The latest on-line project from the Ilkley Art School arrived in my email inbox yesterday. (I must say they are doing an excellent job in trying to substitute for our classes missed as a result of the pandemic.) We are asked to sit in front of the TV and, after doing some warming-up exercises, try to draw what we see on the screen. Use of the pause button is permitted, I gather. Thank God for that!
My responding email was terse. “Stone the crows!” I’m not sure in what spirit I was then sent their reply. “Ah! A reaction!” What the heck did they expect?
Actually, to be serious, the exchange does highlight an important comparison of contrasting views regarding what artists are supposed to be doing. The romantic view of the artist does tend to emphasise “inspiration”, and the idea that the driving impulse of art comes from within the artist. Then there is what I will call the “Hockney school of thought”, which lays the stress on looking, and which prioritises the idea of the artist as somebody who responds to something in the environment.
In all of the projects I have undertaken recently, it suddenly occurs to me, I have been elaborating ideas that have hatched within my own imagination. Perhaps the exercise I have just been sent is a welcome corrective to that, and I will be compelled to spend some time looking.