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Art appreciation
By Jim Murdoch
Art crept up on me. When I was a kid there were only pictures and sculptures. I had a very literal appreciation of art. I expected a picture of a tree to look like a tree and that was how I measured the likeability of a work of art because that was how I assessed art back then, I liked it or I didn't like it, a typical black-or-white childish response. I viewed literature in the same way, words were meant to mean what they said. Occasionally for a cheap day out when we were young my dad would drive us to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Of course as a kid I was more interested in the stuffed animals and model ships than art but we would get dragged upstairs and do the tour of the galleries. I knew even back then that these rooms were filled with a secular reverence, being there felt like I was in church but without all the ceremony. Of course I couldn't express myself so succinctly when I was a kid and so I would simply complain that it was boring. And it was. Change is a fluid thing mostly, you drift from one state to another, it's not like you go to bed a boy and wake up a man or anything, and so I can't pinpoint the day I grasped the abstract quality of art but it came. Now I look at a painting and sense a somethingelseness, something more than a conglomeration of oil paint daubed on a canvas, for example. Meaning belongs to me. I know a lot of people look at abstract art in particular and say either, "What is it supposed to be?" or "Yes, but what does it mean?" and I know where they're coming from because I used to be them. Then one day – that one day I'm having trouble pinpointing – I must have looked at a work of art and imbued it with meaning, either that or decided that meaning isn't the be all and end all, that it's okay for a work of art to simply make you feel. That can be an end in itself. That was a hard thing to grasp because I'm a writer and I tend to translate everything into words but with art that really isn't necessary, in fact it does it a disservice. I can tell you what art moves me but when I look at Magritte's 1954 painting, 'The Empire of Light', for example, I find that I can't express how I feel about it. Were I to try so much would be lost in translation that I don't see the point and frankly I get annoyed at critics and gallery owners who feel they have to explain a work of art to me. I can tell you that that particular painting means something to me but this is where words let me down. Meaning is clearly not simply an intellectual appreciation but an emotional one and I suppose a spiritual one too although I have a hard time with that. You don't need to understand something to appreciate it. There are so many things in this life that I have learned to appreciate over the years that I don't necessarily understand and art is most definitely one of them.
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I am a self-taught artist and over the years I've found many happy hours just createing painting, pastels and woodcarvings.
Best of luck,
Frederick
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
I've no real talent as an artist I'm afraid, Frederick. I suppose like many people with an ability (I can write) I wish I could express myself creatively in other - ahem - easier ways. I see you're into darts. It's been many years since I played but I do remember going to a nice darts shop in Edinburgh to buy my first - and only as it happens - set of darts, getting to try all these different sizes and shapes and coming away with such a lovely set with spare barrells and flights. They got stolen a few years after and never got replaced.
Appreciating without understanding, or at least trying to understand in verbal form, is such a striking and novel concept to me, that I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it, and frankly wonder if I should just appreciate it instead of try to understand it.
 | | nick Dec 12, 2009 10:59 | |
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Nick. I’ve never really understood why I love the art that I do. What I do know is that trying to translate how it makes me feel into words never works, something – much – is always lost in the translation. I think it’s also good for someone like me who is so preoccupied by words to be out of his comfort zone for a while. This doesn’t mean that art makes me uncomfortable, quite the opposite. See how words struggle with the task.
I learned about nonverbal appreciation when I was in college. Before then, I just painted. In college I found out that you have to get beneath things, in order to find nonverbal appreciation. You have to be quiet and observe a lot.
.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Artinit, I’m not sure I’ve ever truly got ‘beneath things’ when it comes to art. What I’ve relinquished is a need to understand; I’m content to enjoy. It’s like a hug – who the hell wants to dissect hugging? Does that mean that hugging becomes meaningless? Far from it.
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