Rethinking Thinking
The following are preliminary thoughts and ideas that I will later revisit and fully shape.
The artist, according to this essay, is someone who feels.
This is true, yet do not all humans feel? Or is there a specific depth of feeling that must be attained before one becomes an artist, just as there is a specific level of scholarship required before one is termed a doctor in whichever field? The essay has a very romantic view of thinking, which boils down to "basic perceptual feelings and sensations". I agree that true art has emotion and passion. Even in my creative experiences, art either happens or it doesn't. If it does, it is driven by unguided forces and never forced. I understand the discussion of instinct.
However, an artist is one who can express, not necessarily one who can think. Max Bill says that the object of art is "the expression of the human spirit". The Root-Bernstein "tools for thinking" are "emotional feelings, visual images, bodily sensations, reproducible patterns, and analogies". The artist, as they do mention, is the one who can translate these tools into novel forms of expression. Transmit, translate, the connection from one individual to the next: this is the role of the artist.
Howard Gardner terms different kinds of thinkers based upon their forms of expression. For example, artists are visual thinkers, scientists are logico-mathematical thinkers, and politicians are interpersonal thinkers. If it is true that our feelings are the base of rational thinking, then I think there is only one thinker: the individual. Gardner's thinkers do not have different brands of thought, but are people who express their thinking in different ways.
Live performance is scary because you feel exposed, bare, and laid open. Your emotions are subject to scrutiny. If we consider the role of emotion in art, then we realize that in fact every form of art is innately the same as live performance. Art transmits that emotion, and the artist embraces the fear of exposure for the sake of conveying a message to an audience. If all thinking is based in emotion, artists become the risk takers of society.
What about graffiti artists, who want to express emotion but then run away into anonymity? What if art is repressed, and no emotional risk is allowed?
The artist, according to this essay, is someone who feels.
This is true, yet do not all humans feel? Or is there a specific depth of feeling that must be attained before one becomes an artist, just as there is a specific level of scholarship required before one is termed a doctor in whichever field? The essay has a very romantic view of thinking, which boils down to "basic perceptual feelings and sensations". I agree that true art has emotion and passion. Even in my creative experiences, art either happens or it doesn't. If it does, it is driven by unguided forces and never forced. I understand the discussion of instinct.
However, an artist is one who can express, not necessarily one who can think. Max Bill says that the object of art is "the expression of the human spirit". The Root-Bernstein "tools for thinking" are "emotional feelings, visual images, bodily sensations, reproducible patterns, and analogies". The artist, as they do mention, is the one who can translate these tools into novel forms of expression. Transmit, translate, the connection from one individual to the next: this is the role of the artist.
Howard Gardner terms different kinds of thinkers based upon their forms of expression. For example, artists are visual thinkers, scientists are logico-mathematical thinkers, and politicians are interpersonal thinkers. If it is true that our feelings are the base of rational thinking, then I think there is only one thinker: the individual. Gardner's thinkers do not have different brands of thought, but are people who express their thinking in different ways.
Live performance is scary because you feel exposed, bare, and laid open. Your emotions are subject to scrutiny. If we consider the role of emotion in art, then we realize that in fact every form of art is innately the same as live performance. Art transmits that emotion, and the artist embraces the fear of exposure for the sake of conveying a message to an audience. If all thinking is based in emotion, artists become the risk takers of society.
What about graffiti artists, who want to express emotion but then run away into anonymity? What if art is repressed, and no emotional risk is allowed?
posted by Pranoti Hiremath at
11:49 AM
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