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George Rhys Artist

Magic in Objective Art

2/15/2016

7 Comments

 
Picture
Tyler Pasture, acrylic on canvas, plein air, 8 x 10"
Nowadays people think that for a painting to be illusionistically successful it must “look like a photograph.” Actually a work of art can do much better. A drawing or painting, under the right circumstances, can convince a part of our awareness that we are actually in the presence of the real subject. A photographic image does not put us into the picture the way I am suggesting. A photorealistic painting just looks like a photo. Damn the photo for allowing us to stop there.

It has something to do with the way our brain works. I’ve seen it done and even done it myself a few times. I know it when it happens, and I know things about the circumstances, but I do not know quite why. I believe, oddly enough, that the effect is most pronounced when the two-dimensional offering is clearly not photographic. One facet or another of the painting takes on the perceptual glow of illusion—realism is too weak a word here. It seems appropriate to think of the experience as a near hallucination. 

There is a story of George Washington at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. He turned toward a full length painting by Charles Wilson Peale of two figures descending a staircase and bowed politely, before recognizing that it was a painting to which he was responding.

I believe that Washington was deceived because he saw the image out of the corner of his eye; his full power of perception was not in play. The examples in my own work that put me into the scene, so to speak, are also more suggestions than full disclosure. And the work seems to have a stronger effect in person than a copy on the monitor.

This first happened to me long ago with one of my own ink line drawings. It was a simple rendering of a woman, but one of the eyes had needed correction, so I had overworked it a bit. Upon contemplating that drawing some time later, that eye took on a life, most convincingly. I will post that drawing one of these days.

My example for this post is a little green pasture-scape. The brushstrokes are unsophisticated, the edges are unsoftened, there is scant detail; and yet there is something that causes us to feel that slope retreating from us, then swinging around to settle under the big tree. What is that? I will take credit for the greens working, and for the composition that draws you in and around, but if you are getting that something extra, the little hallucination of actual depth, then you can take credit for conjuring that inside your own head. (If you are not getting the effect, maybe you need to take this little picture home with you.)

I do not aspire to trompe l’oeil as a genre. What fascinates me is not the possibility of fooling the eye—I know that can be done fairly easily with flat subjects—but of showing perception to itself. The viewer recognizes a painted surface for what it is, and yet at the same time is compelled to perceive something beyond the work.

I believe that this bit of magic has been part of the human experience for a long time. I am convinced it was a factor in the cave paintings. And I am not the only artist who feels that the sketches he brings home from a trip are a more evocative record of his travels than hundreds of photographs. Perceptual enchantment has not been, for a very long time, the primary objective in the creation of artistic images, and I do not believe it should be. But it is fascinating, and there is likely something that happens inside of us in the presence of any depictive work—why else does representational art continue to interest us in spite of the strident politics of non-objective art throughout the last century?

We can’t all be stupid…can we?

I would like to continue thinking about this. (Illusionism. I already know how stupid we are.)
7 Comments
Rosario
2/16/2016 11:20:28 am

George, I don't think we are stupid, some people are just apathic and go through life without seeing the beautiful things that are around us.
I personally love your whole article, I am not in any way or form an expert and cannot even draw a straight line but I feel life in al its glory...

Reply
George
2/17/2016 10:00:37 pm

Over the years in the past century, I was discounted and even mocked for making representational art. Those mockers and discounters thought I was stupid, or at least out of it. But no, I don't think representational artists are stupid either. After all, I are one!

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Roberta Murray link
2/24/2016 07:06:26 am

I don't know how I ended up stumbling across your blog, but I am glad I did. I had no idea you kept one. As someone who divides their time between photography and painting, I find photo realism in art is boring. It is not something I strive towards. The art that moves me is the work that shows this perception, this magic that you are talking about. It is the works that move us beyond the actual thing, to the spirit and essence of the thing.

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George
2/25/2016 01:40:07 pm

Thank you, Roberta! I'm so glad you found me here. (I was going to let you know, sooner or later. Honest!)

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Laurel Starry link
7/15/2016 06:25:10 am

Interesting!

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George Rhys
7/31/2016 03:24:54 pm

I hope you will continue to check in, and that you will find other interesting tidbits here!

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Evelyn Ashley
8/3/2016 12:28:30 pm

I am very interested in your discussions on art. My last 13 years in France were spent with my companion of 13 years who was a true artist in my mind. We shared our love of painting and art in all it's forms. I discovered my own abilities in painting but could not develop my own work into something which it not pictorial. As I brushed out the lines and colors of the scene or portrait I was working on, he would pass by and at some point say, "That's good, don't do anything more to it." Of course, he was right but I could not restrain myself from adding on and on until I thought it looked exactly like the thing I was looking at. I am now thinking that what I was looking at was the illusion of mind which had to keep things in order. When my friend painted it was pure and minimalist and you could discern what was true and essential. So maybe the pictorial artist is the illusionist and the representational artist is the truth seeker.

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