"The art pleases by reminding, not by deceiving."

The quote by artist John Constable (1776-1837) stuck a chord in me when I found it in E.H. Gombrich's classic study Art & Illusion: A study in the psychology of pictorial representation (org. 1960) while preparing for a seminar earlier this autumn. Why? Partly because I am trying to dig deeper into possible perceptions of art in a medieval context. Images were to a large extent used in the Christian context as a way to both remember and experience (relive) the biblical scenes. Various techniques were used to fill images with a vividness that made them evidence of that the events in biblical stories were the truth.

In the book by Gombrich the above work by Constable, Wivenhoe Park, Essex (1816), is a recurrent example throughout the study of the perceptions of art. It is a landscape painting of a park with a grand house in the background. We can see some cows belonging to the estate in the foreground and a lake with men in a boat fishing close to a pair of swans. It is a sunny summer day, but clouds are gathering and it might start to rain in a while. Even if we probably never have been to the actual place we believe it is realistically depicted since it follows established conventions of landscape painting. But Constable needed to translate his experiences into the medium of paint and he had to make some negotiations with the truth to make the painting believable. It basically looked better with some minor adjustments.

It seems like one of the greatest fears of experiencing art today is to be deceived. Occasionally voices are raised that want art to stay close to the truth and not lie to the audience or it will automatically loose its credibility. But what would happen if we thought of art more as remembrance? What Constable was trying to explain was that art makes sense when we can understand it from our own experiences. If it is reminding we can more easily connect the experience to our own lives, as something from our history or as a point of reference to personal beliefs or moral values. It will not always work, because we do not want some experiences — but so what? Art can never please us all.