Tones of Life

The secrets of the artist within

WHERE IS THE ART YOU ARE LOOKING FOR? (A
letter to my art lecturers)
WHERE IS THE ART YOU ARE LOOKING FOR?
Now in my second year, I have been roving the library; visiting art websites searching for what
art could mean only to be frustrated by peoples’ own perspectives of their own interpretations of
the same. I suspect that even amongst you could have found the topic rather troublesome to tell
what it is yet you know what it is.
To me I believe that some people; so to speak live artistically, others have minds fed with artistic
ideas but with all the might of the minds power to influence character fail to live like artists.
Others have hands which have always respected all the commands of artistic impulse within their
souls but with dumb artistic appearance. Others you can tell from their sleepy dreamy romantic
appearance look in their eyes that deep inside they might be suffocated by arts’ mystical and wild
wonders
My question now is how we students of different characters and obviously attitudes can best
satisfy your individual perceptions of art. At first I thought that the masterly of the general
principles and elements of art could be the measure for art only to be surprised by my layout
lecturer when he said that at times you can appreciate a good layout instinctively or by intuition
which is the most complex pattern of human behavior. On another occasion one lecturer
unknowingly commented on his fellows’ drawing which he had left on the black board, in a gust
of furry and utter disappointment he asked:
‘’you mean all the time I have lectured you on how to capture the best forms of the foot you have
not understood?’’
Almost every student who knew that the despised drawing belonged to one genius lecturer left
rather perplexed.
I myself have seen master pieces of the genius who (to me) have over shoot the sublime almost
verging to the tawdry ridiculous and the frivolous. One classical philosopher Pascal Blaise had
once cited that the heart has reasons reason itself can not reason and since an artists’ role is using
his minds’ eye to imitate and beautify nature, I guess it may not be so simple to clearly and
exhaustively understand an individual artists’ work. I have so often quoted
‘’People always comment that something is a work of art when it’s good; however every artist’s
work is his work of art…why then can’t it be beautiful?
If for example; Wordsworth was to paint, I believe he would have made the most complex
paintings; of the setting sun he had so often seen in an extraordinary highly imaginative vision,
often with saturnine and mystical visions and voices of nature. This is because his life was also
peculiarly bizarre, always spent sitting solitary in the woods or on the top of the mountain to
intimate with nature in which he saw the whole stage of the worlds’ wildest wonders.
Edmund Burke for example stipulates the limits of the sublime by stating that the limit coverage
of an informed audience may deem some art sublime if it is awe inspiring and original. Who then
is a sublime artist? Should we say that when some peoples’ works escape our (us students’)
virgin short visual experiences; for that case, we deem the whole masterpieces frivolous or out of
place…and so we are satisfied with common place realistic painter who competes with the
digital camera to bring out even the smallest pimple on the face?
If my life is spent in hallucinating grotesque images in the underworld and so affects my lay out
or every line I sketch should I be blamed for that? What if I have lived a black life and so my
works look rather out blown by an admirer of pure aesthetics because deep in them is a pack of
un imagined feelings?
Many times when some admires some one else’s drawing with awe or wonder thus
‘’oh how this drawing is beautiful…it soothes me’’
He is simply admitting that the referred object talks to him (the admirer), thus shares the feeling
with the artist who made it and so makes meaning to him but this should not be taken the
universal truth of beauty for if that was the case, then there would be no variety under planet
earth from which people should make choice.
More so, you always recommend us to be creative yet creativity has its foundations in the
individual minds’ imagination, what if I always see falling drops of rain whenever I see a woman
in blue? How about if I am always taken back in reminiscence whenever I see the meandering
cracks of a half broken pot and so would provide my best imagination ever?
If for example I may ask: can art exist without copying, imitating? Why then should a student be
penalized for copying a style? If so, why can’t you also give us individual settings in drawing so
that we may not copy one another? To me I believe that the role of every artist both in the visual,
performing and none performing arts is to re create the usual into the unusual. Even if twenty
artists used the same style to imitate the same object they may not come up with the same art
work simply because an art work is a compete tale of an artists’ individuality.
The truth is that we are all artist here to some degree of which God-the God of gods (artists) can
only prove and whoever claims to be the best judge of the gods’ work besides the Devine,
silently claims to be God himself; and is always guilty of blasphemy.
Honestly why on earth should an individual human being judge his fellow upon his unique
troubles and forest fantasies of his own mind whose dreams, feelings and perceptions are not the
same with the former? If it’s an empirical fact that individuality resides in the mind; say the
faculty of all perceptions and the abstract which is much affected by the environment we live in,
attitude and feelings, why should we seek to understand an artist’s idea basing on our own
preconceived?
When I argue like this, I should not be mistaken that I mean that there is no purpose of having
you here and so is ours. it would be ignorance and vain confidence if I would assume that I know
what I am to study but it would equally prove the same if I admit that I don’t know any thing
about what I am to study. I believe that your informed experience qualifies you; to some extent,
to guide us. If I should disapprove your service, I can as well say that man is wiser than God or
the pupil is equal to his master, which my little knowledge of the bible can not allow me to do
(ref.mathew 10:24) but all we need is a mutual and genuine co existence.
Why should I rummage deep into these issues? It’s because we have been much affected by the
tendency of some of our dear lecturers’ confidential sitting in their lone offices to allot marks to
us as their mercy pleases. Worst of all is the fact that even in other disciplines in which some of
us have hope like history, are becoming more complex than the most complex forms of writing.
One wonders whether our history has been changed to poetry or something. Why should a liberal
subject be strictly marked like mathematics with pass word answers, always limiting expression
of the student? for example how can one talk about Rococo art in four separate words (which
must be found in the list of words one keeps__pass words? for not even in goggle are you
provided with just one link! consequently; some of us go out of course works with zeros because
our cram work is the worst yet we are not all that green on the topic.
Such a system mentioned hereabove simplifies not only the load of a lazy student (as we are at
times sarcastically recommended to exchange course work answers), but also saves a busy
lecturer of the task of marking; for he can give the password answers to a primary chap for
marking.
One wonders whether the fruits of such a system can be able to a full page essay or appreciate or
curate apiece of a painting.
These have been some of the rock heavy burdens placed unto our backs of performance and we
can hardly move on, except the trudging along with mean measured marks which can not place
any one any where. We consequently move out with retakes or the lowest marks simply we did
not satisfy our saviors’ souls. Ironically when we go out into the world we strive to survive and
surprisingly emerge better artists than those with first class degrees who wallow in companies
with just paper skills!
In conclusion I shall now therefore humbly request you to reconsider the way you mark us. I
plead not to be asked what art is for I also don’t know. I think, I deserve no punishment but just
reflect on each of the issues I have hinted herein. I am so much grateful for the good done to us.
All in all, I respect all of you for your experience in education, travel and general life and so
would like to place you as my models, learn the secrets so that the evening of my life may not
find me empty in knowledge and of course wealth
NB: These are my own words of which I should be accountable. No single student has
contributed nor has read and edited through.
1 comment February 12, 2010 bonv2