http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters.html

“The feeling for and love of nature always strike a chord sooner or later with people who take an interest in art. The duty of the painter is to study nature in depth and to use all his intelligence, to put his feelings into his work so that it becomes comprehensible to others.

But working with an eye to saleability isn’t exactly the right way in my view, but rather is cheating art lovers. The true artists didn’t do that; the sympathy they received sooner or later came because of their sincerity. I know no more than that, and don’t believe I need to know any more.”
{Vincent Van Gogh b. 1853 d. 29 July 1890} [252]

My courses in art education changed my perspective of all art. I know when I was in high school I was repulsed by most postmodern art and I felt that modern art was child-like. But since that time I have grown to appreciate the simplicity of modern art that the outrageousness of postmodern art. Ive had experiences with some artwork that simply could not have occurred if the work was visually attractive. Funnily enough, my favorite postmodern artist is actually Damien Hirst (the shark guy). I think if you look up more of his work online you will find something you like. I personally love the shark and am very jealous you got to see it, but perhaps you would prefer some of his paintings or his butterfly works.

I think the real problem of modern/postmodern art is its accessibility. Today it is taught in a way as if these artists are “geniuses” and better than other art forms. This makes many people who do not like, or who do not spend enough time with a work to feel as if they don’t “get it”. And oftentimes many people become suspicious of these works – wondering if they were made simply to make fun of them as a viewer (which, honestly, some of them are).

Teachers need to be more honest about modern and postmodern art when they bring it up. It’s not always good. It’s rarely genius. It’s not always meant to be enjoyed. I don’t think it is effective to look at a series of modern works, say a line or two about them and move on. These works more than any other need to be talked about. The discussion elicited from them is the real art – not the rotting cow and growing maggots.

As an artist I prefer less traditional artworks because they can always surprise me. When I look at a beautiful painting, I am not always affected by it because I am too busy looking at the workmanship and thinking “I could do that”. “Oh, that’s how he did that? I’ll try that out sometime.”

Looking at work I would NEVER create myself is liberating. I can simply enjoy it or hate it or both.

I think you need to talk about a work you hate with someone who is completely awestruck by it and spend a good half hour discussing it. Neither of you are allowed to attack the other person in any way – just the art. Those conversations always turn out to be good. You might even like the artwork in the end.

The fact that he [publicly] ridiculed your personal art preferences was also exceedingly un-professional of him, which is another reason he should be fired. The fact that he actually prefers moldy piss in a jar to [your] colorful, interesting, MEANINGFUL artwork is just – insane!

I mean, I’d pick the latter in less than a tenth of a heartbeat if it came down to what I’d rather look at/learn about/study/admire/etc. etc. etc. And to add on to that, how much work, time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears does it take to piss into a jar, close it up, and label it “THIS IS ART” – in comparison to how much work, time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears it takes to draw one PAGE – one PANEL! – of a webcomic like yours? There IS no comparison.

I’d rather learn about your art, from you, and ponder about any foreshadowing or hidden meaning or whatnot than even consider peeking at some idiot’s piss in a jar. The audacity of some people… and what they call art… ugh.

Why are you still taking classes anyway? Clearly this (cough) ‘instructor’ (cough) isn’t adding anything to your artistic pallet (pun intended…maybe…lol).

On a note about the picture, at least the Sniper’s Jarate has some practical purpose.

AND…horray for really long responses! WHOOOO!!!

I agree with you on most of this. And the bias extends to motion pictures as well. From Hollywood’s point of view, “cartoons” are for kids, even though many of them contain as much violence as the Normandy invasion, minus the blood and the fatalities. The Japanese of course have no such hang-ups, as exhibited by anything from “Bleach” to “Witchblade” to “Bible Black”. And yet…

It bothers me that “Invasion America” (1998) did well enough as a prime-time summer series to warrant its continued airing (or rather, re-airing) in the fall, but poorly enough as a Saturday morning cartoon that the WB network cut it without finishing the run, and never ordered a second season of it. (Nor was it released on video; in fact there is no mention of it on the Dreamworks website *anywhere*.)

It bothers me that a rather boring (and subtitled) French movie about a woman who gets involved with a man who’s old enough to be her father (except that her father is old enough to be *his* father) gets 4 stars out of four from a local (New York City area) paper’s movie reviewer, while an action-adventure or comedy which did amazingly well in the box office and eventually got a sequel or two, was panned by the critics.

It bothers me that someone I had as a housemate complained while watching the Oscars one year that he didn’t think animated films should be eligible for Academy Awards, because in his not-so-humble opinion, voice actors don’t really act.

As for “modern art”, the psychodelic culture and “starving artist” lifestyle is considered hip and mod, and unfortunately that goes back well over a hundred years. It’s way beyond time they got over it, but unfortunately, the arteeeeeeesteses are stuck there, and the “hip and mod” keep oohing and aahing over the same drug-addled wasting-away that plagued the rock-and-roll scene in the 1960′s. They’re not oohing and aahing over the music, either; they’re doing it over the wasting-away part. Because it’s better to be getting eaten alive by drugs and sickness and starvation than it is to have a single molecule of lipid left in your system to insulate against cold weather or neural short-circuiting. It’s a crying shame that those with patronage money to spend find the same things awe-inspiring while allegedly stone-cold sober that people once only found amusing while they were stoned on pot or tripping on PCP.

And many of the ones who aren’t stuck in that particular acid trip seem to have a tendency to knock the things that popular culture finds entertaining, because it’s too “low brow”. How they manage to avoid tripping over cracks in the sidewalk because with their noses so high in the air that they can’t see what they’re stepping in, is beyond my ability to comprehend.

As for your ex-professor…

Ask him some time if he finds the same enjoyment in listening to sportscasters recite a running commentary of a game of chinese checkers in AES128-encrypted Swahili. If he says anything other than “Yes”, he’s a hippo crate (whose actual contents I will leave to speculation). And I’m sorry you had to suffer through his more-on-ick attitude.

Better yet, send him a copy of “Atlanta Nights” by Travis Tea (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/atlanta-nights/117402). I’m sure he’ll love it. And you’ll enjoy laughing at him as he sings the praises of a book which was intentionally written as badly as possible, by a collection of science-fiction-and-fantasy authors (and one computer program) as a plot to avenge the defamation of their genre by a vanity press that *still* claims not to be one. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights) Proceeds benefit the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Emergency Medical Fund.

For those of you who are still suffering through this, may I suggest considering a *slight* change of major? The arteeesteses may consider Graphic Design to be “selling out”, but its got a lot of the same skills involved, it’s commercially viable so you don’t have to choose between living in your parents’ basement and starving to death on the streets (no offense intended to those folks who still live in their parents’ basements, provided you’re not deliberately sabotaging your potential ability to move out), and you still get to make a career of producing pretty and interesting pictures. (Speaking as someone who once considered majoring in advertising, because I used to design and lay out ads at my high school paper.)

Would this be a good time to point out that the branch of the computer industry which is currently pushing the hardware performance envelope the hardest is… video games?

Or that there’s a strong corellation between music and math?

Anyone see the “Pinky and the Brain” episode entitled “Pinkasso”?

BTW, Fresnel, Charles Dodgeson wasn’t high on anything but advanced mathematics and the (strictly platonic) company of a few delightful young ladies-in-the-making, with whose entertainment he was periodically made responsible.

Theo, do you still have the source code for the program you used to put that galaxy together?

so i think we’ve already chatted on this topic before, but yeah i half agree. i think that its been summed up a few times in here with the other people who said the same thing that the teacher was really one of the biggest outlying issues, and not in every situation, the art.

but to say more, i think your comment on the drug abuse and shock and awe techniques in the modern art community are really making a bad name for the rest of us. n ot per se that i discourage drug usage for art, but abuse is the problem, especially when you find yourself collecting pee for lofty reasons,.

so i can’t be all the way taken out of disagreeing with you for some certain reasons., one of those reasons is that i make modern art. and youve seen some of it. the difference between my sometimes non objective and metaphorical paintings on found materials and someone else’s unpainted found materials is really the question at hand. i piss on most philosophy buffs, but i do have to side with them on art being a real bitch to hammer into a real definition.

my only thing to finish with. frank gehry said. sometimes a line is just a line, people cant always hammer dead meaning to a dead shark iin gel. but that doesn’t make it less awesome for the geeks in the audience.

The purest form of art is the art of the bullsh*t.

If you could give an esoteric explanation, or some deep emotional appeal, there would be SOMEONE who bought it.
I exploited this by doing an n-body simulation of a galaxy for my senior project.
A little coding, a few days of calculating, plug the data into a renderer, spend the next 3 weeks coming up with an explanation re-describing gravity as “subtle shades of connectedness”.
Funniest A ever.