Re: You Say Krappy, I Say Crappy

So, how is it that some great artists keep making world class art - year after year - availing themselves of happy accident? Cartier Bresson, or Robert Frank or Arbus, made a zillion times better use of the happy accident offered up them by the world, than I could. They didn't - couldn't - control how scenes unfolded in front of them, but they knew to respond where I might have missed it entirely or hesitated.

In the studio, painting, the more I slow down and really look, the more accident becomes happy as I begin to see how much it offers. Whether I am able, at a given moment, to notice and act, is still up to me.

In art school, I wanted complete control of my work, and dismissed anything I couldn't exactly replicate. Now the impulse for utter control matters less and less. I don't have had the control I wanted. I wouldn't want it. It kills more work than it saves. I would emphasize more the eye / mind, and less the technical prowess.*

C

* Yes, some work is technically exacting - dye transfers, many alternative processes...much photography. I'm not arguing with that. But much artistic endeavor is technically perfect, and perfectly dead.

> And despite some opinions to the
> contrary, I still don't believe happy accidents make art, in and of
> themselves, but those accidents are what many "artists" are generating with
> "krappy kameras" and paint splatters and other such techniques.
Received on Mon Jan 10 10:11:30 2005