EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

3 Practical Ways to Understand Art

How can museum visitors and art lovers interpret art for themselves without having the specialized knowledge of experts? It is easier than you think and within the grasp of many. The key is not in books but experience. And that would have been true even for the wise minds pictured above.

Artists of the past practised their craft from a very young age and often prayed before painting. Today we who wish to understand their works cannot mimic their practice to any great extent. Yet their experience helped form their art. It would have included intellectual discussions with patrons and prominent citizens but also spiritual ones with their master, perhaps, a wise neighbor, or fellow-craftsmen. Few artists, even if they could, read much before the Renaissance but were formed by their love of art and their spiritual path. In fact, despite their lack of education, the true artists were visual philosophers who understood their role in essentially the same way as Carl Jung did in the twentieth century:

“The artist is not a person endowed with free will, who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being, he may have moods, and a will, and personal aims, but as an artist, he is Man in a higher sense: he is "collective man", a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind.”¹

This knowledge, that art is universal in nature and passed on through the artist, has not been well grasped. Art history's ways of exploring its subject - through history obviously, sociology, iconology, patronage, and psychology, for example - are not key to art’s meaning or purpose. That kind of book-based scholarship irked even Leonardo da Vinci who wrote in a notebook:

“If indeed I have no power to quote from the authors as they have, it is a far bigger and more worthy thing to read by the light of experience, which is the instructress of their masters..... And, if they despise me who am an inventor, how much more should blame be given to themselves who are not inventors  but trumpeter and reciters of the works of others?”²

The message is: you don't need to read a lot of books (though that certainly helps). What is vitally important is your own ability to think independently. To try that, while gaining a better understanding of major art, here are three possible paths without a page-turner;

1. Spend as much time as possible studying the great art of all periods. See originals in museums if you can, but also good digital reproductions. Google Art & Culture, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Prado all have excellent free archives online with high-res images.

2. Take up painting or sculpting. The practice of any craft is a form of meditation that allows you to focus single-mindedly on the object in front of you. It’s cathartic and therapeutic. With experience, in the quiet of the studio, your powers of visual perception will improve.  

3. Practice one of the many paths of the Inner Tradition: Western, Asian, religious, or secular. Most recommend some form of meditation because it is only by stilling the mind that wisdom can enter. Prayer is a form of meditation, as is the prolonged study of art (as suggested in Option 1). If you live in London or New York or certain other large cities in Britain and the United States, try the School of Practical Philosophy  which teaches the universal principles of life passed down through the sages of the ages, from Socrates and Confucius to Maya Angelou. 

In time by following one of these recommendations, you will improve your ability to interpret art by the light of experience, which in itself is a thrilling experience too.

 

1. Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World) 1961 pp. 168-171

2. Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus 117r-b, Ambrosiana Library, Milan cited in Ritchie Calder, Leonardo & the Age of the Eye (New York: Simon & Schuster) 1970, p.232