After a spark-filled first date, sometimes the spark is still strong prompting thoughts of an actual relationship. This is where we come back to an artwork and consider making a purchase… but the gnawing thoughts of value and “it should be a good investment” keep slipping through…Naturally, we want to make sure we are committing to quality. We want to ensure what we are getting is great art…no? Yes! So, what makes art great?
There is no question this is a minefield of a discussion; a really really murky murky path to take because who am I to say what’s good art? Sure, I have been drawing and painting since I was 10, studying seriously since I was 14, and so I have a lot of experience; however, that does not make me necessarily someone who can tell you if an artwork is truly great. There are many critics out there, some of the best in the world, who can elucidate on this subject far more effectively than I can. Add to that art historians and gallery dealers and artist themselves and collectors and everyone will have a different opinion. But there are a few characteristics which seem to make everyone’s top 10 list. And here I will have a go at a few of my own.
First off, let’s discuss the elephant in the proverbial room: Beauty. What is Beauty? And what about the all-too-commonly used trite expression, “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”? Is it true? Is it relevant? Does great art always have to be beautiful?
I remember one day walking in downtown Toronto with a friend of mine, a fellow art student, Denyse Thomasos. Denyse was soon to become a powerful and important artist in her own right but right then we were two students struggling to keep up with the energy and demands of our first life-drawing teacher, artist Maxine Schacker.
Denyse and I were chatting about the idea of beauty. We came across a run-down neighbourhood and I made a comment about how ugly it was with garbage lying around and the buildings seemed to have been left to fall apart; the paint had peeled, bricks were missing, metal rusted. Denyse challenged me to find beauty in what most people will find ugly. ‘Look at the way this is strewn about, it creates shapes and forms within the positive space and interspaces that are dynamic and abstract”, she said, “see how the rust on that metal has taken on different warm colours, and look here how this stain on the wall creates an amazing complex pattern, how the eroded bricks show layers of textures the intact ones do not”— within seconds I saw what she was seeing. Denyse who had been a year older than me, taught me a great lesson that day and she thus tasked me, a 14-year-old just-starting-out art student, with an imperative: I was to always find beauty in anything and everything.
In our life drawing and life painting classes, Denyse and I had a favourite life model, and her name was Sandy. Sandy was a big, black, beautiful woman who had to be almost 6 ft tall and easily 300 lbs. She was the epitome of grace when she stepped onto the model’s stage. She moved like a prima ballerina. I loved drawing Sandy—her poses were the embodiment of Beauty and a contradiction of physics. Sandy inspired in us the best gesture drawings I think I have ever done.
We also loved drawing old wrinkly models— Denyse would point out the deep crevices and leathery skin on the faces and hands of these older models and I started to see the intricacies of line and form and tonal pattern. To me, they were so beautiful and within a short period of time I became enamored with drawing older models.
Denyse Thomasos died tragically and way too young several years ago. I will always be grateful for her “mature” insights, her friendship, her encouragement, and the brilliant body of work she left behind. And keeping to my promise I still challenge myself to this day to find Beauty in anything and everything.
the volatility of markets, … smugness of high fashion…
I think it is safe to say that beauty is not necessarily what we all think of as Beauty, but it is one of the qualities in great art that elicits a response in the viewer or the person experiencing it. We can’t often exactly describe it. For instance, it’s not always pretty unicorns riding off into the sunset on a rainbow—more often it is a quality, an elegance, a sense of grace, a poetic line, or a surprising juxtaposition of elements or tones or colours in a work—or ideas that cause us to pause, reflect, and smile or maybe cry; suffice to say, we know it when we feel it.
I would count Beauty as one element of great art. Is it a key element? I think so. Is it a necessary element? I’m not sure.
I am sure though that great art is timeless. This is a key and necessary element. Art must be able to withstand the ebbs and flows of academia, the volatility of markets, the fickleness and smugness of high fashion, and the glare of self-aggrandizing collectors, critics, and artists too, knowing all too well that often they don’t know that much more than anyone off the street. Great art will outlive all of us and deliver its critique of history and life many of us will wish we had erased when we could. With great art, like a great partner, the need, desire, commitment, drive, loyalty, sense of duty to stay by their side, ‘til death do us part, is unquestionable, intuitive, and natural. Separation is unthinkable.
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What else makes art great or even just good? Let’s leave that question for a future blog where I will delve into 4 other key characteristics. In the meantime, enjoy perusing and searching… and keep your eyes open… a great partner might be hanging right around the corner on the next wall.
many of us will wish we had erased when we could