Do you ever feel like you just don't get it sometimes?

[confucious]

I can only talk about a different art form - literature. I used to think that my teachers and profs were full of it - I mean, the author clearly wasn't trying to comment on the condition of the human soul in the era of digital medium with that sloshing bucket of water borne on a Sherpa's back. It was just a bucket of water, no?

Years later, I read the same kinds of Lit. and I see connections to old styles and techniques, variations of previous artists and references to them, subtle hints, hidden themes etc. Sometimes these may not be intended by the author, but the vast majority of quality lit. is purposeful and directed and brilliant in its conception. I think the same can be said with a lot of art forms...there is the theory, which really IS the foundation.

Having said that - theory does not an artist make!

 

[Antithesis]

I think when I was a little younger and I considered myself "artisitic", but have slowly gotten disenchanted with it. I think I started seeing stuff that I didn't find all that innovative or even interesting, as well as seeing how many people were doing it for more commercial reasons. Art for profit is sort of an abomination and it quickly loses its value. Especially when someone tries to be original and ends up with something rediculous.

Someone posted a thread a few weeks back of an "artist" who had taken pictures of billboard and sold these enormous prints for something like 3.4 Million big ones. I do understand that no one had done it before, but It's still pretty disgusting.