Swimming

Since my flash fiction piece was less than what I had hoped for, I whipped up a 500 word tidbit about my swim today. Rather than a character's voice, you get me :)

So, enjoy! (or ignore)

...and yes, my second swim of the day will be much shorter.


I love swimming 'til near exhaustion in Kawkawa Lake. It's not just the natural setting, the lack of chemicals and crowded bodies, or the laid-back solitude.

There's something undeniably satisfying about struggling against the elements, yet in a safe and secure location. I've been in this water since before I could walk. I'm comfortable swimming the length and breadth of it alone. I know where it's shallow enough that weeds will tangle around your feet, the rocky crevices where pinching crayfish and spiny bullheads hide, the deep drops where it's safe to cliff-dive, or flip head-first off the rope swing.

Unlike a pool with fixed conditions, the wind breezes lightly and barely rustles the water surface, or it rages down and whips up congested chop and whitecaps.

The current changes with the wind. When it's calm, you could be swimming through glass, like the water is actively holding its breath as you glide through it without resistance. When storm clouds crowd out the peaks and stand low and territorial over the opposing shore, the current is a lurking whirlpool, attacking from all angles and holding you static, no matter how hard your muscles pull and fight against the water.

The temperature fluctuates. Where the bottom rolls down silty shelves into a murky, jade abyss, it's as if the hot water in a shower sudden turned cold.

There are boats, skiers, wake, docks, and sharp rocks. Less than a third of the lake has docks, floats, or approachable beach front you can safely rest at, if needed. Much of it is sliding scree, blackberry brambles, and jagged nests of submerged logs.


Most of the week, conditions have been ideal.

Since there are no marked lanes, like in a lap pool, it's common sense to swim with your head above the water, otherwise you could smash into a dock, or end up stranded in the middle of the lake. Also, if there are boats, you can easily see them, and stick one arm out of the water so they are sure to see you too.

The breast stroke is my preferred method if swimming, but I know, and don't care, it's not text-book perfect. I have honed my own repetition of movement which allows me to cut through the water without ever losing forward motion, and keeps me horizontal to prevent unnecessary drag. 99% of my body stays underwater, so I can swim with perfect silence, and barely disrupt the water's surface.

With wind, chop, and a tricky current, that smooth, efficient stroke is impossible.

I swim the length of the lake every morning in 50-60 minutes, approximately 2 miles. I neither dawdle, nor attempt to set any kind of speed record. My best time was 48 minutes. Today it took 83 minutes. When I was done, my muscles were cold, cramping, and exhausted. I could barely pull myself out and onto the dock.

Today was a good swim. Today I fought a worthy opponent, and I won.

Fluid & beautiful

I'm sure many of you follow Janet Reid's blog, so if you've seen this already, good for you.

...I really can't put into words how much I want to pull my light table out of storage and start drawing/animating after viewing that short.

There's a magic and beauty in classical (hand drawn) animation that you just can't find in any other medium.

The short is about longing... and that's certainly what I'm feeling.

Visceral description

...and not the good kind ;)

I don't just like beautiful description... I like any kind, as long as it's visceral.

By that, I mean it hits you deep down. Like, any *good* vomit reference should make the reader feel a little queazy.

Okay, my CP's know this already... but there's always at least one vomit reference in the stories I write.*

'Brake Fluid' has... oh, more than a few. One of my favourites is:

Another crumpled twenty went in Triss’ pocket when Jaymin didn’t make it to the sink and yakked a swirl of vodka and cheesies into an ugly potted fern.

...the word 'swirl' really sells this line for me... especially since cheesies have such an amazing chemical-orange-vibrancy. The precision of the image is what I like... the visual of a chemical-orange-liquid-swirl.

But it's not just vomit references that I take the time to choose a perfect concoction of words. So far, Chapter 14 has a few lines like this:

The words boil out in a liquid blubber

Only the high pitched laugh that scratched out of my chest like a spooked alley-cat.

I knuckle away the tears, shove my nose into my shoulder and wipe my face clean of snot and drool.

...well, there are more, but they're too spoiler-ish to post. Obviously they still need tweaking... but I like the bones of them, the precise combinations of words.

Honestly, I think I take more pleasure in writing lines like these... ones that hit the 'ick' button, rather than the flowing, perfectly crafted lines that are beautiful to read.

...and I think it's probably a very good thing that I don't write love/sex scenes.

What kinds of description do you enjoy writing? Do you find some kinds are harder than others?



*Don't ask me why, I swear, it's not even on purpose... it's like they just slink in there when my brain is occupied elsewhere...

Home again, home again...

...and completely exhausted :)

...but it's a good kind of exhausted, y'know?

The main reason I'm so tired is 'cause Saturday night I didn't sleep. At all. Through this week, I've been absorbing a tornado of new information and (possibly because I knew I was flying home Sunday morning), my little brain decided it was the perfect time to try to process all that information.

...which felt a little like watching a 4-year-old on a sugar-high.

So, after no sleep and then travelling back to the west coast, I'm still a little groggy this morning :)

But I'm seriously excited. I've got so many ideas.

...and one of them involves sand-blasting, or acid.

oh, yeah, baby... I'm into the fun stuff now :)

Would love to make this post longer, but I have a doggy-play-date with a friend of mine I haven't seen in several weeks.

...which requires peeling my sleepy beagle from the couch...

I WILL be back...


Mwahahahahahahaha...

Demos: Roman Gold, Portraits, Art Deco... and more!

Wow, I've been to a LOT of demos (aprox 1 hour long).

One of my favourite so far was an artist (originally from Venezuela), but now living in Texas called Mariela Villasmil-Kaminska.

Oh my goodness, even if you have zero interest in art... check out her site. It's amazing, the work she does. She's truly an oil-painter, works on canvas, porcelain, etc. So cool, she photographs her own models and then paints them.

It was just slightly mind-boggling how fast and accurately she could whip out a near photo-realistic face. Seriously, in under an hour.

I think the most valuable part of this trip is just seeing the scope of what people can do on this medium.

Some stuff didn't interest me at all, like they looked like something you'd buy at IKEA, or strange jewelry and free-form poured knickknacks (dust collectors, I call them), but other things were... they truly were art.

I'm thankful I have such a diverse (and extensive) background in art, and I'm even more thankful that my grandmother started me off in that world.

I've met many painters who knew/loved her well and have had the wonderful experience of hearing some quite hilarious stories about her.

...and I know she'd be happy I'm here.

Okay, that be all. I'm going to sleep now 'cause I've got another full day of demos tomorrow, then the final banquet... and no, I'm not wearing a fascinator.

EDIT: This morning I had the pleasure of sitting in on a demo by Yumiko Kanazawa, a Japanese painter who flew over from Japan for this convention, who paints in the traditional Japanese styles, like Imari & Nabeshima. VERY cool. We exchanged email addresses 'cause I absolutely love the paint she uses! When it fires onto the surface of the glaze, it's transparent, but coloured. It looks like liquid glass. Here's a link to an example of it, click on the pictures to see at full scale... you can't get the full effect in a photo though, just believe me, it's SO beautiful... and my brain just got going 'cause I want to experiment with it and other products and see what I can end up with.

The other great thing about her paints is it's all mixed with water (so it's not toxic) and you use the traditional Japanese brushes (which I already have a bunch of, semi-good quality, not the cheapies, and I already know how to use them).

Pheasant in fat-oil

Well, by the time a class of ten ladies exchange products (since you can't bring stuff like turpentine and oils on a plane) and everyone gets set up, paints get distributed, etc, a 3 hour seminar is down to around 2 hours.

The seminar itself was pretty interesting. The class sizes are small so everyone can crowd around the instructor's desk and watch while she (in this particular case, other seminars are taught by male instructors) demonstrates each part of the work.

Since the paints were mixed with fat-oil (what is used for traditional French & German painting), it dries rather quickly. This means you need to cover your paints up if you won't be using them for 5-10 minutes, but it also means that you can paint a coat and 10 minutes later you can paint over it without the colours mixing.

My first time using fat-oil :)

...actually, I was one of the better students in the class. I think the only reason this is so is because the mediums I'm used to (chinese brush/ink, pencil, etc) use broad, unhindered, free strokes... while painters who are used to the North American style of porcelain painting use an open medium oil (which doesn't dry) and the normal technique for that is to use small, blotty strokes. Dabbing, I guess you could call it. Basically blending with your brush right on the porcelain.

Basically, it's like re-training your brain how to use the tools. So I get how painters who have been paining in the NA style for 10+ years have difficulty switching over compared to someone like me, who has no ingrained habits.

So, here's my pheasant. Because it took so long to set-up, and some painters were a lot slower than others, each section of the instructor's demonstration kept getting pushed back farther and farther... so we ran out of time before even starting the background.

It was a lot of fun :) I think... I think fat-oil is a great medium to work in. I like it so much more than the open-medium oils 'cause it goes on so nice, but because it dries, it does have significant limits. You couldn't paint, say, a portrait or something super realistic with it (well, that I know of). It seems better suited to stylized work.

(click for full size)

You can see the sketchy outlines in the back... that's for the background. Someone who lives locally kindly offered to fire my piece for me tonight, so I can pack it home without worrying that the paint will get smooshed in my suitcase.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get into any other seminars, but there are demos running which are about 1 hour each (as compared to the 3 hour seminars). You don't get to actually paint/etc for the demos, but you can watch the instructor work/explain and take notes.

EDIT: by the way, the style of the pheasant is very traditional/typical for the old-style French & German painting. Personally, not to my taste, but I don't have to like it to learn it :)

Ottawa & painting!

I would love to write a proper post today... but my flight leaves at 7am tomorrow and I've got a lot to do, the primary chore being: look through the list of necessary products to bring for the three-hour-long fat-oil painting seminar I'm taking first thing Wednesday morning.

...and from the quick glance last night, half the items I either don't have, or don't know what they are.

So, uhm, yeah.

Fake it 'till you make it, right?



EDIT: Oh yeah, remember me saying I'll be the youngest person there by about 20-30 years? I just read on the agenda that there's a *fun* contest at the final banquet on Saturday, everyone's supposed to wear fascinators... and there will be judging/prizes/etc.

Between that and the guided-bus-tour to view tulips, it'll be a wild and crazy time, folks.

Oh my goodness, what am I getting myself into?

Pulling all the pieces together

Over the last four posts, I've given you guys a brief glimpse into the history of Western art and the Idea of Artist.

Yes, I've skipped over a ton of stuff, yes, I've generalized, yes, I've waved my opinion around like a red flag in front of a bull. I confess, I wrote all five of these posts in a single afternoon (since it was sort of one, long continuing thought), so undoubtably there are gaps in information and loose-logic.

I love art, just as I love writing, so don't get me wrong and think I'm trying to demonize the institution.

Elitism in all forms bothers me. It's when we start drawing lines that we start marginalizing other people.

The idea that art is somehow this untouchable, holy, genius-inspired wonderful thing that the unwashed masses can only struggle to understand and capture... I think that's a load of salesman-crap.

As a culture, Westerners value intelligence, education and experience. When something is valuable, it has worth. It has merit. Art, just like writing, is a process of refining technique, training your eyes, your brain, your hands. Like any profession, it's a matter of specializing. It requires hard work, time and effort.

In her post, Janice Hardy said this:

But going back to the "agents killing art" post...

With the vast technologies available to us today, I found myself thinking about writers who just want to create art. They can put up blogs for free and start creating, making their work available to everyone to read. Nothing is stopping them. Agents aren't killing their art because art can't be stopped when you can display it where millions can see it for free. (of course, getting millions to come see it is another story).

If the sole goal is to create art, then why is it necessary to get an agent and sign a deal with a major publisher? Isn't the goal of getting an agent and signing with a big publisher so that you can make money? They are, after all, a business, and the goal is to make money by selling books that are commercially viable. By selling product, not art. Just as I don't try to sell watercolors to my design clients, I wouldn't try to sell something to a publisher that wasn't a commercial product--a sellable book.

If you're complaining that agents won't take you on because you won't make them money, isn't that admitting that money is what you're really after? Not the distribution of art? Because you can publish without an agent or a big publisher if you aren't in it for the money. Or the prestige of being with a big publisher. Or the validation of having pros in the industry say "yes, we think your work is good enough to sell."

So, can writing be art? Or is it commercial?

Why was Shakespeare so successful and popular? His purpose was to write plays that drew in audiences and sold theatre tickets. How can you not call that commercial? Dickens was paid by the word to fill newspapers. Do you think that's wrong?

Shakespeare understood how to communicate with his audience, so he was successful in selling his Ideas.

Steve Jobs was all about the user experience. By making Mac products easy to use and reliable, he became successful.

Honestly, I don't see a division between Western art and product. It's all about selling Ideas, the only difference is whose idea is getting sold. If we're going to marginalizing writing/writers as mere entertainers who offer up fantastical worlds, gritty underworld crime, idealized romance, beautiful and noble heros and heroines fighting the dark and evil forces, or the every-man struggling for the most basic of needs...

...well, that's the subject matter of the Louvre's collection right there...

Writers are selling an experience, a world, characters, story, and Idea, the same as an artist is. It's the heart of the story, which I've blathered on about more than once. Your ability to successfully sell that is no different than Michelangelo, and he didn't get paid for the pieces his patron didn't like.

Just like a badly-made product won't sell. I have nearly destroyed two different cell phones because the menu systems were so incomprehensible. I will never again buy one of those brands. Sure, those cell phones were a heck of a lot cheaper, but there's a reason the iPhone is so widely used...

...and why I use a Mac.*

You have to work hard to make your Idea, your message, understood. You have to think of the audience, think of their user experience.

I've said before that if the meaning of your writing is not being understood, it's your fault as a writer for not being clear, not the reader's fault. It is a failure to properly communicate the Idea. If you are stomping your feet like a child throwing a tantrum and saying, 'You don't understand my writing!' you're never going to convince others that your writing has merit. You need to work for it, improve your skills so you can effectively communicate with your audience.

In the original post accusing agents of killing art, all I see is an unprofessional so wrapped up in the Idea of being an Artist that they don't care about honing their skills to make their work understood, and therefore accessible, to those who would buy it. It's arrogance, pure and simple.

If you love your work, if you have pride in it, you should try to make it the best that it can be.

Alcar already made mention of this in the comments last time, but:

My life-drawing teacher in university once told my class that if you want to be a successful artist, you have to want people to see your paintings. If all you do is create art for yourself, what you're doing is essentially (not my term...) "artistic masturbation". You're not an artist.  All you're doing is pleasing yourself. That's not a professional attitude.

And I think writing is the same thing. You have to want to please other people to actually reach them.

I think that's the main difference between people who are writers and people who write. The professional attitude and commitment that drives them to improve their work. Artists are the same. People mock Jackson Pollock and say all he did was throw paint on a canvas, but he discarded hundreds, if not thousands of paintings he felt weren't up to standard. Even Leonardo DaVinci re-painted the Mona Lisa, re-posed her, re-imagined her, re-worked her.

Artists can't be successful without making sales, and neither can writers.

So what do you think?

...so how was my sales-job? For those of you who actually hung in here with me through these extremely nerdy posts, do you think any differently about art and writing? And really, does it all even matter? Do we need these hard divisions to validate, or justify what we like and why we like it?



*I shan't get into my thoughts on Microsoft... just that, the more you know about how and why something is the way it is... well, let's say I've lost faith in Microsoft ever putting the user-experience before the almighty dollar.

Selling *the artist*

With the rise of contemporary art came mass marketing and commercialism. Literacy was at an all-time high, television, newspapers and radio spread ideas faster than ever before in history. Trade agreements paired with new shipping routes brought wonders from every corner of the globe, all available for sale at your local department store.

Since the early days of industrialization, production wasn't dictated by the rising and setting of the sun. Time was money. Capitalism was rampant and with their new-found freedom, artists were doing all kinds of crazy stuff...

Synchronism swept through the art world, often known as non-representational painting, where the artists took Impressionism one step further -> they were interested in the effect of pure colour on the eye. Scientifically. These are often compared to music because they were abstract yet created an emotional response. Instead of painting the tree, they painted the green so the viewer would feel the tree.

This was the first big American art movement where they weren't just copying what was going on in Europe.

Non-representational art was the first art that wasn't telling *a story*. There were no people, no landscapes, no recognizable figures within the frame for the viewer to draw associations and conclusions from. Through simple blocks of colour, artists were no longer restricted to lessons, history or statements. The Ideas that they were selling were distilled, simplified and wrung out. Scientifically using how the human brain reacted to colour, artists tried to capture/translate the pure Idea of emotion into a canvas. Instead of a lush forest with serene, lounging figures hitting the right emotional/psychological points on the viewer to tell them how to *feel* about the scene portrayed, this was just about colour. How could one paint *serenity* in pure colour?

Not all of them were interested in representing emotion, but they were still trying to capture and translate a pure Idea and sell it to the public.

If we wanted to compare writing to art, I think non-representation art would probably be the closest approximation to poetry. Clyfford Still is my favourite color-field artist. In my mind, his works truly are like poetry or music.

On the opposite end of the scale, Marcel Duchamp was obsessed with chess (he represented France in Olympic chess four times) and he created conceptual art, where the idea was more important than the work of art/material. This was the birth of ready-mades, where a mass-produced object is re-conceptualized as *art*. His most famous pieces were, "Fountain" and  "In Advance of a Broken Arm".

Look at those two pieces of art. Do you think they could get any further away from expressing emotion?

They're more like a pun, don't you agree? They're clever, witty, they make you re-evaluate how you view a common object, but they aren't trying to sell a strong emotion like glory, power, love, fear, etc.

American artists weren't only lashing out against old, European values/traditions, they were lashing out at the institution of art itself.

Personal freedoms were also celebrated with an influx of gay and feminist themed art. Women artists thrived for the first time in history and radical political, social and ideological ideas (like free-love and birth-control) came bubbling out from The Art School League, of which many students lived in the infamous Greenwich village. It's interesting to note that most of these artists were middle class and well educated. Essentially, a bunch of rich kids rebelling against their more conservative parents. Due to their gathering in that specific area, the wealthy packed up and moved away, which tanked the property values and turned it into a cheap-rent, bohemian paradise.

*Starving Artist* was like a badge these people wore... they used their art to scream, 'this is who I am and this is what I want'. They were selling rebellion, they were selling attitude, they were selling freedom from the old ways, the old rules, the old world. They were saying, 'my individual view of the world is important'.

Art began selling the artist.

Jackson Pollock was the first celebrity artist, where he was heavily promoted all over the USA, not only his art, but his rebellious-artistic-spirit. Peggy Guggenheim was his first major supporter, and her gallery was the focal point for American abstraction and surrealism. in 1951, Vogue magazine shot a lineup of spring dresses with Pollock's work in the background, to showcase their fashion as *sophisticated*.

Vogue magazine was using Pollock and his art to sell that image...

...and how is that any different from what traditionally-good-art was doing? No matter what material, what form, Western art was still about selling Ideas. Abstract art was just a new way to sell it. Because abstract art is hard-to-understand, it's a different level of elitism. Really, it's no different from the portraits which showed the upper-class Europeans as god-like, and what's funny is that the wealthy in New York city were all paying for similar, old-world-European-syled portraits to be made to show off their status. The same parents whose kids were rebelling in Greenwich village.

So instead of selling the elitism of being wealthy/powerful, abstract art was selling the idea of sophistication/intelligence/genius, which was attractive to the younger generation who were growing up in an entertainment/commercial-infused world.

Is everyone familiar with the tv series Mad Men?

Life magazine, August 8, 1949 ran a photo spread of Pollock with the question, "Is he the greatest living painter of the United States?" They were selling his attitude, marketing him. He was posed as a rebel/cool with legs crossed, smoking, arms crossed/etc. He glared at the camera, confronting the viewers. The photos screamed, 'if you don't get it, he doesn't care.' This image was taken up by actors, James Dean, for example. Pollock was shown as a star, and this trumped-up commercial image of himself is what broke him as an artist. He basically drunk himself to death after someone filmed his painting process.

But this is what first sold the idea of artists rebelling against the norms of society and living only for their art.

Freedom is what America was built on. Even Pollock's self-destruction was fed back into the marketing of art. Painting became a holy space to act, not recreate something. The artist was the actor, the viewer became the audience -> not allowed to be involved, the viewer was passive. What was important was the artist exploring themselves through the act of creating art.

Harold Rosenberg was a lawyer/poet who fed this new idea through his writing in the '40's. He reworked Kant's old idea of genius and pushed the idea that only the elite could completely understand an artist's genius/vision.

Commercialism isn't necessarily about mass-producing products, it's making people want to be part of the elite lifestyle, but it's all smoke-and-mirrors. Do you want people to think you're sophisticated, cultured and intellectual? Well, then slap some abstract art on your wall and buy the leather-bound complete collection of Charles Dickens novels or Pliny the Elder's letters. Who cares if you never read the books or even like the painting, it sells the Idea that you're of the cultural elite. For some of you, it may be interesting to know that Rosenberg later became a famous art critic for the New Yorker.

Stop for a minute and look again at the date of that article. August, 1949. The glorification of *the artist* as a product started just a few decades ago, and even that was driven by pure, unadulterated salesmanship.

After this brief history of Western art, can you still say art isn't all about creating products? Granted, now the artist him/herself is also a commodity. You can also port this directly into the writing world. Isn't it so important nowadays to be active online, as a writer? To have a fan page, a blog, Twitter, etc? It's not only the book that's being sold, it's the author.

No matter what form or technique, Western art always has been and always will be about selling Ideas, so what else can you call it?

Okay, I promise, my next post will be my last on this particular subject.

...by the way, for those who have been hanging in through these extremely nerdy posts, you have now been officially introduced to what my husband teasingly refers to as my 'National Geographic Voice'. Seriously, never ask me about certain topics in real life, 'cause I will actually talk like this too...



Oh, and those ever interested in museum-hopping in New York city, if you go to the Met, check out Pollock's famous painting Autumn Rhythm. Here's a very nerdy bit of trivia if you like 'Where's Waldo?' books. The colours in Autumn Rhythm are all browns/etc right? Well, somewhere on that painting is one, tiny dot of bright red paint. The reason is, Pollock spread his canvases on the floor of a warehouse to paint and always had multiple paintings on the go at the same time. Because he was interesting in capturing 'movement' on canvas (in simple terms, he danced around and flung paint at the canvas), that tiny dot is a splatter from another one of his works that ended up on there by mistake.

Artist + freedom = emotion

So, last time we talked about Michelangelo and how Western art has always been about selling ideas.

Michelangelo's paintings are awesome. I think there would be very few people who would disagree when I say they are truly art, right?

Well, he hated painting. Hated. The pope forced him to paint the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo's famous for it, but if he'd had the choice, he wouldn't have done it.

Western artists were craftsmen. Hired to create something to the specifications of whoever was paying for it. It wasn't their message they were selling, it was their patron's message.

Do you think every painter, builder, sculptor, etc who built the great European churches were devout Christians? Do you think they passionately believed in the messages broadcast through the stained-glass windows, murals, statues, mosaics and paintings?

I'm sure many of them were, but I doubt they all felt they were called on by God to create Notre Dame and Chartre Cathedral.

I think I'd be safe in saying for most of them, it was their job. People didn't have the freedom and education to just choose their careers back then, they were apprenticed. Skills were usually passed down from father to son. Projects like the great churches were built over generations. 99.99% of the workers had absolutely no control over what they were doing. They were given the specifics and they carried them out exactly or they wouldn't get paid.

Sure, many artists battled against the conventions of what art was throughout history. Some of them met with success and slightly skewed the notion of art into a new direction. Yes, I said 'slightly skewed'. Usually one artist inspired another, who inspired another... so the changes were slow but gradual. Yes, there were bursts and booms, specific artists tied to specific movements like Claude Monet to the Impressionist period or Pablo Picasso to cubism, but each of them were drawing from an entire history of other painters, art forms and scientific advancement. For example, we can thank Japan opening it's borders to international trade in 1863 for much of the Modern art movement because this new/unfamiliar art style strongly influenced painters like Manet, Degas, Cassatt, Denis, Gaughin, and of course, Van Gogh.

Art used to be a simple thing, a flat view of the world and the ideals around us, and by us, I mean the upper echelon of society, the leaders, religious, political, etc. Good artists were recognized by craft, tradition and technique. The time, effort and precision they put into their creations.

Industrialization changed, not only the economic status of the artists, but the available materials. Paint was now made in factories, not by hand. Globalization made it easier to appropriate ideas/techniques/etc from all over the world and brought in a typhoon of cultures, religions, philosophy from which to find inspiration. Both of these were highly influential in changing the notion of what art was and what art could be, but I think there's something far more important.

The true switch from 'what the customer wanted' to 'what the artist wanted' is what triggered the change in valuing the emotional response one could receive from art. Sure, emotion had been part of art in the past, like religious art was usually meant to sell awe, devotion, a cry for peace or a call to arms, but again, that emotion was carefully calculated information being fed to the viewer through the techniques of the artists. There was nothing personal about it.

When the artist was no longer trying to sell to one particular patron, the artist had to sell to the public.

I know I'm about to make an incredibly bold and crude generalization, but here it is: that change in who was 'most important' can be directly attributed to the contemporary artists of New York City because those who founded the USA (and Canada) were freedom-hungry immigrants who fought against the imperialistic old-world, old-blood, old-money, class-obsessed, monarchy-based European countries they fled from. They wanted to tear away the old traditions and take control of their own futures.

Sure, the timing had to be right, with industrialization/globalization, but I think the idea of creating 'The New World' was like the spark that lit the fire.

Freedom was something artists never used to have, and with it came an explosion of what art was, what it could be and what it meant. For the first time, artists had control over what they made, even though they still lived and died by how popular they became, America was all about freedom, even if it was the freedom to just blow stuff up or vomit blue food colouring onto another artist's canvas.

There's a reason many people don't like contemporary art. Much of it feels like pure chaos and destruction, but often that's what war is, what social change is, what an overhaul of outdated, oppressive rules/beliefs is. This is what artists were questioning and while they tried to sort out their thoughts, their language of communication was art. Just as art had been used in France during the French Revolution to fire up the revolutionaries and later glorify their success, so art was used in America, yet with much greater freedom.

You can hate the means, you can hate the method, but you can't find fault in the freedom to make it.

Art was always something the wealthy had and the commoners did not have, but with the mass changes in the way the world worked, the rising middle-class and the self-made empires in the New World, for the first time, artists were exploring what they wanted to say, how they wanted to say it. Industrialized materials meant paint & canvas were cheaper than ever, so artists had even more reason to explore and experiment. They were selling their own ideas and ideals, not their patron's, but they still had to find buyers.

So what was this new generation of artists selling?

Purposiveness without a purpose

Rather than 'emotion', Western art was originally a way to impart knowledge to the illiterate masses.

Kings would stamp their faces on currency and spread it across their kingdoms, religious temples/churches/etc would use statues, mosaics and murals to teach lessons, stories, rules and beliefs.

Art was used to spread Ideas, and since Greece was the centre of Western culture, let's start there.

Ideas are beautiful in themselves, right? Plato thought a lot about beauty and Ideas. Is everyone familiar with his 'shadows on the cave wall' theory? Well, art was sort of a way to capture the Idea, which is perfect, unattainable, and impossible to completely copy/represent in corporeal form. And the Greeks were all about trying to create perfection/beauty through form. If you really examine art/architecture from this time/place, there's a whole heck of a lot of math going into it... the precision of ratio/etc is incredible.

So, if art was used to spread Ideas, then is 'good art' beautiful or useful?

The title of this post is a phrase by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), describing the nature of beauty. In other words, something that is beautiful pleases us. This is different than us enjoying it for it's purpose/usefulness. Take, for example, a car. We can appreciate it based on the fuel economy, the amount of trunk space, the number of passengers it can hold, etc. Speed can also be a factor. While we don't necessarily need to go 0 to 60 in under six seconds, there can be a quality of purposefulness in the raw thrill of acceleration.

We can also enjoy cars based on their beauty, the lines of the body, the colour, the sound of the engine, the materials of the interior, etc. These don't add any usefulness to the vehicle, but even if cars really aren't your thing, I think anyone comparing an Audi Q7 and a Nissan Cube strictly on their body design would agree that the Audi is more beautiful than the Nissan.

A lot of money goes into making the 'package' pretty, but that doesn't mean it's 'better' if we're talking purely about purpose/usefulness.

Kant believed that to truly appreciate the 'beauty' of something, the person experiencing it must remain disinterested, in other words, receive no pleasure/sensation. It is the perfection of the object's form and design which we appreciate and approve of. So, no getting all googly-eyed at a French odalisk painting...

Taking this to a modern level, I could say there is beauty in a software engineer reducing 1,000 lines of computer code into 20 lines. The code may do the exact same thing, but it has been streamlined so there is no waste and no redundancies or overlaps. There is a kind of beauty in efficiency and precision.

According to Kant's theory, beauty was significantly different than aesthetics (aisthesis -> Greek for sensation/taste), which stimulates emotions, intellect and imagination.

So, he suggests there is a clear distinction between something that elicits emotion and something that is beautiful.

One other interesting contribution of Kant's was his idea of 'genius', essentially the ability to create harmony through their materials, thus resulting in the disinterested enjoyment of the beautiful end-result.

I think its important to remember that Kant, and his predecessor David Hume (1711-1776), lived during the Enlightenment period, the Age of Reason, where the prominent ideals were centred around progress, including the notion of moral improvement, human rights, and freedom of worship/religion. Because there was so much scientific advancement, classification of knowledge became important and the first dictionary and encyclopedia were published. There was also a huge renewed interest in Greek/Roman art during this time, mainly because Pompeii was being excavated, but also because Greece/Rome was where ideas of democracy/etc were born.

Many of these advancements came out because of the French Revolution, and France was the centre of the world for artists at this time, and up until modern times. King Louis XIV wanted to stamp out the uncultured dialects/etc, so he established the French Academy, not only to standardize the French language, but to standardize all manner of French culture, including art.

Remember at this time, artists were essentially craftsmen. Like hiring a carpenter to build a deck off your house, art was commissioned by the wealthy according to specific guidelines. So the fact that the king essentially controlled what was art is not something we, as modern humans, can really connect to. Our world is so much wider than it was back then.

Art was a bill-board for the uneducated.


Shame, awe, humility, honour, reverence, devotion, disgust, fear, peace, trust, loyalty.

Think this. Feel this. Know this.

It was not only an efficient way to sell Ideas, but to solidify the notion of class. Only those in power had/used art, so they were the ones controlling what messages art was sending.

Like how parking a ferrari in your driveway is a statement of your status, wealth, taste, values, etc, having the means and ability to buy/commission/use art was a measure of being in the elite.

I'm sure I'll annoy some people by simplifying to this degree, but this is a blog primarily tailored for other writers, not Art Historians, so I'm going to generalize and state, what was considered beautiful during that time was a lot of Greek/Roman iconography, historical or religious subjects.

Like how a ferrari is almost a universal statement of wealth/status/taste, so hanging a piece of art that associated you with the ideals of democracy/intelligence/reason/etc was a statement about who you were as a person. This is the same reason Hitler was obsessed with Greek/Roman art/etc and tried to push the idea that the Nazis were the true children of the Greeks. By associating himself with the ideas of that civilization, he was making the statement that he (and his people) were enlightened and better than other people.

The USA did a similar thing with association when they began building up their country. They didn't have to re-invent the wheel. By using eagles, columns, allegorical figures of liberty & freedom carved in the familiar Greek/Roman style, they were laying claim to those ideas, to those ideals, re-selling them as their own.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's human nature to borrow where we can, 'cause it's efficient. Symbols are short-hand, like seeing a red maple leaf, most of the educated world would probably associate it with Canada, right?

Symbols are like an Idea distilled, and historically, Western art is all about ideas. You can take this right back into the very infancy of Western culture, far back before the Greeks.

In the Age of Reason, if something looked like Michelangelo made it, you were golden, so everyone just copied the same style. That is what sold. That is what was good. That is what made them successful and allowed them to feed their families. The other thing that was important is that the artist's hand was not visible. This means the brush strokes had no character. Paint was layered on in numerous, thin, floaty layers, not like the bold brushstrokes of more modern art. At this time in history, the artist wasn't supposed to show any part of themselves in the art.

Think of it like the voice of the author suddenly intruding into a story. It was a big no-no.

But that certainly changed.

Art and writing

To welcome in the new year, I'm going to bore you guys... so be prepared for at least a week of extremely nerdy posts.

Ever since I hopped into Janice Hardy's discussion on writing and art (my link) way back in October, I've been thinking, on and off, about art and writing. Originally this came about from a post on Janet Reid's blog commenting on another post accusing agents of killing *artistic*/literary books 'cause agents are only interested in making money, not art.

Can writing be art? Can art be writing?

Hardy's post touched on so many interesting ideas (so I encourage you to read the original post in its entirety, but first let's look at this:

To me, art is something that transcends. It inspires, captures emotion, causes emotion in others. It makes us think. It's goal is simply to be. (And I understand not everyone will have this same definition)

A painting can do this. So can music. We can look and listen and take something from the experience. But writing? I'm not so sure. We take things away from a story, but a story is different from plain writing. How many read to experience just the beauty of words on a page? Perhaps poetry is writing's art form. It does everything my definition of art does. It's not so much about telling a greater tale, but about evoking emotion.
....
One thing I want to clarify. I do feel that writing itself is an art. My question is more about where books stand and if they were indeed an art form in and of themselves, or a product and thus the commercial application of an artistic skill. 

She also linked another post which was responding to hers. The quick version is:

People write to create images, worlds and stories that never existed until we imagined them. Just because it can only be seen in the mind doesn't mean it isn't art. When I read I feel so strongly for the characters (if it's a good book). Every time I read Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine I rock back and forth with Ella in the end and wait for her to break the curse. I have to catch my breath, I squeal with anticipation and yell at the characters. They confuse me, anger me, make me laugh; I could go one, but I won't.

C.S. Lewis created Narnia and it became so real for me that I thought "what if". Isn't it possible that there are other worlds?

To me it's about making the reader think outside their comfort zone. To ask questions is how we challenge what we think we know and broaden our senses. That is what art is. It can also be a product, but ultimately, isn't it so much more?

So, ultimately, what is art?

Well, I'm going to annoy you by saying there really isn't a set definition of art. Many people have tried to pin it down, but no one agrees, primarily because everyone's creating and critiquing it from different cultures, different times, different needs and different goals. As these things change/evolve, so does the definition of art.

History is written by the winner, right? Well, so is what we view as culturally and morally acceptable. Child-brides anyone? Age of consent? Prostitution? The legalization of certain drugs? Does a murderer have the right to live? How about dictators, cult-leaders, politicians, marketing/sales, war, mining, child-labour, pollution, seal-clubbing, etc? Should McDonalds be allowed to burn half the Amazon rainforest to make cattle ranches for their quarter pounders? How about soft-drink companies leaping into Vietnam to establish their products, not only on the day the war ended, but within the hour?

Our history, our philosophies, our culture, these things colour the words we use and the ideas we exchange and fight for, and since art is also a form of language, how could it be any less convoluted/complex?

What struck me as most interesting about both these passages is that both Hardy and M.E. (the person who responded) suggested that art and emotion are tied together.

Is emotion necessary to consider something 'art'? Is it one of the fundamental characteristics?

This is actually a very Western-central idea. Considering M.E.'s profile picture has a road sign in MPH, I'm assuming he/she is American, and I know Janice Hardy is American.

I'm Canadian, so I can't say I'm any less Western-centric in upbringing, but growing up on the west coast, there is a much higher infusion of Indigenous and Asian art/culture than in the rest of North America, which is primarily influenced by European and, to a lesser degree, African art traditions.

SO, for the sake of keeping within the scope of 'art + commercial products', I think it's logical to stick to Western art. It wouldn't be fair to, say, start talking about Buddhist monuments in SE Asia, Indonesian shadow theatre, Mogollan baskets, Borneo tribal tattoos or Haida totems.

When we talk about writing, we mostly talk about *Western* authors, European and American (I'm including USA & Canada in that word), so I think it's only fair to stick to the same kind of art. Apples to apples, right?

I honestly don't think there's any right or wrong answers here, what I'm most interested in are the different ideas/thoughts/opinions on this subject, the evolution of what art is, was and can be.

So, feel free to disagree, throw in your own examples/etc, but remember we're sticking to Western writing, art, philosophy, etc.

Oh, and one more thing I wanted to be clear about before we start... I'm going to be using the term, 'sell' a lot. By this, I am primarily referring to the idea of convincing someone of the merit/worth of something else.

You can't sell something that is worthless, whether it be an idea or an object. Both parties need to be in agreement about the value of something.

Does that make sense?