In order to fully appreciate art, does one have to have first-hand experience creating art oneself? How does experiencing art help artists with their own work? 

Artist Lincoln Perry is the author of the book, Seeing Like an Artist: What Artists Perceive in the Art of Others which aims to take the overwhelming and intimidating nature out of viewing and appreciating art. 

Lincoln and Greg discuss why experiencing art in person is paramount, the dangers of focusing too much on an artist’s biography, and the difference between a viewer of art and a participant. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

What differentiates a participant from a viewer when encountering art?

22:02: Viewing is a distancing implication. I enjoy implicating or trying to implicate the viewer. There are many numbers of ways you can do that. You can pull them in, say you have a tiny etching. Say you're Goya, and you have a tiny etching of the disasters of war, and you're holding it in your hand, and you're all of a sudden pulled into these horrors that are going on again. It's in the present. It's in your present, and you are participating, implicated. You have to wonder, Would I have been capable of this behavior? A viewer, somehow or other, does potentially walk through a space and not have an emotional reaction, but somehow or other, a participant will be answerable and also find enjoyment.

Painting beyond accessibility

16:37: I don't paint the way I paint to make it more accessible. I paint the way I paint because I can't do anything else.

Paintings are more like music

03:14: Paintings are more like music. They should wash over you, and if they pull you in and seduce you, you're motivated to read them at that point to figure out their content, their narrative, who's who, the iconography. But if you start with that, it's usually fairly intimidating and somehow off-putting to think that it's a quiz.

Looking beneath art

48:05: So what I'm advocating for in this book is looking beneath the surface of even touch. I don't talk about factors, but try to stress how you read art, how a sculpture carries your eye around, and how a painting guides your eye through depth and then back out again.

Show Links:Recommended Resources:

• Delacroix at the Louvre
• Julian Barnes on the “Raft of the Medusa”
• The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space by John White
• Barnes Foundation
• Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? by James Elkins 
• Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings by James Elkins

Guest Profile:

• Professional Profile on The American Scholar
• Lincoln Perry's Website

His Work:

• Seeing Like an Artist: What Artists Perceive in the Art of Others
• More scholarly articles

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