I had a tough time writing the final essay (here), but I think I wrote there about almost everything I learned and felt in this course, so I would like to share it here.
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This course asks how artists actively make a history for their own practices by thinking about their creative process as a “conversation” with a wide range of art from the past. How has this course helped you establish a greater sense of your own art historical awareness?
By building a picture of the cultural, social and political context of the time, it makes a little easier to understand how and why artists have created art. They all had strong motivations: from spiritual and cultural records (cave paintings), through making a way of living (commissioned works), to social criticism and revolutions (surrealism, modern art). The negation of beauty, shapes and logic – behavior extremely flashy until today – was not by random and had many meanings behind it (some can be “read” within the piece, others not). There is the Fine Arts and “art for the beauty”, but there is also the bizarre, the ugly, the shocking, the bold, and although it makes me instinctively reject it, it also provokes and can still tell me a story or message. Our first assignment was an exercise on that direction: we tried to shift our perception about the reality, trying to give the universe another meaning, to tell a story.
By comparing my work with the great artists from the past, I move forward on understanding the creation process – mine and the artists'. I can perceive the differences between both works and learn from it, but it goes further: it is like I was able to put myself in the place of the artist, try to understand their mental process, what were they thinking, intending, understanding what was done, how and why. By mixing history, putting together works from now and then, from famous artists to not so famous (to us, students), I can have a much wider feeling on how art works, with a much clearer view on how history went and still is going.
By literally using their work (like Duchamp did), I am able to rethink about what can be considered art and about the production process. I can think about creating new things using the old (and so, nothing is actually “new”), but also about the value of handcrafted and the mass produced. Our last assignment, using Diego Velázquez's “Las Meninas”, made us see the masterpiece by a different angle, turning it into something else. Some might think works created that way were not original or valuable, but they are wrong, since they have new meanings and new stories to tell – even if the story is simply about working on top of Velázquez's work.
The recording of the creation process was also a powerful tool, since I could analyze my own line of thinking on a different perspective. I may look now at myself in the position of an external viewer, being able to even criticize me, expanding my potentials and improving my performance on creating art. And by looking at other students' works, I could learn a lot about different ways of thinking and techniques.
This course shifted our way of learning. Typical art history would be studied by following a straight timeline, passing through all the “isms” and art movements. However, here we looked at art how it is now: a mix of everything. Today, with internet and knowledge spreading through the world, art from anytime and anywhere is accessible for anyone. Artists now have a much more globalized mind, with a much wider range of references and influences. The way we see art today, looking back, with all the past available completely at the same time, is completely connected – and connected with everything in our lives. That way, this course tried to make something different, to make us “eat art in the breakfast”, making it part of our day and I think it did it wonderfully.
How has the process of receiving and giving feedback influenced your approach to your work?
We could study without this feedback practice – or even by ourselves, without teachers and colleagues – but the experience will absolutely be poorer – and I believe incomplete.
Isolated, it is impossible to absorb completely all the meaning in the art and to grow as art perceivers and producers. Our course proposal (emphasized since our first week in lectures and forums about “community and network”) is to put together its participants, interacting with colleagues and instructors to exchange opinions and experiences. And beyond that: by showing our works, we could receive feedback from public. By showing our production process, we allow our colleagues and ourselves to understand artists (all of us) mental and technical processes and objectives, even allowing us to suggest ways to improve our performance. This interactivity, this feedback, makes the creation somewhat collaborative, turning our art much more clear and with better receptivity. It is impossible not to change the way of thinking and creating under those circumstances.
I received peer evaluations in my first required assignment, with which I agree completely in the technical aspects (about placement and lighting of objects in my photographic composition), but they also helped me see how wide can be the public interpretation on a piece by seeing meanings I have not thought about before. That certainly made me think more before creating and knowing that, even if I rethink everything, I will not be able to reach some people and also will not be able to foresee new meanings viewers will certainly create for my works.
However, I believe a particular discussion was the most revealing for me, the one responsible for expanding my horizon about what is art: in the thread “Sketchbook Assignment 1: My World and the Art World” by student Carol Ann Waugh. She wrote: “art needs to actively engage and connect with the viewer”. Considering art being about telling a story, there is many different ways to do so - some working better with a person, some working better with another.
I had the tendency in thinking on good and bad (for me and for the viewers), but there really are people out there that do "enjoy" other not very good feelings: melancholy, longing, sadness, fear... It really depends on how the viewer identify with the piece. If it is telling the public something, then it is working (with them, specifically).
Art is not everything, but anything can be art. I understand that now.
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My final words: thank you very much to Ms. Jeannene Przyblyski, Ms. Jen Hutton and everybody else from Live! staff team! Thank you CalArts for the support! And thank you Coursera, for making all this possible!
See you next time!
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