deepstash
Beta
Deepstash brings you key ideas from the most inspiring articles like this one:
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
Pierre Bonnard at the Tate: the surprising reasons we love art
5
Key Ideas
Save all ideas
Why we like art
Art is most exciting when it creates states of psychological conflict, confusion, or dissonance.
While in other circumstances, such an onslaught might make us run a mile, with art, we are held transfixed.
122 SAVES
Visual indeterminacy
It occurs when we are presented with something that we don't immediately recognize. It creates a degree of cognitive dissonance that may be frustrating or even unpleasant.
For example, seeing a vague shape in the corner of a room that might be a cat or a bag. A second look is needed to satisfy our curiosity.
70 SAVES
Color conflicts
Complementary colors lie opposite one another on the spectrum. For example, red complements blue, yellow complements violet.
When complementary colors are placed in close proximity, it is apt to cause conflict and disturb the eyes. Used subtly, it can make our eyes dance to a discordant tune.
76 SAVES
Equiluminance
When we convert a painting to monochrome, the level of light coming from each area is equal.
This confuses the parts of the brain that process color and luminance, and throw our senses of color and light into conflict.
65 SAVES
A logical impossibility
In representational art, figurative paintings contain a logical impossibility - we see one thing (the painting), which is, at the same time, another thing (what it depicts).
The tension or contradictions between the material and representational layers in artwork contribute to the excitement and puzzlement we can experience with art.
61 SAVES
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
6
Key Ideas
Describing wonder
Wonder is said to be a childish emotion. However, as adults, we experience it when gaping at something unexpectedly spectacular.
Adam Smith, an 18th-century moral philosopher, describes wond...
Bodily symptoms
The bodily symptoms of this strange appearance point to three dimensions:
- Sensory: The marvelous things take hold of our senses - we stare and widen our eyes.
- Cognitive: We are perplexed because we don't have a past experience to understand them. It leads to a suspension of breath, similar to when we are startled.
- Spiritual: We look upwards in veneration, which makes our heart swell.
The scale of wonder
At the mild end of this emotion, we talk about things being marvelous. More intense emotions might be described as astonishing. The extreme of this experiences is met with expressions of awe.
5
Key Ideas
Art doesn't have to be intimidating
Art is not only a great source of pleasure in our lives but can also further enrich and deepen our understanding of the world around us.
Developing a casual understanding of art is not that...
How to appreciate a painting through your senses
Art should appeal to you first through your senses. It should grab your eye in some way, such as its subject matter, its use of color, its realistic appearance, a visual joke, or any other factors.
Once you've gotten an overall look at the painting, ask yourself what the subject of the painting is. It might be a landscape, a person or group of people, a scene from a story, a building, an animal, etc. Some paintings will be abstract.
Focus on what a painting says to you
Look for symbols in paintings - something that means something else. Often a painting will include obvious symbols. For instance, skulls were often included in portraits of the wealthy to remind them that their wealth was worldly and ultimately meaningless.
Focus on what the work says to you, instead of trying to figure out what the artist meant.
8
Key Ideas
Abstract Art: Many Shades And Hues
Visually different from figurative art, abstract art came in the early 20th century and used colours, lines, forms and shapes to create unseen compositions, with little or faint relation with the o...
Abstract Art: Contradictory Beliefs
Many historians and artists throughout the century have had contradictory opinions and beliefs about abstract art.
Some people find abstract art the true original expressions, and figurative art being a mere imitation of reality. Others call it a hidden reality, where traces of figurative art are removed and ‘abstracted’ to stoke the imagination.
Pablo Picasso
"“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards, you can remove all traces of reality.”"