The Cave in the Forest - 1
- THE CAVE IN THE FOREST 1 - A black ink and black color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size coquille board. It appears in the book, "THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD," by Jack Vance, published by Underwood-Miller in 1977.
As I usually do while working on a drawing, I stopped working on this one to take a break. I picked up a copy of "The Artist" magazine and began browsing around the pages. I stopped at one article and read, "Consider any two people observing and contemplating an abstract painting - whoever of these two first feels inclined to snicker and laugh, is a barbarian".
I continued to read, "In the arts the only danger lies in your failure to progress, to become so narrow-minded in your appreciation that you only look for the kinds of artwork you already learned to enjoy, while condemning any artwork you don't understand. It is a revelation of your ignorance".
When I finished reading the article I thought that the writer made some good points, but I was disturbed at something else he wrote, that "an abstract artist's work is not to be measured by any standards or criticized using any kind of logic or reason because it is the artist's "thing," it cannot be disputed, it exists only to be appreciated for what it is, a sheer individual creation". This writer did not even consider the possibility that an abstract work of art can be poorly rendered. To him abstract art demands our appreciation for just existing! How absurd is that!
In my world, everyone and everything is subject to consideration and criticism, which can be positive or negative, and though I don't usually snicker and laugh at things I don't appreciate, I am sometimes moved to make negative comments about certain works of art. It doesn't make me "ignorant" and it does not make me a "barbarian". I went back to work on this drawing feeling a bit annoyed.
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