# The Pictorial Language Painting I · Colour, Perception and Materials · https://tryals.app/learn/painting-i/the-pictorial-language ## What a Painting Can Be About The pictorial language offers four answers to what painting is for. They are not chronological steps. ### Representation is a convention In *Art and Illusion* (**1960**), Gombrich argued painters begin with a **schema**. This is an inherited way of drawing an object, corrected against reality. "Making comes before matching." Representation is a learned code, which means it can be refused. ### Abstraction and its origins The usual account credits Kandinsky with the first abstract painting around **1910**. Key milestones include: * **1906**: **Hilma af Klint** starts painting non-objective works in secret. * **1911**: Kandinsky publishes *Über das Geistige in der Kunst*. * **December 1915**: Malevich exhibits *Black Square*. * **1917**: De Stijl is founded. Abstraction sacrifices denotation. In return, it gains focus on surface, scale, and colour. Clement Greenberg (**1960**) argued painting's unique domain is **flatness**. ### Conceptual and contextual practice Sol LeWitt's "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" appeared in **June 1967**. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. His wall drawings are instructions executed by others. Contextual painting instead draws meaning from location. **Daniel Buren** has used alternating stripes of **8.7 cm** since 1965. The uniform stripes ensure meaning comes entirely from their placement. | Practice | Gives up | Buys | |---|---|---| | Representation | The claim that the code is natural | A shared language a viewer already reads | | Abstraction | Denotation of particular things | Surface, scale and colour as the subject | | Conceptual | The maker's hand as the site of value | Ideas that can be executed by anyone, anywhere | | Contextual | The autonomy of the object | The site, the institution and the frame as material | > **Common pitfall:** treating these modes as a ladder of progress. They are simultaneous choices. That means the painter must decide which trade-offs suit the work. ## Practice questions 9 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. Arrange these moments in the pictorial language in the order they happened. **Answer:** 1. Alberti defines the picture as a window opened onto the subject, 1435 2. Hilma af Klint makes the first of the series she would order sealed, 1906 3. Kandinsky publishes Uber das Geistige in der Kunst, 1911 4. Malevich shows Black Square at the 0,10 exhibition, 1915 5. Greenberg argues in Modernist Painting that flatness is painting's own, 1960 6. LeWitt publishes Paragraphs on Conceptual Art in Artforum, 1967 **Why:** The two texts at the end are worth setting against each other. Greenberg wants painting to occupy the one thing only painting can do, and LeWitt wants the idea to be the work and the execution to be delegated. Both are answers to the same question about what is essential, and they point in opposite directions. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/the-pictorial-language/arrange-these-moments-in-the-pictorial-language-in-the-order-they ### 2. A painter shows a canvas of flat red bands and a viewer asks what it is a picture of. Why does Greenberg's argument treat that question as misdirected rather than merely unanswerable? A. It assumes no subject exists, whereas pure colour relations supply an alternative narrative code B. It confuses visual autonomy in abstract art with decorative patterns shaped by practical criteria C. It asks painting to share other arts' tasks, when modernism holds each must do solely what it can D. It presumes meaning relies on private intentions, which Greenberg saw as inaccessible to viewers **Answer:** C. It asks painting to share other arts' tasks, when modernism holds each must do solely what it can **Why:** For Greenberg each art secures itself by concentrating on what is unique to it, and what is unique to painting is the flat bounded surface. Depiction is shared with photography and the stage, so a demand for a subject asks painting to compete where it is weakest. It is a claim about the medium, not a denial that pictures mean anything. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/the-pictorial-language/a-painter-shows-a-canvas-of-flat-red-bands-and-a-viewer-asks-what-it ### 3. Which of these are accurate about the disputed beginnings of abstraction? A. The date usually given for Kandinsky's first abstract watercolour is contested and may be later B. Because that work was withheld, priority and influence come apart completely in this case C. Malevich and Kandinsky first showed abstract work together at the same exhibition D. Its maker left instructions that the sealed work not be shown for twenty years after her death **Answer:** A. The date usually given for Kandinsky's first abstract watercolour is contested and may be later; B. Because that work was withheld, priority and influence come apart completely in this case; D. Its maker left instructions that the sealed work not be shown for twenty years after her death **Why:** The fourth is a fabrication of convenience. The third is the useful one: work nobody could see cannot have influenced anyone, so being first and being consequential come apart entirely here, which is why priority disputes in this period are arguments about two different things at once. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/the-pictorial-language/which-of-these-are-accurate-about-the-disputed-beginnings-of ### 4. Sort each described work by the kind of practice it belongs to. **Answer:** - Representation: Schema portrait, Aerial distance - Abstraction: Abstract bands - Conceptual practice: Wall directions, Paper proxy doc - Contextual practice: Site-tied lines **Why:** The pairs are chosen to show that the categories are about where the work lives rather than about how it looks. Two of these can be posted as a page of text, and the object that results is one performance of the work rather than the work itself, which is a change in what ownership even means. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/the-pictorial-language/sort-each-described-work-by-the-kind-of-practice-it-belongs-to ### 5. Complete the account of the pictorial language. **Answer:** Gombrich argued that a painter begins from an inherited **schema** and corrects it against the motif. LeWitt published Paragraphs on Conceptual Art in Artforum in **1967**. Greenberg held that the quality proper to painting alone is its **flatness**. Buren has worked since 1965 with vertical stripes of a single fixed width of **8.7** centimetres. **Why:** The last blank is the one that looks arbitrary and is not. A fixed neutral width is chosen so the stripes have no content of their own, which forces every reading of the work onto its placement. A pattern that was interesting in itself would defeat the entire argument. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/the-pictorial-language/complete-the-account-of-the-pictorial-language ### 6. Hilma af Klint was painting non-objective work before the date usually given for Kandinsky's first abstract watercolour. By how many years does she precede it? **Answer:** 4 (within ±1.5) **Why:** **Four years**, on the conventional dates, and the gap matters less than the sealing. Her instruction that the work not be shown for twenty years after her death meant it played no part in the argument at all, so priority here is a fact about chronology and not about influence. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/the-pictorial-language/hilma-af-klint-was-painting-non-objective-work-before-the-date ### 7. Gombrich asserts that representation relies on learned conventions rather than direct imitation of nature. If representation is a cultural code rather than a natural copy, what follows for a painter who rejects it? A. They produce purely conceptual work since manual execution is no longer necessary B. They fail to communicate because paintings cannot function outside conventional codes C. They abandon a shared visual vocabulary to explore medium-specific concerns D. They uncover universal forms that exist prior to any cultural schema or training **Answer:** C. They abandon a shared visual vocabulary to explore medium-specific concerns **Why:** Abandoning denotation trades a ready-made public language for an inquiry into colour and surface. It does not dissolve meaning entirely, nor does it strip away culture to reveal innate archetypes or automatically turn the work into an instructional concept. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/the-pictorial-language/gombrich-asserts-that-representation-relies-on-learned-conventions ### 8. An assistant can produce a genuine Sol LeWitt wall drawing without the artist ever touching the surface, provided they follow his specified guidelines. **Answer:** True **Why:** **True**, and it changes what owning a painting means. The buyer receives a diagram and a certificate; the wall can be painted over and the work remade elsewhere without loss. Execution is a performance of the piece rather than the piece, which is what "the idea becomes a machine that makes the art" is asserting. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/the-pictorial-language/an-assistant-can-produce-a-genuine-sol-lewitt-wall-drawing-without ### 9. Arrange the steps of Gombrich's account of how a painter arrives at a likeness. **Answer:** 1. Begin from an inherited schema, the way this kind of thing has been drawn before 2. Set the schema beside the motif and look at both 3. Notice where the two disagree 4. Correct the schema at that point 5. Repeat until the remaining disagreement stops mattering **Why:** The last step is why the account is not a recipe for photographic accuracy. The painter stops when the disagreement no longer matters for the purpose in hand, and what counts as mattering is set by the period, the genre and the patron, which is how whole centuries of painting can be internally consistent and mutually unlike. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/the-pictorial-language/arrange-the-steps-of-gombrichs-account-of-how-a-painter-arrives-at-a