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Category: Charioteer of Delphi

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Reading (and writing) a painting

A good artist, like a good writer, controls how his painting is read.

Early November: North Greenland, 1932, oil on canvas, Rockwell Kent, courtesy the Hermitage

People are sometimes under the mistaken notion that I’m intellectual. In fact, my taste in books is decidedly low-brow. Luckily, there are as many different books out there as there are readers. The same is true of paintings.

Reading a painting is similar to reading a book. First, there’s an introduction. We enter every painting at some point, although the artist need not create a literal visual path in for us. It’s just as likely that there are a series of focal points that the reader notices and absorbs in order. These are supported by incidental matter that contributes tone and information. A good artist, like a good writer, doesn’t leave this to chance. It’s organized in the composition phase and then supported in the painting phase.
Whalers, c. 1845, oil on canvas, JMW Turner, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are only three intelligible passages in this painting—the whale, the whalers in their dories, and the ship. The water might as well be a wheatfield for all the information we’re given.
That requires that you, the artist, understands the basics of composition. You control the motive line of your painting. You know how to use contrast and color to encourage the viewer to read your work in a specific order. You know how to make some passages subservient to these main themes.
You must understand the focal points of your painting, either overtly or subconsciously. These are not necessarily the subject. In Rockwell Kent’s Early November: North Greenland, 1932, our eyes go first to the iceberg in the foreground. Kent has made it the most luminous, warmest part of the scene, and set it off against the briny depths. Next we look at the hillside behind, which is almost as bright as the iceberg. Only after that does our eye travel to the human activity at the bottom. Here we’re arrested by an ageless story: man wrestling against the vast power of nature for his very survival. We spend a long time looking at these tiny fishermen, which we wouldn’t have done had they been what we noticed first.
The Census at Bethlehem, 1566, oil on wood panel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, courtesy Royal Museums of Fine Arts. As with the gospels, all the action is in the most inconspicuous corner.
Kent has borrowed a technique first used by Pieter Bruegel the Elder four hundred years earlier. In his Census at Bethlehem, all the bustle and contrast of the midfield drive our eyes down to the least important part of the painting, the corner. There the scene is laid for the birth of Christ. Just as in the Bible story, this great event happens in an unimportant place.
We know that because we’re bringing our own understanding to the painting. In both literature and painting, prior knowledge plays a profound role in how we read the work. There are symbols we must decode, and experiences we relate to. The thematic thread tying together the three paintings above is the insignificance of man. Every one of us has felt that some time. That feeling transcends the specific narrative.
The Charioteer of Delphi, 478 or 474 BC, courtesy Delphi Museum. We may know nothing of this young man, but his beauty and concentration speak through the ages.
Some of the great art of the past has lost its narrative power today. We don’t know enough Greek mythology or Bible to fully decode them. But the greatest still have the power to transport us. They touch a common chord of experience and emotion.
In our digital culture, we don’t often take time to read artwork quietly. But that’s in the shopping phase. In the end, paintings will go home with someone, to be seen over long periods of time. To survive, they must have some story to tell, some depth of meaning, or they will be relegated to the attic. The work that compels the most on Instagram may be, sadly, the least successful in real life.
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When the Olympics included artists

The Charioteer at Delphi was erected in 478 or 474 BC, to commemorate the victory of a chariot team in the Pythian Games (a forerunner of the modern Olympic Games).
The arts were part of the modern Olympic Games during its formative years. From 1912 to 1948, medals were awarded sporadically in architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. The problem wasn’t so much in the attitude of the Olympic Committee but that of artists, who are not nearly as inclined as athletes to embrace amateurism. Artists may not make much money in their lifetimes, but they jealously protect the right to do so.
The International Olympic Committee was founded in 1894 under the aegis of Pierre de FrĂ©dy, Baron de Coubertin. An educator and historian, Coubertin was himself the son of a LĂ©gion d’honneur-winning painter. He himself went on to win a gold medal at the 1912 Summer Olympics for a poem entitled Ode to Sport.
Rugby, by Jean Jacoby was an award winning drawing in the 1928 Olympic art competitions.
In 1906, the Olympic Committee decided to add art competitions; the primary mandate was that the work had to be inspired by sport.
A series of snafus delayed implementation until the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. Only 35 artists sent work, but they managed to award gold medals in all five categories.
The 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris were the first games in which a respectable number of artists participated; 193 artists submitted works. There were 1,100 visual works submitted to the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928. Participation in the arts competitions remained stable until after WWII, when the conflict over professional vs. amateur status again reared its ugly head. The art competitions were a dead letter after 1948.
Alfred Reginald Thomson’s The London Amateur Boxing Championship Held at the Royal Albert Hall won the last gold medal for painting, in 1948.
The essential incompatibility between the Olympics and the fine arts is apparent in retrospect: no major art figure from the period ever won a medal at the Olympic Games. Perhaps the closest were the British painter Alfred Thomson and the Czech violinist Josef Suk, whose category was made more difficult because judges had to content themselves with reading written scores. (In fact, nobody cared enough to even publicly perform the award-winners at the Games.)

George Bellows (arguably the best painter of boxing ever) painted Dempsey and Firpo in 1924. It was not an Olympic committee contender; Bellows was a professional, not an amateur.

The guy who gets to the end first wins the race; that’s a purely objective thing. Performances, like ice dancing or gymnastics, are somewhat more subjective but still conform to stated rules. Art does nothing of the kind.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!