Paint to Emote? (Ish don't think so!)

The question of emotions in art came up last night while painting the model. Another painter in the group commented on my work (which was at that time basically just a massy block-in of lights and darks), and I forget exactly how he put it, but he said something along the lines of it being dark and expressive of some emotion or other. And I replied, well, no, it should just be expressive of intense concentration, not any particular emotion, which he jumped on.

“You mean, you don’t think Art should express emotions?”

"Well, I'm not feeling any particular emotion at the moment."

"You're NOT!?"

“Uh….no….”

“Some comment about what a pity or something.... Then what is the purpose of making art?”

Now, I have a hard time responding to this question, because the purpose of making art is in the making of art. (It's like asking: what's the meaning of life? If you're living well, the answer is in the living!) I make art because I love art and I enjoy creating. in fact, I seem to get out of balance if not outright ill if I don’t create. I make Art so more Art exists.

But paint to emote?

I really don’t think so.

I mean, first off, which exact emotions is an artist supposed to be expressing? The emotion felt during the creation process? So, if you put 20 or 50 or 80 hours into a piece, do you have to hold that emotion for the duration? What if you paint something, wait for it to dry, then get back to it a week later? Should you sustain your intense feeling of anger for 2-3 weeks? Without letup? What if you paint one angry piece, then begin painting a happy piece while Anger is drying? Should you be angry while painting the angry piece, then happy while painting the happy piece? Is it even a realistic expectation that you can flick the emotional switch on and off just so you can do a painting? (I mean, if so, shouldn’t we be prescribing the painting of happy paintings to depressives?)

Then again, if you want to create a painting about blind rage, are you going to be able to control your brush while you’re in a fury?

And what kind of emotion is a painting of an apple supposed to evoke? (I suppose anger-because it’s red, after all. But wait, the painter was half-Chinese, and red is a joyful colour in China… But what about that complimentary green background? Doesn’t that suggest jealousy? And doesn’t that blue highlight suggest sadness? So, far from being a simple painting of an apple, it is an expression of happy-jealous sad-anger! Who knew?)

I think a lot of confusion arises over the question of inspiration in art, which then gets confused with the emotional state of the artist, or some emotional content that a painting is supposed to express. For the record, in my opinion, inspiration's usefulness is at the start of a project, before any painting or drawing has begun. It's the impetus to create a particular image. It's that fleeting Good Idea that you just have to get down on paper. But fleeting it is! Then it flies away to touch the next Artist on its list, while you sit down and plan out the painting (maybe), or at least sit in Concentration and with Patience, who take over until Inspiration returns - for the next project. You don't need inspiration to work on a painting. You need Diligence, Patience, Stickwithitty, Concentration, maybe a few of their friends. If you waited around for Inspiration to paint, you'd probably only get a few brushstrokes done a year. (Or maybe Inspiration just doesn't visit me as much as she does other artists...)

I also think that the desire to be "expressive" in art is generally a cover-up for laziness and lack of skill - which basically comes back to laziness. ("Oh, I didn't want to get the proportions of the body right because it's more expressive to draw them out of proportion." - THAT's how "expressive" is used in relation to Art.) I have yet to watch a serious painter at work with any visible emotion controlling them. It seems that concentration makes for better paintings. In my own experience, emotions just get in the way of working. (You can't buy a tube of Happiness, Anger, Pretension, etc. It all boils down to putting coloured blobs on canvas. Richard Schmid has said a lot of these things in his book.)

I mean, really, who cares what emotional state the artist is in during the creation process? How does knowing how the artist felt affect your appreciation of the work? (And you're never going to know for 99.9999999999999% of all artworks you ever gaze upon!) That kind of "knowledge" is just gossip, and it smacks of the kind of entitlement and obsession with self that Consumer Culture creates. ("I want this, I want that, I deserve it, you can't fail me because I am not a failure, and I'm an artist because I say I am!" This is basically what is being taught in art school.) Who cares what the artist is trying to express? We express ourselves all the time in every single action (take three sugars in your coffee? what does that express about you??), so why obsess about what someone is trying to express when they are holding a little stick with hairs on the end of it? I've never heard discussion about what a surgeon is trying to express, or those guys who do manual work that's nearly as important as what we painters do.....

Or maybe the emotions that count are those created in the viewer?

But how are you going to be able to control how people react to your piece? Someone who raises pet snakes will likely react differently to your painting of a snake than someone whose family was killed by adders while they watched helplessly from their perch atop the kitchen table. And again, what possible emotional impact are you expecting to arouse with a painting of a vase, or a flower, or a portrait, or a landscape? (I'm sure George W. Bush's mommy would react MUCH differently to a portrait of Shrub than I would!)

Now, I admit that, somehow, (great) Art creates some kind of stirrings in me, but I'm not convinced it interacts with the emotions per se. (Wikipedia lists 47 emotional states. There doesn't seem to be an art-appreciation emotion.)

The closest approximation to an emotion that I can think of that I would like to inspire in those who spectate my paintings, is something akin to sexual attraction. When I look at, for example, a luscious painting by David Leffel, I get that loss-of-breath, sinky-stomach feeling that reminds me of seeing a beautiful woman, nude. And THAT is what I aspire to! That kind of uncontrolled, reflexive “Holy shit!” reaction. I want people to look upon my drawings & paintings and think, “I gotta have that!” Which, upon reflection, is entirely independent of the content of the artwork itself! (I get that lusty feeling when I look at David Leffel's still lifes as much as I do looking at his portraits, self-portraits, figures, even at least one landscape.) And it has nothing to do with saleability of the works or making money.

It’s about enduring knowledge and beauty, not fleeting emotions.