Art: Free, unrestricted expression, or strict, principled crafting?

The idea for this thread came from, bizarrely, a sarcastic remark I made in another thread:

This was my reaction to another troper posting about how she got in trouble for doing something in her art class that didn't conform to the way her teacher wanted the students to work. In essence, this was a teacher working off the assumption that art must be created using the strict rules and principles that have been defined throughout the ages that many artists use to craft their works.*

This is all well and good for certain forms of art, but there comes a point where one should remember that art is not only a method to capture the world on paper, but a form through which one can express oneself, where one can be as wild and unrestricted as one pleases in order to bring one's vision to life or to simply channel one's emotions, desires, what-have-you into a single, reactive work. Of course, this can go very far, especially expresses the hell out of themselves in a work to the point where it's just an incomprehensible mess, but c'est la vie, eh?

What I'm trying to get at is this: There seems to be two polar opposite views of art that often get thrown around. One is that art must be disciplined and relying on strict attention to detail and the principles by which art is often defined. The other is that art is something that needs to be wild, unrestricted, and free, like sex in a hippie commune, letting everything out and not holding back no matter what anyone thinks. What end of this spectrum*

(Personally, I lean more toward the "free expression" side of art, but I can appreciate works from all over the spectrum.)

edited 10th Aug '12 12:17:49 AM by 0dd1

While you're obviously free to make whatever kind of free, unrestrained art you want, the art I prefer has some kind of rules and restraints.

So I like surrealism, Impressionism and so on, but if it gets much more abstract I start to lose interest. Picasso, for instance, never really grew on me. I also far prefer landscapes to any other type of painting.

So I would say...you don't need a huge number of rules, but I'd prefer if you had some.

In a more humourous attempt to end a lesson, I said that;

This was a snide remark at the 'ART IS EVERYTHING' postmodernism approach.

But generally, I think that if it has hard work behind it, and it has a sort of element of expression.

Unrestricted.

I don't even think art should have rules, beyond a sense of keeping in mind who the intended audience is and thus how explicit you should be with it. Like, if you're going to be making something for the wall of a library or other place where children are going to be, you probably shouldn't be drawing naked people.

Beyond that, I don't really think there's any wrong way to make art. Certainly there's ways to make incredibly bad art, but not a particularly wrong method. Teachers who insist too much on you doing something a certain way, beyond the "hey, this is supposed to be a slab project, not a coil project", is just too attached to their pet way of doing something. And to knock a student's grade just because they deviate from how the teacher does it is petty.

You can create genuine, accomplished art by breaking or playing against established canons ... but that still makes its effects partly contingent on those canons. But say that a critical mass of artists start playing the "canon-busting" game at such length, and to such a degree, that there are no longer many artistic principles to speak of—or they're are so weak and indifferently observed that there's no power to be gained or points to be made by flouting them. That's where lots of contemporary artists find themselves.

Some artists (take Racine and Poussin) thrive upon limitations—it provides them a ready-made armature, and allows them to show off just how much can be accomplished within the limits they're given. Other artists (Shakespeare, Gauguin) need a more expansive scope that ordinary canons can't provide, and have to play against the rules to reveal their genius. But even the latter artists rely on the former kind of artist for the touchstones that cause their tactics to mean a damned thing. But nowadays the latter haven't much to push against. And the former are reflexively sneered at by the fashionable.

So past a certain point, "free, unrestricted expression" yields ever-diminishing returns.

edited 10th Aug '12 9:06:33 AM by Jhimmibhob

My one rule for art is it should be something requires both careful skill, and effort. If it's something I can look at, and think I could have done in an afternoon, then it's a interesting novelty, not art.

Its both.

Agree with Midgetsnowman. Rules are just tools (and that rhyme just now was completely unintentional, I swear), not absolutes. Having said that, I think people in any art form should have some understanding of the "rules" because that makes it easier to break them. :)

It seems like a lot of people here are most familiar with art where nothing can go wrong. In some art forms, incorrect form can lead to collapses, explosions, and injury... Rules are often there for a reason :p

This.

A lot of the rules exist for a reason. And while its not to say you cant break them..theres a difference between breaking rules (and potentially killing yurself in the process) because you dont kn ow any better, and understanding the rules well enough to take the risk.

Bob Ross, for example, can break rules not only because he can do painting just fine without the rule breaks, but because he's breaking them for a reason (namely, making painting easy for a layman)

edited 10th Aug '12 12:02:04 PM by Midgetsnowman

Well, obviously if they're safety rules they should be obeyed. That's only practical, and sane

Yes, painting and drawing tend to be pretty safe activities, as long as you don't eat the paint, stab a brush in your eye, or get into an unfortunate easel accident. When you're working with, say, clay, you can't just do whatever you want because there's a good chance that your project won't balance or will break in the kiln. This is also true for working with metals and dance and the like.

Too much unrestrictedness? DRUGS, like this one

I think that art should be something that is able to strike the nerves of conformity and norms, before delivering a unique message on its own. It's nothing if it can't make past 'first base' of viewers' eyes

Except there aren't any more taboos and cultural laws to break. That philosophy is thirty years too late.

Oh, I'll bet there are still plenty of rules to break. It just seems like we've gotten to the part where the past is quite often imitated without any of the understanding of why the first guys did what they did, or understanding what it was in reaction to. Imitation may be flattery, but it quite often lacks the same meaning or punch.

Anyway, I'm not even sure what strict, principled crafting is supposed to mean in this context. Principles have more to do with moral leanings, which would have more to do with how you conduct your business, presuming you want to make money off your artwork, and the issues of copyright and plagiarism. You can have principles and unrestricted expression in terms of artistry.

I really don't think it's an either or proposition.

By "principled" I mean adhering strictly to the principles of art and never veering from it.

edited 10th Aug '12 6:12:32 PM by 0dd1

Exceot thats been done. And it mostly turns out really boring shit.

Going by those principles, I still see no reason why you can't have free, unrestricted expression. All art ends up following at least one of those, due to how the human mind works.

It depends what you mean by rules and the setting. In the case outlined above, I don't see a problem with the teacher asking the class to, for example, demonstrate a particular method of composition or painting style. It's a classroom - the intention is to presumably learn discipline and some of the fundamentals of art. I feel that if one wants to break a rule, you should first understand what working with the rule creates. Few young artists have the experience that allows them to effectively break rules.

It all depends entirely on one very important factor: does the artist expect me to buy it?

edited 12th Aug '12 5:14:24 PM by EdwardsGrizzly

Those 'rules of art' - I'm not very educated when it comes to art. But it seems to me that those rules aren't just arbitrary restrictions put there because, I don't know, people have a restricted idea of what art is or can't think outside the box.

They're concepts that make pleasing pictures when you use them. People didn't really invent them; they discovered them.

I mean, say, colour theory isn't really a set of rules. It's just a way of explaining to people 'this is how you exploit colour combinations to help create certain effects'.

@grizzly: Most artists assume nobody is going to buy it. This is why we price our art so high. a combination of costs (because art materials are fucking expensive) , labor, and the fact we have to sell enough artwork to afford dinner and rent next month.

You know why some artist or another has a 22,000 dollar pricetag on his painting? because thats likely his break even for the month cost.

Pretty much, yes. This is also why most laymen dont understand Picasso or Duchamp. Their works make perfect sense. In the context of the era they were working in. Its just the public doesnt tend to bother learning the rules of art or the history of art (or history in general) to understand it.

edited 11th Aug '12 11:48:11 PM by Midgetsnowman

Concerning expensive art, what do you think about, say, that guy (forgot his name) who just photographed other people's pictures and then sold his photos for a crap-ton of money? Surely he did a lot more than break even...

Which guy was that?