Drawing First Blood - Art Today
Much of art today actually lacks drawing, and this robs it of integrity. How can essentially good art not be based, at least in plan on the merits of good drawing, or a good sketch? My thoughts are that drawing is the backbone of any good piece of art, and when I say art, I don't just limit the definition to academic disciplines of painting or sculpture or such. Art can be anything creative, take music jamming for instance. If I wanted to pick up a guitar and just jam solidly for at least an hour, there has to be some loose basis for the music I'm mucking around with, be it the chords of a G scale or the riff of some old Led Zeppelin track I had lodged in my memory. Drawing can be quite a beautiful medium on it's own, many great works of art have been drawings but intrinsically drawing is the skeleton of the masterpiece it initially suggested, even if it's a sketch. great paintings start off with substantial drawing sensibilities. Bacon, Freud, even Giacometti all thought in terms of drawing concepts from the first before fleshing out their paintings. And it's just not taught as much as it could be in learning institutions these days. If these bare-bones essentials are not taught in schools these days, at least not as much as they used to, the quality of future artwork will suffer. And not just with fine art, with any creative form of visual art, electronic included. I'm not painting a pessemistic image of our future culture, it's happening already and it's not just myself witnessing this. This has been a prevalent issue for some years now. It's not being helped recently by the waning cultural climate we're all enduring as well. And having said that, I worry for generations younger than me who want to develop their skills as creatives but may have less opportunities to do so.
The Voices in my Head
I agree with the foundation of what you are saying. I recently had a discussion with Hellvis about this very subject, in terms of the future of art.
Art is very subjective -(Do you have a rule about stating the obvious? Sorry about that.. :c)] However, whether someone draws well is the least of my worries at this point, although I do see your point.
I am more concerned with the fact that everyone who wants to be seen as 'deep' wants to throw shit in a can and call it art because it questions something. If you want to question something, then by all means, get a damn talkshow or get a blog like I did. *smile*
What has happened because of displays of nonart like the shit in a can, is that our world is on a slippery slope of no longer revering art and mocking an artist because of what Joe Q. Public now perceive art to be, which is shit...literally.
Does this concern you, as well?
Voices~
WE WANT ART WITH AESTHETICS!!
attitudes that reject any formal form of craft-based skill only detract quality from the work. Those qualities that are involved in the making of the work not only give aesthetics to it but operate and communicate on a conceptual level as well. There's something to be said for art as vehicle expressing stuff with aesthetic attributes. There's a great danger that art of this nature will remain only as historical memories in our culture.
WE WANT ART WITH AESTHETICS!!
Earache Hotel
As a sometime student of art, I was drawn to your blog and then found my name mentioned here. Wow.
As Voices mentioned, there has been some discussion of art on Orble, particularly the idea of the readymade and Piero Manzoni's Merd a d'artista: the shit in a can.
My argument is that these works are just as important as those based in technique, because they widen the scope of what art wants to achieve, and turn art's focus back on itself for self analysys. This is a healthy thing to do, but can also lead to endless self-referentiality that becomes a massive wank and makes art lose touch with people.
I don't think works like this mean the death of art. In fact, I think they help to keep it vital and alive by injecting it with fresh ideas. Like you said MatthewB, things tend to go in cycles, and I think its conceptual works that help to shake things up and get people reacting with new, better works.
I think its important to get artists thinking rather than descending into meaningless formalism, which I think would be the true death of art. As a drawer, I think this is a valuable skill, but without ideas to back it up, it's all just pretty pictures.
WE WANT ART WITH AESTHETICS!!