Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.
So can there be Art without skill? If so, then clearly Conceptual Art is a valid form. The artist merely thinks the idea, and he/she or other people can try to put it into existence - or not. But if skill, in whatever medium, is a prerequisite, then we have a valid standard which we can apply to any piece of Art. So let us consider a couple of "Works Of Art" and see where we get. I'm choosing well-known works so that we are not confused by novelty.
This is Gainsborough's famous portrait of "Mr and Mrs Andrews" from about 1750. It has been interpreted of late from a Marxist perspective as a comment - if an unwitting one - on a society based on the holding of property. But I'm not interested in that here. Let us consider skill. Gainsborough can clearly handle oils. The rendering of surfaces is well done, there is real delicacy in the application of the paint, and there is a convincing, if conventional, handling of sky, cloudscape, scenery, perspective and clothing. The painting falls short where the Artist has used the conventions of the period rather than observation and drawing. So the figure of Mrs Andrews is almost fatally compromised because he has given her excessively narrow, "feminine" shoulders, and an anatomy which, if you stripped the clothes away, would look distinctly odd unless she is sitting on a surface inclined at 45 degrees. The trees owe more to looking at Flemish School landscapes than looking at real trees. And the sky seems to be adding something portentous without it being really clear what. The painting, of course, is regarded as the masterpiece of Gainsborough's early life. But he did so much more, and better, later. So is this a Work of Art? That must seem like a daft question. And the answer has to be "Yes". But it's yes because, despite the shortcomings of draughtsmanship, we know what these people looked like and we know quite a lot about their life together simply through the skill - or artistry - of the Artist.
Now clearly this is a work from a period before photography , and its purpose is somewhat different from that of a modern portrait. It is first and foremost a likeness. These people really looked like that (apart from those shoulders). Secondly it is a record. This is how these people wished to be seen and to go down to posterity - for paintings such as these were seen as permanent artfacts, not fashion items to be changed with the colour of the walls. Finally, it is an object to look on many times - there is no sell-by date. Such a picture might also be contrived to be thought provoking, stirring, sexually appealing, funny, scary, devotional, educational, or just plain pretty. Painted pictures served all of these purposes because, together with engravings and other prints, they were all there was to look at in a domestic context: no TV, no photographs, no home videos, no colour magazines. And of course, a major difference would be that the Artist was commissioned to paint the picture - such things were not done "on spec" - the outlay of time and material was simply too great. Such a picture would take months of work to complete - perhaps the time scale was even longer: a year? Perhaps two? It is quite a big painting - roughly four feet wide by two and a third feet high (69.8 x 119.4cm) and the surface is minutely covered with brush work.
One final point: the painting of Mrs Roberts' lap appears to be unfinished; the speculation is that the Artist was requested to make space for a possible future child to be painted in. This was, in a small way, to be a dynastic picture
Now I'd like to look at a picture from 165 years later:
This is Walter Sickert's 1915 painting of a Concert Party on Brighton Beach. It was almost certainly painted "on spec"- it is doubtful if Sickert had a particular buyer in mind. It is probably not a recogniseable portrait of any of the performers. But it is a record of a particular time and place. The topography of Brighton seafront has not changed, although the stage is not there any more. It is a summer evening in 1915. The First World War is less than a year old, and the British Army and its allies are far from being in the ascendent. The Pierrot troupe are playing to a small audience, and the whole setting is just a bit run-down. You sense that these performers have either seen better days, or wish they had. It is quite possible to read the painting as an early comment on the decline of Empire: this is not the fabled Edwardian Summer, rather it is the start of the era of the common man, what Alan Bennett describes as "an NCO's world" in his play "Forty Years On".
The technique is heavily influenced by photography. There is a distinct snapshot quality to the picture; the figures are partially obscured by the structure of the stage; one, indeed, exists only as a pair of legs coming in from the left. It may be that Sickert worked from a photograph - he used them extensively later on. You can see how Impressionism has influenced the Artist - the effects of the various lights (including the natural evening light) are as much the subject as the people. But what the painting does, skilfully, is to evoke the feeling of a specific time and place, and associate that with a slightly tired, brittle glamour which we feel was somehow typical of that first disillusionment with the military and diplomatic might of Britannia.
(Article first published on 30/09/2009)
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