Final Draft

Thinking Outside The Canvas

My final check from my summer job finally arrives. After a long summer of refereeing whiny soccer kids and dealing with their bitter parents, at last I had enough money and enough time to enjoy something a little more relaxing. My first camera.

When I got the notification that it arrived, I ran to my door as if a Harvard acceptance letter just came in. As I opened the box, my hands started sweating and clamping up. My stomach even started getting butterflies. I couldn’t wait to start taking photos. My parents were also extremely supportive of my new found passion and so were my friends. Except for one.

I was met with the most unpleasant attitude from my friend Dylan (not his real name). Dylan did not like the idea of me becoming a photographer. He couldn’t see me develop (which I’ve gotten before), but most importantly, he couldn’t see photography as being “real” art. Dylan’s take on photography definitely got me thinking more deeply about what art really meant for me and what people think art actually is.

In the case of defining art, it’s been the ultimate enigma for quite some time. One aspect of art that everyone can agree on is that art can express many things, like emotions, beauty and skill. However, there’s the remaining question of what’s acceptable. This phenomena has therefore sprung up two sides to the debate; the liberals and the conservatives. 

Ibn Ruqeyeh (frequent Muddle Mag author/blogger) and Jenika (blogger for https://psychologyforphotographers.com/) both tackle this highly-debated issue. According to Jenika’s article “Photography Isn’t Art.” “The problem, of course, is that “art” is a valuable category, but there are no clear yellow-and-black stripes that stand out to say “this is art.”” (Jenika, 2013). Art is meant to be a form of self-expression regardless of the medium. There is no one and nothing that can really define art being Art. On the other hand, Ruqeyeh’s article “Why Photography Isn’t Art” argues that real art has to focus on representation, and that painting effectively does so while photography doesn’t. “A painting is art because of how it represents — how it communicates and transmits ideas […] That is the reason why photography isn’t art.” (Ruqeyeh, 2015). I agree that art should communicate and transmit ideas, but I also disagree that all photography doesn’t do that. Some photography is performed under a more documentarian style, and in that case I agree, but wouldn’t the most hyper realistic painting of a swan convey that same documentarian feeling? Once again, medium is just medium; it is merely a tool to express anything the artist desires to express. 

By comparing mediums and which mediums can effectively produce art , restricting new and unique art has been an immediate consequence. I remember dealing with this issue first-hand when I got an art assignment back in my final year of high school and received a failing grade for simply not following the guidelines to a tee. Essentially, the guidelines were limiting me to only draw and paint in a realistic way, while I did the assignment in a more abstract manner. Worried about passing the class, I went back to abiding the laws like a law-abiding and considerate citizen would do, but I certainly felt constrained. This artistic backlash has unfortunately but inevitably happened throughout art history. A very popular example would be with Pablo Picasso’s cubist works when he mixed complex ideas into his pieces (most notorious examples are “Minotaur Caressing a Sleeping Woman”(1933) for arguably being misogynistic and “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” for portraying women in a rather unflattering way). Another more recent example would be Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ where someone even broke the frame of this photograph in the gallery it was being displayed at to show their discontent. Additionally, more examples can be found in the music world, with musicians like Death Grips producing alternative and experimental hits like Guillotine and I’ve Seen Footage and JPEGMAFIA producing one of his most lyrically complex and sonically diverse hits Baby I’m Bleeding. 

Additionally, a sequence involving a form of Gestalt’s Law of Familiarity has always been applied in art history. The Law states that humans have tendencies to “group visual elements when they form a meaningful or personally relevant object, item or visual scene” (Interact Design Foundation, 2014). When artists start to make art in a certain style that resembles each other, the art world will necessarily categorize those similar works as one style. This has happened in every art movement known, from Claude Monet’s advancements in impressionism to Andy Warhol’s development of pop art and modern art. This is completely fine, since we are organized beings, but we then sometimes become too comfortable within that style. Therefore, whenever someone breaks out from that style, we bash them until someone says “Hey, maybe this isn’t so bad after all”. Then the cycle starts all over again. We’re simply too afraid to break the rules. 

And why is this? It’s primarily the lack of creativity that we’ve been brought up with and when there’s a lack of something in any case when we’re young, our brains tend to block it out, deeming it as unimportant. Bronson and Merryman cleverly stated an example in their article “The Creativity Crisis” with preschool children. As the parents get more and more tired of answering their kid(s)’ questions, the kids will eventually stop asking those same questions. “ By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. […] They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions.” (Po and Bronson, 2010). This problem isn’t only found in families, but equally in schools. An example of creative shutdown is when the wrong answer to a question is almost ridiculed. This therefore leads to kids not wanting to ask questions and even worse, kids eventually stopping to ask questions. This is absolutely crucial to creative development since curiosity plants the seed for all imagination and creativity, and if that seed won’t grow at home and in school, where will it ever flourish? On a final note, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from the University of Chicago and Gary G. Gute from the University of Northern Iowa made a crucial remark saying that highly creative adults usually grew up in families that promoted both uniqueness and security. Jordan Peterson’s bestseller “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos expands on this, with the overarching theme that chaos and order are necessary for a meaningful life; if humans have too much order and not enough chaos, they will get too comfortable and live in a bubble until that bubble pops and they open up.

From da Vinci to Kanye West, the art world has witnessed entire revolutions. If we didn’t move on from admiring the perfectly symmetrical face of Mona Lisa, we would still be stuck in the Renaissance. Once again, humans rely on tradition, but also thrive on change. In other words, change is like a friendly beast, and ignoring it is only going to make it more big and angry. No one can escape change, as humans always get bored of what they have already. We see it in other domains, from buying the newest iPhone to wanting the planet to recycle more. Why can’t we continue to do the same for art?