Skill and realism and art and stuff [Was: The Mani Poem]
Leo Papandreou
> dna...@aol.com (DNALJM) wrote in message news:<20031117222129...@mb-m14.aol.com>...
> I have to go somewhere. I'll respond to your remaining points later, in a
> separate reply.
I meant to reply yesterday but thought I'd give it a rest. Today I decided
I had something to say after all. :-)
>> But I still like to draw a girl with her clothes off too. It is slightly
>> different than anyone has ever seen her, like handwriting or a human retina
>> or fingerprint.
Yes, representing life around them is something artists do. If this were a
photography group, you might have written that you like to take pictures of
girls without their clothes on -- and who can blame you -- for the same reasons
and in the same language. All the arts use a similar language to describe our
ability to experience to a great depth psychologically the things we see or
imagine ("art" or "vision" talk) and a shop language to instruct us how to
record their features and meanings in a particular physical media ("skill"
talk).
>> I think that is an awesome thing, and other people seem to react
>> warmly to it too, although I can certainly sympathize with people who say
>> "so what" or "I can't eat it, fuck it." It doesn't matter to me that people
>> have done it five hundred years ago. I am doing it now and this is the
>> first time I have been alive to learn about it. It puts me in a peaceful,
>> happy place too. I know that increasingly people do not care about this but
>> I think that's unfortunate.
Yes but Jane isn't commonly mistaken for art. Jane is a person, a stranger. She
might paint icons, illuminate manuscripts, sculpt little sugar brides and
chocolate grooms for wedding cakes, make scary monsters out of tattered socks
and shiny buttons, or fix plumbing. What Jane does is her business. I assume
she does things that lift her spirits, are therapeutic, attract moths, or
whatever.
Let's forget Jane for a paragraph and return to art.
Without an audience, there is none, because there is no discourse that provides
for its interpretation. It has no meaning. It is *just* pigment on a flat
surface, clumps of metallic silver atoms, a matrix of tiny glass bubbles
containing a gas-like substance called plasma, and so on.
If Jane is the only audience for Jane's art, the part of Jane's art that isn't
*just* pigment on a flat surface lives entirely within Jane's mind. Whatever
private or idiosyncratic meaning it has for Jane is the best, if not the only,
reason for Jane to make it. That is understood. However, we are talking about
a public, mediated experience -- *many* people finding meaning in one thing.
Why are we talking about Jane? We should be talking about my little niece. She
paints pictures too. It would not matter if the "Jane" posting messages on this
newsgroup were in actual fact Bouguereau or another famous artist, I would
never take my niece's paintings down to hang up Jane's. I do not care about all
the other people who graduated grade two. I know that increasingly people do
not care about grade two. That is their great misfortune. I feel anyway.
You do go on about Jane in your message. As long as it's always about Jane it's
never about my niece. I cannot find the language to emphasize how wrong and
fucked up that is. It's not natural to talk about Jane and ignore my little
niece, who is really smart and cute, fierce, and a good fidgeter. She also
happens to be a better crayon artist than Jane. I feel anyway.
It may not matter to Jane that "people have done it five hundred years ago,"
but it seems to matter somewhere out there in the large. That art succeeded
because it had such cultural pertinence artists felt it in their favor to
imitate and repeat it until it was purged of all resonance, wilted, died, and
in the 20th century turned to kitsch. While it was once powerful and unique,
the pressure to repeat and imitate it has made us forget that it could be art.
It is become thing.
What I mean is, if there is one thing worse than a modern art fag trying to
spoon a drop of fame from a jaded public for his banal wallpaper, it is a
classical artzy-fartzy painting pictures of half-naked maidens flashing us
demurely from behind the folds of their Victorian nightgowns.
Examples: There's a mess of them at ARC's so-called "Living Masters" Gallery,
<http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Living_Masters/masters1.asp>,
for example:
<http://www.artrenewal.org/images/artists/E/Elliott_Virgil/large/nudewithsatin.jpg>
If that were hokier, only then would it be better. I guess I don't get it.
Either the artist (link: <http://tinyurl.com/wr2g>) suffers from an
unimaginable degree of withdrawal from reality (which is permeated with smutty
photos, Jeff Koons and Sorayama, he is not sure which is worse) or he is
appealing to some dimly understood authority in painting, intending to attract
notice and impress others with a tawdry display of ersatz classical skill and
culture. It might've worked if the paintings betrayed the merest hint of irony,
but as it is, well, at least smutty pictures and adult comics are culturally
relevant, which makes them art from my perspective.
I'm sorry, but art rewards artists who have a larger role in society than a
stick-in-the-mud trying to copy classical themes in style and substance. One of
the reasons ARC fan boys believe art cabals are manipulating the public (those
wicked intellectuals, why can't they be more like amateur antiquarians?) is
because they are isolated and out of touch. Don't get me wrong, it's a great
site for scans, but the screeds and jeremiads are absurd comedy.
Does that mean you shouldn't study classical artists? No, of course not, you
should study and emulate as many successful compositional devices as you can
find in order to provide you with depth of knowledge and experience from which
you may draw in your own, original work. There is a difference between doing
that and accepting an art convention as scientific law or holy writ. You should
learn from Rembrandt and Matisse, not try to paint like them as much as
possible because you read somewhere they made "art" the way it should be made.
You can't be Rembrandt or Matisse. If you wanted to paint like them and expect
the world to call you a great artist, you should have done it before they did.
You're too late.
Look, it's all "art" -- to *somebody*, even if only to the artist. But it isn't
all culturally relevant. If you're going to play the game of art for fame and
fortune, then you can't dismiss how the game informs the hive mind's criticism.
If that doesn't matter to you, great, in my opinion that is smart and proper,
and maybe you're actually ahead of time by being so far behind it. On the other
hand, sometimes you watch a race, the red car in the lead, you think, "the red
car is winning." Then the blue car laps it. OK, so what, it was just a stupid
race.
Incidentally, I like the worst painting in the "Living Masters" gallery the
best: <http://tinyurl.com/w33l>. I'd buy that painting in a heartbeat (for $10)
because it is so bad it is man-eating-tomatoes-from-outer-space-B-movie good.
That goes to show, I guess, how hard it is to pin this art business down with
any certainty. [On edit, "bad" and "worst" are ranting words. I want to
emphasize the "Living Masters" have a marvelous facility with paint, and
although a lot of the work is ostentatious, promotes tooth decay, or resembles
well-painted amateur photos, some of it has very nice breasts:
<http://tinyurl.com/wr5h>. Skill like that does not come easy, so good on all
of them.]
>> I also think that stems from someone's agenda being pushed through art
>> schools. What a shame to spend big money to go to school and not learn
>> anything but how to write a defensive essay!
Well if you haven't spent big money to go to art school, then maybe you should
do that, because it will teach you discipline, critical thinking, problem
solving and how to work with others. It will exercise your imagination. It will
help you make connections. It will expose you to the work of others, which will
teach you different ways of looking at the world, thus to transcend your
limitations. It will give you the opportunity to demonstrate what you have
learned, thus achieving greater comprehension and retention. It will give you
feedback and evaluation. Therefore, everyone agrees that art school is the best
thing ever.
On the other hand, if you have spent big money to go to art school then maybe
you shouldn't have done that, because formal art training has hampered rather
than advanced art and should be abandoned. Art schools graduate drones. The
teachers beat up students with puffed-up theories, unrestrained
intellectualizing, and a lot of dogma, neglecting practical instruction and
experience. Who needs that shit? Everyone knows the stuff of art is intense
living, thus that it were better you spent five vivid years in prison than ten
in art school. As a bonus, criminals are more interesting people than
pretentious artists. Thus, everyone agrees that art school is the worst thing
ever.
Now we can discuss this if you want. It will produce a commotion of assent and
dissent, implicating a crisis in education with incriminating generalizations
and free use of absolute terms such as "all," "never," and "always." That can
be fun, trolling is what newsgroups are for.
But our discussion will have no more application to the grave matter at issue
than the stories of the brothers Grimm. Here, instead, are two prospects and a
glimmer of meaning: *which* school, for *whom*? Are you talking about Jane
attending the Miss Winifred's Academy of Accordion and Design? Funny, I didn't
hear my niece's name in that question.
Anyway, what do you mean by art school? Are you talking trade school or
university? At the school I am most familiar with, they will not admit you
without a good portfolio. You're supposed to demonstrate that you are ready to
take natural talent and YMCA courses to the next conceptual level. They're
supposed to teach you "art," not a rigid set of skills. They aren't supposed to
hold your hand for three years while you practice to perfect perspective and
lose your edges, or to drill you in concocting grounds and oils and resins. You
don't need an art degree to prepare you to read and understand shop talk at Wet
Canvas.
I feel anyway.
>> People say "wow" at watching the Matrix but they also say "wow" when looking
>> at a drawing I spent six months on.
Does it matter how long it takes to draw something? I suppose if a drawing were
about how long it took to draw it, then yes, but most drawings aren't *about*
that (or any other arbitrary skill.) I've seen people draw picture
perfect "wow" portraits in way less than 60 minutes. They have always been able
to do that. It comes naturally to them, or so they say.
How long did this drawing take: <http://tinyurl.com/wr6w>? If I told you it
took two hours, would that change the way it looked? How long did this drawing
take: <http://tinyurl.com/wr70>? If I said twenty, would that raise it in your
esteem? How long did this "photo" take, from inception to finished print:
<http://www.salavon.com/PlayboyDecades/PlayboyDecades.shtml>
I understand what you're saying and, all other things being equal, there's a
correlation; but things are never equal and most people aren't skill nerds, so
you're going to have to find a more competitive way to work if you expect the
rest of us to value art according to the clock.
What I mean is, 8 months times 30 days per month @ 8 billing hours per day is
more art than most people can afford. At $10/hr, a modest rate, your drawing is
worth $14,440. No wonder they say "wow," it is sticker shock. I do not think
you meant that. So I guess "six months" is just a ribbon the artist likes to
wear at parties. It says, "I got this ribbon for my hard work and skill." But
it's not germane to the work itself, which is *supposed* to be skillfully done.
And this business of working hard -- everyone works hard. Art is *supposed* to
be hard. Successful art is what happens to the artist after years of painting
failures, nursing an original idea they cannot seem to execute, except when
they finally do, in a day.
"You did that in a day? It can't very good then."
Re finding a more competitive way to work. If you're rendering tight, realistic
drawings, you might want to cheat with photographs, opaque projectors, and
other means. You might want to play with Photoshop's curves and threshold
functions (hi-tech "squinting.") There's lots you can do. Fact is realism has
never been easier. It's still not easy, but it is much easier than it used to
be. You can even photosensitize canvas (link: <http://tinyurl.com/womp>).
Some people discourage "cheating," warning you some tools impede skill,
creativity, and imagination, or violate some obscure moral principle of art.
They are dumber than a bag of rocks at the bottom of the ocean. What artist
cares how images are achieved, so long as the results satisfy his or her
artistic intentions? An artist living on a fluffy cloud, very high up in
the sky where the air is thin, with busts of Plato to keep him company, and
lovely angels playing the harp.
There's a lot to be said for skill; but at the end of the day what counts is
what you have to say. Say something original and relevant. If you're painting
the same kind of thing and in the same way everyone else painted centuries ago,
then we can only evaluate your work by subscribing mentally to a hoary concept
of what is skill. That's what your painting is about. What does a painting
*about* skill say? "Give me a ribbon." Fine, here's a ribbon: "wow."
Which brings up the advice to "transcend the photograph." If your painting says
nothing a photographer looking over your shoulder couldn't say faster, better,
then your painting, as far as a modern audience is concerned, is about skill,
the skill to emulate the Kodak Instamatic. Some of the stuff at
you-know-where.com and between the pages of hobbyist magazines like American
Artist -- Christ, it might as well be photos. Except it would have to be
completely unexceptional, amateur photos no one looks at twice, but feel
compelled to gush about seen in pigment. That's often the whole difference:
pigment, the fact that it is a painting, thus "hard."
"Did you do that freehand? Wow!" The praise is in response to work that has
photographic qualities.
There's nothing wrong or right with that. It's "art."
But. Think for a moment. Ordinary people impressed by that are the
reason "painted photos" are increasingly less relevant (as "art"). From T.V.,
film, photography, and the computer we receive a torrent of realistic images
every day. Everything we see is slightly interesting. Not for long, just until
the next image. So if your aim is to wow people with copies of what you see,
the still and moving photo has incredible power over you: it's fast, cheap,
documentary, real time, and its images can be manipulated, indefinitely
repeated, copied and distributed. The paradox in this situation of visual Muzak
is realist painting undermines its artistic ambitions. Reality has so far
outstripped art that painting is speechless.
There isn't any art gab in the last paragraph. It does not compare modernism
with classicalism, contrast "beauty" with the "sublime", or contain any
referent-less aesthete talk. It does not record a thing about Jane's paintings
or her feelings painting them. It is a statement containing independently
verifiable facts about life in our media, photographic age. It reminds you the
invention of moveable type rendered obsolete medieval scribes and illuminated
bibles, not art or writing.
These things happen.
Progress has momentous impact on the standardization of meaning, without which
I remind you there is no art, on the normalization of visual grammar, our
notions of "truth," "skill," "method," etc., and on the desire to spread these
momentous changes in art objects.
Think of the Holocaust pictures and ask yourself if a painting could have had
the same effect. What could rival the testimony of the photograph? Who in the
heck believes paintings? Belief is very important. It is the most important
thing. We die for it. We kill for it. Some people believe painting will survive
unchanged for it, even though a visit to the modern art museum or a gallery
(link: http://artnet.com) can disabuse them quickly of their nostalgia.
Think of old master paintings (<http://tinyurl.com/wr8j>.) The work is
magnificent. Just look at it. It is impossible to not have an enormous amount
of respect for the brilliant talents that created it. The problem is, people
drawn to making visual spectacles like that are drawn to movies from a very
early age. They become filmmakers. Their thoughts don't run to "I'll sacrifice
years of my life to paint a big-ass painting few people today will see or even
learn exists." They say, "I'll make a movie, each frame a stunning work of
visual art. And there'll be costumes, and music, and gadgets, and explosions,
and girls. It'll be like old master works but better."
So yeah, we can debate the role and relevance of painting in the 21st century
outside stodgy museums and the investment burgher's private collection, and
thus inquire how to revive it, but we cannot dismiss a world of structural
imperatives (and their consequences) outside Jane's mind, her paintings, and
how she felt painting them. That's what took me two hours to say.
Try to transcend the photo, like every cover of the New Yorker does it, Bob
Ross, Thomas Kinkade -- and even Photorealism, which isn't so much interested
in duplicating the real world as it is in duplicating the photograph; it is art
about The Photograph. There is an infinite number of ways to transcend the
photograph. Look inside a Communication Arts Illustration Annual sometime.
--
Leo Papandreou
Clyde S. Dale
koan...@earthling.net says...
>I meant to reply yesterday but thought I'd give it a rest. Today I decided
>I had something to say after all. :-)
Judas Priest! I suppose you think because some
of us have a four day weekend ahead, we have time
to read your novel-length treatises. Do you suppose
you might at least condense to novella length?
I'm getting indigestion already and I haven't even
had my turkey yet today!