CompuServe Thread

#Animations

11 messages in this thread
#47824From: Michael E BartlettJun 28, 1993 1:12 AM
Well, Art does happen. We can work and train ourselves as artists our whole lives and never be so blessed to create a single work of art. That is the sad fact of it. Anyone can learn to draw and buy paint but in only the hands of one who has vision will anything of value emerge. I go against the humanistic school that sayes anyone can be an artist if they so choose. Those with talent and purpose are so few that they must surely be chosen or recieve some calling. As for art, I believe that it must truly qualify itself. Just like the artist that can't be separated from the society in which they exist and work, art must conduct its transactions with the society it finds itself in. It has to serve in some exemplary way to whom it appears as art and eventually it has to stand the test of time. If it doesn't it will pass on as a relic to settle into the silt of time just like the rest of us.
#47828From: rachel rosenthalJun 28, 1993 2:45 AM
ah how nice to find you three drinking absinthe together- speaking of art passing away in the dust have you been to see "like water for chocolate?"
#47863From: Yost GroupJun 28, 1993 10:51 AM
"Like Water for Chocolate" was an insanely great film. Best I've seen all year, I think. (as a film, it was way better than Jurassic… but not much computer graphics 🙂
#48168From: rachel rosenthalJun 30, 1993 2:05 AM
i knew you had a soul -r
#48207From: Yost GroupJun 30, 1993 10:34 AM
Gee… with all the work I've been doing in front of the MACHINE lately, that makes ONE of us. – G
#47897From: Michael E BartlettJun 28, 1993 2:16 PM
Hi Rachel, Good to meet you. I like what you are doing with your "dignified people." I relate to your sentiment on this subject and wish you the best success. I haven't seen anything but the reprographs of them but like what I see. >>"like water for chocolate?" As a matter of fact I was planning on going tommorrow night. You have piqued my curiosity now. meb
#48169From: rachel rosenthalJun 30, 1993 2:11 AM
hello meb-movie is sad but beautiful, i really loved reading your thinkings and it made me wonder about anasazi ruins and minoan temples in the middle of nowhere
#48225From: Michael E BartlettJun 30, 1993 12:14 PM
Hi Rachel, The movie masterfully handled two very difficult subjects, love and magic. It really was a story quite beautifully told. Funny you should mention Anasazi ruins and Minoan temples, I am reading a scifi classic I missed in earlier years, Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles." It touches me in that same sad, longing, and lost way. One of the hallmarks of art is that it usually contains some ontological significance. In other words, it arises out of some logic of being, in the same way that Tita's cooking had a power to effect her family's lives. When we look at a beautiful Anisazi pot in a museum we sense the significance of it's use in the lives of the culture that created it. The words of poet/writer Octavio Paz come to mind, "…the beauty is in the use of the object…" We may find the object aesthetically pleasing to the eye but that is only the remaining evidence that art has passed through it. meb
#47869From: John EllisJun 28, 1993 11:47 AM
Michael – I appreciate the sentiment. I do think however, that great artists have often gone against their contemporary society, in their search of art. And there are examples like Henri Rousseau, who very late in life became an artist, and I find his work very moving, and while he may not be condsidered great like Michelangelo and Leonardo, there is a purety to his work that deeply inspires. And I find it encouraging that I am not alone on a trek that may lead nowhere. You express the sentiment eloquently. -JE
#47898From: Michael E BartlettJun 28, 1993 2:16 PM
No matter how hard artists bang around against contemporary society or the art world, read conceptual art, or even for that matter try to run away from it like Gauguin, the art is indelibly marked. You have spoke about the political nature of art. Did you ever stop to consider how similar artists and politicians are? Both require patronage and depend on it to carry out their work. meb
#47994From: John EllisJun 28, 1993 11:59 PM
No Michael I didn't but I find your comment very amusing and quite true. And yes if I read you correctly no matter how hard the artists bang up against contemporary society the influence on them is still there. I was thinking of the impressionists when I wrote about some of the greats, because they had to fight the academy, but they also influenced each other, much as we are doing I think. -JE