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Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun. 

                                                                                                                          Ralph Waldo Emerson                                                                                                                                             Historic Notes of Life & Letters in New England (1867

In 2018 during my first day as Artist in the Parks at Arches and Canyonlands national parks, a mom and her son stopped by to talk with me as they made their way around Balanced Rock. They chatted for a moment on the cold April morning and, as they walked away, the adolescent boy said “mom, you could do better than that.”  It’s a comment that should have rolled off of me and been long forgotten and yet, here we are, almost four years later, and it still haunts me.

For artists, this comment echoes things we hear in museums and galleries as people view some modern or contemporary art or even what is now classic impressionistic art:  “My kid could paint that” or “it looks like that took about five minutes to paint” or  “is that really art?”  Of course, the overly critical observer is almost always wrong. The painting, in all likelihood, has been created by a master who studied art and intentionally developed his or her style with great consideration.  Maybe the artist was trying to elicit a specific mood such as sorrow or despair,  or possibly the idea was to launch the viewer into a playful, childlike moment or memory. What was created quite intentionally was perceived by a casual viewer as messy, sloppy or unfinished.  These comments beg the question:  What is art? Is it defined by the artist’s intention or the observer’s interpretation?  That, my friends, is a topic I’m not tackling today, just tiptoeing carefully around.

Throughout history and artistic “movements” there have been many examples of art that has been interpreted by uninformed and dismissive viewers as lazy or sloppy, or leaves viewers shaking their heads and walking away.  Even the Impressionistic movement, which remains popular and well-loved in the 21^st century, was met with derision when it was introduced in the mid-1800s.  Conservative critics described their work as “unfinished and sketch-like in appearance.”

“Mill at Limetz,” Claude Monet, oil on canvas, 1888, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missour

The Impressionistic movement received its name because one of its critics called a work “an impression” of a scene or thing, but not a finished painting. (Margaret Samu, Institute of Fine Arts, New York, 2004).  Impressionistic paintings often use short, broken brushstrokes that convey forms rather than the details of a specific scene or thing. This was considered revolutionary and out of step with what was defined as art at the time.  These artists, which included Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissaro among others, sought to reinvent and reinterpret the notion of realistic art. It was anything but easy or lazy.

“Boulevard Montmarte on a Winter Morning,” Camille Pissaro, oil on canvas, 1897, Metropolitan Museum of Art

An article in artsy.net by Rachel Gould began a paragraph describing a painting by Edouard Manet (“Fishing,” 1862-63) in this way: “This surprisingly sloppy landscape” The article goes on to criticize every aspect of the “weak and unfinished painting.”  I studied the painting for a bit and while I can’t say I loved it, or even liked it, I found nothing to support the writer’s overly harsh criticism. At the center of my thoughts was that the painter’s choice of lighting and color was likely intentional. Of course, I can’t begin to explain why these choices were made and I won’t even guess, but that was my assumption, not that the painting was sloppy or bad.

“Fishing,” Edouard Manet, oil on canvas, 1863, Metropolitan Museum of Ar

In 1997 Thomas McEvilley, an American scholar, art history professor and art critic wrote in the New York Times: “What’s hard for people to accept is that issues of art are just as difficult as the issue of molecular biology; you cannot expect to open up a page on molecular biology and understand it. This irritates the public.”   In the same article, Antonio Houmem, director of the Sonnabend Collection Foundation, stated “Every time art takes a form people don’t recognize, they ask “Is that art?”” This has been true of every form of creative expression I can think of. Within my lifetime, when Elvis introduced his wiggling hips, swagger and blue suede shoes, parents were outraged. Not so many years later, the mop top Beatles with their adoring, screaming, fainting crowds caused families to wonder what happened to their sweet teen girl. What’s happened to music, the parents cried? And well before my lifetime in the early 1900s when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso created the Cubism style, people were no doubt aghast asking, what has happened to art?

“Man with a Guitar,” Georges Braque, 1912, MoM

Conveniently for me and this blog, one of Gallery Moab’s most cutting edge and distinguished painters, Antonio Savarese, recently wrote about artistic intention in his fall blog on antoniosavarese.com.  Tony’s media of choice are oil and pastel and he frequently varies his style between impressionistic, post-impressionistic and modern.  He has distanced himself from the literalness that both nature and/or a photograph offer. This has resulted in him focusing primarily on abstract designs and sequences which may consist of shadows, brushwork, and colors to convey his message. He believes that paintings rendered less concrete in their representation will allow the viewer to formulate new perspectives about the artwork, perhaps even years after the purchases.  His style and perspective make him uniquely qualified to help me explain how artists work intentionally, not haphazardly or accidentally.

"Pulp Cowboys”, Antonio Savarese, 36” X 36”, oil on canvas, 2022

Here the decision is clearly one of esthetics and design.  I feel that the contrast of a flat, almost construction paper cut out background next to an image more rendered, will make the rendered image seem more "real."  My intention is that because the landscape is stripped down to its true basics, a flat strip of green meant to be rolling hills, another flat strip of dark blue above that for mountains, that one is more prone to focus on the main subjects of the scene.  I feel the cowboys carry more visual weight than the much larger, but formless, bright cadmium red they are surrounded by. This image and “Cowboy” clearly depict scenes that include elements that a casual viewer may deem unfinished.  --AS

“Cowboy,” Antonio Savarese, 15 X 20, oil on canvas, 2022.

In this piece the background is loosely painted and the shirt is equally as simple.  All my time and effort went into rendering the facial features as, to me, the subject’s face is more relevant as well as interesting.  --AS

In his blog, Tony wrote:  “Harold Speed wrote in his 1920 art instructional book, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials, that John Singer Sargent would begin his paintings in a flurry, covering as much canvas as possible as quickly as he could. He would then, near the final stages, slow down and become more methodical.  When one studies the works of Sargent or Joaquin Sorolla, it becomes apparent that a lot of the painting had been done quickly, which adds a level of mastery to their work. Not only because they were able to do something magnificent, but because they understood what deserved weeks of being rendered versus what didn’t.  Perhaps the edge of an eye as it meets the cheek bone is rendered quickly and left soft, whereas the corner of the lips is worked upon for days or weeks.  This wasn’t done because lips are especially difficult to render, but rather these were deliberate choices the artists made.  The artist decides where to spend time, where the priorities lie in his work, what matters versus what doesn’t matter.  It’s about telling a cohesive story without being bogged down by a meaningless tangent.”

“Saguaro”, Antonio Savarese, 24 X 36, oil on canvas, 2022. Caption: The wild grasses and other prickly greens of the distant landscape are scraped in as is the shadow. The overall scene is pretty out of focus in order to capture an effect, in this case the dusk sky blanketing the landscape in an orange hue.  --A

Savarese concludes: “Never underestimate the final satisfying result that can be achieved by leaving numerous spontaneous brushstrokes.  These strokes reveal the origins of a painting and add uniqueness. Consider that the part of a painting that appears unfinished may be in part because it makes the center of interest look that much more complete and important. A lot of haphazardness is actually deliberate in that it wasn’t removed or painted over because it actually added quality to the final piece and the artist was skilled enough to recognize it.”   

As I was finishing up this article, letting it rest and find a place to settle itself as finished, I remembered a book I cherished from my college days.  The binding has all but given up, the glue is dried to crumbles and the first half of the book is separated from the back half. There are inked notes and sticky notes throughout it. In other words, it is well-loved. As I flipped through the fluttering, loose pages, a handwritten set of notes fell out. The Emerson quote that begins this blog was among them, but I decided I should end this impossible discussion about art with this one:

Only through art can we get outside ourselves and know another’s view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.   

                                                                                                                                                          Marcel Proust