Anyone else who likes ART HISTORY and classical approach to art??
29d
Ray
Hi! I'm new to this site but I would like to talk about some things that have been stuck in my head for quiet some time now. I've always had an interest in classical approach to art. I love the feeling of being in an art gallery and really just studying by looking at paintings from last centuries. My most favorite period is baroque. Especially baroque painting and architecture.
And what I also find very interesting is how we actually ended up from very classical approach to contemporary, conceptual art today - postmodernism. I find it so fascinating how the art world was changing during different times.
Anyways the main reason for this topic is that I would love to meet people with same/similiar interest when it comes to art history, classical approach to painting, drawing. I want to improve as a classical painter (Even though I'm still a student) but I also try to think more conceptual in art.
I think that connections are the most important thing when it comes to this field. You can introduce yourself under this topic if you're interested. I'm excited to meet new people who I could talk to about art history, classical painting and so on. :))))
I was trained classically as a home-schooler before my college went into technical arts (non-classically inclined product development) and eventually when the crossover happened from my own personal study to the East I ended up shattered mentally at times. 2020 was a very special year that created a perfect hurricane, so it may not produce the same effect as readily for you. I just advise a mental preparedness and sobriety where possible.
Reaching down to the Arabic, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc.
The classical nature of that study becomes less technical and more mentally engaging in ways that even Plato, Pythagoras, and the Hindu Vedas say can create a crazed state of glimpsed inter-relationships.
Leonardo Da Vinci did not go crazy but he hit a point of interlocking mysticism that certainly pervades all the way to Carl Jung's analysis of Divine Geometries and Universal Synchronicity.
Yet I must admonish you that it is very valuable and encouraged to become an explorer in the way that you propose.
Make sure you have a good community around you when you reach out to that side. Remain light as you go deeply.
The architectural studies I did lead to a very deep understanding of positive and negative space. It dove deep into the Green Tea Ceremony which is about how the room and it's actions are about the composition of the mind as a mandala of the Universe in a similar interlocking Moebius strip of sorts. Athens was focused on this. Egypt as well.
You'll quickly hit that zone when you get into renaissance fibonacci 1:3 Golden Ratio and all of the various physics implications relating to the personal artistry you produce.
Technical reproduction is more a manner of replication.
The elements, reduced through a 3D engine nowadays can sort of be built from the ground up mentally and it is very fun until it feels manufactured. Leonardo said that you will be thinking THROUGH things as you paint and why he holds painting itself as the highest of all mediums when he did his comparison. (He writes of it in his notebooks).
Then the mind hits to classical thirst for meaning.
Michelangelo hit this point in his life as well.
Perfection gives way to a love of imperfection and the understanding of what perfection itself is through Platonism.
When you go to classical production you'll inevitably get into geometries which have metaphysical concepts associated to them.
THAT is what got me.
After words themselves became shapes and number and word equated outwards there was a large meditation that the mind portals through.
You can study further through to the Enzo circle and will end up at a quantum physics zones. You'll enter into conceptual zones under Euclid like the definition of a line at the fundamental reality of it all. Symmetry, Chirality, etc. You'll enter into science itself as neurologically understanding the rods and cones in your eyes and how the brain assimilates information off of EM waves.
If you are speaking of classical academia, it is very odd that we still have such structures because impressionism blew the scene out by questioning the philosophy of "value" some many years back. Duchamp I once despised but now I see I was unprepared for his value at the time. The world turned a very strange leaf in the 20th century and it may be that it does so at each century in a rhythm once you get to enough study. It is almost an odd humanist music.
When you enter into "What is the value of art?" You will have to answer a great deal.
I was dealing with a move to another state, 2000 miles away where I didn't know anyone, during 2020 immediately after the world decided to play the worst game of musical chairs I have ever seen. I was extremely stressed and took cannabis because people said it was legal and for anxiety and had the biggest inverted flip of my life. I had been studying the classics for YEARs prior and at a certain point, when trapped indoors for too long, reading classical esoterica, it smacked my brain and mind so hard that I saw a connectedness that wonked me out like a looney toon.
I am telling you now, never imbibe in things that cause unbalancing when you get near the East in classical art study. The imbalance is very dangerous. The Hindu Vedas and Yogis often have have guides at certain stages because it will become dangerous. Zen masters often only impart the truths one student at a time because it cannot be done in larger crowds and sometimes the students die somehow. In the west you will encounter the Iconoclasm classically and have to formulate what it was about and how to get around it as well.
Classical patronage is often a matter of "value" connotated upon the artist.
You must recall that the Medici family did not value Leonardo yet he was very advanced in his thinking.
So the classics do have a flaw in distribution.
So it is not a measurable thing, yet conceptualism itself is inherently valuable in art.
Money and ego and understanding are fickle at best and should be taken lightly.
Application of art is rapidly evolving as the tools advance nearly out of control.
So it is right to advance conceptualism ahead of the technological advantage.
Being able to concept things at a high degree is what will set you apart after the technicality gets learned.
Once you can make anything, the decision of "What" to make and "why" to make it will be all that remains.
The knowledge of interrelationships is an advisable step.
Reading great classical works is advisable too.
Why are the Parthenons measured the way that they are? (you can visit one in Nashville if you so choose).
Why did they decide this or that?
Why should I place this here or that there?
I don't think there's any other way to learn, except for Classically, because all of it really is paying homage, backwardly to the foundation of all humanity. So go for it! It's great stuff!
The nature of art in nature is so beautiful that you should dive in.
Take Marshall Vandruff's composition courses for a great look at his perspectives.
He pointed out some great fun stuff about the shape of the stars that was life altering in how it all related.
You are certainly in the right place.
Every teacher here is fantastic for Classical education.
The difference is finding out how to override the public ego to gain your fame.
Fame is fickle. It's necessary in one way to gain money, but it exacts a price classically.
Picasso passed away dissatisfied at his entire career because he had money but did not explore as deeply as he wanted.
As a Zen Artist I do not value money but instead community and effect upon the overall world and time itself.
In a way that means I am valueless and also priceless.
Art is a means of communication of largely spiritual aspects, reaching into such depths that I dare say the end result is rest at peace within the origin of all things; God. I do not wish to have debates on such matters though and so I often work from the nameless angle that the Dao espouses; spiritualism.
Find a way to make money but always do for yourself also.
I would have loved to console Pablo but no man can invent time.
Yet to marvel at the world itself together is a bonded thing that people will love you for and provide for your needs if done well and with sincerity.
Seek and ye shall find.
Knock and you will be answered.
Just make sure you're knowing what you're asking for when you ask questions of the classical things. <3
Because just like you everyone has difficulty at defining "Kingdom Hearts" you will equally have difficulty defining "Classical" and "Art" itself if you seek too deeply. ahahaha
Cheers!
Get at em!
You seem fervent!
That's great! You are and will grow further into a great artist for your inquiries! <3