Apr. 26th, 2003
(no subject)
Apr. 26th, 2003 11:09 pmstupid, i forgot the milk in the fridge at work, so it's either another coffee now, or one tomorrow morning... decisions...
recently (or at least i don't remember it happening before) images from dreams keep popping up in my mind at the oddest times, dreams from years ago i wasn't even aware i still remembered... weirdness. i still don't recall the context, but some images are suddenly *there*, very clear...
catching up, part 2, ca. last friday. (i only wanted to look at a few sculptures, but ended up looking at the whole collection... i also ended up buying a tiny, bright-green-&-glittery-violet-spots stuffed frog, but that's not strictly relevant here... er...but it's cute.)
[[ what bugs me is that apparently i absolutely lack the intellectual equipment to appreciate modern art, especially abstract art. on my inner scale it mostly rates somewhere between 'pretty' and a vague dislike, but touch me? move me?...
part of the problem presumably is that i never bothered to get informed enough to really understand it, but it's sort of hard to, when there isn't even an initial connection...
when a work of art deals with the human body, or even a landscape, anything material, i feel that i've got at least something to work with, some sort of common ground, even taking into account that details or even central messages can get lost or distorted across the divides of time and culture. but there's just a basic connection of common human experience...
with an abstract painting / object i don't even know where to start... maybe it's modern individualism, that makes art no longer necessarily or even primarily a means of communication, something that should be seen in a personal rather than a social context, but i feel like i'd have to to climb into the artist's head or at least read a lengthy explanation to even get the initial key, which my mind refuses to supply.
i tend to look for meaning, for the artist's intent. the 'it can be whatever you think it is' approach just doesn't do it for me. (personally i think there is a basic truth in every work of art, even if the artist isn't conscious of it... i've let the few persons who bought one of my sculptures think about it whatever they liked, rather than tell them what i'd intended to say... i'd have preferred it if they'd seen it, but who was i to spoil their pleasure. also, privacy.) it probably just goes against years of learning to analyse art from a historic and sociological perspective, trying to decipher the meaning of small details... so to me not every meaning is as good as the other. a work of art can be beautiful, but to me it's even more interesting when i know the background, the context, when it unfolds it's layers of meaning...
i guess that's a purely personal problem / deficiency, though, as many people seem to be able to truly appreciate and relate to what i'll pass with barely a shrug... ]]