If you create / engage / execute a work of art with the express purpose of it not being witnessed or viewed, why tell anyone about it?

Was the work of art created, or are you simply making it up?

Please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please stop trying to be Cindy Sherman. Stop the staged scenes, stop the lens flares, stop the animal masks, stop the “young wild and free red indian” bullshit, stop the forced irony, stop the vintage effects, stop using instagram and stop fetishizing crappy old technology just because it’s old and “vintage.”

“But Wespennest!” you whine “If everyone did that, no one would want to be a photographer anymore!”

GOOD. IF THAT IS WHAT PHOTOGRAPHY HAS EVOLVED INTO, IT SHOULD DIE.

I know this month is NaNoWriMo, but I am painfully aware that I do not have any novel-writing talent. I can, however, take reasonably interesting photographs. So, if a picture really does say a thousand words, one new photograph a day should equate to a short novel, I suppose. I could be just finding a new way of weaseling out of NaNoWriMo for another year, or this could be a half-assed attempt to force myself into increased productivity by stapling my form of artistic expression onto something unrelated to it.

Whatever. I’m going to make this pledge that I’m going to produce at least one new photograph a day for the entirety of November.

We’ll see how quickly this goal goes off the rails and splatters horribly on the hillside.

*edit* it’s 50,000 words? Shit, one photograph a day won’t cut it. Two it is then.

Perhaps what we all desire to achieve with our art is to provide some manner by which tranquility can be achieved. Whether this is by venting the pent up aggression in us that stems from unaddressed angst or to find a way of transmitting a notion or a feeling of peace through paper, electron, photon, sound wave or ink blot, the desire for equilibrium is the same. I think all people have this desire, but artists are a curious lot— they are acutely aware that they are unable to achieve personal equilibrium, and thus creativity is born out of the roiling boil that’s in their minds.

You think of nothing but the wonders you will create, but when isolated in a sea of tranquil potential you are more content to sleep than to act upon your grand ambition. The ideas flow like a torrent until the very second the skin on the tip of your finger touches the surface of the pencil. Maybe you’re of the mind that your rough sketches will be judged as completed works. Maybe you’re afraid of the criticism. Maybe you’re not afraid at all but you’re just exhausted from being forced to defend and justify every action.

Nothing is to be born until it has completed its gestation. If your work is in progress, do not label it as such and then abandon it at the first sign of negative feedback. Indeed, expecting any form of feedback that will be useful to the point of producing a superior work before your work has yet to progress past its planning stages is fallacy. So, you post your preliminary sketches online and wait for a slew of praise or vehement condemnation, and are instead greeted by the thunderous collapse of silence, like film of an imploded building run in reverse.

So you shelve your pens, your knives, your chisels and your cameras and you resign yourself to thinking that “at least the crossword puzzles I’m doing are keeping my mind sharp” or “at least I’m being creative with this sandbox game.” At least. *Least*. The barest minimum by which one could be considered to be doing*something*. This “art” thing is a tricky beast— it is a black-and-white means by which one interprets the world of context into shades of gray, hues, vibrance, saturation and opacity before it is further processed into shapes, faces and forms. It, like the world, is an either-or operator. A diode. You do not inject “a little” art into anything— it is either there or not there, on or off. You may confuse the process of paying slightly more attention to aesthetic details as evidence of “a little bit of art”, but what you are witnessing *is* art. Sloppy, poorly executed and of little value outside the narrow confines of commerce— but art it remains, regardless of its thoroughly depressing, toothless, sterile nature.

“At least…”

Your mind is lashed to thinking in the world of efficiency. Efficiency— the thinnest line that separates “maximum output from minimal input” from total systemic collapse.

Kid, this “at least” thinking is going to get you nowhere.

Art has never utilized efficiency as a key aspect of its existence— by its very nature, art is a study in excessive and unnecessary inefficiency. A wall can be painted far quicker by a roller than it can with a fresco, and even then, selecting any paint based on its color or finish rather than its available utility is inefficient. “At least” the wall is painted, right?

You are lying to yourself. Art and creation demand more of you than you are ready or able to admit, and this is a truth that is rediscovered every minute by “real” artists. You are lying to yourself because it is an efficient way of avoiding the pain of failure and of work. What you do not realize is that by continuing the lie, you perpetuate your internal mythology of art being “easy.” All this does is contribute to your frustration and depression.

And then, what’s left but to settle for “at least I…”?

I am not able to shoehorn my photography into the definition of a narrow, overused style. Nor am I able to find a style that would be an adequate fit. If it must be classified, tagged, tamed and domesticated, I would rather it exist in literary, lyrical or musical realms. I hear music when I am composing an image and read it like prose when I am editing it.

Yes, even the shots of trains have a sound to them. You can hear the rails singing before you even see the train.

Here is a breakdown of “good art” (read: “popular”)that I see on places like deviantart, tumblr and various “art communities.”

-Illustrative (sketches, drawings, paintings, etc):
    -Anthropomorphic representations of celebrities and/or infatuations as animals in stock, 3/4 poses on a white background.
    -Anime-style representations of celebrities and/or infatuations in positions and postures that mimic extant still images.
    -Detailed, busy landscapes of fantastical locales.
    -Poorly done throw-ups that are miscategorized as “graffiti” or “street art.”
          -Erotic versions of all of the above

-Sculpture (3D modeling, physical objects, architecture)
    -Faces and bodies detailed down to pore level, but unskinned
          -Skinned versions of the above
    -No architecture, outside of minecraft screenshots
    -Photographs of plastic model kits and associated dioramas
           -Erotic versions of all of the above

-Photo and Video
    -Music videos of anime shows set to metalcore or Nightwish.
    -Instagram-style (read: excessive lens flare, bad color balance, poor focus, grainy) photographs of nondescript, boring scenes, shot with thousands of dollars of equipment
    -Instaram-style photographs of nondescript, boring scenes, shot with cellphone cameras and uploaded through instagram
    -Nude photographs of willowy models in abandoned and/or decaying structures, or otherwise draped over inanimate objects like a discarded pair of pants.
    -Nude photographs of women stretching, making coffee, reading the newspaper, mowing the lawn or any number of chores, duties or activities that would most likely not be performed nude.
    -Nude photographs of willowy models lounging around and looking bored inside expensive, baroque apartments
    -Photographs of flowers, trees and plants, photographed in the same manner as they are depicted in Audobon field guides (i.e. center frame, leveled, with macro shots existing to primarily showcase the color of the object, not its form)
    -Photographs of pets
       -Instagram-style variations on these themes
    -Astrophotography, celestial objects
    -Generic landscape shots
   

This list isn’t solely of things I hate, because that’s far too easy to make. I did throw in things that I actually like, and I think it’s pretty obvious as to what’s what. Suffice to say, “Good art” isn’t. No one cares about EL Lissitsky anymore (if they ever did)— they just want to make pictures of a furry Matt Smith having sex with a furry David Tennant.

Or, why people believe Willem de Kooning is formless scribbling and detailed fan drawings of anime characters are ‘art.’

Art is nothing without context.

Artist Statements establish context.

Artists do not want to write statements and do not make statements relevant or comprehensible for the viewer. Galleries do not include statements in any way, shape or form anywhere near the work.

The viewer believes that most Artist Statements are nothing more than retroactive justification for a work that does little more than act as a physical manifestation of intensely egotistic and petulant behavior that has no relation or significance to anyone but the artist— and is therefore irrelevant and not worth any substantial investment of time or attention.

Hence, no one wants to read Artist Statements. Context is lost and the work becomes nothing more than the sum of its parts.

Art is context and intent. Art exists to evoke an emotion. If we can assume that the intent of the artist is to evoke a specific emotion in the viewer, a work of art can be considered effective if the evoked emotions roughly match with those intended by the artist. Even if the artist’s intent is simply to createsome thingthat only satisfies a deep, as yet unidentified urge within the artist, the work still has an intent, a context and set of emotional responses it is expected to invoke.

From this, we can indeed infer that art iseverywhere— and the act of creating a work of art does not necessarily require a skill set like those possessed by skilled laborers, outside of those skills necessary to achieve the vision of the creator. The primary job of the artist is not to know how to operate a bead-blasting machine or to finish a block of wood— but to assign meaning, purpose and life to aspects of our physical reality. Whether this is done by the skilled act of blending various objects together in a smooth, seamless, well-crafted object or by invoking an emotion in a large group of people, “art” is being created. Even if we took the post modern route— that is, attempting to create a work of art that lacks context, intent and emotion— we’d still have a work of art that had context (why it is being shown, why people are aware of it, the background of the artist), intent (the intent being to create a work of art without intent) and whatever emotional (or lack thereof) response on the part of the viewer. Indeed, in this scenario, the most effective way of creating art that has no context, intent or emotion would be to not create anything at all, and instead use the money to be spent on procuring materials on food, rent or taxes.

Art fails when its intent, context and desired emotional response are gone or forgotten; it is important to point out that “failed art” also possesses the potential for the reassignment of context, intent and emotion. Thus, the cycle of art continues on.

Art is a lens through which the artist sees a world. The process of creating art is an experiment by which the artist constructs a viewing apparatus for other people to view a portion of a world visible to the artist.  Just as there is a scientific method, there is (or should be) an artistic method.

1. Define a question
2. Gather information and resources (observe)
3. Form an explanatory hypothesis
4. Test the hypothesis by creating a work of art and collecting data in a reproducible manner (Create and show)
5. Analyze the data (What did people see through your art?)
6. Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypotheses (Did you properly convey your vision?)
7. Publish results (“My audience “gets” me!”)
8. Create.