Notes · Note 08 · 4 min read
What to say about a painting when you don’t know anything about art
You stand in front of the famous painting. Everyone around you looks moved. You think: it’s nice?
Most people feel they need permission to have an opinion about art. You don’t. The painters wanted you to look and react. A few habits make it easier to find words for what you see.
01Say what you see before what it means
Start plainly. “There’s a man in a pointed hat standing very still while everyone else watches.” Describing out loud slows you down enough to notice things. Noticing is most of what experts do.
02Find where your eye goes first
Every painting pulls you somewhere: a bright patch, a face, a gap in the crowd. Say where you looked first and why you think it pulled you. That’s composition. You just talked about it.
Noticing is most of what experts do.
03Ask what happened a minute before
Paintings freeze a moment. Guess at the moment before and the one after. In Turner’s Whalers, is the boat about to be swamped, or did it just escape? There’s no wrong answer and it gets you talking about mood, which is the thing you felt anyway.
04Say how it makes you feel, then say why
“It feels lonely” is a fine start. The why is where it gets interesting: the dark edges, the people facing away, the strange quiet in a crowd. Seurat’s Circus Sideshow is full of people and somehow empty. You can say so.
05Bring a question home
The best way to remember a painting is to talk about it later. Pick one question it raised for you and answer it out loud on the way home. It’s also how every painting in Color with Words works: one picture, one question, your answer.
Try it tonight
Answer one question out loud and watch Circus Sideshow color in while you talk.