Emotion in Art

Artists all have different aims. One painter wants to make beautiful, realistic images of fruit in bowls while another paints real yet repellent views of grimy city life. Another artist tries to show feelings in visual metaphor while another is utterly direct and hyper-real. Some artists want their makings to cause the viewer to experience a certain feeling, others to reproduce a feeling of their own. The aims behind art are legion, and they change from time to time for practically any artist. Nonetheless, communicating an emotion or feeling is probably foremost for many.

Edward Hopper, "Night Shadows," etching, 1921

Although he often discounted the contribution of emotion to his work, Edward Hopper seemed to show us the isolation and loneliness in the heart of urban life. Many know his paintings but his earlier etchings are as emotionally evocative. In "Night Shadows," from 1921, he gives the viewer a disquieting angle on a lonely figure, buildings looming overhead. It is the lighting and composition of this image that give us the willies. The strong diagonal shadow makes us uneasy and on guard. The same kind of lone and vulnerable figure would emerge in the alienated film noir heroes of a couple of decades later.

Robert Genn, "First Light on Moose Lake," acrylic, ca 1995

Color is another way emotion is evoked in visual arts, more commonly in film and animation. Certain colors are said to evoke or imitate emotions--red for rage, yellow for envy, green or blue for calm, for example. And if we look at visual art these color rules do seem to hold. Landscapes that contain rolling green country and a blue lake can provide a sense of relaxation and inner peace. In "First Light on Moose Lake," Robert Genn shows us a party setting out at sunrise onto a glassy lake, probably in a wilderness. The serenity of the scene is enhanced by the deep greens and blues playing against the yellows of the coming day.

Hoff, "Risk Factors," oil 2014

Symbols have always been used in art as a way into the viewers' emotions. In the days of the Dutch masters, still life paintings quite commonly contained abundant symbols. As an example, vanitas was a kind of still life intended to remind the viewer of the verse in Ecclesiates, "vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas," or in English "vanity of vanities, all is vanity," and no matter what we all return to dust. These vanitas paintings provoked a kind of dread among some at least, and contained symbols of death and evanescence--bubbles, smoke, skulls, and so on. In "Risk Factors," a contemporary vanitas, the skull takes center stage as a symbol of mortality, surrounded by things that can increase one's chances premature death--cigarettes, fats, salt, etc.

Frida Kahlo, "The Broken Column," oil, 1944

Personal experience can provide an emotional core to a visual work that can't be obtained otherwise. An artist can incorporate nearly any emotional experience, though we remember the negative ones more clearly, I suspect. In her symbolist work, "The Broken Column," Frida Kahlo, the great Mexican painter, shows us her own experience of serious physical injury and infirmity. She suffered a dreadful impaling injury when still a young woman that left her with a lifetime of pain, surgery and incapacitation through which she persevered and made her art. In this painting her spinal column is shattered and poorly reconstructed, her body strapped together as indeed it was quite often held together with plaster casts. Her pain and the bleakness of it are clear in the expression on her face. The landscape is broken and split and also evokes the enormous trauma that was her life.

Ilya Repin, "Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, 1551," oil, 1885

Telling a story has been a sure-fire way to introduce emotion. Story, or narrative, is still one of the foremost reasons to take a photo or draw or paint an image. Narrative in art can be implied or explicit. In religious art, as an example, the narrative may be a shared one, well known to the adherents of a particular faith, and provide the viewer with reinforcement of beliefs or perhaps reassurance in times of strife. In his masterwork, "Ivan the Terrible and His Son" Ilya Repin depicts the moment after the Tsar has delivered a killing blow to the head of his son and heir to the throne. The Tsar shown realizing that he has ended his son's life, the life of his dynasty, and maybe even the life of his nation. It is controversial history even today in Russia. The figure of the dying Tsarevich is surrounded by dark reds, the colors of drying blood, and black, the color of oblivion, adding to the horror. Repin knew how to use color, composition, and shared narrative to strike several emotional blows. All Russians know this painting.

When looking at art, then, it is helpful to me to consider more than the image. The composition, choices of color, lighting, symbols, and detection of narrative are all important ways to understand the painting, and the painter's intentions.