Before I make fool of myself, I feel the need to offer the following pair of disclaimers:

A) I have never been educated in how to study art;

B) I have never been mistaken for an art major.
 

Pre•ten•tious: adj. 1. Claiming or demanding distinction or merit, esp. when unjustified. 2. Extravagantly showy; ostentatious.
 

Beau•ty: n. 1. A quality that pleases or delights the senses or mind. 2. One that it is beautiful. 3. An outstanding example.
 

The American Heritage Dictionary (Fourth Edition) has, in one word, pinpointed exactly what bothers me about most art: pretension. I have the tendency to classify a piece of work as pretentious when an artist is applying a motive to his work before the physical act of creation has begun; I’ve found that I am much more likely to be impressed by a piece of art, in any medium, if I refrain from reading whatever artist statement may be present. I’m not saying that the work shouldn’t be created, but merely that it strays from my (overly-traditional?) perception of the fine arts as adding beauty to the world, rather than criticizing or disparaging society, which can already be seen in a hideous light too often.

Take Bowling for Columbine, for instance. I will not deny that Michael Moore created a well-constructed, very persuasive documentary. That is exactly the root of the problem for me; exiting the theater I had an overwhelming desire to protest away my life. That is not me. Through his film, it felt like Moore had made my decision for me, instead of presenting me with a situation in which I could for my own opinion. And besides, isn’t that exactly what he was criticizing the government and media for in the first place, demonstrating a skewed and biased view of the world? On top of it all, Moore pulls a Uriah Heep on us all with his disclaimers of being too ‘umble to know the answers, but, in effect, Bowling for Columbine turned out to be a compilation of suggested solutions, which are so much more insidious than overt statements of opinion or preference. I digress…

As I see it, on the other side of the art continuum, there is beauty. A work that is unconsciously beautiful is not only the most pleasing to my senses, but also to my mind. Doodles on a notebook page are not inspired by the possibilities of social change, yet they consistently better my hour and a half-long Tuesday/Thursday class, and make studying for a test much more bearable. Doodles are an example of spontaneously generated art, borne of pure impulse: even if my friends’ doodles are ugly, at least I know they’re not trying to convince me Coke is evil, and they have, at one time, either made me smile or cringe based solely on the image depicted, not by mind control.

This Print of the Week, titled “A Blind Contour,” by Eliana Stein ’06 is beautiful. She is reluctant to admit to the presence of anything special in the drawing, dismissing her work as an exercise from the first day of Beginning Drawing. She wasn’t allowed to look at the paper while making her classmate’s portrait, and cites the fact that “he’s Asian, and you can’t even tell,” as a flaw. Even if the finished product doesn’t look like the person that had been sitting before her, it is the pure product of hand-eye collaboration that ignoring how the brain “thinks” the portrait should look. Like a Troll doll, the sketch’s imperfections grew on me, and evolved into beauty, tempered by the eye and hand, not the mind.