More about art

I've always struggled to create Art. Because the thing about art is that it requires skill, Painting is difficult, requires training. Poetry is walking a thin tightrope between beauty and pretensiousness. Writing music requires a lot of practice and knowledge of theory. These are all skills I wish I had but don't. So how does one cope with this? I like Allen Ginsberg's approach. Not that he couldn't rhyme or write normal poetry (you know, with meter), but his free verse is soo free. However, that opens up another can of worms for people--a line between writing absolute *shit* and beauty, like that created by Ginsberg. Ginsberg creates beauty while most attempts at free verse poetry are just so "look at me I'm free and I don't have to rhyme" meaningless shit. But see, thats another thing: People think that Art has ONE meaning: whatever meaning the artist intended. This is absolutely wrong. Art means whatever you think it means, even if it isn't what the artist meant. That's what art is. And most artists acknowledge this I think. So for a person (and LOTS of people do this) to go up to some Jackson Pollock painting or something and say, "that isn't art, its just paint splattered on canvas" is absolutely wrong. I don't particularly care for Mona Lisa, but I don't go around saying that it isn't Art. It just doesn't really have much meaning to me. Mark Rothko painted squares on canvas, but to see those squares makes some people weep. Art is about perspective. Like my photography teacher told me in high school, "the measure of a good photograph is not that you like it, it is whether it moves you." I think that Pollock and Rothko knew this, and understood art for what it is. Pollock thought he was a terrible painter (in purely technical terms anyway), but yet he was able to produce something profound.

While I'm on the topic of art still and before I forget, I totally forgot Rembrandt yesterday.
Rembrandt is amazing: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/rembrandt/