Fifty Shades of Sheeps: About Life, Art and Animals

Hey guys!

It's been a long time since my last post, sorry for that but I needed a good topic to talk about and today I got it and it will be hard to just stop writing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc

So this is a video that I watched and it made me think about a lot of things.

Let's start with my opinion as an artist about it I agree with it on some point and I disagree on the other point.

The history of art is great and grand and fat and big and full and all those things.

The meaning of modern art is very relative if you ask me, because everybody see, feel and understand things differently (like the dress lol). So modern art can be as meaningful as meaningless. Art as a term is becoming more and more commercial if you ask me, because everybody can be an »artist« nowadays, you can buy a canvas and you can buy paint for very cheap unbelievably (what is great for me, because art schools are not as cheap as the requisites are…). So we should ask ourselves ho is an artist? Everyone who can draw?

I’ll be so damn strict about this that some may get very mad and some may see what actually takes. Now let’s say you see a road sign with a human painted on it. It’s a circle and very simplify body right? Everybody can do it, everybody can replicate that shape, but very few will know why is that shape like that and this is because they’ve studied human body, muscles, gestures, movement but then they took all that knowledge and squeezed all that in that simple shape we meet every day. And modern art is like that Picassos said: “As a child I tried to be as a great masters but as an adult I tried really hard to be as a child”. And that says it all. He learned he gained all that great master’s ability and knowledge, but then he made his pieces more simplified versions to move back from the photography and show what more we can do and what imagination allows. And that clicked, we see his work we are impressed and when we think of an artist it is Picasso or Da Vinci. Artists can be as extravagant or as simple. Extravagant is and it was the idea of a sex object, but that changed A LOT! Let’s talk a little bit about the Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, there is a full naked woman painted and there is nothing sexual about her, she is just beautiful. Now let’s take a look at Fragonard’s baroque or rococo painting The Swing, the scene is so extravagant and they are all dresses (okay we do see woman’s stockings), but the difference is that The Swing has a teasing idea of infidelity that is much more sexual then a scared naked woman standing in the seashell. Now men are men and they will forever be men no matter what and pin-up art is beautiful In my opinion but it is extravagant in it own way and it is not “appropriate” (not the fully right  word but let’s roll with it) for everyone, but The Birth of Venus and The Swing are. Sexuality meant many different things through the history.

I’ll move a bit further from that, but I’ll come back in a few sentences. So the crowd, community is impressed and even pleased with art that is meaningless, because of two things, first is the name: So if the well-known artist would exhibit, display a fully blank canvas (that happened) in a gallery, the crowd would be pleased with it, because others are and if my neighbor likes it I’ll like it too to show that I’m not “small minded”. Well you are not… the other thing are critics their opinion matters the most (our greatest poet France Prešeren said in one of his poems “Let a shoemaker judge only shoes!”)! And people fall for that even if they don’t see anything in the piece of canvas. And that’s why we are sheeps, we follow the shepherd and see what they want us to see and do what they want us to do. We make promises to ourselves that we don’t keep, we say things that we don’t mean and we are turning into robots with no emotions. We are weak we believe that there is someone who can saves us, well if you believe that you’ll wait forever. We became barbaric we became obsessed with commercial and totally forgot about beauty and art. So what are we looking at nowadays? As I’ve said sex has always been shown in art, because people fell for that and we still do, but how? I’ll tell you what I saw this past week. We went to the exhibition of graduates of graphic design and illustration I was mad and it really opened my eyes. Before I tell you about that I have to mention what one of the professors said to us once: “Graphic design has to be the love, not a constraint and money should not win over the meaning, don’t ever do something that you don’t feel.” And with that I started to think about all those commercials that are appearing on the internet about everything, someone had to make them, but the meaning of them is pointless, but the designers got paid for it and they just didn’t care, and that’s wrong when you see a sign this is made in that country, this comes from there blah, blah those lies were design by someone and they got paid for it… So at the exhibition we saw some beautiful, great done designs of books, newspaper illustration, text design, but there was something from the female artist that caught  everyone’s eye, because it was so extravagant. Before us there were little kids maybe 10 years old on that exhibition and the theme weren’t for them it was too “extravagant” they would say, but no it wasn’t it was just commercial and cheap. I must say that the artist is a big feminist herself, but what I saw was something that made me angry and disgusting. It was fifty shades of tied naked women with no faces that 10 year-olds were looking at and there was the whole wall with newspaper illustrations with exposed parts.

When I was little and I just learn how to read (poorly but I was proud of myself) I took the nearest newspaper and told my dad: “I’ll read something to you” And I opened the magazine and I remember it was written with those big fat latters (I believe is was Helvetica or something very similar if you want to know) and it spoke to me, because it had so much power on those two pages to I started reading “Today you’ll enjoy sex with your partner as never before” when I read it my face was red I was embarrassed and I stood up and left the kitchen. You may think yeah okay what do you want to say? I want to say that vulgarity is becoming too commercial because there is nothing more left to say about things to we took taboos and we exposed them on much vulgarized way. But why? One of many illustrations said “Treat me like your leather” and you say that you are a feminist, please for what are you fighting for? For dominative men and tied up women, that wants to be treated as a leather and we are cheering to that because it’s so extravagant and scandalous, well how did we come from the beautiful Venus to tied up bitch that doesn’t have a face. Vulgarity is this year’s black or grey should I say, we are all obsessed with it, but how does this speak to the younger audience? We don’t ask yourselves that until the money stops flowing and suddenly everything is not that fun when everybody is naked and sexual and vulgar suddenly we see that frightened face of newborn Venus that is telling us that love is more than sex, nudity, love is about passion, affection and complimenting each other and that of course contains making love but on so nonbarbaric way that is almost divinely. Of course I’m saying all that in superlative way, but still there is more to art than sex and vulgarity there is beauty that we’ve hid and made people from persons to objects and that loses a meaning of modern art that is too commercial and less beautiful if I may say that. Now everything is cute, but so little can be called beautiful, can we bring that back.

And in that video there are many things that I don’t agree on. Modern art should wake emotions inside of you what expressionism started and moved away from reality and closer to thought, dreams and feelings and modern art should do just that. The only question is: Do you feel it or do you just see it?

From the one black dot on the canvas to many splashes of colors dropped on a canvas. It is not about what you see it’s about what you feel. Art speaks to us more than just physically, it speaks to us emotionally and that’s why we like it and why it should stay in galleries

Have a nice day!
Pa3k