You Won't Look at Painting the Same Way After Watching This Video

I once approached my painting teacher with a question. I said: there are times when I find myself in a museum, in front of a painting, and I don't know what to see. From some paintings I can appreciate the technique with which they were made, I can appreciate the beauty of an image, I am familiar with reading symbols and allegories, but there are other paintings where I just don't know what to see. What should I look at in a painting? My teacher replied: when you look at a dancer you see him dance, when you hear a pianist you hear him play, and when you look at a painting you see how a painter paints. That sounded pretty logical, but I think at the time I didn't exactly understand what he was referring to. Over the years of practicing and seeing more paintings, I think I understand a little more what he meant. A good exercise is to observe how different painters approach the same subject. For example, a piece of bread. Let's see how painters can achieve a great variety of expressions only with the handling of pictorial elements, without the need to resort to narrations or allegories. For example, this painting gives us the feeling of fresh bread. How does the painter convey this feeling? Let's look at the formal elements. The bread is placed at eye level. The view is a close-up, there is not much space between the piece of bread and the edge of the panel. And the size of the painting is very small, 15 x 20 cm. These three things create a feeling of warmth and closeness. Such a small painting invites us to come closer to appreciate it in more detail. We also have this very dark background from which the shape gently emerges. The transition between light and shadow is very gradual. That can refer to the night and the morning. To give us the feeling that this bread just comes out of the oven in the morning. But what is most striking about this painting is the texture. The quick and vigorous brushstrokes with which it was painted. It seems that the painter was in a hurry to describe this bread before someone else came along and ate it. The vigorous brushstroke reinforces that feeling of freshness. And what a different feeling this other bread gives us. Colors are less vivid. The bread is no longer at eye level, it seems that we are observing it from a slightly higher point. We are not sure what kind of surface the bread has been placed on. There is no table or tablecloth. We also see that the painter has given it a certain texture like a patina that makes the painting look old. And some gray and greenish tones in the bread give us the feeling that this bread is not very fresh. We can also see that the bread is not centered but appears to be placed in an arbitrary place in the image. All this gives us the feeling that the painter did not want to exalt the piece of bread. It looks more like a piece of bread that someone has found lying on the floor. This painting conveys a feeling of great hopelessness. Perhaps from some near future in which finding a piece of bread, even if it is rotting, will be our only food of the day. And this sense of doom was achieved without the need to resort to narrative elements. Simply with the handling of the pictorial elements. Now we have before us a happier image. Comparing and contrasting helps us understand this much better. The colors here are much more vibrant and luminous. We can also see how the painter used the creamy consistency of the oil paint to represent the texture of the meringue. At the edge of the canvas, the cake slices appear cut out, indicating that there are more cake slices that our eyes cannot see. This gives us the feeling of abundance. Here we are immediately seduced by the pleasures of the consumer society. Of course, we know that art can both celebrate and denounce. If an artist wanted to criticize how insipid and empty he finds in consumer society, a slice of white bread on a flat gray background communicates the feeling in a very clear and forceful way. Compared to the first painting we saw of the fresh loaf of bread, this painting lacks awe and emotion, and that is the intention but I find the acidity of its humor somewhat belonging to a genius. In this other example, the painter decided to take a long time to observe and depict this bread in great detail. The bread is placed in a more central place and on a tablecloth. This gives the bread a more privileged feeling. The colors are soft, the tones close to each other. We no longer have the contrast that produced drama in previous paintings. And the material chosen to work with is no longer oil, but chalk and pastels on paper. This has allowed the artist to obtain a very smooth texture, rather than vigorous brush strokes. These elements give us a feeling of silence and serenity, as if it were a murmur between the bread and the painter, and we were witnesses of this intimacy. I think it is becoming clearer how painters use pictorial elements to express different things. But can bread convey sadness? fragility? humor? severity? tranquility? repulsion? Or what would bread look like if it were the difference between living or dying in the middle of a war? Or is it possible that the bread produces a mystical almost sexual ecstasy for the artist? Here the vibrant colors, the deep shadows that hide the shape, the way the light gently caresses the shapes, the close-up view that creates intimacy, the rounded shapes and the fluids that remind us of the human body, the sensuality of the oil colors, and the light brushstroke that the artist uses to describe objects without over-detailing, thus allowing the imagination to play. All these pictorial elements come together to convey this sensation of eroticism in bread. This is how painters paint. How would you paint a bread?

Channel: César Córdova

Views: 1,041,013

Rating: 4.9008665 out of 5

Keywords: painting, art, oil painting, how to, painter, real time, maler, Dipingere, Peindre, curso de pintura, clase de pintura, pintura al óleo, acrílico, aprender a pintar, pintura, óleo, clases, curso, gratuito, como, como hacer, tutorial, cesar cordova, arte, manualidades, dibujo, dibujar, malen, Anstreichen, Verven, للصبغ, Mengecat, 作畫, pintar, 塗る, Peinturer, Рисовать, पेंट करने के लिए, How to look at paintings

Id: ZpwY9Jvv3SQ

Length: 7min 41sec (461 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020