Objective quality in purely subjective things

[Farm Boy]

Fair enough. I agree it's an ad by, and for, the soulless.

 

[aelf]

Sorry, @aelf, but that's gorgeous--right out of the gate.

Again, compositional balance is our friend. Two-thirds pond foreground, one/third building background. The striking balance of central red and surrounding green in the foreground. Fluidity of fish against rigidity of building. The fish are vertically 1, 3, 5, but with just that arrangement in the five to avoid an unnaturally tidy disposition. Top is culture (architecture/writing) Bottom is nature (fish/vegetation). I love it that there is color-swapping in the two conceptually contrasting regions (i.e. that culture and nature use the same reds). Contrasting levels of saturation within each element (deeper and lighter reds in the fish, deeper and lighter greens in the leaves, deeper and lighter orange in the sun).

I don't know what we're going to do with the fact that a ton of "Western" aesthetic principles are immediately applicable to this picture.

I mean, I don't really agree. For one, I don't see the pond as the equivalent of the human figures in the other painting. Rather, it's the fish, and they don't constitute two-thirds of the picture. In fact, there's a bit of a confusion here that explains our divergent views. Is the subject the fish or the whole pond? Arguably, the whole pond isn't interesting or distinctive enough to be the subject. But it's there, seemingly wanting to take centre stage but also not noticeable enough to do so.

And the arrangement of the fish is still too tidy, and looks neither intentional nor natural. Again, it appears confused to my Westernized perspective. It might have some symbolic meaning that I'm not aware of, though.

I'm sure you disagree with my assessment, though, and hence we'll come to an impasse. And since it seems no one else is interested in picking this up, I'll just bow out. I can hardly find the time to discuss theory, so mired am I in execution these days.

 

[Farm Boy]

I thought the picture was pretty well chosen, with its focus on the natural/created, given the thread.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Admittedly, it's difficult to find the best example. I suspect the English-medium Internet tends to favour examples that appeal to Western sensibilities under the axiom that all art is universally beautiful, even if you might not understand how (while ironically selecting for the beautiful that the viewers do understand).

Still, with the right search terms, I might be able to find something more typical of those I see IRL. So lets give this another go:



This is close. As you can see, it lacks the attractive blues, and its composition and perspective are unorthodox by Western standards.

And you have to keep in mind that there are a lot of very similar paintings. This appears completely unoriginal to me. You might counter that this, then, makes it a common piece of work, like many similarly unremarkable articles in the West. But regardless of the (pseudo-objective?) quality of the art, the Chinese frame of reference would find more to appreciate in this painting.

I'd be curious what the chinese characters say.

 

[Hygro]

This person attempts to explore the topic but for coffee. Thought of you guys.

 

[Birdjaguar]

But there is, meaningfully, better and worse art. Not in all ways and who knows why. You can have better technique, labor harder, and have all the inspiration and probably will make superior art, but sometimes make inferior art to a piece made by less of all those things. Better art by less technique, less effort, and less inspiration. It cannot be pinned down how, even if it can be helped and fostered, but ultimately, it just happens.

Creativity happens in both the arts and the sciences. i would suggest that in most cases creativity has a foundation in the mastery of something, be it words, clay, mathematics, wood, paints, sounds, observation, tools, chemistry, etc. Whatever one's mastery is becomes the pathway for expressing one's self. When mastery is combined with inspriation, we often see great results. But i would add one more component to the mix: curiosity. Whatever the foundation, curiosity is engine that that goes hand in hand with inspriation that utilizes mastery tools to be creative. We are curious creatures and that lineage goes way back and spans across many different critters. Curiosity is all about "what would happen if...? followed by any of thousands of possibilities.

Darwin, Einstein, Da Vinci, Monet, Motzart, Kepler, Newton, Basho, etc. were all curious people who had some skill who wondered what would happen if they did this, looked at that, or thought the other. Inspiration follwed and somethig new manifested. None of this solves the problem of objectivity, but it does bind the arts and sciences together. Our emotions (hearts) and intellect (minds) are both stirred and moved by the same forces: mastery, curiosity, inspriaton, creativity followed by wonder.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Thought of you guys.

Thought of us guys! You are the thread's OP!

This person attempts to explore the topic but for coffee.

That person has way too much production capacity on his hands for the profundity of insight ultimately expressed in his video!