Monday, July 12, 2004

THEMESCAPING

I am a themescapist... I consider it the ultimate rational purposefulness of the artist... why might I have come to this conclusion, and what is the consequence of this?

to begin with, it has never been my interest in just being a 'scenerist', one who does landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, and so on,whether real or imagined... these are in effect recorder modes, outdated largely by the invention of photography... this attitude became even more so after being exposed to the works of the philosopher Ayn Rand, who pointed out the true nature of Art, and how important a field of endeavor it really is... nor did it seem enough to continue with just a sense of life about my works - especially since the 'wisdom of life' brought me to a fully integrated non-contradictory view of reality... of course, when I say that, I do not mean that there then would be an absence of the 'sense of life'... what I mean is that this sense of life becomes thereby non-contradictory in structure... as consequence, too, I do not expect the viewers of my works to grasp all of the multitudes of implications and delicacies of the works at first viewing... Art's purpose, remember, is for contrmplation, and contemplation requires SEVERAL viewings and thinkings on these works... to get the viewers' attention, therefore, to garner the most impact, would need the use of the cognitive effort - thru, that is, achieving a 'wisdom of life' approach to Art...

however, the only thing I had to go on, as far as I could see, in my attempt to achieve this were examples from the field of literature - even tho a painting, for instance, is a one-shot deal... in a painting, obviously, one must seek to have it put all together in a single view... a literary work, on the other hand, even the most concise one of a poem, makes use of many words, and as much length as is considered required to make the proper presentation... tho the principles remain the same, the artist has a far grater challenge in seeking to achieve the same DEGREE of precision of showing that view of existance [assuming that degree of precision is even desired in the context of the presentation]...

No comments: