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[personal profile] avad
New eyes, continued... 5/22/2001
.... So I decided to try to reproduce old master paintings in order to train myself. I still went to class, but I tried not to care what others thought of what I was doing. Secretly, I felt superior in both my new dedication and my Mission. And in class, I did try to understand what made these people tick, what they SAW in abstraction (the poor, misguided fools). It was a slow process for me.
Art history class was a boring exercise in the memorization of dry facts and dates.....until I suddenly came awake in the 20th Century Art History Class! I learned how each movement in art came to be...and how it was refuted uncomprehended by the masses at first...but then somehow carved itself into history. How each movement was showing a new perspective on Visualizing Life and Existence....teaching an awareness of how we SEE and relate to things as humans. Impressionism was 'pretty', but wow, to start to think about how our eyes READ our environment, processing all those different points of color which are really different wavelengths of light reflecting off an otherwise unreadable environment? My mind was blown. Cubism looked strange but was telling us that we also register what we don't see but KNOW about an object when we gaze at it....and that is built IN to our seeing...as in, from this perspective I see a square but I know that I am looking at a box and therefore I am UNABLE to look purely at a square. My mind and eyes are inseparable. Artists were trying to convey IDEAS through painting... Wake up call to little missy me. And I was suddenly very interested in these ideas because they were bringing a new depth to my everyday exerience.

With a new determination I went to the Museum of Modern Art. To the wing that always gave me the most trouble. MODERN MINIMALISM.....Ack! Previously I would walk so quickly though those rooms, with the question always screaming in my head: WHY on earth are these people famous? After all, there was nothing THERE! um, right?

This time I sat in front of a big white piece with a hazy vertical stripe running through it about 3/4 the way across, I think it was called Sound or at least that's what I remember. Anyway, I sat there and stared. I had seen people do this before and I presumed insanity. But I sat there thinking 'Sound' and looking....and looking...until suddenly everything went away and I was IN that painting...walking around in a milky white fog silence.....and I felt something palpable...over there...like a disturbance...a different vibration Presence over there...breaking through the space. It was Sound. It was that vertical band cutting through the space, cutting through the silence, cutting through my own daydream...

I don't know how much time passed before I was aware again of being in a museum with other people around me. But it didn't matter. I had just experienced something that gave me new eyes. As if there had always been a color that I was blind to and suddenly I saw it and saw how everything was tinged with it and had more depth,and how SOME things were ABSOLUTELY that color so I never even saw them before.

And then I thought about how incredible it was that someone had shown me something I thought was invisible: sound. Well, that would mean that it was possible to Show things like FEAR or Joy or confusion.....? That would mean that I could try to express the shape of what was INSIDE me, the color of my thoughts, and if everyone didn't get it, it was okay because one person might, and I got so much out of the process anyway- I was learning about myself, I was opening up. I started using found objects that I related to...This piece of rusted metal...this shape was me hiding...this color was how I remember it felt...I started doing what I did in my Diary in another way...expressing what I had trouble finding the words for...And it all steamrolled from there. When I graduated college I was absolutely in love with making art. It was pouring out of me, all that I had kept inside, all that I wanted to say to the world, I worked it out in wood and metal and paint and words and this object next to this object. And I started showing in galleries. And a lot of people would say, "Um, what the heck is THAT?" and then a woman or even a child sometimes would come up and say, " I feel like that sometimes. That painting over there. I feel inspired now." Or they'd ask me about it and the whole story would come tumbling forth as if a key was turned and something in the moment made me suddenly find the words. And I knew I had stumbled something true to myself and that would lead me forward into unchartered territory.

Date: 2003-04-13 01:41 pm (UTC)
ext_9990: (behind my eyes by reeni928)
From: [identity profile] belladonnalin.livejournal.com
this is beautiful ...

Date: 2003-04-13 01:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vidgal.livejournal.com
If I could manipulate video the way the master painters manipulated reality - to have that large of an interpretation and an investment in it, well, I guess I would become a master.

Date: 2003-04-13 03:04 pm (UTC)

Date: 2003-04-13 05:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hopeevey.livejournal.com
Would you mind if I linked to these posts in my LiveJournal? I aspire to making realistic art, but I'm finding myself quite moved by the abstract stuff I've done. I have a hard time understanding more abstract art, although I am often moved by it. I'd like to write about this contrast in myself, and let folks read your experience, too.

Thank you either way :) And thank you for writing about this:)

Re:

Date: 2003-04-13 09:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] avad.livejournal.com
I wouldn't mind at all!:):)

multiply connected spaces

Date: 2003-04-15 10:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rokkitz.livejournal.com
I learned how each movement in art came to be...and how it was refuted uncomprehended by the masses at first...but then somehow carved itself into history

fully. the historical moment lends so much perspective! helps you achieve the right mind-set (i.e. "I GET IT!") and to understand where the art came from. the history of ideas over the last century alone blow my head off... i know very little art history, but i have recently begun to uncover the relations between the artistic gestalt of the time and the concurrence of expressive ideas in art, music, philosophy, mathematics - it's all CONNECTED! hyperdimensionality, geometry, tone poems, cubism, "minimalism" (so much is happening!)... it's really all too much for this brain of mine!

great post! i really liked your description of the omnijective appreciation of Sound... I CAN SEE THE MUSIC!

Date: 2003-04-15 03:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sibyllam.livejournal.com
"....and looking...until suddenly everything went away and I was IN that painting...walking around in a milky white fog silence.....and I felt something palpable...over there...like a disturbance...a different vibration Presence over there...breaking through the space. It was Sound. It was that vertical band cutting through the space, cutting through the silence, cutting through my own daydream..."

Beautiful. Simply beautiful. I feel I'm there.

Date: 2003-04-16 09:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] greensquare.livejournal.com
Very Interesting. I have had the reverse experience, although admittedly - i have done an awefull lot of #*! which has permanently enhanced my perceptual experiences with living colors, flanged noises, moving patterns, pixelation, etc... However, there have been times when listening intently to music (sometimes even my own!) I have been whisked away to a world of animation and movement, of neon colors and movement. Not like silly computer screensavers that bounce to the bass beat - I speak of extradimensional transportation through music (always loop based) to a world unlike anything I've ever heard of. What did I learn there?

Make More Music!

Re:

Date: 2003-04-16 08:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] avad.livejournal.com
Curious: Why do you say you have had a 'reverse experience'?

Re:

Date: 2003-04-17 09:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] greensquare.livejournal.com
because the source of your experience was visual and mine was audio, but i guess they are about the same - so its probably poor word choice, something i am very fond of

Date: 2003-04-17 02:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rokkitz.livejournal.com
funny you say that... i am predominantly aural too... i think most of my memories are sonic, and i think all the *!*#$( i've absorbed only amplified that. i found visual through sonic...

maybe "inverse experience"? er, no... can't think of word

Date: 2003-04-18 03:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ouchmyelbow.livejournal.com
i got work at Black Cat Books on saturdays, stop in sometimes
and the Book Scout in Greenport has alot of old old books with maps and drawings.. found some old botany and fairy tale books to rip apart eventually..

Re:

Date: 2003-04-19 09:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] avad.livejournal.com
Nice! I will try to.:)

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