Were this to be an introduction to art history, I would have had a single recommendation: Start saving the $8,000 necessary to purchase Grove’s 34-volume Dictionary of Art. (You will have plenty of time. It’s now available only to libraries.)
But it seemed more helpful to introduce the subject of visual art from several different perspectives: conceptual, historical, personal, social, poetical, fictional and so on.
This is not to say, however, that by following the recommendations readers will have everything firmly in hand. These are the essentials for beginning a process that rightly should continue throughout life.
FRAME OF MIND
You are about to go on an adventure. It potentially involves thousands of years and millions of people. Like a religion, it’s greater than you; unlike a sport, it cannot be mastered. You will never have imagined most of what you’ll see, but the purpose of looking outside yourself is to discover aspects of yourself that others treated millennia before your birth. Get ready to feel exhilarated – and very, very small.
COMMITMENT
A lot in contemporary life is meant to save time. Art demands you spend it. The average time spent looking at an artwork in a museum is less than nine seconds. Which might do for looking but not seeing or understanding. As in human relations, how much time you spend with a work of art will in large measure determine the quality of the bond you form with it.
FOCUS
Nearly every adult has the ability to walk down a street and be somewhere else; in most instances, all that’s required of your capacity for sight is an awareness of pitfalls. Art can be approached with the same peripheral vision, and doubtless something about it will seep in. But pleasureful or meaningful retention requires that an artwork be the central point of activity, isolated if only mentally from the jumble of traffic and din.
CONCENTRATION
Spoken words, recorded sounds, even printed texts often wash over people who take them in with a fair awareness of content and purpose. Visual art does not do as well with viewers who are passive. You have to actively go out to meet an art object by bringing all faculties to bear on it. The sharper the concentration, the deeper it cuts toward a visual artist’s achievement.
THINGS TO DO
– Buy a membership to an art museum
It doesn’t matter which one. The point is to get all the mailings, as a help toward developing awareness of what’s going on with temporary exhibitions and lectures. There is absolutely, positively, unequi-vocably no substitute for seeing art objects first-hand in a non-commercial setting.
– Visit an environment conducive to art study
The room Tadao Ando designed for Japanese art at the Art Institute of Chicago is as close to an ideal space for the contemplation of visual art as any in the city. Now being reinstalled, Gallery 109 will reopen in winter, 1997.
– Adopt a work of art
Choose any piece from a permanent collection that is available for repeated viewing. Return to it for scrutiny over a six-month period. Exhaust personal observations, then investigate written materials-(greater than) – wall labels, brochures, catalog entries, monographs – available at the museum.
– Explore openings at commercial galleries
Art does not exist apart from a social community. The people dominating the scene may say a lot about values at work in the art. Sept. 5 is the kickoff of the new season. Check our guide in the Friday section that week for individual gallery listings.
ARTWORKS
“The World’s Greatest Paintings”
About 20 years ago in the Illustrated London News, a consensus of 44 leading art professionals gave Diego Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” (in the Prado, Madrid) their highest accolades in a survey of scholars that had never before been attempted and has never since been repeated.
The remainder of their top 10 choices were in order of preference:
“View of Delft,” Jan Vermeer (Mauritshuis, The Hague).
“The Tempest,” Giorgione (Accademia, Venice, Italy).
“La Primavera,” Sandro Botticelli (Uffizi, Florence).
“The Resurrection,” Piero della Francesca (Municipal Art Gallery, San Sepolcro).
“The Burial of the Count of Orgaz,” El Greco (Church of Santo Tomei, Toledo, Spain).
“The Lamentation,” Giotto di Bondone (Arena Chapel, Padua).
“Isenheim Altarpiece,” Mattias Gruwald (Muse d’Unterlinden, Colmar).
“Guernica,” Pablo Picasso (Prado, Madrid).
“The Return of the Prodigal Son,” Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia).
VIDEOS
– “The Mystery of Picasso” by Georges-Henri Clouzot
Ninety minutes of the finest draftsman of the century creating – and sometimes destroying – works that existed only for the camera.
– “Life Lessons” by Martin Scorsese
Part one of the triptych called “New York Stories” gives the sharpest insights into the behavior of contemporary artists of any commercial film.
– “The Way Things Go” by Peter Fischli and David Weiss
A 30-minute chain reaction staged especially for the camera (in 1987) captures the twists and turns of an antic imagination that is as elaborate as (but more fun than) thousands of falling dominoes.
Publications
– “History of Art” by H.W. and Anthony F. Janson
The classic college text for countless introductory surveys; sooner or later, everbody gravitates toward it as the most reliable overview in a single volume.
– “Concepts of Modern Art from Fauvism to Post-Modernism” edited by Nikos Stangos
A chronological presentation of the ideas behind currents and movements that dominated art of the 20th Century.
– “Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s” by Irving Sandler
An uncommonly clear introduction to difficult and often controversial work. As trustworthy as a timeline.
– “A World History of Photography” by Naomi Rosenblum
Another classic. It gives a comprehensive view of the medium that came to wide acceptance as art only in the 1970s.
– “Performance Art from Futurism to the Present” by RoseLee Goldberg
The first text to trace a history for live presentations by artists that lie between druidic rituals and standup comedy.
– “The Letters of Vincent van Gogh” selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw
Virtually the only artist’s writings that detail all facets of his art and also have the greater, deeper appeal of literature.
– “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artist’s Writings” edited by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz
More than 230 painters, sculptors and less easily identifiable creators speak about the abstruse and sometimes forbidding things they’ve done.
– “The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture and Literature” by Jose Ortega y Gasset
The title piece is an outline of some of the thornier ideas in modern art, written at a time when hardly anyone was capable of such crystalline analysis.
– “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” by Matthew Arnold
Written by one of the 19th Century’s finest English poets and critics, the 1855 essay gives the best definition of the act of criticism we have.
– “Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rainer Maria Rilke
The most significant response to a work of art is the creation of another work. This brief poem, written in 1908, is a paradigm about the power of all art.
– “The Recognitions” by William Gaddis
A phenomenally learned and hilarious novel (written over 20 years; completed in 1955) that has as its nominal subject a forger of Old Master paintings and the Greenwich Village art circle in which he travels.
– Art forum and Modern Painters
Each of these contemporary periodicals – one liberal, one conservative – is an antidote to the other. Read them at your peril, but by all means look at the pictures; they give the clearest idea of what is most favored by professionals in art today.
– Public Media Inc. catalog
The “open sesame” to the largest distributor in the United States of video tapes on art. Call 773-878-2600, ext. 354, to request a copy. (No rentals; purchase only.)
ELECTRONICS
– Art on the Internet
The Yahoo search engine gives access to more than 300 sites for art and museums. Visitors can explore everything from individual objects to the complete Sistine Chapel.
More on the internet
For a multimedia presentation on this installment and a look at the previous essentials, go to: chicago.tribune.com
