how to see trees
we went to an art museum here in budapest a few days ago. one of the temporary exhibits was the work of a hungarian artist, Sándor Hollán, who has lived in Paris since 1956. the exhibit was full of his drawings and paintings of trees.
there was a short film before hand, which showed him working, painting trees plein-air. he painted quite slowly. and he pushed the brush sort of backwards, bristles out, pushing away. this method created crumbly, jagged lines. he traced the contours of a group of trees, and darted from one to another, connecting lines in a seemingly arbitrary way. only at the end, was there a sense of a tree. his work was more about a way of seeing trees, rather than a finished painting of them.
the rest of his exhibit showed tree drawings and paintings in various stages, giving us a further glimpse into his process. this was his process of painting, but also of seeing.
it raised an interesting point for me. art has the ability to change how we look at the real world. it doesn’t have to be a straight representation, or an attempt to capture the light and beauty of nature. it can be more.
i remember studying the artist Christo in college. he had a similar idea. he covered parts of the world in white tarp. he covered statues, buildings, even an entire island. his idea was that we would be re-engaged with the thing that had been covered. and perhaps when the tarp was removed, we would see that thing differently.
