A Critique of a Critique

So, meandering around the internet I found myself on a Art/Critique thread. Egotistical and arrogant, because that is my natural state, I wanted to hear all the great things anyone and everyone had to say.  


Because my Mamma told me I'm special, of course the world thinks as such.





WELL. I am not a special, special snowflake as the internet berated me with a very interesting argument that after a series of trolling and vehement pouting, I listened to it. I also wanted to share it with you.

A majority of the disagreements were based on anatomy. It's an age old argument amongst the elitist and modernist of the art word, I assume. One side claims everything less than Di'Vinci styled art, classical renaissance and all other is not 'art.' The other claims anything colored and pasted on the fridge, is 'art'. There seems such a small middle ground for a variety of outlets, like a vast no-mans land between them.

Me, happening to not studied art in a covent for 30 years, nor building street cred by surviving on only bread, water and pain for sustenance, fell into the latter category. My weakness apparently was not having defined every muscle fiber and not rendering her nearly well enough to make anyone believe she existed.  I didn't transport them to a world of origami and sunshine, so I was inherently flawed in all my technique and being.

They said I didn't know how a skull worked! A Skull! I had no sense of the orbital holes and the indentions of the bones! It was an abhorrent in its interpretation of human anatomy.

I was what was wrong with the entire spectrum of less than classical renaissance, gold leafed, tributes to the bible, art.  I needed to learn how to draw eyes and add depth to paper, to carve the very soul from its mass-produced fibers and make people BELIVE in it. Not tepidly be a mindless fan of Japan. Rah, rah, rah, Japan has ruined the art and nay, the whole world, if we let it. How could I be corrupted by the villainous ways of elongated limbs, extreme facial expressions and unnatural boob physics! How!? I should be burned for giving into the darkness.

If this is wrong I don't want to be right. All this hatred of the interpretive anatomy style I draw, rather than the represented anatomy style that died when the impressionist movement started in the 60s.  Maybe it's a lack of being able to spend months on one piece, maybe it's a lack of real training, maybe it's apathy to detail, maybe it's a true influence of Satan-spawn Japan. But, it's not a bad execution. Interpretation of anatomy isn't a horrible thing, I mean, if it was good enough for Picasso its good enough for me!

What good is art if you follow every rule and every orthodox method? Anatomy can be completely relative or absolutely unrelated to good art. The human eye though is very familiar with the form, you can only tweak it so much before someone says, "the ankle cant do that, that penis is weird, that is not how the hip moves." But for the most part, it's a form meant for tinkering, the body does amazing things!

Rigid Aholes who sit in Starbucks all day wearing their super indy scarves, seemingly find it cool to orchestrate this classical-art regime. I'm pretty sure if they ever found a large enough unground scene to collaborate in, they'd create their own little Rapture bio-dome, where the graffiti is Shakespeare and all art is only Classical antiquity, anything later than 1603 gets you stoned. Surely though this Acrylic Compound couldn't happen because once the scene got too big, they'd disband needing to wash off the disgusting popularity. Those hipsters are a self-defeating machine, thank god.

In closing, I believe ripping art solely based off not identically mirroring reality is silly. It defeats the purpose of art and all that art represents. Such a marring experience has only made me more open and accepting of alternative styles. I hope one day to find my niche and maybe win over a hipster or two in the process.
Thanks for reading!
-Lady J