An Epiphany about Art
“ Art is a lie that reveals the truth” said Pablo Picasso, the great Spanish painter, poet, philosopher and sculptor. This quote is quite profound and intriguing . I came across this quote in the very beginning of the chapter-“Artful Brain” in the Brief Tour of Human Consciousness by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, and I was taken aback. How could art be a lie in the first place? And, how could a lie reveal a truth?
Art is a creative work and artists are people who create and innovate, for example a sculptor or a painter. They look at nature and the nature of things to create paintings or sculptures. In the process, they actually travel far away from the truth, the true self of the inspiration or reference, in order to produce a work that accurately and eloquently represents the reality. Sometimes, extraordinary artists produce art works that are more beautiful than reality itself! This is because highly skilled and extraordinary artists are great liars, striving to tell the truth.
It is also interesting to note that our brains respond quicker and more effective to the lies and exaggerations of the truth, to process the truth than processing the actual truth in its pristine state. Now, let’s have a look at some examples.
Let’s take an example of a painting and consider a beautiful natural landscape with trees, a stream, huts and a sky. We look at the painting, and we see a few elements that would surprise us. We look at the clump of trees and see patches of black and brown, or yellow, or white or even grey at times. Why does the artist add these colors, when the actual leaves are just green? Similarly, for the stream, the artist would add green, white, and black along with different shades of blue, when the real stream is just one uniform blue.
The artist adds and mixes so many different colors to give details, shadows and life to the elements that the real scene has. He does it to make the viewers see and recognize the streams or the leaves of the tree. Artists see things in the environment that the people generally don’t. Because artists are so sensitive and observant towards their environment, they capture the subtle reality with their eyes and paint it. This facilitates the art lovers to be able to observe the painting, observe the minute details, and know the reality.
Let’s consider an artwork by Picasso (Image A). The Old Guitarist is one of my favorite works of Picasso. He used interesting color schemes and detailing that makes the picture simply awe inspiring. He used a minimalistic two dimensional blue background for the guitar to guitarist dissociate from time and place. He used the color blue to arouse a feeling of melancholy, gloom and sorrow. He painted the complexion of the guitarist grey signifying weakness, coldness and misery of the guitarist’s life. Also the guitarist looks emaciated and we can see his spindly frame and veins protruding through the tattered clothes that he is wearing. The visage of the guitarist displays immense suffering as well. The guitarist is poor and probably is having a life of despair and pain. Picasso used color as a means to highlight the emotions and feelings towards the picture. He also painted the body of the guitarist effectively by highlighting his bony hands, feet and troubled face of the guitarist. We might not recognize this concept as quickly and effectively as by looking at a poor guitarist living a miserable life. If Picasso had painted The Old Guitarist, by giving the guitarist “skin” color instead of a gloomy dark grey and by creating a background showing a place and time instead of shades of blue, we might not understand the seriousness of the painting. We love and understand the Old Guitarist because of its metaphorical nature. Picasso created an illusion through colors and dimensions to make us immediately experience the true state of the guitarist. And our brains are programmed to pick up colors quicker and understand the feeling behind those colors.
Caricatures are a great example of lying by artists to reveal the truth. As discussed by Ramachandran, caricature artists create artwork with exaggerated features, which make it quite humorous. We can immediately recognize a person or a thing with these unique features because these unique features are made highly noticeable. For example, a celebrity with a nose bigger than average could be used by an artist as a caricature model. The artist would make the nose so big that it starts looking bizarre and funny. The artwork is no way closer to the real person. It is a lie. But looking at the caricature we know the truth about the celebrity having a huge nose! In the words of Ramachandran, “Art is not about realism at all — it is the exact opposite. It involves deliberate hyperbole, exaggeration, even distortion , in order to create pleasing effects on the brain”.
The age old sculptures of Parvati and Ganesha seemed quite bizarre to the British. Let’s take a look at Image B. The huge elephant head and pot belly of Ganesha are quite awkward and out of place. But Hinduism has a meaning for them. The elephant head of Ganesha represents his nobility. The pot belly of Ganesha is a sign of his wisdom. He is considered to be a remover of obstacles and, a source of immense knowledge and wisdom. The sculptors make the belly and head of Ganesha unusually big. This is a lie. But the Ganesha worshipers would recognize him immediately by his head and belly, and start worshiping him. So we can see the magic of lie on our brains in showing the reality again in this example.
Let’s consider the famous work by Rene Magritte, a Belgian surrealist (Image C). The painting is basically of a brown wooden pipe in front of beige background and underneath the pipe are the quirky words that say “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe). At first glance, it seems quite absurd and foolish of the artist to do this artwork. People would be confused glancing at this painting. It is a pipe for sure, but why does the artist say it is not? So the artist is lying to show us the truth. Of course, it is a pipe, but it is not an actual pipe, it is a painting of the pipe. It was quite ingenious of the artist to do so. Magritte also says, he would be lying if he had said, it is a pipe. He forces us to see our personal view towards the painting that reveals the viewers misinterpreting the meaning of the painting. Magritte’s painting of the pipe is unlike any other painting . It is creative, original and extraordinary. As I explained earlier that artworks lie to reveal the truth, in the painting of the pipe, Magritte actually served us the truth directly to make us understand that art is a lie that reveals the truth. This painting marks the turning point of our way of analyzing paintings. All paintings other than Magritte do not explicitly state the truth. For example, the Mona Lisa painting doesn’t say “ this is not a woman”!
Therefore, the world of art is full of surprises. And Artists are philosophers and discoverers. They explore the world and create magnificent artwork that help people see what they don’t see otherwise. Art is always on the quest to lie to us but help us understand the truth. I am quite thankful to Ramachandran and Picasso for helping me understand a stunning discovery about art.
