Reflections on the Nature of Art

“Nothing the best of artists can conceive / but lies, potential, in a block of stone, / superfluous matter round it. The hand alone / secures it that has intelligence for guide.” -Michelangelo, Sonnet 151

We read some of Michelangelo’s sonnets in Beauty: Ancient and Modern, and even looked at some pictures of the unfinished Slaves, but once again seeing the real works, especially alongside the David, served to reinforce the expressed sentiment.

It was also really impressive to see the room with all the plaster models in the Academia. It makes sense to me that that would be useful, but I never really thought through the scale of such a collection in an academy. As an artist in the days of internet and smartphone, I have ability to pull up almost any reference image I need in the moment, which is useful because I often don’t have access to three-dimensional models, but I rarely think of the fact that this is a fairly recent luxury. For years, artists would be required to either use either three-dimensional representations or live models for their work, which I imagine would be quite an inconvenience.

In terms of professional art, I’ve cut a lot of corners, other than using two-dimensional models instead of three-dimensional ones, I began drawing out of my head long before I had nearly enough experience, which may in part account for my appreciation of message over form. Walking through the Academia, I passed countless works displaying technical mastery I would never be able to replicate, or even come close to, but my attention was mainly captured by pieces with a profound emotional pull. One of my favorite pieces was a depiction of the Deposition by Santi di Tito. While not the most photo-realistic representation – I think the depiction of the same scene hanging on the opposite wall was a bit more technically skilled – this image had a very strong emotional message which caught and held my attention.

I’m not personally a painter, I find the medium frustrating to work with, and am very respectful of those people who are able to master its use to convey a perfectly realistic representation of their subject. However, I think there is much more to art than simply conveying natural appearances.

Photorealistic works of art often come much closer to the experience of being physically present somewhere than photographs because, through the conduit of the artist, the simple relation of the quantity and quality of light waves bouncing off of objects is reinforced by the reasoned analysis of a human soul. I believe that artists have the capability of getting even closer to the truth when they focus more explicitly on that truth behind appearances, allowing for the pervasion of imprecise lines and a discretionary palate to draw the viewer’s attention to the message present behind the façade of a building or the physical features of the human form. It’s easy to draw an analogy with people, who are creatures made up of the union between body and soul – a photograph can represent a person’s body, but a good artist can represent their soul as well.

“Do you know the difference between a primitive painter and a creative artist?... The difference is this; the primitive painter meticulously draws in every brick on a building because he knows the bricks are there. But the creative artist can suggest bricks with a few strokes of his brush. The creative artist is concerned, not with facades, but with the inner structure, with the truth of what he sees.” -Ellen Raskin's Garson in The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues,