This is an extract from a journal I am keeping and using in relation to studio work. Theis entry came about as I have been looking at the ideas of the Beautiful and Sublime in landscape art, and as a counter part in the contemporary art world, I have also been looking at the ideas of Ugliness in art and where Beauty is today.
Thursday 13th Jan 2011
For me beauty is something that has been around for longer than we were able to write and even talk. When we talk about beauty we strongly relate it to nature, and qualities which reflect softness, delicacy and many other feminine attributes.
Beauty is seen in everything and goes much further then just physical appearance, true beauty is when someone has good moral standards, is compassionate, understanding and pure of mind and heart. If you want to find true beauty we look towards nature, as it is untouched by human morals, nature doesn’t hate, kill needlessly, feel envy or jealously, nature has a higher standard then human society dose now a days.
Ugliness can be seen all round, in people’s actions, speech and what is shown in advertisement; it is all about inflaming ones appetite, pushing lust and sexual actions upon us. Art used to have a god like skill to it, artists could show us senses of death, sadness and horror in such a way that people found it beautiful.
WHY! As I said skill, the skill of their craft of painting, it was beautifully painted and captured better than any photograph that it engaged peoples interest although the narrative many have been one of something unpleasant none the less one found pleasure in looking upon it and so was willing to stand there and interact with the work. In most contemporary artwork the artist is showing work in a way which is meant to be found uncomfortable in every way, to the point that many people don’t want to have anything to do with the work, in this way for me the art world has failed, how can one communicate with people when people want nothing to do with them, compromises are made in negotiations to start talk with people that don’t like each other the same egos for art. You find common ground e.g. galleries, ideas of aesthetic interest as starting points. If people don’t want to see something that is uncomfortable then deliver it in a way that they will find interesting, but when everyone does the same thing it loses its charm. If you liked chocolate but you had it at every meal everyday you’d eventually hate it. Art needs diversity to keep things fresh and people interested, change is needed to bring people back to the galleries and then artists with have a chance to be heard again. Right now it’s like shouting at a brick wall with only a few holes.
What about this common ground? The critics and the galleries that were there are now not helping; the common ground has been lost, bigger galleries and critics are not willing to take risks anymore, or talk about NEW sorts of art why? Do they feel ideas of beauty are old? What about the Sublime? The shocking, uncomforting feeling isn’t that getting old now as well? or at least the way in which it is being delivered to the viewer. Change is needed in every area; maybe new artists with new ideas even if they come from old ones, if people are still interested in the old style of art then why not use them as the half way point.
It will be hard at first, artists will have to run around to get interest in their work again, advertise in small galleries and shows, the more the public can see your work the higher the chances in people finding it and you getting noticed.
I’ve always known that being an artist would be hard, because the work I like and enjoy is work that in the artwork is no longer popular, but the public still likes those things. In my learning I have found that to try and follow the art world leads me to fall apart and dislike my work. I want to be one of those people that change the world, my artwork is how I can do that. It may take my whole life time to achieve, I could be dead by the time I’m ‘famous’ but so were many of those so call historical famous artists, many died poor or famous in other ways, but it was the generation after them that benefited. I wonder what they thought when they were doing there artworks, I’d like to think they didn’t do it for fame or lots money, but because they wanted to show people things in their own way, and that if fame came from that it was a good thing.
I’m not one for competing with people, I do what I like and hope that others like it as well, by writing my thoughts out like this and then working from them I hope to take my own advice in these areas so I can try my hardest and become the person I’d like to be. As long as I feel my work holds meaning and shows skill them I have achieved something, if it doesn’t them why do it? To be true, good, and endure, these things are the things I hold to y heart, these things are what I want to have in my work.
