Interesting....

I just thought that this was an interesting photo to look at, considering what we talked about last week and what we saw in this week's Arnheim reading....
Arnheim says: "If a face is turned sideways, the nose will be perceived as upright in relation to the face but as tilted relative to the entire picture. The artist must see to it not only that the desired effect prevails, but also that the strength of various local frames of reference is clearly proportioned; they must either compensate one another or be subordinated to one another hierarchically. Otherwise the viewer will be confronted with a confusing crossfire" (Arnheim, pg. 101).
-Alison

Twelve Parts

 

Form to no Form

The Buddhist believe that no art can be created without the experience of experience itself, for art is the closest way to represent the inner truth and practicing of these experiences. Yet, no one can simply begin without the practice of self realization of experiences the self has gone through.  I heard this idea from a close friend of mine, and it stayed with me because if three clear, sharp words: experience, self, and truth.

If I am to say that art should aspire in the realm of experience, self, and truth, then I have to question what these terms mean. Each interpretation will depend on the subjective belief of the person who questions these ideas; therefore, I encourage the thought to express itself within the person on his or her own account. Each individual is unique because of the experience he or she has flowed through, and his or her genetic make up that allow these experiences to evolve. As an individual grows, other aspects of life find their paws into the person’s experience. I refer this to one’s environment; the environment determines the influence of the experience on the self. 

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last night I attended a concert that asked of me one thing, and that was to let go. Letting go is not an easy task to experience because it demands a lot from the inner self. It asks you to stop, point blank, and awaken your senses. The place that I went was a sort of wear house facility created in the 1870s for Aesthetic movements to have a place to exhibit various works of art. That is what the brochure sates. As we (I went with a friend) entered the building, someone asked me to show our tickets and said to progress forward into a large hall split in half by a projection screen. We were to sit on the floor, which was covered by a few old carpets, on these black sort of lounge chairs that rested on the floor, and were extremely comfortable, which I hoped since it would be a 5 hour concert. In front of me would be where the eight musicians would sit, and behind me was a stadium like seating, except nicer. I’ve been to other classical concerts before, but never so open as this one. Everyone huddled together, shoes off, chatting, waiting patiently for what was about to happen in this enormous building. And just like that the eight musicians entered and my entire self disappeared. For about 30 min, I think because I have no idea, I was in a trance. In front of me, close enough for me to stand up and walk a few steps was Philip Glass and Michael Reidman, and the rest of Philip Glass Ensemble. My trance was not due to being awe struck, but simply by letting go of my inner self to listen, and through listening became closer to something not understandable to me, but that I could feel through the inner self I had let go of  to connect to what I was experiencing. 

Passion, vulnerability, fear, happiness, joy. My emotions trying to find their way out, but unable to because they had nowhere to go. All was fine until this morning when I sat down, and asked myself what I would right as I flipped through chapter 3. Nothing came. All that I experienced only 10 or so hours before rushed backed, and I think – connection.

So I referred back to Arnheim on this thought. 

Before I came to the concert, I was reading Arnheim and he brought up a few times the significance of a concept in both the artist and the viewer. How the percept must be associated to the viewer’s conscious within their experience, and that with out this, an artwork will be meaningless. This is how I interpreted his idea. August Macke said, “Man expression has life in forms. Each form of art is an expression of his inner life.” (Fineberg 49) In this sense, man must connect to form because through a visual representation of form he can begin to understand the work shown to him. Yet, Kindinsky took a form that one would normally be accustomed to seeing or have some previous reference to, and break its narrative by exploiting its recognizable shape. The viewer has to confront not the form, but the idea of the form buried in the unconscious of the viewer. In his own word he states:

“Skillful use of a word (according to poetic feelings) – an internally necessary repetition of the same word twice, three times, many times – can lead not only to the growth of the inner sound, but also bring light still other, unrealized spiritual qualities of the word. Eventually, manifold repetition of a word (a favorite  childhood game, later forgotten) makes it lose its external sense of the name. in this way, even the sense of the word as an abstract indication of the object is forgotten, and only the pure sound of the word remains. We may also, perhaps unconsciously, hear this ‘pure’ sound at the same time as we perceive the real, or subsequently, the abstract object. In the latter case, however, this pure sound comes to the fore and exercises a direct influence upon the soul.” (Finebery 62)

I purposely did not listen to Music in Twelve Parts because I was curious to feel the sensation of what I was to experience without having experienced it before hand by listening the piece on a cd or internet. I was curious to see if I could transport myself without having to have a previous experience of the sensation due to familiarity. Here I would agree, to a point, with Arnheim that if I did have some previous association with the piece it would have been a more powerful connection because at times I found myself confused to what I was listening to. Yet, this was not a necessity that I needed to have. All I needed was myself. My own experience (which I could say is the association he is stating) and the trust to say “here, here is me, I, your audience, am willing to take the journey you ask of me.” I can tie this train of thought to Rothko, which happen to be the anniversary of his death (suicide) the night of the concert, and the similar connections that Glass and Rothko have. I am not saying that Rothko was a minimalist, but more that his most honest works had no form. He did have you, the viewer. He did have balance, and yes color, but that was his biggest trick on the viewer, to be able to capture you through color, not form, and the rest he had to weal you in just enough so you would let go and transport yourself. I am left questioning as to whether I need percept to do this, to run away into the world the artists wants me to feel? A world that might be closer to my own then realized by simply letting go of my on percept.

Experience, truth, self

Can you only be true to the self once it is willing to let go in order to have an experience? And if this is so, does form apply anymore if the artist wishes to take you beyond the very elements he or she uses as the medium to transport you?

Art is truth when the experience of the artist is true to him/ herself, and that happens through experience, and that experience happens through the practice of simply living, of being within the environment our culture surrounds us with. It is not an excuse to say that because one wishes the viewer to experience the raw emotion, whatever it is, can be nothing more that. This is the problem I have with a lot of art I see. I have to battle with deciding what of it is the truth versus the thought without the truth of the artist.  Or as Arnheim stated, “When the contact with a full range of human experience is lost, there results no art, but formalistic play with shapes or empty concepts.” (p. 148) He is right.

I try to find myself disagreeing with Arnheim but in doing so I start to understand more of what I think he is telling me. Arnheim makes it clear that there a two concepts that the visual artist has to take into account; that being what kind of projection will lead to what kind of percept, and what principles operate the mechanisms to do so. The striving idea or percept the artist is conveying has to be there and the medium the artist uses to develop it.  Without the relationship between these two concepts, connection becomes extremely difficult to discover.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

I feel more lost then before because I felt. I saw before me more then musicians playing but sounds of curiosity of being, of living. To connect in this world of ours, we have to learn how to be honest with ourselves if we are to be honest with another self being. What is it we are searching for? Connection is all around us but even then, to connect is foreign. I mean to truly connect. What does each letter of that word transform itself into? I think all of us would be able to agree on a definition and understanding of the word connect. Take it apart – c o n n e c t – each letter slightly loses it hold. Separate it even further – c     o    n        n    e      c      t   - and I see letters. I am still able to put the letters together and form the word, but it feels foreign. What I am trying to say is that words used, pictures drawn, music created have to go beyond the definition of the concept it prevails to us. Is has to be disembodied and re-put together, and it has to be repeated so many times that in that very instinct, a connected flashes pulses into an unconscious that is tender to the self, and the inner sound of the person is left bare. I think out of all this, this is what Arnheim might be trying to help us understanding when reading detailed chapters on each aspect of visual perception of art. To take each concept for what it is engrained in us, and trust the artist just enough to experience that connection.

If so, then art is the most powerful tool man has created for he cannot even understand his own creation

Blog post 2

Though created prior to the Renaissance and its extreme focus on perspective, Simone Martini’s Annunciation demonstrates some of the principles Arnheim discusses. This work was the first to come to mind when I read the passage in which Arnheim discusses different ways in which the artist may portray an onlooker within the painting, how he may capture the symmetry or frontality of the thing seen both in the eye of the viewer of the painting and in that of the depicted viewer. Arnheim uses the example of an evangelist writing in a book, suggesting that many Medieval artists strive to portray the man viewing the book and the book viewed full frontally with respect to the viewer; Martini, though a Medieval artist, goes quite another route in Annunciation. The bible in which the Virgin’s hand is placed is neither facing her nor the viewer, despite the fact that she herself is depicted in a relatively frontal manner with respect to the viewer. Perhaps the obliqueness of the lines forming the book serve to counteract the following effects which might make the Virgin’s thighs and torso appear smaller than the rest of her body: the (very slight) foreshortening effect of the tilt of her knees forwards from a seated position on her thighs; the overlapping effect of her hands, structures which place her abdomen in the background; and the flatness of the dark fabric of her robe, the only area of the work denied any shading or depth. Mary’s bible, in resting in such an unnaturally oblique form, follows the perspective of the overall image: the extremely oblique lines in marble on the floor suggest a vanishing point somewhere behind the Virgin’s robe. In having the book in a position relatively parallel to these lines in marble, it emphasizes the existence of this vanishing point even in the context of her robed body. In other words, although without the presence of the bible the area “behind” Mary’s robe may be perceived as small or flat because of its flatness of color and shading, the foreshortening of her thighs, and the lack of shading in the robe, the existence of this strangely positioned text points to a vanishing point behind her robe, an area approximately behind her womb. With the addition of the bible in this unusual position, Martini turns what lies beneath her flat black robe into an infinite and unknowable area: the point of convergence which the background does not allow us to see. 

After thinking about Arnheim’s analysis of La Source, in which he praises Ingres’s use of formal shapes in conveying a fluid image, I looked at the work of one of my favorite photographers, Julia Fullerton-Batten, who uses highly stylized, abstracted, unnatural configurations of the human body to convey essential and universal human truths (at least I think so). In this photo, taken of a real mother and daughter pair, Fullerton-Batten stages and lights the daughter in such a way that a clear vertical axis dissects her body: it begins at the part, continues to break her face into symmetrical halves (one light, one dark), moves downwards to her elbow, and ends with her top knee, which is then punctuated by the most luminant yellow lemon in the photograph. The girl’s body is not symmetrical across this axis, her left side she caving into the background behind her mother’s knees, leaving only her folded hands and streaks of hair on the right. This emptiness on her right side is exaggerated by the fact that her calves are not visible at all; her legs appear to be abruptly cut off at the knees. The effect of this imbalance and asymmetry is that the girl looks almost as if she is melting into her mother, leaning into the background space created by her mother’s presence in the foreground. The nearly nude girl becomes visually hidden or sheltered by her mother in more ways than this: the mother’s hand literally eclipses the daughter’s neck, and her maternal gaze creates a direct, straight line into her daughter’s arms, which in turn shield her body. Also notable is the fact that the girl’s left side, close to the mother, is shaded and protected from the light source which shines from the right. In this image, like Christ’s eyes from the Durer discussed at the end of Arnheim’s chapter, every line, every formal element supports the meaning and content of the entire image; in this case, each line, each curve, and each angle within the girl’s body suggests her reliance on her mother for shelter and protection. 

Since Fullerton-Batten has done extensive work on females in adolescence, it is not surprising that she choses again to capture this tense and fraught stage; however, this image perhaps is notable because it is one of her very few which suggest any sort of solace or protection from the confusion of adolescence. In contrast to the photos in her cleverly named series Awkward, this image allows some relief for this girl in the form of her mother. The almost absurd overlapping within the girl’s body creates a tension which is alleviated in the ease of the mother’s body: while the girl reaches her left arm across her body to her right side, the mother simply uses her right arm to reach to her right (as Arnheim suggests when discussing an ancient Egyptian image, there is more conflict and complexity in an arm which reaches across the body than one which does not). 

Form, Perception, and Unconsciousness

At first I was confused at how the chapter on form would be any different from the chapter on shape. Before now, I suppose I always understood the two words as having the same meaning. The way I made myself understand the difference was to think of a basic shape or object. If you turn it in another direction, it is still the same shape, but depending on your perspective of it, it has changed form.

This also makes me think about facial perception. I remember Oliver Sachs mentioning that sometimes patient’s would have a hard time recognizing family and friends because their facialexpression would change. To the patients, the person would look so different that it was hard for them to believe it was the same person. This fact makes me curious about how reliable our vision is—even those with perfect vision. And how this could affect our ability to correctly identify a criminal or the visual details of a crime? Seeing something or someone from a different angle could cause you to believe you are seeing something entirely different. I feel that we often “see”, not with our visual system, but with our brains (previous knowledge and assumptions through past experiences).

Arnheim describes foreshortening in three different ways—1) The image is not orthogonal (as the Egyptian art), 2) The image does not provide a characteristic view of the whole, 3) any image withparts that are changed in proportion or disappear partly or completely. I found the exampleof the “monstrous horse-man” interesting; however, not because I was confused by my knowledge that it was a horse, and my eyes thinking it was a penguin shaped creature. Before I read what Arnheim had to say about it, I was intrigued by the image because I had to study it before I could tell which direction the horse was facing. (I don’t know, maybe that’s just me?) I suppose after reading Arnheim’s description and studying it longer, I am able to better visualize how that image would appear strange or distorted to someone who was not used to seeing objects represented through different perspectives.

As I have never given much thought to form before, I am interested in applying what I am learning to the filmmaking process. Personally, I find the foreshortened and distorted images visually intriguing. I like not immediately knowing what I am looking at, and the process ofpiecing together details to form the image in my mind, which I am consciously or unconsciously basing it from. “The expression conveyed by any visual form is only as clear-cut as the perceptual features that carry it” (Arnheim, pg. 161). This quote has inspired me to experiment with the camera and to tell my story not solely with the images in my film, but with the way the images are shot. I realize that I rely heavily on the image itself and the voices of characters, and I would enjoy making a film that relies almost entirely on the viewer’s interpretation of the images being presented. I am virtually new to everything in the art world, and even filmmaking was something I accidentally stumbled upon last semester. When I made ashort film as my conference project for an oral history course, I put a lot of thought into the story I wanted to share, but not into the aesthetics of the film—because I really had no idea how to make a film. And so I was really surprised by the reaction it got, and my professors seemed tobe shocked that I had no previous experience. It turns out that I did all these things in my film by accident, but now I am wondering if perhaps it wasn’t accidental, but unconscious? And furthermore I wonder how often these unconscious elements appear in artwork? I think that it is great if one does something purposely, but I wouldn’t describe a piece of art as less meaningful or beautiful if it was created without a clear objective in mind. In fact, there is something more artistic about it if it is closely linked to discovery.

Some old and new examples of art and form (foreshortening, overlapping, depth, etc). As well as a bad example of foreshortening!

Distorted Perception

"The power of all visual representation," Arnheim writes, "derives primarily from the properties inherent in the medium and only secondarily from what these properties suggest by indirection.  Thus the truest and most effective solution is to represent squareness by a square." (Arnheim, 116).  Arnheim contends that even the most "lifelike" of images are not completely accurate visual representations. "The depth effect is diminished and therefore constancy of shape is quite incomplete (Arnheim, 115)," Arnheim writes. Thus, our eyes correct inaccuracies in even the most accurate of images.  Arnheim calls this process "translation." This quote interested me because of what it suggests about the human eye's ability to make visual sense of an artistically rendered distorted object.  When a form is distorted, our eye naturally works fit it into a coherent visual category.  In this way, we are able to make some sense of even the most abstract images. 

 A basic example of this is Figure 87, on page 114 of the Arnheim reading.  It depicts a tracing of a painting by Oskar Schlemmer, from a side vantage point.  The image is of three people sitting around a rectangular table, but because of the vantage point, the table appears more trapezoidal than rectangular.  Despite this, the viewer immediately understands that the trapezoidal shape is a table, and furthermore, that the table is rectangular.  In doing this, we are perceptually bypassing the more obvious category  (trapezoid)  and matching it to a category that is further removed from the actual shape of the image itself (rectangle).  The goal of this process is to convert a distorted image into a more coherent one, and to perceptually correct any visual ambiguities that might impact the degree of clarity with which we view the image.  

A square may well be the most effective solution to representing squareness, but various vaguely square-like shapes can also effectively represent a square.  There is room in art for perceptual distortion, because the eye naturally corrects it.  With this understanding, I have difficulty agreeing with Arnheim that "Western art has suffered a serious loss...in relinquishing directness."  He seems to think that distortion should only be present in an image if it has a purpose. While I agree that distortion should not be sloppily unintentional, or the product of an artist's self-indulgence, I do think that that art can impact a viewer on a visceral level while depicting an completely unidentifiable image.  It seems that Arnheim believes that the purest version of an image can never be represented by abstraction, and I disagree with that.  I don't feel that art should necessarily be translatable, and that its impact does not need to be understood in order to be felt.  I think that, if we viewers can make a trapezoid into a rectangle, we can meaningfully experience an artwork while remaining completely unoriented in it.

The Real Horse

It seems natural to ask an artist, whose painting you are viewing with her: “What is this about?” The painting, let’s say, contains multiple “pools” of aqua and lava-like red, hovering on the same plane as a chair, whose legs as wavy as hair. You can’t let this be a self-contained painting: you have an immediate desire to know what this has to do with reality. “What are you saying here? What is this supposed to mean?”

Later on in the night, the artist tells you she has one more painting waiting at her home. “What is it of?” you ask. That is the assumption: the painting is a duplication of reality, or of something in reality. It’s a “pictorial representation,” as Arnheim puts it. Even if it is a subversion or interpretation of reality, as are Picasso’s drawings (Figures 91a and b), it is still of reality, connected & bound to it, not a painting of its own entity.

Why is so much of Arnheim’s discussion of Form about the representation of an object from real life? Probably & greatly it is a result of the artistic trend throughout history to make art that way. In the Egyptian humans, and the Greek horses, art has been a method of relating to reality, saying something about something real. Even in abstractions, like below in Picasso’s The Guitar Player, titles direct us to the bridge between art and reality. (And if, in these abstract paintings, the title doesn’t give us reality, our cognitive processes do. Arnheim says on page 139, “It makes all the difference whether in an ‘abstract’ painting we see an arrangement of mere shapes...or see instead the organized action of expressive visual forces.” I think the viewer, more often than not, sees an arrangement of shapes; Arnheim assumes a viewer’s choice between the two equally, but I believe there is a tendency to project or infer reality from even the abstracts.)

Why has the representation of reality been the artistic trend? (and where it has not been, why was it the unconscious goal of art viewers?)

Surely there have been painters who have created paintings--self-sufficient entities, detached from reality, images that have nothing to say or do with reality.

It probably isn’t possible. What painter takes brush to canvas without an incentive? a real incentive? A realistic object or objective is what causes the painting. Regarding Figure 102 of Arnheim, we would say that The Silk Beaters is, being a painting, detached from reality--but Hui Tsung was real, and was inspired by real silk-beating women, or the idea of real them, or the objective of making a real statement on real sisterhood. A revolution or viewer’s emotion can be the desired effect of the piece of art. Even in the sudden & unquestioned “surge” an artist might blessedly experience, and then immediately paint without a conscious objective in mind, a painter is real and thus the painting has something to do with reality, by very nature of its irreversible relationship to the painter. It was birthed by something real. Why then, do we talk about a painting as if it is a detached entity?

A tree is real, we would say. A tree is a part of reality. A tree grows; it is not a tree of something, or about anything. It simply is a tree, and none of its existence is devoted to “pictorial representation.”

But is the same tree real if its seeds were planted by a man?

We often perceive (correctly) that what’s in a painting is not limited to the two dimensional plane, but is a three dimensional scene. Our understanding of reality, and objects from reality, leads us to assume and believe the same dimensionality in a painting. Our experience with objects fills in the blanks of Figure 90, from Ballet Mecanique. We assume that outside the frame, this lipsticked woman continues; and that her face is dynamic and three-dimensional, holdable, kissable, and even that it contains a skull and blood. In Salvador Dali’s The Temptation of St. Anthony, in a painting of the non-realistic, even here we process the information in a way that assumes depth and gives shape to objects we’ve never seen in reality. We assume the teetering golden throne is not a cardboard cutout, but a deep and rounded vehicle holding a full woman. 

 
In even more abstract works, we may not see three dimensions. We may not discern anything from reality. But we try, and we would rather have it than not. In Pollock’s Number 14: Gray, we can see different layers of sperm-like swirls, planes on top of planes. We may even assume the dimensionality of the swirls, that they are round and substantial. I think “expressive visual force” is an artistic goal equally valuable than representing reality, but I believe the truth is that viewers look for reality first, and deeply. I know, at least, that I do, very instinctively and not to uphold any conscious “belief.”

 

Arnheim gives only small value to the role of Knowledge. He says on page 116, “Knowledge may tell us that [Figure 88] is a horse, but contrary perceptual evidence--and should always overrule in the arts--such knowledge, and tells us that this is a penguin shaped creature, a monstrous horse-man.”

At first I found this preposterous: I saw a horse, albeit from a potentially confusing perspective, but a horse from which I could discern the shape of a thing I knew from reality. I knew that at another perspective, I would see the same horse. But after looking at this Greek horse multiple times, I am more likely to see a “monstrous horse-man”-- a two-legged thing with a lumpy, human-sized torso. Maybe this viewing sequence occured because this monster is what I am now looking for, persuaded or directed that way by Arnheim. Maybe I saw a horse originally because I was in such disagreement with Arnheim’s idea that knowledge should be and is overruled, that I looked immediately for the realistic horse.

Regardless of what I see now, I think Arnheim plays down Knowledge too readily. Foreshortenings occur because what is on the painting is not (at least, sometimes is not) the birth of a new thing. It may be a foreshortened perspective of a thing from reality we knew beforehand, with which we compare and fill out the dimensionality of the painted image. Arnheim says on page 117, regarding the foreshortened Mexican man and Greek horse, “It is only our knowledge of what the model object looks like that makes us regard these orthogonal views as deviations from a differently shaped object. The eye does not see it.” But the eye can and often does see it; sometimes it happens after the brain “figures out” that this is a view of a real horse, albeit a bad view, and sometimes the eye sees the horse immediately. And yes, sometimes the horse is not seen, but rather an equine penguin. Looking back now, as I draw my eye up the horse’s legs, telling myself it’s a horse, I see it. This effort is different from the horse I originally & instinctively saw. Maybe Arnheim was right--in both cases, maybe my eye didn’t see a horse at all, at least not without the help of my brain.

But viewing a piece of art is not just done with the eye--the brain obviously is working in conjuction. “The eye does not see it” seems a statement ignorant of the entire cognitive process involved with art perception. Arnheim says that “contrary perceptual evidence overrules,” and thus we should see the horse-monster, taking the visuality of the image as the authority. The image’s percepts are the canon of the image’s story, by which we follow information. This is what’s on the Greek vase; this is what is. It may be easier for you to wrap your head around a horse from reality, but this isn’t reality, this is art; this is a vase.

The word in Arnheim’s statement, “should,” is the important word. Arnheim believes that justly--rightly, even morally--the viewer of the art must abide by the perceptual evidence, and disregard the temptation of Knowledge. Knowledge, he and I both believe, makes it easier to “see” an image, to understand what it is of and what is occurring. But that application of knowledge assigns information to the art that isn’t true, because it’s not what is in the art! It’s only the projection of reality onto the art, by the viewer. And while I agree with Arnheim on that that, what should happen is not necessarily what happens. Knowledge makes an image easier to understand. As long as artists continue to leave holes in paintings, the viewers will continue to fill them with reality.

What Is Art?

Is it possible to create art without meaning?

There have been many occasions where I’ve sat down and surrounded myself with a wide variety of tools to create art. I will have my watercolor pencils, my oil pastels, charcoal, graphite, pen and ink. But, all I see when I look down in front of me is a large, blank, white sheet of paper. For me, inspiration can be difficult to express. I feel the influence of my surroundings, but getting it on paper takes work. And what exactly is inspiration? It’s an idea pulled from something else. Is there always a message connected to inspiration? Is there a message in all art that is created? Certainly all art has meaning, right?

If one was to create a piece solely for the intention of making something beautiful or aesthetically pleasing, lacking any meaning, can we call it art? Perhaps creations that are produced for appearance alone can only be called decorations rather than art. Yet, Arnheim said that, “Every painting or sculpture carries meaning. Whether representational or ‘abstract’, it is ‘about something’; it is a statement about the nature of our experience.” We are all touched in some way by the images we see. Creating something just for beauty’s sake must involve some range of emotion. All emotions have meaning to them, so in a sense, the ‘piece without meaning’ actually has meaning.

Arnheim goes on to say, “Compositions by adults are rarely as simple as the conceptions of children; when they are, we tend to doubt the maturity of the maker. This is so because the human brain is the most complex mechanism in nature, and when a person fashions a statement that is to be worthy of him, he must make it rich enough to reflect the richness of his mind.” I agree that logically, of course the ideas presented in an adult’s artwork will be more complex than that of a child’s. But, that doesn’t mean that a piece of art that is presented simply or stylistically child-like should be looked down upon. It is important to see the value in the simplicity of a child’s work. Children see the world so simply and purely – while their artwork may lack the depth of an adult’s, there are certainly ideas present that, as adults, we may forget over time because our perception of our world has changed. Yet, most children may not have any intention in sending a message or presenting an idea. But, that’s the beauty of art – it can be ambiguous.

I’m not completely sure how I feel about Arnheim’s rules for balance and shape in art. I mean, I understand his ideas and I agree with most of what he says, but to me, art is a form of expression. Approaching art should not be a serious thing. It is there, naturally, for everyone. I think techniques are important to create an aesthetically pleasing art piece, but I also think it sort of takes away from the purity or freedom of art, itself. When I sit down to an empty sheet of paper with a strong desire to express my thoughts and emotions, I am not interested in following guidelines for how to make a balanced work. It is an intuitive process. (Actually, everything I’m saying is causing me to second guess myself because I do agree with a lot of Arnheim’s statements, I just didn’t like how I felt about them while I was reading. I need to think about it more. Or maybe create more art.)