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2004-08-22 - 12:00 p.m.
See, I have a philosophy about my "art". My "art" being my pitiful attempts at being creative.
First, let me talk about my "art". I've always been creative. I've been drawing since I was a little kid, when I got in trouble with my Dad for drawing the Nazi flag as part of a sheet divided into four with four different national flags on it. (I was turned on [it being the late 60s] by the graphics of national flags, something I still like to this day.
Well, that's not unusual, a lot of guys draw as children. I remember drawing these big battles on notebook paper with a blue Bic stick (we didn't call 'em "sticks" back then, they were just "Bic pens"). I used a red Bic and a ruler for laser beams. Explosions, tanks, guys blown to bits. Hell, these days those kind of drawings would get you in trouble, they'd think you were gonna go all Columbine on 'em.
I remember copying the Playboy centerfold with colored pencils. Heh. A red-blooded American boy. And drafting class was one of the few classes I ever got an "A" in.
I've just always gravitated toward more creative pastimes. Photography in high school and college. Music. Painting in my post college days.
I just love to do creative things. And when it's at its best, the creative process is almost meditative. Like drugs, or reading fiction, a way of taking myself out of my circumstances. Being out of "the now". Free-associating. Dealing with feelings in an external way too, I guess. For example, most of my most creative times in the past have been when I've been in pain. Or at least what I thought was pain. My understanding of what pain is has changed considerably since my teen and early-twenties angst.
Jenny's death left me mute, creatively, for a long time. I couldn't even really process that for a long time. Jenny's death for me was/is a psychic nuclear holocaust. If you think of my mind's landscape, as a landscape of ideas and feelings, values, priorities, all those things which make up my being, Jenny's murder was the nuclear blast that wiped out my major metropolitan city. Like Hiroshima. It leveled everything. Leaving behind ruins and scars and people dying of leukemia decades later. But in its place a new city is being re-built. It's still inhabited, but its features are changed forever. Its citizens having to adapt to a new way of life. No going back to the old ways. And only a few landmarks left standing, and those have been changed almost beyond recognition.
Back to the "philosophy". My association with other creative people over the years, bona fide artists, people who are actively engaged in art, where art is their main endeavor, and beer fueled discussions with them and others, my own readings and experiences, viewing visual art, listening to music, making art & music, has shaped my own philosophy about creating art, and "consuming" art.
This philosophy, heretofore, not formally stated until now is, at least in draft the following:
Fundamentally, art should be accessible. That is, it should be capable of being consumed by your (my) audience without a great deal of encumbrance. You shouldn't have to buy or build a house with 30 foot ceilings to in order display art you've acquired. The enjoyment of art should not be limited economically. For example, you shouldn't have to pay $200 to see a theatrical production, or an opera, or a symphony.
Now I understand that artists need to make a living. Believe me, I've seen my share of "starving artists". And this would be the main reason I'm not an "artist". I've spent most of my adult life gainfully employed at a full-time job, and I don't see that changing until retirement. This, of course, leaves little time for active pursuit of the arts. Call me a "commie" but I think artists should be employed to create art. But, I guess there are all sorts of programs out there for that, like grants. But I object to the arts being mostly accessible to those with a lot of money. Okay, age-old problem. No easy answers. Lots of tradition. Resistance from the wealthy, especially "collectors" and successful artists... I'm just sayin'
Art should be accessible emotionally. It's my feeling that art is about feelings, about emotion. I believe art is an expression of emotion. I'm not a big fan of Conceptual Art. Conceptual Art has its place, I guess. Its academic. Maybe its useful for exploring what art could be, but as for my criteria of what art is, Conceptual Art doesn't do the work of art. It's an exercise. If your audience has to analyze your piece intellectually in order to take something away from it, I don't think it's working as art.
Likewise inserting esoteric symbolism or imagery also defeats the work of art. Unless your audience is familiar with said obscurities, you've wasted a dialog. You're "speaking in tongues" to your audience. That being said, one could say that two people who speak completely different languages are capable of communicating with one another through sign language, and pointing, and grunting. But the dialog is limited. Eventually, given time, these two hypothetical people could learn to communicate well, but this is dependent on one of the two speakers adopting the other's language. And one of the two will have to set aside their language and learn the other's in order to communicate. That leaves the non-adopter being the one incapable of being flexible enough, intellectually, to learn the others symbolism, syntax, grammar. I don't think there's a place in art for this kind of disconnect. This stance on the part of the artist, forcing, or expecting one's audience to learn your language in order to understand your piece is arrogance. What the artist is engaging in is not communication, not a dialog, but a lecture, a blatting, unintelligible loudspeaker announcement.
Art should be simple. Not simple, stupid. Simple, uncomplicated. The more "produced" sounding a particular rock song, for example, is, the less it speaks to me. I think one can get lost in technique. One loses sight of the communique, and the technique becomes the message. Virtuosity is not an end, in my opinion. In fact I reject the notion of technique over content. Nothing is so insipid as an artist who is a virtuoso of their medium, yet lacks an original idea.
I'm all for competence. For skill. But when one focuses only on the mechanics of the act, the means, then the end suffers. Piling on one brilliant layer after another obscures the foundation of the piece.
Ah, easy for me to say though. As I endeavor to create with little technique at all in any medium. Am I crying sour grapes? Probably. Do I have a right to decry the talented artist who is a prodigy in his medium. Yes. I do have a right. I have a right to an opinion. And I'll defend to your death my right to speak my opinion. Heh.
Having said all that, I am anything, but dogmatic. I will throw out my philosophy to embrace something which speaks to me, even though it violates my philosophy. Call me wishy-washy, but I never hold to an ideal which proves itself untenable. But these ideas are my philosophy, meant to apply to my own work. Though they shape how I view other peoples works, I can't expect others to abide by my opinions, and as I said, should I encounter another's work which appeals to me, I won't hold it up to my philosophy fully to accept it or reject it. After all, I could be, and probably am, wrong.
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So, how do you like them apples?