In the eye of the beholder…
How you look at a painting can make all the difference in what you see there. For many of us, abstract art can be puzzling. And the work of minimalists (monochromatic works, for example, or canvases with nothing more than a single line) can have us scratching our heads and asking, “What are the limits of painting? What is the absolute minimum a painting can consist of and still be a painting: single shape, single color, single image, or no image at all?”
Our expectations have a lot to do with what we perceive. There’s a story about an art collector who meets an artist at a bar, and tells him about a show he had just seen of abstract paintings composed only of a flat colored ground bisected by a single line. “How simple can an artist be and get away with it?” he asked.
The painter asked him if the paintings were all the same color. The answer was no. And did all the lines run the same way? No, some were horizontal, some vertical. And were all the lines painted the same way? No, some had sharp edges, others rough; some wide, others thin. And were all the canvases the same size? Again no. The same proportion? No, yet again. “Well”, said the artist, “it sounds damned complicated to me.”
Take a look at the work of Barnett Newman, for instance, and decide for yourself.
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