Artist Series – Wylie

Watching these videos made me think of something that my mother and girlfriend have told me about. Apparently there is a new trend with bridal parties or other functions where girls get together where they drink wine and paint a predetermined painting, while being lead by an instructor (I should note that I’m not trying to be sexist; I just haven’t heard of any similar male function). The instructor tells the participants what to paint and how to paint it over the course of the evening. What colors to use, the brush strokes, etc. With this in mind, I wonder how the artists in this series of video would react to this. Is art really art if it is churned out like a factory? Can something be art if it doesn’t express or mean something to the artist?

David Carson and Paula Scher, two of the artists from this video series, have different approaches to their art. For example, Carson is adamant about the fact that artwork has to mean something to the creator. Traits and personality quirks of the artist should shine through in the created work. Because of this, I don’t feel like he would like the “wine and paint” parties. Paula Scher is of the mindset that an artist’s first work is either the best it can be, or should not be the final product and the artist should start over. This seemed odd to me at first (how many drafts did Van Gogh do of “Starry Night”?), because I compared her craft to my own: music. When I think about it in the musical world, Scher’s ideas are counter-intuitive. I don’t want to publish my first draft of a song that I wrote, because it’s probably not that good. I’ll work and work on a piece until it’s the absolute best I can make it before publishing it.

In the end, the thing that I took most from this series of videos is that art is not a process that you can define. It means something different to everyone who uses it, and everyone who uses it goes about defining it in a different way. In the end, I guess that’s the true definition of art. So hey, if getting drunk with your friends and doing your best Bob Ross impersonation is art to you, more power to you.