Integrity and excitement

Wednesday April 9, 2008

One of the recurring ideas I wonder about is what makes certain pieces of art great, as opposed to just good. At some point I saw a Mark Rothko painting in a gallery of contemporary work, and it just stood head and shoulders above everything else in the room. As I stood there looking at it I suddenly thought of other paintings that have the same presence, or character. For me the art works that stand out span a vast range of styles, mediums, ideas, subjects… but something makes them significantly better than their contemporaries.

I think part of the answer is in the definition of beauty that I was reading about when I wrote the previous post. Being able to see something deeper than a surface attraction, because the artwork acknowledges the joy and sorrow of life. I don’t know. I’m sure there are a ton of exceptions to this… notably a Rothko painting… How does a color field, abstract painting show such a complex idea? I don’t know, but since I’m rambling on this idea I’ll go ahead and continue anyway. Even if it is questionable to work out these ideas in a public forum.

Another way of looking for an intangible in a piece of art, is looking for the artist’s intent, or personality. This can be a hard argument to make, since people spend all day hiding aspects of their personality, but I think there’s some merit here. There are alot of different things you can learn about the artist from some of their paintings; maturity level as an artist, whether this painting is being done to make a sale or otherwise pander, whether the artist is wrapped up in trying to copy someone else’s work, how seriously they take their task of painting, whether they are willing to risk making a bad painting to get a great one… I guess the point of this idea is that one of the most crucial aspects to making better work as an artist is dealing with the psychology of what we do.

I’ve struggled with everything I listed above. Some things I don’t worry about much anymore. Others I still think are important. For example, as long as I’m trying to sell paintings for a living I’ll have to be careful about my motives when I paint. I’ve been very lucky so far, in that I’ve continued to do very well with my work as my interests in subject matter and approach shift. I haven’t found that I need to paint a certain way to make a sale. But once in a while it does pop up in my head when I’m out working, and I have to be conscious not to let that influence my work.

Is the artist’s personality, or psychology, as important to the finished piece as subject matter, or style, or technical ability? I don’t know. I think it does play a very important role in seperating the great from the merely very good. My last idea on this has to do with an artist I ran into today while I was out painting. This guy, Tollef Runquist, is another young painter. He does some landscapes and interiors, but with a looseness, vigor, integrity, excitement that just gets my blood flowing. I think he is a very strong painter, and when I look at the differences it seems like he’s searching for something beyond himself. He’s trying all kinds of stuff and getting in over his head to where he has to fight his way back out. I’m a little jealous of that, and I think I used to abe a bit more like that when I first finished college. When I was painting in my apartment bedroom in Brooklyn till 4 am and ruining all kinds of canvases to try to figure out what the hell I was doing. It’s much harder at that point, but everything is an open book.

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