What is this?
2019 10 27 | journal
When certain schools of modern art came to the fore in New York in the 1950s or thereabouts, their whole raison d'etre was to remove representation entirely from the work so that art existed in its own right. The reason for this was so that people could, and hopefully would, experience the art in and of itself - appreciate the colour, the shapes, patterns. It wasn't supposed to look like something recognisable. It's hard to explain this to people about that sometimes, and I think the reason is because humans are naturally built to decode, to solve, to put together, to do things that spell something out so that it can be categorised, defined, and understood.
You might ask yourself whether or not you can determine if something's a good piece of art if it doesn't look like something. But the better question, to me, is do you enjoy it? Do you like it? Do you get a feeling from it? If you enjoy looking at a thing then that's more important than whether or not a critic, or some snob from a gallery, thinks it'll pass muster. Deliberate abstruseness seems to sell more work. But, with the advent, rise, and explosion of the internet, the web, self-publishing, grass roots shows, ad hoc everything, the value of art is being taken out of the hands of the art world's 1% and putting it in the hands of where it should be - everyone who wants to stop long enough to look at it.
Art creation is a natural human function, which means that everyone should have a part in it, and a part of it. It doesn't require this mythical beast called talent, or the book-fuelled knowledge of a fine arts degree. It requires that you pick a thing up that can make a mark on another thing, and that you make that mark. It requires that you have exactly what a lot of modern artists want you to have: a visceral reaction.
If there's a message in it, that's fine; but good art doesn't need to have a message. Some art can exist purely for the pleasure of looking at it. Anyone who says otherwise is, to my mind, completely wrong-headed dingus. Message art is a different animal altogether, neither better nor worse than any other, just different. I do believe, however, that was the source of the first face-to-face insult of my work that came from an "artiste", who said that my work was "good enough to hang above someone's couch". All I could think was, "Isn't that the point?"
So, what is this thing? it started out as a mess created by putting watercolour paint onto a piece of rice paper, which then soaked through to the paper underneath it. I then added some black ink to make edges, and coloured pencil to add and augment the colours. Maybe it looks like something, maybe it doesn't. Neither of those things is right or wrong. To me, it doesn't look like anything. I just liked the way the paint bled through, the patterns it left, the shapes it made.
