Art is in the Details
Sunday, 19. November 2023 22:29 | Author:Jay Burton
How many times have we, upon watching a movie for the second or third time, discovered something that we missed the first time we watched it—usually a detail that is more than an Easter egg, rather a detail that subtly shifts a meaning or adds to a character’s development or contributes to the plot? If it’s a well-made movie, the odds are that this happens quite a lot. There is a lot to a movie—too much to absorb at one sitting. The production team, chiefly the director, has spent months constructing the world of the film and the details are a contributory part of that world, whether we notice them the first time through or not. In fact, much time in the making of the film was spent ensuring that important details were included.
This quest for detail extends to nuance in the dialogue and performance. Perhaps the most extreme example of this was Stanley Kubrick, who is reputed to have done 30 or more takes for every scene. This sort of effort is not about achieving “perfection,” but about being sure that all the pieces, even the smallest ones, work together to build the universe in which the action takes place.
This sort of dedication to detail does not belong exclusively to film directors. Stage directors have been known to spend entire rehearsals on five minutes of finished production or to spend hours on line readings and motivation. They too are creating a world that must be complete with details and nuance.
Not limited to the performing arts, the use of detail to make a complete art work can be found in other arts as well. In photography, for example, there are photographers who spend hours in front of the computer, adjusting detail, color, lighting, and shade when they could have just taken the picture, processed it quickly and moved on. These photographers are following the example of Ansel Adams who spent hours in his darkroom doing exactly the same thing because he believed, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
The same approach holds true for landscape painters who spend a great deal of time reproducing lighting effects or the bend of grass, or the portrait painters who concern themselves with more than the eyes and mouths of their subjects, but with details of clothing and background. Choreographers often spend a great deal of time fixing the details of dance moves, so there are not only the dance steps, but other movement as well as the attitude of the dancers. Composers worry not only about the main themes in a piece of music, but the tiniest leitmotifs and riffs as well.
Almost all real artists spend enormous time and effort on the details of a piece, because they know that the details make the whole work of art what it is, and that no piece of the whole is too small for consideration. Moreover, it does not matter whether the work of art is ephemeral or permanent. So, regardless of the art, the wise artist would do well to pay close attention to all the details, not just the overall story or subject matter because the details are what really makes the work of art come alive for the audience, what makes it a whole work of art.
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