Raargh...RyMo smash!
If this ends up being a mini-rant, I'm quite sorry, but I kinda hafta say it. If someone reads this and thinks it applies solely to them, they're wrong. I've gotten this from a lot of people now...
Introduction
I'm thinking about changing my major from mathematics to studio art. I currently have a math major/studio minor planned out...but my interest in math has kinda dropped off and my interest in art has surged...I have never had as many ideas fdor projects as I have in the past week. I see pictures and I get ideas. I see everyday things and I get ideas...Gwyn came to me Friday @ work and said she'd love to do more art but always had a shortage of ideas...I told her draw something everyone sees everyday, but show it in a whole new way. Look at the new iMac...it's just a computer, but it's so visually striking 'cause you expect your computer to be beige, boxy, and with about 29 wires. You don't expect your computer to be 10 1/2 inches around...have the monitor be just sorta floating there, much less flat...and have just all the style it has w/out sacrificing anything in power. So the following Monday Gwyn comes up to me, excited, with a sparkle in her eye...she drew a doorknob and "it was all cool-looking..." Kinda scary I'm giving good advice for once, isn't it?
So...I want to change from a math major to a studio art major...and that shouldn't imply that I'm dumbing things down to make it easier for myself. Yes, instead of learning a seemingly infinite list of formulas and theory and just what you can do with a vector in three-dimensional space...I'd be painting, drawing, or looking at paintings that are up to 500 years old.
Art is every bit as conceptual as math or any of the sciences. Forgive the generalization, but it's based somewhat in the fact that I know an abundance of people like this: Science people will tell you without hesitation just how godawful hard it is to memorize 800 million enzymes, 1.3 bajillion acids/bases/groups, and 2 metric (it is science after all) assloads of formulae. Guess what? I'm not gonna say art is just as hard (though just try and remember all the significant/influential painters from the Renaissance to Postmodernism...and guess what? That list is always growing.) but the long and short of mostly every other major is memorization/regurgitation with less of an emphasis on synthesizing all of it. In art, think about this...
- All artists, stand up. Think of an idea for your next project. If you don't have one, sit down, you lose.
- Guess what you get if you're not more talented in your idea and your execution than all other persons standing? A chance to stop standing...sit down.
Art is competitive as hell.
There isn't an artist in the world who "turns ff their brain" when they enter a studio, or when the begin creating. Color theory, composition, balance, creativity...people, these aren't just instinctual things.
Art requires not only the thinking patterns that scientists, mathematicians, and the rest of the world in general uses, but also the ability to reproduce something...anyone can reproduce something as it is, but who can reproduce something as they see it and have it be called art?