Graphic Art

Graphic Art

by Mark Fairchild

© Mark Fairchild, 2025

At one level of aesthetic consideration, there are several aspects to consider here:

Subject

1. Theme
   Treatment:
   -> Style
   -> Framing
   -> Composition
   -> Pallet
   -> Stylistic treatment (such a "school of art": realism, pointillism, cubism, surrealism, conceptual art, etc.)
   
   

These are all considerations reflected first in the physical world by the artist, then in the metaphysical world by both the artist and the viewer. Both artist and viewer, in fact, create the same composition differently.

The first consideration is performed by the artist in the process of the initial creation, first of in the concept of the artwork, then in its physical creation -- and often the concept comes, some might say always comes, during the process of physical creation.

What to consider:

• What is depicted?

• What is the world in which this exists? (Fantasy, reality, another's twisted worldview, or their appealing world view, etc.

• Why is it depicted in this manner?

• How does it make me feel?

• To what in me is it trying to appeal?
  
  There are many ways an artwork can appeal to you, and often that is the point of the artwork. The artist can attempt to nudge you one way or another (pepulsion, attraction, wild abandonment, etc.), but in the end it is you, the viewer, who decides on how to react. Some might be repulsed by classic beauty while others might be fascinated by repulsive treatments.

Sometimes the artist might try to mix those reactions by creating a repulsive subject, but using vivid, enchanting colors, forcing one to explore their reaction to the artwork and question their assumptions.

There are many such techniques and approaches, but in the end all are meant to encourage you to explore your own metaphysical reality, as well as that reality's strengths and weaknesses. This might not be a mental exercise but rather and emotional one.

In any case . . . in every case . . . it is a metaphysical activity; and this matters; because living is largely a metaphysical activity. These metaphysical muscles need to be strengthened in all of us.

We are co-creators of the universe;”co-” with each other, and with the creator of the physical world in which we all exist. We create the universe – reality – each in our own mind, and share it with each other.

Which is to say, we are all artists at a very basic level. What we see is not just naked photons that mere seconds ago were inside the Sun, or electrons in a lamp; they are what we make of them and what they reveal to our minds! Artists simply invite us into the visual and conceptual realities in their minds.

So when you look at a work of art, graphic or otherwise (painting, sculpture, poem, fantasy, musical composition, play, etc.), consider that you are looking at what might, in some respects, actually exist; realities that we often ignore until they are placed before us.

You must judge them, as you must judge life, in some respects; not to praise or condemn them, but to encounter other ways of seeing, other realities, and allow them to alter your own to one degree or another, in one way or another. We are not here to judge others, but to encourage them, to nudge them in what we see as the “right direction.”

To judge someone's integrity can only invoke the logical fallacy of “appeal to ignorance”, given that we cannot fully know the person's inner reality. Art, on the other hand, allows us to encounter their reality in part at least, (usually) the beauty that is in it, or can come of it.

Theatre, as is the case with most other performing arts, usually depicts a process that traverses an arc from ugliness to the beauty, from bad to good, from confusion to clarity, from fright to relief, etc.

Graphic art depicts not a process but a static state, which can exist in any section of an arc. The viewer provides the arc, if there is one to imagine, and determines where this composition fits in it.

Most things that are ugly can be made beautiful, but not without being ugly first; so that has its place too. Usually, though, we prefer, in a static view, to see the beautiful section of the arc. Nonetheless, we must, however occasionally and reluctantly, encounter the ugly aspect if we are ever to begin the arc . . . in our minds or in the outer world.