How do you 'view' paintings?

RosiesMawagain

Theres no great mystique or indeed skill/education/ understanding involved.
By all means read about the artist- there’s usually a helpful text on the wall or better still use the large print booklets which give you all the information you might need.
But so many people are ‘intimidated’ by art as they feel they have to understand it and there’s no shortage of pundits to drone on and on.
But look at a painting or sculpture at your leisure if possible and if you like it, look some more and if you don’t, move on!

The uestion then arises, which is the work of art, the explanation or the artistic work? DD raised this uestion when we chanced on an exhibition at the Tate Gallery that seemed to consist of acrylic bookshelves in many shapes and sizes. Not tthsat the explanation was very enlightening.

I like sensually curved lines . and understated colours.

I tend these days to look at technique rather than the subject matter these days. I love the nuances and effects that can be produced with water colour paints and if well executed these can add to the enjoyment of a picture even if the subject is rather dull. I like to be to be able to see something different in a picture each time I look at it, even if that difference is only slight.

I love some works of art at first sight, others grow on me. A friend once had a coffee table book filled with Caravaggio paintings, I was smitten immediately and saw an exhibition of his work a couple of years later in Genoa. His work just makes me have butterflies, I feel it on a visceral level. The Dutch masters I also love. But was a little while flirting with Turner before I fell for his works pretty hard.
The same with Manet and Van Gogh.

The uestion then arises, which is the work of art, the explanation or the artistic work? DD raised this uestion when we chanced on an exhibition at the Tate Gallery that seemed to consist of acrylic bookshelves in many shapes and sizes

I don’t understand your question. Of course the explanation is not a work of art any more than a review is a play or a book.
The clue is in the word ‘explanation’ although I don’t think art needs ‘explaining’ .

Greyduster

I tend these days to look at technique rather than the subject matter these days. I love the nuances and effects that can be produced with water colour paints and if well executed these can add to the enjoyment of a picture even if the subject is rather dull. I like to be to be able to see something different in a picture each time I look at it, even if that difference is only slight.

Great point. Technique is a very good identifier.

kittylester

Following on from other threads about art - how do you 'see' art.

Does something 'speak' to you straight away or do you look for the deeper meaning?

I feel I must be very superficial as I either like or dislike something on sight but we have friends who will look at a a piece of work for ages working out what it is all about.

Am I not being discerning enough?

I like to feel as if I'm there.

That is why I'm not keen on portraits. They can be beautiful, skilful, I can admire them but I wouldn't buy one to put on the wall.

However, as I mentioned on the other thread, the Beryl Cooke paintings are great fun!

Such as this one Allira? 😊
They are immediately recognisable aren’t they?

Ditto Vermeer (for me), Vettriano and others.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Such as this one Allira? 😊
They are immediately recognisable aren’t they?

Ditto Vermeer (for me), Vettriano and others.

😁
Is that Plymouth? I don't remember an Algonquin restaurant!

RosiesMawagain

^The uestion then arises, which is the work of art, the explanation or the artistic work? DD raised this uestion when we chanced on an exhibition at the Tate Gallery that seemed to consist of acrylic bookshelves in many shapes and sizes^

I don’t understand your question. Of course the explanation is not a work of art any more than a review is a play or a book.
The clue is in the word ‘explanation’ although I don’t think art needs ‘explaining’ .

Precisely, which is why I do not understand the need for most art galleries to explain everything to us, by definition seeing the explanation as something that should come before the artwork. Something you read first then look at. No artwork has one explanation, only individual responses.

I’m not religious but, for some reason whilst wandering round the Uffizzi gallery in Florence I found my self standing in front of this one with tears streaming down my face
www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/lippi-madonna-and-child-with-two-angels
I can’t remember when it was either. Maybe I was feeling broody but didn’t realise it? I can sit and gaze at Stubb’s Whistejacket for ages. I, too like Rothkos paintings but can’t explain why. Ditto Jackson Pollock. A friend went to an exhibition of his works many years ago and I was quite jealous as I’d love to actually see them.And David Hockneys paintings are a delight, even the ones he just does using an iPad ( or something like that).

My house is like an art gallery..our kitchen diner is full of paintings. I don't mean the trendy "gallery wall" sort of feature either. My finds are usually from charity shops or some that I've bought online and had framed. Each one called me, from a tiny exquisite painting of a song thrush to the larger semi-abstract of an artist's kitchen table complete with paint brushes, water in a jam jar and a ceramic pot of daisies.
It's all very eclectic, including posters from plays or concerts we've attended. I have a collection of frames in a box in the garage waiting for any new finds.
I have to be drawn to a painting. In galleries I'll often go in close to look at brush strokes and the layering of blending of paint.
Usually colour and form rather than subject matter attracts me.

For our fiftieth anniversary, we decided that rather than buying each other presents we would buy something we both liked so we bought a pair of watercolours of steamships. We both like marine art and these were both by the same artist. One is of a Cunard liner being retired to the breakers yard (reminiscent of Turner’s ‘Fighting Temeraire’), the other of a steamship in port being prepared for its next voyage. Heavy subjects, but executed with such a light touch, that things like the smoke issuing from the funnels, the tugs in attendance and the background details of a busy wharf don’t detract from the ships themselves, but are still in themselves full of painterly interest. To be able to paint ships properly, you have to know ships, and this artist certainly knew not only his subject but his painting medium.I

RosiesMawagain

^The uestion then arises, which is the work of art, the explanation or the artistic work? DD raised this uestion when we chanced on an exhibition at the Tate Gallery that seemed to consist of acrylic bookshelves in many shapes and sizes^

I don’t understand your question. Of course the explanation is not a work of art any more than a review is a play or a book.
The clue is in the word ‘explanation’ although I don’t think art needs ‘explaining’ .

It;s good to have works of art explained because the idiom is not as well understood as it may be if the form is explained.

A work of art is also set in history so that the culture in which it was created affected the form taken by the work of art. For instance the culture from which cave paintings of animals and people emerged was instrumental in the production of those works,

For another instance The Fighting Temeraire by Turner is better appreciated when it's explained that it symbolises the advent of steam power that alienated us somewhat from the wind power that is closer to nature.; The Fighting Temeraire is a lament for and glorifiction of a time gone by.

I think your reply sort of proves the point i was trying to make.

An explanation of that painting doesn't increase my appreciation of it - it still doesn't move me at all.

Which goes to prove that we all appreciate art differently

MayBee70 I think our response to art is bound up with or lives and experience.

I know my responses are.

I am moved by beauty, yes, but also know I respond to reflections of my own life - or the lives of others I've lived alongside, or our forefathers, or our visceral personal landscapes- the ones that spoke or speak to us.
It doesn't have to be a "scene" or a landscape - it may the the drama (or subtle quietness) of the brushstrokes, the aggression of the carving, the texture of the yarn.

Maybe I come from somewhere else but when I am making things I try to infuse, create (or recreate) feelings, places, moods that are meaningful to me.

My work is not pictorial but it is a "feeling".

I worked on a series of small pieces loosely based on my longing for a place/ experience/ time/ - something long gone. The link between the different works on this "theme" was (in my head) the rural Wales of my own history and the loss of family overseas, westwards, to Ireland and beyond. They were works variously of love, joy, pain, regret, relief, new starts...
One work was sold to someone who immediately "knew" that I was weaving her love story as a young woman growing up in Santourini. She was SO specific. This was as true as my intention.
😍

I don't believe there is a single truth in what we see and respond to.
I have always got a "backstory" in my work - but maybe not the "backstory" you will respond to.

I will never forget that Santourini woman. She taught me such a lot.

Proust in his essay against the critic St. Beuve argued that who wrote the novel was not relevant. St. Beuve argued for biographical knowledge of the author to comprehend fully the novel. Perhaps they were both right and maybe that applies to visual art.

kittylester

I think your reply sort of proves the point i was trying to make.

An explanation of that painting doesn't increase my appreciation of it - it still doesn't move me at all.

Which goes to prove that we all appreciate art differently

I know what you mean-----I used to gaze at Claude Lorraine's huge oil painting in the National Gallery of Scotland because I enjoyed how my eye and mind were drawn towards the golden sky at the end of the vista. A critic wrote that Claude can't draw people however this made no difference to my sensual pleasure of the movement in the picture. as a whole

This is my favourite from a recent exhibition we went to. No idea why.

As I said in the other thread I was moved to feeling quite emotional over the Prodigal Son. But I bought a print of an Henri Matisse, can’t recall the name, a circle of dancing figures pretty much all all red. I framed this and it hangs proudly in my hall, I love it.

With my eyes

Canaletto is my favourite artist. Mostly of Venice, but some painted during his time in London. Such precision and so much in each one, that every time you look you find something you missed before.

I either like something or I don't, I don't need to understand it. Generally speaking I'm not a fan of modern art, I like art to look like what it's supposed to be. I think works of art like Tracey Emin's bed are brilliant simply because of the fact they are somehow able to make people believe it's art and make money from it. Definitely Emperor's new clothes stuff.

I see pictures that I don't know either liek or I don't. But I'm far from a fan of any art really.

No I defo do not analyse. I like it or I don't. Hate modern art... pointless in my opinion. I love Impressionism... Renoir, Degas etc and I love Art Deco, and Jack Vettriano. All have movement,elegance and beauty in them.