Not many people see the paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and say, “that looks easy.” No one looks at fine byzantine filigree jewellery and thinks, “I could’ve done that.” It’s unlikely someone would look at the Duomo in Milan and think it mustn’t have taken very long to build.
When we witness any artefact made by a human: a painting, a sculpture, jewellery, or architecture to name a few, we seem to be able to intuit effort; to recognise something that took a long time to do or that looked difficult to do; and this recognition is not always a conscious one.
Complexity, intricacy, grandeur, scale all have baked within it a sense of effort of time or expertise.
Simplicity, however, has within it a paradox because it doesn’t have the ‘usual’ cues of effort but instead, often works even more subconciously on the observer and is underpinned by deep understanding of the materials and purpose of the craft. We use words like skill, mastery, technique and craftsmanship in response to something that doesn’t seem complex, intricate, or grand.
Byzantine filigree and a minimalist Japanese chef’s knife couldn’t be more visually different from one another, yet both could be described as beautiful for the human effort that is embodied in their existence.
A Bonnard painting appears effortful. A Bill Watterson cartoon does to, but in a different way. Both are imbued with an intense craftmanship of their respective domains and both would be considered masterpieces in their respective field despite one being complex and layered in colour and tone, and the other being a black and white cartoon drawing.
Most of the time, at some sub-conscious level, humans see and feel the effort expended in a work and, equally, when something did not (like a discount department knock-off of a Bonnard painting), whether we’re aware of it or not.