Aesthetic Perspectives of the   Artist and Audience  Keith  O'Connor  My Writings on Art

last update june  2000

To the artist pictorial aesthetics has to do with organizing the elements within the pictorial field. It is  the under structure within an individual shape and between  groups of individual shapes which  are placed on the surface of  a  rectangular format such as a drawing or painting. The under structure is used as a guide to provide unity within variety and variety within unity forming  a unified pictorial system.

It sounds like good stuff but what does it mean?

The viewer's eyes must move easily move over a painting's forms; colours; textures and shapes without confusion thus using aesthetics to give the viewer an opportunity to enter the world of the artist.

You will note that I said  the viewer will have an opportunity to enter the world of the artist.

We now face the question:Is the sense of aesthetics natural or learned?

I argue that aesthetics is both natural and learned, that we can  enhance by experience observation and information, a natural attribute, or we can ignore it. The natural side of aesthetics concerns the recognition of pattern sequences, the artistic side of aesthetics concerns the ability to create pattern sequences that are sensed but not immediately recognized by the untrained eye of the audience. The artist is much like the magician who must know the secrets, (aesthetics), but convey a range of moods to the audience  - art has been defined by some writers as containing the elements of drawing, colour and mood.

Assume that there is an absolute process that the artist can follow to create an aesthetic sequence.  Each viewer will project onto the art work  personal interpretations and levels of acceptance. It appears as though the viewers possession of an aesthetic sense is not a requirement for acceptance of a work as art. Remember aesthetics only concerns clarity of expression it does not deal with the viewers personal tastes.

The artist  comes to know that there will always be members, of the art viewing society, who will reject the work. The artist like the magician relates to the  art audience as participants in a giver and receiver dynamic.

Let us assume that our artist is well aware of aesthetic principles and intends to use them to guide expression. In the first instance if the artist has enough money the audience giver receiver dynamic can be ignored. In the second instance - no money; no audience - the artist starves. The last alternative is for the artist  to find a patron(s) who is (are) in harmony with the artists aesthetic principles.

What does all this mean?

It means firstly that the recognition of artistic clarity and that creation of artistic clarity  "aesthetics" are not universal, and secondly many artists as well as audience members  are unaware that they may not possess and aesthetic sense.

Recently I have come across thousands of  excellent high quality paintings by  unknown artists. Even if they had wanted to become known they didn't. In their work I can sense their skill and knowledge. Many artists painted for themselves as audience and that audience is sometimes a very demanding audience, but in the end it is the only audience worth painting for.

Through this process of painting for the  artist's internal audience members of the external audience are given to opportunity  to join the internal audience, but only those members of the external audience who can respond to the artist's internal audience can enter.  As the artist, over time, modifies the aesthetic content of the art work the audience undergoes an interactive change. Some members will leave, some new members will join and other members will harmonize  their aesthetic sense  with that of the changing artist.
 

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the following are just bits and pieces that I will eventually throw out.
 
 
 
 

. Aesthetics as defined in this document describes those principles which facilitate the ease of eye movement and recognition of  linked and sequential patterns.

This concept of aesthetics as pure clarity of differential thought presumes a relationship to the linked and sequential patterns in: Art; Mathematics; Philosophy; Physics; Music; Architecture; Astronomy etc.

Pure differentiated thought is used to impose clarity on the use of physical materials in conjunction with  theories of drawing;  colour and composition in order to explore  the energy contained in mood. This then is the artistic process, at the highest level of generality, for the construction  of two dimensional images.

NOTE: Composition which is defined as the creation of linked and sequential patterns specifically  applied to the flat surface will be discussed in the section titled "Art".

@separate the two thoughts and expand ------:
For the duration of this discussion we will define thought as the process by which we must make a choice between two or more competing ideas or concepts. A major aesthetic concept concerns the idea of "variety within unity and unity within variety, implies the parts of a composition must contain similarities. This is accomplished through a process of choices that will generate an infinite number of combinations.
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Thoughtful studies have indicated that the average person can visually differentiate eleven tones between white a black without undue effort.

Since we want our patterns to be clear and easily understood by the viewer we will construct an eleven tone system as follows:

 We chose a white and a black as our two extremes and create nine equally distanced tones between those extremes. This has been referred to as a tonal ruler or scale. This should be a simple task, but I do not recall ever seeing an adequate equally spaced tonal ruler in any of the hundreds of art books that I have reviewed. The art students I know have struggled through this exercise without success.

In ancient times the Pythagoreans conducted many a trial and error experiments in discovering the mathematical ratios that defined how long to cut the strings or pipes in order to produce a series of equally spaced notes. In a similar fashion I went through hundreds of experiments to arrive at the following numeric sequence that produces a tonal scale of equally separated  tones. (to construct the scale I used acrylic Ivory Black with acrylic Titanium white )

The mathematical ratio sequence  was eventually defined as: 2(n)/1 for n=0,1,2,3,4,5. This sequence is described in words as follows.  1 unit of white to 1 unit of black is tone 6; 2 units of white to 1 unit of black is tone 5; 4 units of white to 1 unit of black is tone 4; 8 units of white to 1 unit of black is tone 3; 16 units of white to 1 unit of black is tone 2;32 units of white to 1 unit of black is tone 1: (note that tone 1 is not pure white you still have a white  accent). The five dark tones are the inverse as follows: tone 7 is 2 units of black to 1 unit of white;tone 8 is 4 units of black to 1 unit of white; tone 9 is 8 units of black to 1 unit of white; tone 10 is 16 units of black to 1 unit of white; tone 11 is 32 units of black to 1 unit of white. (Note that tone 11 is not absolutely pure black you still have a black  accent)

Special Note: the tonal ruler is a lot harder to build than to use once it is built.

See my section on colour theory I have added a tonal ruler and colour.

I have constructed the following seven tone scale, excluding black and white, which would make it a nine tone scale if they were included. I like to keep black and white for accents.
 

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 I decided to add colour so you would get the idea of what balanced colour,  (yellow, red, blue),  looks like and that the purist colour is used only for special points of articulation. The use of colour is like unto  an opera singer who gives you the feeling that he or she  can  go higher.

Just as in music the tuning fork is used as a reference sound in tuning the piano, in graphic art the tonal ruler acts like a tuning fork and is used as a reference tone to visually tune the tones. The piano tuner listens with his or her ears to determine when the piano key is in harmony with the tuning fork. The artist uses his eyes to evaluate the difference between  his tones with the tonal scale.

In both instances we are dealing with clarity, clarity of audible sound and clarity of visual tone and that clarity is always related to the interaction of  tones within the visual field.

It will be noticed that in mathmetical terms we have created a straight line by mixing unequal volume combinations of white and black. It is interesting to note that you create the equivalent of a parabolic curve if you mix black and white by volume : 1/1,  1/2,  1/3,  1/4,  1/5 etc.

Although we are dealing with the making of a pattern which belongs under art, we are also trying to express the recogintion of pattern which belongs under aesthetics. Therefore I may in the future rephrase and move it under art.

I will continue this essay on aesthetics as I get the time, but It will always concern the  unambiguous clarity of separateness defining  relationships within the visual field. Clarity of shape, clarity of texture, clarity of color, clarity of line, clarity of tone, clarity of form, etc. It is the sygernistic interaction of various relational clarities that form the art dialectic. The objective of art is always to impose  clarity of separateness on the materials in order to express mood,  which will be discussed in a separtate section.

tonal ruler as tool

mention colour model as tool

I have to put color interaction somewhere.

notes for Mood:

The artist is like an actor who, depending upon the demands of the script,  can experment with different moods.  The graphic artist therefore should be able to experment with different moods depending upon the demands of the composition.

The gestural elements of a figure rather than it's surface apparance concerns real art, which we have defined as clarity of emotion and unity of figure rather than segmentation.

Teenagers tend to approach drawing like it is a puzzle in which all the pices one by one are assembled.

Explain how the photograph has destroyed drawing which communicates mood.

Explain D's remark that life drawing is so much foolishness and it's impact on mood.

Mention the ageing models in the 18th century art schools england.