“If art illustrates anything at all, it’s likely to be a story you didn’t even know needed telling.
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— David Salle

What is art anyway? Is there a one specific way to look at art? What makes one piece of artwork revolutionary and other rubbish? How do you explore and make sense of the artist’s personality, your own feelings, and compare that to ideas of what is that particular piece of art supposed to be telling you? David Salle, the author of How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art, sums up this conundrum perfectly. He explains that the way you should look at any visual art is notice what you find yourself thinking about, which can clash in great deal with what either critics or that little label next to the art work actually says you should be thinking about.

“The wall label might inform you that the work is about the artist’s investigation into the semiotics of performative strategies. While you find yourself wondering if the cafeteria is any good. We need to pay attention to what a work of art actually does – as distinct from whatever may be its supposed intention.” The point is to listen to yourself. David Salle continues: “I doubt if anyone ever loved a painting because of the the ideas it supposedly contains, thought there are plenty of examples of the reverse. And being able to explain a work of art, to spin a narrative around it, does not make it good.”

What’s a person to do? Well, turns out you already posses everything you need to establish a dialog and a relationship with the work of art: your imagination, your taste, your experiences, your heart, and your mind. The only thing you may be missing is the framework for understanding. We’ve looked at Jude Welton’s guide to understanding paintings and compiled several tools you can take with you that will turn you from a passive spectator into your own curator. With this framework of tools, you will learn to trust yourself fully to understand the visual language and deepen the relationship with every work of art.

“To take a work’s physic temperature, look at its surface energy. Like syntax and rhythm in poetry, it’s the mechanics that reveal an artist’s character. They determine the way that art will get under your skin, or fail to.”

— David Salle

Subject Matter, Status & Context

Throughout the history, there were certain categories of paintings have been considered more important than others. In first spot come history paintings - large scale and serious representing scenes from historical events, bible, literature or mythology. In the second portraits, which according to Welton may have been more private role, but they were depicting important figures and aristocracy. Third, genre scenes portraying everyday life featuring regular folk like ourselves. Or even worse – still life or animals. And you can imagine that these last ones were not deemed at all important and it took some time until that changed. Today, this hierarchy is not followed to the extreme but it still can have an influence on both what the artist produce and how we respond to the artwork.

Another very important thing to consider is the context where we look at the particular work of art. To truly appreciate and understand the character of the art piece, as Welton says, “we need to consider its original function and setting and think how those affected its form and content.” In the past – a large portion of what was created was commissioned or sold for a particular purpose, whether to serve in religious functions or grace the halls of churches and aristocratic mansions. Therefore, what was created, the style, imagery, size, and viewpoint depended on why it was created, for whom, and where it was meant to be seen.

Size, Shape & Scale

The first thing you notice immediately when you’re faced with any artwork is its size and shape. Sheer physical size can have an enormous effect on us and when coupled with the subject matter- it can make a huge statement. For example, Gustave Coubert famous painting “The Burial at Ornans” features enormous canvas filled with more than 50 life size figures. But what caused an outcry when it was exhibited was not only the sheer size but also the subject matter. The large scale works at that time were reserved for only extremely important bible and historical scenes, but Coubert painted a country scene of regular, country folks.

Image Credit: Wikipedia, Musee d’Orsay, Paris

On the other hand, scale of the subjects in the painting can also make an effect. For example, Georgia O’Keefe magnified the small blooms and filled her canvas with them in order to “obtain a powerful monumentality.”

Image Credit: Cleveland Art, clevelandart.org

Lastly, the shape of the painting can be looked at as the particular shape may be chosen by the artist deliberately to tell the story or to play with the composition. For example, circular paintings were extremely popular in 15th century and the compositional challenges of circular painting attracted many artists at that time.

Lines, Color & Composition

Color and composition are interconnected and whatever the subject, the artist must divide the surface and the plains of the canvas, choose colors, detailed or simple lines, and create a composition to create an effect on us and tell the story.

Composing the elements of the image is the main ingredient of the story. Symmetry or lack of balance plays an important role: symmetrical paintings evoke the sense of tranquility and if they are large scale, can create a sense of formality or grandeur. On the other hand, asymmetrical composition can heighten the sense of drama and create a dynamic affect.

Color can be used descriptively to either re-create the actual colors seen by the artists eye or to create an unexpected twist. Color helps represent three dimensional forms and create an illusion of space. It can be used also to express emotion, create a specific mood, or have a symbolic significance. The range and combination of colors used in a painting also should be looked at to see if the colors are in a wide or narrow color range, are they harmonious or clashing, bright or subtle, linked or contrasting.

Few examples of amazing use of color to tell the story from Jude Welton:

Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne – bold color contrasts setting blue against brilliant red but also juxtaposes closer colors like the ultramarine of her robe and the blue green sea. To avoid imbalance, there is ultramarine for the skirt of another player. What’s also important to note here is the color itself. The vivid blue was made from the mineral lapis lazuli which was not only rare but also laborious to produce and was more expensive than gold. So, the extravagant use in this painting adds to the drama.

Yellow Landscape, Pont Aven by Roderic O’Connor – uses contrasts to a great effect. This is extremely intense where complementary colors are placed next to one another. The main pairs of complementary colors are red/green, violet/yellow, and blue/orange.

Telling a Story & Dramatic Highlights

Visual storytelling can have many functions: commemorate event, educate or make a moral point. And in the past, the worthiest of paintings always told a story. Yes, the story was usually about a historically important figure or of religious event but some of these stories from the past were beautifully told and have thought us a great deal.

But storytelling through painting is fascinating. Storytelling and plot narrative usually happens in sequence of events so at a first glance, other art mediums may be better suited to this than paintings. So, the painter has to be a master creative in order to express the narrative content in a significant way in a painting. Some focus on one significant moment, or deliberately obscure the central point; some show a number of events simultaneously, while others present individual episodes in a kind of comic strip sequence. Welton’s example: The Fall Of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel – where he hides the story of Icarus in a pastoral scene.

Next, every story needs drama. And the elements of drama can be played up or played down. Few examples from Welton’s book:

Fra Angelico’s Mocking of Christ - the artist eliminates the physical and emotional drama from the scene to tell the story in a way that aids quiet contemplation.

By contrast, Artemisia Gentileschi in her Judith Slaying Holofernes creates drama not only by the way she paints the action and the exaggerated gestures but also by the strong contrast of light and shade and extreme graphic realism that stops the viewers and directly speaks to them.

Image Credit: Khan Academy; Uffizi Gallery, Florence;

And lastly, sometimes the meaning of the painting doesn’t have to be necessarily about a theme that is shown. It is about the way each artist expresses that theme in paint and how that meaning is “communicated through both subject and treatment.”

Light, Shade & Space

I have started learning how to draw and it takes a lot of practice to add dimensionality and depth to objects that are drawn on the flat surface. To achieve this mastery and illusion that the objects exist in 3D space is by using perspective, and the play of light and shadow. Linear perspectives and parallel lines converge distance, scale and space and aerial perspective mimics the atmospheric effect that makes far objects appear pale and blue.

It’s much harder to depict space in the landscape painting as there are not a lot of straight lines, so next time you look at the landscape, pay attention how the artist conveys the space and how they create an illusion that the objects are either in the background or foreground and the use of colors, warmth and coolness and the overall atmospheric feel.

Illusion and Reality

For centuries, people expected to see painted objects to look real and the paintings were judged by how real they looked. As the 19th and 20th century turned, so did the artists. From impressionists to cubists and abstract artist – all rejected the notion that the art exists to show the ‘illusion of observable reality” and that the painting needs to look like anything but the artists’ expression of their reality.

Saints and Symbols

If you’ve ever been looking at a piece of artwork and could appreciate the way it looks, the color, lines and style – but could not quite get the content, it is probably because it was either from the time or culture that is not familiar to you. As Walton notes, the art of the past usually had figures and other symbols that were used to convey a particular meaning with which the viewer of that time would be familiar with.

Today, it takes a while for us to find some of these symbols and understand what they mean to the particular culture or the time. However, learning and looking for those subtle and often hidden cues in the work of art can deepen our understanding and enjoyment of not only that particular work of art, but sometimes of the culture. Think of it as a puzzle, a quest, that would open your eyes to a whole new world of meaning. Much like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.

We hope that you learned a little bit about art appreciation and are inspired to look at art with brand new eyes. Next time you visit an art gallery, or museum, or look at the street art – please give your feelings, imagination, and your senses full freedom and reign to explore the art on its own and what it stirs in your heart and mind before you go asking what it ‘supposedly’ means.

Visual Arts Handbook: How to Look at Artwork