“You are being presented with two choices: Evolve or Repeat.” ~ Unknown
cave drawings
On the way into the office, I stumbled upon these drawings on the brick wall outside Starbucks. I was struck by how similar at least one of them was to the cave drawings in Lascaux, France. Well, except for the small pinhead people at the very bottom. Those are not found at Lascaux. Oh, and the “horse.” The Lascaux horse drawings are far better. Anyway, the Lascaux drawings are some of the oldest in the world. We discussed them in my Art History 101 class a billion years ago. Humans have been finding ways to express themselves and their circumstances from the beginning. For decades after the invention of photography, artists and critics argued against the qualification of photography as art. Some folks still see it as suspect. Shoot, I’ve reviewed art proposals of utterly horrible photographs trying to pass as art, and had to discuss them with other artists who thought they were the bee’s knees. Beauty was definitely in the eye of the beholder that time, but recognizing good technique definitely was not. Even among photographers, though, we don’t all agree on composition, lighting, and style. The same is true in any medium. One artist’s preference is another’s disdain. The point is that preference is personal, even among schooled artists. Art is, and will always be, subjective. That’s one of the reasons I love it. We each bring our own unique experiences to a piece of work, whatever that work may be: photograph, sculpture, painting, theater, writing. It’s not for the elite. It’s for everyone. And hey, we’ve got a whole new roster of prehistoric artists on campus. I’m happy to see them express themselves.
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