The Painter and His Painting: On Constraints In the Creative Act

Most easel paintings in history have been executed on right-angled surfaces whose proportional ratio approximate the golden number, universally considered harmonious. While the theoretical range goes from perfect squares to ample parallelograms, the rectangular shape is by far the most used.

When painting migrated to the easel from its original mural setting, wood was the most used general material and the most practical surface was angular. It was an evident shape when assembling planks or when building wooden frames for canvasses. As for modern boards, angularity has clear advantages for manufacture, handling and transport. We find similar reasoning in building and architecture where most shapes are determined by pragmatic thinking, and most strikingly so in regard to the window. Not surprisingly, the metaphor of the portable painting as a window , allowing for a peek into a different reality, has been constant throughout the history of painting. As for the rectangular shape, it's for obvious reasons a basic shape in our shaped world. The book has it, the computer screen, the letter-paper etc.

This flat and rectangular surface is thus the painter's playground. On this two-dimensional and clearly defined physical space he can set out to record reality, lead us into illusion; transmit impressions, pass on sentiments or simply lets his work touch us independent of intention. These possibilities have all been tried out in sequential cycles during the last centuries and the artist's means have been line, shadow, color, texture, mass, contrast and shape. The result of his efforts may or may not appeal to us, disturb us, simply pass unnoticed or, at best, fascinate us. What exactly it is that we see in a painting is often not clear to us as our whole registry of sentiments and emotions is at play.

The importance of easel painting is not so much the support's shape but rather the limited space implied. The traditional practice of framing accentuates the natural spatial limitations yet more strongly. Furthermore, practical considerations have today standardized canvas measures to fit modern-day houses and apartments. From the very beginning the easel painter has been forced to live with severe limitations, on the one hand with the missing third dimension, on the other with the imposed rectangle. The history of painting is largely the history of fighting these limitations.

There is however a much more formidable constraint for the modern painter: the unacceptability of returning to earlier exploits. This terrible impediment to the exercise of his art is imposed by society and of such far-going consequences that the doctrine actually did put at least a temporary end to painting as art form: The false idea that evolution in art must be linear made quite naturally that creative novelty in painting became exhausted. That there was no more originality to squeeze out of the flat rectangle led modern artists to abandon the canvas for other art forms.

What hasn't been understood in the process is that, in essence, Art is first and foremost forged by limitation and not by freedom.

We'll come back to this in another post.

The author, Michael de Bruges is an expert on Modern European Painting. See further European Fine Art, European Painting and Wise to Art - a blog on the online art market