There’s often a gap between intention and experience -
especially with unconventional expressions like abstraction or conceptual art ...
It’s a language under continuous development and part of the creative challenge of advancing communication amid new and complex discoveries governing our realities ... [simple things like dark energy and matter occupying more than 90% of the known universe ...]
Gaps of understanding usually occur from lack of familiarity with subject material - on behalf of the artist and audience ...
In this age of highly specialized knowledge, that gap widens if there’s a reluctance from the audience to increase their scope and depth of experiencing new art and literacy of current events ...
An artist’s resistance to bridge communication gaps adds to the problem ...
There’s a limit to how many clues can be incorporated to make a work accessible without compromising the integrity of invention ... [similar to the building and safety requirements of architecture that limit the designer’s capacity to be innovative] ...
But there may also be a limit to the amount of ‘newness’ a human brain is willing to assimilate - which causes detachment rather than engagement in learning experiences ...
If communicating to the audience with conventional codes becomes the primary goal of the artist and inventor, then innovation is lost to commonality and art either becomes mediocre or mundane decoration ...
In the antiquities of Greece and Rome, statues and frescoes were a method of educating a larger population to deities, myths, and reason; to the heroics of victory and the horrors of defeat - to the virtues of ethics and the perils of vice - and as the artists’ knowledge increased with their familiarity of the subject, so did their contribution to innovation, style, and philosophy ...
And though we view this work today as traditional, thousands of years ago it was at the forefront of discovery ...
The continuity of art illustrating the advancements of philosophy and science remained unbroken to the twentieth century with a few interruptions imposed by dogma, war, and political repudiation ...
Today however, when broad public consensus rejects the inventions of perceptual development and new art in favor of nostalgia and traditional forms, the concern seems more like a cultural phenomenon than a regulatory or circumstantial abatement ...
Embracing the past suggests rejection of the future ... [uncertainty and fear cause insecurity - they raise doubt in our abilities - and doubt comes from a lack of knowledgeable options ...]
Education lies at the heart of the problem, and will probably be seen to cause more wide-spread civil disruption if trends continue ...
Class separation, as a result of economics, is inevitable but continuity of education is the bonding agent within a civilized society; not just the laws that govern, or the courtesies of civility, or the aspirations of ideals ... affordability is no excuse for acceptability in a world of libraries and information access ...
Education is the foundation for order, acceptance, and invention necessary for global competitiveness and survival - and the integration of new art in society has always been an accurate barometer of a culture’s ability to adapt to new frontiers ... the lack thereof, heralds deterioration ...
It is incumbent on the individual - as importantly as the protection of unalienable rights - to discriminate between our sources of influence and education - between those of value and those that can be detrimental - and to realize the urgency and absolute necessity to prescribe quality education as a basic tenant of freedom ...
Despite what the entertainment and advertising industries have taught us; work, reason, and faith are the only antidotes for the opiates of modernity and the destructive reverberations of misinformation ...
If we simply applied the same tenacity to all experience as we did to becoming computer literate, or learning how to read, write, drive, or speak - our abilities and appreciation of the world around us would probably increase proportionately ...
The excitement of comprehension, one of the four principles of learning [according to Euclid], is a bridge that immediate gratification has replaced ...
James Carroll, founder of the New Arts Program and one of my former professors, tried to instill in his students “that they are responsible for the libraries of history they were born into” ... it’s the primary attribute of citizenry and humanist philosophy traceable to the foundations of western civilization in Greece and beyond ...
In an effort to succeed, i took this challenge seriously and have made a life-long pursuit of learning ...
the benefits have always out-weighed the effort as the world takes on new meaning and levels of beauty with the completion of every book, curiosity fulfilled, and discovery ...
One of the biggest obstacles we face as a relatively young culture is discernment - making informed decisions as we move ahead - being able to distinguish between credible and unreliable information ...
but that quandary shouldn’t cause suspicion of difference; only wariness of evidence and here-say ...
For the vitality of discovery to sustain itself, shifting the paradigm from the stupors of entitlement to curiosity and ambition is requisite - qualities that have been undermined by luxury and expectation ...
Previous standards of literacy are no longer applicable to the growing demand for skill, intellect, and reason in the 21st century - we either meet the demand for developing human potential to accommodate today’s quotas or submit to the impertinence of inaction ...
Some luxuries of entitlement will need to be sacrificed to survive competitively and education will become the key to modifying this current malaise ...
In the words of my late father, “If you can think it, you can make it” - and if we have to think till our brains hurt, it sure beats working till our bodies collapse as our ancestors did ...
