Bouguereau Artistic Expression

Jul 15, 01:13 PM
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One of the consequences of attending a self-labeled ‘art school’ is that people tend to infer from that term that I must be gifted in the field of ‘arts and crafts’. The term ‘art school’ is a bit of a misnomer, as my professional education, of course, has more to do with digital media and computer graphics than painting in oils or gluing popsicle sticks together. The extent of my traditional art education is limited to figure drawing classes, and a few other basic classes in design and color theory. To the extent that the names of some artists or their works have become engrained in our society, I have heard of and do appreciate such influential works such as Munch’s The Scream, Van Gough’s Starry Nights, and countless other modernist paintings.

Outside of these examples and others like them, I have never developed much of an interest in traditional art until a few years ago, when I discovered William Bouguereau on the ARC website. I have since become somewhat of a fan, and have even purchased two poster-sized prints that now decorate my walls, one of which is a high quality framed glicee. What captures my interest is not only the splendidly beautiful paintings, but that I had not heard of someone who has been so monumentally well known and influential in his time. Surely, these paintings capture the natural beauty of the human figure and the celebration of life far better than the art what is typically well-known today. To explain this better, it may be worthwhile to compare this with something more familiar to me. Take any character from a video game, or a featured work on CGTalk, and you will see that the most appealing is that which is the most skillfully modeled, rendered, posed, and composed. Given the fact that being a fine artist is not much of a career path anymore, it would seem that many who have a natural talent in the realm of sculpting and painting are drawn to digital arts. Even that which could be considered cartoonish or non-realistic can be made to fit in a realistically rendered virtual world. Undoubtedly, this is because of the rapid advancements in technologies such as HDR imagery, global illumination, and subpixel displacement rendering. Of course, none of this applies to traditional painted art, but given the fact that the sensory information sent through the visual cortex will be the same regardless, there is some amount of overlap in what could be considered ones visual tastes. Monty Python demonstrated the indifference to visual appeal when they said “I may not know art, but I know what I like”. Beauty in art, it seems, must be self-evident. It would seem that the increasing popularity of artists like Bouguereau, whose works are closer to that of a well made HDR rendered scene, is evidence that there is now a wide cultural shift in aesthetic appeal.

I have recently had the chance of seeing some of the paintings of Bouguereau in person, in an exhibit at The Frick Art & Historical Center. The reproductions on the internet or on paper do not do the actual paintings justice. For one thing, most of them are very large. Many of them are over seven feet high! As is the tradition of classical academic painters, Bouguereau painted in layers, using undercoats to give a painting more depth and to allow the light to shine through and give it a distinct ‘glow’. This is a truly marvelous effect, and can only be witnessed in person. Although some of my favorites were not present at the exhibit, I was still impressed. To anyone that wants to appreciate the natural beauty of classical painting, I would highly recommend checking this out.