art school philosophy

I went to art school (just for a year) in 1998 when I left school. As part of the course we had to write an essay by choosing 3 of the questions below to answer. I just found that list after all these years, below is the best of them - some are still pretty ridiculous but fun to think about. I might blog about some of them in more detail another time.

Why is there folk music?
Could you get along with someone who had no taste?
What if you cooked a meal and no one ate it?
Can you indicate the boundaries of your own culture?
How much space does your body take up?
To whom are you responsible?
For what are you responsible?
Why are you wearing those clothes?
How do you act when you’re alone?
Are you the product of nature or nurture?
Was Darwin right?
Why are there only 2 sexes?
Review a film imagining you are a member of the opposite sex
Review it imagining you are twice your age
Describe a space as if you were blind
What does a house have that a painting doesn’t?
How many words is a picture worth?
Write beautifully about something ugly
Is training necessary?
Does knowledge get in the way?
Could you make something without designing it?
Is style opposed to content?
Describe what is meant by the word ‘rhetoric’
Could crime be described as political?
How easy is it not to think about art when you’re making it?
Is it the same when you are looking at it?
How can you tell the difference between life and art?
How can you tell when something is real?
What is transcendence?
Does belief have any place in the experience of art?
Is religion avoidable?
How can one achieve Nirvana?
How can you be sure that pain exists for someone else?
Do you think good and bad are opposites?
Is ‘abstract’ a verb or an adjective?
Give an account of the ways in which minimalism is expressive
Is art always serious?
Can laughter be revolutionary?
Does the fact that works of art don’t have a particular meaning imply that art is meaningless?
What can silence mean?
Are conversations always about communication?
Can questions be answers?
Is standardisation the road to utopia?
What does it mean to say that modernism has failed?
How do you know what you like?
Are your ideas your own?
When does the future start?
How old will you be when you die?
Does space exist before you fill it?
What is chaos?
What is nonsense?
Write a sensible Dadaist statement about soft drink tins
Is moisturising the answer?
What would you censor?
Are there things you shouldn’t joke about?
Are there things you shouldn’t make art about?
If someone offered to pay you well for something you really didn’t agree with, would you do it?
What is the difference between idealism and ideology?
What is situationism?
Produce a psychogeographical account of your journey to college
Argue for the importance of kitsch
Give me ten good reasons why I should live in a tree
Is art useless?
Is art for everybody?
What distinguishes work and leisure?
Is beauty relevant?

Some more old artwork

omar khayyam

I've recently finished working on a documentary about Omar Khayyam who was an 11th Century Persian polymath - mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, physician and poet.
His most famous poems are compiled in the Rubaiyat and are still loved today for their timelessness and have been quoted in speeches by Martin Luther King and Clinton.


They are great fairytales and here are some of my favourite illustrations from it by Dulac, Vedder and others...

(This one is actually the Princess and the Pea, not the Rubaiyat, but I love the colours and draftsmanship)

bertrand

This is a really old painting I did in my first few weeks at art school, many moons ago. I really like it though. Painting was a pretty new discipline for me and I did it from a black and white photo of Bertrand Russell, fairly quickly and spontaneously.

It's so long since I've done any painting or drawing. I really want to get back into it, but it takes committment and I know I would have to do at least 10-15 crap drawings before I got a decent one I didn't hate - and I'm too much of a perfectionist and too impatient to go through that process.

Maybe when I have babies, I will spend my afternoons painting and drawing again, that would be really nice.

This is a life drawing I did a few years back as well. Rubbish resolution but you get the idea. Again it came out quite spontaneously without me thinking about it too much. I love when it happens like that.