Roads, Mills, Laps

Archive for the 'Art' Category

Melting Snowmen

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

11 miles DML.

Took this picture a few weeks ago of the two snowmen in my front yard: I liked how they had melted.

Posted in Running, Art | No Comments »

Myself in My Living Room: One

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

watercolors

Posted in Art | No Comments »

Benicia

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Oil on board

Posted in Art | No Comments »

Que?

Friday, December 21st, 2007

You: What happened to writing about running?

Me: Do you pay for this space?

You: No.

You: But where are all your writings about running? I’m a runner and I want to read about running damnit! I want to glean shiny diamonds from your peanut-speckled turds! I want to improve my times so I can win the Barnie Fife Memorial 5K and win my age group at the 37th Annual Sandusky Marathon Sponsored By Napa Auto Parts and the Jelly Belly Corporation.

Me: Do you pay me to write?

You: No.

You: So why are you painting, shading, and drawing crap?

Me: Because I want to.

You: But why do you want to?

Me: Since I’m not getting paid to do anything, I may as well paint, shade, and draw crap.

You: But I thought you were an aesthete? I fancied you as some sort of ideal Tolstoy–the running world’s Tyler Durden out to shame narcissistic runners parodistically like the Sansockman. As such, you should abhor mammon, possession, and all things in-between. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Me: Why should you be ashamed of yourself?

You: Oh stop the sardonic torment! Answer the question.

Me: A wise man once said that you cannot pay billz with artistic skillz.

You: Who said that?

Me: You.

You: What is art?

Me: Funny you should ask. That was a prescient moment; I felt as if you were going to ask me that; I felt your thoughts coming at me like an arrow. In his essay What is Art, published in 1896, Tolstoy delved to great depths pontificating the real meaning of art. Sadly, he never touched on what I and others smarter than me call “crappy art”; rather, he spent pained pages (All his pages are pained.) detailing what is and what isn’t art. I am now posting his posits 24 through 30. I end with his posit 30 because it’s the best–especially #30 #3. The boldface there is not the long-dead author’s: It’s mine.

“24. Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art from counterfeit art.

#25. There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man, without exercising effort and without altering his standpoint on reading, hearing, or seeing another man’s work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of art. And however poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy and of spiritual union with another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by it).

#26. It is true that this indication is an internal one, and that there are people who have forgotten what the action of real art is, who expect something else form art (in our society the great majority are in this state), and that therefore such people may mistake for this aesthetic feeling the feeling of diversion and a certain excitement which they receive from counterfeits of art. But though it is impossible to undeceive these people, just as it is impossible to convince a man suffering from “Daltonism” [a type of color blindness] that green is not red, yet, for all that, this indication remains perfectly definite to those whose feeling for art is neither perverted nor atrophied, and it clearly distinguishes the feeling produced by art from all other feelings.

#27. The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else’s - as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist - not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.

#28. If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the author and with others who are moved by the same work - then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.

#29. The stronger the infection, the better is the art as art, speaking now apart from its subject matter, i.e., not considering the quality of the feelings it transmits.

#30. And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions:

1. On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted;
2. on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is transmitted;
3. on the sincerity of the artist, i.e., on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits.“

You: what’s up with all these 19th Century dead dudes?

Me: Put your hand over your heart. -1, -2, -3, -4, -5 (get it?)

You: So how’s your running coming along?

Me: Nice try: keep trying.

You: Ok. Let’s go with this: What’s your favorite Grandaddy song?

Me: Me: A.m. 180

You: You mean it’s not “Yeah” is What We Had?”

Me: No, we never knew. Good is what we understood.