(Untitled)

[jovial_planet]

i only did the most important thing for tomorrow, read for the morning class.. i sat around all afternoon and messed around on the internet and ate snacks for dinner. i'm old, i need a break. what am i saying, usually when that happens i feel like i'm waiting around to die, maybe my "type A" personality is getting an A- or a B+. i don't know

Comments

[eigenvalue]

contrarily, the impression that i tend to get from student art and contemporary art in general is that it is rather sterile and academic and lacking in emotion and feeling. i often feel like the artist is not expressing anything, rather he/she is trying to find or to study or to deconstruct a certain means of expression, a certain color, a certain motion, a certain feeling, a certain atmosphere, etc.
the artist spends so much effort on making an original insight or an original observation or having an original style that he/she ends up not really expressing any feeling or emotion or opinion. i'm not sure if this makes any sense.

[jovial_planet]

I saw both kinds. To me, the more technical stuff was more encouraging to see, because I figured that they were art students, just like I was an English student, and we were both focused on perfecting our methods. I guess the goal is to express a bigger idea or an emotion, but it was a little repulsive to see those emotions prematurely, before the artist's skills had ripened. It was kind of similar to read a 16 year old's diary with unrhymed poems about slitting ones wrists. But I'm old fashioned a little. I like beautiful paintings that look like something I can't paint myself.

[eigenvalue]

personally somehow i feel like things like sincerity, and maturity, and emotional maturity are prerequisites to good art. there's a book by tolstoy called what is art? (or some shorter and more digestible excerpts) that has been very influential to my viewpoint.

[jovial_planet]

I don't think your viewpoint and mine are at all incompatible. Although I haven't read "What is Art," I do know that Tolstoy rewrote his major novels several times and was never satisfied with the product. This could mean that he was very interested in technique. Yet the best thing about "Anna Karenina" is that it is full of emotion. Good technique, I think, captures emotion very well