Since you can't read paintings, why do you still have to "see"

There is an ornamental painting on my bookshelf, set in a curved glass frame, which has been laid out for many years. It was bought a long time ago in a small art shop. At that time, I did not know the origin of the painting, but I only thought that it was beautiful, the colors were beautiful, and the picture was "somewhat interesting". This may be the first impression of all art blindness, called painting "Little White" today, of a work. You may not know who the author of a painting is, the background in which it was created, its genre, or even understand it, but it just moves you because of the colors, the lines, the composition, or some kind of feeling and emotion — pure beauty, joy, sadness, anger, anxiety...

My girlfriend and I wandered around the autumn park, holding up her phone and leaning over a cluster of nameless flowers and plants, looking for a suitable shooting angle. Don't you think it's like Van Gogh? she asked. Me: This is not a sunflower at all! She glanced at me with disdain and held out the photograph to me: "Do you see, does this painting resemble Van Gogh's masterpiece?" She was referring to the composition of the famous painting.

I see it more like Dürer. That bouquet of flowers and plants reminds me of Dürer's "A Big Lawn."

This is painting, different people, the perception is completely different. The paintings were initially published in controversy, ostracized by orthodox academics and derided by critics as "beasts." The "newcomers" in the art world strive to create their own style and constantly subvert the tradition.

What do you think when you see Klimt's The Kiss, the painting on my bookshelf? And what can you see in this?

If you're an "introductory" like me, check out the readings in Jensen's Art History. Background: At the end of the 19th century, art responded to the development of modernization. This is both a beautiful era and a nostalgia for the end of the century. Well, some sorts of things like "This is the best of times and the worst of times", with a wide range of artistic styles and movements emerging, such as Impressionism, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau. It was the time of Cézanne, Seurat, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and the Belgian "group of twenty", the "Vienna Secession" and so on.

Van Gogh painted the famous Sunflowers, 3, 12, 15, Starry Moon Night, The Night Cafe; Gauguin, the prototype of the painter in Maugham's famous novel The Moon and Sixpence, felt that the distant countryside of the Brittany Peninsula was not far enough away, and ran to Tahiti in the South Pacific in search of primitive art; Munch, influenced by their style, painted "The Scream", which in turn "infected" Klimt and created a series of paintings centered on "Kiss" to paint his lover into it. Munch's work also features a similarly shaped man and woman embracing each other, the faces of lovers fusing together in fear, as if they were devouring each other. However, it was simply a black clumps, and Klimt was much "richer", his figure wrapped in a brilliant gold leaf robe, and at his feet was a carpet woven of wildflowers in charming colors, suspended high above heaven.

"'Kiss' contains a strong decorative component," textbooks say (Jensen's Art History is an art department textbook for many colleges and universities), so it's not an exaggeration to think of it as a "decorative painting." As for the "secession", it is to break the hierarchical division of various types of art - in the conservative academic classification, different types of paintings have high and low differences, history paintings are ranked first, genre paintings, decorative paintings, etc., can only accompany the last seat, decorative arts are contemptuously classified as art "craftsman" level.

After this, matisse of Fauvism and Picasso of Cubism appeared. As the beginning of modern art, this period of history, all art history works will tell. In fact, as long as you read through Jensen Art History or Gardner Art History (which is a stupid approach, a thousand-page tome that requires some patience), you can build a rough framework of knowledge. Don't expect to see a work, you know its author, style, and background, but with a general impression, you can probably know where to find the "origin" of the painting, so as to study it further.

Boss Wang said: Xiao Bai's introductory cheats can be a painting, an art reproduction, or a book about art. The same way, the house number is right, the key code is right, and the entrance is a series of art palaces. "Little Gu Talks about Painting" and the like, that is the enlightenment reading, can push open a door for you, let you be interested in a painting, shallow to know a little, and then go deeper. Read Gombrich's The Story of Art, the BBC's art series Civilization, The Power of Art, The Shock of New Art, The Consolation of Art, David Leo Says Art, and, of course, my beloved Barnes's Look at Art. Well, I don't want to give you a list of books, but lately, I happen to be obsessed with them. Moreover, I found that the writing styles of these writers were very different, paul Johnson's "The Story of Art Nouveau" was basically a regular art history path, and David Leo and Alain De Botton were obviously talented: you can read it, you can't read it. Without basic knowledge of art history, it will be a bit difficult to watch.

But I still like David Leo, who has created a private art gallery and told you about classical art. Then, a museum was built to talk to you about modern art. There you can see the "Venus" of different painters gathered together, the cardinals "testing" the majesty, the various fruits and ingredients hanging in the kitchen ("to conceal the slow but unavoidable movement of the swallowing", the author leaves), the amazing still life paintings in the restaurant - I think That Borugel's "Flower Arrangement in a Glass Bottle" is more similar to "Sunflowers". In addition, there is a lot of gossip in the book, which fully satisfies your curiosity (voyeurism).

As for the painters, do we care what we think of their paintings? Make nothing of.

Picasso's former patron, the Stein siblings, had a large collection of "eccentric" paintings, and he asked for a portrait of his sister. From the winter of 1905 to the summer of 1906, after Stei modeled the painting 80 times, Picasso finished the painting on his own. Under the expression of the painter Cubism, the face of the female writer becomes a "mask". My friend was taken aback and said it wasn't like Stein at all. Picasso replied, "What does it matter?" In the end she would always look exactly like the painting. Decades later, critics agreed that the paintings were perfectly "in keeping" with the inner temperament of women writers.

What do you think of the various geometric, superimposed, colliding faces on Picasso's (or abstract) paintings? Surprised or stunned: God, how can this be? I was in the Albertina Museum in Vienna, staring at Picasso's "Woman's Head," a portrait print of his second wife, Jacqueline, which I'm afraid can only be described as "amazing." Next to it is the "Woman in a Hat" series, the model is also believed to be Jacqueline, with two asymmetrical eyes. And the more "realistic" paintings of the early years, such as The Woman In the Ironing Dress, are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where I visited many years ago and I don't remember seeing the painting.

So what? The viewer, who does not have the slightest influence on a painting, sees it or does not see it, understands it or does not understand, it does not matter. Even for experts, "with these old tools of writing, they only touch their skins", says the art critic Clarke. As a painting white, your task is to look at it, stare at it for a long time, and look at it more, you can find the doorway in it.

This may not be useful, but the real life, is not to find the beauty of "useless"?

Source: China Youth Daily client