Well, I do believe intent is everything
....experimental or controlled, the artist
directs the final composition.....
I've been thinking about your argument, Shepaints. You do representational work (and extremely effectively, I must add). This suggests to me that your intentions must be quite explicit or specific before you enter into a project. I can see how this would apply to landscape painters as well, except that Osso's work is sufficiently abstract that she is probably able to improvise a lot during the development of a painting. My more abstract efforts permit me to begin a project with very general and vague goals, like "making something aesthetically interesting or powerful" but without any idea of specifics. Let me ask you, can the artist's intentions be unconscious as well as conscious? Can a general "hope" for something beautiful be included in what you mean by intentions?
Personality may have something to do with this too. I walk around in space generally unintended, yet with my antennae out.
I suppose I am trying to say that in my opinion an artist is sort of like an editor who makes a series of decisions as the work progresses. Even if the process is quite unconscious, at some point the artist makes conscious decisions based on his or her intentions for the work.....
yes I agree with the decisions/editor arguement - but sometimes when things are really flowing these decisions are made so smoothly that you are almost unaware of making them I feel
I remember seeing a programme once about ?alpha brain waves - someone whose brain registered their use incredibly more than most people came up with idea after idea after idea in answer to the challenge 'what can you do with a few bricks' - most of the audience could only come up with a limited number of suggestions.
Sometimes I think we all switch into that mode, whereas she did it constantly. I don't make decisions in a clear illustrational way, but do aim for certain moods or the feel of wind or approaching rain/whatever and work towards that. A lot of what happens is at an instinctive level though and i certainly couldn't explain prior to starting a painting just how it will look when it is finished - it is like jazz - each mark and colour a response to the others, building and changing,
I see, Shepaints. I thought you were talking about a more or less complete planning process BEFORE the actual application of paint to canvas or paper.
Vivien, your jazz analogy is right on the mark. When things are flowing smoothly, I assume I'm in a "right brain" mode of consciousness. (actually it's always both sides of the brain, and they always work together, but there are states in which one side is dominant).
I don't generally write when I'm uninspired. It's not really that I feel I've 'lost my muse', I'm just uninspired. I took some advice from other writers and tried doing theme exercises, which were suggested as a good way to get over writer's block, but most of my theme-suggested poetry sucks, plain and simple. I find that for me, the best way to get over writer's block is to just start reading again. Then, I let the 'jazz' flow.
It is said that all writing is semi-autobiographical, but at the end of the day, I don't really care if the reader 'gets' my original intent, only that they 'get' something out of it.
Cav. I agree with your statement: " I don't really care if the reader 'gets' my original intent, only that they 'get' something out of it." This also applies to my painting efforts. If a work is rich in possibilities it will provide opportunity for many to "get" something out of it. If it's one-dimensional, it has only one point which they'll get or miss completely. The latter is the meaning, as I understand it, of superficiality.
cavfancier wrote:It is said that all writing is semi-autobiographical, but at the end of the day, I don't really care if the reader 'gets' my original intent, only that they 'get' something out of it.
Umberto Eco, author of 'The Name of the Rose', said:
Quote: I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.
I love poetic effect.
Nice quote. I'm actually a big Eco fan myself, JoeFX.
I'm only starting in Eco's work. The Name of the Rose promises a lot, and I mean a lot. I spend more time looking up words in the dicitonary than reading the book though.
It's a really good book, and actually, the movie wasn't too bad either, but of course, it lacked a lot of the subtlety of the novel.
It's a fantastic novel, as is Eco's " The Island of the Day before".
