Paul Klee is one of my art heroes. I suppose the title of my blog Wandering Points is in part a nod to his famous quote 'A dot is a line that went for a walk'...but it is not just dots and lines that I find incredibly pleasing about his work. As an artist, he was really absorbed by colour and rhythm, and was not afraid of expressing beauty and harmony in his work, in a way that was child-like, instinctive and almost primal. I came across an interesting article written back in 2012 by Jonathan Jones from The Guardian about modern art's reluctance to embrace beauty and I found it a fascinating read. Basically he suggests that a lot of art's reluctance to embrace beauty as a creative ideal possibly stems from DADA's anti-art stance, and that to be taken seriously, art had to be about 'ideas, politics, the sublime'. The topic of the role of aesthetics and beauty is massive and possibly one for the dissertation...but I am going to stick my head out now and risk being vilified. Personally I do not have a problem with making art that is about beauty and harmony. I do not see it as a superficial ideal and in fact feel that as sensory beings, beauty offers us a means to connect deeply with ourselves and our place in the world. Of course not all art should be concerned with beauty, as with light there is also darkness and all the shades and tints in between. What I love about art is that there is enough room for all kinds of expression, and that artists have the wonderfully privileged role of shining the light on all the tints and shades of colour in the world.
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