non-representational painting
once upon a time, I was little. books had squiggles in them so grownups could explain the drawings and paintings. the drawings and paintings showed worlds pretty much like the world I played in when grownups weren't around to tell me what I should see. I think it was that houses looked like houses and horses looked like horses. hm. did that come out right? houses in the drawings looked like houses in the world I played in when grownups weren't around, yes; and horses in the drawings looked like horses in the world I played in when grownups weren't around. so I was comfortable with those drawings, and had no idea what a historically and geographically compressed interval they had come from. of course, way back in once upon a time, I thought every day was part of everyday everywhen, and that rural northeastern Brasil was part of everywhere. kids get funny ideas. but along came school and education, and I was floored to learn that ancient Egyptian drawers and painters saw the world all wrong! wait! no! that didn't make sense! they drew and painted what they thought represented the world around them. yes, that made sense. and I could kinda get the twist it took to represent the world that way. I could even try and draw the world around me like it might have been represented by an ancient Egyptian artist. oh! wow! damn! and I learned not to show those drawings to teachers or parents, since they went nuts when they saw them. school was a lot about learning how to avoid teachers and parents going nuts. but then, outside school and outside the world of my parents, I think it was The Book of Knowledge that opened up new kinds of paintings to me. I told you about "discovering" Guernica. even before that I discovered paintings that seemed to me to be just swirls, messes, things like I'd created with fingerpaints. except they weren't. there was an onpurposeness to them while mine had just been playing, not knowing what else to do, or how to do anything else. I learned to respect them and puzzle over them - and keep them out of sight for teachers and parents. and I learned what cubists painted, and sorta intuited what they did, but only much much later learned what grownups who didn't go nuts thought the cubists did. so now, I can see abstract paintings, or African paintings, or cubist paintings, and not go nuts - usually. I can be impressed and even awed. until someone comes along and tells me, "See? this is a dragon. here is his head, and here is his tail, and this is his mouth, and that is the fire coming out of his mouth." "Unh, hunh," I say, still seeing an oval and a circle and a triangle against a curved surface, but what the heck do I know. oh. I do know that I appreciate non-representational drawing and painting, I just don't have stories for the instances of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment