[Les Watters]

In my studies I have come across several things that interest me about painting. One is that most of the great artists of the twentieth century had a philosophic issue which they wanted to express visually on the canvas. They all believed that their art was leading or actually was the truth behind how our universe works. The impressionists believed that if all color was contained in white light that if they painted with only pure color their canvases would glow with luminosity. They had a grounding in the physical world. The Abstract Expressionists believed only in paint and canvass and that all art comes from the collective unconscious. They had a psychological view of how our world works. What I have seen in today's art is that there is only chaos. No one takes a stand on how they believe. Maybe because of the idea of cognitive psychology, "Reality is only your perception, change your perception you change your reality." Is that being expressed in painting today?
Is that what art is about today?
_________________
When in doubt, black it out.

Wally Wood

[ceenda]

Well, every age tends to focus on a particular school of thought which is not necessarily shared by other artists at the time. Whilst Titian and Michaelangelo were painting epic biblical and mythical scenes, in Japan or other parts of the East, people were focusing on entirely different forms of art. Icon painters in the Byzantine world as well, a complete change in emphasis compared to Western ideas about how religious artwork should be realised. The power of Western Europe and it's generally insular ideas ensued that only Renaissance art is remembered as being the primary movement of the era.

[jHof]

It's politically incorrect to stand up for what you believe in now. It will offend someone somewhere. Then you can be sued someway, some how! Joy!

[gekitsu]

jhof, good point. i, for my part chose to discard anything remotely concerned with political correctness. imho it is the most useless invention of 20th century. back to honesty.

topic:
i can only tell what i paint for: i paint because i like it. no idea why other people paint. anyway, its reason enough for me

as for schools of thought: of course there always were new ideas but no one could fully endorse that luxury most of the time. painters in the old days also had to live from their painting gigs.
the kind of motives that were hip at a time are a mirror of the painting-buying part of the society. the way they were painted are a mirror for the technical development as well as the artist schools of mind.
so you can't really compare impressionism with painting biblic scenes.

[Les Watters]

The subject mater is not the thing. The IDEA behind the painting is. What does your painting mean?

Example. Picasso would paint a woman. That woman would represent every woman, more importantly it would represent everything, it was absolute! It was based on humanistic thought if there are no absolutes the artist trys to create one. Thus making himself God.

Is that what is behind your paintings?
_________________
When in doubt, black it out.

Wally Wood

[Impaler]

Arists are a species entirely different from the art scholar, Les.

The line of distinction between the scholar and the visionary has always been clear throughout history. There is the rock star and the Rolling Stone columnist. There's the politician and the Rush Limbaugh.

There's the Picasso, and the hipster sycophantic pedantry to reassure him that he's an immense genius.

Bottom line, an artist doesn't stare at a blank canvas and shout "WITH THIS, I WILL CLEARLY PARALLEL MICHEL FOUCAULT'S DISCOURSE ON MODERN METAPHYSICS". It's impossible to do that, no matter the genius. Instead, the artist paints something, and the interpretation follows.

So where does this leave the 21st century urbanite, besides thumbing his James Dean sideburns and trying to make sense of the current artistic landscape? Well, it's my relatively uneducated theory that the 20th century push for modernist and abstract art to make sense has essentially run the creative wells dry. It'll be some time before some new revolutionary artiste decides to turn everything upside down, and until then, we're left with exploding cows and arabesque displays of contrite pretention.
_________________
QED, sort of.

[Les Watters]

I disagree, if you read what the painters themselves say about their work you will be amazed at what they say their painting really means. These guys had their idea of reality, their philosophical and psychological view of the world. Then they painted pictures to visualize that idea. Just read the accounts of these artists. Ya, they all had cronies and 'yes men" to boost their egos but these men and women pushed new ideas through painting. That was their agenda. To say they painted and it was later interpreted is absurd. That is to say they had no idea what they where going to paint until they painted it. Pollack said he "denied the accident" that means what he painted was intentional and it had a purpose. "Paint is paint and canvas is canvas" and this is the illustration of the collective unconscious. The whole of painting is to bring these ideas to life visually. The same is true in Renaissance and the Reformation painters, one for Humanism, and the other to glorify God!

Do you just paint and have nothing to say?
_________________
When in doubt, black it out.

Wally Wood

[Matthew]

The most important thing though isn�t what you paint but how you paint it.

Matthew

[dfacto]

I paint, therefore I am...an artist. Ok, now that I have massacred Descartes' quote.

I draw/paint etc because I have ideas that need to be expressed visually to truly bring them to life. I also like to show my work and get attention and I use it as a means of enhancing my imagination process. I suppose I express myself too, but screw that, I can just talk if thats what I wanted to do.
_________________
It has been clinically proven that other people's pain IS funny.

[treeboy]

I like drawing and painting because I like to make cool stuff. No inner emotional abstract stuff. I just like to create kickass visions.

*shrug* pretty straightforward IMO

One should paint for personal fulfillment, not just because other people find it 'deep.' art is art for the sake of the artist, art is not art for art's sake.
_________________
Hey Man, Nice Shot

~filter

[Les Watters]

Ok how about this idea.

Entertainment lets us escape from our selves.

Art makes us look into ourselves.

Big differance.


Question, do any of you paint for only yourself or do you have an audiance in mind?

The audiance could be friends, family fellow artists or God.
_________________
When in doubt, black it out.

Wally Wood

[YVerloc]

I generally paint my pictures for Ahura Mazada and Odin. It's awful. They fight all the time. Ahura always wants everything to be yellow and orange. Odin just wants gore. And neither of them will shut up about how I'm supposed to be glorifying them. "Glorify me or I'll smash your house with my mighty hammer!" "Don't listen to him, glorify me!" It goes without saying that whatever glorifies Odin, Ahura thinks is blasphemous, and vice versa. Why oh why can't I have more well behaved dieties as clients? I hear that Beelzebub pays better too...
YV

[Les Watters]

YVerloc,

you just don't get it.
_________________
When in doubt, black it out.

Wally Wood

[scallywag]

Art is often (not always) a form of communication. I'm usually trying to say something with my paintings, to achieve an effect (if only a cheap laugh). Most of the time I paint with a purpose, to reach and influence an audience (and also because it makes me feel good).

[-tai-]

Art is an illusion. A communative and methodical manner in defining understanding reasoning and transfering one's own illusion via the three elements, culture, spiritual, and natural. If you paint for a purpose, then the reason is the purpose and the illusion is the thought. If you paint without a purpose, ergo for the reason to paint and paint alone, then you paint to paint paint and the illusion is the latter definition. It doesn't matter what others think, it only matters what the person doing it thinks. If all grew of the same reasoning then painting would not be as diverse as it is, there is no wrong answer as long as there is a means and a reason.

[Meaty Ogre]

Forgive me if I'm off track, I'm too lazy to read the thread. But I thought I'd that I was reading about Gerhard Richter(sp?), he's considered to be an artist by many folks with clout and he says he paints because he likes to paint. And people have always painted, and so will he. Just like treeboy, he likes to show himself and others "cool stuff". But then comes the art intellectual bullshit. He's a smart guy, maybe smarter than most. He knows how to come off like an artist. So in one since, I think he's great for just painting... because he wants to. But he's also something of a con, like many artists.

I think people paint, some are smart, some are hard workers, some are both. And from all those people, history decides who will be remembered. And the relevence of those artworks is imposed upon them after it is all done.

[Eric Pommer]

[Les Watters]

I will answer your questions with this.

Do they reveal a new truth or help remind us of and old one?
Not a relative truth but an absolute one.
Do they speak to most of the people most of the time?

If they don't then they are not art.
_________________
When in doubt, black it out.

Wally Wood

[Eric Pommer]

[Meaty Ogre]

Word up, Eric.

[eyewoo]