The American art critic Clement Greenberg believed the role of a critic was to define a “cause” in art and rally the troops behind it. And his cause was the flatness of the canvas. He argued that painting was nothing more than a 2 dimensional surface spread with paint. The beauty of a work could only be judged by the formal properties of the paint on the surface without any reference to an “extraneous reality of a transcendent metaphysic”.

Try telling that to the indigenous cave painters from thousands of years ago. Surely they were telling a story, and if they had a story to tell back then, we must have a story to tell now. But what of that story?

P C Skovgaard, *Oak Trees Near Nordskoven*, 1843

I was once scathing of Claude Monet for painting his haystacks and water lilies at the same time that the First World War was tearing Europe apart. There was no sense of the upheaval of those times in his art. I found it deeply troubling that Monet was producing cheerful landscapes, focusing on light and shadow at such a time. But not now.

The attainment of prettiness in art is often regarded as a low ambition, but perhaps it can lead us to consider one of the functions of art - that is, to provide hope for a better future. It shouldn’t surprise us at all to find images of Monet’s work in the most dismal of apartments. Yet we mustn’t regard the image as an attempt to numb the occupant from the horrors and injustices of the world. The role of the painting may be to relieve us from the excessive gloom that can overwhelm us.

If cheerfulness is an achievement and hope is something to celebrate, then art can have an important role to play here. It may seem absurd to delve into the world of AI here, but recently someone posted a reel on social media of an outdoor concert featuring Donald Trump on keyboard, Vladimir Putin on guitar and the Ayatollah on drums. Yes, it’s silly but it had me wishing the world’s tyrants would just lay down their arms and play music.

Geoff Harrison *The Intruders*, oil on canvas, 41 cm x 51 cm

If the world was a kinder place, perhaps we would be less impressed by (and in need of) serene images of a landscape. The more difficult our lives, the more such images may even move us to tears because they represent a reality so divorced from our own.

I have produced a great many paintings of Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens, not because I find them easy to produce. In fact, they can be challenging, but I enjoy the challenge of presenting an environment so divorced from the one I am more familiar with. These are not meant to be idealized images, and some viewers may even detect an air of foreboding in some of them, such as the tall plants menacingly appearing on the right hand side of the painting above. I can remember times when I was deeply troubled by the circumstances of my life when visiting these gardens. The gardens represent sanctuary and consolation and I simply enjoy painting images of them, so why stop?

Art can perform a variety of functions, and providing images of beauty and hope is certainly one of them.

References;

Art As therapy, Alain de Botton & John Armstrong, Phaidon Press

Jackson Pollock An American Saga, Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith, Pimlico Press

A Case For Beauty In Art