A Trip to the Art Museum

Have you ever felt intimidation stepping into an art gallery? Have you been to a modern art museum and felt like a cultural moron, stuck wondering, “why is this oil painting even in here, and who decided this is art?” If your answer is ‘yes’ to either question, read on.

I’ve heard people say things like “with art, there are no mistakes. It’s all art” (and this assertion is ridiculous). You see, contrary to the opinion of those who esteem themselves as culturally elite postmoderns, art has rules. Don’t get me wrong…you can haphazardly throw paint on a canvas and it may be great therapy, but it’s not necessarily great art.

Think about it...

Consider, we don’t approach any other creative endeavor with the assumption that “there are no rules – there are no mistakes!” Can I record myself pounding on a piano and expect to go platinum? Can I string together 50 random words from Webster’s dictionary call that poetry? Can I close my eyes, dig through my refrigerator, pull out great gobs of mystery contents, whip up something special on the stove, and call that cooking? It may be special but not likely edible. And that’s because music has rules and poetry has rules and cooking has rules and if you break those rules you have a mess. It should be no surprise then that creating artwork is exactly the same way.

Rules can be our friends...

There are rules and it takes time and painstaking work to master these rules. But with mastery, they can form an incubator for truly great artwork. Let me be honest. I don’t think everything heralded as art is truly art. I think a great deal of confusion happens when we don’t make a distinction between “art” and “visual expression”. Visual expression does not have to conform to any rules at all. It can be shocking. It can be crude. It can be poorly executed. It doesn’t matter. Visual expression needs only to say something and make you think (e.g. graffiti spray painted on a wall to incite rebellion or express angst).  The confusion arises when visual expression winds up in art museums. Don’t let that intimidate or confuse you. It may be a powerful visual expression, and it may be valid. Please listen to it. Try to understand what it means. Maybe it is completely inane and nonsensical (but maybe that’s how its creator views their world, so it can still be insightful). But you don’t have to process someone’s visual expression like you would process true art. Visual expression seeks to communicate, but without reference to the rules of design and beauty. I believe true art recognizes the rules and design within the universe and works within the grain of these patterns to create something beautiful and emotive.

Art has rules and structure. Those rules and that structure provide a framework for for the creation of something truly amazing.

"The Rules" of Art

Art: The Process of Creating an Oil Painting

I recall an episode of Downton Abby where a certain gentleman made a glaring fashion blunder by wearing a white tuxedo vest. Obviously, he should have known better—should have known to wear the black vest. The family was scandalized and horribly embarrassed for him. I can only imagine.

Rules that dictate behavior in “high society” are often comical, and it’s easy to question their validity at all. Aren’t norms arbitrary and man-made? If society banded together, we could all just as well decide that it’s proper to wear orange vests to our dinner parties, and then that would be the right choice, right? The truth is, some rules are like that. And some aren’t. Some rules are really more conventions than rules. But the rules I want to proceed to discuss here – the rules of art, are far from arbitrary or man-made. We artists take our cue from nature itself. Nature – the way things work, the way things are put together – is what dictates the standards for beauty. I’d like you to study this photo:

This is a oil painting by John William Waterhouse entitled “The Lady of Shalott”. Look at the painting and notice where your eyes are led and where they rest. Are you haplessly scanning the piece, with nowhere for your eyes to land? Probably not. If you’re like most people, your eyes will immediately fall on the face, and then wander to the golden prow of the boat, and then follow the gentle curve of said boat, up the figure to rest once again at the girl's face. Your eye does this for a reason. The painter, John William Waterhouse, used a device called the Golden Section when he composed this piece. The Golden Section (also known as the Golden Ratio or the Divine Proportion) is an almost magical ratio. Mathematically, it is the ratio 62:38. This ratio is found all over nature, all over art, all over everything we deem beautiful. The Golden Section is the most aesthetically pleasing division of space. Looking up at the above photo again, start at the right side and trace your eyes over 62% of the way to the left. That point corresponds to the placement of the woman’s face. Start from the bottom of the photo and measure out 62% and you’ll find your eyes again stop at the woman’s face. Your eyes naturally fall on her because they are carried there by this intersection of two very important mathematical divisions. But there is another reason your eyes are drawn to rest upon the woman’s head. Waterhouse employed not only the Golden Section in the composition of his piece but also his knowledge of contrast. Your eye will always travel to where the lightest light and the darkest dark meet. There is a reason the Lady is wearing white and the sun is shining bright on the top of her head: this creates the point of greatest contrast in the painting against the dark background of the trees. The result is that your eyes are not scrambling but resting naturally at the exact point the artist predetermined to draw them.   I might also mention the use of complementary colors in this painting. Complementary colors are opposites on the color wheel and a complementary color is used to either balance the predominate color or to accent it. Look at the painting again. The predominant colors in this piece are muted greens but he also uses the complement of muted reds. In the water we see blues and violets and that is complemented with the golds and yellows. All this to say: this painting was not haphazardly assembled. Waterhouse worked within The Rules and created a masterpiece.  

...Good art is that it is always created with skill

The last thing I’ll say about good art is that it is always created with skill. There should be somewhat of a mystery about it. When standing in front of a beautifully painted piece of art you should be prompted to awe and wonder, asking the question, “how did he or she do that?” To be honest, much of the artwork in modern times leaves me asking no such question. There is no mystery and no obvious skill. Such art neither commands my respect nor holds my interest. Art that will be remembered throughout history is not that which ignores the rules, nor that which becomes tirelessly bogged down with the rules. No, art that lasts will be that which so internalizes the rules that it moves beyond them, synthesizing and remixing them into new focal points of beauty—new reinventions of that created order which was there from the beginning, but which is inexhaustible in its number of true expressions.

To School or Not to School...

School of Art 

Now and then, I am asked by aspiring young artists if I have any recommendations for an art school to learn to paint landscape or abstract art. The answer to that question is always quite difficult… 

…If a person is gifted creatively, a fine arts major could be extremely beneficial, or it could destroy their potential. It depends on who they are, how they’re wired, and what they’re looking for. One would think that the goal of a fine arts degree would be to learn all the necessary tools for making a living as an artist, right? This would seem like a realistic expectation given the tens of thousands of dollars mommy and daddy are spending for the degree. I mean really, why spend all that time and effort and money just to graduate and flip burgers at McDonalds? (or rather, flip burgers while paying interest on a $60,000 student loan). But this happens all the time, and it’s rarely for a lack of talent.

An option I think everyone would do well to consider is to look for an accomplished artist and ask them to mentor you. Then, go to school and learn something that would help you as an artist (like marketing or business) and all along, learn your craft from your mentor. This is how they did it back in the day and may make a whole lot of sense to bring back. 

But if you're dead set on going to art school, here are my suggestions:

First of all...

First, get online and take a look at artwork of the actual art students. That will tell you a lot. You might think the artwork looks really cool, but the question you need to ask yourself is: does this artwork look like anything anyone would actually purchase and put in there home? I know… I know… even asking that question will insult some aspiring artists, but more than likely I’m saving them from a lifetime of burger flipping. Now, if all you want to do is visually express yourself and you don’t give a wit about making a living actually doing art, then none of this applies to you. The people I’m writing to are those who want to be trained to make a living by learning a skill. For that to happen, you need to learn to make work that others value. Makes sense, right? It’s not rocket science.

Then...

Once you find a school that looks promising, call that school and schedule a tour. A lot of schools will even allow you to sit in on a class, which can be extraordinarily helpful. You’ll be able to tell right away whether the instructors are training students in a new skill or just touting “unconfined expression”. If they are doing the latter, their whole venture is self-refuting—they are building their program on the false premise that art isn't a skill, but if that were truly the case, you wouldn’t need to go to school for it in the first place.

IN CLOSING...

The most important thing to stress is that all of us would do well with input, advice and encouragement from someone who does what we want to do better than we do it (whether we're talking brain surgeons, journalists, actors, dentists or artists). Get input and encouragement. And if you try to do that at an art school, choose carefully. The right school can be a really great find (and the wrong one will be a waste of countless thousands of dollars).