Reading Journal
What is Art
Art is a universal language, a way of self-expression through various creative means, an attempt in immortality. Art is oriented at evoking the feeling within the viewer and channeling a certain idea through him into the masses, therefore art does not exist without an audience. The definition is so vague and versatile that it is almost impossible to settle on just one. Some people argue that art does not have a definition and it is self- appearing, self- sustaining and ever- present. The latter, perhaps, but the idea of the artist goes way back to our very origins of Homo- Sapiens and is, in fact, scientifically proven.
Art usually manifests through the turmoil of feelings in the artist. Non- existent without the audience, art cannot come to being without an artist. They are the liberators, tools, vessels for ideas with crafty hands and admirable determination. At gives meaning to things. In a lot of ways it is an attempt in explanation of human existence. Art is a creation we are compelled to manifest, it reflects the culture and heritage of an artist and even of the human race as a whole. The need to create it lies somewhere deep within our self- realization and awareness.
Upon realizing our origins, it is in our nature to be curious and question everything. Dissanayake argues that there is a certain need for novelty and making special that resides within us. Interestingly enough, this idea also correlates with Romanticism, which focused on the importance of feeling. It is really quite curious how art is usually born from some sort of a struggle, or hardship or an ecstatic state- in each case, it seems to occur whenever an artist is so overwhelmed with feeling he must express it in one way or another.
I think art is more than just a biological expression. Lets say this- it is a biological expression in every way. Since the first scribbles on the cave walls to the discovery of the FOXP2 gene, art is a living dream. In attempt of its description, I think it is the best we can say. I am an artist, and while I like to believe it’s a choice- I don’t think it is. I think it’s a calling. Doing something about it or picking something completely different- is a choice. But it is something you are born into. It’s a mission. I think it is completely mind- boggling and wonderful that not everyone is an artist and it’s ok. Some people have morbid fascinations with mathematics and technology, or farming and they live their life focusing on that and never get any crazy ideas of any missions or changes. Other people can’t sleep at night because their heads are so full of beautiful colorful dreams and all they think about is how to give it this breath of life and pull it into meaningful existence. And that’s the wonder isn’t it? Why? When, what causes that particular pick in a human brain? Or is it in our brain? Does it start when we are conceived or has it been decided long before? Is it simply a result of neurobiology and genesis concoction or is there something deeper in our construction?
I don’t think one can exist without the other. That is to say, a farmer for example, might be just fine without music, or film or paintings in his life- he’s outside most of his life anyways, right, he sees the beautiful sublime nature every day with his own eyes. But, I think there is something in that very image that prompts him to think is “just fine” it? I doubt anyone can ever be satisfied with “just fine”, simply because we have that wondrous ability- to think. And not just in words, we think in pictures. Those pictures are a conglomeration of cultural experience and social interactions. Even when an idea first pops into our head- it’s an image of something. Every single word in our brain is an association with a picture or a feeling. And it’s when these two meet that art happens.
Some of my classmates believe art has no practical purpose, that there’s a difference between art and design. I, on the other hand, think everything is interconnected. Here is its practical purpose- without art, the world would be without feeling, it would be a cold, bleak place where everything is constant. And as far as I’m concerned according to scientists life cannot exist in that state. The aspect of movement is in each of the twelve universal laws. The need for novelty drives us, it is absolutely necessary, because no matter who you are you always need a reason to get up in the morning.
Tolstoy never defined art in terms of beauty instead he concentrated on its ability to communicate concepts of morality. Art does not belong to any particular class of society, which is why he argued limiting it to one excluded niche could result in its obscurity and decadence. Since it is a universal language, art can be evaluated by how well it communicates certain ideas to the public. Limiting a work of art to a particular audience would mean anyone outside of that group would have a hard time understanding it, and generally “good art” is the one that delivers the message to everyone. It is the balance between the unity of the message and the form that makes art universal, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be aesthetically pleasing as long as it upholds morality and sociality. It is an essential aspect in any form of human existence.
“This is the power of art: The power to transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life, and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness” National Endowment for the Arts.
A way to communicate ones experience and impact either self or mass- being, art will always be a fundamental necessity.
FRINQ 131K
Reading Journal #4
12/02/15
Ana Plugatar
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Of Lewis - William’s theories presented in the last three chapters, which of his theories (Finger fluting, macaronis, positive and negative handprints, geometric motifs, features of rock surfaces and the use of dark/light and sound) is the strongest and why, which is the weakest and why?
These chapters are focusing on the ways in which the cave in the mind and typographies of caves interlock.
I personally find the macaronis theory the weakest. And I would put finger fluting somewhere right down the line, since, although containing rather recognizable features, it is very similar to the first. The macaronis theory suggested that people just traced abstract shapes and lines at some point, and then, because they supposedly looked like something in real life, they began to associate those objects with things encountered. Producing art simply because there was an urge, sounds a lot like a subject we spoke of much earlier in the book- l’art pour art (art for art’s sake), which was obviously disproven.
The light and darkness theory, on the other hand, suggests a more complex interaction between a person and the spirit, artist and image. When people went deep into the cave with a small lamp, the shadows danced on the walls and shaped the rock into all kinds of distortions. Those they edited by painting the missing features of what they saw. The binary opposition belief of day/ night might’ve been extended and incorporated into the caves and their connection to the other world. The sound plays a major role in this as well. People believed that the echo produced in the cave was the voice of the shadow passing before them. It is interesting to suggest, in this instance, that if music instruments (of which there is evidence) were brought down into the cave and played in that environment, it must’ve created quite a sound while being chanted. And with a belief that all of that echo were spirits and shadows singing along with the people, it could create quite a trance.
Socrates came up with a simile of a cave inhabited by prisoners. His theory, much alike to Lewis- William’s spectrum of consciousness, is dividing the states of mind into four stages: intelligence, reason, belief or faith and imagination. Lewis- Williams finally states that a Paleolithic mind was probably capable of much more than we will ever assume. The point is, the mind in a cave and the cave in a human mind cannot be separated.
I would say this light/ dark and sound theory is the strongest. It seems very likely that indeed when cumulated, the dancing shadows in dim lit cold caves with chanting echoes spurred the imagination and produced quite an effect, giving basis to some wild interpretations and distortions of reality.
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Based on the last two chapters, how do the caves represent both human community and human conflict?
The obvious distinction between the complexity of images at the entrance of the Gabillou and the Lascaux Caves and inside their tunnels suggest that perhaps communal rituals were held outside or at the entrance, since there was more space for people, and only singled out individuals made their way deeper into the cave to execute more sophisticated imagery. The tunnel replicating the vortex into the beyond, people who returned from such a journey back to the surface into the daily life were considered in possession of supernatural powers. Needless to say those individuals were separated from the main flock of the society. On one hand the image making and the sensations and adoration of such powers as shamans possessed brought the community together. Shamans were healers, they were consultants, advisors and parental figures. But on the other hand, as many artists of the twentieth century have experienced it first-hand, this kind of irregularity was a type of social distinction. The artist had to watch himself not too push too far off the line, because if he had, the subject conducted would be incomprehensible to the very community they were trying to impress.
FRINQ
Reading journal
Anastasia Plugatar
1. Summary of key ideas presented in ch 7
2. Explain the relationship between the following terms:
Brain, Religion, Society, Art
The initial thesis is seeking an answer to a question of how did human beings come to realize that he carvings on a 3D piece of bone could stand for an animal, or what was the driving mechanism for the "Creative Explosion". The Upper paleolithic was a period of social diversity, which made the community of people living at that time highly distinctive and perhaps socially tense. To understand how in this social contestation art came to being and manifested, we must understand the fully human and pre-human consciousness.
Abbe Henri Breul's theory was that humans had the urge to create art implemented somewhere so deep within them that they simply could't resist but express it. He called that "the artistic temperament with its adoration of Beauty". Brigitte and Giles Delluc argued that some group of people in Eyzies region simply invented drawing one day and suddenly everyone picked that up and started making images. There appears to be two problems with these theories: first, there is evidence of images being made throughout the Paleolithic; second, why would the individual examine those images so closely if he did not have an initial idea of what it could've represented?
So Lewis-Williams basically says those people must've had some sort of notion of those images, a unified understanding, or else why would they be looking. There's two stories presented to us in order to understand this in more depth. Salomon Reinach met a Turkish officer during his studies in Athens. The officer, being a muslim and having never seen a two dimensional image, as Islam forbids these representations, could not understand a the image simply because he could not move around it. Abelam people of New Guinea demonstrated a similar cause. While their three dimensional art made sense, all kinds of distortions were present in two dimensional versions, like arms growing straight out of the neck etc. So perhaps the paintings were not meant to look like something in the real world, perhaps they weren't representations at all.
We can summarize that by saying that three dimensional representations related to something in real life and the two dimensional art just evolved inevitably. But it is very clear that there were animals which were prioritized, as not every animal was drawn, perhaps because they has some special meaning or the people of paleolithic were just looking for certain things. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick in assuming that they saw what we see. So, a more accurate summary would be that they did not create two dimensional images based on what they saw in their material world. Instead the notion of images was already present in their existence prior to artistic manifestations.
Diving deeper into consciousness in attempts of understanding this, we are looking at the basic neurology of the brain with its limbic system and thalmocortical system. The first regulates the basic functions of the body, a fundamental, non- rational behavior. The latter is responsible for complex inputs outside the body. Those in turn give roots to two types of consciousness: primary consciousness, which is a state of being aware of the world (present in most animals), perceiving the images of present in present tense but lacking the notion of "self", future or past; and higher-order consciousness involves recognition of own acts and affections, acquired through social interactions. It is the second one that Homo sapiens possesses. Primary consciousness made the evolution of higher-order consciousness possible, which in turn developed into a complex structure with improved long term memory that made the recollection of dreams and visions and their relation to a spiritual world possible. Homo sapiens dreamed and were able to understand what they were dreaming about, thus recreating what they saw in that state of consciousness either while experiencing it, recollecting it later, or through contemplation of the two. These images were naturally disconnected from any real setting.
It is important to remark that while they were attempting to recreate what they saw in those dreams they must've communicated about it with other members of their community. And this socializing gave rise not only to image- making but also to a form of social discrimination.
Through this deep neurological analysis of the brain and consciousness of that time period, we can now understand much better what kind of relationships the Neanderthals and the in- coming Homo sapiens must've had, and why Neanderthals were capable of some activities but not the others. It also gives us a glimpse of why nowadays our values are what they are.
"It seems likely that within the given society the rationalizing of the spectrum will always be divisive and contested."
2. Our early ancestors were primarily observers, spending much time associating affects with causes. This feature must be at least partially wired into our nervous system. The very fear of danger inspired the belief in life potentially ending, and death inspired the concept of soul, the underworld, dark places and edges of the world. It can be argued that this belief in existence of something capable of the ordinary let to the need of comfort and guidance from a father- like figure perhaps obtaining supernatural abilities. The interesting thing is that this must've been the brain capable of abstract individual thinking and philosophical ideas. So while human brain made the assessment of religion possible, religion itself could be used in multiple ways to control the society. And the society, inspired by religion, created art.
