Archive for April, 2009
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Tom Again
Gave it another shot. This drawing came out exponentially better, so I’m pretty excited for the pastel layer. Enjoy.
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Tom the Model in Pastel
So this is Tom, the male model my class and I have been drawing almost exclusively since September. You may recognize him from that portrait I did in oil about month back. The first picture is the “skeleton” of the drawing done in vine charcoal. The latter photo is my first layer of pastels. I went a little crazy with the color in the shadows, but that’s okay, because I’ll get another two days to either try and fix it, or start new ones. Enjoy.
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Rant 02: State of the Art
I’d like to tell a little story. Around Thanksgiving time, this past year, I was at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA. There they have a few pieces on loan from the L’ouvre. Unfortunately, their L’ouvre collection has diminished since the original showing. However, they did have this fantastic Vermeer original that I got to look at. The reproduction to the left does it no justice.
Though the painting is no bigger than my laptop screen, I was blown away by the immense technical skill and detail Vermeer exhibited. I had to get literally within an inch of the painting—which would have been a big issue to less apathetic guards—to see any brush strokes. I’m not saying that a lack of brush strokes is better, but it is certainly testament to the Vermeer’s skill. I must have spent about half an hour gazing in awe at this masterpiece. I had to stop, not because I got bored, but because my mind was fried from so much information assaulting my optic nerves.
I walked out of the room feeling so good about art and straight into the modernist section. I can’t remember exactly what the piece was (I’d prefer to forget), but it looked like a Robert Motherwell piece to me. I just remember looking around to room and thinking to myself, “Really? Four-hundred years and this is where we’ve come?”
I’ll just come out and say it now, I hate modern art. By modern art, I’m referring to the Dada period and every subsequent movement. I’m not adverse as a result of ignorance, I understand the concept completely. Since the Renaissance period, the goal of painting was to simulate photo-realism: atmospheric perspective, impeccable anatomy, advanced color theory, etc. Then in the mid 19th century, new photochemical processes resulted in the advent of modern photography. Now, at the click of a button, a photo-realistic environment could be simulated in two-dimensional space, the exact goal of painting.
This caused painters to have a bit of an existential crisis. Now that photography was accomplishing the painters’ goal with ease, they either had to die out, or reinvent. Clearly, reinvention was the preferable option. To reinvent, painters ask themselves, “What is painting?” It was this question that fueled the quintessential examples of “modern art.” This is all well and good, but in resolving this existential crisis, painters tried to push the boundaries of what art is, essentially dismantling the standards that had governed painting up until then. At first this was considered “avant garde,” but later artists, such as Marcel DuChamp, showed that this lack of standards was allowing for more and more questionable, and even ridiculous pieces to be considered art.
Paint spatters? Blue squares? Urinals? Are we really okay with this? Maybe I’m alone on this, but I’ve always considered art as something that represents a higher level of thinking and doing. Call me an elitist, but I feel that it should not be something anyone can do. Pre-modern art used to be awe inspiring, to the point where you’d get within inches of the surface and wonder how the hell they did it with out tracing. I am not inspired by squares, lines, drips, or splatters. Perhaps the saddest thing about all of this is that many of the artists dishing out this crap are fully capable of actually taking time and producing something… well… good.
A friend of mine, Jason Howard, and I were talking about the effect of gangster rap on young kids one night. After a lot of back and forth, and citing what few references we had on the subject, we came to the conclusion that art isn’t proactive, it’s reactive. In other words, art doesn’t make the picture, it reflects it. Art is shaped and defined by its worldly context. It’s this viewpoint that makes me feel that determining standards, as a culture, isn’t stifling, but beneficial. Standards don’t put art in a box, because relevant art is always in a box, and irrelevant art is in many ways negligible. Standards will only give art and artists a push in a certain direction. The standards we have currently are also giving artists a push, but in a way that facilitates art like the work of Cy Twombly to be hung in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and others.
I think my instructor Tom Leonard said it best, “This is a point in American history where painting asphyxiated on its own vomit.”
I bet you’re asking yourself right now, “Okay, if we need standards, then what would they be?” I’m so glad you asked, because I’ve made a little checklist to figure out if a piece should be accepted as art.
- The piece exhibits intellectual/emotive prowess
- The piece exhibits creative prowess
- The piece exhibits technical prowess
I think the last one is most important at the moment. This list is meant to be objective and entirely independent of whether you “like” it. Truth be told, some of this abstract crap floating around is aesthetically pleasing, even to me, I just wish it weren’t considered art. So then, I bet you’re asking, “What the hell do we call all the things that don’t qualify?” I would call these things “media.” So now you’re asking, “What the hell is the difference?” Well, chill your shit, I’m getting to that.
All art is media, however not all media is art. Media (in this context) is defined as the following: the main means of mass communication regarded collectively. To further define, as we all know the word media is plural for medium, which is defined as: The intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses[...] Now, art falls into this category, however should also, in my opinion, carry with it the former stipulations.
So that’s the long and short of it. I’d love to hear your opinions on the subject, O loyal readers.
xoxo,
Jon
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Please Remain Calm
Don’t know if you guys noticed, but the site went down for a couple days this week. It was a mixture of my extreme hacker paranoia and my computer breaking, hence me lacking the software to fix it. At any rate, I’ve been working hard and have a few new pieces up. Unfortunately, now that I’m working bigger, photographing my work is far more difficult. Because of this, I have a few finished pieces that I’ve yet to add to the site. Stay tuned though.
xoxo
Jon
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Sideshow Poster (Unofficial)
