Discovering Perspective

I've had a difficult time responding to the challenge of defining art. If it cannot be defined then how can anyone say something is or is not art? The problem is that if art had a definition, it would have a formula and if you input the full list of criteria, voila, you have a work of art. Except, that is contrary to the entire concept of art.

During my recent trip to Italy, I had the opportunity to see some of the lesser or unknown artists of the Renaissance along with the big names (you know, the Ninja Turtles). If one were to define Renaissance Art as being a Biblical subject matter painted or sculpted in an idealized form with reference to Greco-Roman style with an humanist message. (A simplified but decently accurate definition) These criteria held true for the Masters as well as the unknown works I saw. True, I could point out certain "errors" in the works of the unknown artists, but one could do the same for the Masters.

Mekki was asking me about this the other day when trying to understand my current painting in progress. I am fooling around with cubism since I have never attempted it. He made two very good observation that show how much he's learned about looking at art and that I am at least somewhat successful in my attempts at cubism. First, he did not recognize the object being abstracted until I commented on, what to me was obvious, the female figure. That would be a problem if I were painting realistically, but a compliment given my chosen style. The second observation was that the light source isn't consistent. Again, a compliment given that cubism involves the deconstruction of objects and space and multiplicity of frames of reference and time. Changing light sources is one means of expressing this. Following my explanations of why his comments were valid for cubism, he asked:

"How then can you tell between a successful painting and one where the artist just had no talent for consistent lighting or realism?"

There is most definitely a difference, such as the difference among the works of the Renaissance artists I saw. But I don't know how to explain the difference. The best I could come up with is the honesty of the expression and the intention. Even honest mistakes can be considered art ie. Henri Rousseau who's naivete and untrained talent was celebrated. But how is an outside viewer to distinguish the difference? How does the artist even know? I guess a key player in art is intuition, for both the artist and the viewer. Bad intuition is then what is most often criticized, assuming that the work is at least an honest attempt at being art in the first place. Intuition is what leaves the vagueness to the definition. I guess this doesn't help much because then what we have is intuition fighting intuition so how do you tell which is right? It does, however, mean that there is a possible absolute meaning of art, we just can't ever know when that is. But it does not mean that "whatever someone thinks is art is art" (which is everyone's first comment to me on the subject) it only means it is what their intuition thinks is art. So I can fight you and you can fight me and that is why critics are so arrogant.

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Here is one definition of art I came across while looking for help.

This one is a bit harsh but does bring up that I have been attempting to describe art as meaning "high art". Analogous is my distinction between art and artistic.

Mekki and I watched the Xena musical episode The Bitter Suite (season 3, episode 12) last night as part of our ongoing Buffy discussion. Since he mentioned that Buffy was the first to do a musical, I've pointed out the two Xena musicals (1998 and 2000) and the one on Chicago Hope(1997). While looking up dates to verify that it wasn't just that they got it out first, I also came across various other series that fooled around with musical episodes and I'm sure this list is far from complete.

I Love Lucy: "Lucy Goes to Scotland"
(CBS) Feb. 20, 1956

The Dick Van Dyke Show: "The Alan Brady Show Presents"
Dec. 18, 1963

Happy Days: "Be My Valentine"
(ABC) Feb. 14, 1978

Happy Days: "An American Musical"
(ABC) May 21, 1981

The Love Boat Follies
(ABC) Feb. 27, 1982

Chicago Hope: "Brain Salad Surgery"
(CBS) Oct. 15, 1997

Xena the Warrior Princess: "The Bitter Suite"
(Syndicated) Jan. 31, 1998

Daria: "Daria!"
(MTV) Feb. 17, 1999

Pepper Ann: "You Oughta Be in Musicals!"
(ABC) Sept. 11, 1999

Xena the Warrior Princess: "Lyre, Lyre Hearts on Fire"
Jan. 17, 2000

Ally McBeal: "The Musical, Almost"
May 22, 2000

Buffy: "Once More with Feeling"
Nov. 6, 2001

You can see by the increase in occurances from 1997-2001, that musical episodes were becoming a common ratings gimmick. Especially if you consider that the last two examples fell during May and November Sweeps, respectively.

Making tonight's music selection makes me want to go back to Italy. In my usual over preparedness, I brought a dozen CDs with me and never opened the CD wallet after the Toronto airport when I put Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk into my diskman. I listened to it everyday on the bus and at night to escape from my roommates or the hustle and bustle around me so that sitting in the Piazza Navona was me and the Four Rivers and in Venice it was me navigating through a canal of masks and Tori became the unintended soundtrack. Its a strange combination of happy and sad which often compliments my mood.

I feel lonely lately but have no desire to be around anyone. I want to go home but I don’t want to leave Ottawa. It’s been a tough year for me and I don’t think it is getting any better, actually, it seems to be getting worse. I keep thinking get through this ‘cause the rainbow is over there but the sun changes angle as the rain clears and the rainbow fades after the briefest of glances and I’m left with mud. You can only be smacked in the face so many times and fight back even fewer times. I keep expecting certain things to solve my problems, but they rarely do.

I don’t know what to do. I’m still positive about the future, I still dream but now with that nasty voice in my head telling me that the pattern doesn’t seem to imply that that is what I will get. I really hope all this makes me stronger and not the alternative. Oh, yes, I’m a smart cookie, but my intelligence doesn’t seem to apply to anything. I see and think too abstractly.

I don’t think I want to stay in Ottawa anymore. For Masters that is. Time to move on, short attention span and all. I’m thinking Toronto. I like the Carleton approach and all, but I’m bored. I learned what they wanted, gave it to them, got good grades, challenged it, got not so great grades. The whole thing is ironic since what they want is challenges but only within their definition of appropriate challenges. Everything is a formula and once I learn the formula and how to apply it and when it doesn’t apply, I’m ready to move on. I think that is what has happened as far as school is concerned. In the other aspects of my life, there are a few more complications and variables that I will likely be working on mastering for a long time to come. But some of them scare me. What will I do when I’ve figured them out too?

So if you’re by and you have the time, tell the Northern Lights to keep shining. Lately it seems like they’re drowning. So I went by ‘cause I had the time. Told the Northern Lights to keep shining. They told me to tell you they’re waiting.
-Tori, Amber Waves

So strange. Woke up to a world that I am not a part of except when I can play its stranger… After all, what was I really looking for? And I wonder when will I learn. Maybe my wish, knew better than I did and I wonder when will I learn? When will I learn? Guess I was in deeper than I thought I was
-Tori, Strange

The big move was Saturday, the unpacking was Sunday, settling in is today.

It's starting to feel like my place. I'm not always tripping over the step into the kitchen and I am starting to be able to navigate my way to the bathroom without thinking too much. I still search for light switches, though.

I was terrified when I got here on Saturday and thought "what have I done?" The water heater is loud, there isn't much air movement, there is no ventilation over the stove, the freezer is tiny, the closets are musty, there are lots of little cracks and the entrance is really ugly. It's weird how you miss things like that when you are looking for an apartment. You get so sick of looking and there are only so many things you can think to check. But I'm feeling better about it now that my stuff is here and I don't have to live out of boxes anymore. And I like the Glebe.

The neighbours are under the impression that Mekki is living with me. "How cute, a young couple and their first place together." Which is better than the cashier at the grocery store yesterday who replied "Wait 'til she's pregnant" to Mekki's comment about enjoying pushing carts. Both our jaws dropped. Oy!

But, plans are in the makings for a party. There is a school yard nearby for ultimate and another one for basketball. I also have access to the backyard though it's not that big and I don't have lawn furniture but it can be byochair or sit on blankets. Mekki is bringing over an extra t.v. and gaming consoles for the summer while my roommate is gone and her room acts as living room, so the guys can be happy. I will send out the details as soon as I decide what they are.

That would have made life easier for art history. It gets annoying always writing out Constantinople. Why? That's no body's business but the Turks.

(What can I say? I've had the song stuck in my head recently)

The lease is signed and I move in on Saturday. It's not my ideal apartment but it is mine; My name on the lease, my stuff where I want it, no one to accomodate (at least for the summer). . . Anything but my old apartment and living in someone else's space. (I am very grateful to Mekki and his family for taking care of me these past few weeks but it drives me nuts. After having lived on your own, it's not easy living with a family)

This is an ongoing conversation and point of debate with Mekki and I haven't been able to clarify absolutely the difference between shock for shock sake and shock for art sake.

The twentieth century saw the death of painting and the rise of the Modern movement. New is good, old is bad. an inevitable dogma given the Industrial Revolution with applications which extend beyond the art world but had significant and visible manifestations in what is called art.

The Futurists worshipped the machine and new technology as the new god. Coincidentally, the death of painting coincided with the Death of G-d. "There is no G-d" , there is no art. And, well, if you were able to ask Michelangelo or da Vinci, or Brunelleschi, I think they would agree. Art was an affirmation that man was made in the image of G-d. G-d created the Heavens and the Earth and man, unlike any other of His creations, could create with art.

There are several interesting issues at hand that I am fascinated by such as the Second Commandment and its interpretations by various religions at various points in history and the famous Renaissance arguments of Plato vs. Aristotle and the definition of the ideal. But that is not the discussion for this evening.

For this evening, the issue is what is art now that it is not about, for, because of G-d and that the artist isn't risking being burned at the stake for heresy if he does something out of line? The answer of 'anything new that hasn't been done' is a bit paradoxical. Conforming to nonconformity doesn't work. That's why the "Modern" movement and all subsequent periods have been relatively short-lived. The art world has been in a back-and-forth contradiction for the sake of contradiction similar to the rest of the world. Modern, Historical, Post-Modern, Post-Historical, Virtual, Abstraction, Super Realism.

Art is about passion and truthful, honest expression of that passion. The "New" refers to not wanting to be influenced into doing something a certain way but discovering it for yourself. If I were to sit down and paint a copy of the Mona Lisa, that would not be art. It might be artistic and might show a talent for painting, but not for creating art. If, however, I were to decide to paint a portrait of a woman and was passionate about finding a way to imitate the way one sees the world and realized that as objects recede into the background, they fade and blur in a somewhat smoky manner and expressed that by painting something that ended up being a copy of the Mona Lisa, that would be art.

My Rabbi once told me that there is a blessing for having discovered something that a great learned man had previously discovered. I wish I knew it as I have felt that realization many times before, especially in my architectural studies. When I solve a problem with a design that I later learn was one of Le Corbusier's or Mies van der Rohe's innovations, I feel I have truly created something. It may have been done before and therefore already existed but I re-created it and I credit it as an artistic accomplishment.

Now the difficulty of clarifying seeming contradictions. Art is something new that has been done, for, Shakespeare himself plagiarised Ecclesiastes and admitted that "there is nothing new under the sun." It's not really the "newness" of something that makes it art but the intention and reason for the "newness". If it is for the sake of doing something different because it is fashionable to do so, it is a gimmick and not art. It's a fine line that I experience with my studio projects. Everyone in studio has that desire to do something new and have something flashy to show at crits but that is not the point of studio. The point of studio is the process of resolving a concept into a building. I constantly challenge my manifestations wondering if they are earnest vivification of my concept or just something that looks cool. It's not an easy thing. The majority of what we present in our final crits is not art, often they are gimmicks that you know will sell. It's sad, but true and sadder still is that it will be even more true in the real world.

And so, I question the motives of any proclaimed artist or work of art. In the real world, despite even possibly good intentions, I think most mainstream "art" is sell-out shocks and gimmicks hopefully with at least the occasional glimmer of true expression. Give them what they want not what you think they need. It's a matter of priorities and it's difficult not to chose the make a decent living. I don't necessarily blame people, I will likely end up going down that path. Few true artists will ever get paid for their true works of art, only those who sell themselves long enough to be told "Here's the money, do with it what you want, we don't care, it's under your control." (Have I mentioned I hate money and the real world) Hopefully, at least with the money made from selling yourself, you can afford to create art for yourself.

That, in a nutshell, is why I can't accept Buffy (the specific topic that brought about this elucidation), or mass produced digital art, or pop music, or whatever Hollywood movie (Matrix, namely), or Oprah bookclub novel of the month, or flashy new design for whatever big budget building, etc. as art. Maybe the director or author or designer or architect or whoever truly is an artistic person and wanting to express themselves is what drove them to pursue their field but most of the time that is not what they end up producing.

Architecture has made me a highly critical person. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. I can still enjoy the things around me, I'm just much more cautious about what I am giving it credit for.

I think it is pretty accurate.

Finally got some of my work put together in a short Power Point slideshow. That means it takes a while to download and it is mainly graphic stuff for MekTek purposes at the moment, but a full and proper portfolio website is in the works. It's also a bit picky with Mozilla because, surprise, PowerPoint seems to prefer IE. It will be fixed soon, I promise.

I'm somewhat amused by getting to tell people I'm homeless because it is so unexpected. That is why I'm otherwise not amused by the situation.

I apologize in advance to everyone I come across for the next few weeks because I am very irritable though I'm trying to recognize that it's not really other people I'm irritated with. I feel completely disorganized. I have no idea where any of my stuff is in the pile of boxes that fill Mekki's garage. I'm positive that my models are all going to get destroyed by the humidity and from the precariousness of their perch. I don't like not having an address to forward my mail to or a phone number for people to get in touch with me, which further complicates trying to find a job. I hate imposing on Mekki's family though they insist I'm not. I'm not looking forward to spending hours looking up for rent adds and calling around to narrow down a list of twenty possibilities down to two.

I'm just overall grumpy.