I Love art. (Note the capital.)
I Love The Arts. (Again, note the capitals.)
Even when I don’t love the art I am looking at, I still love the process of looking at something I don’t like, love or react to it – it is a process that helps to further define in the mind what it is that you do like, love or react to.
The Boy, however, is slightly less comfortable with art, or The Arts, excepting the majority of music genres and Hollywood/ main-stream films - that which is easily ‘understandable’. And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way in the least. It is simply an observation I have made with him, and also The Friend – as is my wont, I have dragged them to art galleries wherever we go, and, like the unspeakably charitable companions that they are, they have never refused to come with me. Yet their reaction is largely the same across all manner of exhibitions (art or otherwise) – that they don’t ‘understand’ it, or that they aren’t ‘clever’ enough to understand it.
Their words, not mine.
I have tried, and continue to try to make them confident in their own sensory reaction – that, if they are compelled to stand in front of a canvas, keep hitting the repeat button on a CD track, or cry or laugh aloud whilst watching a film, they need to not explain this phenomenon in technical, esoteric or academic terms. “I just kept looking”, or “there’s an amazing squelch half-way through”, or “that scene was unbelievably moving” – they all, for me, are valid reasons.
The idea that artists, whatever their medium, create their works in the light of how they will be reviewed technically, or how they fit in the context of their life’s work, is, for me, difficult to entertain. Obviously they will have considered the technical aspects of their work, as with improved mastery of technique, so the final product is improved. However, artists (I hope) are doing what they do as an expression of or outlet for emotion. So it surely follows that of their recipients, they in the first instance, are hoping to evoke a reaction. Artists that produce solely with critics or their reviews in mind are not artists at all. They are egotists. And I have no time for them. Thus why I have little time for contemporary art. If you, as an artist, have truly connected with the idea behind your work, how can you then employ a small army to produce an armada of replicas to then sell to the public. Be it art, food, music, film, or words –the person or people behind the original idea that is being replicated should be involved closely at each stage, and if they aren’t, the quality of the product wanes until it becomes a drooping, lifeless and unrecognisable shadow of its former self.
Anyway, I digress. Back to ‘understanding’ art.
We were recently at The Royal Academy’s Constable, Gainsborough, Turner exhibition. The Boy likes Turner. He likes the seascapes. They present no challenge to the eye – they are what they are. And He likes that. So, I had suggested going.
I was not grabbed by anything in the exhibition except one large oil painting by Constable: The Leaping Horses. After doing the rounds in all the rooms, I happily stood in front of that painting for some time, absorbing it as a whole, and absorbing it in its parts. People milled around in front of me, and bubbled about behind me. Conversations wafted over me. Two caught my attention:
A young couple were drifting from exhibit to exhibit when the girl announced that, in reference to a Constable, it had been painted in Suffolk. She had been taken there on a school trip once, to learn about where Constable had painted The Haywain. And, ever since then, she had always liked Constable because she knew he had painted in Suffolk.
Her words, not mine.
It is not because Constable’s art moves her that she liked or likes him, it is because she ‘knows’ something about him. She knows that fact, therefore she likes him.
Hmmm. The Eyebrow twitched.
A few minutes passed. Another group hovered behind me. An elderly couple with their adult daughter. The father was making technical estimations on The Leaping Horses. The daughter was listening, looking and agreeing. The mother then interposed with her own cogitations in relation to the father’s comment that one might call the application of paint coarse, and said that she didn’t think very highly of it. It was too messy.
I shudder to think what she might say in front of a Twombly canvas.
Something in the mind of that viewer shut down all sensory reactions in the face of that which is too messy: Nature.
The Eyebrow arched again.
I am, by no means, a Gombrich for the 21st century. Nor do I love every form of art, however I find it very hard to understand why people find The Arts so challenging. For me, the only ‘wrong’ way to approach The Arts is to only think of it academically or technically. In that manner, of course you would feel inadequate or under-qualified to view new or different forms, as no one can be fully educated in the ways and history of each art.
The most ‘correct’ or ‘true’ way to ‘understand’ art should be, first and foremost, the individual’s sensory reaction. And actually it is not the art you need to ‘understand’, it is your own reaction. Your opinion. No one can deny it or deny you of it. And if your opinion does not agree with the pre-existing, or widely-accepted opinion out there, then, good. Don’t disown it. Hype gets my neck vein twitching. Endless crowds queuing up to eat in The new restaurant in town, because so and so reviewed it as amazing, but not actually tasting the food in their mouth and assessing whether or not their personal reaction agrees with the review or hype.
Sheep. Sheep lacking senses. Or rather, sheep lacking the ability to listen to their own senses.
Art, in whatever form, like laughing, is something that can be universally shared and enjoyed. It requires only the senses. Education, background information or academic reviews may enhance the experience for some, but, the easiest yet most important part of art is the individual’s reaction, and for some reason seems to be the part that is most often ignored, or most often feared.
My aim for 2013 is to get The Boy more comfortable with The Arts. Things have definitely improved for him, but there is still work to be done. Next stop, The Donmar’s all-female production of Julius Caesar.
His choice, not mine.
Well done The Boy.
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