Wednesday, 29th
August, 2012
On Anticipation
The stress is building. On
top of organizing everything, although Caroline is winning that battle, the van
has broken, my computer has broken and I’m not on top of Henry’s
jabs…nightmare.
Why do I leave so much to the
last minute?
It’s a few days before we
leave and it feels like we are wrapped up in a hurricane with everything that
needs doing whooshing around us. The eye of the storm, Ireland is so
close but so much lies in-between.
For Van Gogh it was the mark
of every great painter to convey certain aspects of the world more clearly. As
de Botton sets out, it was the Spanish painter Velazquez (1599-1660) who, for
Van Gogh, was a guide to seeing grey but also it was Rembrandt (1606-1669) for
the morning light, Vermeer (1632-1675) to the adolescent girls of Arles, and
Monet (1840-1926) for guiding us to sunsets. It was the sky over Rhone after a heavy rain shower that reminded Van Gogh of
Hokusai (1760-1849), the wheat of Millet (1814-1875) and the young women of
Saintes-Maries de la Mer of Cimabue (1240-1302) and Giotto (1266/7-1337).
But really who cares? At the
moment the rain is beating down through the shop door. The heavy rain shower
may have reminded Van Gogh of Hokusai but a painting does not convey reality;
I cannot smell the damp air or feel the cool breeze around my bare feet. The
sunsets here in Croyde can be beautiful. Sometimes I look out of the window at
the top of the stairs at home and the sky is aglow with reds and pinks. I can
photograph it but what’s the point as I can never convey the reality of what I
am seeing or feeling.
As Sontag states in the early
decades of photography the photographic image was expected to be an idealized
image and this approach still remains true today for the majority of amateur
practitioners. To photograph something beautiful is to create something
beautiful such as a sunset or a woman.
Van Gogh may have believed
that previous artists had not represented everything about southern France but if you want to see southern France, to
smell the air, feel the warm summer breeze then you must visit. Everything that
is conveyed in a picture is only ever one person’s viewpoint and one must
always take into consideration what am I being sold. Thankfully Western art has
moved on from Van Gogh, through modernism into a post-modern period but for
most contemporary viewers looking at art beauty prevails. Fluffy cats and
picturesque sunsets maybe beautiful but they are not art. Beautiful is not art!
Capturing a landscape in a romanticised, idealised manner is not art. Painting
or photographing the light is not art. We need to break out of our quaint
little artistic and photographic communities and relate the world to the world
once again.
If we consider Van Gogh’s
belief in art then a photograph can be deemed the ultimate in realistic
representation because for him most had failed to do justice to their subjects in
not producing realistic depictions of Provence.
Yet even the camera for all its realism represents a choice. No painting and no
photograph can ever capture the whole. However, as Sontag states from its
inception the point of taking a photograph was very different from the aim of
the painter.
The Realistic Painter
“Completely true to nature” – what a lie:
How could nature ever be constrained into a picture?
The smallest bit of nature is infinite!
And so he paints what he likes about it.
And what does he like? He likes what he can paint!
- Nietzsche
Bibliography
C Cotton, 2007 The Photograph As Contemporary Art Thames
& Hudson: London
De Botton, 2003 The Art of Travel Penguin: London
E Newby, 1995 A Book of Travellers’ Tales Pan Books
Ltd: London
Sontag, 2002 On Photography Penguin Group: London
Tolstoy L, 1969 What Is
Art? And Essays on Art London: University Press Oxford
Copyright Mark King 2012
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