So
I've been wondering lately if the creation of art must necessarily be an alienating experience - something that isolates and drains the artist. Sometimes I sense that the leech is just beginning to suck my blood - that if I ever gave myself over to it fully (which I feel I must to do something remotely great) I would destroy my life.Does the artist truly have to use himself as a living wick if others are to have light? Or is this all just bleeding heart bullcrap? How can I create in honest profundity without pushing those I love away?
(Maybe you're wondering why this, after a month of no posts, is all I have to offer. Well, the reason is simple. This is all I have to offer. I'm a blank at the moment. A useless, scared blank. I'm sure it'll pass, so come back a little later.)
posted by Lian at 11:57 am
12 Comments:
Although i belive true art can be taught i don't think it can be easily replicated.
Sounds contradictory i know but i think that it is about doing the hard yards over years before one can do truly great art.
If you did produce great art without intent is it art or luck?
Can it be both?
10:18 pm
Personally, I think it has to be both. To me, good art cannot be all control. It is much more about a kind of Platonic discovery. Certainly, the experience and craft you pick up through hard work and life experience enable you to more effectively uncover the form (a shard of it anyway) - or to uncover more difficult and heady forms. Whatever the case, i think there is some sort of brief reaching or stepping out of the world in grasping after these forms that is very alienating.
9:50 am
ya i don't think self annihilation should have to enter the picture. when a woman gives birth she doesn't die (not usually-it's not her intention at the start), but rather glows far more than she could've imagined afterward. i think art must give life. but in the midst of giving birth is some of the greatest pain a woman will ever edure. but i wouldn't know cuz i am a man and have never given birth to a baby. those woman sure like to scream and cry and look angry and all that crap.
7:26 pm
Seasons. Art goes and comes in seasons. Yea I agree that you need hard work!! AND all my favourite artists had other qualities like passion, not just for art itself but for things that look and sound to their liking even things they didn’t create. Also, talent.
This is what I really think - people who say My art are idiots. Art is bigger than me and it’s impossible to pursue because every thing that can be created already has and we can only mix it up in different ways to make us feel like were creating something (to be like God).
Funny that’s what Lucifer wanted at the very beginning.
Show us your art!
corey
10:44 pm
why do some (musos for example) produce very naiive but powerful and moving songs when they are clearly not experienced in years or training (Sufjan, danielson, joanna newsom, for example), but others, also not experienced in years or training (most others) are simply unlistenable (to put it nicely. is art that is comfortable also art that is not interesting enough for a second or more viewing?
10:51 pm
There's definitely a need to endure the pangs of honesty. I've been confronted recently with the allure of writing/composing/painting etc what we WANT to see rather than what we DO see. Both, of course are inherently subjective but the first is ultimately shallow because it does not draw us out of ourselves but encourages us in our selfishness. That's why it's so hard to listen to or look at or read.
10:57 am
chad! that is why i think art is us trying to be like God. self fulfilling garbage! i dont get art any more, when your good, people tell you that your amazing and that it changed their lives but feeding the homeless is more worthy than that.
in regards to what we want to see! what if what i want to see is God and i sing or paint that. i recon art is also about the doing like i want to put in my best worthless effort in honour to God.
i dont like art at the moment though
so just laugh me off.
ps chad your art is good i enjoy it and i realy think God does too which is more important.
corey
11:03 pm
Late comment, just a note really: I think the image of "the great artist" that you're using comes historically from Romanticism, and just happens to not have really ever gone away.
The Romantic artist is a result, I think, of a very particular view of the self, one which emphasizes heavily the side of subjective, attached and egoistic experience.
That's all. :)
-dan
1:30 pm
Thanks Dan. I see what you mean. I think the more recent emphasis, as you say, on subjectivity, is certainly at work, here. Although, I would say it has passed beyond the romantic period and perhaps "infected" many other contemporary forms of art. Also, I think there's a tendency for creative geniuses to have a hard time relating to others in a healthy way - not in connection with their art per se, but merely as a bi-product of being so abnormally gifted.
PS Is that really you man? (DE?). What's goin' on?
11:49 am
chad (+ everyone else + hi erika!)
Yes, that was my point. A tendency to view artists (and for artists to view themselves) in some sense has its origins in romanticism, but which still thrives today.
There definitely is recent art which tries to move away from this. Some minimalist art tries to limit the ego's role in the artist creation. John Cage's chance compositions, Steve Reich's tape loop phases...
And, yes, it's me, DE in the non-flesh. I'm living in Cali at the moment. Waiting on (possible) acceptance letters from grad schools...
I like your blog.
-dan
3:52 pm
let me try this again and make it make sense. i meant to say:
...A tendency to view artists (and for artists to view themselves) which in some sense has its origins in romanticism, but which still thrives today....
bye.
3:54 pm
So, what of the naif?
1:05 am
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