Art & Perception

It was a comment in one of Paul Butzi’s elegant posts The Four Seductions that I said “Art is about communication.”

That phrasing was a writer’s device. Paul, quoting or perhaps paraphrasing Stephen Dietz said “Art is about craft.” I held up a contrary mirror to that statement and used the word “about” again. That was an artistic phrasing of a larger idea.

Art is a certain kind of specialized communication. Communication is not necessarily art. Art does not equal communication, but all art is communication. In mathematical terms, art is a member of the set of communication. What makes art different and special is that a communication that has value.

People consider a communication art when it has merit, worth or excellence. Perhaps a better word than value would be quality.

This is how people, ordinary everyday people use the word art. Nothing has been invented here. So this is not really a “theory.” It’s an observation of observed phenomena. The word “art” is used to describe any communication that can be valued as to excellence.

That’s really a definition for art. The quality of communication.

What is interesting about this way of understanding and analyzing art is the magnitude of predictions and explanations that result. By considering art as an instance in the class of communication, we have an organizing principle that can be used to predict, measure, enhance or create art. We have a way of helping our own art, and we have a way of helping other artists.

For example, if art is communication, it follows the rules of communication. If it’s too original, it is difficult for people to understand. If it is too unoriginal, it is a bore. Too loud and it is irritating. Too quiet and it has no impact. If the subject bears no relationship with the experiences of the perceiver, it is not likely to be grasped. If it deals with a subject in a way that is not stimulating, it is not likely to be valued.

Second, we see that we can dismiss binary or two valued logic as applied to art. It is never therefore “art or not art;” rather, it is degree of art. Someone might attempt to make the case, “If that’s true, well then everything is art. And that can’t be true.”

(That’s so easy to refute I won’t even bother; rather, I will leave that as an exercise for the reader. Assuming of course that you actually read this.)

However, considering that art is communication and that the term is used to describe a the quality of communication, we do open the field to many expressions that have not always been considered art but craft. Craft becomes art when it breaks away from mechanical functionality and begins to “emanate.” One’s personal appearance becomes art when it transcends the purely functional. One’s life itself becomes an art form when it becomes something more than mere survival. So it is true that art as the quality of communication expands the definition.

Therefore this is not a trivial idea.

As artists, we have heard many debates in our lives about whether this is art or that is art. Is a sunset art? Is graffiti art? Can animals make art?

But the answers to these questions can be found by applying the above criterion. Are you experiencing it as a communication — conveyed information? Do you value it?

Then yes. It is art. For you.

Sure, we have heard “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

But why?

This is not something new. Artists have “always known” this. They have an intuitive grasp of this even when they deny they are trying to communicate, and it shows in their work.

As an an organizing principle, art as a communication of quality predicts that art is not a universal. Sure. We know that. But why? What will be art for one will not necessarily be art for another. Why? Because art, as a subset of communication. It succeeds or fails the same ways that communications succeed or fail.

The “artiness” is a matter of opinion because value is a matter of opinion. How much would you pay? Why does a painting appear more valuable in one environment than another? Why does promotion work? (Clue: there is a relationship between degree of attention and degree of communication) Elitism itself in art is explained by this principle. Because one group can see it is art (or pretends to) they are therefore more capable of perception than the crowd, and therefore superior. What are they doing? They saying “This new practice/thing is valuable communication.”

That’s all.

Because I have narrowed the scope of this essay, I do not here treat the relationship between art and technique. But the understanding here can be used to explode that topic.

It could be said, that communication must have intention in order to regarded as “true” communication, but there are several ways to refute that. One, in law, intention is an ineffable quality that is difficult or impossible to prove or disprove. Second, intention can be the intention to not have an intention. Third, nowhere in any usual dictionary definition is intention required for the word communication to apply. Fourth, the requirement that only sentient beings can communicate is a peculiarly Northern European tradition. It is not shared by most of the world, as in Africa or Asia where it is very strongly believed that “inanimate” objects can give and receive communication. It is nothing unusual for a Latin to talk to his sword or his pistol. In Japan, there is a tradition of “seeing stones.” They are “emanative” rocks. When discovered, usually in rivers, they are highly prized and will receive special places in gardens. Visitors will be taken near them without being told about them as a test of the visitor’s sensitivity.

It could also be said that if art is actually defined, then what are we going to talk about?

Art.

To show the possibilities for discourse, I have selected one of my favorite paintings. It was named “The Tempest,” but that came later. No one knows what Giorgione called it. He never explained it.

Let’s look at it. People have debated this painting for centuries. Whole books have been written about it. It’s “meaning” has always been a huge mystery.

Who is that guy with the walling stick? Is it a walking stick? Maybe it’s a spear shaft. A phallic object the goes with his exaggerated codpiece as was the style then. Is he the painter? Giorgione resembled this man. He is not looking at the woman. He’s looking off… somewhere, and he seems to be thinking. Perhaps he is looking back in time. Is he a wanderer? A soldier? There’s a bangage on his leg. Is that significant? And the woman with the child. She looks so vulnerable in her nudity, and yet the way she looks out at the viewer is anything but vulnerable. It’s like she’s saying, “You see? This is life.” Or is she? Her look can be construed as accusative. Then there is that divide, that watery gulch between the two figures, and the two figures are so differently painted. There is considerable texture to the man, but the woman is more smoothly painted. Is that significant? Did he paint these in two different periods? It’s like Giorgione put them together in the picture, but they are really in separate countries. Is that symbolic?

Was this autobiographical? Did Giorgione get a girl pregnant then leave her to her fate? That seems to be going on here, but maybe the guy died, and this allegorical. Maybe the woman is a friend of the painter and he felt compassion for her difficulty.

Then there is the storm in the background. We know this is Torino, but it’s a fantasy, Romantic Torino. There is a sense of something imminent. Doom? Danger? Change? And notice that tippy building behind the man. A world gone askew.

We will never know. Giorgione’s intentions, if he even had any, are not clear. We can only speculate.

What do you think? (There are no wrong answers.)

This painting demonstrates several things. It shows that the artists intentions need not be known for a communication to occur; therefore, artist’s statements of intentions are not significant. Indeed, it suggests that an artist would do well to dispense with any vanity on the subject. It suggests that the art that will be considered truly great will be the kind of art that is actually completed by the viewer. This is the singularly remarkable characteristic of art that comes down through history as truly great. Ambiguity of communication in art is a highly valued characteristic, evidently.

I have completely ignored technique here. That was intentional, but the opportunity for viewer participation (two way communication), when combined with dazzling virtuoso skill is a one two knock-out punch combination.

But the reason I picked this painting in particular is that it has historically demonstrates an amazing capacity to stimulate dialog. It shows that what makes art the most valuable in the eyes of people throughout the ages is something that generates communication far beyond it’s own time. That is one thing you can say for sure about any really famous piece of art.

If ever there was a proof positive that art is about communication, there it is.

Twenty thousand years of art history scream it from the mountain tops. It is writ in letters of fire across the sky.

But I’m afraid I won’t be able to participate in any dialog resulting from this post. I’m taking a long train trip tomorrow, starting before dawn, and as soon as I post this, I shall have to pack. Please do not think me rude if I do not respond. I will have a look at again Monday, but until then, I shall be offline.

I would like to hear what this group of artists believe makes good landscapes. Is there a feeling or something that words can explain, or not.  Should people be placed in landscape images? Is their presence necessary to make better art than without them?

In the last ongoing post, David mentioned “The main thing that stands out to me is the absence of people”, this hit me as being very profound.  I immediately ran to look at my work, and sure enough, I had nearly totally failed to put people in any of my landscapes; when I did, it was unconscious.  The only time I paint people is when I paint people. This is odd to me now, (what have I been thinking?), it seems so obvious to want to include something as familiar as people in a work to make it more inviting to the viewer, they could perhaps bring attention to something being performed. At what point however, would a “landscape” painting become a “genre” painting? Does it matter? I would like to know what quality you may feel is most important and should be included in most landscapes.

Cheers 

I’ve been working on a project.  I’d like folks to look at it and give me feedback.  Apropos of my comment about critiques of single works that need to be seen in a larger context, you have a chance to look at just shy of 90 photos. 

Before you look, some information that may be helpful.  The project is open ended – rather than having a definite goal in mind, it’s loosely organized around several goals.  I’m happy to discuss the goals, but I’d like to get some feedback from you all first.  There’s no significance to the format on my web site other than it’s convenient for me, the pages download in a reasonable time, etc.  Likewise, the order of the images isn’t meaningful to the project; they’re just presented in rough chronological order. 

So I’m interested in having people look at this bolus of photography, and tell me what they think.  Comments on individual photos, comments on the overall collection, comments on the overall direction of the project, or changes in direction you see as you browse through – those are of great interest to me.  Comments like “You should use this cool slideshow flash applet to present the images” are of less interest to me, primarily because the web is a view of the project seen through a glass, darkly.  The real project is a set of prints, 15″ x 20″ image area, intended to be overmatted out to 22″x28″ and then framed. 

One of the things that’s really helpful to me is seeing your questions – any questions. The title of the project, ‘sdg’, is significant but not something I’m prepared to discuss just yet.  Other than that, though, anything is fair game, ranging from technique and technical process all the way through to motivation, goals, whether I’m trying to communicate or not, the technical or artistic quality.

What I’m really hoping for, here, is more than just making this post and getting some comments and having it end with this post; I’d really like to start a conversation with several of you that goes on and on and helps guide the project as it evolves.

The web page of the project is at http://www.butzi.net/galleries/sdg/sdg.htm.

I’ve never needed an artist’s statement professionally. Probably I never will – I have no ambition to do the sorts of things that require them. However, if I did need one, I know I would have great difficulty in getting away with my working statement: This is what I saw. Even if I stretch that out into longhand – these photographs are representations, to the best of my ability, of what I saw – I only get to fourteen words.

I’ve updated my photo home page.

I’m writing about this again now, because I was recently asked by Lisa Call to explain what I meant when I said “art isn’t about communication. I am trying to communicate nothing. This is just what I saw.” Specifically she said “Colin could you expand on these comments? It is what you saw – but you put it here for us to see and to react to. Isn’t that a form of communication?”.

Now, I’ve had enough debates about the communication thing to know that, er, some of you disagree with me (one part of the debate is archived here, and I wrote an article which is here). I’ve no particular desire to go over that ground again, because it seemed to me that it was a matter of belief, and beliefs are not challenged by arguments. What I want to try to do here is to answer Lisa’s question in practical terms.

It is a fair question. If I’m not communicating when I put one of my pictures on display, then what am I doing?

I need to invoke a level one cut-off. I am saying here is a photograph. I think that that is about as uninteresting as communication can get, and even if I didn’t say it, the photograph would sort of say it for me. Please ignore this level.

What am I doing?

My photo home page has contained the following statement for some time: “I’m showing them to help create a dialogue, and with the hope that they may raise a smile, create an understanding or just generally do some good, some how, some where.” There are two parts to this, which I’ll deal with in reverse order:

a) smiles, understandings, and good: this is the altruism motive. I go to places like this every day for enjoyment. You post. I post. We both smile. I don’t think that this needs further explanation.

b) creating a dialogue: this is the potentially confusing area. I want to hear what you think about my photos. Not whether you think that they are sharp enough or whether the sky is blue enough – there is a place for that, but web reproductions aren’t usually worth the effort. No, I want to hear about what they make you think. I do this for purely selfish reasons, because some of you, some times, think something that adds to my thoughts and allows me to see better in the future. This is actually at its most interesting when your reaction is very different from mine. When there is no obvious flow between me seeing and creating, and you reacting. You have my attention the most when you have seen something that I didn’t.

If Winogrand is right and photos are new facts then they are interesting special cases to practise seeing on. If I can’t see what you can see in the photograph then I have to ask myself why? And is it interesting? It is much more difficult to have the same conversation about the real world. It is too big and we might not be looking at the same thing. Observation changes reality’s cat. Time creates difficulty. Things change whilst they are being described. On the other hand, photos are dimensionally limited. They don’t react to being observed. They do not change signficantly during a viewing period. And my photos are something that I think that I’ve looked at. That I think that I understand. Show me a new way of looking at them and boy, am I interested. I’m learning.

There are a couple of subsidiary things going on. I’m one of those human being thingies, so like everybody else I get high on random praise. Getting a few ‘the best photo ever’ comments never did anybody any harm.

I also use my photos as gateways to communication. Here I am on Photostream and Art & Perception (dual posting) talking about stuff – both through the comments and by email – with dozens of people that I’ve never met (it is sometimes slightly spooky that the conversations are overheard by quite so many thousands of you, which is why my email address is so freely available). The communication is about art. Not the other way around.

I recently volunteered some advise on how to solve a painting problem to one of our fellow bloggers. Before hitting that submit button I re-read what I had written and in that crazy way we have of talking to ourselves, I said why don’t you follow your own advise.

This is a study I started as a result. I am trying to let the different colors create the form in the faces, eventually losing most if not all of the drawing lines. The other issue I am looking to work out is the merging of the two heads

Sorry for not posting earlier (I’m a very late riser), and thank you Lisa for your impromptu post. I know that some of you readers also follow my own blog, The Thinking Eye; for those who don’t, I’d like to briefly introduce myself. I’ll do so by following up belatedly on Karl’s Monday post, trying to get at some of my writerly goals and biases by way of my location. Since I also spend time on the Internet (a sort of place, perhaps), this makes a good companion piece to my recent off-site post on Art & Perception. From September of last year, my home has been Ithaca in Upstate New York.

Although I like to discuss Ithaca on my Eye and elsewhere, it often seems absurd of me to do so. A city of something like 50,000 people (the population varies with the coming and going of students), it is not, and has never been, an important art center on the order of Haarlem or New Amsterdam (although it was of some significance in the early film industry). Most likely, it will never be one in the future. Ambitious artists around here tend to gravitate towards NYC, which is about a six hour drive away. I like to travel there myself, as much as I can. Still, Ithaca is where I live, and it effects the way I think and experience art. (I live here by choice, so I try not to sound like I’m complaining too much.)

As a college town–home to Cornell University and Ithaca College–the place is hardly bereft of culture. In fact, it is something of a miniature melting pot, a mixture of different nationalities, religions (a major center of Tibetan Buhddism), and art-forms (music being much stronger than the visual arts). Unfortunately, most of the culture that I value most is not native-grown, but imported. Cornell’s Johnson Museum has a fine a fine permanent collection of art, with particular strengths in in Asian and American art. In addition, the museum and other branches of the school brings in a wide variety of exhibitions, artists and scholars. I try to take in as much of this as I can, digesting interesting bits through my writing. The problem is that most things of interest art-wise come from elsewhere, and are funneled from the top down. This presents problems for me both as a (lapsed) artist and as someone interested in writing seriously about art. I’m working on the latter, at least.
I moved here from Boston last year (mostly for personal reasons) after completing several years of undergraduate study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. My final year there was spent at Tufts University (which is associated with the SMFA), studying things other than studio art. Because of this time period, and because I felt (correctly or not) that I had used up a surge of ideas beginning in 2001, I have shifted my attention from making art to writing about it. While many artists seem to regard this as a waste of time, I believe that it is valuable. If nothing else, I am good at it.
Karl’s claims that “the action in the great living art centers of today is not all that impressive”, citing New York, Berlin, and London. I would like to politely disagree. I have never been to Berlin or London, but I have been to NYC, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C. and Paris, among other places. While I’ve seen plenty of bad art, I’ve also seen a great many things of interest (to me, Karl’s tastes are clearly very different). My main interest is not in the art of the past, the kind enshrined in museums. My main interest is in the living arts of today: not because I think we’re living in the greatest of eras, but simply because the culture is active. I enjoy being in the midst of this culture.

Eventually, I plan to move to New York; in the meantime, where I am is alright.

This is a 450 pixel version. To see a 650px version or a 950px version, click on the links.

Web reproductions. Don’t you love them. The original is pigment on paper. The paper is a mild gloss and is faintly off white. This gives the lightest of warm tones to the print, which I haven’t tried to reproduce here. My preferred size for this image is about 12 inches (30cm) on 19 inch paper.