Methods for Viewing Art

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose. And I didn't go to art school, but I still love to go to art museums and learn about art.

Betty: Hi, and I'm Betty. I also didn't go to art school, but I also love to go to art museums and learn about art as well as look at art on the internet when museums are closed again, which is what is going on where I live right now.

Quinn: Our first first episode that was out in 2022 we recorded in December. And in that episode, you say, “I think the AGO is going to have in-person volunteers come back at the beginning of 2022!” And it was like, uh oh.

Betty: Exactly. That was last episode, I was like, I'm going back to the art museum! And today it's like, they're all closed. So today we're going to look at some art and talk about them. 

Quinn: Perfect. Perfect.

Betty: Which, you now, I know we do every episode, but this time I kind of want to go back to something we talked about many episodes ago. I should have looked up that episode number. So I think this was summer 2020 when we, there was a brief moment or at least in Canada, there was a brief moment when museums were open again. And I think in Chicago museums were open as well. And both of us had gone back to the museum. In that episode, I had gone through some strategies on how to look at an artwork, especially when it's an artwork that you've never seen before, you don't know anything about, just some ideas on how to engage with art that way. So I wanted to go over those methods or those strategies again. But then I actually just kind of found some random paintings that I like, and I want to use this strategy with you on them and just kind of test it out and see how it works.

Quinn: I am really excited about this. And also for anyone who might be listening for the first time, do you want to say briefly your experience with art museums and teaching people about how to do this?

Betty: Oh yeah, sure. So I am a gallery guide and also in the US I think this role might be called docents, which is basically the people in an art museum or gallery who stand around and you can ask them questions, or they can tell you about art and sometimes lead tours around the galleries. And basically just people who you can talk to about art. And can teach you about art. So I've been doing this for about nine years. It'll be 10 years this year if I get to go back to an art museum to do this again, which hopefully later this year, we'll see how it goes. And I have been kind of teaching these strategies for pretty much the entire time I've been a gallery guide. And again, like the idea or like our gallery guide program has been trying to do is instead of just you walking around and listening to someone talk at you about art, we want to try to incorporate visitor participation and get everyone to talk about art amongst each other, and kind of like make this an engaged, participatory type of experience.

Quinn: And I don't have any formal training in this, but I do really love going to visit art museums, as I said at the top of this episode. And so I am so excited to learn more from you.

Betty: Thank you. But yeah, and then you know, kind of when I first started doing this, I also, I had like zero training when it comes to being in an art museum as well. And so I kind of just picked this up along the way as well. So I just, I do want to emphasize that it's kind of a thing that is for everyone and everyone can pick up these these strategies. And just before I forget, I finally found the episode. It was episode 20 when we when we talked about going back to art museums. So if you want to listen to that, it is episode 20.

Quinn: Great.

Betty: Yeah. So, okay. So what I actually did, so in the show notes, I put a link to a Google shared drive in our folders, and you should have access to this. And in there I've put some art and you can actually, like you pick any one of them to start with, and then we can just start and then talk about the next one as we, as we go on. But actually before we start I will briefly go over what the overall strategy is. Sometimes when you're in an art museum there's not always a gallery guide you can ask questions to. And a lot of people have asked me what I do when I come up to a painting or a sculpture or any work of art, and I just don't know what to do. And so this is kind of a step-by-step guideline on how you can think about as well as talk about art. And this is especially fun to do when you're with another person or multiple people. And basically there are five steps. Number one is describe, which is you look at the painting or artwork and you literally describe what it looks like. And what you want to do is you want to be factual and objective. You don't want to start interpreting the art. This is when you just want to like, look at the lines and the shapes and the colors. And then step two is analyze, which is asking questions like what do you think the art is made of? What do you think it's painted with, or what it's painted on? And then you can also decipher the elements of the painting. Like if it's, what kind of composition is it in, in terms of like contrast and space? So basically like a level beyond just describing like the shapes and forms that you see. And then the third step is interpret. So this is when you're you want to talk about, like, what do you think the subject matter is? What do you think the artists was trying to convey? Do you think there's a narrative? And then you can also talk about like, how does it make you feel? Then step four is called relate. And this is where you can go beyond just what you see in front of yourself in the painting. You can talk about what it reminds you of, and it can be other artworks, other paintings, or even books, movies, music, and things like that. And you can talk about if you think there's like historical context to the picture or like things in your own life experiences. And then the final step, step five, is discover, which is, this is where you would then go look at the label and see if there's information and historical context that's provided by the art gallery, which there isn't always, but sometimes there is, and then you can then use this to learn more about the work. But the idea is that even if there isn't any information, so like sometimes step five can be skipped because if you can't find information or can't find staff to give you the info, then obviously number five is difficult to do unless you go home or pull out your phone and start looking it up. But that's kind of the general idea. So I actually, the reason why it took me a little long to start this episode is I actually downloaded all the paintings and I purposely took away the file names that say who it's by and what it's called and what year. And I just gave you, all you see are the images. So the idea is like, you don't want to look at the label. You don't want to look at the information. You just want to start with a clean slate when you approach the painting.

Quinn: Alright. I think I'm going to start with the portrait of the girl and the reflection.

Betty: This is really great because what we usually do on Pictorial since it's a podcast, is when we start talking about an artwork, we describe what we're looking at. And so we can start with step one, which is to describe. Usually we, we kind of do like a general overview where we just described the whole painting, but this time I want you to start like really basic, instead of talking about like, what you think is going on, maybe just start with simple things like lines and shapes and basic quality of the painting.

Quinn: Okay. Well. This is gonna be interesting, okay. So first of all, it's definitely a detailed painting. It’s done in a realistic or traditional style. And it is, I think it's clearly attempting to like accurately depict a realistic portrait. The colors are fairly muted. That background is browns, it’s like a textured brown, but brown nonetheless. There's no real bright colors in here. And then the focus of the painting itself is this painting of what appears to be a young girl. I would guess that she’s maybe around 10, but I'm really bad at gauging the ages of children. So that might be wrong there. And then, yeah, again just a lot of soft lines, muted colors. She's wearing like a dark green dress with a white scarf tied in her hair and like white over the top of her chest. And what's really interesting about the painting is that like the girl is holding what appears to be a mirror and so she's holding this mirror and it's showing her to us. So you can see the same girl in the mirror with the same clothes that she's wearing, but instead of, but she's holding it at an angle in that like she's sideways to us, but the mirror, her face in the mirror is looking straight at the viewer.

Betty: Yeah. Actually, that's a really great description. And you have pointed out already what is one of the most interesting things about this painting, which is it basically has like an impossible perspective. It like, if you actually took this as a real photograph, it would, this would not happen. So, yeah. That’s great. So we can, we can basically move on to the second step now. Cause the first step of like, just describing the visual elements is pretty straightforward. So the second step, analyze, is there's kind of like two fastest to this, like one is without like knowing any information. How do you think this painting was made? Like what type of paint or is it paint or like, what do you think? Obviously it's a bit difficult. We're looking at it on a screen. In like real life you can actually see things like brush strokes, but you know, just do your best. 

Quinn: Just based on the style of painting, I would guess this is an oil painting. And I also would guess that it's older. And I don't know that for sure because I don’t have any statistical information about it, but just based on the style I would expect this to be an older portrait. It's hard to guess anything beyond that because I'm like, okay, well like kind of assume that it's like oil on canvas, but I don't know cause I can't actually see, I can't like see the textures because it's on a screen.

Betty: Yeah, that's totally fine. And then like the second half of this is describing the composition, which you kind of did in the first part as well. But this one is kind of going into like more specifics, like how it represents space and arrangements, which I think like we did talk about is the artist is reflecting or yeah, literally trying to reflect a reflection in a kind of weird way. So I think we can kind of just like move on from this one and we can go to step number three, which is interpretation. So do you have any ideas on like what you think this work is trying to convey, if anything? And do you think there's like a story there?

Quinn: I talked a lot about how this seems to be a very traditional oil painting, which is why the choice of this impossible perspective stands out so much because you would think it would just be a portrait of a girl. And at most like there may be some personality elements to represent her, but the fact that this is such a realistically stylistic painting, but still has this choice to have something that is unrealistic in it and it's clearly not depicting direct reality in it, I think is saying something deliberate, which I think is really cool. It's hard to say, because on one hand, like my, I guess my initial instinct is I kind of feel it's just like a cool thing to do with the painting. Where it is really cool to have the reflection of someone be staring right at the viewer. It actually reminds me a little bit—I know this, I think this is the wrong section. I’ll say early, the painting Las Meninas—this really, really famous painting of a giant portrait of all of these people in the royal family, but there's a reflection. There's like a mirror in the back of the room. And the king and queen are reflected in the mirror and like the painter is looking at them. And so you are actually looking at the portrait from the perspective of the king and queen. So it's just like this really cool creative portrait. And there's something about the energy of this just reminds me of that a little bit. It's like, why is the reflection looking at us and not the girl looking at us? Like there might be a statement, but it also just, I think it's just like a cool thing to do with a painting.

Betty: This is the way you're going forward with the interpretation. The progression of like where it goes in terms of like, the next thing we think about is like what this reminds you of. And yeah, so what you mentioned is the Las Meninas by Velazquez and are there anything else it reminds you of like, other than like, it can be like also like other paintings or does it remind you of like, basically like anything in life that you can think of?

Quinn: Honestly, the most striking thing it otherwise reminds me of is horror movies, because there are several horror movies that rely on reflections. And I think this is a very salient idea in horror and thrillers where like, there's either something in the mirror that isn't, that you like, you don't see it behind you, but then it's in the mirror or like something is behind you that you don't see the mirror and like vampires aren't seen reflected, like it goes back so deep, is this idea of like reflections not actually representing reality. And I think that's something that's very deeply entwined with fear. And so this painting isn't scary really. It's just, you know, it's this little girl and whatever, but children are also used as horror objects a lot. So I don't, my instinct isn't that it's supposed to be like horrific, but I definitely think that it could be placed in that context quite easily, because I do think that that is such an active pop culture element right now.

Betty: Yeah. Actually, when you mentioned horror movies, I all of a sudden thought about the two girls in The Shining. And even though, you know, this is one girl, although since there's a reflection of her, there's two in it. So like it, it does have that, it does kind of have that feeling to it.

Quinn: Like it's like, oh, that's not her in her reflection, it’s her evil twin from the other side of reality kind of vibes.

Betty: That's true because the way her eyes are looking at you, like she is looking directly at you, but almost like her eyes are glazed over as if she's like looking past you into the distance in this really like, kind of just, I guess like mesmerizing type of way, but also a bit eerie.

Quinn: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Betty: The only other question, or like, there are definitely other questions you can ask. But we've already touched on this. Another thing you can ask yourself is how does this work make you feel? And you had mentioned already there's like a horror aspect to it, but is there any other type of mood or feeling it brings you?

Quinn: I would say that my strongest reaction or strongest emotion just from looking at this without placing it in kind of potential other context is I think I just kind of feel soft for this child. As we were just talking about like the expression on her face, both in the side profile that we can see and in her reflection, there could be something kind of haunting about it in a not necessarily scary way, but in a little bit of a sad way where it doesn't seem—like she’s looking away from the viewer in real life. And even this, the face of her that's looking at us isn't quite looking at us, you know, it's not quite active in the gaze. And I think there's something a little bit sad in that. And because she seems so young, it might feel like this reflection of what's going on here? Is this representing some kind of reflection of innocence, or maybe innocence that’s stolen away too soon. Like why does she look sad? And so I feel a lot of like softness towards her.

Betty: That's great. And I'm not, I guess, like we can kind of move on to step five, which is, I can give you a bit of information about this. And we won't spend too much time on it because like, I do think the point of this type of strategy is you don't have to get everything right. Or you don't have to like really always figure out what exactly the work is about. But this painting is a work by the artist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and this is a portrait of her daughter and you were kind of close. I just looked it up and the daughter is seven in this picture, apparently.

Quinn: Nice.

Betty: So this is one of the paintings she's submitted to the French salon. It’s this basically gallery showing that like every, that these really prestigious salons have annually. And this is apparently three years, I think something like three years in a row she submitted portraits of her daughter in almost similar, like almost the exact same composition as this one to the salon as as her entry for those years. And this is her child and she is an artist who's known for doing like all kinds of portraits. Like she's most famous for doing a portrait of Marie Antoinette. Usually she does these paintings of really famous people, like royal people. And this is one of the few pictures I found or paintings I found where this technically isn't a really important person like in history, but obviously this is a really important person to the artist. And what you were mentioning earlier about these questions about childhood innocence. Like I did read some kind of background to the historic context of this painting is that this work was done around the late 18th century. And this was kind of around the time where at least in European society anyway, that the notion of childhood is being like formed, because before this it's like, if you're four years old, you can go work and like, you know, make a living. Whereas at this point, society was at a point where people were saying, oh, maybe childhoods should be this period where kids should get to enjoy themselves and things like that. So that kind of sense of like, is this artist trying to convey some sort of childhood innocence, like that might actually be true. But again, since this is an old portrait from the late 18th century. And we don't have that much information from the artist, we don't know exactly. Maybe she was just like, my daughter is so cute and I want to paint pictures of her. But or, you know, maybe there's something more. We don't know.

Quinn: That’s very cool. Thank you for sharing the background info that we do have about this with me. I'm also proud of myself for coming pretty close to guessing her age.

Betty: Yeah. Okay, so do you want to pick another one to discuss?

Quinn: Alright. This is very different stylistically than the one we previously talked about, starting with it is a lot of sketched lines that haven't been colored in all of the way. Like, I don't know if it's an unfinished sketch or not, but that like is kind of the energy that the style has. The most prominent color in this as well is actually brown, but like honestly the most prominent color is white because most of the page is white. A lot of the shapes that are drawn are not colored in, but a lot of that that is colored in is brown. There also a little bit of reds and blues, and that is pretty much it. There's kind of a yellow, but I think that might just be light brown and there's not really any other color in it. It is somewhat realistic in that it is clearly depicting real things. It's not totally abstract, but it is a lot less detailed, like in the previous painting when I was looking at it on the screen where you can't see brush strokes, like it's very unclear where one brushstroke starts and where one ends, you know, but like this one, it feels like I can really see every line in this painting.

Betty: Yeah. So in terms of analyze, which is like the one with with kind of two facets to this one is like what medium or how do you think it was drawn or painted. And then the next one is like describing the composition and what the artist is basically trying to try to convey if anything.

Quinn: It's hard to say, but it actually kind of looks like marker in the colors. I don't know if it actually is. It might be a paint, like a water color paint maybe, but like, it almost has the appearance of marker on the screen. And then line sketching, that really could be anything that, I mean, that could be pen, that could be like very thinly sketched paint. It's hard to say.

Betty: I have actually tried to look up what the medium of this painting was. And I actually don't know, like I also think it's maybe marker and pencil, but I tried to look on the internet of like, what is the medium of this painting and I don't know either.

Quinn: Very exciting. Great. Okay. And in terms of composition, this is what drew me to this painting is it's clearly evoking Washington Crossing the Delaware, the very famous oil painting thing where it's like, you know, Washington's got one leg up on this little boat and there's an American flag that somebody has, and they're all rowing to go fight in the Revolutionary War. Very famous painting, very sort of one of those like American iconography thing. But this is very different, obviously stylistically, which we’ve already covered, like the style was way, way different. And also like a lot of stuff actually going on in the depiction is very different. You still have the Washington figure with one knee up on the boat, but first of all, it seems like they are hitting land, like they're fully hitting land in the front. Someone is vomiting over the side. The person who has the flag is yelling at someone, someone's jumping off the boat in the back. I also noticed that several people on this boat appear to be Black people, which obviously the original painting everybody's white. And so that's definitely a very interesting feature of that. Like I mentioned that one of the only colors used in it is brown, like someone's coat’s is colored in brown. Like the boat is brown and some people's skin tone is shaded in as brown. Which I think is an interesting aspect of this. And I just noticed the butt hole. Okay. There's also someone who's showing their full butt to us. There's a lot going on in this painting or drawing or whatever it is.

Betty: You know what, I literally didn't notice the butt until you pointed it out either. And I will say it is not just the butt and you can see the person’s testicles too. 

Quinn: It's not, it's a very, it's not even colored in. It's just a little line drawing, but, you know, I guess content warning for full butt. 

Betty: And yeah, I actually just noticed too. I think there's a, there's a shark in the bottom right corner as well. Which I also don't think is in the original Washington Crossing the Delaware painting. So the artist has definitely reinterpreted this painting with numerous elements.

Quinn: Yeah. It is interesting how iconic that painting is that it's still clearly riffing off of that, just with a simple thing of having the flag, the boat, and the guy with the hat on with one knee up, like that's all you need for it to evoke that painting. And even though like pretty much every other element is different in some way or multiple ways. You're still like, okay. Yeah. I see what's happening here, which is very interesting to me.

Betty: I think that is kind of one of the reasons I was drawn to this work too. Like you said, it's really simple. Like in a way it's really simple. It doesn't even have that much color. And a lot of it is just sketched outlines, but even then, yeah, just with those few elements, you can pretty much guess, what this artist is is referring to. Yeah, we definitely talked about, you know, what, what this work like reminds us of. But I guess, so the next question is, do you have any thoughts on what the artist is trying to say or comment on, and then also how this work makes you feel?

Quinn: I referenced earlier that you know, this painting is so iconic and it's one of these like most iconic pieces of American patriotism, blah, blah, blah. Also historically and famously America is deeply, deeply racist. So I'm pretty sure it's related to that. I don't know if the artist had a specific message that they were imparting with this, or if it was referencing or like in reference to something specific that had happened contemporary to that artist. I don't know when this was done, but yeah, it's definitely, it's a remixing of this piece of American history in a way that's both confrontational but also reclaiming it in certain ways. 

Betty: Yeah, that's a really great interpretation because, so this is a contemporary work and kind of similar to a lot of contemporary works, the artists don't usually have a specific thing that they overtly say, because quite often they do want people to kind of interpret it in their own ways or, obviously they want to insinuate things, but aren't doing it totally literally. So this work is done by this American artist Kara Walker. And I found this work interesting because, so she's actually known for doing these large paintings on walls, mostly made of black silhouettes. And a lot of her subject matter is exploring different issues in American history. And a lot of it is regarding race. This is a particular artwork of hers that isn't, doesn't happen to be these black silhouette paintings that she's known for. And I found out that she apparently did this painting on Inauguration Day of 2017.

Quinn: Okay, huh. Yeah. When I said “I don't know if this was referencing anything specific to when it was made,” I guess it was. 

Betty: So I actually, I do want to talk about kinda, or just like Kara Walker and some of these paintings that reinterpret other paintings, especially historic paintings, but we can leave that off for another episode. Do you want to pick one more and then maybe, maybe I can do some like descriptions or talking about like my thoughts in this next one. And then maybe we end off on that one?

Quinn: What if, what if we swing this around to another direction and end on this dinner table?

Betty: Ooh. Okay. Great. Yeah, actually this is great because I actually happen to not really know much about this painting myself either. So this is kind of a good thing for me to look at. I'm looking at a painting. It is of landscape format and it has a lot of round cylindrical shaped objects that are drawn all over it. It's a very colorful painting and it has a lot of reflective surfaces or what appear to be like contrast between light and shadow. There's a lot of browns in the background of this painting and also dark colors or black in like the farther background of the painting. And it seems to be really smooth. It doesn't have any lines, although there are like edges of a lot of these objects and that's about it in terms of the objective colors and shapes and forms in this work. 

Quinn: Cool, and what do you think the materials are in this?

Betty: Probably oil paint, maybe acrylic. Because the only reason I say that is like oil I'm reminded of like blurry, smooth paintings. Whereas this has a lot of like hard lines, but could be oil. Cause it also has a lot of blended aspects as well. But then in terms of like what, what the subject matter is, it does look like it's a painting of a table. It's probably a dinner table. Like the reason why there's lots of browns is because the table is probably made of wood. And then on the table, there are a bunch of plates probably made of china, or some sort of maybe expensive porcelain cause they look quite delicate. And then there is a teacup in the foreground. There's some glass cups in the back. There are jars of what appeared to be ketchup or maybe hot sauce and mustard, there are salt and pepper shakers. And there's a hot dog on one of the plates. And then I want to say like maybe cake or some sort of meat, I'm not sure, on some of the other plates. And then there's like tablecloths or placemats underneath the silverware and the plates and cups and then probably a chair in the background. And it appears to be somebody's dinner table, but there's no people sitting around it.

Quinn: The composition of this reads to me as they had a summer barbecue and now everyone's out back playing catch. Because you see stuff that's like, there's like, it's leftovers, they left the leftovers out. Now everyone's gone to hang out elsewhere, but they've already had dinner. It's a really cool vignette. 

Betty: Yeah. It's interesting too cause like it is really, it's got this really harsh contrast. Like it does look like there's sunlight shining on the side of the composition directly onto the table and lighting it up really bright. But then the shadows are really harsh because presumably there's no light in this room or it's not turned on.

Quinn: It makes me feel like the sun is setting because it feels like there’s harsh light and shadows coming into it. 

Betty: Yeah. And I guess in terms of what it makes me think of, or remind me of is I guess when I first look at it, I just think like, American. I don't know if it's cause I'm seeing  hot dogs. Cause yeah, I’m seeing hotdogs and ketchup and I just think, oh, maybe it's an American dinner table. But then I guess in a way it could just be like a generic dinner table. It could be like anybody's, you know, dinner table or somebody, like you said, somebody who has walked away from like a half eaten dinner table. It looks quite ordinary. But the interesting thing is whenever I think of a stereotypical still life. Like I think of these works that are done like that in like the 17 or 18th century where they’re these really like luxurious, like painted still life’s by these artists who basically just like paints these luscious looking like fruits and cups and things like that, except like this, instead of it being like a 17th century version, this is like a contemporary version of that. That's what it kind of makes me think of.

Quinn: I also felt like this looked very American to me. Between the hotdogs and burgers and the fact that they are drinking full glasses of milk. Like my first thought when I saw this was “4th of July barbecue.” Also there's like—we've referenced the hotdog. There is one perfect hot dog that is painted on this. And it makes me want a hot dog so bad and I don't even eat meat. But I'm looking at that and I'm like, I want to eat that hot dog.

Betty: I know, it does look really delicious. I'm glad I already had dinner. Cause otherwise this would make me really hungry.

Quinn: But I agree with you as well as reminding you about older still life paintings, but at the same time, it's like, it's a still life, but also—like this painting looks to me like there is activity right outside the frame. Like I really believe that this family is in the next room in a way that it's like, this is a moment of peace that has been captured, not something that has been posed and arranged to be there, which I feel like is a cool energy for a painting to have.

Betty: Yeah, that's actually a really good way of looking at it, but yeah, I don't really know much about this painting, except I do know that this was painted by what happens to be a Canadian artist. Even though we're like, this looks like America. But it was painted by a Canadian artist named Mary Pratt and she is actually, she's known for doing hyper realistic paintings, like quite often her works look like they're a photo. When I first saw her works, I thought she was a photographer, but it turns out she's a painter who normally paints these like hyper realistic paintings. But I guess this is actually one of the less realistic paintings out of her, out of her catalog of works.

Quinn: Wow. She decided to take it easy, and it's beautiful.

Betty: Exactly. This is when she was just like, oh, I'm going to do something simple and it still is quite detailed. 

Quinn: Oh, it's gorgeous. Wow.

Betty: Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, I would encourage anyone who can go to an art museum or if you can't to try this out, because as it turns out, you know, we talked, like—all of these paintings we talked for like more than 10 minutes or maybe 20 about them, even though we technically didn't go into the context or historic background of any of them. It kinda just shows you that you don't really have to—looking at an artwork in a gallery isn't necessarily just about like finding out the information of what they they're about. A lot of it can just be you engaging with the art and talking about the visual elements and talking about things that it reminds you personally of.

Quinn: Yeah. It has been super fun to just engage with some pieces aesthetically and just see what unfolds from there. Like horror movies. 

Betty: Exactly. Maybe we can talk about art in horror movies as a topic too.

Quinn: Oh, we can't do that, I’ll get spooked. [both laugh] Alright. Thank you everybody for listening to this episode of Pictorial. You can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial, and you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. And you can also find me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: You can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsv. And I am also on YouTube as ARTiculations. And we also have a YouTube channel, Pictorial Podcast, where we usually upload the video versions of our audio podcasts a few weeks after the audio versions have come out. This one, definitely I would say the video experience will be a lot better because you can look at the artwork as we described them pretty much during the entire episode.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!