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12:20:2003 Entry: "Ann : Aesthetic Crisis"

Aesthetic Crisis

OK, Here's the dilemma...Go back to a certain time in your life that's significant because that's when you started a specific artistic direction that you are still pursuing today. But look at the other stuff in your life at that time. CRAP. All Crap. The people you knew were crap. You were working with people who were crap. People made you feel like crap. You would even like to say the music you were listening to was crap, except, YOU WEREN'T LISTENING TO ANY DAMN MUSIC, so that in itself is CRAP. Therefore, does it then go to prove that the artistic direction you pursued, indeed, is crap too? Are these things separable or are they connected? Go back further in your life. Your friends were good. You had a couple fun jobs. No one made you feel like crap, except for maybe a short time, but you were able to escape from that era. The music, although not what you are listening to now, was not necessarily crap, it was redeeming, and you were listening to some good stuff too. Hell, at least you were listening to music. But your artistic vision was not what you are doing today.

I'm just having a hard time with this. I'm at an aesthetic crisis.

Because I made the decision with my artistic direction when I was under the influence of CRAP, does that make my artistic direction CRAP?

In a way, I don't think so, because my artistic direction has seen several changes in my personal life, bad things like financial stress, personal hardship, and good things like discovering new music, and remained intact nonetheless. Therefore, it can withstand stress and remain durable, unlike the previous artistic direction that really only existed during good times (with a slight interruption/bump in 1985), but FELL APART during the hard times (1989-90). Therefore, my latter direction has integrity, by that logic, right?

The thing is, how do I take my Seinfeldian "art about nothing" and make it about something? How can that be achieved with non-representative abstracts? Oxymoron.

I just don't want to be making ONLY pretty pictures, you know?

8 Comments

well, perception is everything.
And mym thought is, if you think it's crap, well, another may or may not. :: oh really helpfull there::
But, in the interm, I think art is always about something.
Yes....
and damn it good to have your comments back! ;)

Posted by Lori @ 07:31:2003:10:43 AM CST

Hi Lori :)

Well, I don't think it is crap. But it is silent. And I don't want it to be silent.

Maybe silent isn't the appropriate word. All painting is silent because it does not make sound. If it made sound, it would be multimedia or sound sculpture.

Nevermind.

Posted by Ann @ 07:31:2003:11:02 AM CST

Oh, and I still don't know if the comments are a permanent thing. It depends on if the function will actually disable itself when the recent entries are scrolled off. Greymatter is so screwy (the script, not the brain, but that too!) and it's doing some really odd stuff lately, so I just don't know if it'll work. If they don't disable, I'll have to remove them again, because I don't want to continue what was happening last year (like the "Ch*rlet*n H*st*n for World Leader" crowd googling this site and leaving their comments.)

Posted by Ann @ 07:31:2003:11:07 AM CST

Are you going to start painting figures again?

Posted by Stan @ 07:31:2003:06:39 PM CST

I'm going to start painting Pink Floyd nesting dolls, Stan.

Posted by Ann @ 07:31:2003:06:41 PM CST

Maybe you could do nesting cubes.

Posted by Stan @ 07:31:2003:06:50 PM CST

Or nesting dogs.

Posted by Ann @ 07:31:2003:06:52 PM CST

I think I know what you mean about everything being crap in your (our) life (s) at the time you took a certain asethetic direction. I think this is valuable because comfort isn't something to necessariely to be trusted. Difficulty in life might be a key to breaking through to a new and deeper level of asethetic development. Not that anyone would want everything in their life to be crap at any time, but maybe that period of crap was a catilist for a deeper aesthetic breakthrough. Thus, a crappy time of life may have value on the creative path. Not that you want to keep any of the crap from that time of life, but you have to respect the crappy period. You don't have to like the crappy time, but you have to respect it.

Posted by Stan @ 08:01:2003:08:43 PM CST

By Ann @ 20:46 AM CST:12:20:03 ..::Link::..