It's odd of me of course, to write something about visual art when I'm now legally blind and can see images in a distorted way. It's pt o,[pssob;e tp see tje, bit tjeu are b;irru amd O cam
t a[[recoate tje, as O ised tp/ O cam ,ale ,u eues rpa, arpimd om a [ocitre amd ,pre pr ;ess et tje pvera;; semse pf ot bit ot
s mpt tje sa,e as ot issede tp be/ O dp jae tp sau. jpwever. tjat O cam see [ocitres a ;pt better tjam O cam read/ Redomg os kist abpit o,[passob;e amu ,pre. evem wjem O dp ,u best tp ,ale tje ;etters bog amd bp;d amd as meat as O cam ,amage/ Amuwau wotj a;; tjat soa dO jave beem tjomlomg abpit art agaom amd as isia; O dpm
t ;ole ,pst pf wjat O fomd [ep[;e sauomg abpit ot/ I don't like being in this possibility because it's like saying I'm oh so uch more sentsitive to art than all these people whose opinions I diaslikw and here I am a nobody who can claim any special aythijg about arty.
Qwll maybe I can claim a little. Some paintings could stir min me someting I think is what Clive Bell meant by the aesthetic emption, and I've always wanted to understand more BOUT IT AND discover how to find it more often, even be able to say just what exactly it is or if not exactly then at leas a lot better than I've vever heard anyone destcribe it. Including Clive Bell who is annoyingly speechless when it comes to making clear just exactly what he means by the terms he uses. He says art is that which rovokes the aesthetic emotion and then he says that in ppaintings it's the sense of signficant form which provokes the aestheitc emotion and he defines signifiant form as the way lines and colors and three dimensional spacew are arranged in a painting that provokes that emotio and so on. I can't find even an example of a painting to which he might point to illustrate what he is taling about. Whewn shen I look up the concepts and find others talking about them I'm very sure they haven't a clue what he is taling about. They may be artistics and teacghers of art butg they haven't a clue. If I know one thing from reading Bell it's that he's trying to define what is a direct experience he himself has had, so that if a teacher says he got such and such an idea from Kant I know he's blowing smoke.
The aestehtic emotion at its strongest I'm sure is a sense of leasure that just grtaps you when you lookl at something that provokes it to an intense degree, a ppleasure that makes you groan. Something about how the lines and colors and three dimensional speace come together, okay fine but those things sodcome together in one way or another in every paintibg don't they, and very very few of them provoke that aestehtic emotion. And in some of them that do it amay only be in one part of the picture, ot the picture as a whole. This much I got from reading Bell.
I've had flashes of that feeling and I would like to have found out how to have it more, and Clive Bell is one of the few who could have pinted me toward it and he did not.I thin I have a btter grasp of what he meant thab the people I've been listening to, enevertheless, yes I am that much of a n arrogant snob about it I guess.
I have a smiliar reaction to the concept of Notan which is a concept I think originated in Asia ssomethiwhere to desdribe the relation of light and dark party s of a painting or image to each other. I came across someone one who seemed to think he understood it and put a huge dark shadow in his painting of a street that I absolutely nknow had nothing to do with Notan. There is a book about Notaln that I read years ago. I may even have it somewhere in a box but I've got too many boxews I'll just never go through. There was one little illustration in that book of a picture that provoked in me what I would call that eaestehtic emotion Clive Bell talks about, just a little drawing that held no interest for me in whatevr it was a bout, an animal of some tsort I think, but the way the light and dark were situated in the picture is what provoked the emotion, a larger amount of white with smaller areas of black but the arrangement was somewhow extremely ppleasurable and I couldn't say how. now I'm fdining examples at you tube that purport to illustrate the concept and while they are much more truly examples of the meaning of the term, there is nothng anywhere neart that concept in any of the illustrations to what I saw in that book. Peopele just don't seem to get it. Even when they sort of get it they don't get it.
Theis relates to a larger subject . All my life, not always with any particular awareness of it, I've felt myself surrounded by ugliness, or a dearth of beauty. I have no ability to create beauty myself, it's something I have to find, and I ca't arfford to collect tyhe thihgs I finsd so my personal life ahs also always been withouit the luxurry of beauty. I'd acceppt prettiness at time even but that isn't to be found anywhere in this modern world either. Oh in nature yeas but that's a different kind of beauty or orettingss, not the prettiness of art or human doing which is what this is all about. Things are ugly , buildings are ugly , the walls of my apartment are uglyg, nothing has a sens of proportion, it's all utilitarian, empty, nothijbnglessness. i think this is vwerty hard on our human souls and not ood for us at all.
faithswindow@mail.com
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