I am a perceptual painter. By that I mean that I paint from
direct observation. This past year I have struggled to understand
what it means to paint this way. In order to do explore this
I had to ask myself some very basic questions. What is a painting?
Why paint at all in our modern technological world when there
are so many other ways to make images and communicate ideas with
the aid of machines? How can the meanings of representational
works go beyond the depicted image? In answering these questions
I hope to reestablish painting's relevancy for myself and clarify
how my paintings relate to the tradition of painting. In the
broadest sense, my self-portraits and still lives reflect my
world as I see it literally and more. They express my relationship
to my surroundings; historically, personally, and physically. John Canaday, the art editor and critic for the New York Times
over 40 years ago, offered this definition:
This is an astute definition that intentionally describes
a painting on many levels, from the material to the transcendent.
What I have been most concerned about recently is this transcendent
level of meaning and how it can be achieved in perceptual painting.
I worry that my works will be judged solely on their technical
merit and that they will be dismissed once the viewer has decided
that it "looks real". In this respect I've always been
jealous of abstract or abstracted works which seem to be able
to express ideas beyond the depictive level. Canaday proposes
a useful comparison in order to explain the difference between
the way an academic representational painting communicates and
an abstracted painting with a similar subject matter communicates.
He compares Pierre Cot's The Storm 1880 and Kokoschka's
The Tempest. Both paintings represent two lovers in some
kind of a storm, but besides that they are entirely different.
Kokoschka's painting is loosely painted with brushstrokes that
express movement, emphasize physicality and suggest emotion.
The colors, blues and greens, and the movement of the brushstrokes
give the impression of a violent storm without actually depicting
it. The lovers in The Tempest are "twisted, deformed, and
discolored" and yet they are serene in the refuge of each
other's arms. "The picture", according to Canaday,
"says that human love is the sustaining miracle of goodness
in the confusion and malevolence of life." (Canaday, p.
24.) Meanwhile, Cot's painting is painted in the very clean,
crisp and still style that the French Academy insisted upon at
the time. This style makes Cot's lovers feel frozen in time even
though we know there are depicted as running. The viewer can
admire all the beautifully painted details, but it has little
emotional presence. Cot's painting is skillful, "but nothing
much goes on beneath this surface of technical display."
(Canaday, p. 25.) However, Canaday, in trying to make the point
that expressionistic paintings communicate more that observed
life paintings, happens to overlook Cot's depicted content. It
is masterfully painted, but the image itself does have something
to say beyond that. Its content lies in the mythic narrative
about the two lovers. Cot and Kokoschka's paintings communicate
through narrative depiction and emotionalized stylization. Neither
of these two works relates stylistically to my own work, which
I would call purely perceptual painting, or painting from observed
life. Even the more "realistic" of the two, The
Storm, is a creation of the artist's mind and not a painting
done from observed nature. Although, Cot did combine painting
from life, using posed models in front of a painted backdrop,
and painting from his imagination. Generally I do not paint from
my imagination. Observational painting, for me and for many other
painters, is rooted concretely in the material world because
we only paint what is there to be seen. Because the emphasis
seems to be on surface appearances, a "deeper meaning"
is more difficult to express. Many artists paint still lives, figures, and self-portraits
with little or no narrative suggestion, from life. Artists who
only paint directly from life are not always concerned with having
a deeper meaning. The act of painting itself carries the main
meaning because it is about painting technique, the mechanics
of seeing and the tactile experience rather than the objects
being represented. When these painters paint a bowl of fruit
or a nude model they flex their technical skills, making accurate,
quite often extremely beautiful, calculated paintings. These
works are supposed to be judged by their beauty and technical
merit alone. Charles Hawthorne, who taught at the Cape Cod School
of Art for 31 years, gives us an idea of what it is to paint
from observation for the sake of accuracy and beauty in a book
of collected student notes. He told his students to "do
still life because you cannot tell a story about it - paint something
that isn't anything until it is painted well. Get stuff that
is supposed to be ugly, like a pie plate or an old tin basin
against a background that will bring out the beauty of the thing
you see." (Hawthorne, Charles, Hawthorne on Painting,
p. 41.) There is integrity to this kind of painting because of
its honesty and simplicity. These works are faithful to the world
around them. I do works like this, but I'm also continually striving
to be able to communicate something deeper with my works. In
searching for an answer to the question of how representational
works can express an idea beyond their apparent content and their
skill, I came across the even larger issue of painting's place
in the world. Why paint at all in our modern technological world?
By asking myself this question I discovered that painting
has implicit qualities which, for me, re-substantiated the value
of painting in a modern context. Why is it that people continue
to paint representationally today? What is different about a
painted image in comparison to an artistic photograph, or digital
image? Even if these images have the same object presented there
is a difference in the way that they were produced. The most
basic distinction that can be made is that the painted image
is handmade or crafted, while a photograph and computer capture
and create the image in part mechanically. The fact that a painter
creates an image without a mechanical mediator means that there
is less distance between the artist and the work. The painter
views the subject with the naked eye; the image is processed
by the artist's brain and reproduced with the artist's hand.
It is perhaps because of this immediacy that people tend to place
more value on the handmade. Paradoxically, the portrait painter
Chuck Close has put an interesting spin on the idea of seeing
and processing an image. Like a computer, Close reduces his images
to colored pixels. It is as if he is gathering data, visual information.
He is at once the mediating machine and the physical painter.
When asked what his large portraits are about he replied, "They
have to do with the way a camera seesMy main objective is to
translate photographic information into paint information"
(Stiles, Kristine and Peter Selz, editors, Theories and Documents
of Contemporary Art, p. 233.) Ironically, his portraits are
not at all about the people portrayed; they are instead about
mechanical processes and translating information. Besides being handmade, paintings might also be considered
more valuable because they are the result of one person's efforts
to create an image over a period of time. I find this concept
of spending time immersed in the process of seeing and looking
also important to painting's intrinsic value. How do people see
things today as opposed to many years ago? The attention span
is shorter today. We flip channels with our remote controls giving
only half a second to each channel in order to determine if we
want to watch it. Images and landscapes flash past us while driving
in a car. We all have cameras to take as many snapshots as we
please. The act of painting representationally requires the artist
to spend hour upon hour looking at every detail of a sometimes
very mundane collection of objects. This way of looking, practiced
by many artists (not just painters,) is so radically different
from the way most people see today that it could almost be considered
a reactionary protest. I just think of it as a rare and valuable
ability that is unfortunately disappearing in our fast-paced
world. The fact that representational paintings are uniquely
made by hand through a process of sustained looking that is becoming
extinct in our modern world makes this kind of painting intrinsically
meaningful and valuable as a contemporary practice. Because I found the value of representational painting in
its implicit qualities, I decided to look for ways to answer
my third question with the implicit as well. How can my style
of painting express meaning beyond its depicted image? In the
essay "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" Thomas
McEvilley explores different ways that content exists in artworks
both explicitly and implicitly. (McEvilley, Thomas, Art and
Discontent, p. 70.) The first kind of content he lists is
the one that resides in the depictive nature of a work, that
is, the content that arises from representational subject matter.
But he goes on to list other forms of content that come from
outside the depictive aspects of the work. These include verbal
supplements, such as titles, that can add explicit content to
the meaning of a work, the size of a work, and its formal qualities,
which can create meaning in implicit ways. The titles of my own
works are often only a reiteration of what is depicted, but sometimes
I do choose titles that contribute something more, like A
conversation between 3 pears. Size plays a role in my work
as well. The fact that the majority of my paintings are small
in size creates a sort of intimate privacy that doesn't exist
in large works that have a tendency to feel public. The size
of my works also has a relationship with what is depicted. The
subjects of my smallest works are domestic, everyday items like
a pear and spools of thread. If I had chosen to depict these
same images blown up on a wall-sized canvas the implications
would have been entirely different. The formal qualities of a
work can function to add content as well. Painting technique
can enhance or suggest a meaning. Henri Fantin-Latour, a 19th
century French painter known for his still lives, has a style
of painting that could make a viewer feel comfortable. His loose
but still descriptive brushstrokes have a relaxed, pleasant quality.
In contrast with Fantin-Latour is Lucian Freud who paints from
observation as well, but whose style evokes a different feeling
from the viewers. Freud, who paints many nudes and figures, uses
an aggressive brushstroke and chooses unusual perspectives that
can make a viewer feel uneasy. I would say that my own style
is still in development and is therefore difficult to describe.
I seem to vacillate between palettes. Sometimes I paint with
bold color, while other times I'm drawn to a more tonal range
of values. This fluctuation between palettes is parallel to my
fluctuation in my goals in painting. Sometimes I'm satisfied
painting for the sole purpose of painting a lovely image, but
other times I want to communicate something more. Other items on McEvilley's list of manifestations of content
which are central in my own work are the connotations which come
attached to the medium or genre of the work, the work's relationship
to art history, implied humor or parody in the work, and iconography
or symbolism. The genre or medium of an artwork has more to say
than one would expect. Different genres carry different associations
and connotations. The choice to paint in oils has carried different
meanings in different time periods. McEvilley says that in the
1960's and '70's "painting was associated with the old values
of convention. For an artist to choose to work in oils on canvas
was seen as a reactionary political statement-whereas in the
1950's oil and canvas has signified freedom, individuality, and
existentialism." (McEvilley, p. 73.) What does my choice
of representational oil painting mean today? Could it be considered
a kind of Luddite protest against high-tech art? Is it a quiet
attempt to assert older, more traditional values? These were
not considerations when I picked up a paintbrush and started
to develop my rendering skills so many years ago, but nonetheless
my choice of medium has these associations. Although representational
oil painting has had different implications as a genre in this
century, its overall associations have always remained. When
we think of painting in oils, we think of tradition, the old
masters, portraiture, still life, and the easel painting. Each
of my paintings carries these connotations. Content, according to McEvilley, also arises from an artwork's
relationship with art history, which in the case of representational
oil painting is closely tied with the choice of genre, since
it has such a long history. By painting in the genre of perceptual
oil painting, its history is already referenced. It is unavoidable.
He points out that "lately, the most common type of allusion
has been to earlier works in one's own tradition." (McEvilley,
p. 79.) Artists who quote paintings or styles from the past not
only acknowledge their tradition's history; they include the
meaning or significance of the quoted source in their own work.
Quoting from the painting tradition in new paintings compounds
the meaning in the work. Odd Nerdrum, a contemporary Norwegian
painter, makes references to art history through his style, which
is a bizarre combination of Rembrandt, Magritte and Marilyn Manson
(the rock group). These sources, the artists and their meaning
of their art within the stream of art history, in effect, enters
the meaning of the work of Nerdrum. This has been one of my own
strategies in my paintings. The reference to the painting tradition
is apparent in my works. The presence of the painting tradition
is always there looming over me when I paint simply because I
have chosen to paint in this genre that is inextricably linked
to its history. I also reference the painting tradition in other
ways. In the painting Young Artist in Studio I make a
reference to the tradition of portraiture in which people chose
to have themselves painted with their prized possessions, or
in their finest clothes and jewelry, as if that was the definition
of their person. I recall this tradition by portraying myself
wearing a fancy necklace, but in my painting I'm in the process
of removing it. This action in combination with the expression
on my face - a smirk, and the title which clearly states my true
identity as a young artist in her studio, makes a comment on
my own identity and at the same time makes a joke about the way
this has been done in history. By making references in my work
to the tradition of painting, as I do in all of my works implicitly
and sometimes explicitly, I compare my own work with that long-standing
tradition. I'm trying to define myself as a female contemporary
painter in a tradition that has been male dominated is usually
considered "old-fashioned" or conventional. I don't
always feel as if I fit comfortably into the tradition. I reference
the tradition of painting to figure out if I have a place in
it and how I am the same or different from past painters. I also feel a need to escape the painting tradition and stand
on my own. I make references to my own past paintings in order
to separate myself from the tradition and to try to define my
style, since as a young artist, I'm still struggling with my
direction. The history of perceptual painting will always be
in my work, as long as I paint from life in oils, but quoting
my own work, though seemingly redundant, helps me to establish
my own short history of personal painting, rather than continually
seeing myself in the context of historical painters. In the self-portrait
Young Artist in Studio I reference two of my own past
paintings by directly including one behind my head and by using
the same necklace and facial expression that I had used in another
painting of mine. By quoting my own paintings and those from
art history representation is made more complex. McEvilley explains
that "Representation in these works is not based on the
naïve assumption that it resembles nature. What are being
represented are modes of representation themselves." (McEvilley,
p. 92.) Sometimes the results of quoting can be rather humorous,
since the repeated source is being "acted out and criticized"
at the same time. (McEvilley, p. 92.) The reason that some people might interpret the necklace in
Young Artist in Studio as a disconcerting element has
to do with the final way content can be expressed in perceptual
painting - iconography. McEvilley cites iconography as another
type of meaning that strictly speaking, falls outside of depiction.
McEvilley defines iconography as "a conventional mode of
representing without the supposition that natural resemblance
is involved." (McEvilley, p. 79.) A close relation of iconography
is symbolism. In past paintings and novels the inclusion of jewelry
has been symbolic and so, in my own paintings, the inclusion
of the necklace can communicate through this symbolism. Quite
often jewelry has connotations of greed or sex, which can cause
a viewer to see my painting differently. Iconography has had
a long history in painting. Medieval Christian paintings developed
a specific vocabulary of symbols for expressing themes and ideas;
blue became the Virgin Mary's color, gold came to symbolize divinity,
a lamb became a follower of God etc. Even if the Virgin Mary
wasn't depicted, she was evoked by the presence of the color
blue. It has been said that the Dutch allegorical still life
painters of the 17th Century created for their paintings a similar
symbolic system that served to communicate narrative or moral
lessons. Some art historians say the Dutch painters' allegories
were comprised of an elaborate system of symbolic images that
the viewer would then have to decode. There has been recent debate
among art historians as to whether or not these still lives and
scenes of everyday life were truly intended to be seen as symbolic,
since another major concern of the Dutch painters was absolute
mastery of skill. However, the fact that the images that they
painted are rather obviously and carefully set up, would seem
to imply that there is hidden meaning to be found in the paintings.
In Dutch scenes of everyday life, also called genre paintings,
the figures became universal types: the mother, the servant,
the beggar, the drunkard and so forth, which then makes the scenes
more about human nature than the specific situation portrayed.
Their still lives are less controversial. It is widely agreed
that the majority of Dutch still lives are symbolically about
our fleeting existence. Historian Barbara Rose explains what
is behind these impeccable still lives:
A painting of a pile of coins and jewelry next to a dying
bouquet is symbolic of the insignificance of material goods in
the face of death, and if the bouquet is inhabited by insects,
it is symbolic of earthly life being riddled with evil. Willem
Claesz Heda, who was considered one of the masters of this type
of painting, often used a snuffed out candle, or a broken dish
as a symbol for ephemeral life. Most of his still lives showed
the remains of sumptuous feasts, which are seen as moments of
self-indulgent and unnecessary pleasure. Since it seems that
most of the 17th century Dutch still lives have a similar theme
it becomes easier for the viewer to decipher them. Viewers know
what to expect to see as the meaning of one of these paintings
and are familiar with the ways that the ideas are expressed symbolically.
My own paintings are not as easily deciphered. Making a painting that contains recognizable symbolic images
has been a very popular way to communicate to audiences; however,
iconology relies on tapping into symbolism readable by a contemporary
audience. I do not necessarily try to use objects in my paintings
that have easily recognizable symbolic significance. Some symbolic
suggestion still occurs in paintings like Young Artist in
Studio, because of the necklace and its connotations, as
well as in Eating the Pear, because of what is implied
by a woman eating a piece of fruit from the Christian system
of iconology. Most of my still lives, unlike those of the Dutch
painters, can't be decoded. The audience doesn't already know
what to look for as meaning, and so viewers must bring their
own ideas to my works. Everyone has their own ideas attached
to pears and spools, even if they seem insignificant, these are
the individual ideas that create symbolic significance or a narrative
in my still lives for each viewer. In this deconstructivist sense
my still lives are allegorical. The viewer's interpretation of
my works is encouraged by repeated objects in series and the
relationships that I create within individual paintings and between
them. By finding these relationships throughout my works and
bringing personal significance to them and the objects represented,
a viewer creates a personal allegory. I try to create meaning
in my still lives not so much through elaborate codes, explicit
narrative or myth referencing, but more through suggesting certain
associations or relationships. An artist who seems to have similar
concerns is Audrey Flack. Flack uses photographs to create her
paintings, while I paint from life, but her still lives encourage
personal allegory in much the same way as my own do. Her still
lives often depict the kinds of things that might be found on
top of a woman's dresser or throughout her home. We see jewelry,
bottles, pitchers, goblets, flowers, statuettes, fruit, and make
up in her works. While Flack does not always try to create a
convincingly realistic space for the objects in her paintings
in the way that she collages her images, the audience is still
left to contemplate and assign meaning to her choice of objects.
Before I began this investigation of the many ways that perceptual paintings can communicate to audiences, I felt that this particular kind of painting, was not only practically obsolete in our modern world, but also an inferior type of painting when compared with other more expressive or abstract types. In the course of my project I rediscovered perceptual painting's value in our high-tech world and found that even the quietest painting of a bowl of fruit has something to say. Considering the painting's size, title, formal qualities, medium, relationship to art history, tone (humorous or otherwise), and symbolic suggestions, the bowl of fruit could express anything from the beauty of simple things to a criticism of the painting tradition. Seeing content in an artwork is dependent on the interpretation of the viewer, however I now know that there is always content to be found. This conclusion revalidated perceptual painting for me and allowed me to rededicate my life to making artwork. |
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