by Ron at Apollo Network
My View on Good Art
INDEX:
Gallery One: Click HereGallery Two: Click Here
Gallery Three: Click Here
Gallery Four: Click Here
"Slave (dying)"
by Michelangelo, circa 1513 C.E.
Musee du Louvre, Paris
What is Good Art?
(Artists and curators of museums should not read the following. These people know a more learned answer. I'm writing here for the "common man" who enjoys an occasional afternoon in an art gallery or museum. I have been fortunate enough to see the great art collections in New York, Washington, Rome, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Madrid, but I'm only a lover or the arts, not a professional.)
The first question when seeking what is good art is to ask: What is art? (For sake of brevity, let us consider just paintings and sculptures.) An artist's task is to put something on canvas or in stone that represents an image to which you can relate. Since we are talking about Man without Clothes, let us limit this view of artistic work to people as subjects of the artist. (Of course, you may like art that is scenery or abstract, but here let's keep focused on paintings and sculptures of men.)
If you know very little about art, I have to tell you that the cards are stacked against you. For example, when you go to an art gallery, what you will be able to see has been decided for you by those who determine what they will hang on their walls. You may feel that since "knowledgeable" people put these paintings there, then they must be really good and somehow you ought to like them even if your first reaction is repulsion. The truth of the matter is that museums hang on their walls what they can afford to buy or what's available, or worst yet (in some cases) what some rich, tasteless collector left them on his death! Thousands of dreary paintings grace the galleries of museums of long dead businessmen who had enough money to get a famous painter to immortalize them in oil. Moreover, the painter was under due obligation to paint his patron, not as he really looked, but as he wanted to be remembered for posterity. No warts, please. For example, here is one of Rembrandt last paintings called Family Group, circa 1666-68, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig.
So what if Rembrandt did the painting? Art students may get all misty eyed about the shades of brown, the extra color, and point out that "the surface texture is built up with both the brush and palette knife," but for most viewers such paintings are about as much fun as looking at mug shots in police station. In many art galleries you will have to trudge through room after room looking for the "good stuff."
Do I exaggerate? Think on this. At one time the Louvre in Paris had a policy of not posting any paintings until the artist had been dead for a hundred years. Now, who was the best known, and in many critic's view, the greatest 20th Century artist? Pablo Picasso leaps to the lips. When I was in the Louvre in 1972, he was still alive, and unless they have changed their policy, you will not able to see a Picasso there until the year 2073! A kind of elitist and bureaucratic mind set reigns in the policies of most Art Galleries. For example, the work of Peter Paul Rubens was considered gauche and stored for years in museum basements. Imagine the mentality that would store in the basement a painting like The Four Continents! Personally, I had rather gaze on a Rubens painting of voluptuous bodies than dozens of 15th Century Venetian merchants or a conclave of cardinals and clerics portraits. Look at the last two paintings side by side, and make your own choice. Rubens and Rembrandt.
Equally important to remember is that just because a work is very old or even very rare does not mean that it is very good. For some works of art, the truest thing you can say is that they are rare and old. So is some dirt, but no one is framing it.
On a first visit to a world-class art gallery, a person may be overwhelmed by the inordinate amount of religious paintings and wrongly assume that most artists were religious or that religion itself was the source of all art. However, you must remember that the Christian Church has been the richest, continuous organization in operation for nearly two thousand years. It does not take much brainpower to understand that many a poor artist found favor and funds by painting an endless string of banal virgins and gory crucifixions. Tens of thousands of altarpieces in thousands of churches across Europe fed and kept alive an army of artists throughout both the Dark and Middle Ages. All told there are probably still more pieces of religious art displayed in museums and cathedrals than secular art.
If the viewer is not particularly religious, he may feel an aversion to religious paintings, but he would do himself an injustice to eschew all religious art. The subject of the painting may be religious, but fortunately the artist himself still asserted, as boldly as he dared, his own artistic flare. Unlike businessmen who paid to have their portraits painted the way they wanted them, the church often gave more artistic flexibility to the painter, not to mention that many clergymen were themselves gay and welcomed paintings of sensuous semi-clothed men, saints or sinners. Nowhere is artistic latitude better seen than Michelangelo's struggle with Pope Julius II when working on the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. That conflict and artistic triumph eventually found its way from novel to a movie, The Agony and Ecstasy (1965). In the film the artist's homosexuality was completely ignored by actor Charlton Heston who played the artist as a straight man who did not have time for romance with a woman and who just happened to prefer painting nude men on chapel ceilings. The real Michelangelo won his artistic freedom, and the miracle is that all those nudes still hover today over the heads of popes, bishops, archbishops and thousands of yearly visitors. See Sistine Chapel!
What makes real art is played out in how an artist sees, creates and reveals something to those who will see it. What is so boring about old portraits is that the people who paid for them did not really want an artist. They wanted a touched up copy of themselves. They wanted a photograph, but since there were no cameras, they had to settle for an artist. A good artist sees and relates things beyond photography. When Picasso painted a portrait of his good friend, Gertrude Stein, she looked at it and said, "But Pablo, I don't look like that." He answered, "But you will." Good art is creating something that less creative people have not yet seen. The artist opens our eyes to wider and deeper possibilities.
So what is good art? First, the answer ultimately must be decided individually. If a person does not like a work of art, it really does not matter what the "art authorities" say about it. Art has to be for every person a meaningful experience. Scroll to the top of this screen and look again at the Dying Slave Statue. Is it good art? Of course, it is, and you realize it without even knowing why. On the other hand, if you happen not to like Picasso, that is your choice, but if Picasso is really as good as they say, then you may miss an opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a gifted artist. However, there is no Fine Arts Inquisition that will send you to hell for what you like or do not like. Every person decides for himself what he likes and thinks good.
Second, your own appreciation and taste in art will change and grow as you do. Many youths start off liking the art of comic books. Most people move on to a love for paintings hanging in museums. The leap from newsstands to art galleries takes time and maturing. Consequently, what you like will depend where you are in your age and maturing process, not to mention how much time you have away from family and job to pursue the seemingly unexciting world of art. If mostly older (and rich) people like art, the reason is that they have the time to pursue its pleasures.
Third, your appreciation of art will depend on what you have been exposed to. If you live in an area without a library, a museum, a television set, connection to the Internet, or parents and religionists who condemn art, you may still be looking at comic books at any age or no art at all. The Christian religion has been possibly the greatest source of all the arts for two thousand years. The Islamic religion, on the other hand, forbids human representation and although its followers have constructed some of the most beautiful buildings in the world (e.g., the Alhambra in Spain and the Taj Mahal in India), they have given the world no paintings or statues.
What makes art "good" for the individual? Naturally, I have to answer this personally as an individual. Here is what works for me. When I stand in front of a painting or a statue, one of two things happens. The first thing that may happen is nothing, and I move on. The other thing is that looking on a painting may cause an unexplainable connection. An electronic spark arcs between my mind and the painting. My body moves closer, my eyes look at all the details, and my mind longs for another spark to zap it. Sometimes the sparks start flying like fireworks, my breath shorts, and I have a mental orgasm. (The writer James Joyce called this an epiphany, but I think orgasm has a nice ring to it.) You think I jest? If you read a good book, cannot the author make tears come to your eyes? Do you not laugh, or get angry, or even feel sexually aroused? What a writer can do with words, an artist can do with paint or stone. Writer, painter, and sculptor can reach out across centuries and connect with your mind and bring physical responses in your body. That's what good art is all about.
As was said earlier, there is the temptation to define "good art" as what has been around the longest and what is appreciated by the majority of people. American primitive art and the work of Grandma Moses will be around for a long time, but not for their artistic excellence. Rather they are examples of an era and may be more at home in a history museum than an art gallery.
Do not be fooled into thinking that what sells for the most money is the best art. Indeed, money has queered the whole art scene. I remember "the good old days" when you could wander for hours in the National Gallery Art in Washington without bumping into a soul except perhaps a bored guard. But the year that a Vincent van Gogh painting sold for sixty million plus dollars, all that was changed. Now the same Gallery is as busy as an airport with people rushing around as if they were there to catch a plane, not make love with art. (Van Gogh did not do any really famous nude males, but here is one of his drawings that reflects his style, Nude Drawing
Bottom line: You should make every attempt to view and study what the expects call "good art," but you should also look at artists whose names and works are less known. When I am in a room in an Art Gallery, I look at all the paintings and ask: If they would give me one of these paintings to take home, which would I choose? After making that choice, I go to the painting and try to figure out exactly why I like it. (So far, they have not let me take any home!) You see, in the end, art becomes "good" for you when you and the artist establish an understanding, a truth, a feeling, or a meaning that reaches across oceans and even centuries.
FINIS