ON QUALITY IN ART – PART 1
I guess when we talk about the value of
art in our present time, it is because of the astonishing prices that are paid
for acquisition of a work of art be it a painting or a sculpture, whether it is
the work of one of the old masters or that of a contemporary artist. We are all
the more puzzled when we think about the fact that Van Gogh never sold a
painting during his entire lifetime, may be one, but now his paintings sell for
millions of dollars and their acquisition is not only a matter of great pride
but also as an investment for an art gallery or an individual collector or a
corporate house. We have even had fund houses floating art funds. Why so, what
are the justifications for such a development?
Before we really come to the question
of the value let us see what is it that we look for when we view a piece of
art. We would necessarily talk in terms of the quality of the work involved. So
what do we mean by quality in art? We always think that a painting has to be
beautiful to be a piece of art, like landscapes by Constable or a painting by
Rembrandt with their perfection in lighting and well defined shapes. There is
technical perfection and we marvel at the skills of the artist. That is “we
always assume that all that is beautiful is art, that what is not beautiful is
not art, and that ugliness is the negation of art. This identification of art
and beauty is at the bottom of all our difficulties in the appreciation of
art.” Quality is confused by beauty, taste or style. We should beware of this
confusion and avoid identifying quality with any of them.
What is beautiful varies from
individual to individual. Whether artistic value can be objectively traced in a
work of art or whether it is only subjectively felt and is simply a matter of
personal opinion then a common agreement would fall within the realms of
aesthetics and philosophy.
I remember that when I was in Paris on a short visit, I
had gone to the Louvre and since I did not have that much time I had to
literally run through the museum, but I did manage to spend quite some time in
the Italian section. When you arrive at the museum it appears that all roads
lead towards the ‘Mona Lisa’ but for me this paled into insignificance when
compared to the massive religious paintings adorning the Italian section. The
next day I was at the Musee d’Orsay and as I stood there in the halls
surrounded by the paintings of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Sisley, Cezanne and other
impressionists and Van Gogh it was a pilgrimage fulfilled for me.
So what was it that made me spend more
time at the Italian section and the Musee d’Orsay then the rest of the Louvre?
That was because that’s what I preferred, that’s what I liked. A subjective
appreciation, is’nt it? Both the museums consist of various other priceless
works of art and so do all the museums in the world. Whether I like them or not
they are undoubtedly of great value. So over and above subjective appreciation
there is an objective element which defines the value of art.
Jakob Rosenberg in his book ‘On Quality
in Art’ when talking about artistic value says “Artistic value or ‘quality’ in
a work of art is not merely a matter of personal opinion but to a high degree
also a matter of common agreement among artistically sensitive and trained observers
and to high degree objectively traceable. Our value judgement is a composite of
‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ elements.
Quality may be sensed in a work of art
without a proper approach and analysis, but it cannot be fully appreciated
without these means and without a thorough and definite effort on the part of
the observer.”
For any individual the most important
part of his psyche is his imagination, this is what allows him to explore his
subconscious. For an artist it is the urge to convey, create a work through
which he is able to translate his feelings or emotion. Each one of us is
different and we see things and feel differently. But it is the artist who is
able to express and connect with an audience.
Our mind functions in two different
ways while trying to understand a work of art. One is the through the direct
experience of the external world, i.e the immediate perception of an image and
through symbolic representation i.e the image plus its mental associations. It
would be relevant to quote Van Gogh’s own words here to help us understand and
feel through the artists own eyes “a painter as a man is too absorbed by what
his eyes see, and is not sufficiently master of the rest of his life. I myself
am quite absorbed by the immeasurable plain with cornfields against the hills,
immense as a sea, a delicate yellow, delicate soft green, delicate violet of a
ploughed and weeded piece of soil, regularly chequered by the green of
flowering potato plants, everything under a sky with delicate blue, white,
pink, violet tones. I am in a mood of nearly too great calmness, in the mood to
paint this.” (From his letters to his brother Theo). This is a mood of direct
experience which he is talking about and when we do gaze at this painting we
are also overcome by that mood of too great calmness which he talks about and
translated it into his paintings. It is this capacity to retain and express it
through a medium that distinguishes the artist from others. Each one of us have
felt carried away by certain direct experiences but our ability to sustain it
is limited.
At the other extreme we have the artist
who translates his experiences of the external world into symbolic
representations associating his experiences with his consciousness, beliefs and
emotions. Herbert Read while quoting Whitehead says “an artist of the symbolist
type is creating a combination of forms and colours which will convey a
meaning, and in art this meaning always has an aesthetic or emotional tinge.
Art of this kind may therefore be defined as ‘the symbolic transfer of
emotion’, and this definition is at the base of any theory of the aesthetics of
art.” We can see the significant shift towards symbolism with the latter day
movements of Surrealism and modernism, whether in the paintings of Salvador
Dali, Kandinsky, Mondrian or Paul Klee.
For a true understanding of the quality
of a work of art, apart from our own subjective appreciation, it would be
necessary to understand that the development of art has run parallel to the
evolution of human thought through the ages. I intend pursuing this in my
subsequent postings on this subject. (Reference
– Herbert Read’s ‘The Philosophy of Modern Art’)
