art & quality 11: the personal fabricator

so let us continue with science a little bit more.

already we discussed science giving us some insight into what we might perceive as quality in art, through the field of bioaesthetics.

but there are other developments in science which ultimately could change the art world dramatically - so i believe.

one of these developments is called `personal fabrication' (or digital fabrication, fab lab, rapid digital prototyping, whatever). let us suppose for a moment that there is such a thing as a personal fabricator (called a pf, for sure) at our disposal. in the following posts i want to explore some of the remarkable consequences for the art world that i see arising out of the pf.

these consequences also shed a light -i think- on the discussion on art & quality today.

but it is really past my bedtime, will be continued, good night (to myself, is the most sensible interpretation i realize)

brave new world

aldous huxley, brave new world (front cover first edition, 1932)

lately i'm reminded regularly of a book i read when i was 16: brave new world by aldous huxley.

its relevance to what i'm pondering on is multiple in character, i believe. so perhaps i will be able to weave its themes into this art chautauqua (a word robert pirsig uses for his story in zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. indian word, beautiful, world of difference with the anglo-american word `blog'.)

summarily, i think brave new world tackles the issue of where modern society wants to go and is going. what drives human beings and societies? where does this logically take us, if there are no direct hamperings?

if i as an artist want to reflect on human values, societal values, spiritual values, then the question is whether i can do so completely from within, or whether i am always part of a group, many groups, this society.

probably not only my way of sharing/touching deeper layers will be co-determined by these groups, but also that what i perceive on some (sub-, semi-, or fully conscious) level to be the most relevant issues.

and, to continue partly with the previous thread on quality and art, generalized pagerank etcetera, it goes without saying that the societal appreciation of my art endeavours also influences me and my creation process.

[all this in my not so humble opinion...i feel better repeating from time to time that my insights are just that: personal insights, not overwhelming general truths].

famous artist or not: take this test

ok. test yourself here: http://reverent.org/great_art_or_not.html . with pain in my heart i reveal that i only scored 67%. missed out on 2 famous ones and 2 infamous ones...

but the question would have been better put differently, since there are many works by famous artists which i do not consider great, which probably explains the 4 mistakes above (all the 4 paintings that i missed out on didn't impress me very much, all the paintings that i thought interesting were by great artists)

still, why not do tests like these regularly, i like to take them even though i'm often mistaken. of course, one would have to look at the real works...

[but still, i remember seeing works in the dali museum in figueres which were exquisite, hanging next to works which could have been painted by any 15yr old with a rushed assignment for art class. to me famous is no guarantee at all.]

semi-anonymous art: just a painting

just an artist, lago

enjoy.

quality and art legitimization: anonymous art

anonymous artist, mare de déu amb el nen

anonymous art is exempt from artist legitimization. it speaks for itself mostly in terms of what i would perceive as quality. [but see the previous posts on quality & pirsig]

as promised in the previous post, i see 2 obvious ways to prick through the excesses of art & artist legitimization which seem so abundant in the current art `scene'.

the first way is to take an artwork, and present it stripped of any additional information such as who made it, when was it made, what is the price etc. then let people take a shot at valuating the art work.

the second way is to forge a work, supposedly by a well-known `master' artist. and then again let people take a shot at valuating the work.

both ways have been done, with interesting results (works by chimpanzees hailed as profound, forgeries disputed until the forger gave demonstrations...)

i get the impression that modern artists are marketed like brand names. the artist's name comes first, then the work. this influences what type of art is being made. if art were to be presented anonymously, i believe we would get other art works. better art works? i don't know. what is better? it's an even more difficult question than `what is good?'.

but the purpose of this post is mostly to express why an artist need not worry about legitimization, if (s)he knows her/his `stuff'.

if you know your stuff, the inner qualities are bound to come out. it may take a while, a long while sometimes, but i do believe that the appreciation of inner quality is something sufficiently shared by people to allow recognition in the end.

what remains for the artist to be done? deepening inspiration, approach, technique, ambition maybe - ambition in the expressive sense i would say, but perhaps ambition in the social sense is a good motivator too. personally i get very tired of all the competition mechanisms that modern society seems to embrace with such abandon and without much reflection. but you reader will have guessed as much if you read more than one of these `quality & art' posts.


co ngo, untitled

quality & art: artist legitimization

so what can one do. sure, there are a lot of interested open motivated people out there in the art world. still, probably also because of the oversupply of artists wanting to claim their 15 square meters of exhibition space, there is an issue -to say the least- with what i call artist legitimization.

here we have all these important people in art, busy communicating their views, busy selecting important artists, busy buzzing or doing something worthwile (yes i know, terribly subjective, i know i know i really know...but still). and what on earth will induce any member of the art elite to spare time and attention to an artist?

`send me your resume please. i cannot begin to look at work of every artist wanting to show in my gallery. a good resume is essential.'

so i'm looking at artist legitimization from the opposite direction. does the artist know what (s)he is about? suppose so. then don't hide your light under the bushel. who knows how to paint? how to sculpt? how to draw? in such a way as to open doors and windows to the heart? don't let gpr-driven people put you down.

still, noblesse oblige, as they say. it may not be necessary to become as adept with art historical references, language, knowledge of (modern) art (hypes) as the people who claim to be able to judge an artist's work. but it certainly doesn't hurt to look beyond one's own work, it doesn't hurt to be able to put one's own work in some perspective. and it doesn't hurt to be able to prick a needle through the many balloons that are blown up around art.

what makes a rothko so valuable? mostly gpr (although i'm quite a fan myself). there are ways to expose much of this gpr-balloon. and this has been done, clearly, shockingly, more than once. artists can benefit from knowing these ways, i think. if they sense their legitimacy within, then they will be less easily subjected to gpr-legitimization blues. will address this in the next post.


anonymous artist, mare de déu (detail)

art, zen, inner compass & bioaesthetics

hakuin ekaku, mount fuji and eggplants

so what makes the above painting/drawing tick? i'm not sure it even ticks for me. must see it for real. these internet reproductions definitely fall short. am i strange to notice a large similarity with matisse?

somewhere, i think many famous `modern' artists (say past 1900) have been striving to attain some purification/simplification, the results of which have zenlike qualities (imnsho).


henri matisse, music

zen, experiencing of reality and quality before rationalization sets in. art...can also be experiencing of reality and quality before rationalization sets in.

but what does this have to do with bioaesthetics? i think it depends on points of view, definitions also (always the definitional problem which has to be dealt with if you are limited to words). but modulo that, there is much to be said for the idea that certain visual effects/images/colours/symbols/... work on our limbic system, pre-rationally or at least para-rationally.

but is this a static phenomenon? i'm convinced this is not so. developing visual sensitivity, developing visual libraries, developing visual emotionality...is both an ongoing cultural process as an ongoing individual process.

an insect reacting differently to different colours of flowers already shows us that bioaesthetics has a solid basis in biology. by solid i mean, verifiable and easily understandable. to skip to the human level, one only has to look at movie stars...they are invariably quite above average handsome/attractive/beautiful. well, according to what handsome/attractive/beautiful means i suppose. but bioaesthetically, there is quite some knowledge at what human beings consider to be handsome/attractive/beautiful. and again this knowledge is solid in the above sense. symmetrical face, good physical shape, good sexual shape. all is usually explained in terms of the current ideas of `offspring optimization' or `the selfish gene' and similar.

but you and i know that beauty is just skin deep...or is it? what about beauty of the heart, the mind, the soul? many artists appeal to the bioaesthetic kindergartenlevel. nice face, nice tits, nice ass & pussy, even the abundance of the naked female torso in art (headless! limbless! to me associating mostly with brutal crime) which can only -is there another explanation?- appeal to our reproductive sex bioaesthetical level. yet a stiff dick is taboo, and explicit sexual imagery is labeled pornographic and shunned.

one would not believe, i really mean this, how much an artist who addresses higher levels (although, what is higher, but see this in the light of higher mind functions, higher emotions etc) of bioaesthetics has to explain to `lay' people, in comparison to artists who produce yet the next mutilated female body.

so, inner compass? yes, of course. it is not in any sense objectifiably better (by its nature!) than generalized pagerank - outer compass, but the balance in modern society between inner and outer compass to me seems very much in need of restoration.