Art

I’ve explored the world of independent art a lot more in the last few years and I’ve realized I have a genre I heavily gravitate towards… Takato Yamamoto, collages by FFO, Loputyn… all of these artist who seem to find inspiration in splitting open beautiful pure bodies, and mixing flowers in with their bones and blood. They are provocative and violent and yet somehow they still feel so innocent and ethereal. Snow White skin stark against crimson organs and jagged bones. Soft faces with sad eyes, attached to unabashedly naked bleeding bodies. Something about that resonates with something deep inside of myself. I don’t think I’ll analyze it too closely. I’m just thankful to know that there are people out there in this world who feel this too- and put into paint/pencil/collage, what I can’t seem to find the words for.
Sometimes visual art is a language that even poets cannot translate.

I've wanted to create a few large sculptures for about 8 years now. When I first had the thought of them I was living on the streets in another country. I started actively making decisions to build a life where I could create them 7 years ago this coming April. I've allowed stress and pleasure and acquiring resources to totally derail and reshape my plans a million times since then. But, consciously or unconsciously I always marched in some way along the line that would lead me to all the space, tools, time and funding it would take. Now that I'm basically here though, I don't like my life and I don't necessarily feel the same way about the pieces or the world. I feel like everything was just spinning endless samsaric gears into nothing and like all I want to do is burn my house to the ground and go back to wandering around again. Each day is a struggle to turn off my mind so I don't run away a few steps into the plateau I've spent nearly 7 years struggling to reach. If I don't build them this summer I don't think I'll be able to maintain for another year.

Art is nothing more than juxtaposition. You want realism, take a photograph; you want surrealism, learn Photoshop. It's never been easier to mimic, or harder to create.

My urge to create has been almost entirely extinguished. I don't know where it's gone to, all I know is that every time I pick up my stylus, I'd rather stick it in my eyes rather than make something.

And that's depressing.

People often are really condescending about modern art.

I wish they knew how much it killed me inside every time they make comments to that effect.

I would first like to preface what I'm about to say with this statement which I firmly believe: If you suck at drawing, either you haven't practiced it enough, or your practice was misguided.

(the latter part is key)

The extent to which one has an innate talent for it is the extent to which they immediately had a (conscious or not) sense what drawing really is (the ability to ignore how you perceive the world, and draw what is actually there instead, or would actually be there if not real), and therefore are guided correctly in the first place.

(By the way, on a similar note, as it perhaps fits my overall argument on why I love conceptual art, I could define art itself as "the process of revealing some truth that it takes an artist to 'see' ". Drawing is a subset, wherein the revealing is rendering, the truth is how things actually look to the human eye, and it takes a trained artists eye to see that truth beyond how the human mind warps perception. But any art can fit well into this formula: Music reveals via performance an emotional truth that it takes a musician to hear... etc.)

That said, I have always been, since before I can remember, a fantastic artist with lots of that "innate talent", far beyond the level of my peers.... up until now. (I go to a highly competitive art school now... and gave up drawing anyway) This isn't to say, obviously, that from the womb I could draw photorealistic portraits... I certainly look back at stuff I did, say, before high school and laugh at how much i've improved since then. The art I did in first grade is surely worse than anyone here could do now, but at the time I was praised all over for my talent.

My point is though that art, in so far as technical ability is concerned, is something I've never found that challenging... either to do well or to improve in.

To some extent, that's no longer true: I've finally hit a wall where in order to improve to a final, professional level, I'd have to invest more effort than I've ever had to before.... and I don't want to. I've become tired of it, and the fun has been sucked from it for me.

But in high school, I had a great art teacher, who got me to think in different terms, and... I'm not even sure how anymore, but he bred in me a love for conceptual art.

THAT is when art came alive for me. THAT was where I found the fucking MAGIC.

The... point of it all, it seemed. Even if I drew a perfect portrait of someone... that was just a slightly more elaborate doodle. Conceptual art MEANT something. Had magic in it.

I've had enough art history classes now where I can see a piece of some sort of "classical" art and note interesting conceptual things about it, given the trends at the time or historical references embedded within...

But I still find them wickedly, wickedly dull.

I don't care how masterfully Caravaggio rendered the chiaroscuro in his tenebrism. I still find it too boring to really be that beautiful.

(that was just an excuse to use the word tenebrism properly in a sentence, btw... ;D)

I won't be so cocky to claim that I could have done it (what Caravaggio accomplished in any one of his works), as, well, I've had to recreate masterworks as class projects before and it's DAMN hard and I didn't do all that well in my or my professor's opinion. =P Even so... I still don't find the technical ability to be... that special for some reason.

Also, modern art museums are so full of life. They're fun. It's like going to the most surreal place on earth, like a playland for adults. Modern art encourages you to explore and play, if not outright interact.

Classical art museums feel like coffins for pictures of dead people and Jesus. And sorry, but I don't give a fuck about dead people or Jesus, and don't much cotton to coffins either.

So if you're one to sneer at a modern art piece you see at a museum by saying that you could have done it, and I'm around to hear it....

I want you to know how it crushes me. Telling me the magic I see isn't real. It seriously messes me up for days.

The "I could have done that" defense is utter bullshit anyway.

My college currently has a display of the best high school art work from the area in its art gallery.

Most of it is great, outrageously impressive, meaningful art.

But on the furthest wall from the door is a piece named iHeart.

It is the epitome of scenester art.

It has an Ipod playing a Paramore song, with headphones that make a heart, and the rest of the piece is raindrops and lightning bolts and clouds and rainbows and stars.

Oh, and the lyrics from Paramore songs.

My friends and I were desperately trying to make this piece of "art" have a meaning.

"Maybe it's about consumerism?" "I think it's saying that we are better at listening than communicating." "She's trying to give a message about our generation."

We decided we were trying too hard. The girl was probably more like this: "Oh my gooooooddd. I love Paramore so much. It's like they totally get me, ya know? Like, my ipod is totally my life, like, ya know, right? Like, I really think staaarrrs describe who I am right now, ya know? Like, they are sooo misunderstood, but they like, they don't even care. That's just soooo me, riiiiight?"

Oh God. Makes me want to die inside.

I rather enjoy other people's art. I love looking into what they may or may not be saying. Not to analyze it, but to appriciate the supposed effort behind a beautiful painting or the hours of labor to create this wonderful sculpture out of limestone. But what i love most of all is the art that my young coz gives to me. He's eight years old and for holidays he gives everyone a picture he drew. For my brithday a few years ago, and this picture is still on my fridge, he drew two vehicles, I'm guessing two cars, probably hot wheels, that are driving through the grass over lakes and so forth witha green blue sky and a big yellow sun. On the back there's a poem that reads "Roses are Red / Vils are bile / ereboty is sweet / isplsle you" Granted this was a few years ago, his spelling wasn't too great yet, but the message is still there. Some times the art can be portrayed in the misspelled words and that's almost more adorable than anything else.

Art is life, it portrays life and the expirences there in.

Art is not just what’s in a museum. Color is not just a mix of the primary red, yellow, and blue with varying amounts of white and black. Art history is not just the grade you received on a test. Art is life: it’s flow, scenes, people, the “unreachable”, the beautiful, and the ugly. Art is expression: it’s colors you’ve never seen but have felt, shapes that the canvas doesn’t deserve, and the idea that keeps you going and stops you at the same time. Art is organized chaos: it’s the Pollock splatter style that can make you grin or cry, the Van Gogh floral that makes you feel peace and pain, the Raphael faces that can make an atheist believe, and the Michelangelo ceiling that makes your jaw drop while you crane your neck. Art is what you cannot say with words.

Art just happens. I saw it tonight, walking home with my boyfriend and my dog. The dog decided to use the open space of an empty lot to do one of his favorite things, run. Since Bonzo (the dog) was running, and Owen (not the dog) was holding Bonzo's leash, Owen was running too. I trotted behind, trying to keep up. Bonzo danced and spun around Owen, and the broken glass coruscated against the black pavement, making it seem as though the heavens had fallen and flipped 180 degrees on the way down. And it seemed as though that had happened just so Owen and Bonzo could dance there.

Tell me that's not art.

What is "art" is the crap I churn out using mathematical formulas and pixels art or can art only be something that has been implictly created to be creative.

My art will never be as meaningful as the old masters, and never as meaningless as Dada. If I don't aspire to one extreme or another, where do I go? My short answer to the problem is to renounce the title "artist," but that seems cliche somehow. Maybe it's just because I'm a perfectionist without the patience to further develop my craft.

nothing that i say or do is art...my body is not art...my breath, my lack thereof, my slight of hand, my consumption, chemistry, my verbs in use....

convince me...

others would tell me different..

the contradiction is infuriating...