There is no function instrinsic to Art that uniformly spans across cultures. Conversely, everywhere, there is elasticity allowed to all creations towards the emulence of beauty, the spectrum’s far end being at the full expense of function.
To create anything is to externalize conversations about our place in infinity. When an idea needs to be examined, art plays the role that brings the idea from the mind into this world, making it into a thing, maleable and improveable. If, through the intrinsic beauty of the thing, expectations are surpassed into an expanded understanding of our lives, then the thing is elevated to being Art, excused from other function. As soon as an attempt is made to imitate the mode of the new form, the mode itself falls below the bar of being artful, as the functionality of imitation belies the ability to surpass expectation.
The Artist should be able to make anyone believe that anything is not what it is by opening up this extra dimension that “hinges” between a moment in our minds and a platform used to represent the idea. Representation provides the dimension to convert a personal inspiration into a shared belief.
Western Art has creative devices that permeate through discipline and form, to support our ongoing culture with remembrance of past discoveries. The devices are artifacts, they are allusion to fortify illusion, and they are gifts from our ancestors. Sacred shapes and proportions, anatomical understanding, material technology, The Ellipse, perspective, density, and symbols – they all have importance in American Art, but I propose that west of the Mississippi, nobody cares.
In the US, cultural immersion and the reciprocated understanding of encrypted allusion dilutes as the country might be studied from East to West, because of three main factors: the diaspora of western development based on the freedom to define one’s destiny; the development of photography and film as an outreach artform and advocate for found majesty; and the development of design principals first identified by Psychologist Max Wertheimer. This trifecta of simultaneous forces is so much easier, more intuitive and so much more aligned with the American Western spirit that it has practically replaced approaching Art with serious, contemplative intentions; with the evermore popular: “I don’t know anything about Art, but I know what I like.”
Design asks for the viewer’s eyes and mind to fill in gaps, to bring false memories to the image in order to make sense of its dynamics. In contrast, eons of our artistic heritage has examined representation itself and its position to another dimension where the ideals of ideas live in hologram. A lack experience with the dimensional “hinge” causes easy, unchallenged relativity to categorically slip by as a mystic truth; and elevates the individual’s authority on Art, having been able to so easily fill in the blanks brought by design. If it’s so easy, “I can do that!”
What’s the harm? If the real role of Art is to impress upon the viewer “love in a look,” whom does it hurt?
The harm is done to the understanding of process as the artist’s converter of emotions and ideas into shapes and forms. Processing is a time machine bought with inheritance and whetted with skill into a unique and shiny, unstoppable tool. It finds greater depth, builds a secondary platform to find elasticity in the materials and therein facilitates talent. Pivotally: when summoning talent requires mastery of processing, disguising the inclusion of processing disguises the accomplishments of talent.