Read the passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.
The painter is now free to paint anything he chooses. There are scarcely any forbidden subjects, and
today everybody is prepared to admit that a painting of some fruit can be as important as a painting of a
hero dying. The Impressionists did as much as anybody to win this previously unheard-of freedom for
the artist. Yet, by the next generation, painters began to abandon the subject altogether, and began to
paint abstract pictures. Today the majority of pictures painted are abstract.
Is there a connection between these two developments? Has art gone abstract because the artist is
embarrassed by his freedom? Is it that, because he is free to paint anything, he doesn't know what to
paint? Apologists for abstract art often talk of it as the art of maximum freedom. But could this be the
freedom of the desert island? It would take too long to answer these questions properly. I believe there
is a connection. Many things have encouraged the development of abstract art. Among them has been
the artists' wish to avoid the difficulties of finding subjects when all subjects are equally possible.
I raise the matter now because I want to draw attention to the fact that the painter's choice of a subject
is a far more complicated question than it would at first seem. A subject does not start with what is put
in front of the easel or with something which the painter happens to remember. A subject starts with
the painter deciding he would like to paint such-and-such because for some reason or other he finds it
meaningful. A subject begins when the artist selects something for special mention. (What makes it
special or meaningful may seem to the artist to be purely visual its colours or its form.) When the
subject has been selected, the function of the painting itself is to communicate and justify the
significance of that selection.
It is often said today that subject matter is unimportant. But this is only a reaction against the
excessively literary and moralistic interpretation of subject matter in the nineteenth century. In truth
the subject is literally the beginning and end of a painting. The painting begins with a selection (I will
paint this and not everything else in the world); it is finished when that selection is justified (now you
can see all that I saw and felt in this and how it is more than merely itself).
Thus, for a painting to succeed it is essential that the painter and his public agree about what is
significant. The subject may have a personal meaning for the painter or individual spectator; but there
must also be the possibility of their agreement on its general meaning. It is at this point that the culture
of the society and period in question precedes the artist and his art. Renaissance art would have meant
nothing to the Aztecs and vice versa. If, to some extent, a few intellectuals can appreciate them both
today it is because their culture is an historical one: its inspiration is history and therefore it can include
within itself, in principle if not in every particular, all known developments to date.
When a culture is secure and certain of its values, it presents its artists with subjects. The general
agreement about what is significant is so well established that the significance of a particular subject
accrues and becomes traditional. This is true, for instance, of reeds and water in China, of the nude body
in Renaissance, of the animal in Africa. Furthermore, in such cultures the artist is unlikely to be a free
agent: he will be employed for the sake of particular subjects, and the problem, as we have just
described it, will not occur to him.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
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The painter is now free to paint anything he chooses. There are scarcely any forbidden subjects, and
today everybody is prepared to admit that a painting of some fruit can be as important as a painting of a
hero dying. The Impressionists did as much as anybody to win this previously unheard-of freedom for
the artist. Yet, by the next generation, painters began to abandon the subject altogether, and began to
paint abstract pictures. Today the majority of pictures painted are abstract.
Is there a connection between these two developments? Has art gone abstract because the artist is
embarrassed by his freedom? Is it that, because he is free to paint anything, he doesn't know what to
paint? Apologists for abstract art often talk of it as the art of maximum freedom. But could this be the
freedom of the desert island? It would take too long to answer these questions properly. I believe there
is a connection. Many things have encouraged the development of abstract art. Among them has been
the artists' wish to avoid the difficulties of finding subjects when all subjects are equally possible.
I raise the matter now because I want to draw attention to the fact that the painter's choice of a subject
is a far more complicated question than it would at first seem. A subject does not start with what is put
in front of the easel or with something which the painter happens to remember. A subject starts with
the painter deciding he would like to paint such-and-such because for some reason or other he finds it
meaningful. A subject begins when the artist selects something for special mention. (What makes it
special or meaningful may seem to the artist to be purely visual its colours or its form.) When the
subject has been selected, the function of the painting itself is to communicate and justify the
significance of that selection.
It is often said today that subject matter is unimportant. But this is only a reaction against the
excessively literary and moralistic interpretation of subject matter in the nineteenth century. In truth
the subject is literally the beginning and end of a painting. The painting begins with a selection (I will
paint this and not everything else in the world); it is finished when that selection is justified (now you
can see all that I saw and felt in this and how it is more than merely itself).
Thus, for a painting to succeed it is essential that the painter and his public agree about what is
significant. The subject may have a personal meaning for the painter or individual spectator; but there
must also be the possibility of their agreement on its general meaning. It is at this point that the culture
of the society and period in question precedes the artist and his art. Renaissance art would have meant
nothing to the Aztecs and vice versa. If, to some extent, a few intellectuals can appreciate them both
today it is because their culture is an historical one: its inspiration is history and therefore it can include
within itself, in principle if not in every particular, all known developments to date.
When a culture is secure and certain of its values, it presents its artists with subjects. The general
agreement about what is significant is so well established that the significance of a particular subject
accrues and becomes traditional. This is true, for instance, of reeds and water in China, of the nude body
in Renaissance, of the animal in Africa. Furthermore, in such cultures the artist is unlikely to be a free
agent: he will be employed for the sake of particular subjects, and the problem, as we have just
described it, will not occur to him.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
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