: not a blog

07 feb 07

did you just have your mom make an animation in flash?

yah.

here is a woman -- an artist's self-portrait, in fact. as most of the subject's face fades away, the breadth of her smile increases, until it's left, grinning at us, for a time, without the rest if her, reminding us of lewis carol's cheshire cat, whose similar bodyless grin leered at alice in wonderland. as the body leaves us -- as the body dies -- the smile grows. then, the cycle of death and rebirth continues: the subject never reaches nirvana; her relief at achieving the extinguishing of the karmic cycle is transient, and is never fully realized but for those precious few moments of perfect joy, while the animation rests on those four frames of the smile.

the work offers the viewer the fading of the body -- of material consciousness -- and as this happens, the increase of joy. and we rest on joy, for a while; all is right with the universe for a few moments, so we can savor the transition from materiality to a one-ness with the whole of reality, which is synonymous with perfect joy -- the perfect smile (with crooked teeth). then we have to start over. but this is ok, because we're always on the downhill slope towards death/joy.

as the body, as materiality, fades, universal joy increases; the pleasures of death, as it brings us one-ness with all of reality, and the permanent end of loneliness and separation from the great whole -- the great spirit.

my maw wants to add: "tell 'em that your mother turned out to be smarter than she thought".

remember that slew of moby dick-related "axe the box" text of a few days ago? melville supposedly never intended his story to be allegorical, but literary critics who needed something to do described a lot of deep meaning that was there, i suppose, whether or not melville intended to put it there to begin with, which brings us to the conflicted issue of "artist's intent".

my take is that intent is important for the artist, but not really important to anyone else. brilliant, eh? i mean...who cares if someone who painted an abstract muddle on a 10' x 10' canvas intended it to evoke powerful images of death, decay, and the sorrow of a civilization as it tumbles headlong into the new dark age, when all i see is a teddy bear? it might be interesting to "get inside the artist's head", but in terms of our enjoyment of a piece in and of itself (to the degree to which this is possible), awareness of intent might even hinder that enjoyment.

unless the artist happens to be standing there when i murmur something about his socially conscious masterwork looking like a carebear, and subsequently beats me up, artist's intent is (largely) inconsequential, methinks, to everyone but the artist. and you know what mr. spock says about "the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, or the one".

this amounts to good news for art critics. nine inch nails (a one-man band) has a song that includes the lyrics: "don't you tell me how i feel! don't you tell me how i feel!" the public should chorus similarly at the body of art critics: "don't you tell me what i see! don't you tell me what i see!" a lot of this lofty criticism and the community of art-intelligensia in academia and VIP-only neighborhoods and galleries has left the rest of the world frightened to enjoy art, which is one of the biggest, in my opinion, travesties of modernity: it essentially amounts to the death of art, which might not matter much, since no-one is enjoying it anyway except people who need to go out and get real jobs.

if you ask someone what he likes, art-wise, his response will often be prefaced with "i don't know much about art", if its entirety doesn't amount to only a paraphrase of that line. we hope he follows "i don't know much about art" with "...but i know what i like", but that wisdom isn't always there.

who creates the standards for what is good art? it's the always the cultured, and the moneyed. always.

but i think in this case, in my analysis of me mum's animation i hit the nail on the head; jibing seamlessly with "artist's intent". and if you don't see that (joy prevailing as materiality melts away, symbolizing the karmic cycle of death-rebirth), then you are incapable of appreciating art; go see what's on the tube. i think the UFC might be on.