tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post1311284670898413971..comments2024-03-28T22:57:07.128-04:00Comments on ILLUSTRATION ART: LOOKING AT CLOUDS FROM BOTH SIDESDavid Apatoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11293486149879229016noreply@blogger.comBlogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-3646602966262820892019-04-09T09:32:05.435-04:002019-04-09T09:32:05.435-04:00Kev,
The things of life you mention do come throu...Kev, <br />The things of life you mention do come through in your writing and what you talk about. <br />You’ve made the distinction between imagination and programmed “thought” many times before. <br /><br />I was encouraging myself perhaps and you or anyone concerned about the suppression of reality favoring instead a digitally mediated world, (to borrow your word). A great deal may be hidden for a time but it isn't going away and people will seek it out.<br />Take care, SeanSean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-71947890461504989252019-04-09T02:41:23.362-04:002019-04-09T02:41:23.362-04:00@Kev Ferrara
I agree with the first page. I did ...@Kev Ferrara <br /><br />I agree with the first page. I did not mean to suggest that the person taking the photo was the creator of the scene. My point was rather that even the seasoned photographer doesn't necessarily take nature as is (copy verbatim, so to speak), meaning snapping the scene immediately as he comes upon it like a tourist on family vacation. No he doesn't have the same selective power as the artist. I concede that point. Maybe the term selection isn't appropriate at all for him. I was aiming to expand on the point that just copying nature exactly isn't the artistry, but yeah it doesn't work for photography. Unless we involve photo manipulation/software editing?<br /><br />But let's say, keeping to the confines of painting/drawing, everyone CAN select. The difference is will they select and will they select well? Take two different people, one a non-artist or rank novice, the other a master landscape painter, like Thomas Moran. Set them before a natural scene and tell them to create a realistic painting of it. The amateur, provided they are not overwhelmed by all the information before them and hang it up, may strive to paint every tree, twig, bush, and cloud they see, in the exact tones they see, to the best of their ability. The master will omit, add, rearrange, heighten, or subdue according to what he feels will arrive at the best picture according to his expertise (and we know they do this by reading their memoirs, notes, etc). Lacking confidence, the novice may believe that to alter anything is not the "right" way, not producing a realistic painting as instructed. Lacking skill and knowledge, they will not be able to edit the scene and have pictorial harmony. They have not the power of selection. <br /><br />"To explain it another way, what if, as a photographer, you find non-alignment interesting? What if you think it is really artistic to record scenes that are visually dull, or obvious, or chaotic in a meaningless way? What if you think art should never be manipulative so you shouldn't think about what you photograph at all; you just click randomly. Those are choices too. Equally found or curated, and then captured by a machine. The fundamental constituent (light) not being meaningfully transformed by clicking the shutter button in any of these cases."<br /><br />Since I've now taken selective power out of the photographer's toolbox, I would say they lack taste, care, and/or discernment. And they aren't much of a photographer at all. They are not even on the radar of image making competence afaic.<br /><br />When I say alignment, I'm thinking in terms of composition. If it exists as a technical term in design, I'm not using that version. The example I had in my head was a group of figures in movement, as in a sports competition or infantry combat. The photo-journo, in this case limited to a single vantage point, waiting for a moment when the figures fall into a spatial arrangement with each other and the group with the environment, that works as a composition. Heads aren't half out of the picture plane, the figure closest isn't covering all the other figures, etc. Maybe he's the group will arrive at a circular Rubens-esque composition or something Howard Pyle inspired. <br /><br />So do you believe in Art Photography (meaning the photo is the art) as a field, or it's legitimacy? I just assumed it was an actual thing from what I've read and heard. Apparently there are a number of magazines dedicated to it, and a lot of photographers seem to either believe it is a thing or that they are producing it.Chris Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11931414857801867456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-27318023860887411802019-04-08T16:38:42.274-04:002019-04-08T16:38:42.274-04:00You come by way of the stones you turn, Robert McK...<b>You come by way of the stones you turn, Robert McKee, Kant, Pierce and your own explorations. Peterson and Professor Hicks from their philosophical scholarship with references to Soltzenitzen, Shakespeare or Milton. But order, beauty and good sense can come on a walk home alone from summer school and that moment that will return again and again in life. It is repressed in our busy world, but it can’t be repressed forever. Short cuts and expediency reveal discontent. It’s not looking good at the moment, but yours is a good cause. Share on.</b><br /><br />Just to clarify something; not only do I generally not speak "intellectually" in real life about art (unless prompted), but I grew up living a physical life, half in the city and half in the country, full of joy and danger and love and tragedy and all sorts of amazing adventures. I don't know what I would think of as True had I not had all that essentially unmediated experience behind me. But it gave me a firm foundation in life without reference to words.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-27919211228017015322019-04-08T13:11:32.048-04:002019-04-08T13:11:32.048-04:00(And I assume the assumption that when the Arts ar...(And I assume the assumption that when the Arts are not participating in beauty, the Arts aren't Art at all.)Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-62906555971715201122019-04-08T13:09:22.754-04:002019-04-08T13:09:22.754-04:00> If we admit a bit of the universe is beautifu...> If we admit a bit of the universe is beautiful, even far beyond anything man can create, what does that have to do with art,level of artistry, and who/what creates it? Beauty is only one thing art can provide, and, afaic, not the most important. <br /><br />Oh jeez, that's a whole 'nother debate. I guess I should have prefaced this all with another assumed assumption. ;-)<br /><br />I assume the assumption that beauty is the chief good, the most important thing in the universe, the <i>parent</i> quality of all that is virtuous or good, whether truth, love, and so on. <br /><br />I also assume the assumption that beauty is the sole goal of all Arts, and the Arts are therefore a chiefly important (even holy) activity, because of their relationship to the supreme good.Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-91219825987570970382019-04-08T10:50:54.385-04:002019-04-08T10:50:54.385-04:00Kev,
Thanks for the new word arrrghnorance....Kev,<br /> Thanks for the new word arrrghnorance. One of the pitfalls of being human is that the discovery and recognition of one’s dignity is a persistent and persistently misunderstood process. We more easily recognize it in externals and are transported accordingly. Our interior poverty is rarely self evident, nor our eager compromises. Order is recognized in beauty because they’re roommates. They reside in humility, excited or awed, but withdraw with the next distraction.<br /><br />They will persist because they never leave. They’re hidden in every dynamic turn of phrase, cutting truth, juxtaposition of color and form, musical and linguistic phrases, visual linguistics, human gain and loss, in every confrontation, sorrow, success or error and every human story. And once acquainted with beauty and order, people seek to know them better, to defend them and promote them. It is a fire of the heart that can't be stopped.<br /><br />You come by way of the stones you turn, Robert McKee, Kant, Pierce and your own explorations. Peterson and Professor Hicks from their philosophical scholarship with references to Soltzenitzen, Shakespeare or Milton. But order, beauty and good sense can come on a walk home alone from summer school and that moment that will return again and again in life. It is repressed in our busy world, but it can’t be repressed forever. Short cuts and expediency reveal discontent. It’s not looking good at the moment, but yours is a good cause. Share on.<br /><br />Sean<br />Sean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-65614943941113909042019-04-08T10:24:32.485-04:002019-04-08T10:24:32.485-04:002/2
To explain it another way, what if, as a phot...2/2<br /><br />To explain it another way, what if, as a photographer, you find non-alignment interesting? What if you think it is really artistic to record scenes that are visually dull, or obvious, or chaotic in a meaningless way? What if you think art should never be manipulative so you shouldn't think about what you photograph at all; you just click randomly. <i>Those are choices too.</i> Equally found or curated, and then captured by a machine. The fundamental constituent (light) not being meaningfully transformed by clicking the shutter button in any of these cases. <br /><br />In short, there are two different kinds of selection. Imaginative selection is one kind of selection, but <i>just one</i> of the creative activities an artist does to produce his idea. Curatorial Selection is the other, and it is mostly what an editor or producer or DJ or museum director or collector or journalist does. It is a kind of critical procurement and is barely creative.<br /><br />Selection per se therefore can not be the "great power of the artist" if it can be done by people who aren't artists at all and aren't making art.<br /><br />That these two types of selection have been colloquially confused in our modern era is no surprise, as we live in a time of almost overwhelming pandering and aphilsophical justifications of unethical practices in the arts. <br /><br />Alignment is also very deceptive as a principle of art. It is actually a principle of design simplified from a deeper principle of composition. Alignment alone, or any kind of symmetry, doesn’t necessarily have meaning to it. It is often the illusion of meaning. (Most design principles are reductions of compositional principles.)<br /><br />Now, about actually artful photography... When the thing in front of the camera has been sculpted with form and light by the artist for the sake of a camera shot, <i>then</i> it is surely Art because it is sculpture. The basic elements <i>have</i> been manipulated by the artist and transformed for the sake of expression. But the photograph of this sculpture of light and form is not art, it is only a recording of it; a journalizing of it. Just as if you were taking a photo of a frieze, the frieze is the work of art, not the photo of it.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-16026948073676993812019-04-08T10:23:44.745-04:002019-04-08T10:23:44.745-04:00Btw good art photography and artful photo-journali...<b>Btw good art photography and artful photo-journalism still relies on the same power of the artist, which are selectivity. In his case, seeking out or waiting for the elements of nature or human activity that align themselves into a suitable arrangement of shapes, light, dark, etc.</b><br /><br />Chris James,<br /><br />Respectfully, I don't think this is correct. <br /><br />Some thought experiments...<br /><br />If you walk around an aviary and come upon a spot where the song of one bird is combining with the song of another bird in an interesting melodic and rhythmic way. And you take out your iphone to record the audio, that doesn’t mean you are its songwriter or the singer. You found it and captured it with a mechanical recording device.<br /><br />If you go to a grocery store -- a million food items to choose from -- and you purchase a particular pre-made potato salad, a particular store-made rotisserie chicken, and bottle of wine, that doesn’t make you a chef. You selected from what was available. There was no transformation of basic elements to create the meal.<br /><br />If you walk around the city eavesdropping on conversations and finally hit upon one that you think is interesting -- maybe there are interesting repetitions of words in the exchange, maybe one participant speaks in paradoxes and rhymes, maybe one has a natural poetic meter -- and you write it all down verbatim, that doesn’t make you a writer. You didn’t come up with the content. The poetic alignments or symmetries in the exchange were all creations of the speakers themselves. <br /><br />Similarly, no matter if you seek out, wait for, or accidentally photograph elements of nature in some kind of interesting alignment, that alignment was already there. There is no manipulation of the basic elements by the photographer to make the aligned reality manifest. There was no creation. You simply found and took. Even if it took a lot of waiting and looking to find, its still finding and taking.<br /><br />1/2kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-73752559290547817942019-04-08T06:31:02.220-04:002019-04-08T06:31:02.220-04:00Thank you for providing this information. I am lea...Thank you for providing this information. I am learning so much about fot this. We can discuss it in more detail the next time for my project. <a href="https://www.tvfanatic.com/profiles/charlottejefferson/" rel="nofollow">Instagram Stories Downloader</a><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-37573044313199912202019-04-07T20:14:52.194-04:002019-04-07T20:14:52.194-04:00If we admit a bit of the universe is beautiful, ev...If we admit a bit of the universe is beautiful, even far beyond anything man can create, what does that have to do with art,level of artistry, and who/what creates it? Beauty is only one thing art can provide, and, afaic, not the most important. Goya created great works of Art, portraying ugly scenes that were also lacking in beauty of color, paint handling, and surface compared to any random, forgotten Neo-Classic painter. What they lacked in superficial beauty they made up for in emotional, intellectual, and imaginative power. There is a basic facility with copying and understanding nature he needed to possess, but the artistry of these works mostly comes from his sensibilities, intent, and choices, not the beauty of nature. <br /><br />Btw good art photography and artful photo-journalism still relies on the same power of the artist, which are selectivity. In his case, seeking out or waiting for the elements of nature or human activity that align themselves into a suitable arrangement of shapes, light, dark, etc.Chris Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11931414857801867456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-45015779492637131682019-04-07T19:30:24.964-04:002019-04-07T19:30:24.964-04:00Thanks (?) Sean,
No need for apologies though. I ...Thanks (?) Sean,<br /><br />No need for apologies though. I wasn't offended. The only things I am offended by are bad faith argumentation and that combination of ignorance and arrogance I call ARRRGHnorance.<br /><br />And fyi I <i>definitely</i> experience the writing of many of my technical posts as deep and horrible dentistry. I can only imagine the tedium of reading them. But if I don't spell things out, people accuse me of bluffing or tantalyzing with information I never share; or things that are not true go unanswered on the page, causing miseducation. I almost never speak in real life the way I write. People are generally shocked when they meet me after having read me here.<br /><br />The bright side of all this tooth spelunking is often I find that answering a challenging question here can lead me to a more important answer I had been looking for elsewhere. But generally, I write here to educate, empower and encourage those who would combat vapid, pretentious and destructive culture-vulture dogmas. Anybody who shares that mission is an ally to me, even if they aren't technical about it. Thankfully Peterson and others of his mindset have come along to get more to the root of the problem. If only we had 40 more people as charismatic as he is and all over the political spectrum and of every conceivable "identity."kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-75683975843251439832019-04-07T18:46:41.166-04:002019-04-07T18:46:41.166-04:00Kev,
My sympathies are with you in trying to defi...Kev, <br />My sympathies are with you in trying to define the elusive mysteries of beauty when things have broken down so much that defining the obvious is causing people real troubles. These things mean so much to you and a lack of passion you can never be accused. Accept my apologies for losing my patience with you in 2017. <br />And though you may not experience your own excursions as the occasional unsolicited root canal, consider them forgiven in total from this one reader.<br /><br />Also, thanks for the link to the Jordan Peterson and Professor Stephen Hicks discussion on postmodernism from Rousseau to Foucault. That was a gift.<br />Sincerely,<br />SeanSean Farrellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-14302342491583877702019-04-07T11:09:12.356-04:002019-04-07T11:09:12.356-04:00Let's say it's the 1960s. You're flipp...<b>Let's say it's the 1960s. You're flipping through a magazine, filled with gorgeous illustrations of upper middle class New Englanders, and you come to a photo of a nebula.<br /><br />Even if it's not art, would you at least agree that you would find it as beautiful?</b><br /><br />I might find it less, more, or equally beautiful.<br /><br />To talk seriously about Beauty, though, you need to understand that most of the time the phrase is used colloquially. I made a list at one point and found around 16 different colloquial usages of the word. It's as misused a word as Art. So it makes it very difficult to develop an understanding of beauty without pinpointing the phenomena first. Beauty is a particular kind of human response to a particular class of phenomena. From there we work back to an analysis of why we respond to the beautiful and what that response tends to be and all the different phenomena that might thrust similar beauty-responses upon us. And then from there we work back to a non-technical dictionary definition of the word.<br /><br />I've never written it the same way twice, but my current view is that Beauty is something like; the sudden aesthetic intuition of the sublimated meaningful order organizing a complex but clarified source of significance.<br /><br />Part of the problem of stating a definition in English is that words are a different language with different properties from aesthetic signs. And so any attempted translation will be highly lossy and compromised.<br /><br />It is also worth considering Kant's point about beauty being a contemplative response. Rather than a response born out of acquisitive interest.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-91297967932754582792019-04-07T08:42:35.344-04:002019-04-07T08:42:35.344-04:00Richard,
I assume you missed the post above yours...Richard, <br />I assume you missed the post above yours before you sent your own. In addition to the that comment.<br /><br />A belief in God is a real thing and has inspired artists to express their appreciation in religious, cultural and natural works especially landscapes. But if you’re talking about teaching people how to see, the camera is a woeful compromise to that mission because it distorts and flattens space, eliminates many values and there’s almost no color compared to what one finds in nature and these compromises are done mechanically without thoughtfulness or respect for the subject.<br />XAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-3130842131039104172019-04-07T00:29:25.401-04:002019-04-07T00:29:25.401-04:00Okay, so let's go back in time. You've ne...Okay, so let's go back in time. You've never seen a nebula before. Photos of them exist, but you haven't seen one.<br /><br />Let's say it's the 1960s. You're flipping through a magazine, filled with gorgeous illustrations of upper middle class New Englanders, and you come to a photo of a nebula.<br /><br />Even if it's not art, would you at least agree that you would find it as beautiful?Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-43977146639998700112019-04-06T18:18:43.882-04:002019-04-06T18:18:43.882-04:00A theory of aesthetics which holds that nebulae ar...<b> A theory of aesthetics which holds that nebulae aren't aesthetically beautiful because they're not manmade, or appreciably beautiful because I've only ever seen them in photographs is dead on arrival.</b><br /><br />Here we go again.<br /><br />Same old mental glitch. These argumentative shell games are so bloody tiresome.<br /><br />Nobody ever said nature could not be beautiful. <br /><br />Nobody ever said a photo could not be beautiful.<br /><br />Nobody ever said a nebula could not be beautiful. <br /><br />The question about a photograph is whether it is necessarily art (let alone the highest achievement of art) simply because it captures some visual aspects of the world which correspond to our experience of it which are also pretty to look at. I think I have succinctly argued for why it is not. As Chris and others have. <br /><br />The question of the use of the word "aesthetic" is the only actual debate at present. For the purposes of an art discussion I tend to keep it bottled to the field of creative human communication. When I discuss Aesthetics, I discuss the Aesthetics of Art.<br /><br />But, as I have already pointed out, our aesthetic responses almost surely come from our more general intuitive adaptive responses to natural signs in our environment. From our shifts in mood that accompany the darkening that comes with cloud cover before a storm, to one's stunned reaction to the radiant beauty of a fertile and lovely female smiling your way. Ruskin's discussions of the awe and the sublime in nature, for example, are not only legitimate areas of aesthetic inquiry, but are classic examples of such.<br /><br />But these Aesthetic discussions of natural phenomena only get us so far for the purposes of Art. Because Art edits its source material - otherwise naturally occurring signs - so extensively that it becomes its own language separate and distinct from nature. It is our development of that Aesthetic Language that I am mainly interested in. That is my fascination.<br />____<br /><br />Regarding photos of Nebulae; just imagine experiencing them in real life. And you will experience the correct perspective of what little aesthetic information a photo of such a cosmic entity can offer. One simply cannot "close" the scale or sculptural qualities involved from the photo alone. Even if the photo were building-sized. It makes a pretty picture. Cool stuff no doubt. But we must leave the photograph and go into our own minds to get anywhere near the actual awesome reality. Which is by way of explaining that the photo itself is anaesthetic with respect to what it might take to get a proper haptic-spatial-temporal sense of a Nebula.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-19089544453614201512019-04-06T18:09:42.416-04:002019-04-06T18:09:42.416-04:00To you first question: 'yes, very probably'...To you first question: 'yes, very probably'. <br />To your second question: 'possibly'. <br />To your third question: 'no, just recognising similarities in the function'.<br /><br />The fact that lesser mortals sometimes erroneously attribute god-like powers to mightier mortals is beside the point. An omnipotent deity, by definition, will not have the physical and mortal constraints which evolutionarily forge the psychological wiring of finite beings, their congenital need for meaningfulness and thereby the emergence of the aesthetic impulse.<br /><br />chris bennetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02088693067960235141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-37409972153582954662019-04-06T17:25:54.856-04:002019-04-06T17:25:54.856-04:00Chris,
Do you hold that aliens may exist? If so,...Chris,<br /><br />Do you hold that aliens may exist? If so, could aliens have aesthetic purpose?<br /><br />Would suggesting that they make art or have morality be projecting human attributes?<br /><br />To plagiarize from Clark's third law: any sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from a God.<br /><br />I can't see why a deity shouldn't be able to appreciate aesthetic content or have a sense of morality of some kind.Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-44281616138652102382019-04-06T16:53:05.467-04:002019-04-06T16:53:05.467-04:00Putting aside theodicy, it's unclear why a God...<b>Putting aside theodicy, it's unclear why a God who's focus is on creating a world of aesthetic content would have to be "good" in human terms.</b><br /><br />But you are attributing God with aesthetic purpose, a concept of the human mind just as much as the idea of morality. Just as much, in fact, as the idea of Art.chris bennetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02088693067960235141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-51209848386943184852019-04-06T16:17:03.455-04:002019-04-06T16:17:03.455-04:00> the camera wasn’t the best analogy to use bec...> the camera wasn’t the best analogy to use because it lacks the human response to what artists agree is wonder.<br /><br />I'm left in wonder by the beauty of all sorts of things that I've only ever seen in photographs -- take any given nebula.<br /><br />A theory of aesthetics which holds that nebulae aren't aesthetically beautiful because they're not manmade, or appreciably beautiful because I've only ever seen them in photographs is dead on arrival.Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-48340386477187710332019-04-06T16:12:28.709-04:002019-04-06T16:12:28.709-04:00> I have no reason to believe that it is aesthe...> I have no reason to believe that it is aesthetic, that there is intent to appeal to the aesthetic pleasure of humans.<br /><br />I didn't say that. If beauty is universal, then it could stand to reason that the gods made beauty for their own sake, and that we are able to appreciate it as well for its merely having existed.Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-86483218986216075092019-04-06T16:08:27.799-04:002019-04-06T16:08:27.799-04:00Actually, looking at those pagan and animist relig...Actually, looking at those pagan and animist religions where there are gods of beauty, they almost universally hold that the gods are not good -- from Adonis and Aphrodite to Bastet -- Japan, Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Americas, etc.<br /><br />The idea that God is good is actually fairly isolated to Christianity, and it's offspring in Islam, Baha'i.Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-38448065262471828812019-04-06T16:02:35.193-04:002019-04-06T16:02:35.193-04:00> If the answer is that all creation itself is ...> If the answer is that all creation itself is a work of art then one has to conclude that the deity responsible for setting up a cosmos that produced the mental make-up of the individuals who sanctioned gassing six million people is part of it.<br /><br />Putting aside theodicy, it's unclear why a God who's focus is on creating a world of aesthetic content would have to be "good" in human terms.Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-8089779700948668462019-04-06T15:35:16.106-04:002019-04-06T15:35:16.106-04:00And I think we should cut the crayon users some sl...And I think we should cut the crayon users some slack. It's such a chintzy medium, hardly anything good can be done with it. I'd say that dry media is rubbish for anything beyond sketches. So for those interested, I've taken the liberty of drawing up a shopping list of dry media that are worth a damn:<br /><br />-the red and black chalks of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Rubens<br />-The charcoal of Fechin<br />-Prismacolor colored pencils<br /><br />Some of these may be difficult to get a hold of. <br /><br />Everything else you can safely throw in the trash and you'd instead be better off getting comfortable with ink drawing. It's sharper, bolder, cleaner, just as versatile if not more, and most professional looking. Chris Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11931414857801867456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-23856574627618759572019-04-06T15:27:26.913-04:002019-04-06T15:27:26.913-04:00Visual art is cuisine. Created by man for the plea...Visual art is cuisine. Created by man for the pleasure of man. The raw ingredients may be manufactured by nature or God, and for that we should be grateful. And they may be tasty in their own right, but it takes man to turn those ingredients into cuisine from which man will derive even greater satisfaction than if he ate the raw ingredients by themselves. <br /><br />Whatever the intent, function, or purpose of nature is, I have no reason to believe that it is aesthetic, that there is intent to appeal to the aesthetic pleasure of humans. Honestly, nature is often an unsightly mess, visually speaking. <br /><br />Bosch, Dali, Escher, Rubens, Dore, Frazetta etc. in their most famous works, are not "journalists" of nature, they are chefs. They create images that nature does not by re-arranging/subtracting from/adding to/heightening the visual raw materials of reality. "The Garden of Earthly Delights" does not in fact exist on Earth, so a man had to create the art that nature didn't, or couldn't. This is what i mean when I say if only all art was journalistic, than reproducing nature verbatim would determine the artistry of the work. But then instead of looking at paintings or photos, you'd watch Planet Earth on a 4k screen<br /><br />Some art does have mere journalistic intent, but I find no interest in it.Chris Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11931414857801867456noreply@blogger.com