ArtId Blog
A Checklist for Viewing Art
Here's a list of questions and simple visual perceptions that I like to consider in a work of art. I'm not talking about complex aesthetic judgments, but just the visual cues that provide entry points into the actual content of the work.
1.) Is it representational...? The work depicts people, places, or recognizable things whether realistic or stylized.
2.) ...or abstract? A work composed of purely geometric, gestural, or diffusive elements.
3.) Figure / Ground: The main separation of forms from the background. Figure and the ground can swap light and dark values in different parts of the picture. I like it when that happens.
4.) Composition: How the secondary forms and details are organized to support the main figure.
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In my next few blog posts, I want to hear your thoughts about having a personal website, belonging to art community websites, and how having an Internet presence may have helped you with marketing your work. Here are some thoughts about personal websites and why they may not be working for you.
#1 No one is marketing your web site , including you....it's just sitting alone in cyberspace and you have minimal traffic. You're asking yourself why you're spending money on this electronic business card that just sits there and looks pretty. Why can't it do more for me? That begs the question...…
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Over the next several weeks I will be writing about a variety of topics that pertain to art consultants and artists--how they find each other, what tools and/or materials artists need when approaching and/or dealing with consultants, what NOT to do, and other useful business pointers. There's nothing magical about all this, but you will need to remember to do what you do best--be creative! For starters, let's look at "where can I find art consultants?"
Unfortunately, there is no central data base for art consultants. They spend so much of their time being organized with all details keeping their clients happy and searching for you that they don't even think about organizing themselves…
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Hey, I've got a new computer and I'm back in business.
I'm going to continue the theme of my last post: artists who may not be great, but who are wonderful in their more modest endeavors. This time I am going to consider a group: the Dutch 17th century painters who have come to be known as "the little Dutch Masters".
The environment for painters in Holland in the 17th century was unique, and it led to a new and "modern" way of conducting business. For the first time in European art, the creation of paintings was not dominated by the church and the nobility. Instead, art was purchased in quantity by the rising mercantile class, and they were looking for art that expressed their wealth to be sure, but also reflected underlying Calvinist values…
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I really love to teach drawing. Part of the reason for my enthusiasm, as I've been rambling on about in my last three blogs, is the fact that there is almost as much aesthetic philosophy to the course as there are hands-on skills to learn. As a result of my eagerness to teach the course, I do a fair amount of recruiting to build interest in the class since it is often overlooked. What's interesting is that the class is almost unanimously neglected by students for the same reason. Even more unfortunate is the fact that the reasoning behind the rationale to not enroll in a drawing class is fundamentally inaccurate. So one of the professional responsibilities I've taken upon myself is to do what I can to try and dispel The Drawing Myth…
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Paste Paper is a wonderful way to decorate paper surfaces for many uses. Originally developed by bookbinders for finished end sheets, and soft covers, paste paper is also used in artists books, calligraphy, paper weaving, paper quilting and a host of other paper arts. I was fortunate enough to spend a day making Paste Paper with five other paper artists. We found a great workspace that was big enough for all of us to have elbow room and set the papers aside to dry.
Since the process is material intensive it's easier for us to pool our resources, make one big batch of paste and work together. It's so much more inspiring as well to work with other artists, each of whom had a completely different approach and end use…
On to Constable, my kindred spirit. Perhaps not as great in the fullest sense as Cezanne or Rembrandt, but wonderful in his sensitivity to the familiar in nature. He never left England, and did not travel very widely there, going only to Brighton, Weymoutn or Salisbury, within easy reach. How different his subjects are from those of his contemporary Turner, who always sought out the magical transforming moments in nature: sunrise, sunset, monumental storms. Constable made his art from that which was most familiar in his surroundings, seeing it with a sensitivity which was unmatched until the next generation.
Yes, he did break new ground, despite his unambitious enterprise…
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I have been picking out artists who are my favorites, and who also deserve to be called great because of the nature of their enterprise. Many of my favorite artists are not "great" in this sense; they are modest and unassuming in their scope and intentions. A good example is the artist with whom I feel the greatest natural affinity: John Constable. But before turning to Constalbe, I thought I should give homage to his truly great English contemporary, William Turner.
It is hard to like Turner as a human being; is was rather a nasty man, secretive, suspicious, paranoid…
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The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is a popular phrase that, no doubt, everyone has heard casually tossed around in conversations of various topics. However, its application to the subject of art might seem less obvious. In fact, to be of any use in an aesthetic debate, I propose this statement needs to be reorganized. I suggest that, artistically speaking, the sum of its parts are greater than the whole. Or perhaps more succinctly, the whole is great because of the sum of its parts.
Before I pontificate myself into a philosophical quagmire, allow me to try and develop something that resembles a point. Much of what makes a piece of art great are the smaller details within the work, rather than the image as a whole…
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The decision to include Leonardo is not based on the impact of the work on me viscerally and emotionally; in fact, on one level you could say he is not a "favorite" artist at all. It is more that I stand in awe of what he accomplished as an artist, while so much of his energies and imagination were focussed on other things. And of course, after a piece on Michelangelo, it is only proper to give Leonardo equal time.
Michelangelo and Leonardo were the towering figures of the Renaissance until the younger Raphael rose to join them, great rivals, driving each other to greater heights…
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Since working here at ArtId I have had the opportunity to learn A LOT about how the Internet, and more importantly, how Google works. Google is a sort of Big Brother of the Internet. It decides what you will see in a search result and where it will fall in the listing. Right now I am studying Search Engine Optimization or SEO. In addition to paid advertising, sites need to get good grades. Google "crawls" ArtId constantly, basically picking up all the information on the site, determining the relevance, critiquing it and giving our site a "grade" as to how good it is. The higher the grade, the higher the listing in a Google search results…
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I've been meaning to write this blog for a few weeks now but haven't managed to find the time. After reading Caroline Henry's astute observations about the importance of art communities, I felt compelled to make the time today. (And it has nothing to do with the fact that this is the last Friday of the school year! Woohoo!)
I can remember vividly the night I set up my initial free Artid account. The excitement and anticipation over the visibility my work might receive on the World Wide Web; the thought that something might even sell! I remember praying and asking God to please bless the effort that I was making to become more actively involved in promoting my art…
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It's easy to get overlooked among the millions of other artists and their work on the Internet. Search Engines like Google work with words, not pictures, so describing your work accurately will give you an edge.
Here are five tips to get found faster:
1. Describe your work as though there were no picture with it: If someone is searching for a "horizontal oil painting+yellow roses+vase and your description is "a recent painting of my garden" then the search engines have nothing to match.
Example: Ellen Sullivan Farley described her gorgeous painting of lilies this way:
"These are beautiful Casablanca Lilies that I grow in my garden. I love the gestural lines in these flowers and the interesting negative shapes generated between them…
In each of the previous posts I have asked the question "What challenge did this artist set himself that sets his work beyond good to great?". Not all my favorite artists have such an ambitious enterprise, but I will show one more; Michelangelo. For me, the remarkable thing about his work is how often he rose above crippling external limitations and turned them into glorious oportunities.
The "David" is an excellent example, especially if we accept the story about its creation. According to contemporary sources, a truley magnificent block of Carrara marble, intended for another sculptor, was tragically damaged in transit, with a chunk broken off in the middle almost to the center of the block…
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In my last post I introduced the importance of trying to teach my students, especially those in drawing, that before they can really begin to improve their abilities, they must first learn to see. Convincing teenagers, a species that is inherently omniscient, that they don't really know how to see can be, at times, a humorous endeavor. And oddly enough, one of the most valuable instructional tools I have to help facilitate this task is an empty bulletin board; its moniker emblazoned on the sign above it: 10 Foot Test.
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The Art World is Elliptical
www.garypetersonart.com/wiselink.html for full diagram.
An artist interprets objects for the viewer but something always gets lost, added, or changed in translation. Art seldom takes the direct route from object to subject. Distortion increases as the path deviates. Call it "artistic expression."
Three-way relationships are algebraic, so I've based a schematic of visual perception on the ellipse with the object and subject being at either focus. To give the artist equal weight in the equation, an equilateral triangle dictates the height. Note that the term "object" also means "referent," but becomes "concept" in the case of abstract art.
This elliptical boundary separates the aesthetic from prosthetic: fine art from eye candy…
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This will be the third in my series of favorite artists, and I am still following the theme of the major challenge in an artist's enterprise which raises the work from good to great. In this case, however, it is a quiet artist working on a modest scale without earthshaking impact.
Klee's work is nothing if not unpretentious and personal. There is no sense that he was speaking to a wider audience than the one which would seek him out in his artistc seclusion. So why do I put him in a category with someone like Rembrandt?
For me, Klee's work is a marvellous marriage of the analytical and the intuitive…
One question we hear frequently from artists is about how they should price their art. Our in-house art consultant, Carla Santia , posted a blog back in November to help answer this question artid.com/members/carlablog/blog. I think it's important to continue to have this discussion and to learn from other artists from around the globe how they handle pricing their work in different markets. Below is a question posed by one of our members, Mary Exline, and ArtId Staff member Mary Lawler's answer. Please feel free to comment as it would be nice to post a follow up with guidelines based on an international artist audience point of view.
4.25.08
Mary,
I've been thinking about my prices and others' prices. It seems to me that my prices might be too high…
This is the second in my new series of my favorite artists, and what it is in their artistic enterprise that sets them above the merely very good. After having started with a self-portrait by Cezanne in my last post, I can't resist starting this post off with another self-portrait, one of many by Rembrandt.
How different they are! The Cezanne self-portrait, though it can captivate you as a work of art for hours, in the end shows you almost nothing about the man beyond his physical exterior. Cezanne clearly was not trying to explore his inner self at all. The Rembrandt, on the other hand, shows you infintely more than a thousand words could tell you about his soul, his humanity, and most importantly our humanity. Just look into his eyes, and get lost in them…
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It seems that a large portion of my work is trying to convince students of the validity of concepts that, on the surface, seem quite contrary. Often times, it is only after these paradoxical notions are fully understood that a student will begin to see any real progress in their work. Add to this conundrum the fact that, in art, many of the significant lessons are not entirely logical or concrete. They are really more like intangible perceptions to reflect upon during the creative process; allowing them the opportunity to influence and inspire the direction of a piece. Perhaps my favorite of these vague theories is the importance of learning to see.
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