Today’s incapacity was that I woke up after the sun, and almost all of my lights are outside, so to capture the artistry in incapacity and the incapacity in artistry, I had to perform my artistry with some lights slung in the mirrorworld that I haven’t played with in a while.
When looking at the definition of artistry I found: artistic workmanship, and artistic ability. Artistic surprised me with: conforming to the standards of art; satisfying aesthetic requirements. When I think of being artistic, I don’t think of conformity and requirements. This intrigued me.
I found this interesting article from the National Library of Medicine called Social Factors in Aesthetics: Social Conformity Pressure and a Sense of Being Watched Affect Aesthetic Judgments. It begins with this quote from Duchamp:
I thought to discourage aesthetics … I threw the bottle rack and the urinal in their faces and now they admire them …
Marcel Duchamp
Doesn’t sound like he was conforming to standards of art, or satisfying aesthetic requirements. Of course many would argue that he didn’t show any “artistry” either.
To conform to standards and requirements one would need to know what they are, however from the results of the experiment and the statement of Duchamp, one can see that those standards and requirements are easily manipulated and are not standard at all.
I did a study of the emotional nature of art in my post Kandinsky and the Inner Tension of the Point in March of this year. Reading this post made me want to revisit my Kandinsky inspired filters, along with my point and line filters. A lot to play with in my limited palette.
Last year on the seventh, I looked at Artistry as contradictory to Artlessness and became interested in Artlessness’s many meanings. I love how these studies of contradictory abstract nouns evolve and always fascinate me.
2023 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 3
Today’s prompt is to write a problem poem.
The Art Critic’s Dilemma
I found an incapacity
in artistry—to be defined.
The problem lies outside
the artist’s will or skill,
but in standards and requirements,
aesthetics for which to conform,
if only known and agreed upon.
Science shows conformity molds
to social pressures, thus
artistry may as well flow
as a viscous liquid
like glittering, silver,
poisonous mercury, dripping
from a cracked thermometer,
incapacitating an already feverish
artist in emotional expression,
whose artistry will not conform
to the aesthetic norms
lacking standardization.
This morning I checked in with the Global Write-in and was happy to find a vocal stop in France, so I could hear the fun prompts based on fairy stories. One of the prompts inspired me to explore my supernatural entity’s weakness and how it is discovered. And I had over five hundred words before I got out of bed.
While eating lunch I enjoyed reviewing lessons five and six of R. L. Stine’s Masterclass. He recommends coming up with your ending first, and for his books it has to be a happy ending, so I had some fun exploring what would be a happy ending for my main character, and what would be a happy ending for my supernatural entity. I have a lot of fun, twisty ideas to play with.
Experience Writing 