Art Hacks: Curating a Taste in Art

Developing Your Own Art

This aspect of an artist's time is all about developing and investing in your ability to recognize what makes art in the world valuable and important and worth participating in.  This is different from the satisfaction of making a well-crafted thing or participating in a well-performed act (cooking, DIY assembly, and so on).  For a fine artist, this is a sharpening of personal sensibilities and thoughtful calibrations about making and advancing fine art.

And being an artist is different from being an arts and crafts professional that is manufacturing well-established, kitsch product for mass commercial consumption. If the art you create is all about how it looks then you're probably an arts and crafts professional concerned with skills mastery as a primary and maybe exclusive interest.

Taste and Time

One formula for a definition of (artistic) taste is that aesthetic distance and persistence of exposure to art equals a measure of the sophistication of taste. In other words, the closer and longer you expose yourself to art you can absorb, the better.

Regardless of how you define art, its a necessary (though some will debate this) and a time consuming exercise.  It does not necessarily need to be costly.

One of the first orders of business is to re-evaluate your art education to date.   This comes in at least two forms art skills you've been exposed to and art theory and recognition.

Skills

If you are exercising and refining skills that you have already established a trajectory with (say, painting or sculpture) then you already have some inertia going.  If you're unsatisfied with your existing skills and can't seem to make progress on your own then it makes sense to enroll in a skills based studio arts program that's very hands on. 

Art Familiarity and Recognition

This includes art history, art theory, and art curatorial subjects.

Art History

The study of Art History is increasingly a dubious exercise for a studio artist.  The mounting list of problems with History courses generally include their (politically motivated) veracity, the hopelessness of the scope of the field, and their actual affective and effective consequences on an artist.

The undiscussed much larger issue with history narratives themselves is that, for a studio arttist, sequencing historical art is unimportant.  What is of interest are the art problems represented and solved by artists working in familiar aesthetic topologies.

The sheer, ever expanding volume of artistic production, discovery, and redefinition is another impossibly complex problem with any artistic discussion.  For studio artists, the complexity can devour time and energy that is well beyond any benefit the exercise can deliver.

A comprehensive Rosetta Stone-like survey of Art History issues and recommendations can be found on Art Historian Dr. James Elkins' website.  There he suggests a number of exercises an interested party might experiment with to develop a bit of an art exploration map of what you have been exposed to, what you enjoy or dislike, and so on.

A 21st century approach to learning art taste and appreciation needs to start with taking advantage of the internet tools such as videos and digital recommendation agents. And it needs to be emphasized that in advocating the use of recommendation engines there is always the very real chance of intellectual claustrophobia setting in.  In other words, you need not allow yourself to get too comfortable in aesthetic echo chambers. Get comfortable with discomfort if you hope to learn and grow.

Art Theory

Like Art History, the study of Art Theory is debatable. A studio artist doesn't necessarily have a need for theory to create art.  But Art Theory is saturated with the vernacular of art past and present.  In this regard, becoming exposed to and at least mildly familiar with Art Theory subjects of the day promotes and broadens your individual taste. And to some degree, it ensures that you can be part of the art conversation.

Again, a comprehensive Rosetta Stone-like survey of Art Theory subjects can be found on Art Historian Dr. James Elkins' website.  You can, cafeteria-style, pick and choose what you think may be of interest and as your vocabulary grows you'll be able to search out art of interest with a far greater specificity.

Curating Your Taste and Your Art

Part of the learning process is an exercise in developing vocabulary, tools, and a pocket full of ideas. 

As you identify videos that capture your interest, add the to your own playlist for return visits. And each of these videos will recommend complementary content - other videos, artists, and topics that can extend your own artistic horizons.

An old adage advises that "travel broadens the mind".  This is true enough but being an artist with a full time job, family responsibilities, Time and budget considerations, and other constraints may make this impossible or minimal. Not everyone can travel and visit museums and cultural venues.

If travel broadens then let's add that surfing the web can be just as educational and satisfying.

All major and even minor museums have rich websites to browse.  The larger museums offer seminars and tutorials that are excellent sources of historical, theoretical, and contemporary art.

Google Arts and Culture is another excellent resource for learning about art.

And a personal favorite site of mine is Mary Lynn Buchanan's visits to art galleries.

In every case, its easy and important to explore what's been done and what's being done in order to navigate where your own art is going.  Spend a few hours a week just learning and laerning to see.