Art - a beginning

My quick summary of western art

Prehistoric art had cavemen draw animals and people hunting. Food was the central theme! Then humans tried to mimic reality. They created paints, oils and media that helped them capture reality. With the invention of photograph (camera), I guess it was no longer a big deal to capture reality the way it was. So people began experimenting with reality. With impressionism, post-impressionism, pointillism, the technique that was used to represent reality gained importance. Each technique gave reality a unique appearance. Then they began distorting reality. There was fauvism and expressionism, often considered the movements that gave birth to modern art. It was about emotions rather than capturing any form of physical reality. Then I think all hell broke loose with cubism! Now is when it gets really interesting. The ego became the central theme. "I" see reality this way and do not care about what you think of it. Then there was conceptual art, and its ideas. Some beautiful and some mad! (See Duchamp's fountain!) Surrealism is another madness I have been very curious about.

Opinion
Art, to me (someone who couldn't appreciate a thing about it until recently), is a curiosity! I now want to look closely at paintings, noticing things I previously didn't care to. There is nothing profound about what you or anybody sees, and everything you see is just as you see it.

If you share your experience with someone and find that they reciprocate the same feeling or thought, you might feel thrilled. Or it might just thrill you to look from another person's perspective. Or you might want to read about it. Each of it could give you pleasure. But art is about exploration. Exploring the unknown. There are no rules. No prejudices. No judgments. If it is about this, then it ceases to remain art. If you don't appreciate something, that's just it. You don't have to. You hate it, it is okay. Perhaps that is just what the artist had intended! Or it wasn't. But who cares!

The artist is not obliged to give you what you want to see. You don't have to feel obliged to say what he or others want to hear. In the disconnect between the artist and the audience, the painting is the only connect. So the next time you see a painting that makes you turn away, turn away. Or if it makes you curious, just look again. Just once more. Talk to the painting. Converse with the artist through the painting....
I hate it... I want to run away... I think the artist was on LSD... I think he had turtles run over at random... Frightening... The red hues disturb me ... The trees seem to be moving... I can feel the wind... I can hear her tears... She looks ugly... Endearing... Dark... Beautiful... Sad... Or just say nothing... Think... Think anything..Feel... Feel anything... Or just nothing.

A quip

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Fish.

M C Escher

My new fascination! These pictures are on my wall now and I can continue staring into them just wondering how he did them. Or just figuring the darned things out. I hate him for his mind and what he does to mine!

It is not the typical conceptual art and yet staring at it gives me the feeling of an eerie surreal painting! He does something to your mind. Both the left and right at that. Could it just be called a puzzle?

Oh, and have I mentioned his woodcuts? Some of these pictures are woodcuts. Spot them! Can you see the levels of imagination it takes? Picasso, Magritte, Dali and Goya can all go to hell for now. This guy is the best! :) Is he a freak? Twisted? Drugged? Genius? Oh! Does it even matter?

Poetic puzzles

They are so powerful. They are open and yet so closed. They can tease. Inspire. They can make your imagination run wild. They let you reveal your thoughts and conceal them in any proportion you like.

It was the perfect way to release emotions I would otherwise like not to talk about.
However, there was a hitch. No matter how interesting it was, to set up your thoughts into a measured puzzle with just a smashing of hints that could draw someone(s) attention to it, you realise you are not getting the release you desire. It is no longer an uninterrupted flow of emotions that I'd like it to be.

Yet it makes sense because I'd not like to get into verbose details that nobody cares about and that is difficult for me to put into meaningful words, so might as well put it all into a soup of incoherent words that I can later conveniently call a poem, that only I can understand. Serves my not-so-noble purposes! Muaahahahaha!

art articulated

When it comes to art, I always have been in the dark.

We had 'art' as a subject in school. We were forced to draw/paint themes chosen by our teachers and our submissions were graded. It was just like any other assignment in school. It didn't really give me any pleasure. It didn't stir profound thoughts my head. In the end, we would compete with each other wondering whose 'drawing' or 'painting' was the best. To us, the best paintings were those that most closely mimicked reality. Mine had never been the best. Except in a second standard colouring competition where I let my imagination run wild. When I won the first prize, I had no clue why I did. I liked my friends' colourings better.

It was the same when it came to music. I learnt music for 6 years not knowing why I did so. I just sang songs and played the harmoniam. 'Good' music appealed to my senses and I can say that occasionally, I connected to music at an emotional level.

It NEVER occurred to me then to understand what art meant. In fact I have really never spent much time thinking about art until very recently.

Intuitively, I knew it had something to do with the senses, but never thought about it as having too much to do with the mind.

Maybe again it boils down to the question of separation of the body from the mind. How much is a person's emotional/mental experience dependent on his sensory experience? This question presupposes an answer to another question on whether sensory experience is indeed essentially different from the emotional experience. I believe that they are mostly connected at some level. I shall not delve into justifying my belief in this post.

I only understood what it meant to emotionally bond with a work of art when I saw a picture of David Munch's 'Skrik'. It had a direct impact on me, visually and emotionally; I could relate to it philosophically. But I couldn't make sense or articulate what I felt then. The colours and the distorted, flowy background had an effect. The greys melting into the bright oranges. The expression. The unheard scream. Dissolving into the background. The overwhelming sense of helplessness. Of not being heard. People far away. A disconnect. Of not making a difference. Fear. Of just being there and then going away. Pointlessness. Only when I went and read about it, did I understand that it made sense for me to have connected to it. Never underestimate the happiness you get when you connect to something so weird and inexplicable! To know that you aren't alone feeling this way.

This brings me to other questions. Why can't I appreciate all art equally well? At least other famous works of art? Am I tasteless? Emotionless? Unrefined? Have a low IQ? A genetic defect? Or is it just my near-nil exposure to art? Then again, does it take experience and exposure to appreciate art? Does it require reading about art and knowing art enthusiasts to appreciate art? As I mentioned before, I wouldn't have appreciated 'Skrik' as much, had I not read about it, in spite of the very obvious effects it had on me.

In any case, henceforth, I would go ahead and read about art, look more closely at it and analyse my reaction to it, whenever possible. I wouldn't want to miss out on other 'skrik' experiences. :)