steven-wijaya

[steven-wijaya]

On Art History

Art history is the knowledge and study of art. To interpret and analyze art, its characteristics, its reason of being, its function, it has to be placed in a context, and it is the context of its production that informs about its value as human activity. To do history about art is to relate it to the culture that produced it, to learn about its geography, to place it in the chronology of its evolution. Art history, then, follows a methodology that aspires to be as scientific as possible, and so it adapts to evidence, emerging technologies and evolving sensibilities. Kleiner outlines several criteria used by art historians, such as age, style, subject matter, authorship, and patronage, to learn about an art object or an artwork’s history, about what it represents about its culture and human history at large.  

Art is an activity best defined by its function: it communicates, it expresses a message. To somewhat narrow it down, art pertains to culture, which is largely understood as all human activity. Before what anthropology considers civilization, there were examples of people creating iconography, communicating a message that might have had some relevance, some practical function, as it is speculated. Art too can be created for mere pleasure, as the manifestation of personal will, of identity. Whether art is an individual or a group benefit, it is not an either/or question. Art is a social activity. It can take the form of small objects or large buildings, it can be manifested in many aspects of society. As it is a social activity, it has value: material monetary value and intangible cultural value. 

Art is in dialogue with other disciplines of knowledge. When doing art history, it is important to determine when an artwork can serve as an historical object - because it is part of an antique infrastructure or it depicts a historical event - and when it serves a communicational purpose that is not historically accurate. It can represent ideas - or ideals, more precisely - just as it can represent observable reality. Emmanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware conveys not a historical occurrence, but an idea about a historical figure. This same dynamic applies, more clearly, in representations of mythology and religious texts, which are taken as different from historical facts, yet they serve an ideological purpose, and they can inform much of a society’s history. 

Art history is a discipline that intertwines the often literary and subjective world of art and the scientific exercise of history. The purpose of art history is, as it is of any research, to better understand humanity using the totality of the past, the cumulative corpus of creative activity. It examines perspectives, ideologies, temporalities, norms, hierarchies, and therefore it is a valuable branch of the social sciences.

Reference

Gardner, H., Kleiner, F. S. (2017). Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Concise Global History. United States: Cengage Learning.

[steven-wijaya]

Isn’t it funny how you can probably tell a lot about what an artist looks like based on features they subconsciously add to their work?

Like how artists with thin hair probably don’t draw many characters with thick hair bcos they’re mentally referencing themselves for what a hairstyle would look like. Or artists with a very unique nose shape will draw characters with that nose shape a lot cos it’s just a normal nose shape when they have it. Or how artists with moles or freckles probably add those features more often than artists without. Artists who wear glasses probably draw specifically the glasses style that they wear more than any other because it’s the easiest to get reference for

…And you can also generally tell what an artist DOESNT look like by features that look awkward in their pieces. Like when a characters hair looks like a solid piece rather than looking like there’s a head under there bcos that artist so clearly didn’t get a reference for what that hairstyle might look like irl. If a chubby character looks really unnatural it’s probably bcos the artist isn’t chubby and hasn’t done their homework. If a character has facial hair and it just looks bad then they probably don’t have facial hair because otherwise they’d probably have more experience drawing it.

It really makes me think a lot about subconscious biases I might have in my art without realising and abt how we accidentally create representation of ourselves in our character art when we don’t see our features represented by media.

[steven-wijaya]

Echoes of Silence

In silence dwells a storm unseen,

Where words once flowed, now barren, keen.

The absence speaks, a chilling tale,

Of hearts estranged, a bond grown frail.

A rift unfurls with every silent gaze,

Where once was warmth, now icy haze.

The void it breeds, a yawning chasm,

Eclipsing love with silent spasm.

Each unspoken word, a dagger's thrust,

In silence, bonds corrode to dust.

For what remains when words retreat,

But shattered hopes and hearts to beat?

Communication's key, a guiding light,

Yet silence dims its precious sight.

In muted silence, love finds no reprieve,

As relationships wither and grieve.

So heed this plea, break silence's snare,

Speak love's truth, show that you care.

For in the silence, love's demise,

Destroys the bonds that once did rise.

JI

04-15-24

[steven-wijaya]

The problem with "I could do [X popular modern art piece]" being responded to with "then go ahead and do it!" is that I think the point that a lot of people are making is not so much "this artwork has no value" but rather "modern popular art is a heavily gatekept industry that you cannot enter into without requisite pre-existing social cachet".

So even if someone is technically/artistically able to create something on the level of a gallery piece (and, to be honest, I think substantially more people have that ability than anyone would be likely to admit) they do not exist in an environment where they have the financial freedom or recognition for that to be possible or worthwhile.

I assure you that there are millions of people who absolutely could and would want to make Pollock style abstract paintings or giant time-consuming sculptures made with garbage or whatever, but they're currently stuck in a low wage job and if they quit in order to make their masterpiece then nobody would bat an eye and they would go broke because they wouldn't have the sociocultural weight to impart that special numinous reverence that "high art" is granted, and which makes it financially viable as a thing to spend your time doing.

It is also true that a lot of people who have that cachet are able to spend their time making pretty much whatever, and will still be able to support themselves even if the art itself is fairly mediocre outside of the time dedicated to its creation.

Anyway, I feel that people are perfectly valid in feeling a sense of vague resentment at that when they visit galleries holding paint/canvas combinations that sell for more than they will earn in several years. I mean it speaks to what society is implying about their worth as a person. I don't think that it's as much about arrogance and entitlement as people like to pretend, because a lot of that comes from buying into the mystique of the Worthy Artist anyway.

[steven-wijaya]

a list of random art tips i’ve learned over a long time

The elbows are near the same height at the belly button

the hands go about 1/3 of the way down the thigh

add fewer folds in clothes than you think you need

The colors of shadows look different depending on what color your light source is

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HARD LINES AND HARD SHADOWS

if you don’t like doing highlights digitally in procreate, add a black layer over the whole drawing, then click the little N of the layer and scroll down to Color Dodge. pick a color for your highlights and draw. Use a soft airbrush to create glow, use a harder brush to create sharper lines

if something is out of your skill level but you really wanna draw it, get a reference! It’s ok to trace! It will help you get better!

think of objects and people as piles of shapes if you are having trouble with positioning

if you don’t like drawing the other eye: copy and paste, cover it with hair/hat/eye patch/hand/scarf/literally anything you can think of

try new styles! it doesn’t matter if it looks good or not, but now you know what you do/don’t like doing, what you’re good/not good at, and what you want to improve on!

when you’re drawing profile heads: add a little extra length to the back of the head. heads aren’t perfect circles. doing this will make the face, ear, and jawline feel much less cramped.

this is a personal preference, but i like to find old photos from like the 40s and 50s to use as references because people got really wild with how they posed and i find it helps with angles and positioning

heres an exercise i like to do to help with positioning: draw a few pairs of circles, make them at all different angles. then, so back and use those circles as placements for hips and shoulders and draw the first pose that comes to mind. keep it simple, but try to make it natural

(I’ll add more when I think of more)

[steven-wijaya]

Most of you have no idea how making a living with art actually works Your experience begins and ends with watching a generic popfur smut artists get 10k a month in passive income via patreon subs and cashapp donations and it shows In the professional art world if you take 40 hours a week to produce 1 digital piece you will be replaced laughably fast. Being expected to yield something after a 40 hour work week is not crunch culture, that’s an average full time job. People I’ve worked with who make an income exclusively through art are capable of producing 6 12x12 water color landscapes a week and that’s on the slower end. Hobby commissions =/= art as a full time job It’s unreasonable to expect fully lined and painted art from a commissioner online to be done quickly. That’s a completely different standard for completion time since most people who do commissions are only doing it on the side and aren’t looking to enter professional spheres The site credits almost 20 artists. A significant few being “contributors” im not sure if they were hired on a one-off contractual basis to do one or two drawings and no more than that, but nearly all of them address themselves as active members of the art team so Im counting them as well. A lot of the apparel is copypasted, rotated and flipped. There is nothing wrong with this but it’s a simple fact and it’s efficient. I’m not sure why users get so angry about acknowledging this but I’m not arguing this point because it’s obvious with the barest amount of looking. Undel sketched and lined a dragon in 5 hours in a stream where she was heavily distracted by chat and kept forgetting how to use her tablet. They dont’ color by hand, they run it through a coloring program. All of this adds up to a system that should be more efficient than it is If this site can’t manage to get a modern done more frequently than 1 every 5+ years then it’s a sign of either gross mismanagement or they need to hire more productive artists “the artists are already bogged down/there’s too much apparel” yet they release a new ancient every couple of months which increases their gene bloat and errors and decided it was a good idea to add 2 genes a month to the festival items. Those are not the choices of a struggling team. Nobody adds a few gallons to the tub when they’re already drowning.

It’s fine to think that the pace that they produce art is acceptable. If your standards and opinions line up with their output then you’re entitled to feel that way. At least try to admit it’s based on your personal preferences and opinions rather than a professional standard you clearly don’t know anything about

[steven-wijaya]

Abstraction:

"Abstraction is flying. Abstracting is ascending to higher and higher levels of conceptual generalization; soaring back and forth, reflectively circling around above the specificity and immediacy of things and events in space and time, from a perspective that embeds them in a conceptual framework of increasing breadth and depth, a framework without horizon, ceil-ing, or basement; a framework composed of increasingly comprehensive concepts that generalize over increasingly comprehensive classes of things, organize them relative to one another, unify them into a coherent tapestry, a dizzying object of contemplation the details of which stun one into panic by their connectedness, significance, and vividness.

Abstraction is also flight. It is freedom from the immediate spatiotemporal constraints of the moment; freedom to plan the future, recall the past, comprehend the present from a reflective perspective that incorporates all three; freedom from the immediate boundaries of concrete subjectivity, freedom to imagine the possible and transport oneself into it; freedom to survey the real as a resource for embodying the possible; freedom to detach the realized object from oneself more and more fully as a self-contained entity, fully determined by its contextual properties and relations, and consider it from afar, as new grist for the mill of the possible. Abstraction is freedom from the socially prescribed and consensually accepted; freedom to violate in imagination the constraints of public practice, to play with conventions, or to indulge them. Abstraction is a solitary journey through the conceptual uni-verse, with no anchors, no cues, no signposts, no maps, no foundations to cling to. Abstraction makes one love material objects all the more."

--Adrian Piper

From Adrian Piper: Reflections 1967-1987, Alternative Museum, New York City April 18-May 30, 1987.

[steven-wijaya]

Idk who needs to hear it but if you have Aphantasia you can absolutely do character art. Don't let it discourage you. Especially since a good portion of art advice won't fit you and will leave you feeling like its your fault.

I have Aphantasia, its super hard to put characters in poses from my mind. I cannot draw cartoons or exaggeration well, its very hard because I do not see the drawing until it is on the page. I use so many construction lines and blocks of color and always need a reference to base my character poses on. I cannot imagine things artistically before they're on the page and it is super frustrating.

You can still do it with Aphantasia though, it just takes practice. So many of your sketches without references are going to look awful despite you knowing the proper proportions of the human body, it doesn't mean you don't know what you're doing.

It just means you need to give yourself extra help. You're not lesser or bad for not being able to draw on a whim or not having these intricate details. Trust me, I've struggled with thinking that.

The best thing you can do to work with it is collect so many references, use a pose software (like magic poser), and absolutely screenshot and collect art that has a creative element you struggle with. (For me its color, backgrounds, and splash text.) Also, maybe practice abstract art. You have a brain unhindered by a visual expectation, I recommend it. For me I like to do surrealist/abstract pictures of water and space. It takes technical skill but everyday is a good day to start practicing.

Having Aphantasia is a neutral thing. It's not bad or good, it's just there. That bad part is not acknowledging that you work differently so you need to adapt differently.

[steven-wijaya]

character building questions (pt2)

Does your character have an ego? Write a short scene in which their ego is at its peak-halfway through, their ego take a battering and see how it manifests itself in their behaviors.

Write a short scene in which your character allows their anger to get the better of them. Does it erupt onto someone else, or is it internalized?

Write a short story about the stupidest thing your character has ever done. Were they honest afterwards? Did they make it into a joke and take ownership of their blunder, or did they retell their story in a way that made them out to be a hero?

Write a short story about your character in which they interact with the symbol of their star sign - i.e. if they are a Sagittarius, they interact with the archer, or are the archer themselves.

Write a short story about your character's spirit animal.

Write a short story about the hardest thing they have ever done.

What are three positive personality traits your character has? List them, then write a short story where all three appear

Write your character's bucketlist. Pick one item from the list and write a short story or scene in which they complete or fail to complete it.

Describe a garment your character has bought but has never had the courage to wear. Write about the event that they want to wear it.

What does an average day look like for your character? Write a scene in which you disrupt this day and take your character on a journey = (i.e. introduce and inciting incident)?

[steven-wijaya]

Splish Splash Psyduck

[steven-wijaya]

I am an artist, or I guess something of the such, I write and paint and read and devour art with a longing lust.

But lately I am messy, maybe I always have been; I can’t count how many times I’ve been caught with flecks of paint buried under my nails or charcoal smudged on my skin.

Even when messy, I know what I want to do. I want the mess I create to be something beautiful; art asks for us to take tragedy and transform it into something the masses can relate to.

So, I’m smashing perfect tiles to create some new mosaic but, it all is just starting to look eerily similar to the normal messes I make.

The shards of ceramic are askew and won’t sit how they should, so now I’ve got this frown on my face tugging down and taking with it everything that makes art feel good.

But, I see it in the shards and shapes, right there is a trail of every single idiotic mess I have made.

It’s all the drunk kisses that leave my lips bruised, or the weeping tears to be a version of myself whose ribs protrude.

It’s ugly and never looks how it should; it’s throwing daggers with my tongue at those I love to see if they come back, even if they’re staggering from their wounds.

I am an artist. I create all the time but, it’s not always pretty pastels or delicate little words spoken with a small smile. It’s messy and cruel, which are two traits that stick to me like tar.

Because I am an artist, and I have mastered the art of fucking up as well as the stars have mastered dancing in the dark.

the artist - t.k.o

[steven-wijaya]

a poem about sleep and fear

It is late, and I find myself wrapped in blankets, phone screen casting my face in sharp shadows and spotlights. I scroll through photos and videos, overcome with some awful feeling of dread. Is this nostalgia? Regret? Hope? Happiness? Despair? Do I wish this went better? Do I wish I could relive it? Change things? Am I longing for something perhaps? Or do I simply not want to be in this current moment? So many questions with only answers that I can figure out. How daunting. What a chore. Memories resurface, plaguing me with emotions that have not stirred in a long while, perhaps had not been experienced since then. I beg sleep to pull me into his unremarkable embrace. Beg for him fill me up and distract me with dreams and nightmares because I would rather take that gamble than sort through these strange feelings. Yet, he ignores my pleas. Standing still in the corner of my bedroom, watching like a hawk, shifting like midday shadows. His form undulates like a tide as he approaches slowly. Each step is purposeful. Carefully calculated. What does he know that I do not? What does he gain from this show I put on? Time seems to speed up, ten minutes passing in the blink of an eye. I come to focus on the barely noticeable, yet constant, feather-light tug on my heart. It pulls me toward an end that I cannot see, cannot even begin to fathom. Oh… so it was fear of all things. That is what was shaken up inside of me. Fear of time. Fear of the now, and the then, and the next. Sleep stares down at me now, watching, his hooded eyes hungry and lustful. Deceit and amusement laced through his uncanny complexion. He knows that I have figured it out. Knows what dreams and nightmares to wrap around my neck and strangle me with. I glare, though still long for the end of this wakefulness, the end of these thoughts. Yet, I am unwilling to succumb to the illusion of silken sheets he bribes me with. He tries something different now, this time methodically wrapping his spider-like fingers around my heart, tugging on it gently, testing the waters. I feel the strain, the pull forward. The terror and panic of losing time shoots through my body like a bolt of lightning splits a tree in two. In his soothing voice he whispers that he will give me more time, give me more opportunities. Now that is a bribe. An offer I cannot possibly refuse. He knows what I really want, and now he cradles my life in his deft, sinful hands.

[steven-wijaya]

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