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The WOW factor
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Message
Posted
What is it that makes one think 'wow' when first viewing a painting? Obviously there will be potentially as many answers as there are viewers of paintings but as some paintings are more 'wow' than others (monitor the likes and comments on the gallery for instance) what is the most common factor is getting such a reaction.
I can remember my first 'wow' when, as an A level art student I first saw Turner's 'Fighting Temeraire'. Brought up among boats I was a fan of marine paintings from childhood but this was different. The subject, a relic of Trafalgar, didn't interest me too much as my interest has always been fishing boats and working craft but this was more than a picture of one of the old wooden wall ships. The painter was telling a story, the end of an era, a revolution in technology, the passing of an age that had held great fear for many. I had to research the painting as part of my studies and learned that Turner never saw the scene he depicted. He saw the Temeraire being towed up the Thames and made a number of sketches but what he saw was a derelict hulk being towed westward toward the setting sun not away from it. Turner refurnished the hulk with masts and spars, gave it a ghostly ambiance and turned the whole scene around to make the emblematic setting sun a fitting setting. Many other minor changes were made to make the scene Turner wanted but the end result, for me, was 'WOW'. I still feel the same every time I visit the National and stand in front of it. But why? There are a myriad of other great paintings, including many Turners, that don't generate the same response.
If I had to give one reason for my response I would say it is because the painting doesn't depict reality but illustrates a range of emotions and that is what I look for in a painting. It's what I try to capture in my unTurneresque efforts. He has a lot to answer for that JMWT chap.
Edited
by Stub
Posted
We have a monstrously large painting ( about eight feet by six ) of "The Death of Seneca" in our local art gallery. Every time Iook at it I think "Why would someone bother?" In comparison I get a "Wow" factor every time I look at a Thomas Moran's sunsets or his views of wild west America.
Jim Morris.
Edited
by Wanderer69
Posted
For me it's usually a work that instantly creates an emotion within me, I suppose that's obvious, but I never know why, it just happens, often followed by a pang of envy because I haven't painted it. It doesn't have to be a highly finished piece, in fact it rarely is, Turner's sketches come to mind I suppose, the simplicity and those fabulous trade-mark colours, oh if only....
There are some great pieces on our own gallery that also do it for me, not too often but it does happen.
Posted
The huge Stanhope Forbes painting of Newlyn harbour with the mud, the fish, the fishermen and women and the boats does it for me. The colours are so subtle - more than 50 shades of grey - and it is all so wet, wet, wet. The original is owned by Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, but I believe, is currently on loan to Penzance.
But these things are not the usual things that wow me - I usually go for contrast and intensity of colour!
Posted
Peter I think you've hit the nail on the head regards emotions a great piece of work in any art form stirs up emotions and we feel the same every time we hear , see or read what to us is great art ; I remember first time I looked upon this beautiful painting by Alfred Sisley the amount of different emotions it stirred up and to this day it still does ... 
Posted
+1 for Sisley, a lot of spectacular work that just grabs me by the unmentionables.
Any art form works the same way; no matter what you produce it will reach out and speak to someone you don't know, somewhere around the world, in ways you'd never expect; and there can quite often be nothing in common with two finished items that speak to the same person. I try to draw figures and I can look at Sisley, Cezanne or Dali at any time. Likewise, in music, I play Classical Guitar and it's been a good year for me playing at people's wedding ceremonies (so I'm reaching other people, yippee!) but I happily listen to rock and blues - and Gregorio Allegri's "Miserere" gets me time after time.
Edited
by alang23
Posted
Apart from painting (traditional watercolours, abstracts, cartoons and even rustic sculptures) I love gardening and spent a lot of time recently doing up old furniture. There is so much to live for and so little time left given my age. I also write poetry (most of it more serious in the Thomas Hardy vein) but the following is probably apt:
AINT DEAD YET
Is this the day of my demise?
Is this the day I needn’t rise?
The tendency to roost in bed
belies the fact I aint yet dead.
Induced to rise by bladders call
tells me it’s not the end at all.
The summons of the judgement day
will not be served on me today.
The reaper with his scythe and hood
has shuffled off and so he should.
Still closed above is heaven’s gate
the big long box can sit and wait.
Posted
Cheers Syd - how about this from a longer (more serious) poem of mine about a Shepherd but it could also apply to some of us artists I guess;
A waning lantern lights the room,
his leathern face, his frosty hair,
with age supplanting active years
his sharp complexity of thought,
abraded now as inanition
takes its hold with empty dreams
in this his last domain.
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