In the third grade, my teacher Mrs. Walton brought in a print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers for us to see. She gave a little lesson on art and Van Gogh, the details of which I've lost with time. She gave us some crayons and some watercolors and encouraged us to create a masterpiece like Van Gogh's. My classmates started drawing right away, but I couldn't think of anything original to paint other than hills, a sky, the sun, maybe a stick figure. So I decided to do my own take on Van Gogh's Sunflowers. I was so enamored by the piece: how did he make it look that way? My artistic tools were obviously limited.
It came out looking like this:
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| 3rd grade prodigy |
Mrs. Walton held it up for the class to see, my mom framed it, I was very proud of it.
Fast forward 14 years I'm sitting in Art History and my professor pulls up a slide of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. I'm feeling incredibly nostalgic and a bit giddy.
I've had my qualms with modern art. I've said time and time again I don't really understand it. 19th and 20th century modern artists were trying to dissemble the medium, trying to call attention to the art rather than using art to conceal art. Where the Old Masters saw a flat surface as a negative factor that could be only partially acknowledged, modernist painters came to regard these same limitations as positive factors meant to be acknowledged openly.
So that's where I straddle the line. Most of my peers still adhere to this modernist philosophy. I'm being trained in classical academic art. The thing is there's something about certain works of modern art i.e. impressionism and post impressionism, that touches me in ways that classical art sometimes doesn't. I'd like my art to touch people, in a way that transcends class, race, etc and reaches into the core of what makes us human. (A tall order. I may be taking myself too seriously.)
SO
How do you reconcile the personal experience of a modern piece with the power of a classically rendered painting?
Thoughts?
Love \\ Christelle
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