Meaning in Art

Detail of Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?,
Paul Gaugin, 1897,oil on canvas, approx. 55 x 147 inches (Boston Museum of Fine Arts)

Gaugin wanted all the big questions answered, but that kind of heavy pondering is best left to philosophy, or theology if you're so inclined. What I mean by "meaning" in art is the conceptual underpinning for works of art. This would not have been a problem or much of a source for discussion when artists were painting or sculpting religious or history subjects, naturalistic landscapes, seascapes, portraits and other observed objects. In the 20th century, as the subjects of artworks deviated from observed depictions of people, places and events, "meaning" became a topic for examination and discussion. Abstract art brought about heated discussion of meaning and artistic intention.

Philip Guston, Zone, 1954 (Museum of Modern Art)

After World War II, in the heyday of what came to be called Abstract Expressionism, artists and critics for the most part disavowed meaning altogether as art became more the record of the artist's improvisational process or actions exploring and expressing emotions. This gestural period was complemented by color field (organic/chance) and hard-edge (geometric/control) painting. Afterwards, Pop Art, Op Art and Minimalism further removed meaning from art, and Conceptual art left the meaning but took away the art.


21st Century Art

Isa Genzken, Elefant, 2006, from Unmonumental at the New Museum, 2007-08

Kim Deakins, Me-Eat, 2009, Ink on paper, 55 x 36 inches,
from "New American Paintings", July 2010

Jumping over several other movements to arrive at the 21st century, we reach the home of Anything Goes, where many of the trendy galleries and museums are featuring improvisational, random and purposefully amateurish works. At the same time we also have skilled, beautiful and concept-driven work in many, many genres.

The Purpose of My Art History 101
I ran through all the above to reference the fact that contemporary art is full of artists who have historically been trained to decry meaning and defend intuitive process in art making as their unquestionable right. While I am a strong supporter of civil rights and would not send the art police to anyone's studio, I suggest that consciously thinking about and developing the conceptual basis for your work will benefit you by improving your work as well as making it easier and more satisfying to make art. I know this from personal experience and from other artists who have moved their work forward by approaching it from this perspective. (And big thanks to Miles Conrad for his "Moving the Work Forward" class for pointing this out to me.)

Working From the Medium
I think that a medium as seductive and full of technical aspects as encaustic is particularly apt to lead artists into working from process rather than from ideas. The result is lackluster work that doesn't lead anywhere or have anything to say. It's what I call (in my non-diplomatic way) "So-What Art." I look at it and go, "So What."  Why should I be interested in it? Why should I spend my time looking at it? What does it give me back in return for my viewing?

Straight Talk from a Non-Diplomat
Unfortunately, all too many people working in the medium of encaustic consider themselves "encaustic artists" whose work is about "playing with" or "listening to" the wax. Although mastering encaustic techniques requires experimentation and learning by trial and error, unless the work is motivated by some other purpose than "playing with wax," it usually is of interest only to the person who made it (and maybe their mother or best friend).  I have observed that many artists who add found objects to their encaustic works, just place them on a panel embedded in encaustic or use the encaustic as glue and call it a day. The purpose of this blog is to shake up these bad habits and get artists thinking about the work they are making, to develop a reason for making the work and organize it using formal principles.

Working From a Conceptual Framework
The "meaning" I'm talking about can be as simple as an elevator pitch (Per Wikipedia: An elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. The name "elevator pitch" reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.). Or it can be as extensive as a formal statement about your work that analyzes several aspects of your intentions and may be based on research you have conducted on a particular topic.

Examples of Work With Meaning

Gregory Wright, Into the Grotto, 2009, encaustic, oil,  pigment
and shellac on birch, 36 x 24 inches

Greg Wright creates fantasy worlds with glowing colors, sinuous shapes and deep spaces that entice the viewer to enter. His statement says that he "works intuitively," but he does that within the framework of making his fantasy creations using "motifs of celestial, aquatic, and microscopic influences with the intent to capture a visual account of the human condition."

Catherine Nash, From the Outside In, encaustic painting in found weathered
wood -worked board with patinaed redwood shingles, 16 x 13 inches

Catherine works poetically and sensitively with found objects and encaustic. She describes her Secret Skies series, which this piece is from, as "paintings of the sky [are] created within a closable wooden box, game board or the like. I am playing with a physical way of bottling up, translating, of trying to comprehend the unfathomable with a bit of humor. Have portable sky, will travel."

Cory Peeke from the Conrad Wilde website.
(No info was given about title or size of this work.)

Cory Peeke's work is about social and cultural conceptions of identify, particularly concerning gender and racial stereotypes. In addition, the subliminal communication of meaning in color is an important aspect of his work and has led to his work with paint swatches that "subtly acknowledges and contends with ideas of sexual, gender, racial and class stereotyping associated with particular colors as well as certain design professions." His statement is a model of how to describe levels of meaning and their influence on an artist's work. (Also note the difference between the statement he uses on the Conrad Wilde website and the statement on the home page of his own site. Both describe his work and its meaning but with a slightly different emphasis.)

Jackie Tileston, Everything in Your Favor, 2006,
oil and mixed media on linen, 60 x 72 inches

 

Although Jackie Tileston's work looks very different from Greg Wright's, she has in common with him the intention to create new worlds in her paintings. Her statement says: "A medley of sources is orchestrated to create or reconstruct a world within the painting in which a new kind of sense is made - one in which the beautiful, absurd, sacred, and mundane can coexist. I do not find a conflict between meaning and visual opulence, between commercial culture and content, and I often purposefully cultivate an operatic sense of surface and reference." For me, her work epitomizes the sense of "anything goes" in painting today with her mastery of diverse painting styles and genres. Her work is not a hodgepodge but a synthesis built by an accomplished and knowledgeable artist.

Lynda Ray, Cinnabar, encaustic on panel, 40 x 48 inches

Lynda Ray's work has a strong material presence and a real sense of purposeful geometric construction. Her statement says that her work is about time: "Instead of experiencing time in a linear way, as a narrative to be read left to right, bottom to top or top down, I look at time condensed and compressed like a double exposure photograph where one picture is taken on top of another. The end result allows multiple moments to appear at once. It’s as if one is looking through peeled back layers to reveal other stages or development."

Reviewing Artists' Websites

I have shown only five examples of art to be considered in the context of its maker's meaning and intention. I hope that you will visit the websites of these five artists (and others) and notice that when you look at the full bodies of their work, you will see how their work has a consistent look that ties in with their intention. Various series may emphasize certain aspects, but over all you see that their work is recognizable as being made by one person and expressive of unique interests and ways of art making. These artists use a medium (or media) as a means of expression rather than an end in itself.

Next Post: Transcending the Medium and Transformation of Elements

Organizing Methods

As you have heard from Castle Hill, my plan for Making Fine Art With Unconventional Mixed Media and Encaustic is to give each participant a Mystery Box containing a 9x12 cradled panel and a selection of some unconventional mixed media. The object is to examine the materials in your Mystery Box and make an artwork that uses some or all of them along with encaustic paint.

On hand will be plenty of encaustic paint in clear and colors, colored gesso, pigment sticks, oil pastels, charcoal, watercolors, ink plus other materials such as textiles, rope, thread, string, wire, dried plant parts, and so on. I will also have a wide selection of tools for use in attaching objects to panels.

What Now?

The first question you will probably ask yourself (after What am I doing here?) is, How can I make something out of this weird collection of stuff? To make answering that question a little easier, I thought we could review some of the organizing methods other artists have used to make works that may be applicable to the predicament we will find ourselves in when we open the Mystery Box. (And by the way, I will also be opening my own Mystery Box that my wife Bonnie is making for me so that I can work along with you.)

Components of Art
I am sure that you have seen this list or one like it somewhere during the course of your art-making career.

Line – actual lines or direction of the eye through the work
Shape – areas defined - geometric or organic
Color – hues/intensities
Texture – surface qualities – tactile illusion
Form/Volume – 3D
Value – shading – dark/light
Space – illusion – positive/negative
Contrast – of values/colors/shapes 

Pattern – rhythm/repetition  

Organizing Principles of Art

To put some of these components to work, we get a list of organizing principles that looks like this:

Simplification
Geometry and symmetry
Emphasis or focus
Harmony
Unity
Opposition
Balance
Variety
Depth
Meaning

I added Meaning to the list because I think this is also an important consideration and one that we will be exploring in addition to the physical arrangement of elements.


Examples

No. 1 - Construction by Federico Hurtado

Here is an example of a work that is organized in a very symmetrical and geometric way. If we go down the list of principles, we can see that all of them have been employed. Perhaps the one principle that is lacking is variety, but organizing the piece in such a deliberate way gives it a static presence that conveys a sense of ritual and formality. The elements also look as if they have a patina of age and wear.

However, note that the found elements don't seem to have been modified very much. Perhaps the turquoise paint was added and then sanded down, but it may just have been part of the found wood. What does one element have to do with the other? How are they connected visually or in composing meaning? If paint or some other transformative manipulation is done to elements, they lose some of their individual identity but they become more unified in a work of art. They also show the hand of the maker and may be organized into a more meaningful statement.

We need to keep an eye on manipulation of elements if we are going to make works that are not just assemblages or constructions but move into the category of bricolage. For example, what if the ruler had been painted another color? It may have lost some of its identify as a ruler, but it would have given more emphasis to the horizontal and the color might have linked in the turquoise with the browns of the wood. Or what if the ruler had been wrapped with wire or string? What if something else had been attached in front of the ruler? Or what if the turned wood had been painted? Or the black background behind it? These are all questions we need to ask as we are making a piece.

No. 2 - Construction 2 by Federico Hurtado

In this work, Hurtado also makes a very frontal composition with a central focus, however, he has employed a lot more variety in color and shape of elements. Notice how he has placed the inset square above the horizontal midpoint. This visually unites the square with the loop of the handle above and allows more space below for the arrangement of small vertical elements that break up the horizontality of the work.

What could he have done differently? I think he could have made better use of that inset square. Could he have done something to make an illusion of space within the square? Could he have placed other elements inside the square? If he was going to use encaustic in this composition, where could he have added it?

No. 3 - Red Circuit by Jacob Hashimoto

This work by Jacob Hashimoto is not as two dimensional as it may first appear, but for our purposes, let's just suppose that the white elements lie fairly flat on a wood panel and the mass of colored elements projects outward a little beyond the white pieces. We will ignore the rods that project top and bottom and the nylon cord that holds the elements in place.

This is an asymmetrical arrangement that is given substance by the brownish-red lines that appear to provide a scafold for the mass of colored elements. If you block out the lines, you will see how much they add to the composition. They also provide contrast to the rounded shapes of the elements. Balance is a key organizing principle in this work. At the left side of the piece, note the repeating horizontal and vertical lines with the large round element below. At the right side, the mass appears to block out the verticals and most of the bottom horizontal. This gives us an illusion of space; the mass is in front of the lines and they are in front of the white elements. We can also observe that although the elements appear to be just massed, they are carefully arranged in vertical lines that coincide with the vertical arrangement of the white elements. Color and shape have also been carefully composed to add pattern, weight, variety, texture, depth.

This image does not allow you to look closely at the individual elements, but they are all painted on paper that has been glued onto shaped bamboo. An organizing scheme such as this could be used with found objects and mixed media.

No. 4 - Gone Gone, Very Gone by Jackie Tileston

This work has a similar asymmetrical arrangement but with a more organic look and an illusion of very deep space. This happens to be mostly paint, but I think you can see how bricolage elements could be organized in a similar way. Notice how the saturated color works to bring that section of the painting forward while the muted color reads as deep space and the darks seem to be clouds or smoke in that space.

The drippy piece of printed paper or cloth at top right counteracts the spatial illusion but creates an illusion of its own with the two lines that could be cords holding that piece in place. The piece of geometric pattern also contrasts with the organic shapes and the colors interact with the saturated mass on the left side. If you block out that piece of geometric pattern with your hand, you will see how much less interesting the painting is.

No. 5 - Untitled (Hotel Eden) by Joseph Cornell

Finally, perhaps one of the most famous bricolage artists was Joseph Cornell who used found and manipulated objects to construct his own form of mystery boxes. The meaning of his works is obscure, influenced by Surrealism and his own unique perspective, but certain motifs repeated throughout his oeuvre: white paint, birds, circles or rings, balls, clock springs, collaged photographs and cards. His boxes contained poetic vignettes that felt nostalgic, dream-like and romantic.