im gonna talk about art a bit (it’s long so i put a read more)
so for a very long time (western; idk about others) art was about making a representation of reality- like the more realistic your art was, the better, + also symbolism, making the subject happy etc were also important. but so was how good it looked, which is why composition etc and later light were big, because the point of an artwork was 1. look like something and 2. look good
and some people were like hey! i don’t really want my art to be of something. i don’t want the subject to be the most important bit of my art. i want to make light, or emotion, or the process of making the art, or me the artist, the most important part. i can make art that looks good without it being of something, or with the focus on something other than what it’s a picture of. and the people making traditional art were like nooooo. you cannot do that. your art is Bad. new things are bad. thomas edison was a witch. etc.
but then the newer art forms (modern art) became basically the dominant form of art. the art that becomes famous. that sells for millions. the art that critics adore. no one cares about old art anymore. it’s old. da vinci still sells for millions, but if someone as good as him came along in 1970 no one would give a shit, because they’d be making old art.
and modern art cares more about idea than result- da vinci and michelangelo and van gogh are famous because they made goddamn beautiful art. warhol and pollock etc are famous because they did stuff no one did before, they came up with ideas that were new, and people copied them + were influenced by them, but did not come up with ideas quite so new and different
but the thing with rewarding ideas- everyone’s gotta do something new. you can’t do what someone else did, even if it’s incredible, because someone already did it. and so contemporary art is moving increasingly further from “a picture/sculpture of something which looks like the thing, and which makes you feel something positive when looking at it”. like there is a hell of a lot of art made with the intention to shock- art of gore or nudity or literal shit or whatever, art that gets recognised because it makes you feel something, even though it makes you feel sick or scared or whatever. so basically the art world is going through its scene phase.
and you can go to university and learn to make this kind of art! you can learn to make an idea, and to write a gallery description, and to give your work meaning, and it doesn’t matter what it looks like, because you’re being judged on your idea. how does this relate to you as an artist? what does it mean? what is the symbolism? how do you communicate your idea? why did you decide to do this?
i do not want to learn how to make that sort of art. this is why i draw something:
- i wanted to
- it looked nice
and this is what i want to learn at university:
- how to make nice looking art
- (composition, light, technique, anatomy, how to draw stuff)
and i know that at many universities that would not be what they’d teach me. that is not the art that would become famous. that is not the art that critics love. i would not become famous for making art that looks nice. if i make art that is beautiful, that any person who saw it, even someone without an art education, would be like damn that’s nice.. it would not be Good Art.
which is pretty hypocritical in a sense, because firstly, modern art itself, and any new form of it, has always been criticized by the people who made art before it. so to only like One Art (ie modern/contemporary art) when all sorts of beautiful art has been made, at all points in art history, is kind of dumb. and secondly, people who were good at the sort of art i like when it was popular (ie da vinci) are still popular. but if i made that sort of art now, it would not be popular. they’re famous because they used to be famous, and even if you’re as good as them, you won’t be famous because it’s not The Art That Is Popular Right Now.
wow that was a long rant. accordign to word it’s 748 words, which is longer than some stuff i’ve written for school. wow. anyway that’s most of how i feel about art right now. also im still pissed at the art teacher i had last year because she loved EXACTLY the sort of art i hate so yeah