Comments on: okama ; Aesthetics (ever so mildly nsfw)

By: animekritik

animekritik — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:13:23 +0000

@Kitsune

Or maybe they do, and you just don’t see it… Nah, you’re right: they don’t.

By: Kitsune

Kitsune — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:25:54 +0000

Is this why okama looks so clueless when talking about his own drawings???

Artists may explain what they draw, but they don’t always draw what they explain

By: animekritik

animekritik — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:40:36 +0000

Does the purpose of the artist have anything to do with the finished product? It’s an interesting question. People like Dali and Warhol always talked about moneymaking in relation to Art, Dali bragged about it…

I haven’t read TECH Win either, though it sounds like I wouldn’t understand a word of it (even in English translation..)

By: prettyprophet

prettyprophet — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:28:41 +0000

Since practically most of the drawings in “Useless Beauty” were made for zines, okama probably made some decent scratch off them, so in that sense, it sure was useful to him. Plus “Egguard” hooked him up to do “Glass Fleet”.

The best part to me is all this art isn’t even “useless” to us, the audience. Here we are, reading some tech mag, and BAM, next page there’s okama to remind you that drawings are pretty damn cool. Or at least that’s what I assume; I’ve never read Tech Win.

By: animekritik

animekritik — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:19:19 +0000

digiboy, I’m the same. I just bought a book on Japanese graphic design (posters, ads etc..) and i flipped thru the 500 pages in a millisecond. i’ve found that artbooks are very handy when i’m drinking wine, though, then it’s fun to revisit them and look at them more slowly (plus with the added minigame of not spilling the stuff all over the book..)

By: 21stcenturydigitalboy

21stcenturydigitalboy — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 19:56:55 +0000

nice post as usual, even if I’m not sure how to reply. I am the kind of guy who buys an art book but flips through it at a pretty exceptional speed and actually opens it maybe once a year, but I think that also has to do with me having both a good memory and being very easily inspired.

By: animekritik

animekritik — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:32:30 +0000

@ghost

Those criteria are not mine, but Costello’s (if I’m reading him correctly) which is why he calls the pieces in the museum “useless beauty”…And even as I write this I’m getting it wrong, so let me put it more clearly: (I think) Costello calls “beauty” useless in relation to the casual observer at the museum, who is not enriched by it or even delighted by it, and who surely isn’t inspired by it to create more. Costello’s point of view is not anti-art but the opposite: pro-art to the point of potentially bordering on elitism.

Now, your idea of the “story” connects nicely with Kant, because the point of a story is precisely that “there is a point” to it!! I.e. purposiveness.

By: ghostlightning

ghostlightning — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:56:55 +0000

An experience of an object that I find beautiful or even merely interesting (I’ll leave the definition of art out of it), and made by humans, is useful to me as a storyteller. The story is often incomplete; I may end up making up a lot of things as I go along looking at it (assuming an image or a sculpture), but to share a story with me is its primary use.

Your criteria: tell us how to make better art, tell us how to appreciate art… are actually very narrow uses. A piece may teach us something, but that is not it’s sole or primary purpose.