SCIENCE!

I recently read an article on color. It was about fictional, impossible and FORBIDDEN colors. It talked about the physiology of the eye, optics, light - all that is color. It made me think about art, and how the most basic palette of visual art should be these hard sciences. That was my argument at least. The color wheel is fine and all, but shouldn't you know how and why the eye perceives the most fundamental aspect of anything visual? This should be taught in art school.

Visual art is optics, music is math. These should be the building blocks, and then the actual art - the connections, the emotion, the politics, the entertainment, the beauty - can be wielded by the initiated.

At least this is what I thought at the time. Conceptually, an artist should be able to understand the science of beauty. But, when I consider the "art" that I truly appreciate, it might be the uninitiated I favor.

There are two fundamental aspects to any artist or work of art - virtuosity and composition. The former, in my mind, is wildly overrated. I'm sure you know someone who can draw well, and I'm sure you have a piece of art in your apartment done by someone who can't.

With music, this is even more apparent. But Tony! Dave Matthews' violin player/drummer/bassist is SO TALENTED! Who cares. Kenny G plays a mean alto sax, doesn't mean I am going to buy his record. Give me Keith Richards over Steve Vai any day. You ask me to make a list of the greatest guitarists of all time and Keith Richards will be near the top. Because he can write songs. He can make incredible guitar songs. And that's the point of being a guitar player.

All of this thinking about art, in a conceptual way, made me consider my own "art" - writing. Writing is the most practiced and ubiquitous art-form there is. Everyone writes. Writing an email to your grandson about a funny kitten video certainly isn't art, but, like a doodler or pictionary player to a painter, they are practicing the form. This is what makes my particular field so hard to narrow down.

Where is the virtuosity in writing? Grammar rules? Massive vocabularies? Alliterative abilities? It's even harder to recognize than that. The actual talents of a writer are so tied to their ability to compose a work of art that they are nearly indistinguishable. Perhaps this is because nearly everyone can write. Everyone can convey an idea in written form. So the talent shifts almost entirely to some nebulous concept of artistic composition. And again, give me Charles Bukowski or John Fante over David Foster Wallace any day.

There's something that rubs me the wrong way about a writer lording his abilities over me. I once heard that it takes a smart man to make something simple complicated and a genius to make something complicated simple. I couldn't agree more.