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> But art is mostly about surfacing the inner world, and only in part about skill. It’s unfortunate that art selects so strongly for skill. Can we decorrelate the two?

I don’t think the poor lad knows what Art is.

Put another way, we have hundreds of years of recorded philosophical texts and diatribes on what constitutes Art, and what art-making is. Often written by serious practitioners who dedicate their life to it rather than internet-dwelling dabblers and dilettantes. We have people who are deemed artists, not necessarily painters but people who are wired a certain way and are industrious with their abilities. Math geniuses attend certain schools and the other pupils may pick up a thing or two from them, but that doesn’t mean the other pupils are geniuses also. So too, do artists walk among us and may do what we do and we may imitate what they do. But that doesn’t put us on equal footing whatsoever.

Art doesn’t select for skill. This is a red herring and a misunderstanding. Art doesn’t select for anything, because if it did it wouldn’t be Art. This is an old somewhat trite topic that, historically, boiled down to no more than a pithy phrase: “Art cannot be taught.” as expounded by many teachers of incredible talent in their own right who have attempted to distill it into teachable material and realized their talent is not transferable as easily as they had hoped.

Most of what you read on this subject is nonsense sold to you by grifters who want your money. Now and today more than ever. I’m all for, say, “Art and Fear” and “The Art Spirit” and even a bit of “War of Art” to name some household items on the subject. These are all great recent texts. But let’s take these for what they are: self-help literature, and nothing more. The further back in literature you go the less of this patting-on-the-back attitude you get, and more serious the subject matter is treated (example: read the lectures on Art by the presidents of the Royal Academy, they are numerous, Archive has them all. One president basically tells students to choose a different profession, discussed as an aside topic in a book on portraiture from that time.)

Elsewhere in the comments people saying how art is simply good taste seem to be oblivious to the creations of artists that led them to make such a blundering conclusion. Your taste wouldn’t exist had an artist not created a thing to begin with.

We’ve used image generators for decades now. It gets the job done. The person using it may be an artist or just someone who wants a dynamic, changing generated image on the wall.



<< Archive has them all.

Thank you. I added those to my reading list. I don't think I ever delved into the topic.

<< Often written by serious practitioners who dedicate their life to it rather than internet-dwelling dabblers and dilettantes.

And yet, here we have someone not burdened by the serious business of art and gives his personal perspective on it. I am not saying a lot of everything is not mostly crap, because it mostly is, but I found this child-like honesty oddly endearing.

<< Art doesn’t select for skill.

Artist without a skill is just a dreamer, who can't put his vision into place. Barrier of entry has been lowered now, but I am relatively certain that was not always the case.




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