I really liked the reading tonight in the book Art and Fear. It made me think about my own fears that I deal with when creating my own artwork. One of my biggest fears when creating my art is the response I will get from the people that see it. Most of the time when I draw, I draw things that are familiar to most people, because I generally know the response that I will get from those types of drawings. But, putting artwork that I have created from my mind is so much harder, because I am allowing myself to be vulnerable to other's reactions to my ideas But, after reading this I kind of feel like my fear of what others will think is kind of silly. I mean, we are all different and feel things differently and that should be portrayed through our artwork and not everyone is going to respond the same way to the same piece of artwork. So, no matter what I create some people may like it and some people may hate it, it shouldn't be a reason for me to hold back my ideas and limit my creativity.
I also found it interesting that the idea of calling yourself an "artist" is more of a modern thing, because throughout history when people created artwork, they were not thinking of themselves when creating. None of their emotions and feelings were portrayed throught their work, it was more of a form of recording and a language to them, rather than expressing themselves. Today, artwork is more about expressing how you feel and what you believe, and that was not the case throughout early history.
Okay, I'm going to be an ornery classmate here and disagree. I haven't read Art and Fear yet (on my list of things to do) so I don't know what it says about the history of art, but I disagree with the statement that art was used just to record and serve as a language during history. Even way back when cavemen carved on walls, their carvings were constantly expressing them. It's impossible not to express yourself in art, even if you're simply trying to record an event: you're perspective is your expression which is what's being given in your recording through the use of art. But I do think you bring up a good point that today we use art and media more to express ourselves and our ideas or use it to challenge viewers more than humans have in the past. I think this is a very cool point that you brought up, and it kind of brings more questions to the surface about the change of society and mankind: is using media as expression healthy? Hm.
ReplyDelete