Spring Break
Sculpture Series: Center of the Arts
Brandon Bretl
Issue date: 12/10/08 Section: WEB EXTRAS
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I was a grateful soul to have made it to college with my creative integrity still intact. The public education system has a hardened resolve to destroy anything that diverts from the mainstream.
But there I stood, having succeeded the oppressive hurdles associate with education so as to never have to deal with them again, or so I had thought.
Now I could go on and on about my college experience: dodging the mandatory meal plan, getting kicked out of art classes, my participation in various benign vandalisms and artistic endeavors, etc. But it may be hard for some to decipher meaning from my boasting, so I will keep this article to the discussion of its assigned purpose, which is the sculpture on the front of the Center of the Arts.
Resembling a cheap brooch, the sculpture looks as though it may have been stolen from the Jolly Green Giant's great-aunt.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was of the belief that the entire material world we perceive with our senses is the manifestation of spiritual truths, or in other words, what is on the outside and perceptible expresses what is on the inside and imperceptible. In an ironic way, the sculpture outside the CA accomplishes this realization.
According to the most modern art theory, the theory taught within the CA, the sculpture is an artistic masterpiece. It is balanced; it has movement; it has depth; the colors complement; etc.
Let us take the large spiral on the right, of course the Golden Ratio. Fascinating in its mathematical foundations, the Golden Ratio is an anomaly that has the power to intrigue and offer direction in aesthetic choices, but it must remain at that, a feast for the mathematician and an intuitive recognition for the artist, not an end in itself.
I hope it doesn't seem as though I am bitter towards the CA; trees grow in opposition to the pseudo-force of gravity. I have learned many valuable lessons at the CA, and I would recommend it to any artist who considers a college degree necessary. Certainly anyone who is an artist should learn to talk like an artist.
On a more serious note though, one may consider what the true consequences of a standardized art education really mean, which is what this sculpture reinforces.
Inside a sculpture like this, what is valued is familiarity instead of creativity, meted repression instead of controlled expression, and limitation instead of liberation.
The bars of Mondrian's Grid form a prison gate to entrap the imagination. Convention and compromise replace personal exploration and self-reliance. The attachment to feelings conquered replaces the embrace of feelings engaged. The spiritual open-mindedness of a child is shutdown by the secularization of every single mystical experience.
And we are left with an art that is containable, fiscally profitable, and easily managed by a middle class professionalism.
An art, or a sculpture, that is very unnatural, didactic, and unsatisfying.
As the great artist Paul Cezanne once said, "When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art."
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