Art & Perception

Conceptual art represents concepts.

That seems obvious.

The simple statement has some interesting implications, however. Let’s explore by looking first at another art-form: still life.

What does still life art represent? The still life, obviously. Each still life painting shows a given set of objects. Is the still life art the same as the still life itself? Of course not. It’s a representation: the appearance of a still life on a canvas is an illusion.

Does the artist create the objects in the still life? Perhaps he or she might throw the vases and cut the flowers, but this is not essential.

Must the objects be valuable or beautiful? Of course not. The value of the still life art depends on the quality of the representation, not on the quality of the things represented.

Now, back to conceptual art. more… »

In my previous post I discussed conceptual- versus procedural-based art and asked how an artist could have the two dimensions interact. This got me thinking about how different art forms mix these aspects. Contemporary conceptual art, for example, tends to be big on ideas and light on craft, whereas something like the Painting a Day movement is more procedure-based. Renaissance art, in contrast, combined conceptual and procedural components.

Below I try to express this distinction in a two-dimensional plot where the axes are Conceptual and Procedural.

Note, nothing about this hypothetical representation says anything about the quality of the artwork. It is possible to have a technically developed artwork, full of ideas, that is just plain bad. Conversely, a simple, non-conceptual painting could be something wonderful.

Where on this graph would you like your work to be? Where do you think you are now?

Where is the money today? It seems that the conceptual gets rewarded more than the procedural.

Jeffrey Augustine Songco recently posted about different modes of art making. [UPDATE, Jeffrey kindly pointed out (comment 3) that some of the points I make about his work are oversimplifications]

He divides his art into two types, which I’ll call x and y. I use these neutral names because the names that Jeffrey used, although descriptive, are somewhat distracting for the point I want to make here.

Art type x “is thoroughly planned (at least as much as I can) and must specificaly state the meaning that I am ultimately trying to convey,” Jeffrey says. He almost never displays art type x in his studio on a normal day. It is what someone else would hang up and call art, but he prefers to look at type y.

With art type y, Jeffrey says “I find myself getting lost in during its creation. It is something that has no specific goal other than to explore my mind creativity.” This type of art is what Jeffrey would (and does) display for himself, and calls art.

Thus, art type x is “concept first” art. It is focused on an idea of what an artwork could be. Art type y is “process first” art. In terms of tangible product, the type y art seems to yield better results — as Jeffrey says, this is what he likes to look at.

Reading about art types x and y in the original post, I wondered, why make art type x at all? Why not simply do type y? I asked Jeffrey this and he replied: more… »

Mind you, the most perfect steersman that you can have, and the best helm, lie in the triumphal gateway of copying from nature. And this outdoes all other models; and always rely on this with a stout heart, especially as you begin to gain some judgment in draftsmanship. Do not fail, as you go on, to draw something every day, for no matter how little it is it will be well worth while, and will do you a world of good.

—Cennino Cennini, 14th century

Cennino’s statement that studying from nature is the best way to learn to draw is something that resonates today. My question is, what constitutes “copying from nature”? Is drawing from photographs the same as drawing from life? Or is working from photos more like copying the work of another artist? The question is of practical importance, because as Cennino pointed out, studying the work of another artist will influence one’s personal style.

We cannot separate how we see from the way photography has informed our vision.

—Dan Bodner

. . . it is best to remember that every object made by man carries within it the evidence of the time and place of its manufacture.

–Joseph Veach Nobel

If an artist draws from photos, does he or she inevitably absorb the unique “style” of the camera (not to mention the style of the photographer)?

Cennino Cennini devotes his Il Libro dell’ Arte (late 14th c.) to a practical explanation of the materials and techniques of painting. And yet Cennino also writes of painting as an occupation that deserves “to be crowned with poetry”, because the painter has the ability to compose from the imagination, “presenting to plain sight what does not actually exist.”
It might seem there is a mismatch between focusing on the physical aspects of the work, and at the same time emphasizing the role of imagination in creating art. But this combination of the mundane and the fanciful is appropriate for a simple reason: an artist creating from the world of the mind must nonetheless work in the world of the materials. The physical nature of those materials, and the way the artist uses them, will inevitably influence how the inner world of the mind is discovered and expressed.

Contemporary artist Hanneke van den Bergh recognizes and makes use of this interplay of the imaginary and the physical in her clay sculpture. She explains “I like to make the heads by moving a little lump of clay until I can just see the face. I like this quality of the imaginary form beginning to emerge from the raw material.” Van den Bergh does not attempt to disguise the properties of her materials. In the example shown here, Danae III, she leaves visible the coils with which she constructs the main form. The contrast of the repeating pattern of coils with the rhythm of the body contributes to the expressive effect of the work. “By avoiding too much detail,” she says, “I maintain the contrast between material — the physical — and the imaginary.”

Sometime in the 14th century, Cennino Cennini wrote Il Libro dell’Arte as advice for how to be an artist. One of the most interesting passages, I think, is how an artist should go about developing a personal style. Cennini begins:

take pains and pleasure in constantly copying the best things which you can find done by the hand of great masters. And if you are in a place where many good masters have been, so much the better for you.

The point of the exercise is to learn from the source. This means that the choice of master to copy is important. Cennini continues:

But I give you this advice: take care to select the best one every time, and the one who has the greatest reputation. And, as you go on from day to day, it will be against nature if you do not get some grasp of his style and of his spirit.

Selecting the right masters to copy is still not enough. Cennini recognized that the particular interpretations of one artist needed to be studied consistently:

For if you undertake to copy after one master today and after another one tomorrow, you will not acquire the style of one or the other, and you will inevitably, through enthusiasm, become capricious, because each style will be distracting your mind. You will try to work in this man’s way today, and in the other’s tomorrow, and so you will not get either of them right.

By choosing the right artist to study, and by studying his work consistently before studying that of another artist, one will achieve the preconditions for finding a personal style:

If you follow the course of one man through constant practice, your intelligence would have to be crude indeed for you not to get some nourishment from it. Then you will find, if nature has granted your any imagination at all, that you will eventually acquire a style individual to yourself, and it cannot help being good; because your hand and your mind, being always accustomed to gather flowers, would ill know how to pluck thorns.

I always enjoy painting skies. Part of the reason, I think, is that I never know the result ahead of time. The process of painting the skies is not entirely random, of course, but within the system of constraints I use, there is a large element of chance as to how they will develop. A slight unevenness in the over-painting blue becomes the seed of a cloud. The negative space of one cloud becomes the seed of another cloud. And so forth . . .

There is a big difference from photography here in the unfolding interaction with chance. A lucky photograph is made in milliseconds. Perhaps the result will inspire more photographs to capture the moment; but each photograph achieves its essential identity with the press of a button. Painting the skies is something more like an ongoing improvisation, technical context providing a stable base rhythm. The effects of chance are something I can explore over hours and days in the context of a single image.

Sunil’s post about luck in photography got me thinking about the role of chance in art. I wonder, is there an element of art that does not develop from some chance event? I’m on the verge of saying, art is about the harnessing of chance — except that is an oversimplification, and also I remember hearing it somewhere else before.

And yet, what is the alternative to the random? Religion informs us of the notion of Free Will. Science reminds us that there is only the random and the deterministic. Which makes better art?