Since my Art-Craft Model image was getting a little crowded, I decided to produce a different version to help explain what people mean by 'culture'. This ios my first version, and I am sure that I will be adjusting it and trying to make it more user friendly.
You can find many attempts in books, on courses or even on the internet where someone attempts to define what art is. They fail for many reasons, but one of the chief ones is that they fail to understand that a great chunk of culture is missing from the standard definitions. A good sign as to what is valued and what is ignored in society, and I do not mean what is good or bad, is how much language there is devoted to it. Cooking is chock full of language that is freely borrowed from other languages to express ingredients and methods. Here, though, that large white area exists without a vocabulary, and without a vocabulary something does not, or almost does not exist to most people.
A good and common example of this can be found here in Poland, where I live. I am English, but I am not described as a Polish-Englishman - yet if I were Polish and went and lived in the USA I could be a Polish-American. Culturally, I do not exist. My case might not seem important to you if you are not having to live a life of being a permanent outsider. Worse still is the case of Jewish people - neither English nor Polish have a term for Poles who are Roman Catholics, and therefore history texts talk about 'Poles' and 'Jews', as if 'Jews' were not Poles.
There are many unmapped areas of culture, and each removes the rights to be from those who exist in those areas in favour of those who lived in well-marked areas.
My Art, that little note below the question mark, sits in the unmarked zone - you cannot ignore it because it has Art, and yet it would be difficult to sell it because the lack of Craft is so obvious. If, instead of photographs, you saw my actual Art as thoughts about how humans interact with human systems, and realized that the photographs - and graphs like this - were nothing more than attempts to communicate to you from a land with little vocabulary, then is the lack of Craft in the photographs so important? The high Craft elements of my Art are largely invisible and yet in my working life continual to generate irregular extra income. How? Well, once I transform my Art into a visible concept - some diagrams for example, they change the way managers think about their industry, their departments or whatever.
Their are many ways that I use to communicate my Art, and I do not have time to become high Craft in each method - there are too many, and I rather need the time to perfect my Art.
If any of my images or my texts alters your perception of the world, then my Art has touched you - even though it might be through an imperfectly utilised channel of communication.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Art_Craft Model and Tradition
I have now added a few elements, some just to try and make it more clear the difficulty of achieving Art, and one to show another cause for the easy drift away from the search for Art.
Tradition can set in at any time - you might decide that some ancient religious value should prevent you from some area of Art, or that photographs cannot be arty if they are not black and white and taken with a German Leica camera from the 1930s. Perhaps, even, that you must use Photoshop.
If you fail to recognise Tradition, it will push you away from Art into the acquisition of Craft, or event push you out of the arena entirely.
It is worth remembering that if you allow yourself to be blown by Tradition, your works will contain less and less of you and more and more of the people who have gone before you. You may find that society, or some part of society may prefer you to do this, because there is a strong element in society that wants to prevent the discomfort and envy comes when other people achieve things that are new. You may even recognise this feeling within yourself.
You have to decide for yourself how much of yourself are you prepared to sacrifice in order to ensure the comfort of the more restrictive elements of society.
Tradition can set in at any time - you might decide that some ancient religious value should prevent you from some area of Art, or that photographs cannot be arty if they are not black and white and taken with a German Leica camera from the 1930s. Perhaps, even, that you must use Photoshop.
If you fail to recognise Tradition, it will push you away from Art into the acquisition of Craft, or event push you out of the arena entirely.
It is worth remembering that if you allow yourself to be blown by Tradition, your works will contain less and less of you and more and more of the people who have gone before you. You may find that society, or some part of society may prefer you to do this, because there is a strong element in society that wants to prevent the discomfort and envy comes when other people achieve things that are new. You may even recognise this feeling within yourself.
You have to decide for yourself how much of yourself are you prepared to sacrifice in order to ensure the comfort of the more restrictive elements of society.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
What you see you think
This image is available for sale at Photo4me, framed and ready to hang!What we see and what we think we see are not always the same thing, although a lot of the time it really does not matter. You might see what you think is a broken table in someone's garden, but what it might really be is a temporary slide for the owner's children. You might argue that it is still a table - but how many table's do you know with two legs that sit in the garden and children slide down it? It could be made into a table again, but the inability to see it as an object with many potential uses is your own block on your own perceptions - how can you ever create something new if everything you see is already categorized?
The table-slide issue seems irrelevant, and yet we use exactly the same process in people - or at least we allow politicians and journalists to use the same process on us, blinding us to any alternative view. You do not believe me - go read some forums on different subjects and see how other people perceive humans by categorising them as Black, Jews, White, islamic, Buddhists, and how they speak about them. As a White Roman Catholic Man in Poland i should be equal to the average Pole, one might think, but I am not because most people only see me as Foreign, and I am treated as such whatever the legal position might be. Imagine then if I were not White Roman Catholic Man, but Black Jewish Woman?
If you see people by category first instead of Human first, then you are part of the problem, unwittingly you are removing these people of some of their most basic of Human rights, their right to their own identity.
When you see people as Humans, such concepts as 'mixed marriages' no longer have any meaning as what can you mix in the Human race Is the intention to deliberately breed humans so that they are no more than cats, dogs or farm animals, each variation proud to be that variation?
If you feel a need to be proud, be proud of the good achievements of individual Humans, just don't classify these Humans by the nations they happen to belong to. You do not have to love everyone around you, just make sure it is you who makes the decision on what Humans you love or hate, don't hate a Nation just because they have members who believe in hateful actions, for they do not all believe in such things, just as you do not believe in all the hateful things members of your own society engage in.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Limited creation by pressure of society
If you live in a society, you cannot expect to be able to do just as you please, as what you do may affect other member's of the same society. Life in a society means giving up some freedoms in order to gain safety and protection. However, there are some problems.
If you have a book, it might be useful or it might not - and if it is not then you have to consume some of your resources in maintaining that book - such as dusting and storing it. If the book is of importance to you, you might wish to give it to your children so that they can treasure it to, but if it means nothing to you you could try to sell it, give it away to a friend or donate it - or even just throw it away or burn it. Book printing companies destroy books all the time, just as any other manufacturing operation there comes a time when you produce to many things and the cost of storage outweighs the products value.
Many people will object, because they have made their image of 'book' to strong, and now it hurts too much to break that image. At this point, you are no longer free, either your book image is too strong and you must maintain them all, or someone else's book image is too strong and they will make you life unpleasant if they discover you breaking their image by destroying a book. You have to dispose of unwanted books in secret or be on the receiving end of unpleasant looks, gossip or even heated words. You are a criminal because someone else lacks the ability to change.
Why do people lack this ability, and why does it seem to get worse with age? Well, a good part of the pressure comes from other people and their poorly examined values, or from education. And it does not just involve books, but any concept that we have, and because many people find it easy to create unbreakable images, they are easily bent to the will, unwittingly, of people of malicious intent.
If you have unbreakable concepts and you wish to create something new, such as a work of art or a new project at work, then your solution is likely to be deficient in any area that involves your unbreakable concepts. Good, you may say, but only because you do not realize what you are missing - you can always reject something new, but only if first you are able to create it. At a company party the other week, a group of half dozen people who would never usually mix remained together until six in the morning chatting, a feat some would never engage in. They broke the unbreakable, and discovered that although they were all different, there was some benefit in being together.
Even temporary breaking apart of concepts requires practice, as does any skill, you become much more confident and more able to tackle a broad range of tasks through the practice. To many this practice is silly, as they cannot see the immediate connection between freeing up the mind and eventual application of the process. The company I work with is suffused with my solutions, which I have been able to create simply because I practice throwing away the rule book. I move against the pressure of society, and therefore I find not just the cracks, but the opportunities and the fixes they relate to.
I both embrace and reject tradition, and somehow my mind does not come apart in the process. I am not a slave to tradition, nor a loose cannon on deck because i can always find my way home. Here we dug through our wardrobe to create tradition out of modernity, not by just wearing clothes, but wearing in ways and combinations that achieve what we want to say. It cost us nothing but the time and wear, and no we have a great image of us to share and to recall.
If you have a book, it might be useful or it might not - and if it is not then you have to consume some of your resources in maintaining that book - such as dusting and storing it. If the book is of importance to you, you might wish to give it to your children so that they can treasure it to, but if it means nothing to you you could try to sell it, give it away to a friend or donate it - or even just throw it away or burn it. Book printing companies destroy books all the time, just as any other manufacturing operation there comes a time when you produce to many things and the cost of storage outweighs the products value.
Many people will object, because they have made their image of 'book' to strong, and now it hurts too much to break that image. At this point, you are no longer free, either your book image is too strong and you must maintain them all, or someone else's book image is too strong and they will make you life unpleasant if they discover you breaking their image by destroying a book. You have to dispose of unwanted books in secret or be on the receiving end of unpleasant looks, gossip or even heated words. You are a criminal because someone else lacks the ability to change.
Why do people lack this ability, and why does it seem to get worse with age? Well, a good part of the pressure comes from other people and their poorly examined values, or from education. And it does not just involve books, but any concept that we have, and because many people find it easy to create unbreakable images, they are easily bent to the will, unwittingly, of people of malicious intent.
If you have unbreakable concepts and you wish to create something new, such as a work of art or a new project at work, then your solution is likely to be deficient in any area that involves your unbreakable concepts. Good, you may say, but only because you do not realize what you are missing - you can always reject something new, but only if first you are able to create it. At a company party the other week, a group of half dozen people who would never usually mix remained together until six in the morning chatting, a feat some would never engage in. They broke the unbreakable, and discovered that although they were all different, there was some benefit in being together.
Even temporary breaking apart of concepts requires practice, as does any skill, you become much more confident and more able to tackle a broad range of tasks through the practice. To many this practice is silly, as they cannot see the immediate connection between freeing up the mind and eventual application of the process. The company I work with is suffused with my solutions, which I have been able to create simply because I practice throwing away the rule book. I move against the pressure of society, and therefore I find not just the cracks, but the opportunities and the fixes they relate to.
I both embrace and reject tradition, and somehow my mind does not come apart in the process. I am not a slave to tradition, nor a loose cannon on deck because i can always find my way home. Here we dug through our wardrobe to create tradition out of modernity, not by just wearing clothes, but wearing in ways and combinations that achieve what we want to say. It cost us nothing but the time and wear, and no we have a great image of us to share and to recall.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Art_Craft Model - improved
After knocking the first model together for first art-craft blog, I realized that it was not quite right, it lacked somethings and was really too much like a graph in some text book. I mean, I wanted it to look like something from a text book because i feel that this would appeal to the kind of people who read technical data and are put off by the art world, and yet I also wanted it to appeal to the art world too, as my intention is to try and bridge that artificial gap between art and crafts, art and science, real and unreal. I wanted a map.
The first bit to go under the knife was the area called 'fine art', which I trimmed off on the left hand side to make it easier to exclude some things, like high-quality, machine made furniture that few people would call art. I had to be careful since there is an idea that factory made articles are somehow poorer quality craft than hand made - ignoring the basic precept that everything automated machinery produces is produced by machines designed and set up by humans - and nothing that we humans do is without at least a tiny bit of Art, since it is Art that makes us more than mere responders-to-stimuli, like a toothbrush is.
Seeing as I had a whacking great lump of fine art, I realised that something was needed to mark where we all come from, those first attempts to make an impression on the world when we are but newly born. You cannot hold a spoon or stand on your own feet, and yet those craft skills are gained within a few short years. Your abstract thought is able to express base emotions, and yet how long before you can express fine divisions in these emotions, or to conceal them? Hence, the graph now has a large 'juvenile' area, where often we start when we move into a new area.
Interestingly enough, once you have accepted that Art is within you and independent of subject, and if you can improve that Art to a sufficient level, then moving into a new subject area does not mean you start in the juvenile area, but to the right of it. This means you can start producing quality work in that field, even if your craft skills are very poor. Annoying as it may be to those with high craft skills, your opinion in a new field based on a high level of Art can be very valid.
Finding your way through to the high areas of Art, on the right hand side of the graph, is treacherous as it is wild and unmapped territory, where few people can help you as first you have to let them into your head to learn how you think - and, of course, that also means you will not progress far in the search for your Art if you spend too little time in your own head, finding out how and why it works.
In comparison, learning skill is relatively easy because the world is full of experts, your only real limitation, other than access to the right expert, the tools required and adequate time, is your own potential ability. The training path is clear, easy to follow, even as it takes you into strange lands. You can almost always check your progress on the map of exams and peer opinion.
I have added a new line to the graphy bit, to show how easy it is to float off in the direction of Craft achievement while trying to improve the Art. If you pursue Craft, it is easy to shift focus from the innovation phase to a process one - where once you have achieved some Art, you then continue to refine your presentation of that Art (process) rather than continue to explore the potential of your Art (innovation).
if you ever wonder whether you show much Art in your highly skilled work, or whether you are producing work equivalent to the 'Photographer's Eye', then you need to abandon all your fine tools and find the most basic implements you can and then see what you can produce with them. Do the resulting pieces have any value? This will force you to use your tools to their full potential, and you will be conscious of their limit. To get beyond that limit requires the use of Art.
Now that you have recent experience of inferior tools, now try to do something in an alien field, one in which you neither have the skill nor the tools. If you have never cooked, cook on a camping stove. If you have never been a teacher, try teaching someone in a basic environment. You will probably find yourself desperately looking for books or internet sites to read, not because you need that information but because Craft skills and the knowledge that underlies it have become your prop - your confidence has become intertwinned with learned process instead of raw innovation - your Art.
Finally, Art really is only in your head, what you produce are works of Art, not the Art itself, that remains in your head. If you ever find a finely worked flint arrow head dating back to prehistoric times, it is like a glimpse into someone else's mind, into their Art, as well as being an example of their skill.
The first bit to go under the knife was the area called 'fine art', which I trimmed off on the left hand side to make it easier to exclude some things, like high-quality, machine made furniture that few people would call art. I had to be careful since there is an idea that factory made articles are somehow poorer quality craft than hand made - ignoring the basic precept that everything automated machinery produces is produced by machines designed and set up by humans - and nothing that we humans do is without at least a tiny bit of Art, since it is Art that makes us more than mere responders-to-stimuli, like a toothbrush is.
Seeing as I had a whacking great lump of fine art, I realised that something was needed to mark where we all come from, those first attempts to make an impression on the world when we are but newly born. You cannot hold a spoon or stand on your own feet, and yet those craft skills are gained within a few short years. Your abstract thought is able to express base emotions, and yet how long before you can express fine divisions in these emotions, or to conceal them? Hence, the graph now has a large 'juvenile' area, where often we start when we move into a new area.
Interestingly enough, once you have accepted that Art is within you and independent of subject, and if you can improve that Art to a sufficient level, then moving into a new subject area does not mean you start in the juvenile area, but to the right of it. This means you can start producing quality work in that field, even if your craft skills are very poor. Annoying as it may be to those with high craft skills, your opinion in a new field based on a high level of Art can be very valid.
Finding your way through to the high areas of Art, on the right hand side of the graph, is treacherous as it is wild and unmapped territory, where few people can help you as first you have to let them into your head to learn how you think - and, of course, that also means you will not progress far in the search for your Art if you spend too little time in your own head, finding out how and why it works.
In comparison, learning skill is relatively easy because the world is full of experts, your only real limitation, other than access to the right expert, the tools required and adequate time, is your own potential ability. The training path is clear, easy to follow, even as it takes you into strange lands. You can almost always check your progress on the map of exams and peer opinion.
I have added a new line to the graphy bit, to show how easy it is to float off in the direction of Craft achievement while trying to improve the Art. If you pursue Craft, it is easy to shift focus from the innovation phase to a process one - where once you have achieved some Art, you then continue to refine your presentation of that Art (process) rather than continue to explore the potential of your Art (innovation).
if you ever wonder whether you show much Art in your highly skilled work, or whether you are producing work equivalent to the 'Photographer's Eye', then you need to abandon all your fine tools and find the most basic implements you can and then see what you can produce with them. Do the resulting pieces have any value? This will force you to use your tools to their full potential, and you will be conscious of their limit. To get beyond that limit requires the use of Art.
Now that you have recent experience of inferior tools, now try to do something in an alien field, one in which you neither have the skill nor the tools. If you have never cooked, cook on a camping stove. If you have never been a teacher, try teaching someone in a basic environment. You will probably find yourself desperately looking for books or internet sites to read, not because you need that information but because Craft skills and the knowledge that underlies it have become your prop - your confidence has become intertwinned with learned process instead of raw innovation - your Art.
Finally, Art really is only in your head, what you produce are works of Art, not the Art itself, that remains in your head. If you ever find a finely worked flint arrow head dating back to prehistoric times, it is like a glimpse into someone else's mind, into their Art, as well as being an example of their skill.
Friday, December 5, 2008
This WAS a Honda C70
As an attempt to describe my Art, which is an exploration of the mind's ability to conceptualise without a reliance on high levels of skill (Craft) or significant financial outlays in order to achieve an artificial skill boost. This was once a Honda C70, a very rusty and generally decrepit fifteen year old example when I bought it for twenty pounds (and the opportunity to make my face known to the manager of the university hall of residence where I found the machine and where I wished to spend the final two years of my university studies). The resulting machine only contains the cut and rewelded frame from its donor, the rest is a collection of motorcycle and other bits that I found to fit and which met the needs of my intended use of the machine. Scruffy and cheap it may have been, but the redesign was all mine, and I rode it all around England, around the Alps and even took it for a long weekend to Germany.
The Art was in the conceptual design, and although I trained as a mechanic and an engineer, what you see here is a sound design nailed together with limited resources, one which impressed large numbers of motorcyclists once they saw it perform (yes, they often sniggered when they first saw it). The point is that Art will make itself known, once you see past the lack of Craft, but that most people will assess on Craft and assume that if Craft is lacking, Art is lacking too. compare this with two women - one beautiful and one not, which will people first want to be seen with?
I think I took this shot with my old Pentax ME Super SLR camera, which I had with me because I owned it and the zoom on it was good for pictures of bikes and distant mountains. However, this photo is one view on a particular Art-into-reality process, and a better or worse camera would have made little difference as at the time I only intended recording an interesting event. I am not quite sure how I could have recorded the Art that was going on, I would have to think about it, to produce a new Art expression of a twenty year old art event.
The event happened in the Alps, when the bike ground to a halt with an electrical fault that had been bugging it for days. The sun was shining, it was a quiet back road snaking up a pass, the electrical problem had been bubbling in my head for days - rather than carry out a fix back in the car park, and despite the lack of special tools, the perfect moment had arrived to combine body and soul into solving the problem. If I had repaired it as a mechanic in a workshop, I would have followed procedures, and bought specific products, an almost totally Craft procedure. Instead, I turned my back on tools and used what was available at the moment when the combination of problem, landscape and a matured concept of what I had to do came together.
I used the lack of tools to kick-start my innovation, something that I have been practising at least all my adult life by avoiding specialising in the gaining of a limited number of Craft skills (there are enough of these required for my working life). If I had bought a shiney new motorcycle, I would have had great riding experiences. By struggling to create this machine, I had even better riding experiences because I knew that they were the result of my own creative efforts, not simply the result of the creative abilities of other engineers. The same goes for that fancy digital SLR or revered Leica - your contribution to the final piece includes all the efforts of all those other people - their Art.
The Art was in the conceptual design, and although I trained as a mechanic and an engineer, what you see here is a sound design nailed together with limited resources, one which impressed large numbers of motorcyclists once they saw it perform (yes, they often sniggered when they first saw it). The point is that Art will make itself known, once you see past the lack of Craft, but that most people will assess on Craft and assume that if Craft is lacking, Art is lacking too. compare this with two women - one beautiful and one not, which will people first want to be seen with?
I think I took this shot with my old Pentax ME Super SLR camera, which I had with me because I owned it and the zoom on it was good for pictures of bikes and distant mountains. However, this photo is one view on a particular Art-into-reality process, and a better or worse camera would have made little difference as at the time I only intended recording an interesting event. I am not quite sure how I could have recorded the Art that was going on, I would have to think about it, to produce a new Art expression of a twenty year old art event.
The event happened in the Alps, when the bike ground to a halt with an electrical fault that had been bugging it for days. The sun was shining, it was a quiet back road snaking up a pass, the electrical problem had been bubbling in my head for days - rather than carry out a fix back in the car park, and despite the lack of special tools, the perfect moment had arrived to combine body and soul into solving the problem. If I had repaired it as a mechanic in a workshop, I would have followed procedures, and bought specific products, an almost totally Craft procedure. Instead, I turned my back on tools and used what was available at the moment when the combination of problem, landscape and a matured concept of what I had to do came together.
I used the lack of tools to kick-start my innovation, something that I have been practising at least all my adult life by avoiding specialising in the gaining of a limited number of Craft skills (there are enough of these required for my working life). If I had bought a shiney new motorcycle, I would have had great riding experiences. By struggling to create this machine, I had even better riding experiences because I knew that they were the result of my own creative efforts, not simply the result of the creative abilities of other engineers. The same goes for that fancy digital SLR or revered Leica - your contribution to the final piece includes all the efforts of all those other people - their Art.
Art-Craft Model
By observing how people deal and speak about Art and Craft, i decided to create a simple model that combined their views with my idea of the separation of Art and Craft. Assuming that any Art and Craft action at any moment in the history of mankind can be rated as being between zero and a hundred percent quality, I was able to plot on several interesting points.
The green band at the top is 'Fine Art', a concept I am sure is different for everyone, but which in the practice of society (as opposed to mental idealising of what we might be taught), Fine Art is merely any manufactured (in the loosest sense) article that people generally think of being 'good quality'. Actually, while I have drawn the limit line horizontally, maybe it should be canted at angle to capture more Art at the right hand end, and less Craft at the left hand end. Possibly the more someone knows about the art world, the higher and more to the right the green Fine Art area may be.
I have also plotted on three points: Mona Lisa (top right), Photographic Eye (top left), and My Art (bottom right).
Mona Lisa: I chose this painting as being a generally known and accepted work of art that is also done with a high level of painting skill, or Craft. This work contains a lot of thought in terms of Art and a lot of practiced skill, the opposite would be a point in the bottom left of the graph where someone daubs paint on a sheet of paper with little skill and little thought beyond wanting to create an image of a person, house or similar - which we could call 'juvenile' in terms of Art and Craft.
Photographer's Eye: Most people take photographs and either like them or not for what they show, but there appears to be a body of photographers who are highly skilled in the use of their equipment and choice and manipulation of their subjects such that they produce extremely competent images, but, to be honest, these images could be compared to very well designed, expensive, craftsman-made furniture - nice, but the craftsman is knocking out similar pieces every day. However, if you asked average people on the street (by which I mean not a street full of artists), they would see no real difference between the Photographer's Eye work and an Art piece because they lack experience in Art in these terms.
My Art: I am not a photographer, photography is not my 'medium', I express my Art through whichever medium is to hand and which seems to fit that idea i have in my head. A lot of what i produce is not really recognisable as Art by many people because our education systems give relatively narrow definitions of what Art is. This graph is a piece of my Art, although I would admit it is an early test piece, my Art in my head has not fully formed this concept yet, I am still working on it as I type. Many artists produce series of related images as they try to express that idea they have - and it is worth observing that Art is not the piece that is produced, but the idea that is in the head of the artist. Hence the artist can make many attempts to reproduce that idea, and each time different influences occur.
The three large arrows are different possible directions one can take in developing an idea - improve ones skill in reproduction (Craft), improve the quality of the basic idea (Art), or a combination of both. i am not suggesting that the actual path one takes is straight, or that one cannot go backwards or go in circles as one adds or removes artistic or craft content.
Education tends to lead one in the vertical direction, to improved Craft. Any movement to the right is very hard and has to be one's own effort - although the encouragement of others definitely helps. Hardest of all is to move horizontally - to improve one's Art without improving Craft, as the very use of tools to reproduce the idea improves your ability to use those tools. The tendency to move vertically up is natural, and it takes deliberate effort to stop sacrificing your Art as you get caught up in the intricacies of learning to use a camera or photo-editing software. People who end up at the Photographer's Eye point may have originally set out to produce or improve their Art, but in the end confuse the improved quality of their images with producing better quality of Art.
If you really want to improve your Art rather than your ability to produce your current level of Art in pieces demonstrating better quality of manufacture, i suggest you forget all ideas about a Leica film camera shooting black and white producing 'better' art than a cheap digital camera can achieve - Art is about refining your ability to think up new ideas that have never existed before. The Leica may eventually give you better Craft, but the throwaway digital may force you to think your ideas through and to innovate more simply to achieve even a half decent piece. You might even find it helps to define your own Art, rather than you becoming a pale shadow of some Leica diva.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
More on What Art Is
Art is completely independent of the tools you use to express it, your art resides inside your head, and you can use whatever tools you like to with any degree of skill that you possess to demonstrate that art, through whatever medium you choose. Aside from the requirements of some art course or the necessity to sell or otherwise dispose of your pieces, there are no categories of art, only your satisfaction in what you achieve.
To get others to appreciate what you have achieved, you have to go through a process of coding their brains with information and processes they can use to understand your work, which is both an important process and one laden with problems. the biggest problem other people will lay before you, or perhaps attempt to bludgeon you with, is the idea of purity. By purity, I mean how close your work resembles some category system in their head, either based on some kind of classical-historical golden age (Ancient Greek, for example), or teenage memories (i.e. wot i lurnt on my art course).
Since art really happens in your head, you have to keep thinking about it. I recently saw someone respond to someone's image on flikr, saying that they did not want to say why they liked a picture, that it was nice was enough. Well, they are free not to write, free even not to think, but it is that process of thinking that forms our Art and our Craft. Our Craft guides the tools that we use, but only in replication of the pattern in our mind that is our Art. Both processes need extensive thought, for without that thought both or either our Art or Craft will remain juvenile.
Talking about Art in terms of labels, categories is nothing more than a form of Craft, these are tools that we use to describe our Art, not the Art itself. What is more scary is that we lack vocabulary to describe in anything but the tritist of terms. This is partly due to the advanced thought that is Art, located ahead of Craft description, but mainly due to very Craft orientated education systems which leave us able to count and list information, but unable to express why we think something is nice without wandering off into a dim and distant geek-land of which most people lack an atlas.
I think it might be the lack of any requirements for skill in tools that would be the stumbling block for many people - the idea that you could pick up a paint brush and slap paint on a canvas and say you have produced Art seems to hit the brick wall of common sense. However, you are not just splodging in a juvenile way, because what you should have formed in your head is a mature Art form, whatever that may be, and you are now using whatever tools that come to hand to produce a hard copy of that Art idea. When Jackson Pollock 'splodged' some paint on large sheets, he had a mature Art image in his head, but what many people thought they were seeing were there own juvenile art thoughts 'splodged', they expected Art to be painterly. Painterly, or fine art, is a mix of Art and Craft, the latter to a high level, the former to some level between juvenile and mature, depending on artist and his or her intentions.
What is really strange to me, is the problem that some artists have with commercial work, as if an external trigger for an idea is somehow worse than an internal one. At some stage, somewhere, every artist is supported by commercial work, even if they are living off family money, that money arrived in the family through some striving or other. Selling one's own Art is still commercial. Artists hating the fact they have to engage in commercial work is very elitist, does the worker in a factory have that choice, how many are blocked from their Art by their need to feed their family and because their education failed to instil in them a sense of their own Art? If an artist fails to create Art in their commercial work, they are not thinking enough about what they are doing, even having to satisfy the needs of others, even the strange requirements of the customer, is in essence an opportunity for more Art expression, no matter how bitter might be the task. Dislike is merely opportunity unrecognised.
To get others to appreciate what you have achieved, you have to go through a process of coding their brains with information and processes they can use to understand your work, which is both an important process and one laden with problems. the biggest problem other people will lay before you, or perhaps attempt to bludgeon you with, is the idea of purity. By purity, I mean how close your work resembles some category system in their head, either based on some kind of classical-historical golden age (Ancient Greek, for example), or teenage memories (i.e. wot i lurnt on my art course).
Since art really happens in your head, you have to keep thinking about it. I recently saw someone respond to someone's image on flikr, saying that they did not want to say why they liked a picture, that it was nice was enough. Well, they are free not to write, free even not to think, but it is that process of thinking that forms our Art and our Craft. Our Craft guides the tools that we use, but only in replication of the pattern in our mind that is our Art. Both processes need extensive thought, for without that thought both or either our Art or Craft will remain juvenile.
Talking about Art in terms of labels, categories is nothing more than a form of Craft, these are tools that we use to describe our Art, not the Art itself. What is more scary is that we lack vocabulary to describe in anything but the tritist of terms. This is partly due to the advanced thought that is Art, located ahead of Craft description, but mainly due to very Craft orientated education systems which leave us able to count and list information, but unable to express why we think something is nice without wandering off into a dim and distant geek-land of which most people lack an atlas.
I think it might be the lack of any requirements for skill in tools that would be the stumbling block for many people - the idea that you could pick up a paint brush and slap paint on a canvas and say you have produced Art seems to hit the brick wall of common sense. However, you are not just splodging in a juvenile way, because what you should have formed in your head is a mature Art form, whatever that may be, and you are now using whatever tools that come to hand to produce a hard copy of that Art idea. When Jackson Pollock 'splodged' some paint on large sheets, he had a mature Art image in his head, but what many people thought they were seeing were there own juvenile art thoughts 'splodged', they expected Art to be painterly. Painterly, or fine art, is a mix of Art and Craft, the latter to a high level, the former to some level between juvenile and mature, depending on artist and his or her intentions.
What is really strange to me, is the problem that some artists have with commercial work, as if an external trigger for an idea is somehow worse than an internal one. At some stage, somewhere, every artist is supported by commercial work, even if they are living off family money, that money arrived in the family through some striving or other. Selling one's own Art is still commercial. Artists hating the fact they have to engage in commercial work is very elitist, does the worker in a factory have that choice, how many are blocked from their Art by their need to feed their family and because their education failed to instil in them a sense of their own Art? If an artist fails to create Art in their commercial work, they are not thinking enough about what they are doing, even having to satisfy the needs of others, even the strange requirements of the customer, is in essence an opportunity for more Art expression, no matter how bitter might be the task. Dislike is merely opportunity unrecognised.
Monday, December 1, 2008
My Bond Gurl
Continuing from my previous post, here is Ania being three very different people dressed in exactly the same clothes, and using props found around the home.
Choosing an odd number of objects is very powerful, more so than even numbers, especially if you intend to put things in a line. Three is especially important for images as they can form a triangle - the ultimate pointy object. Note that the chair and the ladder are both aligned along the sides of the Ania triangle, facing the most powerful person of that trio. Note also the slight separation of Geek Ania, a common feature of society, achieved by that area of bright wall.
Bond Ania is very exposed,and yet her crossed arms show her power, and with her sunglasses there is the mystery you will never really understand. Bond is the least safe, and yet the most desired.
Geek Ania, the isolated, is achieving new things, pushing back the borders of our understanding, she is dynamic but difficult to understand as she is always changing.
Passive Ania is like a rock, pumped full of knowledge and yet unable to create new knowledge with it like the Geek, or put it to use like the Bond. Being passive and consistent, she is easy to rely on because today, tomorrow and in ten years time she will still be the same.
Choosing an odd number of objects is very powerful, more so than even numbers, especially if you intend to put things in a line. Three is especially important for images as they can form a triangle - the ultimate pointy object. Note that the chair and the ladder are both aligned along the sides of the Ania triangle, facing the most powerful person of that trio. Note also the slight separation of Geek Ania, a common feature of society, achieved by that area of bright wall.
Bond Ania is very exposed,and yet her crossed arms show her power, and with her sunglasses there is the mystery you will never really understand. Bond is the least safe, and yet the most desired.
Geek Ania, the isolated, is achieving new things, pushing back the borders of our understanding, she is dynamic but difficult to understand as she is always changing.
Passive Ania is like a rock, pumped full of knowledge and yet unable to create new knowledge with it like the Geek, or put it to use like the Bond. Being passive and consistent, she is easy to rely on because today, tomorrow and in ten years time she will still be the same.
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