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08/18/2004: "Great Art" by Brad Michael Moore
Great art lives by its own rules and timelines, which hardly ever favor the artist who creates it. There's an unspoken quality in great art that you can sense in both past grand masters and everyone leading up to today's most contemporary leaders in their mediums. If art speaks beyond the times of its creator - it may be great. I don't rely on some else's opinion, though, to tell me what art is superior or not. That's kind of like assuming your children's school can teach your kids about sex better than you can for they have the materials of so many studies. To me, anyone who can handle their own intellect alongside of their soul and express a balanced rendition of their uniqueness married between the two - I believe I can recognize that level of variable clarity. That's how I judge another's art to residing in the neighborhood of a higher level.
"Well said Brad. Could you speak a little more about the balance of intellect and soul? Whether we're speaking of art or just living. I think this is an important issue." - Walter King
Walt, I don't think I can separate the two - creating art or just living creatively. Making art that is universal must come from a connectiveness binding the truth of one's spirit to the realization of potential from one's mind that is trained earnestly and effected to be fruitful. Our ideas are our legacy and living to see them manifest in any shape is an artform if you make it so. 'Creatives' endeavor in all walks of life and achieve imaginatively in all manner of course. Some could argue Winston Churchill was an artist who left a free world as his legacy byways of a grant from the national endowment of the good ol' USA. While I create art and live a life conducive to its production, I have come to recognize inventiveness as a potential in us all that comes about almost intuitively as we nourish the wisdom of our years (and our peers) and apply it to our interests and concentrations. Is there a qualified difference between a great painter, illustrator, or architect? Can a politician, or a teacher, or a craftsman of any venue not have the same common respects for nature shared between them but expressed by each his own hand? If I were to meet any of these, or all of them together - would we not find thoughts in common? As an artist, I compare my works with the deeds of others on a level of equivalent standing - no matter what their passion and/or how their contribution to humankind forms to be. While it is also true that Churchill was a painter - you'll likely never find his work of oil and canvas in many an art history textbook. You will find Pablo Picasso and his works derived from the treachery of a war known to each man... Both men were creative conduits to humankind with their journeyed expectations and productions brought about from the trials of their era. To this end, we too have our work to do - be we makers of peace, poetry, or photography - purveyors of ideology or investigators of any 'ology'. To be a maker of great art you must be able to reach into the great discourse of present life and recognize that the depth of your work is directly linked to your soul and the souls of others who share in the seeking of answers to the questions of our time. These answers are the ones we must all be artists to arrest and display to future generations. It will then be up to them to decide the greatness of these things we do today. The legacies we give for the legacies we receive. History always repeats itself - of that, we can be sure - the rest we must invent. - ©2004BMM
