Art, iPads, and Auto-naming

I cannot believe how much fun it is, and how freeing, to make art on an iPad. I have started a weekly class and can't stop picking up the iPad and playing with some newly discovered aspect of the art app. 

There's something very freeing about not having to buy paint and pencils, canvasses and watercolour paper in order to be able to mimic the effects of it all on the screen.  I have always been a little intimidated to buy all of the paraphernalia; one needs enough to make things work well, but not so much as will be hard to give away if it's not the right thing...

I also love the "undo" and "trash" buttons. I can choose to struggle with a "fix" or just delete. Entirely freeing!

ArtRage is the app I am using, and it is quite wonderful with its range of tools and range of settings for each tool. Each new work is a sizeable file because of the way the app mimics wetness of paint and drying times, etc. There are layers to play with, colour samplers, importing of photos for tracing, and a palette knife (my personal favourite, so far).

One thing I haven't figured out yet is the "auto-namer" for paintings. 

For example, one of our assignments was to do a series of self-portraits. Following is one of me with a bad cold:

ArtRage named this "Boy with a Red Waistcoat"!

Another piece I did especially to see what name it would receive:

ArtRage name: "Ballet at the Paris Opera."

Auto-fillers are the subject of much recent humour and for good reason. But I've yet to see anything so serendipitous and delightful as the ArtRage one.

I admit that I am hooked and look forward to seeing how some of my work will look when printed - and just what odd delightful name it will have.

 

Artists, Motives, and Morality

After reading an excellent post, at ART and ARCHITECTURE, mainly, about Oscar Wilde's involvement in France's notorious Dreyfus Affair, I decided to re-post this entry from August  2009. I have long been intrigued by our relationship with artists and by our expectations about them as moral (or otherwise) people.

In 1991, when Woody Allen began a relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow (his long-time romantic partner), the media erupted with commentary for and against his morality. Some said that they would never again patronize any of his films; others made a special case for him because "artists are different," and we overlook transgressions because of what their art gives to us.

An even more heated debate about artists, their morality, and their contributions to the world, arose when Roman Polanski was arrested in 2009, decades after fleeing to avoid sentencing in a case of having forced sex with a minor - to which he had pled guilty. The same arguments circulated.

Hels' post about Oscar Wilde discusses two books about Wilde's involvement in the Dreyfus Affair, particularly about his motives, and it reminded me of this question about artists that surfaces again and again.



Here is the original post:



In October 1984, I saw an exhibit of Hitler's watercolours at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

I then knew nothing about Hitler as an artist and was shocked by the fact that he painted anything at all. The paintings were decent, some better than decent, and some were quite pretty, especially those of great architecture in landscape settings.

I would forget for a time that the paintings were done by Hitler and simply appreciate them; then with a mental start, I would remember whose work it was and feel guilty for enjoying it. At times, I was dual-minded, a critic watching myself enjoying the art of an evil madman.

It was one of those odd moments that stay with a person always.

Spiegel Online International has Ulrike Knofel's interview with German art historian Birgit Schwarz: "The Fuhrer's Obsession with Art."

Schwarz is an expert on Hitler's relationship with art and sees Hitler's obsession with art as part of his view of himself as a genius, and vice versa. She further connects his political and racial evils with his belief in himself as a genius - an idea of genius from the 19th century:

We define a genius on the basis of his talent. At the time, talent was not the main focus. A genius had to have a strong personality. He was a larger-than-life talent who was permitted to do anything, including evil things. The genius has outstanding ideas, and they must be implemented, even if they are completely amoral. Hitler admired the work of dour philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Unlike many other historians and biographers who see the artist almost as footnote to the monster, Schwarz sees Hitler's ideas about himself as an artist as fundamental to his persona and actions as Der Fuhrer.

Schwarz has written "Geniewahn: Hitler und die Kunst" (Delusions of Genius: Hitler and Art) about these connections.

___________________________________________________

The connections between artists and morality, between what society expects of us mere mortals as differentiated from what it expects, at times, from artists is a complex and fascinating question. Hels' post has added another dimension and another artist to my "collection."

Art is the Thing

Our scientific understanding of sound frequencies, musical instruments, and analog and digital technologies for conveying sound waves does not ever fully explain a Mozart piano concerto, nor does our understanding of music theory.

Neuroscience does not explain the piano concerto, and it does not ever fully explain the writings of Shakespeare. But because neuroscience is the newest kid on the block and has a trendy cachet, some believe it can explain Hamlet and all other art in ways that will fundamentally alter our understanding.

But I don't believe it.

Morgan Meis's article "This Is Your Brain on Art," in The Smart Set (March 17/11) discusses these issues in his review of V.S. Ramachandran's book The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for what Makes Us Human. The article is well written and a balanced discussion, although Meis at least somewhat believes that the findings of neuroscience will deeply shift our relationship with art.

In his review, Meis points out that Ramachandran does not claim to explain the ultimate meaning of art, just that "making art and appreciating art seems [sic] to be universal in the human species"  :

Neuroscience is not meant to replace other standpoints from which we appreciate and analyze art. Ramachandran thinks, in general, that neuroscience can make significant contributions to aesthetics without otherwise encroaching on the humanities. Our love of Shakespeare, he argues, is not diminished by our understanding of universal grammar.

Ramachandran gets it because he understands the science and understands its limits, but so many non-scientists want to base every field of study and area of human endeavour on neuroscience. So we have brain-based Shakespeare, brain-based leadership, brain-based art history, brain-based relationships, etc., etc., etc....

Individually, it is a personal choice to base one's life on misunderstood science written about in popular culture, but we shouldn't rush to re-write social policy and whole academic disciplines based on it. (I've written about this in literary studies; there is a trend towards neuroscience as full explanation of literature.)

I believe that our relationship with art is not most importantly about hard-wiring and synapses, that is about the material. The importance of our relationship with art is existential and beyond science.

Some of Ramachandran's research (which I discussed in Mirror, Mirror) is about phantom limb pain and how the brain responds to a mirror image in place of a missing leg. Shakespeare, in Hamlet, presents the play within his play to hold up a kind of mirror image to Claudius, an image that contains Claudius's missing guilt.

The more things change, the more they stay the same! The mechanism in both images - the Renaissance understanding of the psyche and twenty-first century understanding of the brain -  is that the viewer will respond as if the missing element is indeed present and act accordingly.

Ramachandran's mirror image and neuroscience, generally, contribute to our understanding of humanity and art. But, like Shakespeare's play within the play, it is only part of a much larger, complex, and maybe inexplicable whole.

Meis writes: "We are going to go forward into the unknown in the quest to make art fully knowable and we'll deal with the consequences when we've arrived, joyful in our accomplishments and sad, too, at the inevitable loss of all that has been left behind."

Loss? I don't believe it.

Weird, Wild, Wonderful 4 - Jan 31 - Feb 6

Some new findings, some old favourites.

ThinkShop, a blog on history, politics, and literature (among other interesting and intelligent musings). This blog is very well-written by an educator who lives in Switzerland.

nthposition online magazine is hard to categorize and certainly extensive. Here are the sections, just to give an idea: Strangeness, Politics, Opinion, Places, People, Poetry, Fiction, Reviews, Artreviews, Discussion, Contributors, Links. Good writing; some eye-opening essays.

In These Times, always interesting, always pointed, always good reading:

In These Times is a newsmagazine committed to political and economic democracy and opposed to the dominance of transnational corporations and the tyranny of marketplace values over human values. In These Times is dedicated to reporting the news with the highest journalistic standards; to informing and analyzing movements for social, environmental and economic justice; and to providing an accessible forum for debate about the policies that shape our future.

Delineating Art, the blog of artist Elaine Cheung offers commentary on art and life. Many of her posts begin with a particular artist or piece and then lead out to a larger point. Thoughtful and interesting.

Soiree's Past Week

At My Soiree - January 25 - 31

A typical winter view from our window.

...And Looting Isn't Always Crime - Monday, January 25/10

Art and/or Morality - Tuesday, January 26/10

Your Name is WHAT? - Wednesday, January 27/10

Days of Wine and Yoga - Thursday, January 28/10

Movies for Foodies - Friday, January 29/10

Weird, Wild, Wonderful 4- Jan 24-30  -- January 30/10 

Art and/or Morality

Jeffrey Toobin's article in the December 14/09 issue of The New Yorker is quite a comprehensive discussion of the ongoing legal issues and extradition order for Roman Polanski. The article lays out the timelines of events and the twists and turns of Polanski's long self-exile in Europe.

Called "The Celebrity Defense," Toobin's article traces the influence, for both Polanski's advantage and disadvantage, of his celebrity status.

The arguments put forward in the "for" and "against" Polanski camps remind me of the same arguments raised when Woody Allen was caught having an affair with his, then, step-adopted daughter Soon-Yi in 1992.

Allen, who is 34 years Soon-Yi's senior, eventually married her in 1997, but the scandal raged at the time.

Allen's (it should be noted that he did not commit a crime and faced no charges) and Polanski's cases raise issues about art and morality. Often in Polanski's defense has someone commented on his talent and contribution to the world of film. The same defense was raised concerning Allen.

I remember listening to a call-in show on CBC radio just after the Allen scandal broke. The callers clearly were divided into two camps, fairly evenly split, as follows:

1) Artists are different from us mere mortals and, thus, should be forgiven their sins (or judged by a different standard).

2) Artists have no special relationship to the law, are not above it, and should be held up to the same moral and legal standards as everyone else. Period. No exceptions.

These two positions lead to further questions about what happens when it's concrete, and we are putting our dollars where our morals are.

Are art and the morality of the artist intertwined? Independent? Should one purchase or in any way support the work of someone who is deemed immoral? Or are we merely purchasing something not related to morality at all?

Do we know the moral qualities of all the people who own (and own stock in) the companies (plus all the people who work for them) whose products we purchase? Is not knowing an excuse for going ahead with a purchase? Is that really any different from buying a book or painting created by an individual of whom we disapprove?

I wrote some months ago about seeing Hitler's watercolours in Florence and going through a severe ambivalence because I liked the paintings but had a hard time reconciling that with who had painted them.


These are not easy questions. Jeffrey Toobin does a good job of showing how they play out in the life, crimes and sentencing of Roman Polanski.


(Both paintings shown in this post are by Adolph Hitler.)

Soiree's Past Week

At My Soiree - December 21 - 26 /09

Northern Solstice - December 21/09

Christmas and the Food Police - December 22/09

Winter Wonderland - December 23/09

A Candlelit Silent Night - December 24/09

The Weird, Wild, Wonderful Four from December 20 - 26 /09 - December 26/09

Good Thinking About Art

Critics write about music, books, theatre, and art, and they write using ideas and words particular to those fields and to ongoing developments in those fields. A review written using eigtheenth-century terms and concepts about a contemporary play would sound odd to us. But when writing about art can highlight one of two contemporary, but quite different, approaches, issues about art and writing can become confused with each other.

Eric Gibson, in his article in The Wall Street Journal - "The Lost Art of Writing About Art" (April 2008) discusses what he and others saw as the abysmal writing for the Whitney Museum's biennial exhibition of contemporary art (2008). He laments the change in critical writing about art since the 1950s and quotes other artists and critics who see it as "impenetrable" and insulting.

Gibson cites Richard Lacayo who writes in a blog for Time magazine and wants to ban five words from the critical lexicon because they are meaningless - "interrogate," "problematize," "references" (used as a verb), "transgreessive," and "inverts."

These five words exemplify the move away from earlier times when critics dealt with "art and aesthetics," to the present, when they "simply riff..." on philosophy. Art and aesthetics have been overtaken by discussions based on Marxism and feminism. (The Horror! The Horror!) Duchamp's Readymades inaugurated the shift.

The problem with impenetrable writing about art is not the real issue here. Bad writing is bad writing wherever we find it and is not acceptable. Good writing about art can and should include words that reflect how critics approach art. Gibson himself says that from Duchamp on, art required a different kind of writing.

Gibson's article should be titled "The Lost Art of Writing About Lost Values in Art." The issue here is nostalgia for a time when art was believed to be purely aesthetic and "real" critics knew how to write about it from the correct perspective. Gibson seems really to want a ban on a contemporary way of thinking about art, a way of thinking that needs its special words.

Feminism and Marxism both "problematize" the purely aesthetic approach to art, a change which, as Gibson points out, began with Duchamp and his contemporaries.

Whether one prefers the purely aesthetic approach to art or is an afficionado of conceptual art, appreciation increases with well-written criticicism. Well-written criticism requires the words and ideas appropriate to each approach.

The Weird, Wild, Wonderful Four from Last Week

Browsing, as serendipitously as possible, never fails to turn up blogs and websites that amaze, intrigue, and amuse me. Last week was no different.

Odalisques, harems, and edible delights, as well as some truly beautiful photos-- Calimyrna Nights is worth a visit. The photo of the Morroccan lanterns is from the blog, as is the photo of the figs.

 The stunningly beautiful digital artwork and writing of Tomas Karkalas is the subject of the blog arthiker.



For a range of interesting topics, I like the blog only in the movies...; it is well written, and the author Samantha has a lively voice that makes her posts good reading.


Finally, I get some good information and a good chuckle from the blog on the site The Guy's Perspective. The guys explore the humourous and sometimes serious side of relationships - respectfully, too.


Hope you enjoy them as I did!