Olivia Palacios, MHC 100, Professor Graff, Summary of “Looking at Art”
Chapter 3 is very heavily focused on landscapes. When we look at a marvelous view, it’s hard to imagine that we can recreate this beautiful sight on a single sheet of paper, wall, or canvas. There are so many details and it is the painter who decides what he/she will do in order to capture the moment. One scene can be painted in several different ways. Each painting will not capture movement, but a single moment of the scene that is being depicted.
While some saw a landscape as something that simply provided a background for humans in paintings, others valued it much more and believed it was just as important as the rest of the picture. For example, the ancient Romans would draw a hero in front of all the land he had conquered, or outdoor scenes were painted indoors to give people a feeling of peace and serenity. The Chinese saw landscape as very important because they believed it depicted the “moods of man and the infinity of God” (21). To paint these landscapes, there were different techniques that were used, such as painting with different brushstrokes to represent different textures within nature. At times, part of the paper was left blank to represent sky or water, which in fact made people feel some sort of respect towards the landscape.
Landscapes were a complete contrast to what was formerly used as backgrounds. In the early medieval period, backgrounds were gold. However, in the 15th century, artists finally started looking at the world around them and attempted to draw and paint the wonder of God’s creation. A solid color of gold was now being replaced with the beauties of nature, such as “fields, mountains, and sky fading to a blue distance” (22). Landscapes were becoming more and more important and soon were emphasized more than the actual event in the painting. For example, in “Baptism of Christ,” it would be assumed that the main focus of the picture is John the Baptist pouring water over Jesus’s head. However, the surroundings stole the show, for van Eyck believed that the presence of God not only existed in that very moment, but in everything around the two. Holiness was present in every leaf and portion of the sky. Man somewhat took the backseat as the beautiful world took its place on top.
Some of this appreciation for landscapes derived from the love people had for their homeland. The Dutch loved their countryside and genuinely loved painting pictures of the flat fields that surrounded them. Although it sounds odd, a formula was created in order for artists to be able to draw these extensive views. However, because art is personal and unique, this formula was simply a blueprint that could be altered to please the artist’s preferences. In the 19th century, the English were similar to the Dutch in that they became interested in paintings of their homeland and it in fact became popular for them to buy paintings of their own estates. A well known English landscapist, John Constable, became interested in the details of nature and achieving accuracy in depicting its components. He used a “fresher color” in order to represent grass and trees in a livelier way, giving them a sense of moisture. In the 18th century, settlers in America weren’t as excited about their surroundings as the English and Dutch because it was still very new and intimidating. But after gaining independence from Great Britain, a sense of nationalism spread across the states and people were proud to paint their environment which they could officially call theirs. Cultures came to appreciate landscapes in their own timing.
After receiving lots of attention for a period of time, the landscape started to share the spotlight with things still of nature, but not so broad. Gardens, fields, and stream became popular. An artist relied heavily on his eyes, using this sense to recreate what was present before them. However, most came to realize that a painting cannot just consist of what an eye can see, but must contain feelings and thoughts. This is what could truly captivate an audience. A photograph lacks the emotion a painting holds.
Chapter 4 discusses artists attempting to draw a group of people in a way that distinguished their position. Egyptian pictures contained people with possibly no heads, no bodies, or no feet in order to represent the reality that when people are in a crowded space and are overlapping, not every body part is able to be seen. Most walls of tombs and temples were filled with people taking part in everyday activities. In some works of art, certain figures in society were distinguished by the way they were portrayed. For example, while prisoners were cramped and bodies overlapped, a larger figure above them most likely represented a priest, which then faced “part man, part lion, who are probably gods” (38).
One aspect that had never really been studied in art was depth. Perspective greatly affected how a person depicted a particular setting, because the angle of vision constantly changed once the artist moved. Artists at first somewhat ignored the concept of a vanishing point and never drew scenes that disappeared into the distance. They did not want to draw distant objects smaller and called their vision a lie, since the “man in the distance” wasn’t smaller in reality. However, in the 15th century, artists finally started studying the science behind distance, shapes, and size. Artists such as Uccello even became obsessed with the idea of perspective and would murmur “Oh thou sweet Perspective,” making his wife quite jealous. This distortion that we see, where objects appear different that they actually are, finally became a fascination. Artists truly started to play with the idea and drew from many interesting perspectives, even from a view above a building, quite different from the average view of someone standing directly in front of a structure. By the 17th century, drawing pictures with depth was very preferred. The Chinese and Japanese used “isometric perspective” which actually was a way to depict depth without a vanishing point (51). Parallel lines continued on but never intersect. No matter the difference in technique, artists had finally become concerned about how to handle space and paint a 3-Dimensional scene, using light, shade, and shadows. It was all about drawing “what the eye sees” instead of ignoring our realistic views (53).
Overall, both of these chapters highlighted the progression of art and explained how and when certain ideas and techniques became accepted among artists.
