I’m no Da Vinci, that’s for sure, but I’m finding it fun. In sculpture, one doesn’t get much guess work, at least not to me. When sculpting, or rather modeling, from a real life set up, be it human model or still life, one learns to depict things accurately. Let’s forego the basic language that this entails: proportion, shape and the like. Instead, let’s focus on a language in terms of creating an illusion. There is no illusion in sculpture. Something is what it is and made up of shapes and forms blended together to form a whole. Only in the cases of extreme found art assemblages does one find illusion. I speak, as example, of maybe a tire being used to achieve the form of the upper chest of a male figure; or of the curve of a ladle to represent the curve of the lower calf muscle in a human form. These examples create the illusion of the over all form. In most forms of modeling, and even carving, we rely on directly translating the curve into the same curve (just in a different medium). I refer to only the most realistic of sculptures, of course, and when dealing with straight representational artwork. There are no ‘parts’ of a still life modeled in clay, there is only the forms of which the still life is composed directly re-represented in the chosen medium.
Painting is different however. Referring again to only the most realistic renderings out there, we see that a whole is comprised of ‘parts’. Painting is a form of art where nothing self-similar really happens. That is to say a painted apple is comprised of brush strokes that create lines, textures and forms that construct an apple when viewed as a whole. The apple may have gobs of paint built up in it, such as a Van Gogh or even be thinly painted like that of a Renaissance painting, but still the same principles are at work. We find color mixing and other elements ‘adding up’ to the representation of an apple. Such elements create the illusion of depth in the picture plane.
So what does this prove that hasn’t been stated time and again? I don’t know. What I’m getting at is that representation is what a lot of painting is about one way or the other, and sculpture exists as a secondary reality to its original. I guess the argument goes as far back as I think Aristotle or even Plato. I’ll have to check my philosophers, but I think it was Plato who didn’t really like painting and viewed as an almost tertiary reality to that of the real-REAL thing. You see, I guess I fall into the same thought pattern. There is an Ideal ‘appleness’ and a sculptor captures such in the sculpture of an apple more so than a painter captures said ‘appleness’ in a painting of an apple. The difference being that the sculptor can capture more of the ‘appleness’ given the greater amount of dimensions the sculptor deals with. This is not to say that painting isn’t valid, but Plato did think of it as a waste of time I believe.
I haven’t wasted time, however, as I enjoy the challenge of rediscovering the language of painting after so long, and that’s what it really boils down to for me. The language. Not just some of the terms I’ve used here like ‘picture plane’, ‘line’ and the like, but also the language that mark-making creates on a surface. How visual elements begin to create a synthesis of forms and thus create a whole. Painting is fun!
Tags: art, meanderings, Musings, painting