Some people say that 90% of people don’t know anything about painting because they can’t tell a good picture from a bad one. Others say that everyone understands art, and others point out radically that it is not necessary to “understand”, because the paintings are designed only to give us pleasure.
We have an alternative point of view-understanding art can and should be learned! Six simple tips to help you in this.
1. Learn more about art
The first thing to do is to get some understanding of the paintings of different eras. No matter how much we would love to, we can hardly tell Raphael from Rubens or Titian from Rembrandt by wave of a magic wand. For this purpose a theoretical basis is necessary. So it is worth reading about the trends in fine art, the great masters and outstanding works of each era.
Similar information can be found today in numerous books on art, as well as on the Internet. Any manual – detailed or strikingly brief, such as biographical guides on the masters of painting – will do. Choose literature depending on how much time you can spend studying art history, as well as your desire for how deep you want to delve into the issue.
It would also be very helpful to remember the main milestones in the development of painting and their names: antiquity, renaissance, baroque, classicism, romanticism, realism, impressionism and so on. When performing this task, be sure to pay attention to the connection between the historical period and the pictorial direction, it will help to arrange “on the shelves” all the received material.
2. Learn to see a painting
After that you need practice, if you will, self-testing. At this stage you cannot do without an album with reproductions of painters (the best solution is to choose a catalog of an art gallery). Having opened it, you should try to determine for yourself the era and the current to which belongs to a particular master, and perhaps even his name. This procedure can be repeated every day, if you have the desire and available five minutes. Just don’t peek!
3. Train your Sense of Beauty
Even more effective will be a training on real canvases, than on beautiful pictures in the book. Just make yourself go out on the weekend to your local art gallery or museum, where you finally come face to face with works of art that are a little clearer to you.
4. Distinguish the good paintings from the bad
When you become a frequent visitor to museums, you will be faced with the question of how to tell the difference between a good painting and a bad one. But establishing whether a work is good can only come with experience. If you are always admiring the masterpieces of the great masters, carefully looking through a catalog before going to bed, and at least once a month visiting galleries and museums, soon you will not have any difficulty in evaluating an unfamiliar painting at an exhibition in a resort town where you came to rest on vacation.
5. Admire the work of artists
Sometimes we don’t understand what experts find in this or that artist’s work. Take, for example, the famous “Black Square” by Malevich, which caused at the time a heated debate. What is it that everyone so admires in the works of the masters?
Before we praise the first picture we see, we should examine it, so to speak, breaking it down mentally into 3 elements – line, volume, color. Which of these dominates the painting? What attracts the most attention? Your answer will determine the main merit of the painting.
But don’t forget the overall impression – beauty. At different times there were different generally accepted standards of beauty. In the 19th century people admired the magnificent forms (remember Renoir’s nudes), and in the 20th century angularity and thinness became encouraged, which Serov hypertrophied in “Ida Rubinstein”.
The concept of beauty in painting is immensely broad, but here are some points that will help you get aesthetic pleasure: perfection of line, fusion or lightness of stroke, the primacy of volume or the self value of the color scheme, photographic realism or total abstraction of the depicted.
6. Understand the meaning of abstract paintings
Nothing is as controversial as the beauty of abstract paintings. What is it about?
Yes, abstract paintings have no subject, and sometimes they’re like child’s paintings, but they call on the viewer to look deeply into himself, to appeal to his inner sense of beauty. But this beauty can seem ugly to the untrained viewer, because it is depicted in the form of abstract associations and not allegories that everyone can understand.
When studying painting, one should not forget that paintings are not only a subject for discussion, but also something that evokes emotion. According to Somerset Maugham, art is a manifestation of feelings, and feelings speak a common language.