andy and alph-art

18 Oct, 2024

due to recent work, i've been interested in contemporary fine art a lot. it's a field that's pretty much always eluded me but i think i get it now.

1. authenticity

my own brief background is that i rejected the term "artist" for myself for the longest time because i felt like the crap i drew wasn't meaningful enough to be considered artwork. where did i get this mindset? i've never had any disrespect for manga and i considered everyone's artwork to be artwork except my own.

i think it's because of how art is taught in new zealand high schools. the key point is that the subject of art is focused on the message/concept, rather than the technical skill.

i didn't attend many art classes in those years, so i might not have had the full picture. but i don't recall ever being taught technical skills like how to draw still life or how anatomy works, etc. the kinds of things i hear about in art classes in other countries.

instead, the primary focus of art class is developments and effectively expressing a message through your artwork. in that way, it's more akin to an english class than an art class.

sharing a message that i cared about was difficult at the time— i was already insecure about my art in a technical sense and i hated talking about personal things publicly (even now i refuse to do so). so i'd just make some really middling shit while my classmates would get deep and gritty about artwork that was true to their message, even if it wasn't "conventionally visually appealing".

i was conscious of my own inability to express what mattered to me at the time, so even then, i came to believe that art is about the message/concept. ¹

on that note, i attended a talk the other day where the speaker was asked what gives new zealanders such a great reputation in art and design. my personal answer is that new zealanders are taught from when we're young that art is about the message/concept, not the technical skill. it's mostly thanks to the fact that we don't exactly have an obvious 2D art industry, so most people don't focus on improving technical skill competitively like in america or china (until they find out we do actually have a decent game and film industry).

if message is the most important thing in a piece of art, i think that authenticity is the most important thing as an artist.

to be authentic as an artist, i think you just need to be able to call yourself that with genuine feelings. i know this sounds like meandering bullshit, but, well, that's genuinely how i feel. if you believe you're an artist then you are one and it's ok to create meaningless pieces that are still artwork because you're an artist and your creations are art by definition. ² basically, it's fine if you call yourself an artist just because you think it's fun or like the actual process and so on. as long as you're being genuine about it!

so where does the topic of fine art fit into all of this?

i guess i'm just amazed at how authentic people can be through artwork— not just in their message but how they express it. for instance, the full authenticity of putting out a canvas painted two dark colors and using it to express despair is something i could never do without feeling so terribly self-conscious!

i feel horrendously cringe alone just drawing 'serious' anime boy comics without cracking jokes, so it's impossible for me to create artwork so raw and real in both message and medium. it's certainly to do with the ironic culture of gen z, but also my own inability to accept myself as an artist. so i'm really impressed by people who can do all that with such genuine feelings. ³

2. history

despite how i felt back in high school, i still had no interest in contemporary fine art until recently. most things just didn't interest me visually and i felt no emotional response to works i knew were supposed to elicit something. i still feel that way for the most part, but while i can't understand feelings, i can understand history!

i love history and learning new things, and learning to read art as history rather than art really changed the game. there's practically a whole 80's new york fine art cinematic universe! everyone's connected! did you know that the guy who painted the cover for my beautiful dark twisted fantasy used to be in a band which basquiat's band opened for before he started his art career?

it really is so interesting to see how different groups of artists are influenced by each other, how great artists were connected, and how the surrounding cultural landscape was affecting the fine art scene.

my favorite fine artist is jean-michel basquiat. he has such a striking, distinctive art style that looks really cool! not to mention the actual messages behind his works which i'm not qualified to speak on. i really like that his artwork is rooted in legitimate anatomy from copying the engravings in gray's anatomy given to him by his mother when he was young. i also bought a simplified version for reference!

3. scope

basquiat's work looks distinctive, but the fact that he draws humans at all makes him easier for others to connect to him as an artist, or even person. i say this because once i started looking into fine art proper, i realized how vast the sheer scope of it is.

you can understand why your mother thinks all anime artwork is the same when you see that the definition of visual art includes everything from "guy living in a gallery room with a wolf" to "massive spirals formed from the earth itself". art is really huge, even beyond every marketable industry like gaming or graphic design or textiles.

i really love that feeling! i still get so upset and insecure over posting my artwork online sometimes, but it's literally just video game illustration fanart! it's so small in the scope of it all that there's no point in being sad if it flops.

on a related note, i always think it's best that young artists don't solely rely on social media or fanart alone as art inspiration. usually i suggest looking up to pro manga artists or comic book guys instead, but i think it's also good to go out to an art gallery and find work that'll inspire you even if it's in a medium you'll never use yourself.

these pieces are works that i found aesthetically inspiring from a recent visit to the auckland art gallery. it still leans towards figurative stuff, but i want to try incorporating darker colors and grittier textures into my art.

4. skill

a lot of contemporary fine art gets flack for being simplistic, with people saying stuff like "my kid could draw that!" and the common argument being "well your kid didn't, and this person did first" or "the fact that you're arguing about it at all shows how it's real art because it provokes feelings".

obviously i think intent and feeling matters, but just saying that ignores how technically difficult and impressive a lot of contemporary fine artwork is.

basquiat is really hard to copy! i tried to imitate him, but his works are layered and complex, yet still look cohesive and compositionally appealing— and he was doing all that with a traditional medium on a larger-than-life canvas.

andy warhol was screenprinting all of his soup cans! he still had to draw them first with his great experience as a university-trained commercial illustrator. how many people knew how to silkscreen stuff in the 1960s, anyway?

yayoi kusama painted millions of dots on her own! it's a level of dedication that's impossible to imagine, but she does it so neatly and perfectly every time on any medium.

of course, you can't talk about divisive contemporary fine art without mentioning marcel durchamp's fountain. it gets a whole lot of "it's art because people talk about it" and other explanations i don't want to go into, but as for myself, i think fountain is a really good demonstration of composition.

that is to say that fountain is art because durchamp purposefully arranged, or composed, the urinal to be positioned in a particular way that changes how it's viewed. it's basically the same as the art of photography.

art is just bloody difficult, man. i really don't think there's that many people who have the skill or resources to make a giant metal bean.

5. distance

the world of fine art feels so far away from me, but i like it that way.

i think it's the same as my approach towards celebrities. i like traditional celebs because they're so far out of my reach that it's okay to admire them without feeling weird. it's more comfortable to do so rather than strongly caring about someone who has a close-but-not-quite connection with their audience, like a youtuber or seiyuu (though i don't think parasocial relationships are good either way of course).

fine art is similar, where the whole sector feels so far above me that it's like a celebrity world. paintings sell for astronomical numbers and even those that don't fetch higher prices than what i could imagine per piece in any other art industry.

i'll never become a fine artist, but i can accept that, unlike something like "being popular on social media" or "working as a professional artist in a standard industry"— things that feel like they could be so close and come true if i was just a bit more dedicated or less stupid. scrolling on twitter gets me so depressed sometimes, but i can keep enjoying art when i look at this far away fine art world instead.

#art #rant