1.Vermeer, The Milkmaid, 1658-60.
In this Vermeer painting we can clearly see that it is an interior scene with a woman going about the daily chore of pouring milk into a bowl. This scene is loaded with many refined details: the weave of the wicker baskets, the shine of a metal pot (behind her on the wall), the folds of her clothes, and the decorative images painted on the tiles that line the wall. We can even see the spiral of the flow of the milk. The woman is realistically presented with natural anatomy. She is prominent both in size and location. Notice the natural depth within the painting, she feels quite right in-between the table in the foreground and the wall behind her. The colors of things are clean and there are clear differences between the color of her arms and the colors of her clothes. An interesting element is the prominence of the light on the wall behind her, it takes up a third of the painting and it makes its brilliance felt.
Within the borders of this canvas Vermeer projects a realistic view of people, of things, and he projects the true to life environment of space and light. This painting projects a markedly intelligible view of humanity and its environment.
2. Kandinsky, Black Spot I, 1912.
The universe of this Kandinsky is essentially different from the Vermeer. Here we have abstract objects in fanciful shapes. They may or may not be based on real things, such as mushrooms, birds, bugs, or dolls. But taken literally we cannot know with any certainty what these objects are; we are safer to assume that they aren't things from reality but are simply abstractions. The colors of green, gold, blue, black, light pink are pure and there are clean distinctions between them. There is very little depth in the painting and though the colors are bright we have no sense that there is any light. The relationship of these abstract objects to one another seems to be arbitrary in the sense that there is a squiggle there, a blob here and we have the idea that they just popped up.That said then, what do you have to say about this piece by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian: How does this canvas answer the question, "Is the universe intelligible to man, or unintelligible and unknowable?" Remember to back up your answer.
The universe in this painting, though clean and clear and whimsical, is unknowable to us in the normal meaning of the word. Kandinsky projects, quite literally, floating abstractions; abstractions disconnected from an intelligible universe.
Mondrian, Composition in Red, Yellow and Blue, 1921.LINKS: More on value judgements in art - Not PC (22 Sept)
Detecting value judgements in painting - Michael Newberry
RELATED: Art, Objectivism, Philosophy
3 comments:
The bottom one looks very much like my shower curtain.
Good that I am up to date with the latest fashions, even if it is purely coincidental.
Brian S. wrote,
"...I imagine that the colours in the full-size original would really sing (A quick google confirms, of course, that this is not coincidental, as Kandinsky had synesthesia)."
Actually, Kandinsky did not have synesthesia. He only explored the condition as a possible means of understanding how abstract visuals affect us in ways similar to music.
J
Brian, you said: "Kandinsky is exploring the idea that colour and line, when freed from any representational role, can still convey feelings to us... Now I'm guessing that Newberry - and certainly Vermeer, as evidenced by the beautiful picture above - would acknowledge that colour and line in and of themselves can have an emotional effect on us and that there must be some objective basis to this..."
Well, yes, but that's only one part of what has effects us. Colour and line are to art as a sentence is to a poem, or timbre is to music, or good grammar is to literature -- just one of the means by which art is made. They're not on their own enough on which to base a 'microcosm of our view of the universe': there just ain't enough there.
It would be like saying, for example, that rhythm is all that affects us in music (ignoring the integrating effect of melody) or that characterisation is all that is important in literature (ignoring the integrating effect of plot).
Colour and line do affect us, for sure -- and they're appropriate playthings for artists to study on their own, as a study of the effect of colour and line -- but Vermeer and Newberry and Rembrandt and the masters use them just as one part of the effect of a whole ensemble of effects that are integrated by the subject of their canvas.
On its own colour and line, however playful, are just not enough to have the effect that full-blown art can with all of its effects integrated and brought to bear, anymore than a stray sentence or bit of pottery, however fine, can compare to the effect of a full novel of a complete 'architectural ensemble.'
On its own it's just lines and blobs, is all, and on their own that just ain't enought. ;^)
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