"If those eyes of yours were different"

The Story of Art with 370 Illustrations

The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich

“It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and saw the sites -- if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. . . .” Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

In many ways, Gombrich’s work his a history of the way that painters have changed the ways in which we see the world, or, if not that, given us options. According to Morrison, if you change the way a person sees the world, you change them. If you change them, they start changing the world. And when they change the world, other people see a different world. And the cycle continues. Following are quotes from Gombrich’s book (I am just getting to Rembrandt) that pursue this theme further. Just who are the artists that have created new ways of seeing the world for us and how did they convey their new vision with their art.

Everything that was considered good and beautiful in the age of the pyramids was held to be just as excellent a thousand years later. . . .  Only one man ever shook the iron bars of the Egyptians’ style.” P. 67

“Once this ancient rule was broken, once the artist began to rely on what he saw, a veritable landslide started.  It was a tremendous moment in the history of art when, perhaps a little before 500 B.C., artists dared for the first time in all history to paint a foot as seen from the front.  In all the thousands of Egyptian and Syrian works which have come down to us, nothing of that kind had ever happened.  P. 81

“the Egyptians had largely drawn what they knew to exist, the Greeks what they saw; in the Middle Ages the artists also learn to express in his picture what he felt..” p. 165

Giotto had rediscovered the art of creating the illusion of depth on a flat surface.  Giorgio knew this discovery was not only a trick to be displayed for its own sake.  It enabled him to change the whole conception of painting.  Instead of using the methods of picture-writing he could create the illusion that the sacred story was happening before our very eyes.  For him it was no longer sufficient to look at older representations of the same scene and adapt these time-honored models to new use.  He rather followed the advice of the preaching friars who exhorted the people to visualize in their mind, when reading the Bible and the legends of the saints, what it must have looked like when a carpenter's family fled to Egypt or when the Lord was nailed to the cross.” P. 201

“Leonardo certainly knew how he achieved this effect, and by what means.  The great observer of nature knew more about the way we use our eyes than anybody who had ever lived before him. . . . Leonardo had found the true solution to the problem.  The painter must leave the beholder something to guess.  If the outlines are not quite so firmly drawn, if the form is left a little fake, as though disappearing into a shadow, this impression of the dryness and stiffness will be avoided.  This is Leonardo's famous invention which the Italians call sfumato.” P. 301

One of my new favorite "this changes everything" artists is Caravaggio. This is a gu who decides to bring sinners into Holy places. He was himself a hard drinking hard living willing to fight at the drop of a hat sort of guy and lived on the wrong side of the tracks by choice on a number of occasions. When you see the sinners that Caravaggio painted in the churches that hired him, you might have met them yourself at a recent card game, brothel, or prison.

Caravaggio killed someone himeself in a duel and had a bounty on his head. In hopes to acquire a pardon from a Papal insider, he intended to bring his OWN head in for the reward (a pardon) by painting the Papal insider a painting of David holding the head of Goliath's head, only the face of Goliath is actually Caravaggio.

Carav13

What was his point? Maybe simply an inside joke. Maybe he is trying to get out of his pickle by being the one that brings his own head in - so lifelike it could be real - to justice. Maybe he is saying ... "Look. So I killed someone in a duel. Didn't David? And he is a saint!"

Being an artist can come in handy. In your own art, you can sway the jury's mind in your favor without so much as stepping into court. You can change the way that they see. How would I like to change the way people see? I would like them to actually literally believe that the people who can make the most connections between things are the most beautiful. ;-) But even with respect to that trait, there are some people who are so superlative that I am not sure people want to be around them. Who wants to be reminded all the time that they will never measure up?