Pictures and Commentary
1/14/06
I guess you might classify this "artwork" I do as Dada. Though if you read more about the
Dada movement, in addition to being an expression of
life being torn apart by World War I, it was also about "...nihilism, deliberate
irrationality, disillusionment, cynicism, [...] and the rejection of the prevailing standards in
art" -- this is not what I'm about. So my stuff may look like Dada, but I don't really fit into the Dada movement.
Nonetheless it seems a slightly more accurate term than "abstract". If you're trying
to find the meaning in my pictures, give up, because there isn't any. They just are what they are. What
you see is what you get. They don't mean anything. In fact they're not even representational -- looking
like something -- except on rare occasions. Well anyway, if I were to really try to figure out where I
"fit," I'd probably have to make something of a study of art history of the 20th century, and
not just jump on a form that seems to fit superficially -- Dada -- but doesn't really, and that had its peak in World
War I, nearly a century ago...
Commenting on his work Fountain (Dada),
Marcel Duchamp "...described his purpose with the piece as shifting the focus of art from the
physical craft to the intellectual interpretation." That strikes a chord with me.
Sometimes my pictures require very little in the way of physical craft, and am I not always asking
for your interpretation? ;-) I am much more interested in hearing what you think they are or what they
make you think of, even if it's just that the background looks like a giant pepperoni. ;-) Rarely do I have any desire to "tell you" what it "is", really, what I think
it is, if anything. Were I to make a statement about what any of my pictures "are", or make me think of, or what
I thought while I was doing them, that would have the effect of greatly limiting the
possible interpretations you could come up with. So I try not to do that, because often your interpretations really
surprise me!
Avant-garde composer John Cage, as an artist was interested in creating art that he himself did not understand. He wanted his compositions to end up a mystery to him. I have this motivation too. Creating something you don't immediately understand opens the door to a thousand fascinating interpretations, as well as a lot of thinking about art like all this I'm writing now. But creating something I don't understand can take my own creativity in new, fascinating directions.
Today's pictures, and some others that I'm stuck on and haven't finished yet, make clear that another thing I'm interested in is the combination of natural forms with forms that are artificial and obviously computer generated. Clouds, water, and squiggly hand drawn lines, combined with the perfectly straight lines, graceful curves and perfect symmetry that doing art on a computer makes easy. So without further ado, I give you "1/13/2006 a & b".
Tell me what you think. Anything you think.
