So I've done film school and I've done design school. I absolutely believe that the artistic / creative process and "art" itself can be taught...to a point. My father is an engineer and he will never, ever understand, value, or be able to create art. That's fine. As long as you have some creative in your blood (this is a topic for another day) art can be taught. Art is simply telling and story and/or expressing ones ideas, thoughts, views, and emotions. Music, film, painting, digital design, etc all do this. You take something that is internal and you externalize it and try to transfer it to the audience so that they can internalize some of it. Art is nothing without the audience just like art is nothing without the idea. There are certain rules that apply to different forms of art that allow the artist to be successful in this. This is why art school works. It teaches you a lot of things. We did heaps of ideation work in my writing for film, design, and production classes. Ideas are bullshit most of the time. The hardest thing is to come up with an idea worth sharing and then taking that idea to a new level. I'm sure you have all encountered that friend with a million "brilliant" ideas. The ideas are shit, but he's excited about his idea because he knows things that you don't know. He is just having issues communicating the idea to you. (Or else they are just shit. There are a lot of plain-and-simple shit ideas out of there. Unoriginal copies.) It takes a lot of work and iteration and circling around the initial seed of an idea until it is fully formed. Part of school was figuring out a process that can move the idea from a little seedling to a fully fleshed out idea. We did exercises to look deep within ourselves and our emotions to find new ideas. We did bullshit tactics like writing down every idea that comes to mind and connecting the dots, etc. Ideation is hard. Things like collaboration, feedback, conversations, inspiration, brainstorming are tactics to help the idea become fully formed. They are also things that artists rarely do until they have been taught how to do them. Once you have the idea, you have to figure out how to communicate it and make it accessible to the audience. With film, you have to have the technical side down in order for the audience to be able to ignore the technical side and get to the story and idea. In particular, the edits and sound in film should be invisible. If you notice the cuts in a film, the editor has done a poor job. This same idea is reiterated when I started practicing design. John D. Berry - "Only when the design fails does it draw attention to itself; when it succeeds, it’s invisible." Art is so much more than the above. Art is a culmination of a million little bits coming together to create something that can be transferred to the audience. It can make the audience see what you see. It can create new emotions in the audience. It can take on a life of it's own and have and unintended effect on the audience - emotions or readings into or whatever. People take what you have created and make it their own. That's good art. So, can you teach it? Sure. You can teach tactics on how to grow ideas into something real. You can teach them how to take the idea and make it something that is aesthetically and technically sound. You can teach certain "rules" that allow you to communicate to your audience better. You can give them opportunity to be successful and to fail and you can teach them how to recover and channel that failure into something new. The rest is up to the artist. The artist must have the desire to create and share their creations and put the time and energy into the art. This is why I say my father will never create art. He has no desire to. You could teach him art for 50 years and at the end of the day, he would go home and tinker, not explore deep ideas in his head and working on conveying them through an artistic medium.
This, if I remember correctly, humanodon, was the basis of our first interaction about art, wasn't it? It's an idea I'm still processing. Certainly not yet ready to make any more assertions about it, because I'm not certain enough of my answer anymore. As for art just being about externalizing the internal... I'm not entirely sure. Lemme see if I can dig around at why. Keep in mind that I'm tired tired tired and supposed to be working right now, so I'm not sure of the value of what I'm saying. Feel free to pick 'er apart. Basically, though. If art were just about taking something internal and making it external with no other preconditions, would we have any people we consider artistic heavyweights? In other words, if I have a feeling: "Work is useless," and then I paint onto a canvas a stick figure with a speech bubble saying "work is useless..." I've just externalized my internal viewpoint. Poorly, but by the above criteria, it doesn't matter. It's up to the audience to determine whether or not I'm artistically successful, even if I know I put no thought into the piece. Or else yeah, I can practice and study and work out my ideas and hone my art until, on a canvas, I can use the most exquisite oil paints to paint in painstaking detail a guy with his head in his hands... with a speech bubble saying "work is useless." And it's up to the audience to do the rest. This example is ridiculous, I know. I'm actually kind of embarrassed to have used it, but again, tired. But it gets at something: sometimes you can practice and practice and practice and put something out that's technically well-rendered... and it still won't strike an emotional chord because a) maybe you just don't have any good ideas (you addressed this above) and/or b) you have, for all of your technical skill, no natural talent for effectively expressing your views to any audience. Which I guess gets in a roundabout fashion to the first thing I mentioned, which was the role of the audience in effective artwork. So blah. I guess the best I can do is provide two examples- Thomas Kinkade (God rest his soul) and Chuck Close. Chose them because they both focus on the representational, both paint as realistically as they can (okay, that's an assumption), both use the same media. Other than that, arbitrary. Kinkade did landscapes, Close portaiture. They're both concise in realizing their ideas. Is Kinkade on the same level in terms of cultural value as Close? That's not rhetorical- it's a hard question. Kinkade probably has more total market value and access to popular culture? But Close's stuff probably goes for more per square inch and is more highly valued within circles that pride themselves in valuing such things. I can say that looking at the two side by side objectively as I can, Close's stuff is just incredible while Kinkade's stuff feels cheap and saccharine. But if they've both desired to convey something as much as they possibly could, and both practiced and toiled and created these works, but one retains more value than the other, doesn't that mean that there's some kernel that is totally up to natural ability, and can't be taught? That, in my mind, is the seed of artistic expression. Not impeccable technique, but an inbred ability to not just externalize the internal, but to compel a culture to empathize with your internalized thought/emotion. Which, I guess you get at above as well. So why do you think that the whole process is teachable whereas I believe that the fundamental ability can't be bestowed but only inherited?Art is nothing without the audience just like art is nothing without the idea.
Yes and no. You've successfully externalized your idea and the audience may internalize that idea but that doesn't make it good or art. What makes art good is when the audience has to go through a process in order to internalize it. During this exploration process they take in what you have created and make it their own. They see things you may not have intended, they relate it to their life, their emotions, their unique experiences. Then it is their own and the art has evolved and has been successful. Good art also creates new experiences during this process. When you watch an excellent movie, you are not only watching it and taking it in, but you are also creating some new emotions or thoughts while you take it in. Sort of like the journey, not the destination. Same with paintings. They create emotions that vary between different audiences. Some people may look at a painting and find it full of elation. Some may find the same painting to be morbid and a bit awkward. The barrier to entry for understanding and devouring art is what makes art truly complicated. In your Kinkade/Close example, Kinkade's barrier to entry is quite low. You see him on puzzles and calendars and everything in between. It's just there and it is pretty and that's okay. Not much effort is put into looking at a puzzle. He's an artist and he has created some beautiful pieces that (for me) are pretty and calming and soothing. However, because the barrier to entry for viewing his works is so low, and the environment that we often seen Kinkade in is on a puzzle, not in a gallery, the value and satisfaction I (the audience) receive from seeing his art is also low. I've found the same is true for music. You could hear a fantastic song after diving for hours through soundcloud and your experience listening to that song is going to be magical. You are going to feel and have a deep appreciate for the melodies and the lyrics and all that greatness. You could have heard that same song for the first time on the radio while driving and you would never have that same level of appreciation for it. Even though it is still the same, magical, fantastic song. The atmosphere is different, the level of attention you are giving the song is different, the level of internalization is different. I think that everyone is capable of having ideas and learning how to convey those ideas in a great artistic form. Art is really only about the idea. The rest is pretty technical. If one has the inclination to explore and dive deep into their ideas, and enough desire and time to dedicate to learning and perfecting their craft, they can do it. Very few people have both the inclination and desire and the time. Right. Well, not every one has great ideas nor the inclination to take their ideas and make them something worthwhile to be shared. I still stand by the fact that everyone has ideas. Some people's ideas are initially better than other's ideas and this has to do with life experiences and reflection. Some people naturally soak a lot of information and experience from the world around them and then take that information and reflect on it. lil has probably had more insight in life and love by the time she was 25 that I'll have during my entire life. kleinbl00 has had a variety of life experiences - from strippers, to deserts, to engineering, to audio, to parenthood, to planes. Even though these things are all pretty different, they all connect and come together and thus, the scope of ideas (and arguments) are impacted by his knowledge about these things. Other people may grow up in a single place with a single group of friends. They may not be well-read. They may be satisfied by simply being told an answer and never asking why. They may not reflect on their choices or actions. Their ideas are going to be affected by this. They have an idea ("work is useless") and that's the end of the "conversation" in their head simply because they have never experienced anything different. kb's arguments / ideas are initially more fully formed not just by his experiences, but by the arguments that take place in his head in a split second. This instant circling around an idea makes it grow into a bigger, stronger truth. He may say "work is useless" and another part of his head comes back and says "no it's not, work is useful in XYZ cases." By the time he writes a post on hubski, the idea is a massive beast, grown from a million microscopic arguments that he's already had with himself. If we take the person who just had the idea "work is useless" and moved on and we teach them how to pull apart the idea, connect the idea with similar ideas, create arguments to fight the idea, and circle around it, the idea is going to be much stronger in the end. The only advantage some people have is that this process happens naturally while other people need to force the process more. Don't worry about it and thanks for leaving it up. I do this all the time. I'm still 50/50 on this post in fact. Too many ideas to get out.I've just externalized my internal viewpoint. Poorly, but by the above criteria, it doesn't matter. It's up to the audience to determine whether or not I'm artistically successful, even if I know I put no thought into the piece
So why do you think that the whole process is teachable whereas I believe that the fundamental ability can't be bestowed but only inherited?
Because they just don't have the requisite intellectual equipment.
I hate what I just wrote. But I refuse to take it down. Somewhere in there is what I'm trying to convey. Not sure I can. No natural ability? Huh.
Hm, there's some really neat stuff here. I especially like Because it gets at something I've been thinking a lot about lately- chiefly that creative works have a life of their own, and as such their merit exists independently of their creator. Not a new idea maybe, but definitely one worth chewing on for a while. Lot of points to digest, thanks for the response. Speaking of KB, I'm surprised he hasn't put his two cents in. Subject seems right up his alley.They see things you may not have intended, they relate it to their life, their emotions, their unique experiences. Then it is their own and the art has evolved and has been successful
I hate what I just wrote. But I refuse to take it down. Somewhere in there is what I'm trying to convey. Not sure I can. No natural ability? Huh.
Okay here we go: successful art is like a successful argument. And some people are really good at making successful arguments given whatever vocabulary they have. Others can talk and talk and talk, but no matter how much they work at it, no matter how much they improve, no matter how big their words are, they will never make a successful argument. Because they just don't have the requisite intellectual equipment. So it is with art. Some people can use whatever medium they want, they can take all the classes in the world, they can paint with technical proficiency, but they will never illuminate anything or convince anybody of anything with their art. Inborn ability.