In church this weekend the priest was talking about beauty must have meaning. He said something is beautiful because it serves a greater purpose. I thought later I wanted my art to be beautiful in that sense but what purpose can it serve? Though he wasn’t talking about art directly i still thought I could apply a lesson.
I remember seeing a Dali at the Tate Modern in London and being immediately drawn to it. I had never seen something that drew me like that. I walked over to it like a zombie seeing a fresh brain on a plate. I stared at it for 10 minutes feeling invigorated after wards. “I really like art” is what it made me feel. I liked art before and liked the other stuff I saw but this was something different. It had beauty. (The painting was “the metamorphosis of Narcissus”)
In my photography class the professor taught that a picture without meaning is not a good picture. I never learned that (yet) in a painting class. Rothko’s work, the flat plain colored squares, are all about meaning. A strange inward hard to grasp meaning albeit. Of course there was meaning in The metamorphosis of Narcissus by Dali. It was meaning to show the story of Narcissus staring at his own reflection and the background meaning of that story.
So what meaning does my art have? Im not sure yet. I’ve got to either look at it and find a meaning or find a meaning and go from there. But did Dali really mean to show the passing of time in his melting clocks or did he think melting clocks would be surreal? Did the viewers later give the works a meaning? “The old man is an old man and the sea is the sea” is Hemmingway’s drunk interpretation. Many had read deeper into the false meaning of The Old Man and the Sea. Just as many have for lots of art.
But can I give a lasting meaning. Not a meaning like a still life that contemporarily in the 17th century- a lemon peel means mortality. Then the meaning is lost in time only to be known be historians and studiers of the piece. What lasting meaning can I give. A good example of mortality I think, that is not a lemon peel, is I had this cheesy bronze statue of a monkey holding a skull looking sad. Ironically the person who gave it to me died so they couldn’t ponder morality before they passed, but that is beside the point. What in-your-face example like this monkey and the skull of meaning could I give to convey beauty?
Should I go about saying I want to make a painting that shows cats loves for their owners? And then I would think of how a cat loves their owner and show that in a work? Im not sure. It’s something I’ll have to ask an art professor. I want to show meaning but I also want an organically made piece of art that isn’t too cheesy or dumbed down. If I went to the local museum how many of the pieces could I immediately tell the meaning of? How many have a meaning? But mostly all are beautiful.
Bye
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