I saw an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art the other day, I have no idea what it was called or who the artists were because it was the biggest load of conceptual art bullsh*t I have ever seen. But more on that soon. I want to have a rant about my current thoughts on art and why I refuse to do it for myself anymore. So if anyone has any contradicting comments to this that might help me from having such a negative view on contemporary art might be of some benefit to me.
Despite the fact that until the end of this year I am supposedly studying to become some form of artist, I have found that I really do not find a point in what I am doing. Like some may say it’s a form of self expression, a way of communicating your ideas, but personally I don’t care about that. Well not directly anyway. My primary issue with this is that artists use this as an excuse to make the most boring, untalented works of all time. The idea of concept and experimentation results in artists becoming lazy by merely splattering some paint or doing some distorted picture of whatever and calling it a work of art- like of course it can take forever to do, but it doesn’t remotely take the effort painting some actual realistic thing (or along those lines) takes. Art has become a result of laziness and being poor- why do most the artists of today not create massive time consuming oil paintings? Because they’re too poor to afford the paints, and have to resort to collecting rubbish off the streets and compiling it into some conceptual mash that nobody understands because it has no point! In which case I find this, as an artist who believes that painting should be based on the talent of being able to draw realistically and being able to incorporate a really good sense of colour, tone and design into that. This offends me because, in my painting class, my bloody major at uni, they don’t care about this, so despite that fact that I can paint reasonably well, of course I have things to improve but that doesn’t matter, I get stupid marks because I’m not experimental enough.
It all comes from our education, both at school and university, we aren’t taught anything about technique- provided you have tried playing with new ways of creating art, have at least 3 influential artists, and have a concept that has to do with identity, culture or something political then it’s all good. So nobody knows anything about the basics of drawing, like perspective, tone, creating colours, and well structured paintings, unless you take a special course in it, or at uni do it as an elective, but it’s not compulsory. Is this not stupid? There are 50 million people in my painting class who couldn’t draw a figure if it wasn’t a stick, and I’m like why the hell are you here? I can’t work in a world that is like this. This exhibition I saw, it was primarily about audience participation- answering questionnaires, recording comments in a phone, having your photo with the ‘artwork’. It was ridiculous. Thank god I didn’t have to pay to see it, because I wouldn’t give those artists a cent.
Which is why I like music better. At least with instruments you still have to have some kind of talent to be a professional musician, even for the more experimental music- and for the experimental/conceptual composers, they still have to have an understanding of what the instruments can and can’t do- you have to know about music! We can still play pieces from before 1900- so why can’t I paint like artists from before 1900? I can’t produce art for myself- the concept of having an exhibition of my work seems stupid because I wouldn’t be able to justify what I’m painting- I have racked my brains trying to think of something that would actually be worth painting, and every time I come up with an idea I’m like why would I want to paint that? I’m generally not one who likes to make comments within what I do. I want to create artworks that the audience likes- that they can stare at for hours and it moves them- but you don’t have to have a concept to make art beautiful, it’s one of those indescribable things- if someone asked to explain what my art was about I could make some rubbish idea behind it, but it wouldn’t be why I created the work- I just mashed the idea to fit the painting, whereas it should be the other way around- but my art teachers won’t accept that I don’t have a concept. It’s stupid. I will paint specific works for people who ask for it, because I know they’re not in it for the concept- they appreciate the aesthetic qualities of my paintings and that’s all I care about.
So that is why I’m quitting art. I now have people putting bets on whether I’ll take it up again as a non-commissioned type thing. But personally I can’t see myself picking up a brush just for the fun of it.