A mundane musing on a maxim of Modernism

Some ways of thinking about things become so familiar that, after a while, you "forget" them; they don't just suddenly rise to the conscience when you're confronted with every single given situation in which that way of thinking is applicable. And then, one day, it suddenly does come to the surface and, no matter how familiar an idea it might be to you, it seems to carry even more weight than before, to the point that you can't wait for a little time to blog about it. Whatever did people do before blogging? Do you ever wonder?
Such was the case the evening before last, as one of my students in my Humanities class was talking about some paintings by Van Gogh that she found especially attractive. Interestingly, she was intrigued by their rather plainspoken titles--the fact of their plainspokenness, that is. She showed 5 paintings, of which Olive Trees

was the last. She mentioned in particular how the sun's light was represented and, in particular, how Van Gogh makes no attempt to disguise his brushstrokes. She also mentioned what she senses in these paintings as Van Gogh's honesty about what he sees. I mentioned to the class that the Van Gogh at the Nelson-Atkins, a painting of an olive orchard but dramatically different in appearance from the one I've posted here, has paint on it that is so thick and the brushstrokes so broad, it has the appearance of having been fingerpainted. And then it struck me: up until the latter decades of the 19th century, the paintings we'd seen have very smooth surfaces. It's as though the painter seeks to ensure that nothing intervenes between the viewer and the image painted--the image is the subject, not the making of it. But that attitude changes with Manet, I (re)realized: how the painting is made--and the corollary of why it's made that way--become more overt concerns of artists from that point on. Van Gogh's titles don't exactly scintillate because it's obvious WHAT he's painting. But Modernism takes as its basic assumption the idea that the making itself is, to some extent, the subject of art. So it's some trees--big deal, Van Gogh's titles seem to say. But look at HOW I've painted them and ask yourself WHY I painted them that way.
So no wonder, I was (re)reminded, my students speculated not a whit about Botticelli's relationships with women but were more than willing to speculate regarding those of Picasso: of course all art is subjectively made (and viewed), but in our own era, that subjectivity is more obviously a personal one.

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Painting, Theories of Art