Enrique Brinkman c. 1982
BLOG # 17
I used to have a problem with abstract paintings. I didn’t know how to read them.
My vision, my thought processes and mindset had been determined by stories. Stories that help us all to get to grips with experience, help to shape our understanding. Stories seem to be my way of seeing the world. In fact they may even create our world.
Abstract images from Kandinsky to Cy Tombly initially baffled me, no actually, they didn’t even appeal to me, they did not resonate.I guess this is simply because I couldn’t read any kind of story in them. I couldn’t find a way in.
Roger Fry, the art critic, helped me. Writing about Kandinsky’s paintings, he describes them as . . .
pure visual music.
And Kandinsky seem to agree . . . .
paintings could develop just such
powers as music possesses.
So that’s the first step, stop looking for exterior directives and start to feel the music. Music after all, never, or very rarely never, requires a narrative structure for it to appeal to us. We simply listen and react.Music seems to work more on the level of emotion rather than intellect. We let it wash over us, immerse us.
Not surprisingly Kandinsky started using music titles for his paintings. He called them ‘improvisations’, ‘compositions’ and even ‘fugues’. He clearly expected the abstract nature of his paintings to affect his audience directly, like the tones of music.
So okay, think about music. Well, that’s the first step.
My narrative mind still refused to completely let me go into pure emotion. I needed another step. Another guiding light.
I began to discover that I could, by looking closer, find an element in a painting that I could fasten onto. A way to begin a narrative read, the starting point of a story. A detail, a figurative detail, or something close to this, that sets the imagination on a journey of discovery.
Kandinsky was probably attuned to this need of a narrative clue when, in his early abstract work, he would often describe his paintings as containing figurative elements or at least symbols.
A castle on a hill, a rainbow, a battle. Images that are mostly hidden but ultimately decipherable. These elements of course might be only loosely connected to the outside world. They are merely clues.
Finding this little figurative detail was my next big step in getting to grips with abstract paintings. The detail let me into the painting, gave me a way forward. A way to begin to appreciate the colour, the form, the rhythm, the contrast, the synergies and of course the emotion.
And so to maybe a final step. Experience. The experience of being led many, many times, into an abstract painting via the little details.The little details that lead me in and now leave me immersed and ready to appreciate.
Let’s hold these thoughts and rewind to look at the first painting.
Abstract, yes indeed.
I was going to begin to describe what I see, see visually, but of course that’s not what abstract art is generally about as I have learnt. Just let it flow over you, immersed in the emotion.
But, but, what about the eyes? The eyes have it. Yes, it’s an abstract image with that small, but so vital, figurative element.A pair of eyes. A pair of eyes looking at us. A pair of eyes commanding our gaze. A pair of eyes asking a question.The eyes seem to lead us in, lead us into the painting. The eyes seem so critical here, they ask us to look back at them. To look back at the person. A way in.
People have said that eyes are the ‘window to the soul’ or sometimes ‘the mirror to the soul’.
As ever Shakespeare was wise to this.
Today I do command my watchful soul,
I let fool the windows of my eyes.
Richard III Act V Scene 3
He was not alone. Leonardo da Vinci was thought to have initiated the phrase or maybe even the philosopher Cicero. Others claim that the Bible reveals the origin of the phrase.
Nowadays we may say, less poetically maybe, that eye contact is central to our interaction with others. Eye contact, so important, and yet often so difficult. We demand this eye contact, we attempt it, we often shy away from it.Eye contact is clearly emotional, clearly vital. Portrait painters and photographers have long recognised this vitality.A portrait without a clear view of the eyes always seems weaker, less direct, less personal.The eyes seem to tell us so much about the subject.
Confident and Sure
Desperate
Intense
One Eye
The eyes clearly are central to our understanding of the person, even one eye.
Initially, in my work as a cinematographer, I failed to understand just how important the eyes were.I failed to illuminate the eyes, resulting in the person feeling less dependable, lacking in depth, hidden.This lack of illumination in the eyes could of course be turned on its head, dark eyes, shadowed, they say . . . sinister, not to be trusted.
A moment of enlightenment fortunately happened.
A trusted director quietly whispered . . .
I can’t see his eyes .. .
. . . . as we were creating a close-up of our favourite actor.
Oh yes, I asked the Gaffer to bring in that small ‘inkie eye light’.
I gently brightened the actors eyes. Instantly personality, insight and depth appeared. I never looked back. I was always careful to light the eyes.
On top of this a bonus. Take a look at the eyes in this portrait.
See the reflection of the light in his eyes, in the trade we call it the ‘catchlight’. See how the catchlight lights up the face, give it life, give it sparkle, give it dimension.
Looking this way we do indeed see into the soul.
The eyes have it.
And the wonderful painting by Enrique Brinkman also has it . . . . thanks to the eyes.
CREDITS
The wonderful work of Henrik Brinkman from Malaga can be found at his website www.enriquebrinkman.es
Wassily Kandinsky, Composition IV (1911) Düsseldorf. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
Botticelli, Portrait of a Young Man National Gallery London
Courbet Le Désespéré Private collection of the Conseil Investissement Art BNP Paribas
Film still from Shutter Island. Dir Martin Scorsese
Nathan Ford Self Beaux Arts Bath
Kata Kálmán National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Many thanks to all of you who have posted comments. Please keep them coming, they are most welcome and helpful.
Abstract art should imply an active process involving abstraction from something, somewhere or maybe somehow. Picasso said towards the end of his life that all his art came from people he knew, relationships, sex. Some artists have become purists and somewhat puritanical in their approach. “There must be no reference to or identification of the real world.” The word abstraction then no longer makes any sense.
20th Century art where this phenomenon became manifest relies on the interface between chaos and order. Our natural human tendency is to tidy up, make sense, derive a pattern and sort. But that interface has been used in art for hundreds of years. Any analysis of arts like Giotto to Claude Lorraine will find abstract structures holding the picture together or dividing the two dimensional space. Advertisers, designers all use these mechanisms to capture the human interest and hold it. And if that process is subliminal then so much the more powerful.
With the “ismatic era” of the 20th Century when such movements as Constructivism mainly based on a political ideal the move away from anything remotely realistic was achieved by artists such as Malevich with the Black Square or Ives Klein with Blue. But as already stated these will induce an emotional response. When Sigmund Freud unlocked the possibility that allowed us to admit our deepest emotions then so called abstract art was let loose. But wander into a 40 thousand year old cave decorated in abstracted designs of Bison, horse, hand prints and you will find the power of art showing the “essence” of a human response to their world. Nothing has changed.
On my one film with Helen Miriam we had a talk about where is performance most evident. She said in the eyes. My response was if you are not in a close up it is in the voice or sound.
Another good one Richard That Portrait of a Young Man has always been my favourite painting. Such a direct un-put-on look directly back at the viewer. Across the centuries.