In these days of a new realism and a new energy for the photographic, Paul asks the audience, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way, to consider what in painting is really real and what is mere suggestion.

In Response to
Janet

QUESTION:
In your videos, you tend to mention lost-and-found as a source of suggestion.
In Bowie’s book, On the Laws of Japanese Painting, the partial hiding of an object, is raised as a source of suggestion.
In the book on John Sargent by Charteris, a mood can be suggested.
Keyon Cox in The Classic Point of View writes: “Horizontal lines will suggest rigidity and stability, curved lines will convey the idea of motion; and the curves will differ among themselves, some being soft and voluptuous, others resilient and tonic.”
Longinus in his Essay on the Sublime, says: ”But when a passage is pregnant in suggestion, when it is hard, nay impossible, to distract the attention from it, and when it takes a strong and lasting hold on the memory, then we may be sure that we have lighted on the true Sublime.”
Cyril Pearce in Pictorial Composition mentions: “When no other object is introduced, a gradation is serviceable. Much may be thus suggested and besides the depth and air properties thus introduced, such variety of surface excites visual motion.”
And: “Breadth, so often accountable for mystery, leads to suggestiveness.”
And effect: “In producing the effect, instead of the detail, of a bunch of grass or a mass of drapery, we substitute suggestion for literalism.”
I wondered whether you could add to this topic of Suggestion with a video…
Janet
Busyness, i.e. repeated value shifts in a small area, without articulation of the actual shape of an object suggests texture...grass, leaves, etc. Suggested is in the category of implied though unstated specifically. In Trompe reality is suggested. 3D space is implied since the surface is actually flat. Atmosphere is suggested by chromatic flatness and outdoors by loss of color and contrast in the distance or general chromaticity (sunny day).. Character is suggested in a portrait. Whenever a form or line is suddenly cut off it needs to be correct in what it implies would be there if not hidden. Grandeur, grace, mystery, peace, importance can only be implied. See NC Wyeth's Paul Revere's Ride. Michelangelo's Captive suggests the human condition. Light is suggested. Direction of light, ambience of a room. One's location in relation to the seen world. 'Symbolizes' is different. P
What isn't suggested? What is actual? Canvas. Pigment. Marks. Color notes in their 2D visual relationships. A subsequent likeness to the visual impression. A color scheme. Distribution of light effects, A certain ordering of such things. Nothing more?
Degas, Leonardo, Velasquez