Some #art thoughts I've been struggling with:
1. I'm learning to do oil painting. I have a lot of cultural baggage about painting, from outside. Oils as high culture, mastery of art, pure fancy creation.
2. I'm deep in a math art place, variations on Menger sponges and related ideas. Stark geometric objects, fine hard lines and proportions.
The two fit together weird; I feel like my subject is fighting my medium, and yet feel like using tools (stencils etc) to mitigate that is "cheating".
@joshmillard i used to do geometric drawings and i had the same internal debate.
you can take an experimental approach to figuring this out though. do some works using more tooling and some with less and compare how you feel about the experiences and the results!
@bea Yeah, that's where I"m trying to be. And I think about this a lot but I also do keep making stuff and am enjoying that process, so this shit mostly runs around in my head during non-creation periods. Actual process of painting, as weird and not-going-as-intended as it is some days, has been engaging and rewarding, so I don't really have grounds for a serious complaint. But brains. They gonna brain.
@joshmillard that they are, that they are. story of my life really
@joshmillard also fwiw I think it's okay to see the work in the materials, especially when developing a new line of practice. Try a bunch of stuff! Let yourself enjoy the doing of it for a while...the results will be whatever they will be.
@courtney Yeah, totally. And I'm enjoying the trying a lot when I'm not overthinking it.
@joshmillard I think if you feel precision is important to the message of your art then you should use any available tool to help you achieve it. I guess what matters is whether you think the straightness of the line has significance.
@jec Right! There's this conflict between the "ooh, I wonder what will happen" aspect of just jumping in with oils and playing around, and the "i have a vision in my mind and want to execute it as accurately as possible" aspect of the mathy stuff.
And the former is going fine: I like what I'm doing! I like most of the results!
The latter is pulling me toward tool use and/or other mediums.
And I don't have to choose, other time and attention span, but those are actual factors, hence conflict.
@joshmillard the other thing is that even when you use tools, especially as a beginner, there are still flaws because your hand is still on the tool. (Unless you program a machine to do it for you.)
I'm reminded of seeing notable works of geometric abstraction in person vs seeing a photograph. The lines appear precise and perfect in the image, but a close look at the painting reveals layers upon layers with crisp yet imperfect edges.
@joshmillard I think art itself is the practice of providing answers to questions that don't have answers.
You're taking some polarities (emergent math, art and manual representation), and used against/with each other they sort of circumscribe something. I also wonder what the nucleus is.
@vai Yeah. Part of this is I'm continuing to work through what was almost a running joke to start with before turning into a deliberate-ish fixation and is now a whole ongoing aesthetic project/obsession/whatever that snuck up on me and turned out to be more engaging and important to me than I'd have guessed six months ago. I don't know where it's going, so trying to steer it is sorta complicated and quixotic.
@joshmillard These are constraints that only exist for you. For observers of the art, they aren't going to see the process, so what they get is just the piece itself. There is so much evidence that painting as a craft for hundreds of years was filled with do-whatever-works technique for controlling perspective, not just the push towards the abstraction of constructivists or the dynamic geometry of cubism or vorticism or orphism.
I don't think there is a better, just what works.
@Mainebot Yeah. Reminding myself that art is a thing I'm doing and that it doesn't have rules in any sense is I think something I need to keep foregrounding for myself when I get to beanplating this shit.
@joshmillard @Mainebot or rather, if the viewer is supposed to know those things, you're going more into conceptual or performance art or something, and so you need to think of what you're saying with that, rather than how masterly it is
@joshmillard Painting is painting, not jiu-jitsu. Unless your muse or artist's thesis compels you to treat it that way.
Let chain-smoker David Hockney, who knows a thing or two, run it down for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbFZIpNK10
@joshmillard Why in general does one use tool X to express thing Y?
@henryseg There's a part of me that wants to say "because it works" and clap the dust off my hands and call it a day. And with a lot of creative work I do I manage to actually leave it there.
In practice it's not that simple and worrywarting aside I think I'm glad about that, because thinking about tools and how they work and how they don't is interesting and something I enjoy interrogating in/as the process of making something.
@joshmillard Have you watched Tim's Vermeer? It opened my eyes to what cheaters artists have always been.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim%27s_Vermeer
@bradsucks I havne't, and I've been meaning to! And @ardgedee just linked me to a related BBC doc by David Hockney that I have also been enjoying this morning now.
@joshmillard @ardgedee It's great, I wanna get Hockney's Secret Knowledge book at some point. Tim's Vermeer helped me resolve some latent "using computers for music is cheating" issues.
@bradsucks @joshmillard
Yeah I don't think Hockney's the final word in art history at all, but I like that somebody with intimate and expert knowledge of his craft chiming in on (a) the Great Masters having help and (b) that this does not lessen their greatness because somebody''s eye-hand coordination is not the sole criterion of the worthiness of an artwork.
@bradsucks @joshmillard Would make a great double feature with F For Fake.
@joshmillard this is super interesting to me! I have v novice training in paint materials - the selling point on oils is how long they take to dry and so how much time you have to mix and spread them, usually...I'm curious if maybe you could experiment with very light application/dry sponging, possibly even do color mixing that way?
@courtney Yeah, there's some things I haven't tried yet. I *have* played with a few drying mediums that cut drying time way down (which for oils means "just 1-2 days!", heh).
I have made little (not no) use of oils' slow drying nature so far, so it might just be literally the wrong medium for my math work; trying acrylics at some point is on the docket, at least to see how they feel.
On the other hand, as just a substance I am *enjoying* oils so far, so complicated feelings!
@joshmillard My high school art teacher did the most amazing paintings of buildings (in acrylics)--very geometric because of the angles she used. She did both free hand and ruler depending on the piece. I asked her if she felt like it was cheating when she used a ruler and she said "Rules in art?! There are no rules in art!" We both laughed. As long as you're creating, that's what's important.
@fussybritches Heh. Yeah, that's the spirit I think.
@joshmillard Plus, a lot of those "Old Masters" invented/used tools as they went along to help with perspective, etc.
@joshmillard nothing is cheating in art (except forgery 😋). many artists and sculptors use found objects and materials in their work.
if you are using stencils to do absolutely everything in your work, then you may feel that's cheating but I believe it's up to the artist themselves (you) to decide.
all people, including artists, create their own limits and express their thoughts and ideas in whatever way they see fit. it is your work, your thoughts and your art.
@joshmillard I understand what you mean about high art and using stencils though. but each movement in art turned something on it's head and did it as they wanted. so can we all
@joshmillard this might be obvs but have you looked into the minimalists and painters like that from around the 50s/60s? They stenciled the fuck outta stuff, Judd doing all sorts of sculptures involving math and ratios...Might be a good rabbit hole for you. I could ask some friends who are WAY into that stuff for recommendations.
@jwithy I am just now starting to, yeah, which is helping me a little down the road of getting over these weird hangups. Recently discovered Julian Stanczak in particular, whose "Equivocal Color" is in the modern wing at Portland Art Museum. Blew me away as a piece of work but also was very very clearly made with tape or cutting or other such techniques which was a reassuring "oh, right, that's legit" moment.
Would love recommendations.
@joshmillard cool! Will see what I can drum up!
@joshmillard I have analogous feelings about music!
I do pretty much entirely electronic stuff out of necessity, but I have a deep aversion to sampling, mostly because it feels like it somehow makes the music less "mine."
And yet! I don't hold anybody else's music to this standard! I love genres that heavily use sampling, and I'm constantly blown away by people who do it creatively.
And that "cheating" sense is something I'm trying to power on past, to say, fuck it, there's a whole history of modern art unmoored from fusty Old Masters mystique. My hand is unsteady? I need a sharp straight line? Do whatever makes it happen!
But it's still there in the back of my head, in the wrestling match between different things I could do when I sit down to paint. Better to use a tool, force a straight line? Better to freehand and train my unsteady arm? Better to find a compromise? Etc.