the 4 horsemen

colourful drawing of hyrdro towers in fields with forests and lilly pads and bulrushes and cattails and a smoke bush and hills
Les Tours Hydro Landscape. Mixed media on Arches rag paper. 2021. $4850
That doesn’t make it bad… that makes it thought provoking, 
Which, in my mind, is always a good thing!
drawing of a woman in in ink, charcoal, 35” x 45”
Woman. Sumi, charcoal, chalk, pastel on acid free paper 35” x 45” 1989. $2500 framed.

Likening 4 critical characteristics of great art to apocalyptic doom and gloom of the 4 horsemen might be a bit much, but whether you look at the New Testament or the Old, leaving these characteristics out of one’s artwork might just bring on punishment on an apocryphal scale.

That’s not to say that every work of art must always have all 4 characteristics, but I do believe an artist teeters on the edge if they were to leave any of these out. We already have Beauty and Timelessness checked off (see my last blog if you missed those). What other characteristics make the list?  Allow me to delve into each of them.

Digital Man. Digital Drawing on Paper. 10” x 10” $225
Great art is Provocative or evoking of a response.

One thing that a lot of people might agree on is that good art evokes some sort of response, some emotion, which I talked about in my earlier blog. I do think it’s got to go a little further than that.

Many in this world are impressed when art actually looks like something. For instance, if an artist perhaps has drawn a still life or an animal or landscape, we so often hear a viewer exclaim, “Wow that looks so realistic”. The viewer is obviously impressed but, by what? Making something look “real” or “realistic” or, another so oft heard, “just like a photograph” is the product of a] The artist’s desire to create realism, high realism, or hyper-high realism; b] Skill; c] Perseverance.

It’s important to understand that making a work look real is more about the artist’s facility or technical ability to do that, and the artist’s interest and objective to do that, than it is about whether the art is any good. Now, before I rile you up too much, I’m not saying realism is not good, or aspiring to be a hyper realist is a bad thing, I’m saying that that is only one aspect of the art—the mode of communication.

I know many great communicators who talk about nonsense.  A great speaker, as with great art, has a message worthy of communication

Remnants of Man, Ted. (detail of profile, on location). Plaster with oil and varnish. 1991. Collection of the Artist

Back to the Basics

REWRITE. Encaustic and RF pigment stick on stretched canvas. 48” x 48”. 1996. SOLD

Let me explain by going back a bit to the basics.

Art is the communicating of ideas and emotions through a language. Drawing is a language, as are painting and sculpture; so too are playing piano, violin, bagpipes, or communicating by speaking in French, Cree, Farsi, Mandarin, Inuktitut, English, Hebrew, Arabic, Swahili—these are all languages, and anyone can learn any of these languages. Some people have great facility and pick up languages one after the other, just like that. And other people struggle learning even just one—but they could do it with enough work and effort. And forget about the accent of a particular language, if one really learns the words and understands how to put those words together to create a phrase in a sentence and eventually a paragraph then one can communicate an idea because language is all about communication. When we understand a language and we understand how to communicate in that language then we can speak it—seems rather obvious, yes?

Well, the same thing happens with drawing, painting, sculpting, or any other form of visual art, and in fact, most of the arts.

closeup of purple flower
Crocus on Overbrook. Image taken with Canon R6. 2021. Print pricing available

There is a communication that is either effective or not effective. Let’s not caught up in the mode of the message, as McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” as that’s a little bit different than saying that art is great because it is realistic. That would be like saying that somebody is a great communicator just because they are articulate and use very specific words correctly. I know many great communicators who talk about nonsense.  A great speaker, as with great art, has a message worthy of communication. And that’s where we see the difference between a good crafts person/ technician and a true artist (who may also be a good craftsperson). Is there a worthy message, is it well received or received in the way in which the artist had intended?

Ironically, I may just have lost some of my readers here because my communicating skills need an upgrade! Or perhaps I’ve gotten you thinking that while the artist may have intended for their audience to understand and receive a message in a particular way it doesn’t necessarily mean that the audience received it that way.  That doesn’t make it bad… that makes it thought provoking.  Which, in my mind, is always a good thing!

Here now, in my rather awkward and clumsy way I have segued from the often superficial, awe-inducing realism to provocative messages in great art.  Where does that leave us? Again, with the question, what makes art great?

Great art…is something with which we enter into a relationship that is ongoing, always revealing more and more as we grow as humans, as humanity evolves.

closeup of solitary violet iris
Badass Iris Alone. Canon R6. 2021.

To summarize thus far, along with Timelessness and Beauty, it is safe to say that with Great Art:

  1. The communication elicits a response and may even be provocative.
  • The communication is effective.
  • The work transcends the boundaries of human experience. No matter who you are, where you are from, what your cultural, religious, life experiences have been, great art tends to resonate with virtually everyone.

This has been seen time and time again from cave paintings to the Sistine chapel to stone-cuts by Tivi Etok; and from Bourgeois spiders to Giacometti’s walking women, Moore’s plasters and underground drawings, to the works of Cassatt, Rodin & Claudel, Michelangelo, Morisot, Calder, Smith, Ashevak, Kollwitz, Degas, O’Keefe, Picasso, Schiele, Kahlo, and Van Gogh. No matter our background we find commonality in our shared experience of great art—it brings us together and unites us in a new awakening of experiences we may never have had but somewhere, somehow find familiar at the same time.

  • Though it may complete you it never completes

That is to say, the work may be finished and nothing more can be done to it by the artist, but one’s experience of it is never complete; it is instead, organic and dynamic.  Great art, in my humble opinion, is something with which we enter into a relationship that is ongoing, always revealing more and more as we grow as humans, as humanity evolves.  Ever heard someone say, “the more I look at it the more I see”?

This evolving relationship is ongoing and everlasting.

pink flower closeup
Stoic. Canon R6. 2021.

I look at a Van Gogh and every time I will see something different. The same holds tru for any great work of art.

…unites us in a new awakening of experiences we may never have had but somewhere, somehow find familiar at the same time.
closeup of yellow and red tulip
Badass Tulip II. Image taken with Canon R6. 2021.

There you have it:

6 in total,

  1. Timelessness
  2. Beauty
  3. Evocative
  4. Effective
  5. Transcends Boundaries
  6. Everlasting and evolving experience


Next month, let’s jump on the other side of the canvas and explore some of the technical aspects of visual art like composition and form, etc.. By increasing our visual vocabulary we may broaden our appreciation of the craft of making visual art and make even the most difficult pieces more accessible.

closeup of white daffodil
Badass Stoic Daffodil. Image taken with Canon R6. 2021.

HAPPY SPRING!!

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