Attempting to Understand Abstraction

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose, and I am someone who did not go to art school, but I still love art and I love learning about it every other week with my friend, Betty.

Betty: Hello! And I'm Betty. I'm also someone who did not go to art school, but I have been looking at art pretty much all of my life. And I did look at art very often when I used to be a gallery guide at an art gallery back when art galleries were open. But that's okay because we still have the internet. So we continue to look at art if we so choose.

Quinn: Think of us as your virtual art gallery guides. In a past episode, we took you on a journey of our love of squares because we really like paintings of squares. And we noticed that and thought it would be fun to talk about. Now we're taking a step back. One might consider the broad category that squares could be in, which is abstract art. Abstract art as a topic is something that can be somewhat controversial. It is the source of a lot of people looking at art, for example, in a museum and being confronted with the knowledge that perhaps they could make that. You may have heard people say this in the past. Our mission today is kind of to explore a little bit of the history of abstract art and look at some good examples of what this kind of art is, and what the depth behind it actually is and why people appreciate it.

Betty: Exactly. I think, yeah, the whole concept of abstraction, depending on what it is and what it is that people see—you know, we have definitely experienced a lot of people just turn right off and they walk away. And to be quite honest, like I don't always mind that, you know, I don't think everybody needs to like every type of art ever. Cause there's just so much art out there that you can enjoy that it doesn't really matter, but like more recently I don't know. It's just bothered me more. Like I recently sort of became more active on social media. And I talked to people and just in the last little while I experienced like people just outright, again, dismiss abstraction as a whole and say it's not art. And when in the past I just stopped getting into these arguments, but more recently I have, because I'm, I like to get into arguments on social media again, apparently. So I've just been like, okay, well, hold on a minute, like just stop dismissing it. Just at least hear me out. And the reason why I say that is again, like I mentioned, I'm a gallery guide or used to be anyway, back when that job was allowed, at an art institution. And I am not trying to brag or anything, but I have had so many people, whether it's friends, family, people I date, who tell me that they don't like art at all. And then I'm like, just give me like an hour to tell you about some stuff. And I swear, I have never, every single time, the person says, wow, like, I'm glad I actually listened to that cause I didn't think of a lot of the things you mentioned. And I'm actually—like it’s anywhere between “I'm actually somewhat interested now” to “my mind is blown.” So, again, I'm not trying to brag about like my own abilities—maybe a little bit, cause I have been doing this for like nine years, so I do have some, you know, expertise obviously in trying to tell people about art, but sometimes I'm not successful and that's okay, and maybe today I won't be. But you know, I'm not trying to make the whole world love squares and be weird like us. But I think we—like, for me, all I'm asking really for people who are just completely turned off by abstraction is to keep an open mind and let us speak for a little while. And then if you think this is still not for you, that’s okay.

Quinn: I do have to appreciate for a moment that while everyone else in the world is out here arguing about politics, you will have somehow found your way onto art discourse and you were having these arguments. I just needed to appreciate that. [laughs] I want to play this out like I am a visitor in your art gallery, Betty—apparently in a scenario, you own an art gallery, the way that I phrased that. If I walked in and I was looking at some abstract art selections, and I turned to you and said, I don't get this, this isn't attractive to me. It doesn't seem like this person is actually good at art at all. What would be the first thing that you would say to me?

Betty: You are absolutely wrong. No, I'm just kidding. [laughs]

Quinn: “Get out of my gallery!”

Betty: Get out and never come back! Yeah, no, I hear that almost—back when I was a gallery guide—almost daily, if not multiple times a day, especially when I was assigned to the contemporary areas and the more like modern areas—or when we've had a show, an exhibition of an artist, I get that often. And generally, like I don't have a canned response or anything because it depends on exactly what the person said, but like it's usually something along the lines of, I try to be like, oh yeah, no, like, absolutely I totally understand it when people feel that way. And to be quite honest, like before I knew that much about art I also did for a lot of paintings. So I say, I have sent you a link to this article on—which we can link in the show notes—in idealart.com and it's called “Famous Abstract Paintings That Changed the Way We Perceive Art.” And there are, we're obviously not going to talk about all of these, but there are some works on here and some are like really famous works that you may or may not have heard of, by artists like Kandinsky or Mondrian or Miró and Helen Frankenthaler and, you know, Rothko and lots of people we have already talked about previously. And then there may be some artists like Agnes Martin or Robert Motherwell that I don't know, you may have also heard of depending on how many—or you might be like, I don't know who any of these people are. And honestly, it doesn't really matter. So I'm not going to talk about all of these, but I—like I do, I am going to later on focus on one painting that we can maybe do like a bit of a question answer of, but I guess actually, you know what, looking at these, so without me just now trying to like tell you what you should think. Cause usually with a visitor, I want to be like, well, what questions do you have? Like, so say that we're in this virtual art gallery and these paintings on this website right now are in front of you. Which one would you pick out to be like Betty, I don’t get it?

Quinn: Something that jumps out at me right away is that a lot of the works on this page seem very fluid. Like they do seem to a degree random or that there's just a lot of fluctuation in the way that things were painted. And then there are a couple of examples, most notably this Mondrian painting that's like extremely geometric. And so there's, there's straight lines, blocks of primary colors and white in a way that makes it stand out. And so I think that, like, it also makes me wonder about like, is there a unifying theme behind all of these paintings when they—when they look so different all stacked up next to each other? What is the through-line between this collection of abstract art?

Betty: Yeah. So it's funny because normally I might say “nothing.” They're just works from different people at different periods or slightly different decades by different artists who are doing their own things. Which is also kind of true. Like normally when somebody has a collection of like, you know, works from a certain period and someone says like, oh, like what connects these together? I might say, well, other than they're all called Impressionism, nothing else, except for what defines Impressionism, obviously. But in this case, there kind of is, and I did mention it a little bit in Squares, but I'll kind of explore a little bit here. Which is like all of these artists—and again, these are from vastly different times, like Kandinsky is from 1910s. And then Mondrian, this one example is from 1921, but he also worked into the 50s. Or at least, maybe even later. And then Jackson Pollock was 40s and 50s. Frankenthaler was 50s. And then some of these artists obviously worked into the 60s, 70s. So it's kind of, I guess, all over the place in the 20th century, people exploring abstraction. But the Kandinsky one—I liked that they put it in the beginning or sort of in the beginning, like he wasn't the first person to explore this obviously, but we would say like one of the first to pioneer it, which is like this direct exploration of lines and shapes. So for centuries or millennia, I guess like, or a very long time, like art for the most part have kind of been about depicting things. It's like, we're painting a person, a house, a piece of architecture, like a story, like from the Bible or from history. And it's, it's about like, just depicting things and even artists who do it in abstract ways, like, you know, not everybody's always painting everything realistically, but they're still trying to like paint something, I guess is the answer. Whereas starting from around this time, so many more artists—and because again, like we talked about photography, because of the advent of photography, a lot of artists are just like, well, I don't have to paint something. I can start to paint like concepts and ideas, or just explore like the fundamental nature of art itself, like, what is it composed of? Well it's lines and colors and shapes. And like, those are actually interesting. And again, maybe some people aren't interested in lines and shapes and that's fine, but you can't deny that whether you're a mathematician or an artist or a designer that you, you just sometimes find the concept of a circle really interesting, and how it works, or like, you know, different colors next to each other. And you want to study color theory. Does green and red work well next to each other? Turns out it does. And we wouldn't have discovered these things if artists didn't explore them, if there weren't kind of pioneers like Kandinsky, who was a professor at the Bauhaus, you know, at a design school who explored these things and similar with the rest of these artists. So like kind of my first argument to people on like, why these art works deserve to be in this gallery, whether this virtual one, or like a really famous national art gallery, like the Art Gallery of Ontario, is because they, they did start to explore things that were… that artists didn't explore before. It's the, like, I could do that, but you didn't do that argument, but in this case it's like, well, somebody had to be the first one.

Quinn: Alright. So if we take that where it's like, this is an exploration of color and form and I can definitely see that in some of these, and techniques where they're putting different colors together and oftentimes they're making something that like, even if it is very abstract, I can still see like it being aesthetically appealing. But then what do you say about something like a Pollock painting where it just, it’s just art thrown on a canvas. And like, you know, I've seen videos of Pollock painting and just splattering paint everywhere. Like how can we consider that art worthy of being in a museum?

Betty: Yeah. And that's, again, that's an awesome question. And it's like, I think a lot of people who like, kind of get annoyed at, you know, art galleries and these types of institutions is because people in the past may have dismissed that as a stupid question when it isn’t. Like it is what those of us who work in these institutions, that's the question we want people to ask. And like without focusing too much on Jackson Pollock, was actually someone who I do find really interesting, I do want to bring you and our audience to a similar artist who have sort of, kind of had the same similar criticisms as Pollock, she might just not be as—definitely isn't as famous. So I also popped a link to you to a painting by an artist called Joan Mitchell. Not to be confused with Joni Mitchell. It's Joan, J O A N Mitchell. So she's someone who basically was known for these types of like paint splashes, or just streaks across the canvas, or spills. And so I guess I kind of think of her as a cross between a Jackson Pollock and a Helen Frankenthaler, whereas like Jackson Pollock is just like splash, splash, splash, and then Helen Frankenthaler is pour the paint all over the canvas and swish it around. And Joan Mitchell while not always is doing the exact same thing, is kind of like that. It's like somewhere in between that. So Joan Mitchell, so she was an American artist. And so a lot of the artists that, you know, I tend to talk about who do abstract work come from this movement called abstract expressionism, which again, we don't even have to get into exactly what that means. So she is considered an American abstract expressionist, but she actually spent most of her career in France. And the only real reason why I know so much about her is because her kind of lifelong on again, off again partner is Jean-Paul Riopelle, who is a really, really famous Canadian artist, that if you're a Canadian, you will have probably been forced to learn about this person at school. So she, I think, visited Canada a lot and because of him and he went to France a lot and they collaborated a lot. So you know—topic for art couples, by the way, we’ll write that down after cause that's a really interesting story. But the reason you'll like her, she grew up, I think, born and grew up in Chicago and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. So she basically, long story short, like became actually very successful in her lifetime. Like she was earning like lots of money, lots of commissions, like, you know, did this professionally and was quite successful. And even after she died in 1992, her art continued to sell quite high at auctions, you know, in the millions and then tens of millions. And then in 2014, her painting did break the record for a most expensive painting ever sold by a female artist. So her, one of her paintings sold for 11.9 million at Christie's. Later she was beat by Georgia O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed, which since sold for 44.4 million. It’s like, Georgia O’Keeffe’s just like, sorry. Sorry lady, just got to kill this right now. But you know, again, women, we're not, we don't have to compete with each other is what I'm saying. I'm just trying to say she was really famous and her paintings sold for a lot of money, one of the reasons she's an art gallery. But now I can objectively talk about why her paintings are great, which is why she became successful and then deserving of being in the art gallery, which is that—her works are, while they are abstract, and while they—like, I do want to make it clear, one aspect is that because these artists were exploring like lines and shapes and color and the composition, a lot of them, I think maybe probably including Mitchell as well as her partner Riopelle really was, like, intending on the audience to not read too much into it, to not be like, “that looks like a mountain, that looks like a dog, that looks like it could be a field of flowers.” So because a lot of times that's like, that's not their focus. That doesn't mean you can't interpret it that way. That doesn't mean you can't be like, I see something. And then the artist is a lot of times will be like, awesome. But a lot of times it's like they're describing, they're depicting feelings. They're not depicting objective things. They're depicting like an emotion or like an experience or how they—kind of their mental stage.

Quinn: It’s like a Rorschach test.

Betty: Kind of, exactly. So it's like, they're trying to paint like a non-tangible thing. Or an intangible thing. I explain art, but English sometimes doesn't work. But so something that's not, yeah, not like a direct recreation of something that they see with their eyes. So a lot of times it’s, it is supposed to be sort of like them painting an experience. So I think the, my long-winded way of kind of answering your original question is that it is, kind of whether it's Jackson Pollock or Mitchell, it is kind of revolutionary that they were, they were painting feelings. And when we did have a retrospective of Joan Mitchell and John Paul Riopelle’s work in the AGO a few years ago, I do remember the curator when we kind of had a talk with them, did tell us that yeah, they were super interested in music and they were inspired and I would assume they painted while music was on. And it's kind of like, you know, that abstract nature of music, it was inspiring them to like, have this visual composition rather than an audio composition.

Quinn: That all makes sense. And I also wanted to throw in something here from the gallery guide side, instead of the patron side that I've been doing as well. Because sort of getting into the composition things, because one thing also that I found interesting, like every time you study someone who does like modern or like abstract art, basically all of these people were classically trained and they, they were like trained and created art in a more realistic style and like gotten more abstract with time. And I think that's something that's, that's like a piece that's missing from a lot of what people see in art museums I think. Because like, you know you see the abstract painting because that's where the artist is most famous for. And it was what they became known for, but you don't see the progression that got them there. And like all of the years and years of training and playing with color and form, and eventually sort of abstracting things out into the style that they became best known for, which I think, not that—not that we can can't call like abstract art legitimate in itself. But I think that when you are coming into a space, and saying, like, why do people consider this art? A toddler could do it. It's like, well, they came up with this form because of all of the training that they had been through beforehand, not—they didn't just pluck it from the ether. It exists in this greater context of every art that they had produced and consumed up to that point. 

Betty: That's actually, that's a really amazing point that I probably would have forgot to bring up. But like someone like Mondrian that you had mentioned earlier, which I can talk about a little bit in a second as well—if you, this is why I love going to artist retrospectives, where you see their career, you see how they progressed and you see some of the earlier Mondrian work and they’re so much more representational. And again, you can see where like that actual—not actual, but like, the classical training comes from, and again, some are just taught themselves, some actually went to school. You can see that progression and it's not always a linear one, but you realize, oh, these artists didn't just paint one thing. They might have been most famous for this abstraction, but they literally could paint, you know, a realistic representation of a person or a house or a vase. It's just, you know, you can only do that so many times before you get bored. I want to explore something different. It is important to keep in mind that, that like, again, it also kind of helps with the, well, "I could do that” argument. But but then people will inevitably ask the question. It's like, well then why did they start painting like crap if they could do it so well? Is usually the next question I get. And I'm like, yes, I will explain. So, which I kind of already did with, well, they were trying to depict feelings, but so then the caveat to the, “they are not actually trying to represent something literal” is a little bit broken with Mitchell because a lot of her paintings are named after like, you know, well, I think one of them is Sunflowers. So then obviously when you look at that, you're like, oh, well, you're thinking about sunflowers. Like, so she does have things that are garden related, either garden or feels related. So I know another one of her paintings on the screen that you would see is Row Row. And then the one that I really personally like is this painting Un Jardin Pour Audrey or A garden For Audrey. And so… of course the word garden is in the name, and the painting itself—actually, why don't you describe it, Quinn?

Quinn: So what I'm seeing here… Okay. In an abstract way, how I would describe this as it's like plants, but if you are looking at them from hell [laughs] I don't know. Okay. But to describe what it actually is, it’s like two panels of painting, two vertical panels. And there is a lot of green, it's mostly different shades of green that are in like huge swaths of color that are all mixed in together and put over each other. And then there also is some reds, yellow oranges that are in smaller blocks of color that are kind of haphazardly thrown over the top is what it mostly looks like. There's a little bit of white space, a little bit of blues in there, but again, mostly you're getting like dark greens with a little bit of light green, and then that sort of smattering of flame-like colors over the top, but without anything evoking any kind of particular shape, there’s nothing that I can see in here directly that's like, oh, that looks like a tree or something. It just sort of is like naturalistic colors.

Betty: I absolutely love the way you're describing this. Like it is so I think representative of what this painting looks like that for listeners obviously who aren't watching either the YouTube version or going to the show notes are, I think they, they get it. And the thing that I'm going to say next is the ironic thing is that like, whether it's Jackson Pollack or Frankenthaler or Mitchell, every single brushstroke is absolutely intentional. It is not random. It is not like complete—is not just haphazardly—like, it looks like that, which is again, like there's nothing, no criticism of your description cause it does look like that, but like nothing is like, “I'm just going to throw this on there. Well, whatever today I'm just gonna be ahh!” And a lot of people don't believe me when I say that. And a lot of people will never believe me, and that is fine, but I'm just saying, based on people who interviewed this person based on people who have, have watched them paint, based on people who have studied their works for years and years, like academically scholarly whatsoever, you might just think they're all nuts, and maybe they are that, they have concluded that this person was totally intentional, every single square millimeter of this canvas. And now, again, this is one of those things that like, virtual art galleries are amazing—you have to see this painting in real life if you've ever get to, because it is ginormous. In the first link I sent you, there is a picture of a woman standing next to it so you can have person for scale of how big it is. It's probably like twice the height of a person, and then, you know the width is even longer. And then in real life, it's like to me, it's breathtaking. I still actually haven't even asked you yet, do you like this painting? And you can say no.

Quinn: I like it. It's not… I’m not drawn to it the way that I'm drawn to some other like abstract paintings that I've seen. But especially like seeing how big it is. Like when I see compared to another person, like I love a really big painting. And so I could definitely see myself being very engaged with it if I was there in person and could like study the individual brush strokes.

Betty: Yeah, exactly. That’s kind of part of my point. And then the other thing is, so I do have to tell you when I first encountered Joan Mitchell's work, I was like ugly. Nope. Not interested. I'm sure she was very important and did some important things, maybe was revolutionary, maybe started a whole new movement or whatever and is really famous, paintings are expensive, not interested. But when I saw an entire retrospective of her work and did go in and observed and thought about it and studied the brushstrokes, and again, learned a little bit of background and context, I like fell in love with her. I was like, oh my God. I just want to see every single Mitchell painting there could ever exist that is put on public display all over the world, because I love this person. Like when the Riopelle Mitchell show came on, I was like, I really like Riopelle. Cause again, Canadian, studied a lot, like knew a lot of context. I'm like, yeah, I feel bad that I like Riopelle so much better, but I'm just not into Mitchell. And then after the show, I changed my mind completely. And I'm not going to change everybody's minds, but basically like this painting—it’s ginormous. It's two panels. It's a diptych is what they call it. And I hope I'm pronouncing that properly—in like art as opposed to a triptych, which is three panels, or just a single painting. So there are these like two sides, which is common in art history, but then obviously the content is totally not common. And it is evoking a garden. I'll just read this quote about this painting from Joan Mitchell herself that was written in this probably exhibition catalog. So she said, “when I was sick, they moved me to a room with a window and suddenly through the window, I saw two fir trees in a park and the gray sky and the beautiful gray rain. And I was so happy. It had something to do with being alive. I could see pine trees and I felt I could paint. If I could see them, I felt it would paint a painting. Last year I could not paint. For awhile, I did not react to anything. All I saw was a white metallic color.” So that's her comment about this painting, which again is very vague. She's not like “I painted a flower and it looks like this.” It's, she's talking about kind of what she was going through maybe in her life in this past year. And you can sort of tell from her, you know, she was sick, like you know, she didn't feel motivated to do things for a really long time. And, you know, there was like gray rain, but then she felt happiness. She is painting her garden, but it is not actually her garden. It is her metaphoric, like, brain garden. At least that's how I, what I get from reading this quote. That's one of the reasons why it's not, you know, it's not a direct representation of—it’s like, yeah, you took a garden and you like shook it up and it's like in hell. And again, like, I think when I sent you this link, you didn't, you hadn't read her quote yet. Is that correct?

Quinn: Yes, that is correct. 

Betty: Yeah. So like you just looked at it and you, you didn't even have to know those was done by Joan Mitchell. I just feel like this woman painted this, tell me what it is and your description of like, it's like her flower garden in hell. It is! It’s her probably going through some sort of illness or depression for like a year or two. And literally she was, and her whole life got shaken up, but she didn’t—she couldn't express it except for in this way. But like when you're trying to express some sort of mental state, it's difficult, like it's, you can't describe it in words. And even when you do it makes no sense. So it's kind of like that's, that's why it looks like that. But then the other thing, like kind of compositionally, why I'm saying it's intentional is even though she's like describing this like crazy screwed up-ness emotionally in her life. She's thinking, okay, red and green work really well with each other. So how do I distribute them evenly? How do I make it balanced? Because we, we could do an episode about the like principles of art and design. But you know, there are things like you, you make sure that you don't have a ginormous object on one side and then just blank on the other side. Cause then the painting feels like imbalanced or you make sure that you, you know, don't cut off something, a part of the painting that's like, just makes it feel like it's lopsided. Like that's kind of what I mean. And she is like looking, okay, I need to add a brushstroke here because it feels too heavy on the side. I get this splash of orange paint is like, it can't be too blobby. Because if it is then it's just not, it's just going to look weird compositionally. And like, I have a lot of white in the middle, so let's balance it with some black at like on the other side of the panel so that it's like, you know, the contrast is there, or, you know, this one side has a lot of—like, you also don't want it to be too much of the sameness, so it’s like, okay, this one side has a lot of streaks and dots. So then let's do some like washes on the left top left corner so that there's some more like watercolor-y looking things, so that's given more interest. Like you cannot achieve this level of, of good punk composition that is balanced and it has rhythm and is interesting and is textured, doesn’t look like it's too heavy on one side or the other, if you're not super trained in the elements and principles of art and design. Like you would have had to go to school for somebody and practice over and over and over of how to make a good composition so that you make something look aesthetically pleasing. Again, some people will still be like, but this is not aesthetically pleasing, this sucks. And in which case I would just be like, I'm sorry. I like it. 

Quinn: That is a very good breakdown though like of of the different elements that went into this painting and the different things that like, that you may not see just on first glance, but then like diving into sort of the background of it and the—even just like the compositional elements of it is really cool to learn. You know, it's very much like nothing is as it seems just on a surface. And I think traditional art is like that as well, too. You know, I think we're so accustomed to seeing traditional art and like even seeing photos now that I think sometimes we don't even appreciate like how hard it is to make realistic looking paintings. And then that same thing applies with abstract art, as well as like, when you look at something like, I mean, literally anything in the world, unless you know, like you don't know how much work went into it. And then it's cool to have these little things to think about like, oh, how did this thing get decided, like taking under the assumption that this wasn't random. What's all the different pieces that had to come together to make this? And it's really cool to break those down and actually think about them. 

Betty: So I kind of started the conversation with like when you asked, like, why do these things deserve to be at an art gallery? I started the conversation with you know, the whole, I could do that argument, which is like yeah, somebody had to do it first and then they kind of started these art movements and then it became a thing, but then I ended the episode with you literally can't do that. You couldn't do this. Like you think you can, but you cannot. And you—and I encourage you to try. When I'm at the art gallery I’m like, listen, if you don't believe me, that's totally okay. I'm not expecting you to take me, somebody who technically didn't go to art school, to tell you what to think about a work of art. If you don't believe me, try to recreate a Mitchell painting, try to make this and then see how you do. And maybe you'll do well. I don't know. And then you're a great artist, try to sell it. But you probably won't if you don't have at least some sort of training. One last thing I'll say is, you know, a really great video that, a YouTube video that is, that talks about this, but this video talks about different paintings and it talks a little bit more—the video is called “I could do that” by the YouTube channel the Art Assignment. But one criticism that everybody has of that video is that Sarah never got the chance in that video to explain why you couldn't do that. She just kind of said, yeah, these are actually really hard, and you couldn't. And most of the comments I see in the in that video is, well, yes, you could. And here I am trying to explain, these are all the reasons why you can't and again, people still won't believe me. So go paint your own Mitchell painting, please. [laughs] Dropping my mic now.

Quinn: Just to follow up on that comment, months ago, we did an episode where we were like, we're going to make paintings. We're going to make little paintings that are inspired by this art style. And I'm here to tell you it was so hard. Mine came out looking really bad. [laughs] Well, I hope you all have enjoyed this little crash course into abstract art and different ways to think about it. If you came away with a new appreciation for it, then that is awesome. If you're still like, I still don't like it. That's totally fine. We'll talk about something else next episode. You can find our show notes and links to all of the images and everything that we talked about today at relay.fm/pictorial. And you can find us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. You can also find me on Twitter or Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram at articulationsV. I'm also on YouTube as ARTiculations. I am also someone who hadn’t uploaded a YouTube video in a very long time, but hopefully by the time you listen to this episode I will have. And speaking of YouTube we also upload these podcasts to YouTube so that you can, for episodes like these, follow along in what we're talking about, because it is quite visually heavy. And so hopefully by the time you listen to this, there will also be a video about it.

Quinn: So much video content, you guys. Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!