After watching the video explanation from the girl from Ipanema and going through the handouts, taste for makers and knowledge, & the arts. I’ve completely changed my point of view towards the arts, and how they must be judged. I thought they had the sole purpose of having people give their opinion on whether they like it or not.
After the video, The Girl From Ipanema is a far weirder song than you thought I started seeing the arts from a different perspective. Understanding that technical merit is different from personal taste. I also realized that something that seems so simple can be made up in a very complex way making it wonderful. So to quote Paul Graham ” good design looks easy & is also simple. This takes me to my next piece of art by John Latham.
Full stop by John Latham, for years I saw pieces of art in museums where it all seemed so simple; I would see it and wonder, “why is it in a museum, anyone could do this”. But now looking at things from different points of view I see that there is more to it.
The spot was created by repeated action with a spray gun, its curve delineated using weighted sheets of newspaper cut to the correct shape and, as a result, traces of rectangular forms are faintly visible outside the circumference. The circle’s edges are blurred, particularly on the left side where a sprinkling of tiny and slightly larger dots emerges from the dense black of the large spot.
This made me rethink my position, seeing that although it seems simple in fact it’s hard to copy. I also read some of the comments about it and people described it as “a solar eclipse, a black hole or the negative of photographs of light reflecting off planets in the dark galaxy. ” Which also remarks on what Paul Graham suggests in taste for makers which is that good art resembles nature. This all led me to the conclusion that even if I didn’t like at first, once you understand the merit behind it you grow to appreciate the merit behind it.
Figure 1: Full Stop 1961 John Latham 1921- 2006 Presented by Nicholas Logsdail and Lisson Gallery, London 2005 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T11968