THE FRENCH NOVELIST Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) once said that he “firmly believes that details alone will henceforth determine the merit of works.” This made him a pioneer in literary “realism,” much followed by the likes of Charles Dickens, a genre that admittedly is no longer geared to the short attention spans of modern readers. For Balzac insisted on details, down to minutia describing people and objects.
Before this, sentiment and generalization characterized great literature. Balzac, while somewhat romantic, would have none of it. One irony in terms of art history is that when most people think of Balzac, they think of the bronze statue of him by Auguste Rodin, celebrated for its large, lumpy simplicity—a form in cloak, an indistinct head atop. Its simplicity is the diametrical opposite to Balzac’s theory of writing.
Realism in the arts since his time has taken a parallel path. I suppose painters heard of the literary trends, but either way, by the end of the nineteenth century, painting everyday life—with details included—became a common genre.
That changed with modernism in art, first led by Symbolism, then Cubism, and then the wraps were off. Among painters, it was a rebellion against “the academy” and it style of romantic realism, such as portraiture and history painting.
I have written earlier that it’s a stretch to say “painters are poets,” mainly because their two mediums are so different. But I'm open to the idea that painter are like prose writers, indeed writers like the realist Balzac. The devil is the details.
In modern art, “detail” has gotten a bad name. This has arisen partly from the modern conceit that art is primarily about shape and form. One thinks of the argument of Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) that a painting is good if it has “push and pull” in its shapes and colors, whatever they might be.
The modern art critics, Clement Greenberg, a booster of Abstract Expressionism, said he could tell whether a painting is good or not by simply turning toward it quickly and measuring the overall visual effect, a matter of a few seconds. Similarly, I recall the time a professor from the Pennsylvania Academy of Art judged a painting contest. He explained that he walked through the forest of paintings, and took note from a distance which stood out. Then he zeroed in only on those to make a final judgment. For art contests, admittedly, it might be best to be bold and simple, sans details.
All of this is in accord with what psychology tells us about “salience”—the way something bold, sharp, loud, or simple first grabs the attention. It’s not the only psychological theory of art, however. And this takes us back to detail.
It has often been said that modern, or contemporary art, illicits a strong immediate response, but may not hold interest over time. It has shock value, but not the ability to evoke long-term examination or contemplation. Detail in a painting, however, does keep the viewer coming back, again and again, with always something new to see.
At the turn of the twentieth century, philosophers and psychologist toyed with the idea that the human “stream of consciousness” is actually made up of countless moments running in succession. One thinks of Henri Bergson and William James. The latter tested the idea empirically as well. There is something about the human mind that goes, step-wise, moment to moment, and this creates the illusion of wholeness and continuity.
If that is close to the truth, then detail in a painting must have some power over our attention span. This is where painting, perhaps, is like prose, not in its medium, but in its flow of small, individual events, like words that make sense in a sentence. This was yet another debate in art history. Critics have dismissed so-called “literary” painting, usually because it presumed to tell a story, not present a composition.
But details can be important to a painting’s “effect,” usually attributed to composition alone. They populate a painting with things viewers can run their eyes and minds over, and can do so indefinitely. A modern painting of three bold colored stripes, for example, can awe on a museum wall, but it’s different if you see it every day hanging in your living room. It does make a statement about modern sensibility. On the other hand, it falls short of speaking to that moment-to-moment flow of the mind. Details speak to this quality, and arguable can make a painting interesting for a lifetime.
The old saying, “can’t see the forest for the trees,” is a famous slight against detail. In the positive, it means we should see the whole, forget the details. In the negative, it means being so overwhelmed by details that the whole is lost. Fair enough, in life and in painting. But without details, there is not a whole, unless it is a painting of three colored stripes.
We often associate detail with “illustration,” which has been shunted to the side of fine art as being a commercial art. Think though: how many great painters, past and present, trained in illustration before they wowed us with a painterly works. We could state the contrary notion here: “can’t see the trees for the forest.” The trees—the details—are often what keeps us rapt and wanting to keep looking. The whole may be greater than the parts, but it still needs the parts.