The artist’s way of seeing:1 - Is it just a matter of learning to see?

As an artist, I see the world physically as we all do but I have become intrigued by the phraseology ‘an artist’s way of seeing’, it implies that the process of art needs some sort of specialist ability, even magical!  I do wonder at my own sense of conjuring with lines, forms, shades and colours to make visual reality appear in what we call ‘pictures’.  Well I don’t remember becoming a sorceress but I do know I am curious about how my creative potential is in a large part due to ‘learning to see’.

As an art student, many a time I felt frustration at not being able to accurately represent what I saw when I drew or painted, I could not understand what blocked my co-ordination of hand and eye but I was determined to foil it. This led me to scrutinize what is actually meant by the artist’s way of seeing, is it really about learning to see?  

Easel and me - From My SketchBook

“Learning to see?  - Haven’t you been using your eyes all your life?”  I hear you say!  

Yes, but when I am at my easel looking at a still life arrangement, I observe the scene that is offered to my eyes and I record it. Observation implies close analysis with objectivity but I know I can be selective even easily swayed by self interest.  To see is to see ‘something out there’ yet I know that the artist’s task is to wrestle with visual experiences and play the game of capture. In playing the game you soon come to realize that the act of seeing can be overridden by the act of making, as you can only interpret what you are seeing in the terms of the medium that you are using.

The game only comes to fruition when you have successfully bridged the gap between what you the artist sees and what ends upon the picture plane of the paper or canvas.

Training the eye as I have found is a curious concept because if you take the evolution of the artist as the making of a resemblance of something, there had to be a starting point, a vocabulary of portrayal to articulate the world of visual experiences.  Was the first picture a configuration of marks that suggested an image to an artist for which he corrected, adjusted or adapted for the needs of his portrayal?  Is it possible that the starting point was simply intuition that fostered learning by perceptual trial and error? Art museums are filled with all the successful experiments of invention that have led to the discovery of appearance,  so we know that the act of ‘making and matching’ allowed the artist to build conventions that suggested reality upon a flat surface.  No wonder past artists were thought to be magicians but with hindsight we can judge how they directed visual clues towards their own artistic way of seeing.

Artistic Thoughts - From My SketchBook

The question of what is involved in ‘looking at the visual world’ has seen many a heated debate, none more so than when the Impressionist movement laid claim that they saw the world as they painted it.  This brings in the question of artistic style and intention which throws a curve ball into pictorial representation saying that visual subjectivity also plays a part in the artist's way of seeing.

It is here that I become aware that the topic of ‘seeing’ becomes a quicksand into masses of literature upon art and science but I found a real benefit in understanding why we see ‘something out there’ simply because seeing is so familiar to us that we hardly question it.

Beware reader, the path for inquiry now divides into theoretical areas that fill artists with trepidation but I hope to show that in exploring the various ideas upon artistic vision, it will bring clarity to artistic practice.  The only trouble has been how to translate my mountain of notes into the format of a blog. With the number of books stacking up on my desk, I rapidly came to the conclusion that I would have to spread this topic over several posts. You could say that the relationship between visual perception and pictorial representation is a matter of ‘more than meets the eye’, more complex than first imagined!

Part Two - Vision and the artist, coming soon!

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee: portraits portrayed every which way

This month sees the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne with last weekend marking a whole host of jubilee festivities to celebrate the occasion.  As part of the celebrations London’s National Portrait Gallery hosts an ‘unofficial’ exhibition of royal portraits entitled
“The Queen – Art & Image”   Having toured Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, this presentation of royal images has arrived in the capital for a summer long show highlighted as an inquisitive exhibition into portraiture. So curiosity led me to browse this collection to see if it had ‘a startling range of artistic creativity’ as per NPG press release.

Jubilee Celebrations  - an image from a big screen
on the Thames Embankment!

Well portraiture, I would have thought amongst the artistic genres need the least explanation, it’s a picture of a person, just the Queen in this instance with only a few painted images in this rather small exhibition!  It is true that today we see far more portrait photographs than we do paintings; who hasn’t got a likeness on Facebook, indeed I have mine as a profile picture. The act of commissioning a portrait is something few of us will do but what if?           Do we, like the Queen, have a public face?

The answer is yes!  How many times have we hated photographs of ourselves only to alter our appearance so that we stage a pose with our best side turned towards the camera. We are all vain to some extent and a camera records dispassionately whereas painters bring their own subjective response to a portrait, but are we willing to accept the artist’s own personal vision?

It something the Queen has submitted to as Her Majesty has sat for countless portraits and has presided over many changes in trends and technology which have changed the way her image is presented to us; this is very plain to see in the exhibition. Yet despite the differing artistic approaches very few leading artists have captured the essence of her character and appearance. There is no doubt that many have felt uneasiness with a sitter of such status but at the same time have we, the viewers become too familiar with the Queen’s image?

Walking around and looking at the display of royal pictures, you do sense a passage of time not just for the Queen but for your own perceived history. There’s a lot of “oh I remember that” as many of the pictures were reproduced in the newspapers of the time. It is as if we know the Queen but at the same time we don’t know her. We see her likeness time and again yet it is an enigma, we are so blinded by familiarity that we don’t really question the person pictured. Whether contrived or not, the regal distance is always maintained and I suspect that the Queen over the last sixty years has learnt the secret of just showing a public face. This barrier I suspect is the reason why very few artists, even photographers have overcome the painter and sitter dialogue to portray a successful conversation between sitter and viewer.

Thinking more as an observer, there are very few portraits of the Queen which I have viewed over the years that has captivated me as a viewer, none seem to capture her heart and soul, only fractions of her character. The 1955 portrait by the Italian painter Pietro Annigoni, which on display in the NPG’s exhibition, comes closest, although it’s a very conventional and formal. Idealized in some respects, almost renaissance in manner but there is too much empty space to the top of the work for my liking. Less ostentatious than past ‘ruler’ portraits, it gives a sense of regal continuity with a youthful likeness of the Queen thoughtful in her role of monarch embarking upon her reign. Annigoni’s portrait is probably the only work that we have some small inkling that the Queen actually liked this representation of herself. 

However, there is one work at the other extreme that is equally captivating but infamously unflattering. Lucian Freud’s critically divided portrait of the Queen which is also part of the exhibition, is an intriguing work although its small scale is a surprise. Artistically I found his portrayal most insightful and the artist has captured something beyond a mocking caricature. It holds the attention as there is a sense of tension between sitter and painter, the Queen’s top lip is a little too pursed, the look is almost haughty, did the painter getting beneath the public face or perhaps a sign of the sitter’s disapproval?

So how difficult is it to portray the royal likeness? I wanted to see for myself but I admit that portraiture is not my forte.  Consequently I put pencil to paper to sketch her Majesty so that I could understand more about the person that has reigned over us for sixty years. Facial expressions are intricate but drawing eyes, noses and mouths becomes more straightforward with practice. However portraiture is about combining them all into an appearance that expresses personality and subsequently a likeness. Easier said than done!

From My Sketch Book: Queen Elizabeth II -
"Congratulation Your Majesty on your Diamond Jubilee"

My experience has shown me that any portrayal of the Queen is a tricky task which I feel is due to her image being so familiar and to the fact she has perfected that public face. I applaud any artist who has tackled a royal portrait as she will never let that public face slip and her real persona will remain a mystery. However, when I was researching the topic of royal portraits I came across some commemorative images of the Queen made by children. Take a minute to follow the link and explore this fascinating look at how the Queen is seen by a generation used to today’s world of mass production images as it is an artistic insight into portraiture of budding Picassos and portraits portrayed every which way!

Further reading that may be of interest is an article entitled the 'reverential and the real' published by the Art Newspaper, excellent picture of the Queen sitting for the portrait by Lucian Freud!

©MRMansell 2012