Your art and you.

What do you think is the capacity of art to say something about the artist?

The bluntest example would be that virgins are reputedly unable to write good sex scenes, but we can be more abstract. Examples: Are people somewhat restrained by their personality and life experiences as to what they can do best artistically? Can an asocial person be expected to write about social life well? Does being extroverted affect one's ability to write good introverts, and vice versa? Can someone who hasn't felt or cannot feel love depict love convincingly? Do women and men depict the forms and the minds of the opposite gender in art with a different approach than they do those of their own—aside from the obvious visual and role differences, of course?

And more than just what one can or can't pull off—how about what one does? Why do some artists deal in horror while others would be loathe to? How about those who produce slice of life works as opposed to those who have no interest in that? What might an artist's visual or verbal style say about the person who produced it, be it realism, surrealism, abstract, technical, experimental, traditional, or etc.?

Things like that. What makes artists tick in the varied ways that they do? Or, if it's not an answerable question, I declare just answering for yourself to be on topic because it's interesting.

edited 7th Dec '10 1:08:49 AM by SPACETRAVEL

I think art is a great way to understand a person, psychologically, it can explain a lot.

Not too sure HOW it happens. I think it's a coping mechanism. Like having a stuffed animal or an imaginary friend, or something.

Well you can attempt to read very general aspects of an individual such as language, education level and possibly some other things.

Going further I think you might want to balance aspects with probabilities which we've not previously analysed. I think that if we spent the time we could try to put in some statistical tools to look at someone. For instance, bad sex scenes is indicative of virginity (let's just say) but then you statistically analyse it and find that only 53% of people who write bad sex scenes are virgins. Then 26% of people are just crappy at sex.

Looking at this from a personal perspective:

My difficulties in social situations are definitely linked to my inability to write highly social characters, and my tendency to see the world as a vague blur is probably why I can't write descriptions. My reliance on The Power of Friendship seems to come from the same source as my fondness for state-funded welfare programs. My major characters usually talk like I do. My squeamishness about violence makes me reluctant to kill off large numbers of characters.

Interestingly, I apparently can write "cute" love stories despite my suspicion that the emotion I've felt isn't really love.

edited 7th Dec '10 2:49:43 PM by feotakahari

I think the better you are at writing, the more you can overcome the limitations of your experiences. Or rather, good writers can work past them. The ability to write well about other people seems like it's to be tied to the ability to write realistically about them, which seems tied to some degree of understanding...

That sounded even more tangled in my head, I apologize. But think about the terrible writing you've read-it always seems really obvious what that person is like, there's so much of their personality in the work...

edited 8th Dec '10 4:42:46 PM by deathjavu

Even if the artist/writer had not felt the experience first-hand, he is quite able to put it down into his work — using what sensations, feelings and memories he already has that can relate to the subject at hand. And his imagination may fill in the gaps. I think this can be related to that optical illusion; there's black pyramids sticking out of a (non-existant) sphere, but even though there's no sphere, you can still picture one.. (I forgot what the name of that illustration is).

I suppose you can catch a minute glimpse of the artist in his work; whatever has been put down by the brush or typed — the artist subjectively expresses or "encodes" his thoughts, feelings, beliefs into what he makes. Most artists, though they may not be aware of it, have a personal preference for using certain types of encryption. Some painters place great emphasis on colour combinations to establish moods. Some writers create complex personal histories for their characters. And some musicians create notation that mimics the phonetic sequences of lyrics. You see a summation of what impressions have been left on their mind, and what they let out to share.

In short, the very essence of the artist.

edited 8th Dec '10 6:44:28 PM by QQQQQ