What is art?

Lowry is know for his ‘matchstick men’ but there is so much more to him than meets the eye. Lowry suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome and lived with his parents until he was 52 years old. He led two very distinct lives; one as a rent collector which he did during the day and for 42 years, and one as an artist – he painted at night usually between 11.00pm and 2.30am.

His mother thought of him as a failure and often laughed at him, calling his paintings ugly, depressing and boring, yet he was devoted to her. He attended Manchester art school and the Salford art school for over twelve years in the evenings, before they eventually told him to leave because he was too old.

A Lowry industrial scene before the tutor's criticism.

A Lowry industrial scene after the tutor's criticism.

He began painting his industrial scenes in the late 1920′s but they met with little success until one of the tutors criticised them. Lowry was furious and when he asked what he should do to improve them was met with the answer, ‘that is for you to find out’. Lowry went home in a tantrum and came back with the roads and buildings painted white to which the tutor said, ‘that’s better.’

You will notice in all Lowry’s landscapes the roads are painted white and the buildings white or pale pastel colours, nothing like the dull grey’s of the reality. His work began to sell after an exhibition in London in 1939 brought him to the attention of the London art scene, he was aged 52.

Interestingly, if you look at the figures in Lowry’s paintings they are always in little groups, a lot is going on, but you always get the impression that Lowry is the distant observer. Apart from his devotion to his mother, he had no other relationships in his life. His work is actually much more interesting and sophisticated that it appears. He is an artist who observes the minutiae of life very intensely.

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Inspired by Lowry at Hampton Bishop VH on 16/17 June

You have a blank piece of paper, canvas and the thought you want to create something, but where do you start? Being creative is harder than you think, but there are things you can do to get the creative juices flowing.

Just start scribbling. The first idea is rarely the best just keep scribbling and let the idea fester, play with it over a period of time and remember if it goes nowhere it is not the end of the world, but it might suggest the beginning of a new adventure.

To be truly inspired, you have to learn to trust your instincts. Don’t keep re-drawing the idea too much or plan the painting down to every intricate detail, otherwise you’ll get bored with it and everyone who looks at your finished work will probably feel the same. Remember, hard work is important, but it’s not as important as inspiration.

If you are really stuck for ideas, let your mind wander, observe people in the street, watch films, read books, comics, newspapers, look at the gestures people use when in the street, queuing, eating, whatever. Take these everyday things, make notes about them use them as a starting point and doodle, let your mind day dream and ponder on them.

Sometimes try to write down your ideas instead of drawing them. Be very brief, concise and direct. Don’t over-complicate things. Picasso once said he spent a lifetime trying to learn how to draw like a child. Children see the world in simple, straight forward ways, they speak a lot of sense, watch how they work and try to follow their uninhibited methods of self-expression.

At the end of the day don’t be afraid to scrap all your hard work and planning at the last minute and go off in a totally different direction. Don’t be too precious about your idea, it can be hard to ditch it, but as I said earlier trust your instincts.

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Art is what artists produce. All artists are human beings, but not all human beings are artists. So what is it that makes a human being an artist? And what is it that they produce? These simple questions are the basis of endless debate so let’s break it down into simple chunks.

There seem to be three common threads running through all definitions of art:

· We expect to see some form of manual or technical skill, something we are not ourselves capable of, or which we aspire to. We can see this in lots of walks of life, sport, surgery as well as painting, drawing and sculpture. However, it is important that we do not see this as the most important or sole criteria.

· We also expect to encounter some form of intellectual challenge, something that confronts our ideas and thoughts, but probably has no definitive answer. It is very much like a political or religious discussion.

· Finally, we should see some form of personal or public expression that communicates what the artis about. When we hold a conversation we express our ideas and thoughts, it is the same type of process.

The three points mentioned above describe a lot of things humans produce so there has to be something else we need to understand to define what art is? We could start with the word Art itself? Art is related to the word artificial in the sense that art is not naturally occurring like a tree, man creates art. It does not follow that anything man produces is Art. Why is this?

There seems to be something different, more profound about Art than compared with what is simply mass produced by man. To see how this might be, let’s compare a sculpture of a human figure with a manufactured nail. The sculpture can tell to us something about the human form or condition, where as the nail is simply a functional object with little or no real significance. On the other hand a nail is a very useful object where as, in a practical sense, a sculpture is not. So art seems to be a group of objects, ideas or activities, which it could be argued, are useless in practical terms, yet are different or significant in a way that a nail or painting a window frame is not.

Art constantly changes and as each century passes, artists change the direction of art, or in some cases redefine it altogether. In the early 20th century the artist Marcel Duchamp invented the ready-made, a work of art created from found objects, and made us look at everyday objects in a quite different way. Artists such as Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky choose to reduce the world to series of lines, colours and shapes and invented abstraction with its consequent effect on design, architecture and fashion.

It is not just artists that change art; technology has also made its mark. Without the invention of the camera obscura (the simple pin-hole camera) some artists would have struggled to create their topographical paintings during the Renaissance. Luckily the paint tube was invented before the 1860’s; otherwise the ability of the Impressionist painters to work outside would have been diminished. Today we see the computer influencing everything from animation to special effects and generating new forms of art at the same time, just as the invention of photography did in the 19th century.

Paul Priestley's Art Blog

L.S.Lowry – interesting painter

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