe was why renaissance changed the face of painting for ever. It brought a perspective of the painters, to the viewer. Work was no longer a representation of events but it was recreation.

Let us look at 2 more of these paintings, one by Michelangelo and one by Raphael. The paintings started getting complex with renaissance maturing in age.

This form of painting then became a tradition. Painters kept using the dark brown, light brown and cream to paint people around. There would be focus created from a single source of light and its impact on subject of painting keeping the darker parts in black. Brush strokes got lighter at places, features got more and more perfect, the color palette was getting confined to a set of colors and frames. The whole form of painting was ideal to draw portraits of people. But with advance of camera, the whole art of painting a portrait as documentation of having "being", lost its meaning. Tradition of creating the perfect Davids and creating deeply intriguing Monalisas had to change.


Painting 3

A new form had to emerge that captured the passion a person felt when he was with nature. That did not give importance to "human forms" but paid its ultimate tribute to the nature. A form of painting that represented the impressions the nature and environment left on the painter. And hence were born the rebellions of the 19th century- the impressionists. Painters who would not be accepted in their societies for a long long time for moving away from the "beauty" of painting. for using colors that were never used for showing a passion in harsh strokes. Painters like Monet, Manet, Vincent Van Gogh, Gaugin, Cezanne, Toulouse Lautrec, Rousseau and with them the city of France defined an era. The famous painting 3 here is the most celebrated of Van Gogh's collection - Starry night.

Here are a few other paintings. Notice how Claude Monet makes light solid and the view misty in his painting.



And how Lautrec captures the amoral burning passions in his paintings.


And the way the brilliant Van Gogh captured the colors of nature. It was as if they had seen a new world.

Impressionist movement too, in a manner captured the beauty. Beauty of simplicity, beauty of pain, beauty of the rigor of life and so on. Importance was given to the feelings that were invoked in a painter / viewer on watching a scene. The inner feelings on how the subject must have felt, thought or would have been from its core was not given as much importance. The painters who talked of bible, of Gods, of kings and of nature had to be shadowed by the ones who painted a perceptive being more often then physical ones. Expressions were to be brought to shock the world over the impressions. And came the expressionists.

Painting 4

What do you notice?

My first note was nudity. The bare breasted female who looks neither shy nor seductive. Paintings like these and its theme from Gustav Klimt, Scheile and likes had created an uproar of sorts with their works. And with it they brought secession and the expressionist movement to Vienna.

Not that the painters before did not use nudity, but they used it in its purest forms. In creating something that was as beautiful as the nature that created them. But expressionists were different, nudity was not just "ornamental" but was also "real" with these painters. The perfection of form was not important with these paintings, what was important was to say what the character felt.

Here in this painting by Gustav Klimt, we see beautiful Judith, who has just made an army legend fall in love with her dance, and made him give his head for her, stands with his head in her hand. She is not showing that pride on her face. It was her work, and she did it. She had to. There is a sense of detachment with the achievement on her face. She represented what stood for "Femme Fatale" in that time. She did not have the glass ceiling that the females of that age had to fight with. These painters brought the feelings of the subject out.

A handsome man like Egon Schiele, was at many point so much obsessed with his ugly feelings that he drew paintings that were portraits of his feelings more than his being. It was this that was so different with Expressionist.


Not that these painters could not have painted something beautiful. Infact in their life they did portray beauty in many forms but for their paintings, they were known for its expressions. Consider this painting by Richard Grestl, whose personal life was as much in turmoil as the painting of her lover and her husband and the family he made. If we dummies look at it without having a background and context, we might as well find it ugly.


Appreciating the art of this time and the times that came later, becomes difficult and needs some efforts and thoughts from the viewer. At times they might look inaccessible all together.


Painting 5

With technological advances of photography, the art of painting was going to get more analytical. It looks very logical on the hindsight. But there had to be a set of painters who would have to change the existing trends back then. And then came painters who broke the whole painting in parts and with passion of impressionists and eloquence of expressionists, they added their analysis. They created a new form of art out of painting- Cubism.

This painting number 5 by Pablo Picasso represents that abstraction of feelings and analysis that came in to the art of painting. Painting moved above just being sensory, it became intellectual. I still have not got enough of understanding of this art and the new art that followed it. This painting represents the 3 musicians.

It took me quite some reading to find out an example on what he was trying to do. Consider this painting by the impressionist painter Paul Cezanne. Its called portrait of Ambroise Vollard.

Picasso made his version of this great art dealer. A dealer whose head understood the complexity of the dealing. He promoted Picasso also and here is Picasso's version. The painting had become analytical and Surreal. It was a portrait of a person who in its part was not there, but existed in entirety with his own interpretations.


The art was heading towards a path which would get more and more complex. And the new art, the modern art (I believe there always had been modern art in every era, Renaissance was also modern art and so was impressionism), went beyond the means of what was traditionally known as painting.

Painting 6

The last painting in the set of 6 is that by Andy Warhol. He was not just a painter. He juggled with painting, film making and printing and in many ways he managed to create an art out of creating hybrids out of each of it. Here is one more by Andy Warhol.

Not sure whom to put here but here are a couple of paintings by Rene Magritte, that I thought were brilliant :

A painting of pipe, that says, "this is not a pipe". Well weird isn't it. But true, this is not a pipe, its a painting of pipe. That is what he called "treachery of image". Here is one more surreal painting from him that I thought was interesting. It is called "Not to be reproduced".





At every point in history some or the other artist have grown beyond a point, took a different direction and has defined the movements in decades to come.


There is much more as more and many have been generated outside the form of paintings and with its extension from comics, to animation, from logo making for business brands to graffitti. There has been lot about photorealism, conceptual art, fractal images that I want to read and know but have no idea about . But that is what art is today. Boundaries of medium have merged, digital medium is partnering the painting to form a new form of art. I have no idea about how :) and so would stop here.

But look back on history of anything and you will find a set of brave people, who did things differently. They lived their life, struggling to get accepted, for their belief that they were doing something that would stay longer than their struggle. The time they got accepted the directions changed. With hindsight it all looks logical and chronological. But do you think it could have been different? Do you think expressions could have come before impressions and impressions after film-making. I doubt that. Somewhere for everything whether it be art or since, there is a beginning and that beginning will go on to its logical path till end. And there will be people, there will be events that will define this path. And so has it been with paintings.

So if you are accepted by everyone around, you are not going to change anything :).

There is a lot you can read about the art periods and its influences on net, this was no where close to those details but it had just been a dummies guide created by a fellow dummy. Hope you enjoyed it.