I'd never met a Genius beforeFollow

Everyone knows you're just being nice.

The beauty of art is that not everyone has to appreciate it as such. As someone who has had a lifelong love affair with creativity and has struggled with what I feel is subpar talent, I admire and appreciate people who have a natural talent, coupled with the necessary focus to complete projects. This man may not be Picasso, but he's an artist because he creates for no other reason than the need to do so.

To some folk, neither Keith Haring or Jackson Pollock were artists, but that's because they're unfamiliar with art history and the evolution of what is commonly held to be aesthetically valuable. Haring is graffiti, and Pollock is a drop cloth, but both speak intimately of the period and culture that surrounded them in their work.

I'm as fascinated by a person that creates because they must as I am by a newborn child. There's wonder in it. /shrug

Yes, that's lovely, but creating miniatures of existing people/places/things is no more creative than making huge replicas of, say, nostril hair. It's a hobby.

And I do have a certain amount of regard for dedicated hobbyists. I just don't mistake them for artistes.

Weird, I'm fascinated by pretentious self important people who waste their time commenting on people who regurgitate other people's ideas as if they were some novel insight. There's amusement in it.

And racecars, those are neat too.


Edited, Aug 3rd 2007 11:37pm by Cookiemonkey

That's strikingly close to my own personal ethos, except it goes "never underestimate the depths of human stupidity!"



Usually in reference to myself.

Place me in the "He's a genius" and "an Artist" column.

I am talented draftsman with pencil, charcoal and anything else I can mark a surface with. I mainly let my talent go to waste with tons of ideas and drawings left unfinished. That's just part of my illness and the fact that the drugs use to treat it often leave me creatively dormant.

Then suddenly, my mind lets loose and I'm driven to draw something, anything, just let the process create on it own will.

Right now I'm hunted by a figure of a female body in the act of falling. One leg is already bent in an odd angle and yet, I'm not sure where the drawing is going. I'm at the stage where I put down my 4H pencil and work the lines out, removing any excess with my faithful kneaded easer. Do I continue with pencil or pick up the black pen, I just had to have, the moment I saw it in the store.

I can pick up the drawing and try to work on it some more, or play LOTR:online some. The question is will this drawing find an ending or stay undone nagging me to just get back the creative moment that gave it life.

It's the fact that I can't stay with in the moment and work constantly, that will always keep me, as being just an so so artist. Talent isn't genius, but to work driven to create something no one else is willing to put an effort in, is. I'll stick to drawing, so I don't have to worry about the act of breathing and my heartbeat ruining the process. I hate having to take the medications, but fear now I would feel without them. Pain and depression are not worth going without and so I let them, mute the creativity in me.

If he would have, it at least would have been an original thought. I mean, if I want to see a drunk in dubious lighting, I'll just go over to BT's.

What if he did a mini-Kama Sutra series?

Then you'd think he was a genius.

What was so revolutionary about Rembrandt? He painted people in their dreary, blah realism, infusing them with emotion. The feeling of the times was that any old bastage could do that, but that that wasn't the point of painting, which at the time was meant to glorify the subject rather than demean it. Picasso went the other direction trying for a 'return to order', and people in his time critiqued him for being creatively lazy. What both these artists were striving for, however, what any artist strives for, is a departure from the established way of representing the world around them.

While I'm not intimating this guy's a genius, he does have that natural societal disconnect built-in, and he expresses it in technically superior work that doesn't have universal appeal. That he (or some others) is/are incapable of valuing his creativity to a certain level doesn't mean he's not an artist. He's an artist because, even through his disability, he has the need and the skill to create. There's even a name for the kind of artist he is: visionary.

That he (or some others) is/are incapable of valuing his creativity to a certain level doesn't mean he's not an artist. He's an artist because, even through his disability, he has the need and the skill to create.

No, he's a technician. He does something a machine could do better, without adding anything. Let me point that out again, because it's important. WITHOUT adding anything.

He's as much an artist as someone who carves perfect copies of paper plates from trees. Even then, not really, as there weren't already 10,000 people before that guy carving paper plates from trees.

There's no creativity here. He does a mechanical task at an exceptionally high technical level, that again, machines can do much better.

I don't care what y'all call him...I think he's neat.

Nexa

It's a pin I found online, and it called to me. It fits in with my present yay state of mind.

Update:


Since we met he's been awarded an MBE by Her Maj and he's proud as punch about that.

Had a nice lunch-break sipping champagne at a media launch of Willard's exhibition in Birmingham. Last Summer he said he'd invite us to the launch and we thought no more of it, but last week while we were having a cig break outside his house he gave us VIP invitations.

1st time I've seen his works for real (a small array of microscopes) and was blown away. On this piece he's even managed to get a stern facial expression on Henry VIII. Outstanding.

Found this video on Youtube.

He's such a really nice bloke.