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Ah, art. Cultures debate endlessly about "What is art?" Is that abstract bunch of paint really art? Is street graffiti art? How about artifacts of everyday use like my tea cup? Is that motorcycle art? Is performance art art or is it glamourized acting out? Aren’t my neice’s scribbles a kind of art? I’ll be the first to admit that even in a fantastical shrine of art such as the Louvre in Paris there are times I am in total awe, yet there are times I feel like "I don’t get it" or the even more blasphemous "well, even I could do that…"
Walking with P and 2 friends at the Fremont Art & Wine Festival, we came upon a booth of paintings-and I had the bizarre sensation of seeing much of the contents of my head upon these canvases.
My first reaction was sort of a joke, "Hey, P look it’s ME. Books flying everywhere and a cat (my apparent past life form)."
Then as we browsed further, holy cow, this really is me. Books, cats, birds, birds, more birds, trees, more books, messed up bedsheets, a flying person, a modern dance/semi-tortured person, fruits, disorderly order.
Upon reflection, this is one of the true meanings of art to me.
To see so many of the symbols, powerful, loved, denied or identified with…depicted in a medium that allows another to share an inner experience, another world.
The artist, Ted Wen was chatty and seemed pleased to meet someone who spoke Chinese and loved his work so much. (too bad I am too poor to buy any original pieces). Oddly, we don’t seem to have damn thing in common other than being from Taiwan. And frankly, he has the mildly abrasive manner of many a Chinese man, and the unintentional bluntness of English as a Second Language speakers. If this were a movie or a novel I suppose one would discover a soul mate through the medium of art.
Alas, not to be. But I loved his work. And we lamented together how impossible in this callous and shallow world, how impossible it is to feed oneself relying soley on art.
Check it out-
http://www.tedwen.com
If I could paint, this would be a lot like what would come out. (or perhaps I merely I flatter myself!)
I bought a tiny reproduction-not actually my favorite one, but one that is "normal" enough to put in my office. Some of the more conceptual "weird" ones could be interpreted as too scary or depressing to clients, or too scary and weird for our home. But not nearly as weird as what I think about on any given day…
Which reminds me of a conversation I had w/my mum.
About how much I loved Van Gogh works, and she said that they are good, but that they are too "unhappy". She preferred the "very pretty" more aesthetically pleasing works such as say, Monet’s famous waterlilies.
I seem convinced that true art, (much like true love) always contains suffering that keeps it real (spoken like a true masochistic Chinese person…). But I concede that to pooh-pooh someone else’s artistic choices as being fluff just because it’s pretty is also quite narrow.
But that my friends, is a whole other story…
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