How to Paint Pictures

I put down my brush, and I stand back, looking at my painting sitting on the easel. Is it any good, I wonder? Which is the more important question: "Is the painting any good," or "Am I any good as a painter?" After a few moments of thought, I opt for the former and I decide that I am satisfied with the painting.

How do I come to that decision? As a contemporary painter, or at least a pretender to that particular throne, I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to make an esthetic decision without any sure criteria. In past centuries, painters had clearer guidelines to follow, for better or for worse. How the weight of the centuries bears down on my small effort! There the canvas sits, and it is solely up to me to determine what is worth the effort of creation.

Whether we agree with those criteria of the past generations is not longer important to us, except in a historical sense. We appreciate painters like Rembrandt, Van Eyck, Goya, even Pollock, for what they say to us today, and less for how their contemporaries appraised them as artists. The joke is on me: maybe in 400 years the art public will appreciate me as a genius. How does that really help me today, in front of my still-wet canvas?

Rembrandt lost portrait commissions late in his career, because he began painting portraits that were too intense for the prevailing tastes, and in addition they took too long to complete. This was at a time when painters were paid by the amount of detail in the painting: one price for a head, another for a hand, maybe even down to how many fingers were to be included in the portrait. Every detail had a price. Of course the painting should look like the sitter, more or less, and it should look flattering.

Clear guidelines were available, yet what moves us in the paintings of Rembrandt is the sloppy brushwork, the intensity, the handling of the elements. The subject can be a portrait, an historical theme, or a piece of beef. Either you love them or you don't, but no one questions Rembrandt as a great painter. Those mudpiles of oil and pigment are what we marvel at today.

So I stand in front of my latest canvas, and I wonder how to evaluate it. In addition, this uncertainty is compounded by the uncertainty of how the art public will evaluate it. First of all, what do I think? Is my painting an expression of my inner vision, or my outer reality? Am I exploring the plastic qualities of two-dimensional image-making? Does my painting look like anything at all, or even worse, does it look like a "painting" - that is, the way a painting should look?

I give up in frustration. There are too many questions. I sign the painting with my nom de plume (which may or may not be pretentious). Now the painting is done, and will be thrown to the dogs of postmodernist critics. From the vast morass of postmodernism, I will be evaluated from a carousel of voices, all speaking without context, and without form. All opinions are equal, but none will help at all.

How exhausted I am with postmodernist critique! Who reads the text in any contemporary art book, and comes away with greater understanding? Except, of course, those books that explain why such criticism is only useful for the academics, and for the critics who use postmodernism as a common language. The jokes are on them, when stories are told of art aficionados who spend time finding meaning in a blank wall, only to be told that the artwork is really located elsewhere. Sometimes a blank wall is only a blank wall.

Not that I think that art of any sort shouldn't engender response, discussion, and controversy. Art should, and must, do this. Art's practical aspects have been lost for the most part, so it must do something with itself. Matisse said that a good painting should be like a comfortable armchair, but maybe I just want the armchair itself. Postmodernism arose out the end (or the failure) of Modernist thought. It was artists like Matisse who not only defined what Art should be ("an armchair") but also contributed to the demise of any sort of criteria with which to judge art. Is the "Portrait of Madame Matisse" a great painting, or just a sloppy one? I can certainly use green and pink now, whenever and wherever I want.

Jean-Francis Lyotard is usually considered the father of postmodernist philosophy. It is a gross simplification, but for Lyotard everything has failed, all universalities are dead, and therefore everything is equal. Irony replaces meaning. Style survives the death of content. It is impossible, say the postmodernists, to represent the sublime experiences (that I may have). Attempting to encompass everything, postmodernism ultimately communicates nothing.

Before the Twentieth Century and Modernism, a painting was a window into another world, bounded by a frame. Although personal artistic expression was always lurking somewhere in every great work of art before that time, such expression was usually subjugated to a larger philosophical meaning. Artworks proclaimed Faith, or Nobility, or Strength, or Courage (often in extremely violent images). It was Van Gogh who, guided by his own inner directives, painted directly from his heart, telling his visual story in personal terms. I often marvel at his courage, painting pictures that looked like nothing ever painted before (and he had the weight of history as well!)

In the Twentieth Century, art became life. The picture plane extended forever in all directions. Perspective was a trick, and the Cubists worked a painting as though they lived in a universe of extended infinite dimensions. The technology of painting (pigment in oil on board or canvas) was to be fully explored, until the technology was exhausted. All that was left was content, and finally that came under suspicion. Not that painting had died, as many postmodernists proclaimed, but it did become a sophisticated game with complex rules.

Having recently seen Gerhard Richter's forty-year retrospective, I came away with a renewed appreciation for painting as exploratory process. To me, Richter's efforts at "unpainting" made for great paintings. How do I know? Because they gave me something to SEE, and seeing is the point of a painting. I was moved by his images. Some are intensely beautiful, and require the viewer to examine closely their secrets, which are not given up easily. Richter's paintings are not comfortable armchairs.

So I turn back to my recently completed canvas, and ask myself if I am seeing anything at all. Is it just another knock-off of someone else's idea, or have I created something that expresses my personal consciousness? Is this work really mine, and does it therefore have a meaning that communicates to me, and hopefully to others? Am I moved spiritually and maybe intellectually by the image, as though someone else painted it and I am seeing it for the first time? If I can answer affirmatively to these questions, I can be confident of my own efforts. I apply this indefensibly subjective criteria to others works, and I can clearly say whether or not the work has been successful - for me. To all writers of art reviews: please spare me the postmodern rant, and tell me what you honestly think. I believe that critical taste can be developed and can be a positive attribute. Let the postmodernists wallow in their own sterility: to everyone else, tell me how you think, how you feel.

Stephen Micheal Barnes

 
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