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MOST ANNOYING
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Message
Posted
This is a thread about art. So it's no good using logic on me, Micheal, I leave it outside the door when I'm painting. (My wife adds...also when I'm awake.) So it follows there's no such thing as a small sky, there's only BIG skies.
And Rob...that IS an annoying phrase. The only possible answer (I nearly said 'logical' then)...is....you copied it from your memory.
I've heard, or maybe read somewhere, that in parts of Wales you can find 77 year old ladies up trees in the dead of winter. Who'd have thought it?
Lew (in wonderment).
Posted
<title></title><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm">From imagination Michael? That may be a good answer though I have the feeling that whatever I say 'they' will just wander away muttering, one idiot once asked me to draw a perfect freehand circle to prove I could draw, I just wandered away muttering.
Posted
Thank God I live on the Isle of Wight. I've never yet seen a lady up a tree.
We have quite big skies too though - if you look out to sea, which, here, you sort of have to do. So many of these expressions are romantic, symbolic, imaginative: I don't object to those at all - without imagination, where would we be? What I do object to is the flaming pretentious - there's poetry, which I like; there's pomposity and exclusivity, which I hate. Some time ago, I read an art critic who bemoaned all figurative painting, on the world-weary, cynical grounds that 'it has all been done'. I can begin to see his point, but I haven't done it all - I don't care if others have; I have my own way of looking at the world, as have others, and I note that we're all different, we all see different things: and if you're bored, well - I think that particular critic is just terminally bored with life as a whole, and that's really HIS problem, not mine.
So much art criticism is grounded in cynicism - the best art critics (e.g. Robert Hughes; and perhaps Brian Sewell, although the latter could be a crashing snob) rose way above that: and they understand, as the cynics don't, why artists paint as they do; we are not in a competition to achieve the latest modernist accolade. Most of us just don't give a sod about all that - we do what we do because, well, that's what we do. If the public takes an interest, fine: if they don't - we'll still keep doing it. And the critics? I have never once taken any of them so seriously that I've changed a single thing I've done. So I don't sell? Well - OK. That's not up to me, and I'm damned if I'll go chasing the market in order to reach an alien and unwanted standard: any more than I'd paint Athena-print-friendly soft porn on deep-edged canvas.
It's not so very different to conform to others' opinions: but if that's what I did, or do, you have my full permission to shoot me.
Edited
by RobertJones
Posted
This is one I hear all the time especially among the less experienced.
Ican't seem to get the right colour
Well it doesn't matter - use a colour from your heart, a colour with emotion, a colour that complements, a colour from your limited palette, a colour that matches, a colour that simply works well - it's a painting not a photo.
Posted
Micheal's thread has made me re-appraise all the little niggles that annoy me about art. It's guilty secrets time...you know what?..they don't annoy me really. As has been said here, it's often the WAY things are said that matters, and that's not restricted to art. Marjorie has invented this marvelous character called Arty Bollocks (well, that's how I see him). I was going to draw him pushing a wheelbarrow that contains his massive ego...but I've already drawn him. Apologies for posting this old pic, although the way things speed through the gallery, you may not have seen it. Arty is the character going starry eyed over a painted 'dot.' Around him are people less impressed, and in the background an authority figure who thinks ordinary people shouldn't be allowed the luxury of having an opinion.
If Arty Bollocks were to vanish, I'd miss him and all the nonsense he spouts. He makes me think however naff I get, I can't be as naff as him. I'm happy with all the words...en plein air, painterly...etc etc. We'll all have our own versions of what they mean...I take 'painterly' to mean that you can see it's a painting. Van Gogh is 'painterly', and that's just great. I admire realist and hyper realist art. As with all art, there are some examples I don't like. I'm less enamored with it when I'm looking at the umpteenth version of some iconic photo. But if that's what people like to paint, what it's got to do with me? We should embrace the art we like and not dwell on the stuff we dislike. We don't have to justify anything. So long as we all keep making the kind of art WE like, we'll ensure that the most important thing in art continues...and that's it's VARIETY...there's something for everyone. As Arty Bollocks would say, when he's used up all his candy-floss words...'ain't art great!!'
Here endeth the sermon,
Lew.
If Arty Bollocks were to vanish, I'd miss him and all the nonsense he spouts. He makes me think however naff I get, I can't be as naff as him. I'm happy with all the words...en plein air, painterly...etc etc. We'll all have our own versions of what they mean...I take 'painterly' to mean that you can see it's a painting. Van Gogh is 'painterly', and that's just great. I admire realist and hyper realist art. As with all art, there are some examples I don't like. I'm less enamored with it when I'm looking at the umpteenth version of some iconic photo. But if that's what people like to paint, what it's got to do with me? We should embrace the art we like and not dwell on the stuff we dislike. We don't have to justify anything. So long as we all keep making the kind of art WE like, we'll ensure that the most important thing in art continues...and that's it's VARIETY...there's something for everyone. As Arty Bollocks would say, when he's used up all his candy-floss words...'ain't art great!!'
Here endeth the sermon,
Lew.
Posted
Lewis, you have hit the nail on the head! We are all different and like different things and that's the way it should be, each to their own! This thread has really got us thinking and it has been great fun watching it develop so keep 'em coming.
Not arty but a word that seems to be on (especially youngsters) everyone's lips is to start a sentence with "so". "So I went to the cinema", "So, I like painting". The English language is going to be unrecognisable in years to come!
Posted
The ‘So…’ prefix to every sentence would be just as annoying although excusable (they’ll get over it eventually) if it was confined to those youngsters that they have now. But it has become so widespread that even politicians and others who should have more sense are using it. So rampant has it become that etymologists have named and classified the phenomenon. (And it even makes me hesitate when starting a sentence with the word in it’s olden-days usage). I heard a discussion about it on R4 some months ago (on the excellent programme Word of Mouth) I forget the grammatical phrase they used to describe it but it has been classified as indicating superior knowledge and understanding (because message is conveyed in the intonation too). “So…[you of course do not have the benefit of my knowledge and understanding on this subject but fortunately I can explain it for you]…”
For many people it’s just a currently ‘fashionable’ way of speaking, akin to using cool or awesome instead of yes. And I strongly disagree with argument that that is how language has always changed and developed. Until (for the sake of putting a convenient date on things) the development of international consumerism, language changed slowly and in response to daily usage not in response to marketing, advertising and the perceived ‘coolness’ of TV programmes. When I go in a coffee shop the conversation can go something like “Two black coffees please”, “Two Americanoes”, “No, two black coffees…”, [pause, quizzical look, slight smile] “Is that regular?” “Well no, we both prefer tea usually but Margaret fancies a coffee today and I think I’ll join her”.
Some years ago amongst the students that I was teaching at that particular time, at the college where I was then employed on a contractual basis, the word ‘pants’ was fashionable. Used to mean bad, unpleasant, of no use etc. By chance I was then reading a book printed from a nineteenth century gold miner’s manuscript in which he declared that although the hillside he had been searching for days had all the signs of being gold-bearing, he eventually gave up because "…it was just pants". I was not believed until I took the book in and showed them.
Oh…and I hate being urged to “Grab…” something or other rather than to try it or just take one or…