Being an Artist: Concept
Behind an image an artist creates lies a message, an abstract proposal for a viewer to perceive and communicate with us. This is known as concept. The spark of creation, and when added to craft, art manifests. Art with concept is vision. One thought, simple or complex, can create more than an picture, but unlike in writing where words can bluntly explain a case, the artist has to use concept as a means of guidance. What the artist’s audience is seeing are visual metaphors and symbolism. The artist works in hope to persuade and provoke, explain and enlighten viewers. Having a clear point of view comes differently for every artist. In my own journey I had to be open to learning in a completely different way and through this development I found a new way to speak.
At my former art college we had a mandatory class called Idea, Process and Criticism(IPC). The goal was to teach artists how to take inspiration, develop it, and turn that into art. This proved harder than it seemed. We were allowed to use anything as a topic for our projects. Each week we received a different lesson with an assignment and when it was due we grouped and subjected our work to critique. After awhile a lot of students started to resent the class and were overwhelmed. We felt as though our opinions were constantly shot down. So every assignment I tried experimented with a new idea, hoping one could endure our teacher’s examination. Critiques were personally started to make me feel completely drained. It seemed as though my ideas and opinions were irrelevant and with all the criticism I simply started to wonder why we were asked to put so much effort into a piece that would just become misconstrued and scolded. ________ After a long debate with one of the teachers I finally seemed to understand. The teacher asked me to first release my own personal attachments to my topic and then to pretend I was merely a stranger passing by. Now what did I see?
None of these topics were wrong or right my visual statements were simple unclear and immature. Concept in art is taking a topic and extracting the information. We then fill our images with as much of the information needed. This technique guilds the audience member through our work and creating influence. An image without meaning is hollow. A journalist doesn’t just announce the headline, they need the facts and details to create news and the same idea applies to the visual artist as well.
