Art Talk
a monthly Linn County Leader column
by Nora Othic
April 2006
LOOKING AT ART, PART ONE
One of the most interesting things about selling at art fairs is watching the general public look at art and hearing them talk about it. I sit in my director's chair in a booth filled with my work and I could be that chair in as much as people discuss my drawings openly in front of me. Not only have I learned to be thick-skinned about this, I've also learned a lot about how non-professionals view art. Over the years I've heard the same truisms often enough to realize they represent the opinions of a substantial part of the population.
I once had a man tell me (about another artist), "I know he's really good. His work has a lot more detail than yours". Or people say, "oh, this is good---it looks just like a photograph". I've seen people become genuinely angry at abstract art, thinking that someone is trying to put something over on them: "that's not art! My three-year-old could do that!" Or conversely, "I'm really not into conservative art---I like abstracts". All of these statements come from ideas which, while not exactly wrong, are somewhat incomplete.
For example, good art doesn't have to have a lot of detail. That's like saying Beethoven was good because he used a lot of notes. Detail is just one tool at the artist's disposal and it can be used to great effect by a good artist or can obscure whatever point the mediocre artist tries to make. Look at a painting by Rembrandt and what appears to be richly embroidered cloth or thick fur or a mass of unruly hair is mainly dense shadow with a few loose brushstrokes to suggest texture. Other artists may use an overwhelming array of individual strokes that ultimately meld into one cohesive whole (Jackson Pollack). Or a painter such as Milton Avery might successfully eliminate virtually all detail to create a composition that is a very powerful shorthand, where shapes are pared down to only what is essential.
Good art doesn't need to look like a photograph. It can of course. There was a movement called Photo-Realism in the 60's and 70's which featured a precise-in-every-detail style and depicted ordinary life: shop windows, travel trailers, faces blown up to unflattering size (Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, Chuck Close). It had a stark, intelligent perspective but was unfortunately co-opted by a great many unoriginal artists who thought that the whole idea was to copy a photo in excruciating detail. Just as attention to detail can serve the artist or overwhelm him, so can hyper-realism serve an idea, or hide the fact that there is no idea.
When it comes to abstract or representational art, many people align themselves in one camp or the other, as if there was a war going on. One side is the "abstract is bad, realism is good" faction, while the other side thinks, "abstract is sophisticated, realism is outdated". The truth is, art is art, and a good work has strong composition, some interesting line structure or color relationships and an underlying point of view. The only difference between the two is one has a recognizable subject and the other doesn't. I've seen realist works that had a brutally strong statement or abstracts that were merely decorative. I've seen totally vapid representational paintings and abstracts that were so intelligent and forceful you could study then for hours. Part of the responsibility of making art work is with the viewer. The artist is like an electrician---he does the wiring, installs the switch, but if the audience never flips that switch, the circuit is never completed and the light doesn't come on. A bad piece of art doesn't require anything from you---everything is immediately apparent and needs no thought. A good work is more difficult. It has layers of meaning and can be revisited again and again. Put some effort into looking at art and it will pay off in spades.
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