Response to Davion's blog

How can an artist not know the true meaning behind his/her art, when art is the intentional manipulation of feelings or desires?  How can they manipulate what they don’t know?


It's like the drawing Professor Johnson drew on the board with the ice berg, where 90% of our minds are unconscious while the rest of the 10% is conscious to the world and others. It's also like the things we do in everyday life.  

You could be scratching your nose during a conversation and not know it. This is kind of what drawing, painting, playing an instrument, dancing, etc. are like. When you draw, you could draw a random mark on someone's face you're drawing, paint an object brighter than what it actually looks like, strum a c-note instead of a different note, hold a pose a few counts longer than what your dance routine originally was. Whatever thing that you do unconsciously could have a meaning to it. 

You might have been thinking about the person's personality you are drawing and unconsciously your pen/pencil might have slipped and accidentally grazed the person's face on the drawing. You might be in a happy mood and so you unconsciously added more yellow into the green tree leaves than it originally is. You might unconsciously be thinking about a special someone that the song reminds you of and your fingers slipped on the note and hit the c-note instead. On your dance piece, you could have unconsciously held the stance too long because you're focusing hard on the complicated leap you are supposed to do that is only a few counts away. 

Either way, an artist can create his/her own piece of art and be completely oblivious to how he/she portrayed the emotion, feeling or desire the artist had at the time. They might eventually see it after looking over their art work many times over, but the fact is that the artist was unconscious of it.