in a furious anger i have not known before in my life...

[DCDave]

i have to ask this, but why? i love the way this turned out, and to do it again without feeling it again would just be doing it again without my emotions embedded into it. i guess i kinda don't see the point.

Because art isn't just for you to express your emotions through? While that piece may have a lot of emotional investment and meaning for you, without a title or explanation, the casual viewer would simply see soda-can tabs hammered into a piece of wood.

but that's the thing, that is what it is. it is a bunch of soda-can tabs nailed to a piece of wood. i can't think of anything else i want it to be. it is my feelings as they came out naturally. here: look at it. it isn't supposed to look like anything besides how it came out of me. i can understand redoing paintins: the colors are not used properly. i can understand redoing drawings: the eyes are not even, the legs are too small. i can understand rewriting: i am constantly rewriting the dialogue, the plot, how i phrase things. my entire writing process is rewriting since i don't write any stories chronologically.

i can't see the point in redoing it. it isn't supposed to look like one set thing so why redo it? it would just look like itself, except without an emotional attachment to it.

So are you only creating the art for yourself? You don't seem to be interested in taking the basic premise of your work and reworking it to a point where other people than yourself have access to it without you explaining its meaning to you.

If you're ok with putting your emotions into your work so that it's validated to yourself, then that's a reasonable approach, but if you have something to say that might serve as a touchstone for others then I beg you to reconsider your approach and rework some of your basic tenets into approachable pieces.

Edit: I like the word tenet.

[Nickosaurus]

The way I look at it, as a humble artist myself, you've got to fully know and understand the rules before you can break them. If picasso had started out his career as a cubist his work would be a whole lot less interesting.

and I suppose that will answer your soda tab question with another question, what do you hope people will get out of it?

[TheVole]

it sounds to me like you're not creating art; you're showing people the results of your therapy session if you honestly can't look at it objectively and try to improve on it.

edit i love these fast-moving threads.  I hit 'reply' and by the time i'm done replying there are two posts ahead of me that say similar things.

[Nickosaurus]

Honestly, that's how I feel about it too. I generally only respond to art that is deliberate and roll my eyes at works that are simply cathartic for the artist.

[jordanmichael]

to be honest, i dunno how to start answering that question. i never really started wanting to show it to anyone. it just started with me being angry throwing a hammer around my basement because i knew i was around nothing really breakable or of value. doesn't matter if you fuck up concrete floors, if you can. after a few days i was thinking how it'd be cool to show people i knew. kinda of a "this is how i felt, and i want to show you because you are part of my life and i want you to experience this with me." i never really made it for anyone for myself, and for people i cared about . you are actually the first people to see it who didn't see it in my room, which is where i continue to work on it. i dunno if it "art" because everyone has a definition. i always thought it was just somebody expressing an idea, thought, feeling with other people. sometimes people get it and sometimes they don't. i dunno if that fits under some of your definitions. scott mccloud has a really broad definition of art. my art teacher doesn't.

[DCDave]

Scott McCloud is dumb.

So is your art teacher.

Find the ground in between, because I think, as many of us do, that you have interesting ideas, especially with your early work, and that those ideas can be translated into things that ARE approachable by others. Art isn't JUST emotion. It isn't JUST the moment. It's finding a way to translate that emotion and moment into artifacts of meaning. If you only create artifacts which have meaning to yourself, then your art will only have meaning to yourself, and your message will be lost. It'll be, as Vole said, a therapy session.

[Nickosaurus]

Until, ofcourse, jordanmichael goes off the deep end and creates nothing but manic outsider art, in which case he himself becomes the art.

[jordanmichael]

first of all, let's just agree that when somebody says "art is _____." it is an opinion, and not a fact. i am saying that for me as much as i am for you. i get on a soapbox and say "art is ____" often. second, with the therapy sesson i agree. it IS a therapy sesson. does that mean it isn't art? some people are bound to get it, and some people aren't. it is like that with every work. to be honest, i really don't think andy kaufman wanted to make anyone laugh but himself. he went on stage and pretty much said "this is what i think is funny. you can understand or you can not understand." some people understood, and a lot of people didn't understood. personally, i think andy kaufman was a fucking genius, a comedy still hasn't caught up to him in a lot of ways.

[Nickosaurus]

Well, I'm not going to say wether or not I think it is art, but I will say that I have no interest in it whatsoever in it's current form.

Perhaps if you thought of it as some kind of a "sketch" you could produce a more fully developed piece. Look, we've come full circle! I did it!

[jordanmichael]

okay, here is another example:
i walk into port prep yesterday and my friend mike is drawing something. it is this surreal looking man with one leg, one arm, and one eye. it has more now, but he is still working on it, and he just started it yesterday as i walked into class. the moment i saw him inking it i said "that's fucking awesome" because it made me feel an emotion that would evoke a "that's fucking awesome". it made me feel better when i was having a shit morning. he turns to me and says "it is supposed to make you feel lonely". i look at it again. one arm. one leg. one eye. one of everything. i see how he's trying to do that. would i of gotten it if he didn't tell me so early? i dunno, because he did tell me very early. but it did evoke some emotion. it made me perk up because i saw something i liked and saw it my own way. isn't that one of the cool things about art that is kinda up for interpreting yourself? people see the same art different ways. somebody might see my angry piece of wood as something that evokes a "that is fucking awesome" in them.

[John]

Jordan I think that until you actually want to see thing from others' perspectives - including your art teacher's - you're going to encounter frustration. Every time somebody suggests another point of view, you explain why no, you already have a point of view. Cool: your point of view's valid, valuable, etc. Now learn to see the value in others' ideas. Your work isn't going to lose any of its you-ness if you try doing it another way.

I feel certain I am wasting keystrokes here though because you're in full-on defensive mode. Open your mind is what I'm saying. Your complaint is that your teacher(s) aren't open-minded enough; be better than them by being more open, even to ideas you find noxious at the moment.

As far as I'm concerned one can't really learn much of anything without this mindset.

[Nickosaurus]

*snaps in a circle*

[coldforge]

Can I ask a possibly stupid question, which is, if Jordan you are so resistant towards formal art training or being told about how to make good art, why are you taking an art class (and majoring in art, if that's what you're doing)?

[jebreject]

John's OTM.  There's this dude in my lit studies class that's like that, to a really obnoxious degree.  He decries people for being closed-minded, but refuses to hear anyone else's point of view or admit that maybe someone's view is just as valid as his own.  This has proven extremely frustrating for everyone in the class, and even the prof has pulled him aside and told him that he needs to cut it out.  The fact is, Jordan, if you keep going through life this way, you're going to be brutally eviscerated (verbally, or through art, that is) by someone who knows more than you, and because of your reluctance to back down or take into consideration the other point of view, it will end with much humiliation and possibly tears.  Dude, you're young yet, and being young is the perfect time for thinking you know everything--but you have to get over that hump if you ever want to grow as a person.  Your opinion is valid, and so is Nick's, or Dave's, or John's.  Just because they seem to contradict yours doesn't mean that you need to get on the defensive; this whole conversation seems to be about something far more important than being right or wrong, so allow for the possibility for opinions other than your own to exist!  You will be better for it, I promise you.

[jebreject]

Can I ask a possibly stupid question, which is, if Jordan you are so resistant towards formal art training or being told about how to make good art, why are you taking an art class (and majoring in art, if that's what you're doing)?

Whoa, yeah, this is a good question.

[coldforge]

Now that I've asked a Good Question I can toss my hat into the ring and say that I completely sympathize with the Art is Everything crowd, in that I don't think it makes any sense to draw some line of demarcation and only let people of a certain kind into the art section. Art is easily made by everyone.

BUT. Just because nearly everything can be art and nearly everyone can make it, or perhaps BECAUSE of those facts, most art is still terrible. You can scribble something in shiny sharpie on a Van Gogh print, and yeah, definitely, that's art, no problem, hang it in a gallery if you can find someone to take it—but I still think it sucks. My taste is of course my taste, and entirely subjective, but my taste such as it is is to one degree or another predicated on classical (or merely human) notions of aesthetics, proportion, the sublime, et cetera. To my mind, the potential and universal entry for the field of art does nothing to diminish or alter my criteria for quality, and I suspect that most people have their own criteria—and these are things that can be satisfied by, yes, training, or talent, or skill; qualities that are in fact immune to the democratic ideal, and which might be enhanced by a firmer grasp of Michaelangelo's sculptural technique.

If, of course, you don't care about satisfying anybody's but your own criteria for good art, then my original question comes back. That's a totally valid position, but you can't express it on a message board, or in an art class, and be aggrieved when you come up against something that disagrees, and maybe even makes better art than you do.

[jebreject]

I want to adress the question of what art is, as well.  Yeah, when I say "art is ____", that's an opinion, sure, but that's not to say that there isn't some sort of objective criteria to apply, or at least, a consensus opinion regarding what is or isn't art.  Most of us would agree that the act of hammering a nail into a tree is not art, you know what I mean?  Just because everyone has seemingly differing opinions of the matter of what constitutes art doesn't mean that there aren't definitions or ways to quantify art that we can't all agree on.  This is an important concept, because if it weren't true, art wouldn't exist at all.  If no one could agree whatsoever about at least a general definition, we, most likely, would not even be having this discussion.  Definitions are useful, and, despite our possibly disparate opinions about the specifics, we all probably agree about the generalities.  I guess maybe the relevence to this thread is tangential at best, but what I really mean to say is that we can talk about what art is or isn't, and we will.

[jordanmichael]

Can I ask a possibly stupid question, which is, if Jordan you are so resistant towards formal art training or being told about how to make good art, why are you taking an art class (and majoring in art, if that's what you're doing)?

to be honest, i have been asking this a lot lately. at first it was to keep my opinions open as to what i wanna do, so i signed up. i am interested in photography and video, which are tought in the art major program, and i am interested in a formal art training with them. they need a formal art training. i actually have an issue with the classes because they aren't giving enough of a formal training as much of "this is how you edit film", "this is how you develop a photograph" but no real "this is how you convey ____" which is something i need help with. the same goes for english. i really want them to teach me about creative writing in english class, but they don't. i am just resistant towards a formal art training with the more 3D stuff only because i really can't see it. i am not too interested in making actual things. what i am interested in is just venting my frustration by turning it into something. it might not be for you, but that is what i love to do because that is my only way i can really vent frustrating in a productive way.

[Nickosaurus]

Jordan, how can you try to convey something if you don't know how to develop it yet? (I'm using develop in the literal film sense that you used it though it could be easily read other ways)


Also, it seems that you have chosen to ignore the other statements directed at you.

[jordanmichael]

Jordan, how can you try to convey something if you don't know how to develop it yet? (I'm using develop in the literal film sense that you used it though it could be easily read other ways)

i was trying to say they don't teach any theory behind anything. it is basically "here is how you develop film, now go take a picture of this". video production was worse. really obvious vocab like "medium shot" and "long shop", then they teach you imovie. thats it.

[Nickosaurus]

Also, it seems that you have chosen to ignore the other statements directed at you.

[jebreject]

See, you have to start with the basics, the foundations, and then you move on to the other, probably more interesting things.  Before you learn how to write, you have to understand grammatical rules.  Before you can learn how to take photos, you have to learn how to develop film, and the mechanics of the camera.  There is a reason we start at the very beginning, even if it seems obvious or, god forbid, boring:  to be able to really excel, you have to fully understand the mechanics and fundamentals.

[jebreject]

Also, it seems that you have chosen to ignore the other statements directed at you.

[jordanmichael]

i'm trying to cram in the rest of my homework and get to bed before midnight, so sorry, yes, i am avoiding a giant conversation right now.

[Nickosaurus]

le sigh