Behold the work of Marla Olmstead, four year old painting prodigy. Her name is being mentioned alongside famous modern abstract painters of the 20th Century like Jackson Pollock and Wassily Kandinsky for her ability to paint in layers upon layers of expressive colors and unpredictable brushstrokes.
If a true artist is one who has devoted her whole life to developing her craft, then does it could against her if she's only been at it for two years out of four? Does it have to mean something? If her work is no more or less technically adept than the masters, does that mean that she is great or that the masters are no more talented than a four year old? Does it make it good art if people are willing to pay over $300,000 for an original print?
Questions like these are the reason, I think, that art critics need to divorce the work from the artist. At the end of the day, the final question is: would you like to have this hanging in your house? What do the colors and brushstrokes do in your mind?
I didn't appreciate the work of Jackson Pollock until I learned to love the music of jazz great John Coltrane. Coltrane's notes fly from his saxophone like wild, gloppy splatters of paint or wisps of smoke blown askew in a violent wind storm. It feels like there is no rhyme or reason for why one note comes after the next, but they keep coming, blowing around, like a small bird determined to reach its nest in a hurricane.
To try to grab on to one note or one line and wonder why it isn't straight or doesn't go anywhere is to miss the point. The notes are part of a journey the same ways days are part of a life or words are part of a personality. Some are ugly and some don't make sense, but over time they make a bittersweet mixture so harsh and beautiful that it reveals the true balance that makes up real life.
I don't know if this helps me understand Marla Olmstead's work any more. The truth was that Coltrane and Pollock both had already mastered the existing forms of their day, then threw them out the window so they could create something that has never been seen before. They had the bravery to make something that, especially by the standards of their time, was "wrong", "bad sounding/ looking" and "made no sense". Marla Olmstead came of age (?) in a world where Pollock is the status quo and people have been repeating him for 50 years. To create something that looks like a Pollock or sounds ike Coltrane is much easier now because those artists created a new landscape for the rest of us to explore. A four year old who can play Coltrane on a saxophone (or Paganini on a violin) is impressive but not that unusual. I think that she has a great start as a painter, and I can't wait to see how she develops as an artist. Perhaps one day, she will go from mimickry to innovation.
What is Art? Can a Four Year Old Make It? From Marla to Pollock to Coltrane and back again.11/15/2008
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After typing in "is not music" into Google, I knew I'd find someone's manifesto on why Rap does not fit their definition of "music". Well here it is. (click on "download full article" to read it). Sometimes I think that art needs to be about communication-- a lot of what we do in class is using art to accurately and powerfully get a message from our minds to the minds of our viewers. This is very upsetting! BE WARNED. An artist in Honduras paid some children to catch a dog in the streets so he could chain it up in a gallery and let it starve to death. People came to watch it die as if it were an art exhibit. Make sure to read the comments about this video. [Link] When I heard about Cloaca, AKA "the Sh!t machine", I thought they must be sh!tting me, but it's real. This is a machine where you put food in one end and get feces out the other. It makes me wonder if this is art when it's something that any of us could do without thinking too much about it. This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar. I think that art is anything you want it to be. No, @$%& that. That's a cop out. I don't know what it is, but it isn't the Jonas Brothers or Wayans Brothers movies or Coca-Cola billboards. When something is created more for money than to raise consciousness, it ceases to be art. If it challenges us, wakes us up, reveals possibilities of other realities, or reminds us of what's important, it's art. If it appeals to our mind's sense of divine symmetry and order, or if it VIOLATES that sense so completely that we can only wonder "why did that happen", then it's art. I don't know if art can be made by accident. I think art can be functional, but function and form need to be synergistic and intentional. I'm just gonna say it-- I don't think art can be accidental, but I think artists can use accidents as a way to reach different truths. Like William S. Burroughs, who wrote a bunch of pages of words, cut them up, dropped them in a hat, pasted them back on paper with space between them, and wrote between the words, trying to make it make sense. He was trying to reach the "third mind"-- the creativity that we can only access when we're reacting to the unexpected. They call it the third mind because you can think of something with a partner (in a conversation) that neither of you could have thought alone. |
AuthorI am a high school Digital Design teacher who wants my students to start wrestling with the question: "What is Art?" Archives
January 2009
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