Name
12th Grade Reading Comprehension
Clouds mean nothing to him but an accumulation of water dust that may bring
rain.
This accounts in some way for the number of good paintings that are
incomprehensible to the majority of people. It is only those pictures that pursue
the visual aspect of objects to a sufficient completion to contain the suggestion
of these other associations, that they understand at all. Other pictures, they say,
are not finished enough. And it is so seldom that a picture can have this petty
realization and at the same time be an expression of those larger emotional
qualities that constitute good painting. The early paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood appear to be a striking exception to this. But in their work the
excessive realization of all details was part of the expression and gave emphasis
to the poetic idea at the basis of their pictures, and was therefore part of the
artistic intention. In these paintings, the fiery intensity with which every little detail
was painted made their picture a ready medium for the expression of poetic
thought, a sort of "painted poetry," every detail being selected on account of
some symbolic meaning it had, bearing on the poetic idea that was the object
of the picture. But to those painters who do not attempt "painted poetry," but
seek in painting a poetry of its own, a visual poetry, this excessive finish (as it is
called) is irksome, as it mars the expression of those qualities in vision they wish to
express. Finish in art has no connection with the amount of detail in a picture,
but has reference only to the completeness with which the emotional idea the
painter set out to express has been realized.
1. How does the author explain the role that vision has in accounting “for our
knowledge of the solidity and shape of the objective world?”
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