Artistic Process

art
Nobody's home! BoGoWo, I agree with you and Cav, that art is most fundamentally an emotional--I would add sensuous--activity. I would stress, however, that "emotional" includes more than the more surface or culturally categorized/recognized emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, happiness, etc. Many, if not most, emotions of art are more like "feelings" often indescribable and usually aesthetically powerful. As I see it, art's images and feelings usually come together. Art MAY, however be very sentimental but in the positive sense of Kollwitz's drawings and Tchaikovsky's music rather than Kincaid's painting and John Tesh's music. I DO appreciate Portal Star's and Vivien's insistence on the importance of intelligence for the making and appreciation of art. But, with so much intellecutal writing about art we have come to think of art as an intellectual activity. That's like seeing the experience of having a baby as a scientific activity because so much medical science has been written about the process.

Actually, for a good number of years, intentionally showing emotion or peronal feelings in your art would have been seen as crass. This is especially true of neoclassical art, under which history paintings were considered the pinnacle of great art and had intentional didactic purpose. (Yes, I -am- taking an art history class on history painting right now ).
I know what you mean about having so much analasis of painting. We also tend to historicise paintings - for example, Van Gogh probably wasn't thinking "I'm going to make paintings that show I'm a maniac," but because we know so much about his personal history, we read that into his work.

"How is your degree going? what are you working on currently Portal? is the site working yet?"

My degree is going well, thank you. I am working on figure paintings (taking a figure painting class), antique maps (for commercial reasons), and a rather annoying digital time art (film) class. Why is it annoying? Because the teacher thinks minimalist conseptual art, especially minimalist conceptual socio-political art, is not just the best, but the only kind. And he doesn't allow linear narrative.
Other than the video class, the artistic endevours are going well, I've mostly been working on my technical skill, but I'm on the eternal quest to try to unify logic and reasoning into my art while keeping it interesting, entertaining, meaningful, and profitable.
Sorry, the site isn't up yet, my friend is a putz. It's still on my agenda, though.

How have you been doing?

portal-beware. Youve gotta walk a fine line between just sponging the stuff you need from the minimalist digi instructor. youre probably well enough into your degree to know how not to be jaded by these "uni directionalists" who just so happen to see themselves as approaching a pinnacle.

MFA doesnt preclude "bullshit"

I guess ive said enough times, Im an ex academic in the sciences (chem -geology) and i took a bFA as a "fun" degree after better training as a kid from some really important artists.
I learned early that the more words used to describe ones conceptual art has almost an inverse relationship to its value. (IE more bullshit, less art)

I tell you, I hATE the pre-raphaelites. Well, I was taking a series of art survey?history courses and was stuck for 3 semesters with the same prof, who, it was my misfortune to have recieved one of my diatribes about pre-raphaelites being great for illustrating "uncle Wiggly" books. I was spouting off while she was behind my back , i had to work so very hard to achieve a decent grade from this wombat.

We must quietly respect our instructors in their presence and in their earshot, so that our tickets may be punched without raising the bar too much.

Many times college interferes with our educations


PS, tell us more about your antique maps course. Whats the syllabus trying to accomplish/

art
Portal Star, how do you find time for us. I remember when I was in art school I had to choose between being a good student and having a life. I chose the latter. By the way, my reference to the emotional and sensuous basis of art--as opposed to the sterile conceptual basis for your video art teacher's orientation--refers, or should have referred, to emotional expression as essentially unconscious. The work is an expression of the whole person, and, most important of all, as I noted elsewhere, the painting is itself "expressive" in the sense that it is capable of evoking aesthetic feelings (and emotions) in the onlooker, and they may not be the feelings of the artist. It is not the gross process of an artist saying to the onlooker, "look at this depiction of my emotions." The power of the painting is its ability to serve as a stimulus for the onlooker's own creativity. This is one of the reasons I especially enjoy making and seeing work that is more or less ambiguous (how's that for an ambiguous statement?). The work must not be "confused" in the sense that they do not evoke a definite aesthetic response from me, but they must also serve--like a rorschak test--to conjure other feelings from onlookers.

Excellent JL couldn't agree with you more. Yesterday I had my students pick out different paintings from books and tell everyone how the paintings made them feel. It was a very productive class.

Farmerman- Don't worry, I'm not taking the video class too seriously.
Sorry, the antique maps is not a course, it's a job. I am producing them for the commercial market - it's an ongoing freelance job. It's pretty fun, actually. I take an old map, (someone else) traces the geography onto watercolor paper, I paint it (my own way), scan it, and then edit it, balance the colors, and add custom features in photoshop - do all the text, scan in other watercolor images (compass, border, decor, etc.). I'll post one some time if I don't get my site up (which, on a side note, my friend says he'll have up today...I can hope.)

JLN- Yes, I am very busy. I also made the semi-mistake of taking two writing components in one semester... So Iv'e been a bit stressed lately. I post while I'm eating in-between my classes, or when I'm slacking off . I used to want to double major in Biology, until I found out that taking both labs and art classes would be the death of me.

truth
For sure, PS. I used to advise my students--those who were having GPA problems because they were taking on too many classes--that it was better to underload themselves and strive for quality (they could always make up units in summer sessions).

jln - I agree about the ambiguity/mystery - I too don't like everything delineated and 'given' but like mysterious 'lost' bits and the onlooker having to do some work and use their mind a little, this isn't something that only happens in modern paintings either is it? - a close look at a Rembrandt shows wonderful ambiguous mysterious areas and sheer paint quality that knits bold marks together to create forms.

Portal - glad everything is going ok. Oh i hated tutors who had such narrow tight agendas - hang on to 'you' through it. Just grit your teeth and get all the useful knowledge you can out of them. It is so important to come out of a degree as an individual with your own voice.
When i started my degree everything was expected to be abstract and it was only towards the end that representational art made a come back with quite a few students producing very very high calibre representational (from photo realist to semi abstraction) by sticking to their guns and getting good degrees. The degree show was a really healthy mix of abstraction and representation and all the work was very different - a couple of years before that you virtually couldn't distinguish between some of the students work because they were working to please the tutor rather thanbeing true to themselves.

I've been rushed off my feet with the Open Studios event here as i was doing the brochure and with a group of friends was coordinating the various groups taking part. it went really well. It is now over thank heavens but i still have several upcoming exhibitions so am still rushed off my feet! (not to mention kittens ...)

I'm also doing a my level 2 teaching certificate which will open up more teaching posts to me.

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Vivien, the teaching certificate's a great idea!

...I believe some of the best learning can come from situations where there is a clash of ideas and methods between students and teachers....It either solidifies and makes you defend your position or rethink it and capitulate!

Farmerman....I love those awesome pre-Raphaelites!

I know his work, he was comissioned by the museum of my school - the blanton museum - to do a piece for them after the Hopwood affirmative action decision. Must say that I agreed with the decision wholeheartedly, and the school didn't, and instigated some really stupid admissions policies, so the work has felt trite to me ever since. It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it functions well as a series - it loses it's meaning.

Here's a topic we were discussing in class, and I'll start a new thread about it: How does one measure the quality of political art?

His canvas was huge: eight by twenty feet. Pollock
didn't work from drawings or colour sketches.
He came to the painting like a boxer stepping into
the ring or a priest approaching a ritual - fully
prepared, instinctually aware.......

"When I am in my painting......when I am in my
trance, I'm not aware of what I'm doing....I
have no fears about making changes, destroying
the image, etc. because the painting has a life
of its own. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess".....Lewis MacAdams and Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop,
and the American Avant-Garde