_ Out of the three artists we were given an option to comment on, I

personally chose the painter/ performance artist Bruce McLean, due to

the wide variety of points about him we can comment on. Bruce
McLean is an artist in which style of work captures the viewers of his
paintings, due to its extravagant simplicity. However, in my point of
view, this is one of the reasons that greatly brought him down.
Personally, I think, in art, simplicity of complexion is an interesting way
to capture the viewers and embrace the art more, and that’s all good.
However, Bruce McLean had gone a little too far in integrating the idea
of simplicity in his paintings and made some his paintings almost too
simple, at an unbearable rudimentary level, thus had affected his
stance. One example of this would be his painting- the Cavalily.

_ For this painting, even though he had included his style of twist in
simplicity, he has made it too simple, and the result is explicitly- no
matter how many times you looked, no matter which directions did you
look at it from, it’s still the same blue
tree with a funky
multichromatic background.
That leaves the painting quite
bland and a bit meaningless.
However, it all depends on the
viewers’ ideas about it…Even
though this painting- the
Cavalily- had proved itself to be
quite a bland and unimpressive
work of Bruce McLean, there
are far better ones that he had
produced, and one example
would be- the Aftersun Soother.
In this painting, he had
incorporated the idea of
simplicity perfectly, working at
a minimal working rate but yet
still produced a painting with a
meaning worthy of a work
produced with a maximal rate
effort. The good thing about
this picture is that it leaves
quite a paradox within the viewers’ minds, as when we looking at it
generally, we don’t see much except streaks of blue and a yellow eye
in the middle with a dark and somber background. However, if we
focus on the details step by step, we can then realize that when
concentrating on the blue marks along with the eye, the shape formed
on the left hand side resembles a toad (without noticing the black
outlining). Then, when we start to pay more attention to the black
outline, we can then see that it was actually a person, and the yellow
eye turned out to be his or her…breast. Therefore, this painting,
though simple, excels in its simplicity, and thus would make Bruce
McLean a very successful artist.

Onto quotations, Bruce McLean had two quotations mentioned in the

video that really caught my attention. One was: “Artists and art can
change the world”; and the other being “As an artist you can do what
you want, when you want to do it and however you want to do it.”
The first quotation made by him: “Artists and art can truly change the
world”, in my opinion, was rather inspiring, plausible to some people,
yet incredibly vain. The quotation and his general ideology is truly vain
and unrealistic, as exactly how can artists change the world, and in
what way WILL they change the world, should that idea come to a
reality. Also, another question that could be asked is that in what
effects artists will create when the world is ‘truly’ changed? Will it be
good and influential? Will it serve as a bad influence perhaps? What
will an ‘artistic’ world contribute to us? Will it solve any problems we
are having? There are multitudes of questions that can be raised upon
hearing this quotation, and most likely the arguments that can be
heard will be quite loosely biased, so therefore in my opinion, Bruce’s
McLean’s belief on that subject is vain, unrealistic, unlikely to happen,
and yet still extremely vague. It really pumps up McLean’s imagination,
yet also his lack of receptivity in reality.

However, although the first one was…interesting, the second

quotation: “As an artist, you can do whatever you want, whenever you
want to do it, and however you want to do it.” This is an interesting
quotation made by him, and personally, I think it is an amazing belief,
spoken from someone with experience, thus would make this quite
reliable. What I like about this quotation is the fact that he pointed out
his own belief that art is a very free choice of occupation to be made,
and through working solitarily, you, as an artist, would have no
obligations or restrictions blocking you and making you refrain from
expressing your feelings or do whatever you mind tells you to. As a
matter in fact, many artist came to success through improvisation or
painting through the use of his/her own instincts, and thus that is why
that quote made by McLean really excels.