Which comes first art or life?

That is to says, do people create based upon what they experience or are experiences shaped by what people have created?

I was listening to an Ice T interview recently and he said something interesting about how easy it was to just tell what he had experienced. He talked about how he was fine with the move to start labeling music with stickers to warn about vulgarity and age appropriateness.

He also spoke about some of the music/rap that's just about partying, or having sex, or fancy things and money. He said he couldn't have rapped that way back then because it wasn't his experience, it would have to be totally fiction and there would be a limit to how many stories he could come up with, as opposed to the daily experiences he was living in the hood.

I never thought there was anything wrong with him sharing his experience and his feelings with words, in fact, as an artist, I consider it part of his job

I even enjoyed listening to it, because it was such a different but potent experience than my own life and because I watched him grow in the experiences and in what he shared as years went on.

I think its important, in art, for good and bad PERSONAL experience to be shared. But, of course, not all experiences sell music, not all experiences even get an opportunity to be mass produced and/or marketed to the public. Those creating the music are not so much those who are deciding what music people get to hear.

I think its important to try to maintain a BALANCE when sharing all those different experiences, but the culture tends to sway towards one extreme(all hard and vulgar) or all lollipop(partying and breakups and fancy things).

Many seem to think that the vulgar should be quieted as completeley as possible because of its impact on shaping the culture. I believe that the answer is having more of a balance instead of quieting either side.

What do you think?

Do you think the violent or vulgar 'art', whether its movies, music, visual arts or whatever should be censored or hidden away?

Do you feel we need more of it to show the ugliness of what some people experience,

or do you feel art should just show the 'beautiful', or 'inspiring' things people experience?

Life inspires Art


That is all subject to one's own personal preference. What one person feels is vulgar, another may find divine. I believe we should have the choice to be exposed to art. Society regulates exposure to art based on its "agreed upon" morality code.


The world is full of both beauty and horrid. Concentrating on the horrid can shift thinking into the negative. I feel it is best if mixed. It is 'despite' the ugly life that some of the most beautiful art is created. Created as a contrast.
Many comedians are not happy in life yet they make people laugh. One would think that Robin Williams was a happy guy, then he commits suicide.

Anyone can create art.
Some have a refined or gifted talent for certain mediums.
Even if nobody likes the art that we make, it is still art.
Creativity usually springs forth from imagination.
To stifle art, imprisons the imagination.

I grew up in a time when what people declared to be "art" expanded rapidly to the point where there's no longer a distinction between art and "whatever you happen to do at the moment."

So yes, I do support mindful censorship and restraint, both because some "art" directly harms people (especially children), and because if everything is art, then it is restraint of art to refuse to allow someone to restrain someone else's art.

Also, I "do art"myself, and from inside my own trajectory into "doing art," I know how much real work can be involved with what I think of as real, or valid art.

The art that I create, has two main goals: to try to excite others to see the world as I see it, and to get the damn ideas out of my head so that I can move on to something else. You could (if you like) sort artists into three basic groups: the ones who MUST get you to deal with their expressions, the ones who don't care if ANYONE sees their art, and the ones who are a mix. None of these questions matter to the second group. I'm in the "mixed" category. Sometimes I'm trying to change the world, sometimes I'm just getting my own tensions released by putting them into words or images.

I think it can work both ways. Art can imitate life and life can imitate art.Art should never be stiffled as we should all have the right to express ourselves , once it poses no threat to human life.And art is one of the more acceptable and powerful mediums of depicting the truth of alienated groups in society, who are often not given a platform to do so.

On a related note,since art is often a mere expression or interpretation of life ,I wish there was some way of getting a broader spectrum of view points broadcasted to the masses to create a more balanced picture of a concept or entity. In my mind, that broad soectrum of insights bring us closer to the truth ,which I often think is hiding somewhere in the middle of two opposing views

Huh?

Are you asking a question like "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

Or are you asking something more like "which is a greater priority in your life, which comes first, your job or your family?"

If the former, then it depends on your belief system.
If you believe in "god" or a great universal conscious personality, then art probably came before life.
From a human perspective life comes before art.

If you are asking about my personal priorities, life comes before art as art is little more or little different than a means of masturbating, attempts to trigger a specific emotion for titillation of something.



Is art truly just taking all of your experience, putting it in a blender, and then doing something with it?
Or is it realizing the boundaries of your experience and then taking an intuitive leap beyond to try and create something beyond your experience?

You know that old thought experiment of "describe a space alien without using anything that you've experienced on earth."
Closest anyone can come is through "artistic" expression avoiding language altogether.

Other than that, experiences are shaped by everything human beings are able to sense, even the absence of sense.
People do both. Create based upon what they experience, what is created and what is experienced shape what is further created and experienced.


It's why this:

is generally nonsense.
There is no balance.
There is only constant change.
Subtle to extreme.
There is no maintaining a balance, there is only a constant struggle to adapt to it and what variables you can control or avoid for your own comfort level and identity.
You don't find a balance. At best you get better at pretending you have while you come to rely more on the subconscious and indirect action in the struggle.


Shaping "the" culture?
Basic sci/fi fantasy stuff.
Law vs. Chaos.
You can either fight for change, or against change.
There is no balance except for those that don't want to face reality.
Fighting to change another culture is just trying to protect your own. You can't protect your own without fighting against another.
There will never be "the" culture. People naturally segregate themselves. Men, women, white, black, democrats, republicans, Texans, New Yorkers, accountants vs sales. Every segregated population has its unique culture.

Culture helps shape identity.
If culture always changes, so will identity to match it. If who you are, or who you think you're supposed to be, constantly changes, that's going to cause problems requiring compensating behavior.

There's no utopia. There's no "if we could just get one culture to this one point, to this one place, with freedom and equality and understanding and acceptance and knowledge and love for all, we can just find this one good point of balance and then stop it there."

You are either attacking yourself, or someone else, no matter what you do.

There's no progress, only change.
At best instead of grabbing guns and killing off people and asserting your own cultural dominance, you manipulate cultural dominance without violence...the target culture stops breeding as its adherents are ostracized and dies off, so you can assert cultural dominance.
No matter what, cultural conflicts lead to death.

At best it just makes you feel better that it wasn't directly violent and or other people get pushed to the point where they violently flail to protect themselves, so they're the bad guys.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the "vulgar" is quieted or not.
If it is quieted, that changes the culture as compensating behavior has to be taken to value quieting the vulgar.
If it isn't quieted, that changes the culture, as the stress creating the vulgarity stems from the culture and compensating behavior needs to be taken to relieve the stress for the sake of cohesion and continued perpetuation of culture, perpetuation of members self identity.


IMO movies and music aren't art.
I don't think they should be censored or hidden away, nor do I believe they should be subsidized in any way.
Promoted and disseminated solely through the efforts and abilities of the artist(s) and interested private citizens.


That implies a centralized ideology.
Of someone determining "what we need."
Or that, possibly, you and I form some sort of "we."
I don't believe in utopian culture or collectivism.
I do not feel "we" need more of "it."
And I sure don't want to pay for it in any way.


Art "should" be whatever you want to call art and create yourself, or what you go out and through your own efforts discover and label as "art."

IMO "art" is never something that is marketed or mass produced.
But I idealize more individualistic efforts. What one person creates.
Music, movies, books, although entertaining those aren't really created by one persons efforts.

I really don't see the difference between porn and prostitution except what government can regulate and tax.


I remember reading that before the 70's when people self identified it was never as an "artist."
They'd say things like "I'm a father, a mother, a man, a woman, a hard worker, a home maker. I'm loyal, patriotic, loyal, loving, hard working, nurturing."
Something like 1 in 100 people would say they were an "artist" or "artistic" or "creative."

Now (well, now being the late 90's when that book came out) a large majority of the people identify themselves as "artists" or "creative," highly valuing that label, and believing it had enough reciprocating social merit to mention.

IMO with the whole Ford assembly line and greater push towards niche specialization (think what it takes to become a doctor, a lawyer, to get your CPA, or the licenses required to become a hairdresser, all with specialized knowledge, skills, and language) which just means segregation and different cultures.

I wonder if part of the push towards idealizing "artist" or "creative," if people that call themselves "artist" and believe art is about "expression" and "to try to excite others to see the world as I see it," is simply a compensating behavior.

Biologically, we need to feel connected to a group, a culture. We biologically need hugs and loving touches.
Back before birth control we had umpteen orphanages filled with unwanted pregnancies. The infant death rate was astronomical.
There were political cartoons lampooning what people were doing with the number of dead babies. Wheelbarrowing piles of dead babies to the landfill.

Until some nuns decided that when babies cried they should be picked up, held, and cooed at, played with. Rather than Ukranian style dumped in a crib and given a bottle and change when necessary.
The infant mortality rate dropped precipitously when simple nurturing, basic touch, was introduced.

I wonder if people are trying to be "creative" to "express" themselves in ways outside of their perceived niche culture, find some more broad or universal means of communication, as a means of just trying to get back to normal, to get what they really need.

I don't think it's important for people to figure out how to share their personal experience, I think it's important for people to figure out how to unniche themselves and better communicate what they actually need.

Otherwise it's just creating a delusional reality and then relying on things like "artistic expression" or indirect manipulative communication to get people to give you what you need while you rationalize how important it is for you to keep "artistically expressing" yourself demanding people respond to it.

"Art" is the physical representation of an emotion or experience. "Art" imitates life. So both "art" and "life" are what you make of them.

Art, The Distruction of Mankind! Or ONE RACE!

is the video game that is teaching young kids to go around and K#ll is that an art, or an afterschool special that shows a jv hall with a broomstick in the bathroom with 5 girls. Is a Movie Theater filled with young men and women and underaged boys and girls who snuck in through the back door being exposed to Mechanical devices to be used to mass murder a household of teenagers. what about a car who takes over and goes on a rampage racking up numbers from infants to seniors only points count is the game.

If one put a human in a cage and then outside of the cage showed how to torcher and harm animals. How long would it take for this human to learn the same thing if it is all he was subjected to for 18yrs. When the human was released into society he was unable to function for all he had was a craving for death.

Tv has created death in our world but what no one understands is it is an easy way to Genocide without the USA Military in our streets. The Government just sits back and waits, today this happens, it is a game for some like as a Man hunts a tiger, instead, he hunts a human one by one or hundred at a time. He sits and waits, he plans, he gathers his weapons than when the right time it becomes his Art left behind while the mass distraction is left behind for others to clean up the mess. what did it teach, because that is what art is about is teaching the next generation to create an image out of nothing.

If I was to listen to music from this day an age it would cause a person to go out and demolish a vehical, a person, a dog or a child to end all life as he or she knows it the glory of death as they seem to call it.

Wepons are a form of Art they say!
what the Night people do not understand is they are the target and have been since 1930- when it was put into the plan, to make a great race but the "rebellion nature and the lack of understanding" to educate could not be taught so the breeding was stopped and in the 1950's it was placed on the presidents' desk. (he got shot)November 22, 1963. They have taught Iraq, the NK Well: United States is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world, with nearly 300,000 of its active-duty Introducing (DoDIPP). The Hercules!!! Plastic Caskets!! (Fema Camp Coffins Investigated) You can look it up on YOUTUBE it's not a JOKE! Now going along with this you might say skeptical view at our “honest” governments “good intentions” to be prepared for perhaps viral infection, … Today just waiting for the right president to sign it. It was signed! Coffins away in Georgia 500,000 to persist on a piece of land. there is a document that has taught Korea NORTH KOREA COUNTRY HANDBOOK fas . org / nu ke / guide / dp rk / nk or . pdf This product is published under the auspices of the. Department of Defense Intelligence Production Program. (DoDIPP). since the 1970's how to eliminate only one race the night race in America. This document teaches young kids at 14yrs old to 30yrs old. Next year they will step foot on US Grounds and head out to many cities near New York. from 2018 to 2027 a Mass about of people one by one group settings all over the USA will die. Is this Art! do you ask why! Its because Mankind is tired of the Destruction of one race that has overpowered another race and brought hate to all art, Preachers teach it, Teachers teach it, Music teaches it, Movies teaches it. "now we are about to live it". To make a massive change brings ORDER to a Government! Burn the f and P and tear down all the S you can start from scratch. Make a NEW HUMAN RACE!

This world that has taken "away" Pride, Work ethics, and Integrity, Morals and most of all LOVE for a Human Soul is gone to only leaving behind a race that could not forget the past so loneliness and laziness is left. so the USA can be taken over by One country leaving another behind.

The young men and women have no idea but as old as I am I fear I am a dying breed, as we sat down by a tree and learned about life, the next generation sits at a table on a computer and zones out on pharmasudical medical permitted Legal Drugs. Humans becoming fat and forgetful, sidetracked and has no idea what is outside of his or her house. But the computer is ART, the Cellphone is ART, the TV is ART and yet a bike and rollerskates are only for elementary kids.

Mankind has created an Art that I am afraid he cannot hide any longer there is a future that no secrets shell be the truth or death. What once was hidden will be open to the entire world.

the world is making (Mankind Responsible for his actions) and in this comes a "New World the EVE"! 2030, In this world mankind, has lost all words, he himself cannot live with himself. While Women Rebuild the world. Wait and See without you noticing all the Sensoring, and all the facts of an immoral man will be exposed to each city, town, or neighborhood they will not be able to run and hide.

I never thought my Art Teacher or my History Teacher understood life but I see after 40yrs that they were more in tuned to the creation of life then we thought! What we were taught is playing out today and perhaps what our grandchildren will learn will also have some thought!

By 3000' the world will be nothing like it is today for we will have destroyed and rebuilt so many times to genocide, to create jobs and to make a "New HUMAN RACE" in 2070.

Art, we are not teaching ART we are teaching Death mass death, in clay, photo's, music, glass, tv, radio, colledges, schools, business, goverment all these places are creating death but the worst of them all is the Media this is the true art for it uses an imagination to fear all of the mankind making them believe that the end is near when the truth is all land on earth is free, all creater is free, all people are free and all nations are controled by media or the USA! One Nation under ONE MAN! and all religion will be faded away as dust to dust for faith and hope, brilliance must die for one to go back in time and learn how to survive.

msharmony ...Is art truly just taking all of your experience, putting it in a blender, and then doing something with it?
Or is it realizing the boundaries of your experience and then taking an intuitive leap beyond to try and create something beyond your experience? -> it is either or with some artiest ...




I do believe in keeping... some away from young children ...
but seems they can down load anything these days ...

I grew up with comedian Richard Prior & George Carlin ... what does that tell you about vulgarity both different kinds of artistes
came from different backgrounds an both very good ... same in art... all a matter of what one prefers ... take a look at MM he rapped about his poor back ground seemed real ... a lot like him for it ...

again... it is either or with some artiest ...
I don't believe you can rubber stamp any of them ...

That is a huge question MsHarmoney.
Many artists become famous, but their medium/art has not been their experience or their life, yet they have captured history.
Kevin Carter photographed the famine in Sudan 1993. His experience of other's lives/death's haunted his life, he commited suicide a year later at 33.

There is a special border, the border between art and life that
often shifts deceptively. Yet, without this border, there is no art.
In the process of being produced, art borrows material from life,
and the traces of life still shine through the completed work of art.
But, at the same time, the distance from life is the essence, the
substance of art. And, yet, life has still left its traces. The more
scarred the work of art is by the battles waged on the borders
between art and life, the more interesting it becomes.

As far as welding goes. That puddles not going to do anything without me. See the puddle be the puddle. Metal has been my canvas for many years and my livelihood. Now what was the question?