The 36th Chamber

When I was watching the 36th chamber and thinking about my life in relation to San Te all I could think is that although art school has been brutal it is definitely not beating your head into sand bags. And it doesn't seem that useless either.
All joking aside, most of his life's journey I really can't relate with. Perhaps I most relate to his desire to exceed. He wasn't happy with just being average so he'd wake up in the middle of the night to work at something and I've slept less and less as the semester's progressed because I have that same desire.
Shaolin in a lot of ways is similar to art school because a lot of what we do seems a little over the top at first, but then as the year progressed you realize how significant things you thought weren't important are the more your eye is trained to view things. Especially simple things like pinning your drawings up straight.
Eating on top of a log in water is basically like being able to look at a model and let your hand draw without you staring at the page. Running on barrels would be like compositional balance. Also how the chambers work at training individual areas of his body, our classes train individual areas of artistic design, and each assignment focuses even more specifically within that.
I think as far as perseverance and art is concerned is that you can't just stop once you make something that works. Not stopping because of time or lack of funds, but working with what you have until you're satisfied, not just until you're "done".
I think monks are far too religious and dedicated to be compared to artists who from artist to artist can differ so much in practice, appearance, personality. Monks are kind of taught to not be extreme while artists are constantly pushing past extremes. But both monks and artists have a higher level of connection with themselves intrinsically.
Boot camp is not as physically trying as the 35 chambers, but more so mentally I would say. The 35 chambers were taught in a peaceful, spiritual, and solemn environment while boot camps involve drilling, loud noise, and lots of activity. Not to mention boot camp is essentially preparing people for war at its extreme while the chambers were only a means of bettering oneself.
The abbot's quote is actually surprisingly really applicable to the art community, not sure why it's surprising though. But art school is definitely an almost closed off existence from the world. Students [for the most part] don't have to worry quite as much about bills and responsibilities outside of making art for class. It's turbulent while you're inside the flow of the school but that turbulence will really be put in perspective when we leave school and understand that we have to make everything we learned work in a world that's primarily a business.
To challenge a master in art...well. I'd imagine first that a teacher, or someone who inspires you would be a master but maybe actually someone who doesn't inspire you. A popular artist that you feel doesn't deserve the recognition they get, if you were to take the goal or meaning that they intended for and then tackle it with your mind and approach it differently, I'd say that's challenging the master.
I don't think I've reinvented art in any way as drastic as creating a three part nunchuck. I've done things were I've done them without being taught or given the idea but I'm not sure I'd say it's the first time it's been done. I don't really know enough to say.
The 36th chamber in relation to art school feels kind of like, the students that go on to be teachers or artists that become popular in some manner, not necessarily really popular, but enough to inspire someone else to go into art school.
I guess my art teacher from HS Mr. Windsor was my San Te as far as the 36th chamber is concerned. I have yet to see the Godfather but everything he said to me really helped push me towards art and he saw something in me other than math and here I am tackling the chambers myself.
Who knows where it will go after this point. I've taken it upon myself to write down ideas that I don't have time for now, or concepts that I'm interested in, and perhaps they'll change after school but I want to remember the things that I don't have time to do now while I'm still learned so that when I approach the world even if I'm not sure how I can do what I want to do, I'll always be focusing on what I want to do, not making by.

Armleder

It feels to me as if John Armleder’s work is deeply rooted in how it is perceived by his audience as I would imagine most artists should at least consider. Especially if you consider himself to he a part of this own audience because he wants to change his own perception of his art when he exhibits so he wants to take on the role of a viewer separate from his art. It’s interesting that a good number of his exhibitions rely on historical knowledge of art so it’s more specific to an audience but he says he prefers the unknowing audience who would get an entirely different perspective from his art. Otherwise he would only get his own perception retold by those with a similar knowledge of art to him. He notes how people classifies his work within multiple different movements, and is glad that they can do that. Their perception of his work doesn’t change the meaning for him but he wants them to be looked at from changing perceptions. I don’t think artist movements are as static as a definition of what a fruit is, and the same with people’s perceptions so it’s entirely possible for Armleder to be a part of multiple different movements. During the Renaissance artistic styles lasted longer and varied less, but in today’s world there are tons of different cultures all with different movements coexisting and influencing one another and movements are created and die off quickly. So it’d be impossible in my opinion for artists now to only fit one movement, and even if movements directly contradict one another it’s possible to be associated with both depending on the perception of the viewer.
I think it’s highly plausible what he’s saying about it being impossible to have completely generic or neutral work because I don’t think it’s possible for anything to be completely something. Even if you take away the word completely I’d still lean towards agreeing with him because neutrality is subjective. I think even neutrality is important though and the idea of a completely neutral piece of artwork intrigues me a lot. I think it’s hard to classify anything as neutral though because it has the history of all art influencing it and the history of the artist.
The way Armleder recycles form is so important to me today because recycling of waste and energy is so important. Recycling ways of creating art seems to me to emphasize the importance of not giving up on forms simply because they’ve already been used, like how people treat clothing and electronics today. People should consider the importance of throwing away things more clearly.
When Armleder uses the term pseudo intelligent, he is approaching his art with the intention of failing at being smart so he is trying to create dumb art. Basically he is trying to fail which always devolves into a paradox about success, but I think it’s interesting. I’d fall back on the paradox though and say that if he is trying to create something that appears smart but isn’t, then his method is smart and so what the product, the art work. To reiterate my early points about his relation to his audience, because the lack of intelligence of the piece requires a specific audience, those without it may actually consider it to be very intelligent and it feels more like his usage of the term is simply a term to satisfy that specific art audience so that he can appeal more to the unknowing audience.
I think that it’s a matter of sequence, confusing the viewer should come first because if a viewer walks us to a painting and sees a beautifully painted bowl of fruit they’ll appreciate it’s beauty and continue walking. There needs to be something done to art whether in how it was created with texture, method, size, anything that adds some level of confusion to the piece so the viewer will stop and study it. People will study graffiti because it’s harder to read and they’ll listen more closely to people who talk quieter because they’re harder to hear. I feel like if artists want to influence people more they need to get their full attention for longer than a couple seconds, but I don’t think having no underlying explanation is good either. I don’t think that the artist’s explanation is important so much as the fact that multiple people can find different ones within it, if it’s so confusing that only art critics and the artist themselves can bull shit a response about it’s impact on them, then I don’t think it’s succeeding. Catching your eye and making you stop should warrant some sort of substance. It’s certainly more exciting to confuse someone then having them understand something that they create, like riddles. They’re beautiful whether they’re solved or unsolved.
As far as Armleder’s way of creating artwork I’m moderate on it. Which might be easy to be because he seems rather moderate about things, or neutral as was mentioned earlier, not to say entirely neutral but he’s not doing anything over the top, it’s subtle artwork. His method isn’t so much a method to me because it appears that he approaches different areas very different with an open enough mind to just left the art flow. It’s not like he set out to do things in my opinion, it all feels very natural, which isn’t something I’m necessarily great at but I appreciate seeing it.