The Art world is constantly changing. The hard thing to do before understanding the pretext is to determine what is art. Art has many definitions ranging from products that are arranged for conceptual purposes and some view art as any skill or mastery. It’s hard to find the middle ground between these statements because one says that intent has to be behind an action and the other tells us that you need knowledge in a subject for it to be considered art. It almost feels like they, meaning either the artists, the collectors or the curators add a level of higher ground in this platform of art. But the easiest way to solve this problem would be to hit an average. I would define art by bridging the statement that is a skill that people do to express themselves. Since all things could be attributed to as a skill and their is different level between every single person that does that almighty skill then it would end to everything be considered art. Since art is a freedom of speech, a place to let go of our collective reality, the area that we all are apart of, and explore our creativity which is a space that we put away our sight and start expressing sometimes verbally, graphically or conceptually into a void-less space that has no definitions. Definitions are just guide lines not policies to apprehend to and this is the definitions behind things like love, emotions, life, reality and in our case, art. It’s obvious that arguments have spurred from language and these can’t determine our natural discourse between our instinct to be right.
But back to the liberty of art. In my definition, everything that has been created, developed or thought of applies to this eeriness of everything. It’s to expansive in this area to be to matter of fact or in-depth. Since everything encompasses the sky, the stars, the knowledge, wisdom, culture, commerce and anything widely in between then it must be taken roughly.
I don’t want to hold myself on the justifications of this, it’s an ideology that I adjusted too. it’s a common critique, an area of importance that I deem an area to navigate. I really came here to talk about art work. Drawings, painting, collaging, sculpting, music and most importantly the closest you can be to creativity. All you need is your hands and timeful resources that are now cheap or to ancient civilization, came from the earth. In the art world their is a parameter on something called traditional art. If you have never heard of that term or don’t understand it, traditional art is known as work on canvas or sculptures. Anything that cavemen could of done, bringing back from my ancient civilization remark, is known as traditional because its what has structured art throughout its existence where an artist learns and its the first stepping stone to understand your hands, the useful sense that is only used for convenience, and the wall between your reality and creativity. This is where you breathe, meditate, and let your decisions afloat, inhibitions are zero and your bones do the work they intended to put forth instead of that thing we call work. For a frequent artist, if it wasn’t for traditional art then there would first be no basis to observe like an idea un-said, no rudimentary barrier to gauge your art on a conceptual level and second, wouldn’t be a way to explore the quintessential mediums that will eventually lead you to your fabricated style. It’s an undeniable event and some see it as deceitful but it’s inevitable and dense. You might get offended by the first remarks but soon you will embrace it for its genuine purity.
Your style is the way you create and their is a plethora of genres to stick you style to. The deceitfulness that reigns from this is when you try to absorb into a genre rather then being put in. Being put in is quite find because it’s only a suggestion but trying to search for a genre is using art to find your audience. Sometimes it is used just to find yourself through the thick fog of art but if you haven’t realized that you are in a place because of you then you shouldn’t try and be found and just wait. A style is helpful in not only explaining your art to a previous example but it gives you a good size to scale your future endeavors in your craft. While identifying yourself it helps you either see what those artists did and acknowledge your presence in the thick fog that seems unescapable. It’s not asking to be concrete at immovable to your status but it is you. If someone calls you modern then take is a compliment unless you are trying to stray yourself from that connotation then just abandon your goals. Just kidding, but don’t worry about these. I’m trying to help you. If you deal with the negatives as just that, negative and malevolent then you won’t be able to make it much farther then your dreams. Your dreams are fine but they are too structured to actually obtain to.
Without this learning tool known as traditional art, you the artist, would never learn through your work a lot of groundwork that eventually expands your creativity. Before tapping into your consciousness and the ability to let it dwell uncontrollably, you must know the root of your passion. In this grand scheme, you learn about different mediums such as pastels, watercolor, oil, acrylics, pen, ink, pencil, colored pencils, crayons, markers and many others. These mediums or the tool you use to explain your creativity are what makes up traditional art. Not only would you be unfamiliar but you wouldn’t get the most important sense to an artists and that is touch. Without touch, you wouldn’t have the control, the curiosity that one needs to use as growth. You wouldn’t know how it felt in your hands and the bonding one receives when they fondle their favorite brush or their most beloved pen size. You wouldn’t know what pressure was and how to use it to your advantage. Without this, so many skills that are involved in the process of making. Pressure adds depth. Depth adds layers such as background and foreground. This adds dimension to your work. Dimension then turns your work into a scene. Then the scene turns your piece into a story that stems differently for every audience member. My biggest problem is, without traditional art, the work on paper, what would happen to a sketch or a doodle and would you instantly start working on a finished piece in this technological dilemma. The aromas ink, acrylic, and water color produces when mixed in the same cup of water would be missed out on if we went to artificial art.
Their is so much that you could do with a physical copy of a work in progress rather than a digital. With a digital copy it is just static and it’s hardly considered creating because you have a handy mentor helping you every step of the way. With a sheet of paper you could flip the page and view it from another angle and observe it’s potential in full 360. This works with a tablet too but if it’s straight on your computer you have to tilt your head rather then the piece and you can’t watch the light seep through the transparent paper. You could then notice that something was missing and use the other side of the paper to support the front page or vice versa. A double sided piece where the shadows in another just creep up to the original. Also you can let the paint flow down the page like rain on a glass pane or the necessity of a firm touch. Every time I have patiently viewed digital art, practically computer graphics, I haven’t been able to find emotion in the work. While working, sometimes you get pissed at your hands and start slashing at the art trying to kill it or you find yourself enlightened and you start putting gestures in each stroke. Each line has a feeling of compassion and even though they were all a part of your process, they stick out and help solidify your place in time. This adds an intimate belonging to the ideology of your work and makes it tentatively set in time because you can remember each moment that you labored over your work but also it makes it timeless because each line, each emotion, each discovery is different for everyone that witnesses your masterpiece.
All this leads up to the fact that traditional art is slowly dying in our technological maze of society where simple, fast and above all, professionalism aesthetics is trumping over basics and basis. My own squandering has left me wondering what if technology such as tablets, ipads and digital art became the norm and the essential stepping stone and traditional art slipped through the cracks like a hand written letter? It might be to farfetched but with a growing display in graphic design and this reverent simplicity which I judge by precision and wisdom has become a looming display over our heads. An artist would be changing his ways entirely to what we were used to. Digital art has one main flaw but it could be seen as a staple to the art community and that is audience. In our world of tweets and deviant art, it’s easier to find an audience or at least get your work seen. But the reason it is a flaw is because it is changing the reason we do art in the first place. Does it need to be seen? Art shouldn’t be for the celebrity or the sense of acceptance but for the individualized past time it enhances. Art is meant to be shared but there is such a difference between sharing your work and seeking attention because of your work. This steals from my past argument in style because why do it for that appeal if it’s not genuinely ideal.
But it is looking like technology is starting early and cutting us off guard for us traditionalists. My father, Kevin Click, has been an art teacher at the same school, Harrison Elementary, for 24 years. He hardly ever had a lesson plan and on some weeks we would do activities like paper mache masks or holidy cards but on the rest of the year, we would meet once a week, he would just tell you to draw. He would have a table with paper and one with boxes of drawing pencils, kneaded erasers, markers, crayons, water color and colored pencils so you could pick from whatever your heart desired. You got an A in the class just for effort. He was very lenient, would let you sit anywhere and be rather open in his classrooms. You could also play your own music on his boom box or if you needed help doing anything like drawing a deer he would do it in a minute and get you back to work. It was an hour, once a week, where you just got to either collaborating with your friends and try to work hard at your expertise or just be alone and try drawing whatever came to your mind. I was always a comic fan from the funny pages in the newspaper to the comic books where Iron Man and Thanos appeared. This lead me to try and create my own by either mashing together un-heard of super teams or coming up with my own stories and characters. Then I met my friend Colin and we created our own comic strip that was actually published in my dad’s environmental zine. It was called “The Colegan Chronicles.”
He first had a regular classroom upstairs in the Kindergarten through 8th grade hallways for ten years. Then through popular demand, the school partitioned the cafeteria in the basement for an enormous room where he had his own sanctuary. He kept art all through the room which was mostly student work and he would be the communal salvation army with birds, turtles, lizards, chinchillas, fish and other random artifacts that people found in there forgotten sheds or appeared in their backyards. He also had computers that children would play on using art programs such as paint to make sketches and flip books and animation. Then the room got a great review by a school district review panel for his classroom. They thought it showed great appreciation to the art, the students, and was a place for creative haven. Then the next year later they said that the art work and expressive room was a distraction and he had to get rid of it all. Twenty years down the drain. This was really hard for my father who is a known hoarder. Some of the things in the room he brought home like the animals he couldn’t find homes for but throwing it in the trash was like dumping those two decades into the a cess pool. He always kept student work because he has had a few of them come back after art school or just feeling nostalgic and ask him if he had any. He would always save them just because art meant so much to him and he knew each piece was a memory in a moment in time. Since his room was barren and he didn’t need the space anymore so they moved him back to his original room. But next year is a new low because they just told him that he won’t have a room anymore. He is a mobile art teacher who will be going room to room while the teachers takes a lunch break. So instead of art class being time away from the classroom you spent 8 hours a day in, now it’s going to be doing art at the seat you are familiar with.
But a different shock arbitrates from this, all of his supplies are going away and the kids who probably only do art at school or found out about it at school are moving discreetly to ipads. The reasons are still unknown. My father only has three years left until he can retire and under my mothers guidance, he will just bite his tongue and ride it out till retirement. But it’s not just about the irritations they keep putting on my father, the sudden change in his teaching style that will inhibit his control over his own curriculum since it’s a broad step in art or the irrational answers given by the educational hierarchy but the change that could occur if this was state, national or internationally wide. Is someone trying to kill art and take out the creativity and inject knowledge and technical supreme instead of wisdom and style. Using a device such as a tablet is taking out the hours that should of lead you to taking your prints digitally. Everything is at a click of a button rather then searching through your countless drawers for the two colors to mix. It takes the experimenting out of the creativity and even though their is a place for digital artwork, there still should be a place for regular artwork too. If these children starting learning on a digital device rather then working with their hands finger painting and having fun then I don’t know what will happen to the art we now know? Will it eventually be phased out of your lives and physical art will only be seen in museums to try and recapture the past? Then there will be a digital class system having just like the art world is now but online where anonymity is supposed to be a general rule of thumb. Art will only be a crisp product that hardly holds a conceptual idea anymore and the only thing you would sense from viewing a digital print would be its aesthetic qualities. As Andy Warhol pointed us in the direction of pop art or in lament terms, bringing reference to our actual world in his art and this plagueful awareness to irony. Now his work, digitally, are connotations by contemporaries and people are photo shopping actual pictures or making art that can be easily redone or parodied as a joke.
You could easily say, what if this happened early? Would there be a Jackson Pollock to reverse our thoughts on an artist and art? Would there be a Picasso to show us the three dimensions in a 2-D plane? How are we supposed to explore ourselves and the possibilities that lie in something that has been around forever when, in a piece of technology, the limitations are already built in and the only exploration is finding out how to comprehend the system rather then skipping that gray area and in traditional art, the system is you rather then a machine designed for consumerism. A lot of artists, going back to Jackson Pollock or Vincent Van Gogh wouldn’t of been able to do art if we only relied on the technological prowess that we do now a days. Tablets at least cost a hundred bucks for a low level brand and model but that is not including the computer either. Even though everyone in America has computers, art was never supposed to be for the elitist or for the people that already blow there money on trivial possessions but it’s for the type of person that likes to be productive, likes to be creative and likes to experiment with his abilities and his senses. It would be a boundary from some and a luxury for others. It would make art a process that you could do be it is either a fad or a trend and others resent the artists for doing what they do not for their arrogance, ignorance but for their social conjunction. It would cause feuds and more conflict in a world of social, economical, and political injustice. Art is supposed to be about the time you put towards a piece and that influenced it’s value but now when we are full of niches, art is about the money you put towards it values it exponentially and the area you are working with. It happened to graffiti artists who were doing it for advertising social awareness, fun and vandalism but it exploded recently and these artists have been selling there graffiti work for hundreds of thousands of dollars just because street culture came through. Art is now luck and a money game. Art is now going to be talked about in the past tense and this new thing, technologically fused, will be defined as something else. Without the process, or the pre-production of a piece of work, that zone you take trying to find a way to express your mood or concept is taken out of the picture because the tools are at your disposal on a device as clear as day. It’s just a design, it’s not the art I know of.
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