When is a Painting Finished?
I I would like to answer the question: When is a painting finished? Let us first put aside the facile and fatuous response, “A painting is never finished”. There are two answers from famous artists which I first wish to quote. They are from interviews by David Sylvester with artists Willem De Kooning and Robert Motherwell. The first is from De Kooning: “.And what makes you feel that a painting is finished? When do you leave a picture alone? Well, I always have a miserable time over it. But it is getting better now. But what is the criterion by which you know you can stop the painting? Oh, I really … I just stop, you know. I sometimes get rather hysterical and because of that I find sometimes a terrific picture. ….” And here is the interview with Motherwell: “At what point do you feel a painting is finished – if this is a question to which one can give a verbal answer? I think, when your feeling is completed. (It was a big issue with American painters ten years ago.) I think it’s really a question of the completeness of the feeling. …. “
Both answers are inadequate, to say the least.
II There is a prior question to “When is a painting finished?”, namely, “What is the artist considering during the activity of painting?” Whatever personal or aberrant considerations that an artist may have, one issue that all artists must consider is the sensory organisation of the painting. That is to say, the artist must consider if a certain colour or tone is where he wants it to be or whether it is too strong or too weak. It is when the sensory organisation or sensory structure meets with his satisfaction, that is the time when he regards the painting finished. In other words, the painting is finished when the artist considers the painting to be good, making the matter one of a value judgement. In other words, the artist has made an evaluation.
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