If you accept the proposition, as many do, that imitation learning is the swiftest way to proficiency in the arts, a certain obligation comes with your process. Sooner or later you must give a personal spin and attempt to raise your standards beyond that of your imitated master. Apart from being valuable in the building of self-esteem, this move is vital to wider acceptance and is more in harmony with the idealized wisdom of art history. There is a price to pay if you don't. In the words of landscape painter A. Y. Jackson, "Those who follow are always behind."
28 comments:
This is quite appropriate for me today, thanks.
But I guess one has to be smart, and know when to make that move, and make it in a way that does not hurt your master.
master/mentor/peer/contemporary/student/teacher
The learning between student and teacher has always fascinated me. In the best cases it is a two way street.
I always feel like a student.
This applies to a parent/child relationship as well.
Always the child...that makes sense.
My students (children) teach me a lot. Also I've recpgnized mimicry as a great way to learn. Once in a while a class will get this brainy idea to copy every word I say (often not as an intentional learning method, but as way to try and tease me). Of course I see this a great opportunity, and before they know, they are reciting a lesson from the day. It's kind of fun for everyone.
As for the statement "imitation learning is the swiftest way to proficiency", I may be one of the few who do not "accept the proposition". Afterall, Art, in my mind, is above all else, (aside from something that defies definition) a form of communication (not a quest for proficiency-yuck). It requires more than a mere "personal spin". I think it should be individual expression and that to clamer towards some imagined peak in search of "the idealized wisdom of art history" and acceptance, is certainly folly (where has it gotten us). When I think of my own 'art masters', they taught me the importance of creativity and the dangers of idealism and heirarchical athstetic standards ie: style. Style and idealism (and technology)are forms of violence. The first monkey to kick a can scared all his fellow monkies into submission. Let's be more civilized.
Richter Says:
There is no excuse whatever for uncritically accepting what one takes over from others. For no thing is good or bad in itself, only as it relates to specific circumstances and our own intentions. This fact means that there is nothing guaranteed or absolute about conventions; it gives us the daily responsibility of distinguishing good from bad.
Also, despite the fact that I really like A.Y. Jackson's paintings I don't care for his one liner here (not knowing its original context). My question is, Do we all need want to be leaders? Isn't the problem with that obvious, that we would need to out-do and subjegate everyone else to do it (ie:war)? Really there is only one way to paint (ie: applying paint to a surface). My personal goal is not to be better than everyone else, it's to be better than myself, and offer that realization.
Again with the Richter:
I pursue no objectives, no system, no tendency; I have no programme, no style, no direction. I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes, or variations that lead to mastery.
even more Richter:
I don't want to be a personality or to have an ideology...
To have an ideology means having laws and guidlines; it means killing those who have different laws and guidlines. What good is that?
I say:
Let's do something greater with our art than commercial production (which in a sense ceases to be art at all if done for that sole reason). Let's do our job as the last/new philosophy/religion, and provide ideas of love and hope.
and yet another interesting one from Mr Gerhard Richter...
The sciences certainly have influenced the arts. To an Aztec, the sunset was an inexplicable event, which he could not cope with or even survive without the imagined aid of his gods. Obvious phenomena of this sort have since been explained. But the sheer unimagined vastness of the explicable has now made the inexplicable into such a monstrous thing that our heads spin and old images burst like bubbles. The thought of the totally inexplicable (as when we look at the starry sky), and the impossibility of reading any sensse into this monstrous vastness, so affect us that we need ignorance to survive.
Strange though this may sound, not knowing where one is going-being lost, being a loser-reveals the greatest possible faith and optimism, as against collective security and collective significance. To believe, one must have lost God; to paint one must have lost art.
I better stop before I plagarize his whole book (The Daily Practice of Painting)
Auspicious post Knackerson...I'm deep into the topic of the institutionalization of education and the nature of the teacher/student relationship myself.
My advisor is equally passionate on the topic. I remember the first time I set foot in one of his classes about two years ago. He spent the first class walking around and shaking hands with the students and getting to know us.
For the remainder of the course he would divide his time between asking us questions and taking notes. The questions were for us, the notes were for him. He was learning from us, and would reread his notes whenever he sat down to do his own research and writing.
This quiet recognition of our own knowledge and insight changed the classroom dynamic considerably, and for the better. People spoke thoughtfully, frequently, and without fear.
I think this demonstrates a manner of living that can be applied across the board. I know I do it with respect to interpersonal relations. I treat you like you are a good person, and you, in turn, behave like one. (even if it's only with me:)
ok, I digress. This "comment" has turned into a dissertation. Speaking of which...I should probably get back to that.
cool post Dave.
Sometimes ruling with an iron fist is important too.
:)
I prefer a laissez faire leader to a 'iron fist' any day. I like to give/have the feeling it's a group affair making decisions (even if I'm lead there =).
None of the words in this post are my own, how ironically I have mimiced them for the dialogue, which is fantastic, thanks all. But a big thank-you to Robert Genn, this is an excert from his constant emails. I can't say I believe all the words, but they are invigorating and inspiring.
That AY quote is goofy. It's very matter of fact and really means nothing.
As for Gerhard Richter not having an ideology, well that's a lie on his part. He explains it later in his book as a blanket or shield from the rest of the world that he uses when he is young, so he can just work. But his methods and style are very deliberate, his blurring, his color theory, all repeated to find mastery, and in many cases derivative of other art. Unavoidable in our big world.
A friend told me about a TV show recently that had some designers come up with a logo for a company and they placed images on the designer's walking path, and somehow aspects of it appeared in the final work. Pretty interesting the stuff our unconscious will pick up on and absorb.
Not to say I don't love Richter and his varying STYLES of work. :)
I really like Ren's post. Very much about our group theories on Art Reinforcement.
And Dave points out Richter's theory of being lost or a loser. That's really important, that contrast(only percieved) that you are alone. Creation comes out of that hunger or need. Maybe a little bit of stretch, but my best work has come out of times where all seems lost.
No more rambling James!
I get what you're saying, but I wouldn't use a mean word like "lie". Contradiction more likely. I haven't finished the book yet, but I will be very surprised if he says it so bluntly as you have. This is part of the idea, allowing contradictions and ambiguity, aknowledging the mystery. There may very well be no way to avoid being derivative, but he admits that at the begining by saying there is only one way to paint. No reason in getting hung up on it. Still being critical has it's value, even if a no-ideology ideology is obviously contradictory. I think the point is kind of "lets not fight about it".
Who's fighting?
Ideologies are fighting.
If you think about it... why would one have to hoist a shield such as this to do something as mundane as painting if it weren't for the fact that we as artists are persecuted ideologically from all sides. We need to justify not only why we paint, but how we do it. That also explains Richter's need to say Artists are the most important people in the world (playing the role of philosphers). It's a need to say (as perhaps, most proffesions require)"What I am doing is valid". Can you say that without question? I can't.
I'm sorry for all the comments but this is cool too...
James says:
That's really important, that contrast(only percieved) that you are alone. Creation comes out of that hunger or need. Maybe a little bit of stretch, but my best work has come out of times where all seems lost.
I agree with this, and would like to add. When is the desire to make art most compelling? When you are feeling alone. Why? Because it is an attempt to express the impossible, how it is to be you. No matter how many paintings, blog comments, poems, songs I make I will never adequately express exactly what it's like to be me and all my perceptions. In that way I am alone, but trying to circumvent it, giving me that sense of hope that is in my opinion the making of great art. I feel excited right now that our dialogue might be leading to the same thing in a way.
I really like this commentary. I think you can just as easily (as bluemask hints at) apply all of this to Life in general. We learn, we imitate (as Dave points out), we develop our own way of doing things, we improve on the areas we notice our predecessors did not do so well in, or sometimes we just fall into their bad habits ourselves. None of us are born into a vacuum - even feral children, being social creatures and helpless as infants, necessarily gravitate towards some sort of social order (wolves, dogs etc.) to keep their company and teach and protect them. And here, I think Dave's point about communication is very important, don't you think??
wow I'm often so amazed at the collective wisdom that arises from these conversations.
cool commentary indeed.
In my own teaching practice and research on teachers, I have learned about the potential of a learning environment based in freedom. However, I have also learned that it is very hard to do so in an institution.
That being said the simple act of, as Renamaphone's professor did, acknowledging students voices and connecting their lived experiences to academic knowledge can be very powerful.
Catherine MacKinnon said " we know things with our lives and we live that knowledge, beyond what any theory has yet theorized".
This quote fills me with hope for what is possible, in life, learning and maybe for oppressive little institutions like schools.
Yup, it feels good when people try and understand.
...but if the artists know not what they do, or how they do it, should we listen to them?
Lennon said that he was merely a "conduit" of expression.
If I can`t explain an image I`ve done, where is it`s validity??
I don't think a visual artist needs to be able to "explain" their work (a lot of the best painters/drawers aren't "smart" in conventional terms). More often than not the explanation of work limits possible perceptions, and (in the case of intellectuals) is extremely boring. Visual arts (assuming that's what you mean bluedude) IS an explanation. It is a language unto itself (this is obvious for me right now, as it is my main form of communication in a country where I don't speak the native tongue). If you are trying to communicate something, good job, if it's something you can't put into words, even better (as you solved this problem by using visual language). Being a conduit for expression is fine too, I think, as long as you're saying something. Meaningful, useful communication/expression, well that's another puzzle as baffling as quality.
This has come up before, and I pointed out before that a lot of people who study language don't really believe it has a whole lot to do with communicating information, actually. Some people who have studied the origins of language believe it may have begun as a means of self-reinforcement - that is, expressing yourself in order to model the behaviour back to yourself and therefore strengthen it.
This may not be so obvious unless you consider that language may not have begun as spoken language in the first place. I wrote a paper once drawing on a couple interesting theories, and proposed in it that two parts of language (basically, giving names to things, and sentence structure) may have originated separately from each other, expressed in two distinct ways - voice and gesture.
So what macro says is true - you don't have to be able to 'translate' from one form of expression to another in order to 'validate' it. The translation is an entirely different skill. Useful, yes, but not available to everyone.
so interesting that, at various times in various places, dudes (and dudettes) not much different than us thought to themselves...
i'm doing something. what is it? how can i give a name to it, or a gesture, so that i can refer to it anytime and anywhere? how can i explain this complicated idea to others in a single word or gesture?
and then you have language... if i'm understanding sky's comments.
cats, by the way, have somewhere in the range of 109 distinct vocalizations.
oops. that was wolfkid, not stanley D.
Language as a mirror?
Stan Dangerman, I think that's one of looking at it, but another (really interesting) way I was getting at in my previous comment is the self-reinforcement concept. I think maybe the best way to understand it is in terms of memory. One of the things we humans do so well compared with other species is learn, and we couldn't learn without memory (not to say other species don't learn or have memory).
What has been proposed by some people is that vocalizing/gesturing and naming came about as a memory aid, a mnemonic device. If I encounter something important (dangerous, pleasurable, helpful) and want to remember it, vocalizing something in association with it will help my memory. This can apply to objects in the environment, events that happen to us, even internal states (shouting for joy, crying in pain etc.) The object/event/state becomes all the more memorable simply by being associated with another action in our memory.
Here's the really interesting part: the fact that others around us see/hear our activity and are able to discern what we mean by it is merely a side effect! The whole point of it is to say something to ourselves, and others just happen to be able to pick up on it incidentally...
Yep. I agree, Uh-huh. Look over there, Sky is saying something I want to remember, so I reinforce myself by saying it. I get it.
A form of empathy? That popped into my head, but I don't know if I want to remember it.
Dru's working on his first few words or sounds. And those high pitched whistles, yikes.
I think what you're saying is super valid Sky, but it tends to diminish the social evolution of language.
In this sense, I'm not sure that interaction, or another's perception of my vocalising something in order to buttress my memory of it, is simply accidental.
My environment also necessitates that I say, that's one of my kind, that's my mother, that's my father, that's my sister, et cetera, and it feels good when I'm around them.
In this way, it makes language more social than individual in terms of what it may do, specifically in terms of a tool for survival. This challenges the individualism of your argument, specifically from the point of view of a human, where saying something to myself in order to strengthen a memory of it does not mean a whole heck of a lot relative to the fragile state in which we enter the world.
So I guess what I'm saying is that both individual and social processes to language are primal.
I think that this is a purely historical argument (and one so lost in time that we will never answer it completely). Certainly, the social aspect is there. That has been recognized since the beginning of the study of language. This is merely an alternative, but complementary view. My argument is not to dismiss the social side of language, but to question whether it was there at its beginning.
In fact, there is a strong argument put forward regarding what you say in terms of speech dialects. It is not clear why, in the modern world, we have dialects. Would it not be more efficient if all speakers of a language were able to communicate effectively? The answer may be that we use speech cues to enable us to recognize each other. Long ago, we lived in very small, isolated communities, and most people in such a community were related to each other. We also would have spoken much like each other, and so speech could act as a means of identifying our relatives. This is related to altruism and evolution, as the act of helping someone related to us is an act of perpetuating at least some our genetic material, which would be shared amongst our relatives.
However, someone who spoke differently could be thus identified as an outsider, unrelated, and therefore not worth helping (evolutionarily speaking). It's an intriguing theory, I think, and one that is gaining acceptance in the field of linguistics.
what they said...
kinda/sorta...
*sigh*
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