Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Art Doesn't Always Have to Be 'About' Something

Jafabrit, a wonderfully whimsical artist who works in many media, reminds us of that in this post:
sometimes motivation [for creating art] has to do with a desire to paint a tongue just because I had never done it before.
Often, it seems, artists only find the real meaning of their work, if there is a meaning to be found, after they've acted on the simple desire to do something with piece of canvas or the musical scale or a blank page they'd never done before.

Read--and view--the whole thing.

[UPDATE: My opinion may have changed a bit since I wrote this. I guess I feel that all kinds of art has its place and that artists who overworry about what meaning they want to convey aren't engaging in art, but propaganda.]

1 comment:

jafabrit said...

I like your observation in that sometimes meaning is found afterwards. I guess the meaning of mine is said in the title, that we shouldn't assume anything about others, or their work by just how it or they look. How's that for applying meaning ;)