Odd Fascinations · 1:43pm Apr 13th, 2017
I love art in many forms. I admit I find it difficult to appreciate works such as 'Voice of Fire' but some of that comes from not knowing the artist's intent behind the piece. I personally don't derive anything from it, but perhaps if I had the perspective and knowledge of what the artist was trying to convey, I might have a different opinion.
I'm leading to the fact that I often find strange works of art beautiful. In this case, carved citrus peels. Hear me out.
In Japan, the art of carving citrus peels is apparently a somewhat obscure but not unheard of thing. Of the people who do this, the best known is a man named Yoshihiro Okada. His medium is tangerine peels.
This is beautiful and magical in and of itself, but even moreso is how he does it. He starts with an unpeeled tangerine. He does not peel and then carve, he carves on the tangerine and makes sure to take away and add nothing as is part of his ethos. He feels that the best art comes from compromise and those are his compromises.
This is a beautiful article about the man but if you go to the bottom has a video of him carving a tengerine peel and the surety of his hands and watching it slowly take shape, like a magic trick awes me.
Which leads to the main point of the blog post. What do you guys think? Is art best when it's unconstrained by limitations and compromises, or is it best when it works within limits? And how do you compromise or not when you're writing or drawing?
I think that art is about making choices, from medium to content to more thematic elements and details, and each choice imposes a limitation. The key to good art is picking the right limitations for the art you want to make. Too few choices, too unlimited, and you can't find the meaning in a work, but you don't want to make the wrong choice and cut off your metaphorical foot.
I realize that sounds wishy-washy, but basically limitations are good if they're the right limitations, and deciding which ones are right is the hard part of being an artist.
Just like Hitler.
(Actually, I really love "Voice of Fire", no lie.)
Restriction--censorship, writing oneself into a corner, competing demands for time--can certainly strangle the work in progress.
But artists also complain of facing the terrible blankness of a page or canvas, not knowing what to do, not next, but first.
So it seems that a certain amount of restriction is necessary to the work. To be ethically ideal. it should either be self-chosen ("I shall write a sonnet") or else common to all ("there are only 24 hours in a day").
Of all the constraints that you could choose, an externally enforced deadline is among the most painful, but also the most productive of both ideas and labor. There is no such wild genius as desperation brings forth.
I once read of an art instructor who required all his students to do ice sculptures because, he said, "it forces them to solve their problems now." I can see the use of that.
Albert Camus said (or, you know, wrote) that, "A guilty mind needs to confess. A work of art is a confession." I wonder what Mr Okada is trying to confess with this
Very impressive though. Too bad it's not a lasting medium, fruit-peels dry up. Luckily we have the technology of very cheaply making images and spreading them over the world, so we can preserve the creations in an admittedly limited medium, but preserve it nonetheless.
4494987 Oh? I'd love to hear the reasons if you're up for sharing them. I have nothing against the painting, I just don't understand what it's trying to convey.
4495177
It's big and it has good colors and I like abstract art, especially the kind that is comprised of solid blocks of color. :B
Constraint breeds creativity. After all, just look at a munchkin battling their GM.
More seriously, putting constraints on your art forces you to do things you ordinarily wouldn't. Like learning how to draw beaks when you decide that the picture must have a gryphon in it, or finding a way to quickly and satisfactorily resolve your plot points when you're running across a word count limit.
4495217 Works for me :) I like more variation. like Piet Mondrian's art for cities works. Though part of the enjoyment may stem from having an understanding of the intent of the piece.
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I like Mondrian, but I love Rothko. My favorite modern artist. :D Though his works are far more nebulous, they're still big swathes of color.
4494987
David Sirlin would be proud.
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It's all Bad Horse's fault. :B
4495042
Thank you Civilization 5
Everything is compromise. When you're building a bridge, you are always compromising between weight, strength, aesthetics, cost, and longevity. You cannot increase one without decreasing another. (Forgive my analogy; I am an engineering professor)
All art, therefore, is also compromise. When writing, you must choose between brevity and inclusiveness. Subtlety and the fact that some readers will miss the point. The style must be vivid enough to illustrate the scene, but not so much to be distracting.
But your question wasn't about compromise, it was about limitations.
Creativity comes from limitations. Why do we write a story? Because we can't upload the idea and the feelings of the story we want to tell directly into someone else's brain. Why do we paint? Because we can't upload the idea and the feelings of the image directly into others' brains.
If you limit yourself artificially, you must be creative to produce something of value.
I guess. I'm just kind of making this up as I go along.