Goodbye, Blue Skies.

As I reread my first two blog posts, it seems that I have addressed the speaker more so than I have the readings, and focused more emphasis on the in-class presentation rather than my tone or blog presentation. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed writing about their style of art and what their goal in creating different pieces was. However, this week when listening to Jack Ryan, to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I had any idea what he was talking about. Now that’s not to say I wasn’t listening, but I would have to agree with my classmate who made the comment of his work being like a science experiment. I found it interesting to see his views on what makes an artist and how artists what their work to be taken.

“I want the audience to have an experience. I want my work to generate complex questions,” said Ryan, when speaking of his own work. For me, his work did these things. “I feel like I’m on a trip,” came from a few rows back during the presentation. Whether this statement was generated from the presenting artist or illicit drug use, I felt the same thing.

In the interview with Hilton Kramer, I thought he touched on valid points about where the direction of art was headed too. “I find these comments interesting… you seem to suggest that they (traditional artist) are in the position of underdogs at this point” (111). I had to read over this passage a couple times before I could really digest it and make something out of it. I feel like Kramer and I might share a similar view on art in the sense that today, it seems as though anything can be considered art, if that was the intention, and we are teaching young artist to be different and be more modern in their pieces. Maybe it is that I am misunderstanding his argument, but I can’t help but feel like we label too many things as art and read too much into the simplicities of life and nature. Now maybe going back to these simplicities is what we as a nation or people need to do to fix the different environmental and global issue we currently face but I am not exactly sure….

I actually thought Satish Kumar’s interview was a little more down to earth and reasonable because he seemed more in tune with art as a changing process and the need to constantly push the boundaries. Specifically, I liked what he had to say about what we need to do to “fix” the world. “Why the world is facing this crisis is because we have become dualists, we have separated ourselves from nature…Whereas the artist can still see the relationship of unity between human beings and nature” (148). I thought this was really moving because I have always believed artists have been on the cutting edge of where we, as a nation, are headed. It got me to think that maybe artists today are trying to say something about the present and feel a need to express it. Not simply painting a landscape or drawing a Maple Tree that sits alone in a white room, but physically getting out there and creating art with raw materials and using nature as their canvas.

I feel like I may have taken a step back this week in truly understanding art. I looked at Jack Ryan’s work and could not get the words “science experiment display” out of my head. That being said, I was thoroughly engaged with the presenter and felt like his work was deeply impressive. His incorporation of music into his work was my favorite aspect of his art. I have a passion for music, and seeing him share that passion gave me a bit a bias in his favor.

Here is one of my favorite songs with the title being directly tied to one of Ryan’s pieces..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0v07InoFiU