Journal Entry: Art and Indecisiveness

Let me preface this by saying that I write even more eclectically in my journal than I do when I'm writing for an "audience". I just finished this entry and thought its content interesting enough to post. But since I have no desire to take the time to reorganize it in a more intuitive fashion, I've left it as it is. Further, because I generally find "personal" accounts more interesting than "objective" ones, I thought I'd try posting it in its entirety rather than in snippets. If it seems a tad melodramatic at parts I apologize... that's just how it ended up.

I've been thinking about this lately and I'm uncertain of my choices as they relate to what I am presently involved in. For too long, I have wasted my time in academia, learning things from others that I could have learned myself, or learning nothing at all. (Or more accurately, learning very little over a tremendous expanse of time.) I have little or no desire to remain in this state of affairs for much longer (and the small globule of remaining desire is that which resists change). Ever since I returned to college this semester, I have had the feeling of being an observer to the social and academic processes--as though I didn't belong here, and was introduced to an environment that I did not take refuge in--like an exotic fish introduced to a small foreign aquarium (though I am not so without humility to consider myself 'exotic'). In general conversations, and occassionally in classes, I feel as though I was that exotic fish among a native school or a visiting anthropologist... a tourist, really, that has grown tired of his vacation but finds himself both unable to leave and without a place to return to. I don't feel that I belong here. I'm making slow and introverted passes to incorporate myself into my general surroundings, but the passes too often don't accomplish enough. This may smack of a typical response to social exclusion or estrangement, but I really feel as though I should be somewhere else. Doing something else... rather than trying to find my niche within my existing surroundings. I feel the urge to go exploring and finding new social surroundings that I don't find superfluous or misled.

The experience of life is a longing, not a gratification.

Unfortunately, this "ideal" path is one that I am finding too distant to abandon my current one in pursuit of. I once felt that becoming an art teacher would be the "dream" career for me. I could teach art, life, and everything in between, and that would be my service to society. However, I've recently become weary of my previous fascination. The argument for my changing majors would go along two lines, the first practical (and ill-meditated), the second philosophical.

The first, as I have often mentioned informally (and perhaps once or twice within this journal), is that there is no merit in teaching the subject. The teaching of art would be the teaching of the uncertainties of what has come to be called art, of the inter-related ambiguities of life and psychological experience as they pertain to the activities of humankind. What could come of such instruction but the continued and perpetual teaching of ambiguity and uncertainty? That others may teach uncertainty and ambiguity and devote their lives to it? In what way does it benefit society to tease man's curiosity?

The second, I suppose, is on almost equivalent grounds with the first, which is to say it isn't completely distinct. I've lately come to agree with Plato in some respects about the function of poetry (i.e. art in a broad sense), although not in the respect that I feel that it should be formally restricted. Rather, I believe that the proper way to express the understanding of the world is through language... whereas art expresses the world through the unintelligible, the ambivalent--and when it is clear it says nothing more than trite trivialities. (In more recent times, existential or meta-conceptual trivialities.)

In my first Art Since 1945 lecture, there was a video shown in which Jeff Koons made an effort to formally describe the implications of one of his works. (Spalding basketballs suspended in a small aquarium tank, I believe.) If anything, hearing his statements solidified my preconceptions that artists do not know shit about shit. Hearing Koons attempt to introduce imperious conceptual statements to justify his mediocre industrially-assembled piece, only proved to me that art can only say very little. There are, with the proper direction, arts that have a greater significance than what many aim to introduce, but there is still so little that they can express. In fact, art is simply not the medium of choice to express civil or sociological concerns. Why express the ever-important through the ambivalent? It's an exercise in nonsense.

And while I heartily admit that I enjoy art, and often find it quite amusing, I refuse to recognize it as seated on the pedestal on which it is so often erected. Art is a byproduct of interaction, of social processes... it should never have taken it's present formal chair and declared itself mighty, auspicious and sacrosanct. Is art a product of high-culture? No. It is a product of culture, and while I concede that it can often be interesting, its worth is often over-estimated, as is its significance. The poet claims to know what he does not know--what he is unsure of himself. The gut expresses very little but preference. What does art express? It expresses a filtered view of the world (albeit somewhat out of focus), a reductive concept, or nothing at all. What does it achieve? It provides new (albeit fragmented) contexts, although these contexts are themselves not always produced through or by account of its content, but by the responses of others to it. Therefore, meticulous and intentional schemes for "high" expression through art is a flawed trade. It is possible to express minor things, but not major things... the major things are extrinsic of the artwork. The major things, can be expressed much more fully, unabridged and in focus (though still not fully) through language. Visual and auditory phenomena can only convey what is auditory or visual... the lingual can express a concern--at best the visual or auditory can only entice a response (which it then has no control of directing beyond small trifles). I decry the "insight" into the nature of things that artists seem to proclaim; many even seem more arrogant than philosophers.

If I choose to reject philosophy as a major, so too will I reject art.

In my drawing class today, the class had a pseudo-intellectual discussion (it's not my intention to sound terribly derisive) about what makes drawings "good" and what could make them "better". Normative criteria for art is ridiculous. This is good, this is bad. This is aesthetically pleasing, this is aesthetically displeasing. Put an 'X' on the life-line:

Fear |-----------------------------| Love

That which is beautiful |-----------------------------| That which is ugly

For that matter, "non-representational" visual art is blasphemy. It's incorrect to look at aesthetics as a branch of philosophy: it is, more accurately, a subject of psychology. The nature of the sensory visual experience is to make sense of the world around you and to use that information to govern the interaction of your other senses and, consequently, your behavior. Thus when you see an image of something that appears unclear to you, the natural response is to try to figure out what it is. In this sense, it is ridiculous to consider art as "non-representational". It may be abstract and conceptual, but it would still represent a concept. The relationship of lines and forms in space represents just that, which is to say nothing: a confused visual arrangement.

Of course, in this case, the comparison to musical theory is tempting, but the two things seem too different in my mind to be compared. I imagine the comparison is unavoidable, and perhaps even fairly persuasive... at the moment, I reluctantly disagree with it even though I don't see anything wrong with it. Music isn't representational (or at least the vast majority of it isn't), yet there is something interesting in it. Why not, then, with non-representational visual art? Maybe it's just a matter of preference... I feel that music can be emotionally and psychologically provocative without being representational and that the same doesn't hold true with the visual arts.

And that's my disoriented rant with respect to art.

**Mitchel Edwards Klik Enters a Dreamlike State and It's Fucking Scandalous, De Facto**

8/24 update:

I think the reason that I don't like equating "non-representational" art with music is due to the nature of the two senses that experience those things. For the sense of sight, we are constantly and continually bombarded with sensory information and this includes a very broad range of stimuli. In the case of music, however, there is a sense of novelty in that it appeals to a sense that usually isn't stimulated in a very diverse way. In some ways, I think of listening to "good" music as analogous to tasting really well-prepared food. In everyday experience, taste and hearing aren't stimulated nearly as much or as diversely as is the case with sight. In these cases, something crafted serves a more profound function, whereas in visual arts the exercise is in extracting things that you find interesting from your everyday visual experiences. I think that life in general provides a more sufficient "feast" than with the other two senses and so experiences for the visual "organ" don't need to be supplemented nearly as much. (Awkward grammar anyone?)

I was also assigned to write a brief summary of my views on art in my Design II journal. Below is what I have come up with so far (left-click to view a more full-size and legible version).