prodigy, 2

[egypturnash]

Lots of interesting thoughts on yesterday's entry about the seeming lack of visual arts prodigies.

Here's a thought I had regarding the lack, after going through more replies than I thought there were (LJ's being slow on the notification mails): To be a good artist, first you must learn to see like an adult; then you must learn to see like a child again.

And these things have to happen in sequence; by their nature, they can't overlap. And they take time.

Comments

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. You have to be willing to defend your artistic choices, and do your work without fear of fucking up or being sneered at... but there's these two important things you have to learn, and you can't do them at once. Seeing like a child from innocence is very different from consciously seeing like that.

Oh, and I couldn't think of anyone I consider an "artistic genius", in late reply to your comment on the other entry. I've worked with people who've been called "geniuses" and it's really just a matter of having a period in your life where drawing is what you do, all the damn time. This is not necessarily a good period when you're having it, either; it might be a way of escaping from some horrible shit!

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

I was even thinking of the fear of a blank canvas, fear of making things perfect, which in a way, feeds back into your "think like a child" point. Really, I believe one wants to get to a point in one's artistic career where one doesn't really "think" at all.

For geniuses, I'd point to Picasso at least and perhaps Hockney, though not so much for his own work as much as his dissertations on art and the viewing of it.

Though he'd disagree with me, I think there's genius in Goodwin's work, but it's something that's really most appreciable when you see him do a piece from start to finish. He just -gets- it, and that's before any sort of real training.