Does anyone feel that there's a prevailing idea that great art is created from depression, sadness, hallucinations and suffering?
It's everywhere we look, installations, art, design, books and visual entertainment. We're encouraged to claw through our emotions deep down to "create", this is how we were encouraged back when I was in art college and I feel like that's how every designer and artist I know makes impactful pieces.
But surely we need to be harvesting our best emotions and happier memories to share with others.
Is happy work not impactful enough?
Wilma Buttfit
Feb 14, 17 7:38 am
What do you want? Romance?
Non Sequitur
Feb 14, 17 7:45 am
I find happy art boring.
chigurh
Feb 14, 17 8:53 am
You don't have to be tortured to create good work. I don't know what "happy work" is. Work is made by showing up and being dedicated on good days and bad - let somebody else judge the result. If you adopt the attitude that you need to be dysfunctional and depressed then you are buying into a fabricated romance. For every van gogh, there are a hundred artists that didn't cut their ear off. For architects, people aren't going to trust you with their money unless you have a proven record of delivery or maybe sanity. You can be normal and make good work.
Donna Sink
Feb 14, 17 6:08 pm
Showing up and being dedicated. Exactly this. I'll add skilled, too, but the skills can come over time with the dedication.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 14, 17 8:59 am
There is beauty in the horrible. When I look at Lucretia, I know the story, the horror, but the artistry in Rembrandt let's me know the human condition in such a visceral way, that I'm moved in profound ways.
Sunshine and happy, don't really take me there. I'm profoundly suspicious of depictions of happiness, I'm always wondering; who did they murder?
Wilma Buttfit
Feb 14, 17 9:12 am
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I made a happy creation yesterday, a Batman figure from play-dough. Go get creative with a 4 year old for a bit, it'll cure ya.
Donna Sink
Feb 14, 17 6:12 pm
archiwutm8, what kind of art moves you?
Example: I am deeply moved - to tears, even - by Agnes Martin's paintings. They embody every expanse of the human experience and the relentlessness of time to me. But for a lot of people they're just grids. I don't' think they could be called "sad" or "happy". That said, Ms. Martin was a deeply neuro-atypical human.
Erik Evens
Feb 15, 17 8:52 pm
I enjoy a lot of modern art, and I own many modern art pieces. But I rarely say that it "moves" me emotionally in the way figurative art does. I do experience an emotional response to some of it. Jackson Pollock's greatest paintings are emotional in that way for me, as are Richard Diebenkorn's paintings.
But for a work of art to "move" me, it usually need the kind of symbolic or narrative content that comes with figurative work. Or it needs to be beautiful in a way that I react to it viscerally.
I look at Agnes Martin's paintings (thanks for the tip - I was unaware of her work. You learn stuff every day!) and it's very hard for me to understand how they embody the expanse of human experience. They do look like grids to me. :)
Lee Robert
Feb 16, 17 9:11 am
Judging by the Yeezy Season 5 show at NY Fashion Week, I think at least Kanye agrees with you.
Does anyone feel that there's a prevailing idea that great art is created from depression, sadness, hallucinations and suffering? It's everywhere we look, installations, art, design, books and visual entertainment. We're encouraged to claw through our emotions deep down to "create", this is how we were encouraged back when I was in art college and I feel like that's how every designer and artist I know makes impactful pieces. But surely we need to be harvesting our best emotions and happier memories to share with others. Is happy work not impactful enough?
What do you want? Romance?
I find happy art boring.
You don't have to be tortured to create good work. I don't know what "happy work" is. Work is made by showing up and being dedicated on good days and bad - let somebody else judge the result. If you adopt the attitude that you need to be dysfunctional and depressed then you are buying into a fabricated romance. For every van gogh, there are a hundred artists that didn't cut their ear off. For architects, people aren't going to trust you with their money unless you have a proven record of delivery or maybe sanity. You can be normal and make good work.
Showing up and being dedicated. Exactly this. I'll add skilled, too, but the skills can come over time with the dedication.
There is beauty in the horrible. When I look at Lucretia, I know the story, the horror, but the artistry in Rembrandt let's me know the human condition in such a visceral way, that I'm moved in profound ways.
Sunshine and happy, don't really take me there. I'm profoundly suspicious of depictions of happiness, I'm always wondering; who did they murder?
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I made a happy creation yesterday, a Batman figure from play-dough. Go get creative with a 4 year old for a bit, it'll cure ya.
archiwutm8, what kind of art moves you?
Example: I am deeply moved - to tears, even - by Agnes Martin's paintings. They embody every expanse of the human experience and the relentlessness of time to me. But for a lot of people they're just grids. I don't' think they could be called "sad" or "happy". That said, Ms. Martin was a deeply neuro-atypical human.
I enjoy a lot of modern art, and I own many modern art pieces. But I rarely say that it "moves" me emotionally in the way figurative art does. I do experience an emotional response to some of it. Jackson Pollock's greatest paintings are emotional in that way for me, as are Richard Diebenkorn's paintings.
But for a work of art to "move" me, it usually need the kind of symbolic or narrative content that comes with figurative work. Or it needs to be beautiful in a way that I react to it viscerally.
I look at Agnes Martin's paintings (thanks for the tip - I was unaware of her work. You learn stuff every day!) and it's very hard for me to understand how they embody the expanse of human experience. They do look like grids to me. :)
Judging by the Yeezy Season 5 show at NY Fashion Week, I think at least Kanye agrees with you.
http://pitchfork.com/news/71641-heres-what-happened-at-kanyes-yeezy-season-fashion-show-5/
Call me old fashion but I find it hard to beat Mark Rothko however, I did get to witness this in person a few years ago while in Madrid:
Now this bus-sized work is human experience.