A friend was in the gallery recently and, upon seeing Jacob Tillman’s paintings, commented that they were “just bad art.” He said they showed no “technique,” no “craft,” no “sensitivity,” and simply were not “beautiful.”
I of course sprung into action, mounting a forceful academic defense of the paintings, positioning them in the arc of art history, pointing out the choices of color and line, underscoring the brilliant craziness of Tillman’s compositions, et cetera. Predictably, my friend was not swayed. He said that for him art had to be beautiful, and if it wasn’t he had no time for it. There are countless reasonable people who feel the same way about art, and I’m guessing many of them would respond similarly to Tillman. Too bad. They just don’t understand the paintings.
But here’s the thing: We read T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, listen to the dissonant works Schönberg, or watch experimental theatrical works by Artaud or Beckett, and we either “understand” them or we don’t. If we feel we understand them, we may very well perceive them as beautiful works of art. If we do not understand them, we my perceive them as ugly or, worse, not perceive them as art at all.
Yet do we need to “understand” a view of the Grand Canyon, a sunset over the ocean, or a giant sequoia tree to perceive beauty (or ugliness) in them? Of course not. While “understanding” seems to be a necessary first step to a complete aesthetic experience of art, it clearly is no such prerequisite to a complete aesthetic experience of nature.
For this reason, it is said, an artwork is not so much an object of sensory experience, but an instrument of conveying knowledge or information. Once the information is conveyed, it can create an aesthetic experience that feels strikingly similar to the feeling we get when we perceive beauty or ugliness in the natural world. And that’s what’s so wonderfully, frustratingly, exhiliratingly confusing.
Images: Jacob Tillman, "2 x 2" (2009), oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in; "Sitting Room" (2009), oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in; "Stage is Set" (2009), oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in.
