Movin' On Up...

Well dears, Blogger was never meant to be my permanent home. And so here we are, moving on to my new address http://manduh.jasonspadaro.com.

It's a new look, new location, and a new name, with the same great content. And now (if I have the settings right) you can comment without having to register! This was a big deal to me...I really want to have and inspire more discussion and I know if people have to register for something they're less likely to leave a comment. So check out the new place, and please try to comment...if you can't, let me know!

Cheers all,

ManDuh

Announcements!

As you can see since Tuesday has come and gone, the Artist You Should Know feature is taking a little break...but if all goes well, it should be back next week!

The reason is, I'm feeling these features lack a little something. Like the artist's voice. So I'm seeking out artists I can interview as well as feature their work. So hopefully AYSK will be back better than ever next week.

Continuing with the announcements vein...Ramblings of an Art-Obsessed Mama is moving! Possibly as early as tonight. While Blogger is a great service, it's come to my attention that people without accounts can't post comments. Which is kind of counter-productive to the idea of having discussions (something I'd like to get going). It would also give me even more flexibility as far as layout and appearance, and it'll pull things closer together, as RoaAOM will now be hosted on my new website – complete with bio, contact info, and portfolio.

I'm excited about this change. I've been longing for my own real-live website for a while now, but hubby's been busy with school (and my head is too full of art stuff to hold anything more than the little, now out-dated, HTML I taught myself when I was 12) to put it together. However it's looking like tonight's the night we get cracking!

So tune back in tomorrow at the new address (I'll post it up here) for a discussion about various media.

Art School, Schmart School, Part 2: A Rant About Yarn

So I had promised an article on Saturday continuing my thoughts about art training vs. self teaching.

Yeah...I went to write it a couple of times, and was repeatedly distracted by kids and/or in-laws, until I forgot what I had wanted to say. I should've made an outline or something.

Instead today, let's talk about my yarn problem. Because oh, do I ever have one.

It all started about two and a half, three years ago. I was at school, and a bunch of friends and I were RPGing (can't remember the specific game just now...BESM comes to mind, but I don't think that was it) and one friend was knitting at the same time. On impulse I asked her to show me and if I could knit a couple rows. She did and let me, and that was the beginning of the end.

I went out and bought a couple of books, a couple of needles, and bunches of yarn. I inherited more needles and yarn from my mum. I scour the internet for free patterns (my big kick right now is public domain vintage and antique patterns). And I buy yarn. A lot.

I have two problems. Firstly, chasing the kids around all day makes it hard to knit for more than a minute or two at a time. It's hard to finish things in a decent amount of time and makes it easier for me to get lost when I come back to a piece. Secondly, in large part because of my first problem, I get bored with a project after it's been sitting for a while, so I unravel it, roll the yarn into a ball, and start something new. As a result of these, I buy yarn faster than I can knit it. I currently have three good-sized boxes and a dozen or two loose balls. I just can't help it! The Real Deals (my favorite dollar store) makes it so easy! It's only a dollar a ball for yarn that originally sold for $3-$5 a ball. And Big Lots doesn't help either; theirs is only $1.50 a ball for formerly expensive yarns. What's a girl to do?

Well clearly I have an addiction. It actually extends to art and craft supplies in general, this inability to pass them up. I know it'll be my undoing, and it's why I suck at saving money. It's really bad combined with hubby's addiction to computer bits. Someday we're going to have a house filled to the brim with art and craft supplies and computers.

I may have found a solution for the yarn though. Well, two solutions actually. One, it's summer vacation, so I have more time for knitting in general. But my main solution, my exciting one, is that I've decided to make my own pattern book. See, I don't have any circular needles, and some items it's hard to find a pattern for on straight needles, if not downright impossible (like socks for instance). So I figured I'd start making my own patterns for people like me (if they exist). I think I'll be less likely to get bored with patterns that I'm still creating. And while it'll take a while for the yarn to get used up because I'll be experimenting a lot, the important point is that it will get used.

Unless I keep buying more.

Of course it's also summer time (if you were unaware). Summer means I can play with acid outside. Playing with acid means etching! Maybe every time I get the urge to buy yarn, I'll just go over to my in-laws (they live close to the dollar store) and play with acid instead. Substitute my yarn obsession for my art obsession. That's healthy, right?

Art School, Schmart School, Part 1

To college, or not to college – That is the question. Whether tis nobler for the artist to suffer the sleepless hours of assignments and anxiety of grades, Or to muddle through drawing and painting alone.

I've got art schools on the brain. I'm sitting here in my in-laws living room, listening to them lament in the dining room over the possibility, in two years, of hubby and my youngest brother-in-law (who's in art school) graduating on the same day. On Tuesday, because not taking art classes right now makes me cry) after my finals I crashed some freshman art students' critiques (the professors are my two biggest mentors). After one boy's crit, the professor was asking him where he wanted to transfer to and, when the kid didn't have an answer, told him his summer homework was to research and find 3-4 schools he was going to apply to. This got me thinking about my own transfer. I'm picking up associates number 2 at the end of next year. I still want to get my BFA and eventually maybe an MFA, which means I need to find a school to go to. Of the “nearby” schools, there's an unrealistically expensive one 20 minutes away, one I've gone to and hate an hour away, and then a private and a public both an hour 40 away (actually more like 1; I speed). The two viable options are RIT and Binghamton University. RIT is expensive, but has a track record of giving a lot of money to OCC grads. Binghamton University is cheaper and a close friend of mine goes there and has an apartment in Binghamton. So I have some decision making to do, but that's not the point of this particular blog.

No, this particular blog is inspired by my youngest brother-in-law. Earlier this evening, I asked my BIL if he wanted to see if we could get a friend of ours to get naked for us tomorrow night, so we could have some figure drawing. Even after I secured a model, my BIL has declined to join me. While I was still on the phone with Friend, I mocked him for not wanting to draw tomorrow night. This prompted Friend to mention that he just got home from school and is on break. I countered (loud enough for him to hear me) that it didn't matter, if he was a “real” artist he'd be drawing everyday.

This is an idea that's been hammered into me by the two professors mentioned at the beginning. “Work, work, work,” and “Let your mother tell you how wonderful you are,” are their two favorite sayings. I actually have quite a bit of guilt about how little I've been drawing lately. Some how doodles during my philosophy classes don't seem like they ought to count. So I actually am a little annoyed my BIL won't come have a figure drawing with me. Don't his professors beat the work ethic into him? Doesn't he want to draw to improve his skill and because he enjoys it?

But this attitude isn't foreign to me, not by any stretch of the imagination. I've encountered it among a lot of art students. So it leads me to question, is art school necessary? If half to two-thirds of art students aren't totally dedicated and there's more than that number of people not in art school who are dedicated, then does one really need to go to art school to be an artist?

The answer, obviously, is, “Of course not.” So then it begs the question, should one go to art school to be an artist? This is a little murkier. Because dedication, I think, is the real necessity, and no amount of art school can teach that. But there is something to be said for the skill and knowledge one can gleam from working with an experienced artist.

This, of course, is the endless Academic Art vs. Outsider Art debate. Which is only really a debate to the pretentious. Academic and self training both have their merits and pitfalls; so is one really better than the other?

For me, I think academic training was essential. The professors I've had, almost without exception, have opened my eyes to so many wonderful things that I'm not sure I'd have seen or thought of on my own. Not any time soon anyway. So really, all the tens of thousands of dollars I'm spending is for a sort of short cut.

I've got a lot of other thoughts on this topic. More tomorrow.

Schopenhaur, Schopenhaur, Schopenhaur...

My butt has been thoroughly kicked by finals. So in lieu of this week's Artist You Should Know, I give you instead, a critique of Arthur Schopenhaur's aesthetic theory. One quick note, the text of this blog in its current form was originally submitted as a term paper for my 19th Century Philosophy class. So if you're the type to put term papers through an internet search Professor B, I just want to let you know my husband hasn't yet given me a definition for existence.

Arthur Schopenhauer was, among other things, a friend of the arts. He had a violent, pessimistic outlook on life, but felt that the arts allowed him a serene respite. To find serenity in art, he felt one needed to let go of their expectations, desires, and other aspects of the will. While this is an excellent way to observe the technical skill of a particular artist, the viewer misses the point of art. Several artistic movements in particular actually require the viewer to reach into themselves in order to truly appreciate the work. Although he could not have anticipated them, many contemporary art movements disprove Schopenhauer's assertions that one must let go of oneself to find aesthetic pleasure.

In Schopenhauer's defense, the major art movements that contradict and disprove his aesthetic theory – Cubism, Expressionism, and Abstract Expressionism – all developed well after his death in 1860. Cubism hit the scene in 1907; Expressionism in 1905, mostly in Germany; and Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s, again with a largely German influence.

Cubism was the most revolutionary art movement of the 20^th century, heralded by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. As part of their experiments to create a new sense of space, they would turn curves to sharp points, make sharp points into curves, and abstract everything. As we can see in Les Demoiselles D'Avignon (1907), the human forms have shed the photorealism of the past. When viewing this piece, one can not drift into peaceful serenity; there is too much to think about. The expressions of the women, their misshapen bodies, and in the cases of the figures on the right side, their seemingly masked faces. The space moves differently than in a traditional perspective painting, adding to the difficulty of a calm, inactive viewing.

Expressionism makes idleness in viewing even more difficult. Though earlier artists and pieces are considered Expressionist, it was recognized as its own movement around 1905, largely among German artists. Expressionism unloads vast amounts of raw emotion upon the viewer. Consider Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893). An idyllic lake, a rich red sky, a couple – perhaps lovers? – strolling on a bridge...and a ghoulish figure miming the anguish and misery of the world in one silent cry. His overly curvy form seem nearly ready to collapse, as if he's wavering under the pressure of emotion. This hardly inspires serenity. One can not help, when viewing The Scream, but feel strongly.

However Abstract Expressionism is by far the most difficult to view with a clear mind. It has, as its name implies, all the aspects of both Abstraction and Cubism, and Expressionism. While many of it's origins in putting the two movements together into

one come from the 1940s, the movement's most well known works come from the 1950s and early 1960s. This was when Jackson Pollock began throwing and dripping paint onto canvases, the merits of which are hotly debated in the art world. But consider a master of Abstract Expressionism, Hans Hofmann. His 1962 work Simplex Munditis ignites feeling within the viewer. The blocks of flat color seem to move in a weird space – it certainly is not perspective space of the Renaissance. The ratios of the complimentary colors also serve to set us ill as ease.

An argument can be made, however, that the work and movements Schopenhauer had available seem to support his aesthetic theory. Especially after his time in France, Schopenhauer would be very familiar with Gothic art, art of the Renaissance, and possibly even the up-and-coming Impressionism.

Gothic art dominated a large portion of art history, stretching from the 12^th century well into the 15^th. The architecture of the time was huge and could literally take hundreds of years to complete construction. The paintings were, with few exceptions, very religious, as seen in Madonna from the Annunciation (1340-1344). Gold and gold leaf were common elements added to represent the divine nature and divine glow of the subjects represented. Stylistically, the space is flat and awkward, but peaceful. One can see how Schopenhauer could gaze upon this Madonna with a clear mind and feel serene. However, this renders his theory inapplicable to the common person of his time. Because many people of Schopenhauer's time were still devoutly religious, a Gothic painting of a Madonna, or a saint, or Jesus would move them greatly.

Renaissance art seems like it would come the closest to Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory. The 14^th and 15^th centuries saw what would come to be known as Renaissance art rise along side Gothic art; by the end of the 15^th century, it replaced it completely. Perspective as we know it was developed during the Renaissance, giving paintings for the first time a true sense of space. Although it is true the church commissioned a lot of work, artists looked beyond the Bible for inspiration. Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (1482) depicts the mythological birth of the Roman goddess of love, Venus. As she rides in on her clamshell, she looks alive and more three dimensional than the Madonna of Figure 4. Surely anyone can spend hours looking upon her peacefully. Well, anyone except those uptight Victorians. Classical reference or no classical reference, Venus' nudity insulted their delicate Victorian sensibilities. It was during the 1800's that many pieces of art were censored – Michelangelo's David, for example, had a detachable fig leaf made for it. It's highly unlikely a person of Schopenhauer's time period could look at a random Renaissance painting, many of which contained nudity, without reacting.

This leaves Impressionism, a movement that was just getting its start near the end of Schopenhauer's life. Impressionists were the rebels of their time, going against many of the established canons of what art was supposed to look like. They painted outside, painted the mundane, and painted with deliberately visible brush strokes. They also introduced atmospheric perspective, the idea that the atmosphere can warp and play with light and perspective so that they are not exactly as one would expect. These aspects come out beautifully in Mary Cassatt's Children Playing on the Beach (1884). Two children sweetly playing in the sand...what could be more calming and serene than that? The fact is much Impressionism work does indeed support Schopenhauer's theory of aesthetics. Unfortunately, he probably did not see many, if any, Impressionist works. The movement was so hated by critics in its very beginnings, that museums and galleries refused to hang the work. It wasn't until a good twenty or thirty years after Schopenhauer's death that the movement took and became popular.

Schopenhauer took a lot of pleasure in the arts, but he clearly misunderstood them. While art can indeed be a good means to escape from the everyday world, viewing with your brain shut down is not the way to go about it. Many art movements, both before and after Schopenhauer's time disprove his aesthetic theory. Impressionism seems to be the exception proving the rule, rather than an actual area of support. And there are many other art movements not discussed that continue the trend of disproving Schopenhauer's aesthetics; Dadaism, Surrealism, right up through the contemporary Low Brow movements (see Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, and Ron English, respectively). By letting go of himself when viewing art pieces, Schopenhauer cheated himself out of the point of experiencing art.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I had a weird accident on Friday. A guy on his bike down on the city's south side smacked into me at an intersection. I was terrified; Jase was cool; Sketchy was indifferent; the guy was quite possibly high. In any event, he kept trying to shoo us on our way as we asked if he was ok, and I wouldn't leave the parking lot of where we were dropping Sketchy off until Jase talked to a cop that happened to be parked there. We were informed that if the guy took off and no one was hurt, that talking to him (the officer) was all we should and could do, and that we were now free to go on our way. My nerves were still pretty shaken, so I decided to calm myself by buying a new book. This is how I came to be in possession of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Ever since I heard about it some months back on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me (a show everyone should listen to! Go ahead, the review will still be here when you're done), I've been looking forward to reading it. I must admit, I was slightly disappointed. On a scale of 1 to 5, I'd give it a solid 2.5.

The concept, I think, is brilliant. Injecting a little modern phenomena into a classic novel, and an important one too. Pride and Prejudice was published at a time not only when the novel as an art form was in its infancy, but when it was nearly impossible for a woman's work to be published once, let alone a second time. I sincerely hope people that don't typically read classical literature will read this, be motivated to read the original, and then jump into Jane Austen's other works.

But enough about my bibliophile nerdiness, back to the review. I have two main complaints about the book; character changes and integration of the new work to the old. Let's tackle the characters first.

Having read Pride and Prejudice a couple of times prior to reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there were sections of the latter where I didn't even recognize Elizabeth Bennet. To render the main character completely unrecognizable is, in my opinion, a grave mistake. Because it's not a case of PaPaZ-Elizabeth clashing with PaP-Elizabeth, it's a case of the Elizabeth you're currently reading at any given point clashing with the Elizabeth of a few chapters or even just a few pages ago. It makes the character totally inconsistent throughout the new story, which is not good. The above also goes for Darcy and Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

All in all, it makes for a difficult and confusing read. I attribute most of this to the heavy reliance of Oriental training. It's kind of strange and totally inaccurate. Given the state of China and Japan when the novel takes place and British opinion towards these countries, it's not just unlikely, but nearly impossible that British aristocracy would have had their sons and daughters trained in Oriental styles of fighting in the case of a prolonged zombie outbreak. The ninjas are even more out-there.

Then there's the issue of integration, and this kind of ties into what I was saying earlier about character inconsistency. The new scenes don't mesh well with the original. If not imitating Austen's voice was an intentional decision, it was a poor one in my opinion. You can blatantly see where the author's voice changes, and it makes the whole thing come off as mediocre fan fiction.

That all said, it's not a terrible book. Not a great one, but not terrible. It's definitely worth a read, but I'd recommend borrowing it from the library instead of buying your own copy.

Pwned by philosophy...

So I'm being totally pwned by school right now...but I'm knee-deep in a philosophy paper that will also make a great post, so be on the look out for that sometime this weekend. Till then, stop wasting your time reading blogs and draw something!

Artist You Should Know: Henry Darger

So apparently I totally missed last week's Artist You Should Know. Bad me! I've got a goody this week to make up for it.

Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between: Henry Darger.

(The pictures are scans from a book I highly recommend, Darger: The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum by Brooke Davis Anderson and Michel Thevoz, hence the warping at one side.)

Darger (1892-1973) was a foster care group home-runaway turned hospital janitor and an Outsider Artist* completely unknown in his lifetime. And when I say completely unknown, I mean completely unknown. His work wasn't discovered until his landlord went to clean out his apartment after his death.

His life and work are fascinating. During his lifetime he wrote what is believed to be the longest novel. A 15,000 small type font page epic he called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. In addition to writing this epic, he illustrated it. With 10ft long pieces that were a combination of watercolor, drawing, and collage.

His disturbing portrayal of children is probably what stirs the most debate about him. We know he was an extremely devout Catholic, hence the horns and demonic imagery on the villains. It's the penises on the little girls that give pause. Originally it was thought that he was a pedophile (over the period of time that he lived in his apartment, several little girls went missing, later found raped and murdered), but now experts wonder if it's possible that he just didn't know what female genitalia looks like. There aren't any indications from his journals of any sexual experience, ever. It's entirely possible that he thought since he had a penis, girls and women had small ones too.

His technique was interesting. He overcame his lack of training by tracing images close to what he wanted, then tweaking and redrawing and tweaking and redrawing them until he had the image he wanted. His near endless supply of tracing and collage material came from the hundreds of papers and magazines his collected from the trash regularly.

Darger is a truly intriguing figure, and I find him to be sort of like a onion. As I study and research him, peel away a layer so to speak, there always seems to be a fresh layer waiting for me underneath.

*An Outside or Outsider Artist is an artist with no classical, academic training.

Permanent vs. Temporary

This weekend was a rare beauty here in CNY. It was bright and sunny, but not too hot with not even the tiniest threat of rain either day. Perfect sidewalk chalk days. Which just so happens to be exactly what I did.

I'm the one in the black and white tops. My apologies for the crappiness of the images...it was REALLY bright and I was trying out the web cam on my laptop. I didn't even think to bring my digital.

We packed the family into the car and went over to the in-laws. After not too terribly long my mother-in-law wandered off with Midget #1, so Hubby, Baby, and I found our way down to the Seneca River. There's one good chunk of river bank between the cemetery and the lock that's cemented and has ropes for boats to dock for short periods of time. For a few years now this has been a favorite drawing place for me...there's the serenity of the cemetery, the zen-ness of the river, and not too many yuppies (the last point alone makes it a rarity in Syracuse suburbs). This cement bank is an especially nice surface for sidewalk chalk. A bucket of which I just so happen to have nabbed from my brother-in-law. Hubby wasn't feeling it, but I was shortly joined by my friend Kelsey (aka Lvhg17 of Deviant Art and Live Journal).

It was overall a pretty good day...my plans for sidewalk chalk nudity were ruined by the docking of a large boat with several small children who wouldn't freaking leave, so my pin-up girl needed a bra, but other than that it was fun. And it got me thinking about the permanence of art.

Should art be permanent? Is art that degrades or is only physically temporary somehow less important or less “art” than that which is permanent? The other way around?

(I should note that these questions are mostly only relevant to the fine arts. Music, film, and literature require preservation largely by their definition, as theater and performing arts are completely temporary largely by their definition.)

Because you think about it, and people spend nearly a dozen years of college to become art restorers. Art preservation techniques are experimented and tinkered with for years in effort to perfectly preserve pieces. Is this really the way we ought to go? In this age of digital documentation, is the physical piece really necessary? We take Painting A done on canvas or Photograph B on film. We document, scan, get digital pictures of Painting A and Photo B. So then do we need the physical canvas of Painting A or the physical film of Photo B anymore? Why not let it rot?

3-Dimensional art is the obvious exception (aside from those mentioned above). 3-D pieces are often made to be viewed by multiple angles, something usually lost in a mere photograph, even in digital 360° views. 3-D just has different space than 2-D. Preservation also comes easier to 3-D art, as (traditionally at least) those pieces are made from more permanent materials from the get-go.

But even if we didn't have the ability to document pieces so thoroughly, why not still just let pieces rot when their time comes? Or out and out destroy pieces after a period of time? A dear professor of mine told me once that he has a day set aside every year that he, and sometimes some fellow artists, get together and have a bon fire where they burn all their work since the last fire that they didn't like, didn't work, was never able to be realized to its expected potential, etc. He referred to it as “a great zen cleansing” that gave them leave to reuse, reinvent, or retry the concept in a new piece.

Why only do this with rejected work? This bon fire story was given during a discussion about allowing your art to become too precious. Why do we, as artists, frequently allow our art to become so precious? Why do we allow any of our art to become precious? I'm not saying your art shouldn't be important, but why not burn more of it? I know all of us that feel art passionately have pieces all over the place. Burn them! Paint over them! Free yourself from that piece and redo it differently.

As a regular diet or modus operandi this probably is more harmful than good. We do need art floating around in society to enrich our culture and exchange of ideas. But my point is that so much value is put into the physical object, when it really ought to be the image, the concept that's valued. Create, document, burn, repeat. I bet you can't bring yourself to do it for one whole month, and I'd love to be proven wrong.