This round-up is based on my ‘’artist talk’’ session
held in NACC on Aug 11, 2017. It is just the elaboration of the outlines
covered during the artist talk session. Last year I read a pocket book, Is
Christianity a Hoax, which is a very interesting topic, so I borrowed its title
to apply here.
Great style is
a great disguise –
For an artist, the ability is much more important than
the style. I believe ‘’form follows function’’, or ‘’form follows content’’. If
so, an artist is not supposed to be restricted by any style. Actually,
‘’style’’ is the label mostly used by other people to analyze your works. It
might show up very naturally but we’d better not to ‘’design” the style. Great style is just a great disguise.
A real artist is an actor or an actress, when he or she finished a film (the
art project), just like took off a
disguise. Perhaps in the previous film, he or she played a role as a drug
dealer, but then in the upcoming film, his or her role will be a cop. We can
say either the ‘’drug dealer’’ or the ‘’cop’’ is just the ‘’style’’ of the
creation.
People may argue that lots of excellent artists or
actors/actresses are well known for a particular ‘’style’’ throughout the
history of art/film. That is the truth, but I think that is mainly because of
commercial reason, that by sticking to a particularly ‘’style’’ it might be
easy for one to stand out from the market, but I also think the great artists
or actors/actresses can master various ‘’style’’; and that ability to ‘’switch
between different styles’’ is vital.
We live in an era that ‘’specialist’’ dominates the
world, but back to Renaissance time, many artists are also excellent
scientists, musicians, etc., Compared with modern artists, old masters have
strong ability to control a great deal of variety.
Is it
necessary to have artist’s statement? –
Language is so powerful that it might be used to
manipulate people’s mind. A typical example of powerful language is the leading
question or suggestive question on the court. Attorneys are busy with
identifying and objecting to these types of questions on the court. Although
here we are talking about art, which has nothing to do with justice, or even
right or wrong, the subtle influence of language could not be underestimated.
Scholars, such as Elizabeth Loftus, have found out the
connection between suggestive question and confabulation in the legal setting
though. Any suggestive words, by verbal or by written communication, have
subtle impact on people’s cognition.
This might be more obvious regarding abstract art. For
example, an artist draws a few small black dots scattered around a big circle,
then he attached a lengthy statement to explain this drawing represents celestial
motion or comet hitting the earth, etc., we might immediately ‘’feel’’ these
dots are ‘’special’’ – they are not normal dots.
There could be a reason for us to think so. First, we
actually like ‘’lie’’. While on the court people dig the hidden truth, in the
art exhibition we are quite tolerant to the ‘vague things’. The court just
needs dry fact, yet the audiences of the art exhibition might unconsciously be
looking for sort of ‘’meaning’’ embedded in the art, something bigger-than-life.
However, do we search any philosophical meaning in Chopin’s Nocturne? I think
most of us don’t.
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong about
attaching artist statement, I myself sometimes also try to ‘’explain’’ my
artwork, but I’m just wondering if music can speak to us directly, why the art
can’t be self-explained considering it’s a visual language?
Artist is a
logic person –
People like to think artist is sort of ‘’special
species’’, or sometimes the profile of a ‘’psycho’’ seems to be much closer to an
artist. However, as we know, old masters in Renaissance time are very logic
people. In fact, putting abstract art aside, the starting point of art is all
about observation – proportion, angles, volumes, lighting, negative spaces,
etc., Even Picasso can give you an “abstract” bull, that’s only because, as he said,
I can draw as good as Raphael when I was a teenager.
If someone says, I cannot capture such realistic
object, that most likely because he or she didn’t observe well, particularly
for us modern people living in an age dominated by technology. Most of time, we
only look, but never observe. OR, we look at the outside world through camera
or mobile phone, but even the machine can record the reality in the most precise
way, it doesn’t ‘’observe’’ too. Sometimes, drawing is about geometric problem,
although nobody really uses the ruler to measure the angle between the eyes and
the nose.
So, Impressionism, Fauvism or Cubism, or whatever ‘’ism’’,
they are all rooted from the necessity of ‘’marketing differentiation’’, not
the deficiency of skill set.
What do you think about running an ice cream shop near
the beach? We can sell vanilla gelato on Monday, then chocolate gelato on
Wednesday, finally we will have an ‘’abstract gelato’’( in an empty cone) on
Sunday, but the most important thing is, we need to know how to make a real ice
cream at first.
So if we can
make both real ice cream and abstract ice cream, can we succeed? –
You need him – Ambroise Vollard. Just him.
Picasso said, ‘’The most beautiful woman who ever
lived never had her portrait painted, drawn or engraved any oftener than
Vollard…’’
So google him.
Finally,
today’s takeaway --
- 1. Learn from old masters: Peter Paul Rubens, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Anthony Van Dyck, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Ilya Repin(Russian), etc., -- They all can make real ice cream.
- 2. In the future, AI might take Artist’s job as around 50% of content will be automated. Check out this: Could a robot do your job? (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-08/could-a-robot-do-your-job-artificial-intelligence/8782174 )
Bonus in the takeaway --
- “Artificial intelligence and automation are coming, so what will we all do for work?” (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-09/artificial-intelligence-automation-jobs-of-the-future/8786962)
No comments:
Post a Comment