Painting From Life vs. From Photos
Works of art create their own worlds, with their own rules. . . Internal coherence is more important than any resemblance the work might have to something outside of it.
–Arthur Whitman
I think this is one of the most insightful statements about what art is about, or supposed to be about, that we have had on Art & Perception so far. As Arthur points out, it is not so much a definition of art, as a statement of what is most valuable in art.
Arthur’s statement is not so useful for telling us what is art versus what is not (in that respect it is far too broad.) Rather, it is an interesting way to think about what a given artwork is accomplishing. I say “accomplishing” in the present tense, because an artwork, to be perceived, must have a parallel representation in the mind of the viewer (the mind being the greatest world-builder of all). Whatever world the artist has created in their artwork must be rebuilt in the mind of the viewer in order to be seen and felt.
I read something tantalizing in Arthur’s statement about world building, something that suggests to me that art is the externalization of an artist’s inner perceptual world, or a world synthesized through an interaction of the inner world of the mind and the materials and stimuli of the outside world. The problem is that to be more than simply tantalizing, we need to take what Arthur is saying a lot further.
Let me ask then, what are the implications of the statements that I quote at the beginning of this post? How can the concept of art as world-building enhance our appreciation of, and ability to create, art?
Two further ideas:
1) All artworks are interactive; to see (hear, understand, etc.) them fully, you have to take time to explore them. A painting that I look at for thirty minutes is not the same as one I look at for three minutes. This gives the audience some freedom , but not unlimited freedom. What is there in the work constrains what you can do with it. As Paul Klee writes, “the eye follows the paths laid down for it in the work” (from his Pedagogical Sketchbook).
2) A work of art is not a purely transcendental thing; it is tied to the real physical world in which it was produced and in which it is appreciated. What you bring to an artwork from the “outside” is important as is what you take back there. But art has autonomy too. It isn’t an everyday, literal kind of statement and shouldn’t be taken that way. (I stole this idea from Wendy Steiner, who suggests “enlightened beguilement” as a way of approaching art.)
All artworks are interactive; to see (hear, understand, etc.) them fully, you have to take time to explore them.
Arthur,
Good point. For example, the experience of the chocolate Jesus is going to be very different around Christmas time.
This gives the audience some freedom , but not unlimited freedom. What is there in the work constrains what you can do with it.
Arthur,
Here we are getting to something interesting, related to the world-building concept. In a previous post, Art as discovery, we discussed the idea that an artist does not so much create an artwork to make a statement, but to provide a context for learning something they didn’t know before they started painting. To put it into your language, the artist creates a world with an artwork, a world with constraints as to what the audience (including the artist) can do; but, what those constraints are, what can be learned from the artwork is something to discover, both for the artist and the non-artist.
My experience making paintings is, if I feel I fully understand the work when I am finished, and this feeling remains with time, then I feel unsatisfied with the painting, there is something pedantic about it. I prefer paintings that make me think and realize what I don’t know — that is, paintings that offer something to explore. To me this is the magic of art — that we can create worlds that are somehow beyond ourselves, but that we can still investigate and understand with time.
What kind of a world is the artist going to build? To the extent the artist is heading into the unknown, he or she may be very open to suggestion. This is the reason that Edward Winkleman’s advice, that the artist should visit all the galleries and talk to all the dealers about their programs makes me shudder. The precise purpose of this exercise, if I read between the lines, if for the dealers to identify artists who are open to suggestion. In the process of trying to understand the dealer’s program, how is the artist to avoid the subtle influence the dealer, how is the artist to avoid building the world that the dealer wants?
Maybe a gallery owner has to have a program because the customer expects it. Someone who has gotten used to shopping at Neimann Marcus may not want to go to Macy’s. This creates in-the-box expectations of gallery owner, customer and artist that only varies somewhat with current fashions.
Karl,
Thank you for reminding us about Arthur’s comment and for Arthur’s and your own further thinking on the subject.
I agree that a particular art work can create its own world, one that is interactive yet limited in both directions — the viewer has a world out of which she is looking and the art has a world which peers out to the viewer.
However, I’m uncomfortable with the notion that while I’m making art, I’m creating a world. That’s both too grandiose and too directive for me. I can’t quite get my mind/psyche/eyes around it. I would rather think that if the art that I make is successful, that it takes on its own life as its own world. I don’t think I can build a successful world if that’s what I set out to do. I set out to make visual something that is of importance to me. After I’ve finished, I hope that it has its own integrity. Some of it does, I think, and some of it doesn’t.
It’s odd to me to think I have such a strong reaction to the metaphor of the world when it’s extended to the maker of that “world.” But that may be because I don’t think the world was made; it simply is. And so the metaphor breaks down when it’s attached too closely to the original artifact.
Internal coherence: Now I understand my reaction to a painting this weekend. Cartoon-like figures on the right half looked silly compared to a mysterious figure on the beautiful left half of the painting.
Hello Karl and all i do not know (yet?),
Between gods creating “the world” or “their own world” as a valid start
and those waiting for their work to be god and create their own world,
I feel in go(o)d company!
Here is my contribution:
Let the needs of the artist meet the one of the world!
Most likely this lovely thought is not from me but since I can’t remember the proper quote nor the author, let it be “mine” for now.
Hope it helps.
Graziella.
PS is it possible to use a speudo? Because of the Google thing if you know what I mean. I promise to “create” an artistic one!
Dear moderator Karl (I guess it is you),
I have an important and yet almost essential alternative to offer for the quote-non quote appearing on my previous post. Here it goes:
MAY
the need of the artist meet the needs of the world.
Hope it helps even more.
Graziella.
I’m uncomfortable with the notion that while I’m making art, I’m creating a world. That’s both too grandiose and too directive for me.
June,
I agree, the idea is daunting. I never think of it that way when I am working. I never really thought of it at all until Arthur discussed the idea. I think the point I was making in my comments above is just what you are expressing, that the exciting thing is when the art work becomes a world of its own, perhaps one that the artist does not even understand — at least initially. But remember, the artist is the one who sets down the “constraints” that give the specific world its character.
I agree, world building sounds a bit grandiose. I still think it is a thought provoking metaphor, however, and for that reason I want to think about it further without getting turned off by negative connotations. Arthur’s statement is not an end in itself, but, hopefully, a means to further understanding.
MAY
the need of the artist meet the needs of the world.
Graziella,
What a nice idea, meeting the needs of the world. Do you think we as artists are doing that now?
I was thinking about sculpture as related to this world-building concept. Arthur’s idea of artist as “world builder” seems to fit more naturally with drawing and painting. Does the sculptor creating an individual figure really create a world? Or does that require a collection of sculptures?
Arthur,
Almost by definition, your concept of art as “world building” seems to declassify non-representational art as being art. What do you think about that?
Looking at one of Clyfford Still’s paintings, for example, I see a number of things, but not a world. Putting several paintings together, as seen in the linked post, could be construed as building a world.
What about the photographer? Is he or she building a world, or simply recording one? What do you think about June’s comment that world building is too grandiose an expression?
I think that we should think about expanding the idea beyond the individual work, and relating it to the idea of art as a medium, which I think deserves more discussion.
Internal coherence
Birgit,
This concept of internal coherence is most interesting. The mind also seems to try to enforce internal coherence on percepts, even if this means making a false or nonsensical analysis.
Karl,
“I placed a jar in Tenneessee,/ And round it was, upon a hill./ It made the slovenly wilderness/ Surround that hill.”
and “It was her voice that made/ The sky acutest at its vanishing./ She measured to the hour its solitude./ She was the single artificer of the world/In which she sang.”
and “So much depends/ upon/ a red wheel/ barrow/ glazed with rain/water/ beside the white chickens.”
The first two are Wallace Stevens, “Anecdote of the Jar” and “The Idea of Order at Key West,” both excerpts. The last was William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” (in toto).
Karl,
Arthur’s idea of artist as “world builder” seems to fit more naturally with drawing and painting
I agree and its true that I find most “conventional” sculpture uninteresting. (I’m not saying that this is a fair or normal attitude.) They often just seem to me like dull inert objects. Paintings, photographs, films, video games and other mediums, I feel like I have room to wander around in.
Sculptures in a larger artistic setting are more interesting. I could be wrong about this, but my understanding is that the sculpture as autonomous object is a relatively recent development. Traditionally, sculpture was usually integrated with architecture (this was the case with painting as well, I think). Present day “installation” artists are trying to do something similar. Too bad so much of it so uninteresting. But there are artists that I like: Sarah Sze, Judy Pfaff, and Polly Apfelbaum come to mind.
Karl,
For me, works of art create their own worlds when it is a body of work on a related theme. Arthur brings out a very important point here with respect to internal coherence – a quintessentially important aspect of related works of art – I guess this is what curators aim to achieve when they develop shows around a theme and museums hope to develop when to put related artworks helping achieve dialogue between the pieces… A single artwork by itself very rarely creates its own world (unless of course you are talking about Hieronymus Bosch ;-).
Can anyone think of a work of art in which internal coherence is purposely violated?
Is Leslie’s Kitty in Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ an example? Or her Kitty in Goya’s picture?
Birgit,
The only way I see internal coherence violated is by poor technique, so it seems to be a statement in which the conclusion does not logically proceed from the premise.
Rex,
You are right with respect to the painting of a Danish artist that I saw last week (my comment 7 above). The left side was much better developed than the right side.
One of the benefits of blogging is that doing so rather forces one to say exactly what one means in ways that cannot be misinterpreted; ether that, or one is purposely vague in order to stimulate questions or stir things up. The latter being a tiresomely sophomoric pursuit, I choose the former, but I am guilty, nevertheless of being a bit vague.
What I meant to say was that it seems to be impossible to not have internal coherence when one is even a little skilled, so any following statement about resemblance or non resemblance to external realities is non sequituer.
I dare, without formal permission to go on with a pseudo, just for the Google tracks.
Petite Grâce stands for Graziella Curreli, lately post 8 and 9 of this discussion.
What a releaf! I have the proper quote and it is from Aristoles:
” When your talents and the needs of the world cross, lies your calling.”
Much more luminous than my memory of it!
The experience of meeting this statement again can be translated with words like “joy”, “freedom” and “responsibility”!
To Karl, post 11:
you ask and what I retain from your question is the word “doing”.
There is no “doing” as far I understand, there is the grace of a “crossing”.
You can only “prepare” (“talents”)…
Only the effort can be “yours”, not the outcome or, to use a metaphore,
picture yourself as a bulb ever busy trying to control electricity !
To Sunil Gangadhan, post 15:
Thanks for the very last words of your post.
I am most touched by you capacity to sense and convey your perceptions of Jeronimous Bosch’s work.
This guy, never talked about himself… He only talked about “you” and,
his “you” is valid because it is a “us”.
Further on, I would like to introduce an idea which I believe can be important for clarity, without, given free from the aim of being “understood”
(the Babel tower being a tragedy we can’t avoid. Bruggel painted his vision of it about 6 times, if I am correct).
Just offering something as limpidly as possible:
I think, the needs of the worlds are not to be sized/understood by success (the breath of the crowd) yet they do not exclude success either.
Inner vison and/or inspiration prevail(s).
Read Goehte, Walt Whitman; see Bosch, Brughel; Touch the stone of a Cathedral…
Any “I” is “Us”…
May you be intentional here and read in the dictionary the meaning of the word “Muse”.
An “artist”?
Perhaps…
Yes… Because…
No…Unless…
With much appreciation,
Petite Grâce.
On the subject of “internal coherence”, my guess is that “in-co-henrence” is so hard to accept that one will “manipulate” every possible given data to “make it fitt and get back to coherence.
To Brigit’s suggestion of a possible “internal coherence purposely violated”.
At the source of such question I sense fear. Fear is never a good adviser…
Just drop the nonsense and walk the “open road”!
Can you consider being simply ex-cluded ?
Can you accept someone is simply ot addressing you but themsevles ?
Self enquiry, exhibited, is common fact and even celebrated fact, since freud, his daughter and many more after them.
Can you keep unchanged the perception of someone not a-knowledging you and leaving
al-one ?
“NOT ACKNOWLEDGING YOU AND LEAVING YOU ALONE”
Would this not be a good and attractive title for a “modern” exhibition?
Don”t you think?
Since I am mainly driven by trust,
I trust you/we know you/we are not alone and do not need “everyone” to “make sense to your senses” (including brain activity),
forever allert and carefully choosing your company and friends!
Sorry for the internal coherence thing but equally valid is we are indeed alone and solitude.
Back to the class room everybody!
Graziella.