GREAT OR MODERN ?

'These are not works of art at all, unless throwing a handful of mud against a wall may be called one. They are the works of idleness and impotent stupidity, a pornographic show.'
-Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.

If you appreciate great paintings, I applaud you. If not, I mourn your loss.

Humankind has been painting almost as long as they have been doing anything else. Art is one of the most basic and poignant methods we have of expressing ourselves. Any child can – and indeed every child I have ever known does – draw and make pictures. It is a basic urge, an intrinsic and irresistible impulse that we all submit to at some point. Even those of us who have little or no artistic talent doodle and draw little pictures sometimes.

I have a personal interest in art history. It is one of my favourite subjects. As with all of the things I like to learn about, I do accept that most people do not share my hunger. Most people who do not have some art education will not fully understand (or even care) what words like ‘foreshortening’ mean; they won’t know the difference between ‘surreal’ and ‘impressionist’; they will not look at a painting and be thinking of things like perspective and vanishing points.

But I will not accept the idea that anyone can stand before a great work of art and not appreciate it. Whether for the pure and simple fact that it is nice to look at, or because it accurately portrays a historical figure from before the days of photography, or because it tells a story. Everyone can – or at least should – appreciate a good work of art when they see it.

If you have never stood before an original work by Raphael, you cannot possibly imagine how perfectly seamless the brush strokes are. If you have yet to stand with a work of Rembrandt a few feet from your eyes you would not believe anyone else who tried to describe in words the texture of it.

If you can stand in the middle of the Sistine Chapel and look up at Michelangelo’s ceiling, behold the sheer majesty of it, breathe in the historical weight of the ambience of the place, and not be stirred, then you must be devoid of a soul.

Even someone without an educated interest in art should, when standing in the dining hall of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, look at Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper on the back wall, and be moved and amazed. This 15ft by 29ft mural painting, which covers the back wall, was created by Da Vinci from 1495-1498, and has, due to the experimental nature of the technique he used, badly degraded over the years. Even in its current poor state though, it looks like part of the room. The lines are so perfect that the back wall seems simply to continue into another space that contains a table where Jesus and his apostles sit. Everyone will appreciate the sheer emotion and expression displayed by the figures in the image, the dynamic poses of the twelve apostles, the expressions on their faces. Even if you can’t actually name the apostles in order, if you aren’t consciously aware that Jesus sits at the vanishing point of the image’s compositional lines, even if you have never been made aware of the possible significance of the number 3 in the structure of the work, or if you are unaware of many other facts and details of academic artistic interest, you will - you should – be stirred to your core by seeing this masterpiece.

If you have read a certain popular work of (ahem) ‘literature’, you may be aware that the figure commonly accepted to be the apostle John in The Last Supper is quite feminine and may actually be Mary Magdalene, and you may be aware of the mysterious alleged ‘extra hand’ wielding a threatening knife. Such speculation and alternative theories about the exact meaning behind, nature of, and message contained in, a work of art, add to its mystery, its attraction. While I personally am largely disdainful of such mad theories, anything that makes people who wouldn’t otherwise do so look at a great work of art must have some small benefit.

If a work of art provokes literature and commentary, if it finds a place in a museum or gallery, if people travel from all over the world to view it, if it is held aloft as an example to others, then it must have something. It must be special. It must be great.

Everyone appreciates great art. Everyone from those educated in the history and terminology of art, to those who don’t really care about such things. Their appreciation may be for different reason. They may ‘get’ something completely different from the work. But the act of appreciating by so many people is what makes a work of art truly great.

While studying art, I have had to examine and write essays about many different works of art. I have discovered that there are some things I don’t like. Impressionism, for example, doesn’t really work for me. I know that the likes of Claude Monet and Edouard Manet did do some art that I like, but they also did those fuzzy, blurry, indistinct, messy things that just seem completely pointless to me.

Equally pointless and rubbish are the works of Pablo Picasso and other Cubists. What bothers me most about these people is that I know they have done good art, there are paintings of theirs which I like, but the ones they are famous for, the ones they get acknowledged for and the ones that people commonly recognise as theirs are the ones that I can’t help but thinking of as worthless rubbish.

However…in an uncharacteristic show of understanding, I can (sort of) see why some people do like those kinds of paintings. There is obviously still great skill required in their creation. And they are different. Different always goes a long way to make things stand out.

Maybe it’s because I’m a photographer, and I just like things to look like they are supposed to. Maybe it’s because I studied history, and I like to think of art as a reliable record of what the world has been like. Maybe I’m just too simple, and there’s something in them that’s just too deep for me to see it. Whatever the reason, I don’t like them, but at least I can appreciate that other people do.

I have however, discovered a phenomenon that has me baffled, has my brain spinning in confused circles, and about which I can find not the slightest morsel of understanding.

For some reason that I cannot grasp, Jackson Pollock’s work is appreciated.

I once had to write a 1,500-word essay about a Jackson Pollock ‘painting’ (and I use the word very lightly). It was painful. It hurt, deeply hurt, to write from an academic viewpoint about what I saw as a nothing more than a random mess of spattered paint. How can that be art?

Yeah, yeah, the very question of ‘what is art?’ is a whole philosophical debate about which we could argue and debate for several lifetimes. But putting aside everything else, I am thinking here simply of art which is good to look at; art which inspires the imagination; art which stretches through history to tell us what has gone before, what life was like back when it was created, what people thought and believed in the past; art which makes somewhere look attractive; art which helps us to relax; art which provokes emotions; art that can be appreciated by everyone, anyone.

And that I think is the nub.

Modern art is designed, purposefully crafted by its devious creators, to be seemingly impenetrable to the unenlightened. The haughty art academics surround these ‘non-art’ creations with flowery words, elaborate descriptions, and suggestions of arcane meanings that the uneducated masses cannot hope to comprehend.

The skill of modern art seems to be more of sophistry and rhetoric that real artistic talent.

Why go to the time and trouble of creating a real work of art, when you can throw together any old piece of trash, hide your brazen brass neck behind a carefully crafted mask of mysterious musing, and throw together some elegant explanation of the message the art is supposed to convey. You will (as long as you are a ‘real’ artist, who has been properly educated and qualified, and conforms to what the establishment expects) doubtless be backed up by a legion of sycophantic supporters who will add their own swanky descriptions of your wondrous creation to support its genuineness.

Leonardo Da Vinci died in 1519. Today the Mona Lisa is an artistic treasure beyond price. It is a simple portrait of an unnamed subject. Nearly 500 years after its creator’s passing, a great work of art is still a great work of art.

Jackson Pollock died in 1956. In the 25th century will people still be appreciating his ‘One: Number 31’? Will it be a priceless artefact held securely in a museum, visited by millions of people every year?

Know what I think?

I think the archaeologists of the 25th century will uncover the ruins of New York’s Gallery of Modern Art, find it, and think ‘oh look, someone spilled some paint…they must have hung it up there so that no-one stood in it and soiled their shoes’.

But I bet the Mona Lisa is still being appreciated even then.