Yes, Tomkitten....but I suppose that the argument is that with the new computer technology, learning technique takes on a whole new ramification.....
Art and antiques
Well, I wasn't thinking about computer art. That's a whole new world, and totally different.
the word technique carried a whole load of baggage and preconceptions with it
I think it is important to learn the various ways that you can use and handle paint, the marks and gestures and accidental things that can happen- and then go and find your own personal voice and way of utilising them.
Some people rely too heavily on particular techniques and their work becomes predictable and unimaginative.
Painting is a visual language and a wide vocabularly is essential.
Art
Vivien - You are so right. And that's how people like Thomas Kincaid (sp?)
get so well known (aside from the heavy advertising, of course). They don't have to waste time on new and different subjects or approaches; they sit in their nice little rut, and can be thoroughly mechanical, without worrying about imagination and such.
Of course, Kincaid has his stable of subordinates which speeds up the process further, but doesn't add anything...
Kincaid'e ears must be burning!
incidentally, when i started my degree and we had our little pep talk at the beginning, one of the key things the tutors wanted us to clearly understand was that it was now 10% talent and 90% hard work ....
Art a subject
Or, as someone else once said, 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
This is as bad as quantum physics
...well, I don't believe there is any formula.....
Yes Vivien, or Gauguin. I think I will quit being
a Sunday painter and go live on the islands....
now there's an idea!!!!!
art
Is art a subject or an ability? For the art historian it's mainly a subject, for the juror or critique it is mainly an ability, but for the artist and the viewer of art it is mainly an activity.
Well, now, ability is a complicated matter to me.
I have taken many many art studio classes, and then I later took another twenty five or thirty classes in landscape design which is also, at best, an art. In Los Angeles one can do this kind of thing after work for years, losing immense amounts of sleep, which is the time when one gets one's homework projects done.
There were people in my beginning painting classes who I thought quietly to myself were just straightforwardly inept (who did I think I was, eh?) and others who seemed to zip right into realistic portrayals of the models, and I guess I was somewhere in between, but among the "accomplished" ones in the room. Over time though, I remember one particular guy whose work seemed incredibly stiff, worked out his own kind of style and his work got more and more interesting. And I grew less impressed with the facile folks, less judgmental, really of either facile or awkward, more interested in, sometimes, parts of work that were just wonderful.
Years later in discussions with colleagues teaching landscape design, some of us concluded that some people with clear, immediate, facility tended to coast on that. No, of course not all. But that facility in, say, rendering form realistically, doesn't necessarily make interesting painting or... art, or thoughtful or exciting design.
art
VERY interesting comment, Osso. In one of my abstract art classes there were a number of people (one was a professional and others had taken these classes for years) who did interesting things right off the bat, really attractive things. There was an older man, in his eighties, who rarely produced interesting forms, but when he did, WOW! I could not say he was as talented as the "more facile" painters. They were more consistent and more skilled than he, but when he hit his homeruns, I think he created images clearly above the best work of the class. The problem is that he didn't always seem to appreciate what he had done. I think it was false modesty because when I told him of my responses to his good works, he seemed to be trying to suppress a smile.
That makes me smile too.
And on whether the Art world in general is a place for one to fit in? If you are trying to sell your work to make a living at it, that becomes a serious question. For making art which is expressive of you and your continuing observations, who cares. I do agree with (I forget the name now, Twisted Lyricist??) that knowledge of past artist's work and basic techniques is a good foundation; some of it can be learned though as you go along, by looking at work that interests you at the time. The internet is a tremendous help in this, though of course it isn't the same as hearing music in person, seeing a Pontormo in person.
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Osso, I think I've said before that I seem to learn more from the examination of others' work than from the technical things I've learned in art classes. I also develop my particular (slowing changing) taste, inspirations, from that on-going examination.
my mind keeps playing the life of Picasso. An outstanding draftsman, he was able to slowly carve away the unnecessary amounts of "pre-Raphealite" painterliness and finally get down to the essence of what he wanted to say. Even in his years as an elder srtist he just kept smashing those barriers. I think he was a child at heart and never attempted to grow up. His personal life showed this he was a selfish centered adolewscent till he died.although. mailers book seems to press that Picassos best years were his youngster years
art
Farmerman, I've always had this perception of Mozart (before seeing Amadeus). He was not as innovative and experimental as Picasso, but SO prolific and he virtually secreted masterpieces with a profound lack of self-consciousness.
