i'm not saying it all right. aaaargh. glbah.
lately the problem of the timelessness of art versus the statement of critics and those who write high school english textbooks, that is that "no art is born in or can live in a vacuum," has come back to bother me. i woke up this morning remembering i'd never fully resolved the issue. there's the assertion from some that no artist creates anything independent of context; even when one believes they have escaped their environment, have erected something completely free of the marks of hisher world, they have only proved and acknowledged that context was an issue in the first place. ideas and art history theses concerning modernity and artists striving to defy the so-called confines of their time's norms and structure come to mind. it's an artist struggling to break his frame, his box, maybe. but then again, there are those who have embraced this issue with such vigor it becomes the art, as we're all familiar with...
i keep thinking about jasper johns. what did he say, about his flag art...that it was so nice to have an image already available, so he didn't have to think about creating one, ie so he could focus on the paint itself, the form and its creation, on its own...but then, interestingly, people saw his work as being so important for his time. it's considered pop art or modern art but....hm. i wonder, is this about the disparaging views of artist and audience. anyway.
(and also...johns and rauschenberg were partly reacting to america's mostlyembrace of the abstract expressionists...ee)
to dadaists, i'm not sure if context was important. i realize this sounds grossly ignorant, that dada in germany and austria was founded partly on a vehemently political view (one arguably even at times superceding the art itself, as the attack on art for art's sake seemed to assert), but...it's funny, because the illogical part of it, or the ability to make something outrageously "unpleasing to the eye" or "anti-aesthetic" art seems to be a different attack, on the notion that beauty is an eternal value. a lot of dada asserts that beauty value and art value change, are victims of social and political and historical variables...and then makes fun of this by trying to prove such values will always change, thus rendering dada art appropriate, even passively acceptable, in "another" time period, when the aesthetic norms will be radically different. but dada would not necessarily say that so potently (or at all) without its context of currently failing to live up to our standard of beauty or "pleasantness." hm...context as canvas. argh!
a lot of artists appear to at least initially "villainize" the sociohistorical view, see it as a perversion of the one pure expression left to the individual. ...
i used to think it was perfectly reasonable for an artist to reject the statement that "no art is born in a vacuum." it seemed an understandable, appropriate reaction from the artist--it is arguably reacting in the only appropriate way possible for the artist; specifically, in a very faulty, very flawed, very selfrighteous (or perhaps selfpreserving...), very human way. it is offensive or stirring to an artist. heshe may want to believe something so grand as "true art" (hm) cannot be reduced to rubble given context and change, the fickleness of eras. it renders it a weakling, powerless--or embarrasses the artists who want to believe their art is controlled only by themselves. it's insulting, in a way. to some, anyway. i could understand that, even while realizing it's a personal, human sadness that maybe doesn't stand up in a vaster view. maybe. you want to believe in the lovely, highsoaringlofty, and downright youngfeistyandnaive (? downright?) vision that "art is art," and that's the point in itself. other conversations are just dabbling and nitpicking on that which doesn't matter, that which "doesn't concern the artist," if you accept the idea that the artist's responsibility is to present visions and render things in a way (what way?). or, that his job is to "be," if i'm drifting to cummings. :) (which i often do to a fault, like many other naive kids just like me... :)
and then there are the artists who embrace the concept of dependence on context, and see it as another variable or medium to work with, an immediate and potentially problematic and therefore potentially satisfying one, like paint or scratches in stone...this is a supposedly common view for the conceptual artists. maybe.
"always a maybe."
i'm not done yet. with this. but i have to go to work now; i'm sorry notebook. i'm late.
/
ps. why didn't it keep my edits to this post? anyway, since it didn't and i've tried to fix some of them a second time...sorry for any inconsistencies or gross injuries to grammar (yes, i see the glaring comma splicing/misuse of the semicolon, yes. as you know if you're familiar with my journal, i batter the language vulgarly with my overabundance of lonely, dependent clauses and dangling prepositions. and i just never subconsciously "accepted" that the third person singular corresponds with "his" instead of "their." i am sorry.). ee. and of course, my faulty logic--it comes with my rambling and morning wake up musings. also part and parcel with these installments of scatter-thinking are my jumps and gaps in explanation, jumbled (dis)organization of thoughts, and redundancy in other areas. it's always either too scant, too repetitive, or quite misplaced. oo. :/ oh this my tattered notebook. :b
i keep thinking about jasper johns. what did he say, about his flag art...that it was so nice to have an image already available, so he didn't have to think about creating one, ie so he could focus on the paint itself, the form and its creation, on its own...but then, interestingly, people saw his work as being so important for his time. it's considered pop art or modern art but....hm. i wonder, is this about the disparaging views of artist and audience. anyway.
(and also...johns and rauschenberg were partly reacting to america's mostlyembrace of the abstract expressionists...ee)
to dadaists, i'm not sure if context was important. i realize this sounds grossly ignorant, that dada in germany and austria was founded partly on a vehemently political view (one arguably even at times superceding the art itself, as the attack on art for art's sake seemed to assert), but...it's funny, because the illogical part of it, or the ability to make something outrageously "unpleasing to the eye" or "anti-aesthetic" art seems to be a different attack, on the notion that beauty is an eternal value. a lot of dada asserts that beauty value and art value change, are victims of social and political and historical variables...and then makes fun of this by trying to prove such values will always change, thus rendering dada art appropriate, even passively acceptable, in "another" time period, when the aesthetic norms will be radically different. but dada would not necessarily say that so potently (or at all) without its context of currently failing to live up to our standard of beauty or "pleasantness." hm...context as canvas. argh!
a lot of artists appear to at least initially "villainize" the sociohistorical view, see it as a perversion of the one pure expression left to the individual. ...
i used to think it was perfectly reasonable for an artist to reject the statement that "no art is born in a vacuum." it seemed an understandable, appropriate reaction from the artist--it is arguably reacting in the only appropriate way possible for the artist; specifically, in a very faulty, very flawed, very selfrighteous (or perhaps selfpreserving...), very human way. it is offensive or stirring to an artist. heshe may want to believe something so grand as "true art" (hm) cannot be reduced to rubble given context and change, the fickleness of eras. it renders it a weakling, powerless--or embarrasses the artists who want to believe their art is controlled only by themselves. it's insulting, in a way. to some, anyway. i could understand that, even while realizing it's a personal, human sadness that maybe doesn't stand up in a vaster view. maybe. you want to believe in the lovely, highsoaringlofty, and downright youngfeistyandnaive (? downright?) vision that "art is art," and that's the point in itself. other conversations are just dabbling and nitpicking on that which doesn't matter, that which "doesn't concern the artist," if you accept the idea that the artist's responsibility is to present visions and render things in a way (what way?). or, that his job is to "be," if i'm drifting to cummings. :) (which i often do to a fault, like many other naive kids just like me... :)
and then there are the artists who embrace the concept of dependence on context, and see it as another variable or medium to work with, an immediate and potentially problematic and therefore potentially satisfying one, like paint or scratches in stone...this is a supposedly common view for the conceptual artists. maybe.
"always a maybe."
i'm not done yet. with this. but i have to go to work now; i'm sorry notebook. i'm late.
/
ps. why didn't it keep my edits to this post? anyway, since it didn't and i've tried to fix some of them a second time...sorry for any inconsistencies or gross injuries to grammar (yes, i see the glaring comma splicing/misuse of the semicolon, yes. as you know if you're familiar with my journal, i batter the language vulgarly with my overabundance of lonely, dependent clauses and dangling prepositions. and i just never subconsciously "accepted" that the third person singular corresponds with "his" instead of "their." i am sorry.). ee. and of course, my faulty logic--it comes with my rambling and morning wake up musings. also part and parcel with these installments of scatter-thinking are my jumps and gaps in explanation, jumbled (dis)organization of thoughts, and redundancy in other areas. it's always either too scant, too repetitive, or quite misplaced. oo. :/ oh this my tattered notebook. :b