Painting

When looking at paintings, we establish a silent dialogue between ourselves and the picture before us.  We bring our expectations, imagination, and taste to the experience, and the longer and closer we look, the more the painting reveals itself.  Yet it is sometimes difficult to understand the visual language the artist has used: time and culture may distance us from the painting; it may depict an unfamiliar subject, or have no recognizable subject at all.  Considering certain questions — about imagery, composition, color, and style, as well as about facts such as who the artist was, when it was painted and why — can help us gain new insights.  But a picture’s particular appeal can never be explained away: It remains and deepens with every viewing.

Nothing can replace the experience of a work of art in the original.  Like its size, the physical shape of a painting is also instantly perceived.  Shapes can vary enormously according to context, function and taste.  The most common shape is rectangular, with most individual portraits, for example, being vertical, and most landscape paintings horizontal.  Both these formats reflect the subjects’ characteristics, and the way we perceive them in reality.

Whether creating a figurative work — one in which elements from the physical world are represented — or an abstract one, the artist has to divide up the picture surface, and compose the elements of the image.  On one level, this may be simply a matter of creating a pleasing design.  But composition can have a powerful effect on the way the spectator responds to the picture.   Symmetrical, balanced paintings can evoke a mood of tranquillity, stillness, and harmony and particularly in large-scale works can creat a sense of formal grandeur.  Asymmetrical, deliberately unbalanced compositions may heighten the sense of drama or unease, or create the effect of dynamic action.  Composition can also help tell the story, by leading the eye through the picture in a way that helps the spectator to ‘read’ the narrative as the artist intended.

For centuries, most artists aimed to make their painted objects appear like real objects occupying real space.  And many people still judge a painting according to how ‘real’ it looks.  But in the 20th century, there has been a fundamental shift away from the notion that a painting exists to represent an illusion of observable reality.  The Cubists first broke with the conventions of illusionism.  Rather than showing objects from a single, fixed viewpoint, which is necessary for the creation of a visual illusion, they used multiple viewpoints — fragmenting objects by depicting them from a number of angles.  Since then, non-representational, abstract art has developed, and many artists have rejected the idea that a painting needs to ‘look like’ anything apart from itself — it has its own reality.

We often look at paintings out of the context for which they were originally intended.  But to fully appreciate the particular character of a work of art, we need to consider its original function and setting, and think how those affected its form and content.  The imagery, style, size, and viewpoint of a pairing depend largely on why it was painted, for whom it was painted, and where it was intended to be seen.  Most paintings were not made to be hung beside others in a gallery; they were commissioned or sold for a set purpose.  That purpose might thane been anything from aiding private religious devotions to decorating the ceiling of an aristocrat’s palace.

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