A painting from my parent's house
My step mother died last year and it took a while to sort out her affairs. However, her niece contacted me recently to tell me that everything was now in order and that a couple of items that she believed had come to her aunt from my dad needed to find a home. She had found a couple of cross stitched copies of paintings made by my mother as a distraction when she was dying with cancer and two small paintings. It was agreed that my sister would have one of the paintings and a cross stitched image that was based on a Rembrandt painting and that I would get to have the other two images. I didn't remember ever seeing the painting I received, but my sister did remember hers, as it was on the wall of one of the houses she lived in when she was a girl. I am though a lot older than her and my parents, who tended to move house every two or three years, had lived in several houses after I left Dudley. However, the more I look at the painting, the more I become intrigued.
The painting's signature
The painting is signed, with a name that could be Kine, Kinn or Klien or something similar. I found out that paintings signed with the "K" last name were often painted by what were called "Decor Artists". There were many European and American painters in the mid-1900s who painted cheap, commercial oil landscapes and signed them as "Kine", "Kinn" or similar, which were sold in furniture and department stores. These mass-produced "factory paintings" were also by the late 1980s made in overseas workshops such as Dafen Village in China. Skilled but uncredited painters used their skills to quickly create and reproduce works. I also found the following statement about this type of painting.... "while many vintage decor paintings from the 1950s–1970s possess a certain charm or historical value, they generally hold little to no long-term monetary or gallery value". This use of various types of value systems of course intrigued me; historical value in this case was there, but no monetary or 'gallery' value. In the art market, gallery value is the standard retail price an artwork commands when sold through a commercial art gallery. It typically represents the base "Artist Price" doubled to cover the gallery's commission and operational expenses. As these paintings were sold in furniture stores, they were obviously thought of as 'decor', however I have seen people go into galleries and ask to look at paintings that would go with the interior decorative scheme they had implemented for their house. The use of the word 'charm' when researching qualities associated with these paintings, opened another aesthetic conundrum for me. For instance there is such a thing as 'curated nostalgia'. It draws from vintage or cottagecore* themes; such as cozy country cottages and whimsical florals. This creates a comfortable, safe and deeply familiar visual environment. The cozy feelings evoked are deeply emotional, and I realise that these paintings are perhaps far better at communicating certain types of emotion than the work I'm supposed to be developing in relation to my research into the visualisation of interoceptual experiences.
Thomas Kinkade
Kinkade’s paintings depict an idealised, nostalgic escape from modern anxieties. By utilising luminous painting techniques, easy to read symbolism and familiar, therefore safe imagery, his works are like a comfort blanket. The feelings expressed in these images are related to the feelings that my parents wanted to have evoked when they purchased the painting I was sent. Knowing my dad he probably bought it second hand from a salesroom somewhere, maybe part of a job lot, bought sight unseen. He liked that sort of adventure.
I decided to look at what was offered in similar outlets today. Wilco had landscape prints,
Idyllic Country Scene
Posterlounge the Fine Art print company is slightly up market of Wilco, it asks, "Are you inspired by atmospheric landscape prints? Countryside Cottage by Dominic Davison being a contemporary offering by them of a by now familiar theme, the difference is that Davison is a digital artist. This is how Posterlounge introduce Davison's work.
'Pure romance, a grandiose attention to detail, warm summer evenings and an idyllic holiday feeling… All these things mark British artist Dominic Davison’s digital masterpieces. The biggest source of inspiration for Dominic’s wall art is his chosen home, Buckinghamshire, featuring picturesque cottages, green meadows and quaint forests. His unmistakable style is inspired by artwork of all kinds.'
Countryside Cottage by Dominic Davison
Both companies tell us that these images are 'idyllic'. The Oxford English Dictionary informs us that "Idyllic" is often used to describe a scene, place or experience that is peaceful, charming, and picturesque and is associated with a serene, flawless, or stress-free rustic environment, it can refer to anything from a beautiful countryside landscape to a perfect, carefree childhood memory. This idea is an old one, the OED goes on to explain that...'the word "idyllic" derives from the Greek word eidyllion, meaning "little picture" or "short poem." Historically, it refers to an "idyll," which is a literary or artistic genre used to depict an idealised, peaceful vision of pastoral or rustic life.' However, this romanticised outlook, where nature is innocent and untainted, has been intentionally constructed and passed down through centuries of literature, art, and philosophy. The Roman poet Virgil’s Eclogues depicted idealised shepherds philosophising in meadows, while in reality shepherds had to deal with a harsh difficult to negotiate landscape that included wolf packs, disease and extream poverty. During the 18th Century Marie Antoinette had a fake rustic hamlet built at Versailles, so that she could play at being a lady peasant, at the same time the real French peasants were starving. Farmers today struggle with debt, climate change and corporate takeovers, the countryside can be a very harsh environment, often far away from comforts such as local hospitals or cultural outlets such as theatres or art galleries.
It would seem that the more industrialised and urbanised we become, the more we romanticise the countryside. Hence the 'idyllic' stereotype.
Back in the 1990s Komar and Melamid set out to find what most people would like if a painting could be made exactly to their wishes. Intending to discover what a true "people's art" would look like, the artists began the process which resulted in America's Most Wanted and America's Least Wanted paintings, which were exhibited in New York at the Alternative Museum under the title "People's Choice."
*Cottagecore is a lifestyle and design aesthetic that romanticises rural, simple living and harmony with nature.
USA Most wanted painting
France most wanted painting
Turkey most wanted painting
They went on to conduct surveys in several other countries and as you can see from the three samples taken from their research, what people wanted was very similar in each case. Michael Govan had this to say about their project.
In a way it was a traditional idea, because a faith in numbers is fundamental to people, starting with Plato's idea of a world which is based on numbers. In ancient Greece, when sculptors wanted to create an ideal human body they measured the most beautiful men and women and then made an average measurement, and that's how they described the ideal of beauty and how the most beautiful sculpture was created. In a way, this is the same thing; in principle, it's nothing new. It's interesting: we believe in numbers, and numbers never lie. Numbers are innocent. It's absolutely true data. It doesn't say anything about personalities, but it says something more about ideals, and about how this world functions. That's really the truth, as much as we can get to the truth. Truth is a number.-Michael Govan, Director, Dia Center for the Arts
Govan's statement was I found worrying. Faith in numbers is I find problematic, but I could see what he was getting at. I was more interested in what this group of images represented in terms of visual psychology. It has been argued that people love landscape images because of the prospect and refuge aspects of evolutionary psychology, such as the safety instinct whereby we are biologically drawn to landscapes that offer a vantage point to survey surroundings (Prospect) and sheltered areas for protection (Refuge). Images featuring lush green colours and accessible water (like lakes and rivers) are meant to be universally pleasing because they signal survival, food sources and seeing water, that even in pictures or video projections, signals safety, relief, and replenishment, and in turn it produces wakefully relaxed brain waves. This is a process also called "soft fascination", whereby water engages us in a gentle reflection that quiets the mind, allowing the brain's cognitive networks to recover from stress and anxiety. Landscapes can also serve as blank canvases for the viewer's imagination, acting as a form of visual therapy, giving the mind a space in which to mentally inhabit a space far away from daily stresses, a place that is a serene, idealised environment. It is argued (biologist E.O. Wilson,1984) that humans are evolutionarily wired to respond positively to natural, adaptive environments (like water and vegetation) and neuroaesthetics supports this by identifying the exact neural pathways that light up during experiences of beauty. Neuroaesthetics can be used to identify the exact neural pathways that are used when we experience certain feelings or sensations. It has been found that when viewing natural scenes certain particular neural pathways are indicated as being used and these same scenes when examined using stress reduction theory research, show that viewing these natural scenes immediately engages the brain’s calming, restorative responses, lowering cortisol levels and blood pressure. Therefore there is a direct connection between aesthetics and the brain's production of chemicals to control emotion. Landscape scenes that evoke the Golden Hour, use warmer tones combined with lower colour saturation, mimicking the sensations we get from experiencing early morning and evening light. The feelings invoked by those times of the day are often felt by people to be both spiritually uplifting and emotionally warming. Landscapes serve as blank canvases for the viewer's imagination. They act as a form of visual therapy, allowing the mind to mentally escape the traumas of now and transport someone away from their daily stresses into nostalgic, serene and idealised environments. I do wonder however, how much of this has been culturally manufactured. Perhaps nature and culture are in this case interwoven, but its also useful to remember that people who live in the Amazon view their environment not as a "wilderness" or an "idyll" but as a living, sacred entity.
In 1984 Roger Ulrich published a ground changing paper, 'View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery'; patients that had a view of a landscape through their window were discovered to heal more quickly that those who did not. It would appear that not only does exposure to landscape views effect people's mental state, but that it can also be beneficial to their physical health.
Wittenstein would look in these situations at 'use value'. He believed that languages act as sets of tools, "meaning" being determined by their practical use within specific social contexts. Therefore in terms of 'use value' a painting of this sort may be used to benefit someone's mental health. It could be argued that we often get mixed up when trying to think about the 'value' of an image and although the painting I have been sent has no monetary or gallery value, it may well have been used by my parents as a window into a nostalgic, idealised environment, that allowed them to escape the everyday realities of their lives in Dudley.
So what does this mean in relation to what I'm normally looking at in terms of visual imagery? Perhaps a bit of a wake up call in relation to who uses what imagery for what purpose. Most people like images of landscapes, because these images make them feel better. I sense by most people I'm talking about the majority of people who have hard lives, especially those working in towns and cities, where nature is rarely experienced as a raw elemental force, more as a breathing gap or space for leisure and an escape from work. The rich can afford to buy abstract paintings that often are not that different from Komar and Melamid's 'Least Wanted' paintings. They can afford to like difficult things.
America's Least Wanted painting
Harsh colours and spiky, abstract forms, are, Komar and Melamid found, the least wanted shapes and colours to have in a painting. Probably because of what they represent. Harsh, bright colours and spiky shapes represent danger, tension, and aggression. These visual elements trigger heightened cognitive arousal and mimic natural cues associated with threats or intense stimulation. Spiky shapes, sharp, jagged and angular forms remind us of aggression and pain, because they resemble thorns, teeth, or claws. These forms trigger primitive survival instincts and raise alertness. Harsh, bright colours, high-contrast hues and highly saturated colours demand immediate attention, as psychologically they represent warning signs, urgency, and intensity. There is also a certain amount of synesthesia at work, whereby a perceptual phenomenon stimulates one sensory or cognitive pathway and involuntarily triggers an experience in another. Such as when spiky, jagged shapes are triggered in the mind by sharp, explosive sounds. We instinctively associate jagged shapes with the twisting and fast bodily movements that are often made in response to sharp percussive noises and in turn these movements can be visualised using forms that like a frenzied dance movement, sharply zig-zag from side to side.
Because I'm often working with people in pain, it is this area of visual form that tends to dominate the images produced. But as it seems clear from the above, these images are the least wanted in terms of 'pictures to live with'.
So what in my case is the 'use value'?
I have tended to think of the use value of my research as raising awareness of interoceptual sensations and feelings. I have also thought of the work I do as art. Some of the images that have emerged from the process are I think powerful in their own right and when put into a gallery context are open to interpretation, just like all the other images seen in galleries. Once removed from their initial 'use value' context, they slide into a further use as imaginative images of the body, that help me to visualise ideas about the cosmic body and my thoughts about how we use images of our bodies to visualise the wider world.
Most importantly, this post allows me to find a connection between what my parents might think in relation to using a visual image in their life and what I do as an image maker. I have for too many years thought of myself as someone 'different' to my parents, but the reality is I am very similar.
*Cottagecore is a lifestyle and design aesthetic that romanticises rural, simple living and harmony with nature.
References:
Ross, A., (1995) Poll stars: Komar & Melamid's" The people's choice". Artforum.
Ulrich, R.S., (1984) View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. science, 224(4647), pp.420-421.
Wittenstein, L. (2012) Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. London: Simon and Schuster.
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