How we look at art: craft and intention
Who gives a flying fuck?
One statement can have multiple meanings. Words confuse us all the time. Especially written words in texts and emails since you do not have intonation. Crafted pieces of writing give depth and meaning. We use metaphors to reach the reader and bring them closer. We slant details to represent our moods and state of minds. Crafted words can be intentionally or unintentionally vague, simplistic, abstract, concrete, conversational, reflect deep universal truths, can be colloquial, and on and on. A good writer uses craft in their own way to convey what it is they want to convey (i.e., beauty, truth, connection, emotional experiences, a lesson, deliberate ambiguity, a philosophy).
In art we use many craft techniques as well. What medium am I going to use? Paint, pastel, (colored) pencil, collage, chalk, sculpture, or any other medium, or a mixture of mediums? The mediums are the dialects of language. The style might be seen as the language itself.
When you set out to create art, you have many decisions to make. First of all, what the hell are you drawing? (and for writing, what the hell are you writing?) Sometimes the artist themselves doesn’t find the answer to the question until they reach the end of the creative piece. But along the way, they make many decisions.
What style? Do you want to make something others can point at and say, “Oh yes, that is a cat lying in the shade on the porch under a swing.” The other end of the spectrum could be some squiggly lines that somehow tell us something by the color chosen, the amount of control the artist seemed to have over the pencil or brush, placement on the page, spacing, pigmentation, and not unrelated, the pressure the artist used, especially with pencils or pastels. Do the lines intersect? How many are there? Lots of factors for such a simple piece.
When you add words to your art, how important is it that others “hear” your intonation? Can a simple question such as Who Gives a Flying Fuck? be represented in a slanted way? Of course it can. It has multiple meanings. I could be really angry and it could be I’m yelling to the universe, hands up in the air, “Who Gives a Flying Fuck!!!!” Who cares about some annoying thing or even a more existential meaning. But it could also be a disconsolate state of mind. Almost a whisper, “who gives a flying fuck?” (about me). Perhaps a moment of desperation captured in one question. It could be also be a humorous statement with possible sexual/crude allusions. I’m not quite sure what a flying fuck is, but I can certainly see how merely having the word fuck in there can represent sexuality of some sort. Perhaps joining the mile high club? In writing, it’s really important that those words are contextualized with details so that we understand the emotional state of the person saying the words, perhaps the way they think, but really, what they are trying to convey.
In art, one of the things I love is that we can play on ambiguity. Ambiguity is what can make us think and leave us projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto the piece of artwork. Almost like a projective test in psychology. With words in a drawing/painting/collage, instead of some mere abstract design, the words guide associations and provide a base of questions for us to think about. And perhaps it’s more fun for me to sometimes leave the viewer in a state of confusion or ambiguity and allow them to experience it on their own terms, in their own language, from their own history.
