Emotional Connotations of Visual Art Through Time

"When we look at a painting or drawing, whether abstract or representational, we are apt to comment that it is sad, joyous, tragic, conflicted, agitated, or calm... These are emotional properties that we feel we see directly, yet we know they are only metaphorically possessed by the physical picture." - Ellen Winner, How Art Works

For many artists, color, line, texture, and composition become the most important ways in which to express emotion. Every artist approaches their work from different perspectives.

Color and Form

Mark Rothko produced many images of solid colors. Most of which were darkly saturated colors, like his Black on Maroon painting from 1958. These mediums for this painting included oil paint, acrylic paint, glue tempera, and pigment on canvas. One of the questions that come to mind:

"Can abstract art arrangements of forms, lines, colors, and textures express emotion?"

According to Ellen Winner, in her book How Art Works, the answer is yes and she shares three ways in which this is true:

"one way that paintings convey emotion is literally"

"a second way that pictures convey emotions is metaphorically, by depicting things that we associate with emotions, such as barren versus lush landscapes", and

"Expression in pictures can also be wholly independent of representational content, based on purely formal properties - color, line, texture, composition."

There is something soothing about the large swatches of deeply saturated pigment on monumental canvas panels. Rothko does not work to create realistic representations of anything in particular. He strives for freedom and a release:

"I think of my pictures as dramas; the shapes in pictures are the performers. They have been created from the need for a group of actors who are able to move dramatically without embarrassment and execute gestures without shame." Rothko adds: "Neither the action nor the actors can be anticipated, or described in advance." - Mark Rothko, The Romantics Were Prompted.

Perceiving Emotions in Paintings

The artwork of Henri Matisse, Vasily Kandinsky, and Mark Rothko along with Krishna Manandhar and Kim Tschang-yeul are the primary focus of emotions found in paintings. Each one of them worked from a place from within; creating works of art that required the viewer to add meaning to the piece. As the viewer examines these images they can ask themselves: Does this painting make you feel happy, sad, calm, or excited? The answer to viewing Henri Matisse’s, La Gerbe, could be that it makes them feel happy. Vasily Kandinsky’s, Orange, may express excitement.

Vasily Kandinsky is a unique artist in that his seemingly random marks were quite expressive. The colors he used were often bright. The stroke of the line was intentionally created. The painting was a spiritual activity for Kandinsky. In his book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky writes:

“Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposely, to cause vibrations in the soul.”

He believed that art should not be merely representational but should strive to express spirituality and the depth of human emotion through abstraction. Kandinsky once explained that the content of or meaning of the painting is only realized when “... what the spectator lives or feels while under the effect of the form and color combinations of the picture.”

After sitting in meditation, visitors have reported that Mark Rothko’s large canvases located in The Rothko Chapel have moved them to tears, experiencing strong emotions. Mark Rothko shared:

“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom… the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”

Mark Rothko’s Chapel is a great example of a spiritual space where individuals or groups could meditate - some experiencing strong emotion. Rothko was preoccupied with raw human reaction, or what he called “basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on,” and found this to be the only ‘right’ way to react to his paintings. He felt that these reactions connected the viewer to the artist in a spiritual way.

Drawn to Pain

Being drawn to pain is based on the concept of the enjoyment of negative emotion. We see examples of negative emotion in art quite often. The Gray Tree, by Piet Mondrian, is a great example of dark colors that could make us feel sad or lonely. In The Poetics, Aristotle explained this phenomenon:

“...we enjoy contemplating the most precise images of things whose actual sight is painful… the explanation of this… is that understanding gives great pleasure.”

One of the greatest authors of fantasy and fiction, J.R.R. Tolkien stated:

“Joy can tell us much about sorrow, and light about dark but not the other way about. A little joy can often tell more about grief and tragedy than a whole book of unrelieved gloom.”

The most darkness someone feels is at the loss of another person. Dok Peep’s Where Does One Go after Death? explores the deep emotion of grief.

“Art is inextricably linked to emotion” and “the pleasure we feel from watching grief-filled scenes is really the pleasure from feeling moved; the pleasure we feel from joyful narratives is simply the pleasure of happiness.” - Ellen Winner, How Art Works

Why are we drawn to pain? In the eighteenth century, philosopher David Hume suspected that we enjoy sadness in art because it moves us, and we like feeling moved. Of spectators at a tragedy, he writes

“The more they are touched and affected the more are they delighted with the spectacle… The heart likes naturally to be moved and affected.”

We often describe works of art through expressions of emotion like happiness or sadness. However, art does not express emotion. Rather, art reflects our emotional lives. The visual arts require us to tap into our own innate tendencies to perceive meaning in the forms expressed on the canvas. Art evokes emotion, some experience overwhelming emotion while others are simply moved. Painful emotion is one of the most powerful emotions we can experience as human beings and we often wish to escape it when it arrives. However, when we are presented with sorrow or grief in art we are able to bear it and even enjoy it.

References:

Fisher, Jason. Mythlore, vol. 27, no. 1/2 (103/104), 2008, pp. 179–184. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26814574. Accessed 23 Feb. 2020.

Halliwell, S. (Ed. and Trans.) (1995). Aristotle’s Poetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hume, D. (1767). Essays and treatises on several subjects. In two volumes. London: Printed for A. Millar, in the Strand; and A. Kincaid, and A. Donaldson, at Edinburgh.

Rodman, S. & Eliot, A. (1961). Conversations with artists. New York: Capricorn.

The Romantics Were Prompted - Mark Rothko. Originally published in Possibilities, I. New York. 1947

Winner, Ellen. How Art Works. Oxford University Press. 2019